New 7.1 hairstyle looks nothing like the winning hairstyle from the 2023 contest

[DeltaDawn37]

Jesus christ. This isn't even remotely the same hair. How can they even claim this is "inspired by" the winner when the whole point of the winner was to have "natural curls?" This isn't curly! If I were the contest winner, I would feel insulted that such a clear design could be interpreted so badly. And the original design was highly anticipated by many players precisely because there are currently ZERO curly hair options for most race/gender combos, which is really unacceptable. Even if they can't make curls look good in the engine*, they should have at least made curls - after all, plenty of non-curly hairstyles also look janky and they still get implemented. CS3 needs to redo this hairstyle before they put it in game.

*Additionally, while I do not use 3rd party tools, I have seen screenshots from people who do use hair mods, and usually those modded hairstyles are curly, proving both that a) people really want the option of curly hair for their characters and b) the game engine is perfectly capable of rendering curly hairstyles. If modders can make curly hair look good in FFXIV, I fail to see why CS3 cannot implement this hairstyle with the curls it is supposed to have.

[Kacho_Nacho]

It really looks like the character just stepped out of the shower than the contest entry it was 'inspired' by. It's really underwhelming, especially since people have been waiting for that winner to be implemented. Hopefully the hair can be reworked in some of the smaller patches to actually resemble the contest winner.

I agree. At best, it looks like a first draft. What's really shameful is Creative Studio III has shown they can do textured hair. There are mobs and bosses with such hairdos in the game. So, it's not a limitation due to the game engine.

I've suggested this before, and I'm going to suggest it again, Creative Studio III should reach out to the modding community to help lessen the workload. Square Enix could treat them as independent contractors.

Square could just send out a call for hairstyles, gear, improved 3D models for the environment, etc... The artists could then submit their work where it could be scrutinized by the people of Creative Studio III for appropriateness, bugs, and quality. Then if the work is acceptable, Square Enix pays the artist, the copyrights of the work passes to the company, and Square lists the artist as a contributor in the end credits of the expansion. Done.

Not only do I feel doing this would dramatically improve the appearance of the game I believe many artists would jump at the chance to have a work accepted by Square Enix on their resumes.

[KannyChan]

There's no excuse for this. At all.

The original design is adorable, well thought out, and even drawn to make the dev's lives easier. As others have stated, there are no good POC hairstyles in the game -- just the obligatory joke afro, and the world's worst matted 'dreads' that make you look like a white hippie at Burning Man. The fact that the artist fully admitted they decided to draw it on a light-skinned character to improve the chances of it being chosen... that is depressing.

"There would be performance issues with adding the curls!" Hair textures in this game are small even after the graphical update. The 3D model would certainly require a touch more effort than other hairstyles, but the end result would still be less graphically taxing than your average endgame character with glowing relic weapons and artifact armor. Even if every single AFKer in Limsa was sporting this hairstyle, the impact on your performance would be zero.

"They don't have the tech for it!" As others have stated, a few curls already exist on some Highlander hairs, and some characters like Byregot have distinctly curly hair. It is well within their wheelhouse. You can't use the excuse of the game being too old -- Guild Wars 2, a game just as old as FFXIV with an equivalent graphical fidelity (and a smaller dev team, no less), added over a dozen black hairstyles -- curls, locs, dreads, and *multiple* non-joke afros. FFXIV can do it, they just continue to choose not to. The alpaca mount got curly hair before we players did.

"They need to make the hairstyles appeal to a wide audience!" They could do it in a way that broadens their audience, rather than watering it down. When this curly hair was picked as a winner, the response was staggeringly positive. People with naturally curly hair, mainly people of color, were excited to finally have a hair style that represents them. One of the most consistent complaints from gamers of color is that FFXIV has absolutely no customization options that make them feel included. Many refuse to pick up the game or don't play it for very long because of that. Adding more curly hairstyles, like this contest winner, would literally draw more players into the game. They are literally losing money by not appealing directly to players who *want* to play but feel excluded and erased. And it is not an insignificant amount of people either -- black and brown anime nerds are *everywhere*.

What could've been something that drew in my friends of color into the game... instead turned out to be the result of leaving Timothee Chalamet under the grocery store veggie mist spray for too long. So many players have been begging for properly curly/kinky/wavy hair for *years*. There's absolutely no way that the devs aren't aware of how much folks are clamoring for it. Their heads are in the sand, and the result is some of the laziest hair I've seen in the game, full stop.

[Torashiki]

Why is it such a constant struggle to get decent haircuts in general?

It feels that all we get is either:

- jpop girly haircuts
- shibuya jpop boy haircuts
- meme/low effort haircuts

If they are not going to pay respect and faithfully make the haircut winners because they ''might be too western for our lala JP server sensibilities'' then stop holding contests and just drop the haircuts the devs want lol

The moment anything that isnt jpop shibuya hairdos is chosen I have to sigh and wonder how CB3 will butcher it.

[EstelleCere]

This hair is such a let down honestly, and disrespectful to the artist.
The actual art of the hairstyle has a lot of volume and many curls, looking bouncy. Whatever this hairstyle they put into the game now does not look like that at all. It looks like some flat and low textured seaweed, and that does not do the original creation of it justice at all.

I really hope that they fix this hairstyle come the patch, because it's not okay at all. I know for years people have been wanting more hairstyles for poc characters, and this just feels like a slap in the face to them. I hope they can find some way to fix it.

[Burmecia]

i don't really care. looks alright enough to me. cheers.

[Caro178]

Please forgive me if this has already been mentioned - I ain't going back through 40 pages - but are we even sure this is supposed to be Curls? When a winning entry was implemented into the game in 7.0 it was actually called a winning entry in the patch notes. The 7.1 hairstyle is just called an "entry". Curls won so why isn't it also listed as a winning entry?

[PrincessLily]

Short hair looks bad anyway ordinal and SE version.

[slingbees]

Please forgive me if this has already been mentioned - I ain't going back through 40 pages - but are we even sure this is supposed to be Curls? When a winning entry was implemented into the game in 7.0 it was actually called a winning entry in the patch notes. The 7.1 hairstyle is just called an "entry". Curls won so why isn't it also listed as a winning entry?

I wondered myself if it could possibly be an entry that wasn't a winner, but after looking at it myself and after someone later drew over both images to show which sections match up, it lines up very well with that entry, down to how some of the loose curls fall around the sections of hair, and it's parted similarly.

img embed isn't working so https://imgur.com/a/Sw15cJk
(sorry it's sloppy i made it in paint)

Even with the crunchiness, it looks to me to be very clearly meant to be the same style as in the entry

Honestly? If it's not the same hair then there's no real issue - all they have to do is address the concerns by saying as much and showing us the non-winning entry it's actually based on. Without any proof that it isn't supposed to be Natural Curls, its presentation is frustrating at best.

[lolnotacat]

I understand that for the Japanese player base, they don't really care about hair for poc, but I hope they could atlest understand i also tried to make the hair with them in mind to use.

To be honest, this is one of the possibilities I thought the devs might've missed the mark to begin with. When a character with curly hair and dark skin is shown in the US, people probably think of a different look than what people think of in Japan.