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

[Arrius]

Because the modders don't take into account that the game has to also run on toasters so they do not care about stuff like optimisation and poly counts and complex shaders.

Exactly - And then modders complain they crash because they have to load in half a million polygons per player when they enter a area with high player traffic, like Limsa or Solution Nine.
So they have to disable them in order the game to work.

Can you imagine SE going "Sorry Low End guys, this hairstyle and clothing breaks the fight for you, please unequip." ?

[IcarusAvery]

Hello.

Thank you for all your feedback on the hairstyle that will be implemented in Patch 7.1. We would like to apologize for the major confusion we have caused.

For this patch, we started work to implement "Natural Curls" from the winning entries of the Hairstyle Design Contest, based on the idea of adding not only straight hair but also a variety of other hairstyles.

However, as the development work progressed, the light, delicate, and voluminous curls required for Natural Curls could not be implemented perfectly, despite implementation of the recent graphical update in FFXIV, due to limitations such as the polygon count.

Therefore, the finished result is a hairstyle that has not been implemented as Natural Curls, but as a wavy bob hairstyle, which is called "Doing the Wave" in-game.

However, since we did use the winning entry as a reference in the development process, we included a statement to that effect in the patch notes. We are deeply sorry that this has resulted in a great deal of confusion and concern.

Although we were not able to make it happen this time, the development team will continue to strive to implement many more hairstyles in the future. As for Natural Curls, which was not implemented in Patch 7.1, we will persevere in our efforts to look for other ways to implement this hairstyle.

We appreciate your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy FFXIV!

No shade to the community rep - please don't shoot the messenger, y'all, they aren't the ones making these decisions (I hope?) - but this is such a hilariously bad cop-out answer, I'm genuinely in awe of how bad it is. I never thought I'd praise anything WoW did, but World of Warcraft - a game with a engine that's literally twenty years old - has been able to create Black hairstyles for years, but CS3 can't?


Small indie company, please understand. What a joke.

[starfarer]

I never thought I'd praise anything WoW did, but World of Warcraft - a game with a engine that's literally twenty years old - has been able to create Black hairstyles for years, but CS3 can't?

This is my issue. There's plenty ways to do curly hairstyles in a way that doesn't break the polygon bank. If CBU3 don't know how, they have connections - they can consult people for this! It's just so disappointing to see them not respect the artist's original vision.

[PaulusHamsteru]

Hello.

Thank you for all your feedback on the hairstyle that will be implemented in Patch 7.1. We would like to apologize for the major confusion we have caused.

For this patch, we started work to implement "Natural Curls" from the winning entries of the Hairstyle Design Contest, based on the idea of adding not only straight hair but also a variety of other hairstyles.

However, as the development work progressed, the light, delicate, and voluminous curls required for Natural Curls could not be implemented perfectly, despite implementation of the recent graphical update in FFXIV, due to limitations such as the polygon count.

Therefore, the finished result is a hairstyle that has not been implemented as Natural Curls, but as a wavy bob hairstyle, which is called "Doing the Wave" in-game.

However, since we did use the winning entry as a reference in the development process, we included a statement to that effect in the patch notes. We are deeply sorry that this has resulted in a great deal of confusion and concern.

Although we were not able to make it happen this time, the development team will continue to strive to implement many more hairstyles in the future. As for Natural Curls, which was not implemented in Patch 7.1, we will persevere in our efforts to look for other ways to implement this hairstyle.

We appreciate your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy FFXIV!

Time to upgrade the engine/rewrite the code or whatever works. I'm SICK of hearing the same excuses over and over again.

[ExESGO]

Time to upgrade the engine/rewrite the code or whatever works. I'm SICK of hearing the same excuses over and over again.

They always are, but it takes dev a lot of dev time. Reading various feedback on this forum, we'll never get the perfect unicorn game everyone wants. Do we sacrifice work-life balance of the devs? Do we sacrifice content? Do we sacrifice QoL? Everything has a sacrifice. Maybe they could drop the need to know business Japanese, but once again we'll have to sacrifice something for that.

[SpookyRahl]

Hello.

Thank you for all your feedback on the hairstyle that will be implemented in Patch 7.1. We would like to apologize for the major confusion we have caused.

For this patch, we started work to implement "Natural Curls" from the winning entries of the Hairstyle Design Contest, based on the idea of adding not only straight hair but also a variety of other hairstyles.

However, as the development work progressed, the light, delicate, and voluminous curls required for Natural Curls could not be implemented perfectly, despite implementation of the recent graphical update in FFXIV, due to limitations such as the polygon count.

Therefore, the finished result is a hairstyle that has not been implemented as Natural Curls, but as a wavy bob hairstyle, which is called "Doing the Wave" in-game.

However, since we did use the winning entry as a reference in the development process, we included a statement to that effect in the patch notes. We are deeply sorry that this has resulted in a great deal of confusion and concern.

Although we were not able to make it happen this time, the development team will continue to strive to implement many more hairstyles in the future. As for Natural Curls, which was not implemented in Patch 7.1, we will persevere in our efforts to look for other ways to implement this hairstyle.

We appreciate your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy FFXIV!

I appreciate that this answer was meant to be diplomatic but it really comes off as dismissive of the issue. I sincerely hope when the "issues" are solved and Natural Curls releases finally it will be a free default hair for all players. Everyone deserves access to a hairstyle like this by default so they can make their WoL look like themselves if they so choose. And that's the real root of this issue, the lack of representation that people are asking for repeatedly. I hope the team can find some consultants for this like they did for Dawntrail and fix these issues. If other games can work within their own technical confines to bring representation, in at least hair, to the table there is no reason CBU3 can't do the same.

[Madqueenmomo]

Hello.

Thank you for all your feedback on the hairstyle that will be implemented in Patch 7.1. We would like to apologize for the major confusion we have caused.

For this patch, we started work to implement "Natural Curls" from the winning entries of the Hairstyle Design Contest, based on the idea of adding not only straight hair but also a variety of other hairstyles.

However, as the development work progressed, the light, delicate, and voluminous curls required for Natural Curls could not be implemented perfectly, despite implementation of the recent graphical update in FFXIV, due to limitations such as the polygon count.

Therefore, the finished result is a hairstyle that has not been implemented as Natural Curls, but as a wavy bob hairstyle, which is called "Doing the Wave" in-game.

However, since we did use the winning entry as a reference in the development process, we included a statement to that effect in the patch notes. We are deeply sorry that this has resulted in a great deal of confusion and concern.

Although we were not able to make it happen this time, the development team will continue to strive to implement many more hairstyles in the future. As for Natural Curls, which was not implemented in Patch 7.1, we will persevere in our efforts to look for other ways to implement this hairstyle.

We appreciate your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy FFXIV!

Thank you for the response!
I am relieved to know that my hope was not misplaced and that the team did in fact try!
I am also relieved to know that you have not given up on textured/curly hair! It was my biggest fear that they would see it was hard then not try anymore.

Thank you for being transparent with the community about this!

While I know that it's just a promise and it will take more time to be implemented, I know you'll be able to create beautiful textured hair for the players!

For the dev, i posted in the Japanese forum as well,
I drew this image to inspire you and to not forget the people for who this hair is important!

Do your best!

[NerysEluned]

I remember seeing that this one had won the contest and had been really excited for it, though I don't think it would suit any of my current characters.
Completely unsurprised Square Enix didn't do it any justice, like why did they even pick this hair if they weren't going to actually make it.
It honestly doesn't even look like they tried.

Hello.

Thank you for all your feedback on the hairstyle that will be implemented in Patch 7.1. We would like to apologize for the major confusion we have caused.

For this patch, we started work to implement "Natural Curls" from the winning entries of the Hairstyle Design Contest, based on the idea of adding not only straight hair but also a variety of other hairstyles.

However, as the development work progressed, the light, delicate, and voluminous curls required for Natural Curls could not be implemented perfectly, despite implementation of the recent graphical update in FFXIV, due to limitations such as the polygon count.

Therefore, the finished result is a hairstyle that has not been implemented as Natural Curls, but as a wavy bob hairstyle, which is called "Doing the Wave" in-game.

However, since we did use the winning entry as a reference in the development process, we included a statement to that effect in the patch notes. We are deeply sorry that this has resulted in a great deal of confusion and concern.

Although we were not able to make it happen this time, the development team will continue to strive to implement many more hairstyles in the future. As for Natural Curls, which was not implemented in Patch 7.1, we will persevere in our efforts to look for other ways to implement this hairstyle.

We appreciate your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy FFXIV!

Thank you for your reply. Going forward, we hope you'll understand the need for transparency around these issues and why many BIPOC players and their allies are upset. We look forward to seeing you resolve this in the coming months.

[Minarisweet]

Thank you for your reply. Going forward, we hope you'll understand the need for transparency around these issues and why many BIPOC players and their allies are upset. We look forward to seeing you resolve this in the coming months.

its not gonna be months lmao

[Jokiro]

Hello.

Thank you for all your feedback on the hairstyle that will be implemented in Patch 7.1. We would like to apologize for the major confusion we have caused.

For this patch, we started work to implement "Natural Curls" from the winning entries of the Hairstyle Design Contest, based on the idea of adding not only straight hair but also a variety of other hairstyles.

However, as the development work progressed, the light, delicate, and voluminous curls required for Natural Curls could not be implemented perfectly, despite implementation of the recent graphical update in FFXIV, due to limitations such as the polygon count.

Therefore, the finished result is a hairstyle that has not been implemented as Natural Curls, but as a wavy bob hairstyle, which is called "Doing the Wave" in-game.

However, since we did use the winning entry as a reference in the development process, we included a statement to that effect in the patch notes. We are deeply sorry that this has resulted in a great deal of confusion and concern.

Although we were not able to make it happen this time, the development team will continue to strive to implement many more hairstyles in the future. As for Natural Curls, which was not implemented in Patch 7.1, we will persevere in our efforts to look for other ways to implement this hairstyle.

We appreciate your feedback and hope you continue to enjoy FFXIV!

Genuinely asking, how were you able to render fluffy textures on non-character models such as environmental assets in the form of bushes or the fur of certain creatures, most notably alpacas, if said polygon count issue exists?