Current state of Viera and Hrothgar

[LinaAkayomi]

I feel the exact same way, going back to playing a character that is not *me* is out of the question. Hope this sentiment doesn't encourage SE to sit on their thumbs and do nothing, because dedicated fans of hrothgar/viera will play these races no matter how limited they are. Which is why I feel the need to add that I cancelled my sub.

End of the day, I won't abandon Hrothgal because, after 11 years, I feel I'm finally the race/character I've always meant to be. But dang, it is overly frustrating. I am still convinced some minor tweaks happened to their models in 7.1 but I can't put my finger on it. I thought they had been left alone completely, but the shoulders look a tad tweaked and I swear my eyes aren't exactly the same, but I could just be losing my mind.

I feel ya. I will dabble on Lalafell every now and again because I really grew attached to my lala over the years waiting on femHroth, but having hats on my hroth will make that less likely.
But also, I'm convinced SE profits greatly from half assing hroths and then selling Fantasias to us...

[CamuiKushi]

I feel ya. I will dabble on Lalafell every now and again because I really grew attached to my lala over the years waiting on femHroth, but having hats on my hroth will make that less likely.
But also, I'm convinced SE profits greatly from half assing hroths and then selling Fantasias to us...

I relate to this. I made a miqo alt a few months ago and I've definitely spent more time as a cat than a bun in that time.

Of course, the whole situation has reminded me that outfits aren't account wide, so there's that too.

[Aexnidaral]

It's inexcusable to put out *new* gear that we can't use hats with. I understand anything prior to ShB, I'm even willing to say prior to EW -- but it's Dawntrail. Viera and Hrothgar have been out for 5 years. Putting out new gear -- especially cash shop items -- that can't be used is absurd.

[Phlurg]

It's inexcusable to put out *new* gear that we can't use hats with. I understand anything prior to ShB, I'm even willing to say prior to EW -- but it's Dawntrail. Viera and Hrothgar have been out for 5 years. Putting out new gear -- especially cash shop items -- that can't be used is absurd.

It's especially egregious to then charge players full price for the set when their character can't use it. The site is linked to the character, they know if it is a viera/hrothgar

[Lord_Umbra]

It's inexcusable to put out *new* gear that we can't use hats with. I understand anything prior to ShB, I'm even willing to say prior to EW -- but it's Dawntrail. Viera and Hrothgar have been out for 5 years. Putting out new gear -- especially cash shop items -- that can't be used is absurd.

Hah most of it is not new models they're reskins of old models they don't make 100s of new models every expansion they take old models/meshes etc etc & re-tool/skin them.

Also again Yoshida should've just stuck to his guns be somewhat less complaining those guns being Hrot/Viera will NEVER have hats only get unique hair updates instead he shared what team made on their own time & now players expect full headgear/all race hairs for them, must remember to Yoshida at least these meant be races never meant get any headgear so I imagine despite them making some available it's still incredibly low priority for the team to make.


As for Op lose me at Mods, yeah modders don't have get up catch train or drive work > work on specific task hired for/assigned too > get feedback on work > send for or test themselves that it works in various environments & make it work without limitations so players PCs/Consoles don't run at 1 frame a second > get approval > further testing > sent to other places since one team doesn't do textures/models/animations it's many teams so if I make model it may go off to different team does textures etc > then finally gets into the game & pray nothing wrong missed QA.

Modding on other hand you get up decide do whatever F you want for 2 - 18 hours don't care about polygons "most mods way over limit" don't care if runs poor or good or is optimized as long it runs don't have answer to any bosses/team leaders other departments/teams.

It's a completely different worlds Modding versus actual game Development.

[CamuiKushi]

That's the thing that baffles me, there are several hats they just let the ears clip or they just hide the ears outright. I don't understand the difference between different head pieces? Surely brand new hats should be made the same way as past hats that do work?

[LinaAkayomi]

Pressing issues like a poorly optimised mobile game

That no one asked for and everyone though was a weirdly timed april fools joke.

"DON'T YOU GUYS HAVE PHONES?!" tier announcement, honestly

I think that alone says it all about how much Square-Enix cares about Viera and Hrothgar, doubly so when it doesn't appear that those two races will be playable within said mobile game.

It's only ARR races, so Au Ra would supposedly get shafted, too. Then again, they're a popular race so chances are they get added in anyway.

.

You don't deserve a proper response. Modders do their job for free, devs don't, we PAY their company to maintain the game, so they should do it.

That's the thing that baffles me, there are several hats they just let the ears clip or they just hide the ears outright. I don't understand the difference between different head pieces? Surely brand new hats should be made the same way as past hats that do work?

As other posters said before, it has something to do with how some hats hide the hair, but at the same time, we have SOME hairs (see: Little Ladies' Crown, Varsity Cap, Felicitous Hood), so I don't know what's the problem, other than the hairs not showing "properly" through hair.
Meanwhile, hair clips on EVERYTHING you play on ALL races.
Have you ever worn Matoya's hat as a Lalafell? On SMN/SCH? The book clips through the damn brim of the hat 90% of the time.
It won't be perfect, it doesn't has to be, just let us wear them, damn it! At least the exclusive ones.
An example: See how everything clips to hell and back? Why are we allowed to have hands and outfits if they clip, hmm, Yoshida-sama? /s

SE: "We can't just toggle the metadata ON like those SLOPPY, unpaid modders do, that'd clip and look bad!"

Also SE:

[Derio]

My problem is they are digging themselves in a deep hole. They are releasing new gear on the mogstation and in game where the headgear or certain pieces dont work on these races. Why not work on them during implementation to work on all races instead of just saying we will come back to it later. The same goes for hairstyles.

[LinaAkayomi]

My problem is they are digging themselves in a deep hole. They are releasing new gear on the mogstation and in game where the headgear or certain pieces dont work on these races. Why not work on them during implementation to work on all races instead of just saying we will come back to it later. The same goes for hairstyles.

Same as everything else
Small indie company, please understand
The devs are very tired and underpayed and can't do that much for the game right now (nevermind the fact we pay to keep it afloat, so if it's too much work, just hire more people? It's not THAT hard)
But apparently, hiring contractors for fixing hats is too much for a multi million company that makes, what?
Let's say 10m players subbed (probably more) that's already 130m in raw revenue each month, even after salaries and all that, they can probably spend.. what? 1 million? In contractors to fix everything, just hire them for a couple of months.

[AbrahmEden]

I think being outwardly antagonistic towards the developers in threads like these isn't constructive, regardless of level of frustration.

My impression, as an outsider looking in, is that the development team is stretched thin (particularly with what I assume is a large portion of the graphical team assigned to the updates), because Square-Enix corporate still views FFXIV as a "salvage project", and uses that as an excuse to keep CS3 on a shoestring budget.

I would love to be proven wrong, and to be shown differently, but years of following Live Letters and the game's development seems to make this clear. While it gives the game a sort of underdog credibility, it also isn't good optics for a company to take their best-selling product (which IIRC made nearly a quarter of their yearly revenue in the fiscal year of Endwalker's release) and neglect it in favor of risky ventures like consistently-failing mobile game development.

FFXIV may bring in a large sum of money, but I doubt the team sees much of that invested back into the game.

Yoshida refuses to crunch his team and mandates limited work hours, and for the most part remains transparent and candid about development, which is a reason I admire him as a producer-- this is rare in the games industry in the west, let alone in Japan.

I agree the hole they're digging is deep, and somewhat disconcerting. If this is being worked on in the background, why not dripfeed out updated hats? My only thought is there's a certain development milestone goal, such as the majority of hairstyles implemented for Hrothgar and Viera of both genders, where they'll all be released at once? That possibly releasing a new hairstyle that hadn't been prepped prior would cause things to break? It does that to the mod, apparently-- hats will display with an unadapted hairstyle, but the models appear "peeled" with the hairstyle underneath not rendering.

Admittedly, with a rudimentary level of knowledge of the workflow (i.e. what goes into the mod that enables the hats to be displayed), and game development in general, I'm trying to rationalize it-- it would be extremely beneficial if there was an official statement clarifying the development, plan, targeted release, logistics, complications, etc.

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Edit: Here are a couple deductions based on what I know of the workflow and requirements for hat implementation. I chose to edit here in lieu of making a second post.

Clipping has been floated as a reason, but I'm not sure what the source of that reasoning is. I vaguely remember it being mentioned, and it's likely a factor, but definitely not the only factor here.

There are roughly four or five types of headwear in the game:
-Full-face helms without a visor feature that completely replace the head model
-Mostly-full helms, armets, and hoods that cull the hair model, and the head model is mostly replaced save for the face (ex. Dragoon artifact helms; newer ones may display on Hroth/Viera)
-Hats that display more of the face and neck, but still cull the hair model (ex. Zormor Turbans, which display on Hroth/Viera; these may be the same as the former)
-Hats that partially cull the hair model (ex. BLM/RDM Artifact hats; none of these partial-culling hats display on Hroth/Viera)
-Hats and facewear that don't cull the hair model (ex. YoRHa Type-51 hats, Varsity Flat Cap, Circlets, Glasses, etc.)

For every piece of headwear that culls part of the hair model, every hairstyle has to be hand-checked and adjusted. This would give reason to not release a hat until all planned (and existing) hairstyles had been implemented for that hat, lest a player use an incompatible hairstyle and the hat or hairstyle suddenly not display correctly.

For Hrothgar, the shape of the head and dimensions of the neck require the size and shape of all hats to be adjusted, in particular armets and face-showing helms that encompass a large amount of the face. The dimensions of male Hrothgar faces are somewhat varied, so I am assuming a great deal of checking would need to go into their dimensions. I know this was a lot of work for the hat modder.

For Viera, the position and angle of the ears likely has to be checked individually, even if they clip through a hat or helmet, to make sure they look passable (you would want them adjusted so they weren't clipping through a supporting piece of a helm's frame, for example). It's a different problem; I'm assuming the facial shape being similar to the other races makes it so the hairstyles are easier to check and the core dimensions of headwear need less adjusting, but the prominence of the ears is an entirely separate area. I agree that, for the most part, clipping here is fine, but position should be adjusted if necessary.

The mod publisher has lamented recently that vertex data for hats they have already checked and implemented has been changed, which sparked another realization: if hats are still being changed in the graphical update, and not just their textures, but their models being significantly altered, it would make sense from a work standpoint for the team not to update them for the newer races until the models and textures were finalized, to avoid having to do the same work twice. I'm under the impression that this is also why female Hrothgar were delayed until 7.0, after it was decided during Endwalker's development that the graphical engine would be updated; why create an entire suite of lower-quality assets that are just going to be thrown away for graphically-updated ones, when the team is stretched thin as it is?

QC is obviously a lot more stringent on official products, and has to pass a lot more checks than an unsupported mod. Red tape can be arduous, and if a team lead (or even Yoshida himself) isn't happy with the result, it can be sent back. They don't want a repeat of the Hrothgar ears incident.

Speaking of which, I can only assume that the chopping off of the Hrothgar ears in a previous 6.x patch was somehow related to the way hairstyles needed to be checked; Yoshida mentioned something about it being an "easier method" during the subsequent Live Letter after the backlash, and one that "was not acceptable to the community", so it was reversed.

I'll admit, I'm giving the team the benefit of the doubt here-- they're real humans, likely working 40+ hour weeks, so they deserve to be respected-- but I'd definitely prefer a real answer over this kind of speculation. They have to be aware that Hroth and Viera players aren't satisfied with the current situation, and I think voicing discontent on the forums (in a constructive way) is valuable. After all, it's about all we can do.

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Edit 2: As an addendum, when I was considering the Phoenix Riser and Vanguard Fending helms and their (somewhat amusing) Viera ear socks, it was brought to my attention that certain full-face helms (like the Archfiend Helm) simply don't display on Viera, and that the reason may be that as full-replacement helms, they would be non-uniform in terms of programming if they referenced (called) an element from the player's head, and would be unable to replace the entire head model cleanly without either chopping the ears off, or a model adjustment for the ears.

If this is the case, it's entirely possible there is significant modeling required (or even planned) for armor over Viera ears on full-face "head replacement" helms.

As a Hrothgar player, I've noticed two things in Dawntrail: there's been a general movement toward more "type 5" headpieces (ones that don't cull hair at all, like circlets and hairpins); and that all headpieces introduced in 7.0 that are full-face, hair-culling, or non-hair-culling actually work on Hrothgar, with only ones that partially cull hair being absent (though these are admittedly the majority of head pieces).

Are there any headpieces introduced in 7.0/7.1 that work on Hrothgar but don't work on Viera, or vice versa? Are there any full-head-replacement helms introduced that don't work on Viera?