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

[astralmoon]

I'm not sure where else to write about this but I'm very disappointed in how the new hairstyle for 7.1 patch looks as seen on the patch notes released today.

The hairstyle in question looks like this:



Assuming that this is supposed to be the "Natural Curls" hairstyle, which is part of the winning entries for the 2023 hairstyle contest, this is what it's supposed to look like:



I'm very disappointed if this is what we're about to get in this game.
The hair looks nothing like how the artist had originally visualised — it looks more wavy than curly. I cannot begin to articulate how bad it is that we've wanted better natural/textured hair in this game only for the devs to butcher the artist's vision and "play it safe".

Please do better. We don't have enough hairstyles like this as it is, with the only two options available for black people specifically are a stereotypical afro and a poor attempt of locs. I'm hoping more people speak out about this as I know folks have been looking forward to the small number of entries for textured/natural hair that were selected as winning entries for the contest.

[Fatch38]

hairs (in general) in the game are really stiff and most of haircuts looks bad/low def (even after the upgrade). trying to have beautiful curls/affro in the game is almost impossible it seems.

[Luluna]

It looks awful like play dough, I do not like the style they chose but I know a lot who do and they have made a balls of it. I remember when we used to get 2 or 3 in a patch now we are lucky if we get one at all.

The styles they had to choose from and it has taken so long to do just makes me more annoyed with the game as of late. I know we need more styles like this and also I would like a longer one as all the ones we have had have been so short.

They should have made a better job of this one and also add a long or mid length one. I feel for players who wanted this style and no clue who they have doing them because its awful. I feel the chaos raid may have a really good hairstyle in it as to get players to do it. I think they do not listen to feedback on anything now.

[GrizzlyTank]

Does the game handle curly hair like that well though? The pompadour and Affro are like 1 flat cylinder/ball with a texture not actually curls.

Edit: Guess i was correct in my assessment as seen in the dev response.

[thekavseklabs]

Does the game handle curly hair like that well though? The pompadour and Affro are like 1 flat cylinder/ball with a texture not actually curls.

The thing is the artist had actually laid out the 'panels' of hair, just like every other hair in the game, in sheets. The hair they actually made is mechanically the same. They just made it stringy and wavy and weird instead of sticking to sets of tight curls that would have been wavy/bumpy sheets in the model with a texture on top to bring the curls to life. There are mods for this game with curly hair that I've seen pictures of, so we know it's possible.

[MAJRIS]

Does the game handle curly hair like that well though? The pompadour and Affro are like 1 flat cylinder/ball with a texture not actually curls.

exactly.
To have such hair in good quality it would need the amount of polygons of whole character.

For those that say the new hair is bad, it would be nice to provide example or suggest way how to model the hair to not completely fry gpus with millions of hair strings.
The player-provided examples from other games sadly don't look appealing.

[Doopliss]

exactly.
To have such hair in good quality it would need the amount of polygons of whole character.

For those that say the new hair is bad, it would be nice to provide example or suggest way how to model the hair to not completely fry gpus with millions of hair strings.
The player-provided examples from other games sadly don't look appealing.

This creation-within-limitations (again, with limitations quite similar to FFXIV!) doesn't look appealing enough to add to the game...


...but this one somehow does?


Make it make sense, man, lol.

[BrailRahas]

I whole heartedly agree! The graphic quality on the FFXIV hair is drastically too low! Those are barely curls! It looks more like someone got wet!

[MAJRIS]

Make it make sense, man, lol.

Please don't twist the information. I never said the xiv version looks appealing. I said it's not easy to make volume of strands to look good and while hitting polygon limits - especially for xiv visuals that up to the past expansions still had to comply for older console standards.
it's not that good curls haircut is impossible, but they probably don't have way to make it look good while adhering to their polygon limits and standards.

[Evermomo]

Please don't twist the information. I never said the xiv version looks appealing. I said it's not easy to make volume of strands to look good and not hitting polygon limits.

It's the technique that gives the effect, really. Polygon counts are not as important as artistic ability. I say this having worked on video games as a 3D artist. Even trying to be generous to what you're saying, it's not a good excuse.

(Besides, they just did a huge environment update massively increasing foliage polycount, so...)