Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.1's new hairstyle has forced Square Enix to apologize

Final Fantasy 14 fans have been up in arms over the past few days since the initial patch notes for patch 7.1 were released. There was a lot of cool stuff, like the Starbird drop chance and more details on our little piggies, a new hairstyle coming in patch 7.1 ruffled some feathers, which was “inspired” by a hairstyle design contest. Winning entry from back in 2023.

The hairstyle was submitted by a player named Madqueenmomo and was titled “Natural Curls”, and the design featured the game's various races, which were slightly shorter and more curly. It's a cute little hairstyle that looks very different from what we have in the game, but any potential excitement turned to anger when Square Enix revealed what the hair would look like in the game.

You can see the hairstyle featured on a female Roegadyn and a male Au Ra in the patch notes, and you'll immediately notice that it's much less curly than the design suggests, and instead looks much longer and wavy. This led to widespread complaints about the hairstyle “looking like nothing” that was inspired by the design. The outrage was so widespread that it now appears to have forced Square Enix to issue an official apology.

Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.1's new hairstyle has forced Square Enix to apologize

On Sunday evening, a Square Enix community representative from the Final Fantasy 14 development team called Chesketh sent a message to angry fans on the official forums, thanking them for their feedback and apologizing for the “huge confusion” over the past few days. They then go on to explain the reasoning behind the changes to the original design, and it seems that one of the biggest obstacles was a technical limitation:

“For this patch, we started working on applying “natural curls” from the winning entries of a hairstyle design contest based on the idea of ​​adding not only straight hair, but also a variety of other hairstyles,” Cheskith says. “However, as development progressed, due to limitations such as polygon calculations, the light, delicate and voluminous curls required for natural curls could not be fully implemented despite the implementation of the latest graphical update in FFXIV.”

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The statement explains that the natural curls hairstyle was then replaced by the “doing the wave” hairstyle, which we have now, but the patch notes claim that the hairstyle was “inspired” by the contest winner because it was the original. base In the end, fans were given another apology for the whole fiasco, and Square Enix promised to “persevere in our efforts to find other ways to implement this hairstyle.”

Unfortunately, even though Square Enix is ​​a huge company, with a good deal of developers hiding behind technical limitations, this has done little to assuage the anger felt by some. It's an argument that's often been trotted out for other requests from fans, such as glam restrictions, which came into question again after this season's PvP glam reveal. Regardless, at least we now have an official explanation, and the promise that natural curls are still on the table despite this new hairstyle.

In Square Enix's popular MMO, Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, players step into the role of a warrior of light in the world of Eorzea. There, they find themselves testing their mettle against the Primals, the Garlian Empire, the Aseans, and many other threats.

This award-winning MMO now has several expansions to its name, with the most recent Endwalker expansion bringing the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc to a close. Director and producer Yoshi-P has promised many plans for future content and regular updates to the game to keep players engaged.