Character graphical changes are NOT in an acceptable state, please make it optional

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Originally Posted by Scintilla

I'm curious and perhaps you could enlighten me, but where is the line drawn between 'make them better' and 'keep them the same'? Where is the limit? At what point are they no longer the same character?

Ultimately, the changes made appear to have been made in order to make the characters look more real - the same characters, just made to look more realistic. But all of these realistic features have been pointed out by different players to be featured they dislike and that have to be reverted:

Skin texture and pores? - presumably to give a more tangible appearance, rather than cartoon-ish. A matter complained about by some.

Removal of a permanent eye glint and instead adding light reflection based on environment? - again, more in keeping with real effects of environment and lighting. But again, complained about by some as leaving their characters 'empty and soul-less'.

Extra detail to facial structure - dimples being one example. Look in the mirror. Smile. You'll see dimples! Some may be strong, others more subtle, but they'll be there. Yet some complain this goes too far and prefer to return to the more solid, doll-like appearance.

While there are more, I would think each of these would be perfectly understandable ways of trying to make the characters 'better' while still being the same character. Yet each of these have been complained about. So I ask, where is the limit? Exactly what would you be looking for?

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realism is killing the stylization. having higher quality textures is one thing, but changing the SHAPES of actual character's features is completely different. you can have one and not the other.

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Originally Posted by Averax

I love looking at these comparison shots and the biggest difference is....the lighting....it's really dim in the benchmark character creator for some reason. Most of your characters look almost exactly the same for me.

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Characters here and in other threads have really obvious lip jobs or changes to lips and nose jobs which really isn't the lighting...

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Originally Posted by TheDruidOcelot

realism is killing the stylization. having higher quality textures is one thing, but changing the SHAPES of actual character's features is completely different. you can have one and not the other.

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I don't deny that there are some changes which have left me wondering why they were made at all: changes to positions of hair colouring or the removal of glossy appearance of lips (true, not 'natural' but we have other makeup on characters so I don't see why a little gloss would be out of the realms of reality) are two that spring to mind quickly.

But the point remains that many of the changes being complained about by lots (eye glints, skin texture etc.) are perfectly understandable changes. If even those are considered by some to be out of the question, then exactly what changes would they expect as part of this 'same but better' approach? I do feel that some of these complaints are far too dramatic

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Originally Posted by Scintilla

I don't deny that there are some changes which have left me wondering why they were made at all: changes to positions of hair colouring or the removal of glossy appearance of lips (true, not 'natural' but we have other makeup on characters so I don't see why a little gloss would be out of the realms of reality) are two that spring to mind quickly.

But the point remains that many of the changes being complained about by lots (eye glints, skin texture etc.) are perfectly understandable changes. If even those are considered by some to be out of the question, then exactly what changes would they expect as part of this 'same but better' approach?

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i mean, they deleted elezen cheekbones and took away keeper miqote fangs, they changed the apparent luminosity of eyes as well, not just the glints, they desaturated the iris colors to look 50% as colorful. like those are ALL HUGE changes that should never have happened. the glints and skin textures wouldn't be so noticeable and abrasive if they didnt also take away all the other stylization from the characters by smoothing everything to an absolute absurd level.

EDIT: my final, clarifying, statement on the matter, because its getting to be a cyclical argument.

look. the public facing PR team swore up and down they wouldn't make people's characters look so different they couldn't be recognized. but that's what's happened.

so, because of the emotional response of feeling lied to, people are more upset than they would be if the pr team hadn't gone and made promises they knew couldn't be kept. (or could have been kept but they chose not to, because they seemingly decided the existing stylization was ugly, despite saying they didn't want characters to look realistic.)

the emotional response to being blatantly lied to is combining with the obvious disappointment at characters looking absolutely like different people than they looked like (and the bias against dark skinned characters, making them look literally grey is not at all good.)

so people are 3-5x as upset as they would have been if they had not chosen to make those public statements. even if they were just hypetrain pr fluff, they are retroactively lies. because they did not ever update with a "ok so they're going to be much more different than they were before, we're very sorry. a fantasia might not actually fix it." which would have been the better option. to be humble and actually apologize, or delay the graphical improvements until they could be done with the care and attention they actually deserved, rather than the slapdash nonsense that is being shown in the benchmark. They would have known just how different it is BEFORE the las vegas fanfest, and they made choices that obfuscated that fact.

that doesn't reflect kindly on the PR team or devs.

Did I accidentally hit the jackpot, after watching it in the benchmark face 4 male seekers seem entirely unchanged, they just have higher textures and better lighting

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Originally Posted by TheDruidOcelot

i mean, they deleted elezen cheekbones and took away keeper miqote fangs, they changed the apparent luminosity of eyes as well, not just the glints, they desaturated the iris colors to look 50% as colorful. like those are ALL HUGE changes that should never have happened. the glints and skin textures wouldn't be so noticeable and abrasive if they didnt also take away all the other stylization from the characters by smoothing everything to an absolute absurd level.

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THIS!!! It's so jarring to see my elezen's high, sharp cheekbones smoothed out to nothingness, not to mention other issues like artifacting on au ra scales (how do you mess this in particular up. y'all had one job with au ra scales). These are things that someone looked at and went "yep, looks good" which is baffling to me

Thankfully, the benchmark is a self-admitted work in progress. This is why the forums are so important. I have posted the very obvious, grating changes to my characters in other threads, but reading through this one I see that I'm not alone. I also see that many people were lucky enough to not have their characters drastically altered, or are indifferent to the changes! I would say to all of the people saying "just use the free fantasia" to please remember that some of us are playing characters with the darkest skintone, the fullest lips, the darkest hair. We have no where to "change" to.

There is no reason that jet black hair should be grey (and in the effort of arguing realism, I have black hair in real life ; it's not grey in the sunlight, and it's not grey at dusk) just as there is no reason to lighten skintones. Even most of the lip textures seemed to be placed wrong, either thinning lips or making them fuller (in the case of femra)

I do hope the team gets in here and sees complaints. There's some serious issues going on with lighting, and when it's egregious, it's (really) egregious. I'm trying to stay positive, though!

They could have kept everything intact but make them high res with better effects in eyes, lips, and skin. Because this isnt a huge graphical update anyway....

Unlike in some other games I have played where the graphic update really changed everything. So in my opinion if they want to make things the same, then make it the same (use old model as baseline) but with higher details. When it comes into character model, its either you do a big update (like WoW did) or a minor update (higher res, textures, and effects) imo. Something in between will always result in complains.

In some of the complains you can see how even changing eyes or lips a little resulted in a different character. Its neither here or there and just odd.

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Originally Posted by Scintilla

I'm curious and perhaps you could enlighten me, but where is the line drawn between 'make them better' and 'keep them the same'? Where is the limit? At what point are they no longer the same character?

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As the game currently is, male and female viera have smoother face textures than the older races. Upscaling the older races' would have been a less drastic but probably more welcome beautification. Did they need to mess with the shapes of lips? To remove fangs? To make eyebrows and eyelashes thinner?

The free fantasia is welcome for my hrothgal alt, sure, but Im sad that after waiting so many years for male vieras they get wrecked 1 expansion after their implementation.

Literally who cares? SE won't rollback the new changes because they know 99% of the player base uses mods/reshades and they endorse it by looking away.

Just wait for the mare lamentorum bunnies to fix everything.