[ Graphical Update Feedback ] Examples of Darker Skinned Characters/Darker Lighting

Adding my support as well- I love my blue miqo'te but the lighting, specifically in darker areas or heavily shaded You don't see her features unlike a pale skinned character
+1 Show us dark skinned and blue/grey skinned examples in the new lighting and please make necessary adjustments so all skin tones don't suffer from "favourable" lighting issues

I really second this since I struggle with my different lighting situations in cutscenes as well. I mainly play my Duskwight characters which is already hard to see but worst case is my viera with the darkest skin tone. He simply disappears in many scenes even with the character lighting on max.
Examples from the inside ship cutscene at the beginning of Endwalker & in Ultima Thule
https://i.imgur.com/AlEcESP.png https://i.imgur.com/5AKsfdN.png

Glad to see someone bringing this up on the official forums!! Seeing as the next expansion takes place in a setting with many dark-skinned characters, I really hope they address this. If not for the sake of players whose toons have dark skin, then just as a general QoL improvement. Can you imagine going through Dawntrail cutscenes and every NPC who is a shade too dark can hardly be seen?

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Originally Posted by WuzabowFuFu

Seeing as the next expansion takes place in a setting with many dark-skinned characters
[...]
Can you imagine going through Dawntrail cutscenes and every NPC who is a shade too dark can hardly be seen?

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I don't want to kill your hype, but so far we've only seen one NPC from the next expansion's setting in-game (6.5 MSQ) and from the little we've seen they were as white as can be... The CGI trailer shows a little variation in skintones (I see a black character at 2:16 and there's the Hyur girl at 2:22, another black one behind Thancred's arm), but personally I'm not holding my breath until we see in-game screenshots and videos with populated areas.

Radz-at-Han was a step in the right direction, but it still has a lot of light skinned characters, despite being inspired by a region of the world that is also predominantly populated by people with darker skin. I just had a look around and realized that most of the NPCs you are asked to talk to (cutscenes, vendors, etc) are part of what should be a minority. Interesting coincidence :^)

These aren't my pics from Ultima Thule because I couldn't find those but you can imagine just from these how many times I had to play "Find The Bunny" in every screen. Including cutscenes. Other places that hold great distain in my heart: The HORRIBLE LIGHTING in Azys Lla, which also commits crimes against my bun. When you have to wait just for the right time of day to pray your character will look good in cutscenes...

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...a506ce6f28185&https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...3a7388c25cd30&

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Originally Posted by Rikizza

I agree with this, and we also need example of female xaela too.

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Seriously, because I'm stuck in the camp of both dark skin and dark scales. I mentioned it in my earlier post but most people have the issue of disappearing, but there's also the issue of extreme washing out and it effects xaela more noticeably for some reason. But I'm not at all confident since they seem to think that auri players are white, blonde and raen.

Agreed with all of this. Since the materials are getting overhauled, there's no reason not to address how inconsistently and weirdly different skintones react to lighting. I've got a character with medium-tone skin and one with very dark skin; some areas wash them both out, others make my Viera disappear.

Daytime in the Peaks shows both of them pretty well...
https://i.gyazo.com/268b7ce583368345...3706523056.png
https://i.gyazo.com/fea0b34a11fd6fa9...f2640c087f.jpg

...but nighttime in Ul'dah somehow washes them both out:

https://i.gyazo.com/b8ae68723208f7c6...5cdc510102.png
https://i.gyazo.com/d14da2943850a317...e5800d5ccb.png

And the Crystarium does... this...
https://i.gyazo.com/f4a101772bee6191...f4059ac57a.png
https://i.gyazo.com/9339fdce1f8ad6c0...9d2e6d58e6.png


In other words: we ask that the devs please test the new character materials and shaders under many combinations of skintone and environment-- and then when lighting new areas, to take that into account as well. It's probably inevitable that there will be a few times and places that certain characters won't look good, but when it's always the same (dark skinned) characters and it happens in quite a large number of times and places, that's really not great. The 7.0 overhaul is a very good opportunity to fix this, so I really hope that it's taken as such.

This is a great observation and I completely agree! I hope the devs listen because this is a really important topic.

I also feel they should test scene like those of Shadowbringers on dark-skinned characters.

Wanna know what my dark-skinned character looks like in those scenes you're supposed to see glowing skin?

https://i.imgur.com/lVSkMuJ.png

It's supposed to look glowy. Instead, it looks like she's just light-skinned with a weird texture. I KNOW this looks different for light-skinned characters. So they obviously didn't test this on dark-skinned.

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Originally Posted by Salmonking

Please!! When playing thru Stormblood the scene with Raubahn in the Royal Gardens was really sad, you couldn't see either of us at all :/ it would go so far towards assuaging the worries of people who play dark-skinned characters, who have already had to deal with numerous issues that don't impact paler characters, to at least show previews of the new lighting. And, while you're at it, the lip glare for darker-skinned characters in environments with limited lighting (not diffuse lighting) is really obnoxious, so I hope the lighting changes fix that too.

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Is *that* what it is? I'd noticed that my girl's lips looked really weird in some lighting but not others. It's made me consider changing the lip color more than once, but then I'd look again and it wasn't so weird. I keep forgetting about it so I never pinned down the cause, but that would be nice to have that fixed too.

Looking through this thread, it makes me sad that we don't see much in the way of variety in skin tone and appearance in the MSQ cast. There are some really beautiful characters here.

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Originally Posted by Niwurr

Aside from just being a dark blob I really wonder how the cool skintones will be told to adjust to the SSS being integrated in the shaders. I particularly wonder how the backface scattering will look on like... they blueish grey duskwight ears?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...a5c37d5cfef79&
^ That is what I'm referring to
Like obviously for "normal" tones it'll skew reddish, so will grey-blue ears skew pink? or just... lighter grey/blue? (which imo would look quite awkward)

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Support for pretty much everything in this thread, but this post in particular made me remember something. Will they do anything for palms? The palms of the hands and soles of the feet of anyone with mid to dark skin in real life are always lighter, a fact which is not replicated in game. Considering that they will be doing the above for the tips of elezen ears, can they fix how the palms and soles look for any darker skin in the game? It will, of course, be up to them on whether or not they change palms and soles of the non-human skin colors like red, green, blue, and grey, but it'd follow through and be really neat to see non-human skin colors get lighter palms and soles, as well!

I'd also like to reiterate what an earlier post said: please do tests on darker skin tones, including all non-human skin tones! The 2B outfit and Gaia's outfit both faced problems with the sheer on darker skin tones and non-human skin tones when initially added. We pay for the game monthly, and Gaia's outfit is extra money by itself. These things need to be tested ahead of time!

I also want to see more NPCs, especially those consistently present in MSQ, with darker skin colors! Fixing the lighting according to darker and non-human skin tones and sad problems with theses darker and non-human skin tones would make me happier with the game and would make it easier to incorporate more NPCs with darker and non-human skin tones!

To reiterate: it's not just Ultima Thule that has unfortunate lighting for dark or non-human skin tones, even at 100%. I've grabbed a few images with a buddy of mine with dark grey skin for her viera. My skin tone is Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te column 6, row 17. Her skin tone is Rava Viera column 6, row 20. I'm at least thankful that it's a bit easier to see a human skin color than a non-human one, but this is still sad, especially with how washed out we appear at 100% half the time...

I forgot to include screenshots to show the weather each time ;-;

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9KuHFmWQAAIG5q?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9KuGLiXQAAWqXm?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9KvSyqWEAACN4T?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9KvTVWWsAAsGS5?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9KvCfsW0AAcb89?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9KvC5OXUAAAu46?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9Kw992XwAAZJ5p?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9Kw-t8W4AA-NYn?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9Kw_agXUAIjAzm?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9KxAMGXAAAjwMa?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9Ky8KEW0AAPcoi?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9Ky8_PW8AA4dXU?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9Ky-AgWEAAywh6?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9Ky_LFXcAAgmfY?format=jpg

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Originally Posted by vanillavanitas

To reiterate: it's not just Ultima Thule that has unfortunate lighting for dark or non-human skin tones, even at 100%. I've grabbed a few images with a buddy of mine with dark grey skin for her viera.

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Thank you so much for including more--I meant to include additional shots as well in other places than UT and the Doman Enclave, but just plain forgot ;;; it is so sad to see in even a normal housing area too...

I got one of a Duskwight in Empyreum, actually, I'd lost it my screenshot folder. Still at that 100%, and definitely a bit washed out.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/67e204e1...118e940785.pnj

Adding support for this post. I want to see Square Enix do better in respect to supporting darker skin tones within this game.

Here are each of my characters' skin tones on the character selection screens:
https://i.imgur.com/DSsMJwK.jpg

A Seeker, a Midlander, a Hellsguard, and a Rava, in order of lightest to darkest.

Below they are each in the lvl 50 Dark Knight quest "Our Answer", cutscene 2, which has slightly different lighting if you do it at night or during the day, but is otherwise a black screen shadowrealm. It's worse at night, and my Rava has the same dark-as-can-be skin tone as Erenville, who is set to be a major NPC in Dawntrail. My Rava, even playing the cutscene in the daytime, vanishes entirely into the background.

Various dungeons, several zones, indoors or outdoors, caverns or buildings, and in cutscenes; several times characters just are badly lit or outright invisible--and the darker their skin, the worse it is.

I have done what I can in the game settings. Adjusting character lighting only works in some cases (and also turns pale characters into light bulbs!). I shouldn't have to use my graphic card's shaders, and/or Gpose, and/or a lot of post-process work on my screenshots, to see my characters at all, let alone decently lit.

Seeker, Night:
https://i.imgur.com/QtolGSj.jpg

Midlander, Day:
https://i.imgur.com/l6B01tU.jpg

Hellsguard, Night:
https://i.imgur.com/auKzIQa.jpg

Rava, Day:
https://i.imgur.com/L6LWT1Y.jpg

Adding a voice of support to this thread. Please give darker skintones proper attention, SE! For Players and NPCs both.

To add more evidence to the choir, have some samples from my alts.

This dungeon isn't even that dark and Peach is already almost vanishing (though I will note, if this was the lower limit of detail loss on dark-skinned characters I would find it acceptable--the problem is that this dungeon is, for the most part, not that dark compared to other areas)
https://f2.toyhou.se/file/f2-toyhou-...vChR2HjQbT.png

This is in Limsa, and you can already see that because Baavgai's face isn't directly in the light he's vanishing a bit.
https://f2.toyhou.se/file/f2-toyhou-...hGoUNohu0b.png

More Baavgai, this time in the Ultima Weapon arena.
https://f2.toyhou.se/file/f2-toyhou-...2EH2KOX4xS.png

Ayulsa with a THM NPC to show how bad the lighting treats her compared to him; the area's a bit dark, but one character is clearly suffering more from it.
https://f2.toyhou.se/file/f2-toyhou-...GQtpJsQNOo.png

Adding my support to this thread! My main WoL is light skinned, but I have several alts who have very dark skin tones. They aren't up through EW yet, but even up through SB the lighting issues are pretty egregious. I love my Dark Skinned characters and I'm really concerned about what's going to happen to them in the update considering how the game treats them now.

I would also like to voice my support for better lighting, and neutral background option, for the character creator menu. The Aetherial BG and the various starter areas make it almost impossible to really get a feel for what these dark skin tones are really going to end up looking like in game. A dimly lit interior room is also a terrible option. The same dark skinned character can end up looking vastly different against each of these back drops. I want to see my character in neutral lighting before checking them out amid the various starter areas so we can actually see what's going on.

I support basically everything brought up in this thread though! I don't think it would hurt to see more previews in the fanfest panels or otherwise showcasing both light and dark skinned characters of all races and genders. Having four images is a lot for each preview, but something I think is necessary. As someone else voiced before me, we pay monthly for this game and all characters, WoLs and NPCs, deserve the same careful treatment as the light skinned characters are getting.

I don't want to get to important scenes and watch Erenville vanish due to poor lighting nor do I want my WoLs to suffer the same.

Adding my support for this thread as well. My WoL has dark blue skin, and while I've gotten some degree of contrast in with her design to make her easier to see in dark locales, it's an undeniable fact that it's really hard to actually see dark-skinned characters in anything less than total daylight, and even then they often appear washed out or greyish (though some of that can be attributed to the natural grayness... gamma? the game has already).

I would love to see previews that show dark-skinned characters with the new changes in both traditional skintones and fantasy skintones!

Has there been any word on whether the graphical update will add HDR?

The game has always been underlit, and that is always been because they have had very limited global illumination in the game.
We know that the graphical update will allow them to place more light sources in zones, so I really hope all scenes get lot more illumination in them as a result.

adding support
please show examples of darker-skinned characters in the next update showcase

Definitely here to support better lighting for darker skintones; it's been a problem for a long time and they have a good chance here to fix it. I hope they finally put the work in for an important QoL change!

Strongly agreed that this has been left unaddressed for a long time and the graphical overhaul would be a perfect opportunity to improve lighting with dark-skinned characters kept in mind. It would benefit players and cutscenes with existing NPCs!

I have dark-skinned alts and lots of friends with dark-skinned characters. We are all quite curious about those upcoming 7.0 graphical changes and how they will affect tan/dark skins.

Please don't forget about them !

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Originally Posted by vanillavanitas

Will they do anything for palms? The palms of the hands and soles of the feet of anyone with mid to dark skin in real life are always lighter, a fact which is not replicated in game. Considering that they will be doing the above for the tips of elezen ears, can they fix how the palms and soles look for any darker skin in the game? It will, of course, be up to them on whether or not they change palms and soles of the non-human skin colors like red, green, blue, and grey, but it'd follow through and be really neat to see non-human skin colors get lighter palms and soles, as well!

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This is also a really good point! It's strange that it's not implemented in the game honestly, because it is definitely possible with the technology currently in place. If they're aiming for a semi-realistic touch, this would be a good thing to really ground that realism.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

Looking through this thread, it makes me sad that we don't see much in the way of variety in skin tone and appearance in the MSQ cast. There are some really beautiful characters here.

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This has honestly been something that people have been talking about for a long time. A lot of people joke around about their non-white wols being the diversity hires of the Scions, but it's exhausting - especially when you pair that with how the existing darker skinned characters are treated in the story (the answer is Not Well, seeing as there are at least 3 black men referred to as The Bull, which is based in some really racist/dehumanizing stuff). It's disheartening to think, too, that your character would never even be a consideration for a design just on the basis of not being pale (but especially not being white or east asian). It was nice seeing Thavnair, but why was it so white? All the darker npcs didn't have speaking roles and you can't even select them. The ones that do speak are white, and even Ahewann was paper white. And that's not even getting into the Twelve who - if they're supposed to be a cumulation of the faiths of all people - are all white with European features sans Nald'thal - the god of Ala Mhigo is white? The only dark ones are monsters like Zodiark. And that says something to players, especially to players of color who are frequently told that the divine is white and european but the fell is dark and suspiciously afrocentric and takes a lot of cues from tribal caricatures (see: Zodiark's mask, or the Nibirun of the Dead Ends (antagonistic in Omicron quests) and look up Ligbi horn masks). It's...a lot deeper, but the most visible issue is definitely the distribution. Because if the CC was truly random, why is everything so white when there are so many other options?

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Originally Posted by vanillavanitas

Will they do anything for palms? The palms of the hands and soles of the feet of anyone with mid to dark skin in real life are always lighter, a fact which is not replicated in game. Considering that they will be doing the above for the tips of elezen ears, can they fix how the palms and soles look for any darker skin in the game?

I'd also like to reiterate what an earlier post said: please do tests on darker skin tones, including all non-human skin tones! The 2B outfit and Gaia's outfit both faced problems with the sheer on darker skin tones and non-human skin tones when initially added.

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Yes! Exactly! Like I didn't even get the Gaia set because of the disaster with the tights!! And PLEASE let us have depigmentation for our palms!!! TToTT it looks so weird without it! And also do it appropriately (which is a gradient at the edge of the depigmentation, not a harsh line/hard transition).

Also Y'shtola should get her melanin back, because her becoming white like that was behond egregious. She became important to msq, and then she was suddenly super pale? Put it back!!!

I really, really hope this can be a bit of a wake up call for the devs that this needs fixing. I'm still looking forward to this graphics update, and I appreciate all the hard work and sheer effort going into it (the FF panel on the technical aspects was great), but honestly they should use this opportunity to make sure character lighting in general and in cutscenes is fixed. Especially seeing just how egregious some of the screenshots put into this thread have been; I am so sorry to everyone that you've had to fight the character lighting like this for so long.

Something that got brought up kind of early on in this thread was the idea that the devs can't put in artificial light sources in every cutscene, as this game isn't like a single-player AAA experience. While I agree to an extent, I can't help but think about games that are still able to pull it off, and make every character look good.

I recently started playing Baldur's Gate 3 in my downtime, and seeing characters with dark or "fantasy" skin tones like Wyll or Karlach look really nice, even in the nighttime scenes at the camp, just drives the point home. They are able to handle skin as pale as Astarion's, and they can handle Wyll and Karlach and Lae'zel in the exact same scene and they all look very good!

I know that's comparing apples to oranges a bit, since BG3 is a single player game primarily. When I was thinking over BG3's handling of varying skin tones, I figured that the devs at Larian probably do use multiple extra light sources in cutscenes to help make things look as good as they do--and I figured it might be difficult for CBU3 to handle. After all, we don't really know how these things happen behind the scenes, and it might not be feasible.

But then, I remembered that the XIV devs have used multiple light sources in cutscenes before, as far back as ARR.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/ca785e36...5dae708722.pnj

This is used for dramatic effect in this instance, but what's to keep them from doing this to add some additional lighting in a cutscene? Not only that, but the devs will change the time of day in cutscenes to fit the mood!

At this point, the dev team should be able to do something to fix these issues with character lighting. It may have to be generic since it's true they can't exactly account for everything in their lighting for all possible combinations, but that's still something they can handle, surely?

As was said before:

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Originally Posted by LynMars

I shouldn't have to use my graphic card's shaders, and/or Gpose, and/or a lot of post-process work on my screenshots, to see my characters at all, let alone decently lit.

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Just please give us some examples to put our minds at ease...

The problem comes from scenes that take place in the overworld. Standing in the middle of Ul'dah, the scene is going to use the direct light of the sun to ... light the scene. If you decide to make a zone that is just ... dark, like ultima thule, the result is what is. Direct light is very simple, and lot of old games only had direct light and the shadows calculated from direct light in their graphical make up, and usually very few direct lights. This is why you get those horror faces of XIV where you walk into a room with a single direct light set to the ceiling and you get those massive blobs of darkness hanging off character's faces.

But that is why we have indirect lighting to fix that. Well, we have many simulations and illusions of indirect lighting to fix that because it is insanely computationally heavy to simulate real light... If you put your hand in front of the sun, your eyes will not be covered in total darkness after all. And lot of techniques were always built for linear, enclosed games. If you got a window and you know in this level the sun is out and going to pour through that window, and the player will never actually get outside ... just apply lightmaps to fake the sunlight. Or you put probes into the overworld where characters near it with just inherit the color of the light probe, another way to cheat the simulation. You go into a cave? Now your whole character is baked in dark grey because it is dark inside, step into the light, baked in light yellow because it is bright there.

You want a straight forward way to simulate correct lighting situation for every possible place in a large, open map? Just adopt complete path-tracing for your light!

My char is pale af, but adding support. These screenshots are horrible TT

Some of the examples in this thread arent even bad? OPs examples are clearly visible and lit how i would expect them to be. I have to wonder what kind of settings people have in game and on monitors.

Now dont get me wrong, the lighting is really bad in places and shading especially needs the updates. I would expect to see more skin tones being showed off since theyve been listening to feedback.

Hello I just wanted to share my screenshots as well! Playing as a dark skinned character is simply pain to exist...
https://i.imgur.com/Qjgd1YY.png
https://i.imgur.com/xU6prym.png
https://i.imgur.com/lsCpl9S.png

An example of my roe in costa del sol at midday. Though her hat is casting a sharp shadow, it's still wild how much her face disappears under it.
https://i.imgur.com/OyU1Dpe.jpg

However there are some cutscenes where the lighting is great!
https://i.imgur.com/2rFjzXp.png

I think the devs specifically need be careful how they back light the player characters, especially if there is no direct source of ambient light. For cutscenes specifically I can imagine using artificial light sources to light the characters without the light being in frame would be relatively easy to accomplish. In general though it would be nice to see the dev team show more samples of their graphical updates with default models of varying skin colors (turn on that character randomizer!). Of even just do it for Erenville if they want to use an NPC.

Thank you for creating this thread! Hope more people share pics of their wols, fail screenshot of them disappearing into the void or not fail screenshot of them shining in all their glory~ :)

I expect dawntrail to be released as the very last day of summer because of how many things people want change with graphics update

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Originally Posted by ValkyrieL

I expect dawntrail to be released as the very last day of summer because of how many things people want change with graphics update

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"Actually test on a wide range of player options" is not, in fact, a wild ask, especially when we have examples of decent lighting in places (and honestly? even with a pale character, Ultima Thule is just really badly lit). A lot of these samples could just be solved by use of more indirect lighting, which is something they've already stated they're adding to the engine, so asking that all options are actually kept in mind during testing not only isn't unreasonable, it's the expected baseline of testing in a game with heavy character customization.

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Originally Posted by Vesplume

It's great that the different races offer such a variety of skin tones to choose from, but we really shouldn't be having major cutscenes where main characters are so difficult to see. It's not just WoLs either - Erichthonios is a very expressive character but is difficult to see for most of the Pandaemonium raids due to how dark his surroundings are.

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Originally Posted by xieathe

[...] Pandaemonium was just as bad for dark-skinned characters, and that whole questline featured dark-skinned NPCs!

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Thanks for mentioning Pandaemonium! I sometimes had to turn off the lights to see faces there: the dark-skinned characters were strongly backlit and invisible against the light, or they were posed against dark surroundings and blended with them. I dug though my screenshots to illustrate the matter.

The images below show characters from the Pandaemonium raid story. Please look only if you have completed it or are fine with spoilers.
Dark-skinned NPCs in Pandaemonium-1
Dark-skinned NPCs in Pandaemonium-2

And a word about screen quality. I have a calibrated monitor with dark stabilizer and other gaming fancies. Dark locations like Ultima Thule, the Fell Court of Troia, and the Lunar Subterrane are bright and full of rich hues. But dark-skinned characters are flat dim spots.

So the topic is not a case of screen deficiency—a good screen only emphasizes the issue. Full support.

Here's hoping dark skinned characters are no longer banished to the void in less-optimal lighting. The new lighting/shading in general looks really good so far, so here's hoping.

I think the main issue is that character models don't reflect any ambient lighting, and i think that was a problem they mentioned addressing?

Having (more) lighting options in the character creator would be nice to have, too!

I do believe they already confirmed there would be a layer of "internal" character lighting on the new models. Specifically when discussing how they made the illusion of Elezen ears appearing a bit see through. While actual confirmation would be nice, I don't think there's too much to worry about based on what they have said about how the new models will work on a technical aspect.

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Originally Posted by Sourcy

I do believe they already confirmed there would be a layer of "internal" character lighting on the new models. Specifically when discussing how they made the illusion of Elezen ears appearing a bit see through. While actual confirmation would be nice, I don't think there's too much to worry about based on what they have said about how the new models will work on a technical aspect.

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They've historically been really bad at considering how things look on anyone who isn't both pale and a normal human skin tone, even as recently as Endwalker, so forgive me for actually wanting to see examples of how the reworks look on those previously neglected skin tones instead of taking it on their word.