Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

I posted additional screenshots in another thread a few days ago, I forgot to post them here too.

First comparison
https://i.imgur.com/0L6xJ49.png
https://i.imgur.com/XJWDVmP.jpg

Second comparison
https://i.imgur.com/rHDUXEs.png
https://i.imgur.com/vTfoiJV.jpg

The dimples, the puckered lips and changed lip shape, the really dilated eyes, the overall softer face, and so-on are all things that have massively changed my character's tone and expression.
As I picked a combination of features to really accentuate her stern and fierce looks, these changes are the complete and exact opposite of what I want for my character.

I too am not very happy with how horribly the graphics have been downgraded in this upcoming expansion, my character looks like another character entirely and I've been up all night unable to sleep grieving the loss of my warrior of light. I can't believe Naoki Yoshida would force this onto us after all these years. Its like I'm losing apart of myself, the character I know and loved for the past 10 years is being taken away in some vain attempt to "modernize" the game with graphics the game never even really needed. The game was literally perfect in Endwalker, I cannot believe that they thought this was a good idea. I'm appalled at how much of the game's soul is being sucked out just by this benchmark alone. Previously I was so excited for Dawntrail, it looked like it was going to be the best expansion yet, but now I have no idea how I feel.

Like many others I'm sharing a draw over of everything wrong with my WoL that they changed in this benchmark, I'm hoping we can find justice in these trying times and hopefully the devs will hear us and delay the expansion, or at the very least revert the graphics update so we can remain faithful to the visions we all had for our characters.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...231b4f59f3155&

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aadrian1234

I posted additional screenshots in another thread a few days ago, I forgot to post them here too.

First comparison
https://i.imgur.com/0L6xJ49.png
https://i.imgur.com/XJWDVmP.jpg

Second comparison
https://i.imgur.com/rHDUXEs.png
https://i.imgur.com/vTfoiJV.jpg

The dimples, the puckered lips and changed lip shape, the really dilated eyes, the overall softer face, and so-on are all things that have massively changed my character's tone and expression.
As I picked a combination of features to really accentuate her stern and fierce looks, these changes are the complete and exact opposite of what I want for my character.

---

In my observations, they:

• Widened the face (making it rounder, less hawkish.)
• Reshaped the lips.
• The lips are now black voids of light and will cast harsh shadows around the corners (no subsurface scattering,)
• look like a goldfish.
• The eyes are greatly improved, have real depth and look like actual eyes (no regard on shape.)
• Changed skin tone (noticeably yellower for my character.)
• Ruined my character's entire aesthetic, for much the same reason.

The lips aren't actually wider or narrower than before, but widening the face causes them to look extremely small now, and the character's overall look is just ruined. I don't know who was in charge of this update but they really missed the mark on au ra.

First of all, there are some amazing character designs in this thread and it's been fun looking through them all (even the characters who the update has been unkind to). There's been a lot of great feedback regarding clear issues that need to be fixed, so hopefully that happens soon.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...5594dc7b43e44&

Overall I'm pretty happy with how my Raen turned out. I definitely agree that male face #3 has some pretty bad eye shadow, but I think my hairstyle slightly reduces it (it's really noticeable on some characters). The thing that stood out to me was how different the textures are on the horns vs the scales. It's pretty jarring in the above photo, so I hope they get touched up to look more consistent. It doesn't look quite as bad when zoomed out or in different lighting, but when compared to current pictures the discrepancy is still pretty noticeable.

Endwalker: perfectly matched scales across his horns and body
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...a5ef6e2ca1de3&

Benchmark: visually inconsistent
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...cb00145b57bc0&

Hopefully things like this get addressed as they look through people's feedback.

Adding my lizard to the pile. Man, they really do look like they swallowed a bee, don't they? And after staring at this comparison for ten minutes, I realized that something I haven't seen mentioned a lot is how a lot of the sharp lines of the scales were smoothed and blunted. Like the top of the upper cheek "spike" tapers and curves a bit instead of coming to a sharp angle (this one really gets me, because I chose that jaw shape specifically for its strong, unbent spike), the tips of the lower nose scales are rounded off, and the three V shapes in the chin have been slightly filled in.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsi...q75ys3bxi@jpeg

And I fully acknowledge that this last item is entirely self indulgent, but I miss how the horns came to a needle tip. "Sharp enough to stab somebody with" is a charm point in its own way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Taranok

In my observations, they:

• The eyes are greatly improved, have real depth and look like actual eyes (no regard on shape.)

The lips aren't actually wider or narrower than before, but widening the face causes them to look extremely small now, and the character's overall look is just ruined. I don't know who was in charge of this update but they really missed the mark on au ra.

---

The only part I disagree with is that they greatly improved the eyes. The eyes look much worse in the benchmark here for me personally - they are less sharp and the pupils are massive and it looks more dead than before. I think for some, the blending of the umbral ring is more of a hit or miss - some love it, others hate it and prefer the harsher contrast/border. The red colour is more washed out so you have to select a brighter red to get the same effect. Currently in EW, you can have a deep, but also bright colour for the umbral rings, but now you either choose a watered down colour compared to current options or go for the brighter options which are not as deep as before. Not sure why they changed the colour options to the point that if you import your current character, you have to change the eye colour to get the same effect.

Would be nice to have an option, but I think the massive pupils look significantly worse personally. I'm hoping they give us an option to customize the shape of the pupil.

Overall, I think the graphics direction also resulted in a style change where the au ra were made to look more "cutesy" resulting in changes such as much larger pupils which isn't a graphics update, but a style change and not really what people were expecting.

Hi everyone, here to give feedback as well.

I need the devs to know that I love their work and that I also play a femroe with a darker skintone and she looks absolutely stunning in the benchmark. But my main is an au ra and here she is:

https://i.postimg.cc/GH6B23TP/au-ra-face-6-point-58.png https://i.postimg.cc/DJC0K7KX/au-ra-face-7-point-0.png

Left is her face now as of 6.58 / right is her face in the benchmark.

This is face 4 / Mouth 4. For some reason the benchmark makes her look lifeless. My main issue is with the lips, I don't know why they got bigger like that. As other people have noted face 4 got rounder and so the character looks less fierce and imo the shadows look... strange. I also take issue with her new skin/eye color but I found that I can achieve the original look by changing colors slightly.

In the benchmark cutscenes those issues were less visible so maybe it's also a question of lighting and facial expression. But I still wanted to report on that!

Sorry if anyone else has pointed this out. But in the character creator, the pose Au Ra does when you swap between race clothes/small clothes is broken.

Screenshots:

https://imgur.com/vNBDbwa.png
https://imgur.com/GR6J3qN.png https://imgur.com/kMYSOD3.png

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kimeraandrel

Sorry if anyone else has pointed this out. But in the character creator, the pose Au Ra does when you swap between race clothes/small clothes is broken.

Screenshots:

https://imgur.com/vNBDbwa.png
https://imgur.com/GR6J3qN.png https://imgur.com/kMYSOD3.png

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Same as on live it seems
https://i.imgur.com/0uzj04G.png
https://i.imgur.com/Mqr7mPV.png

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I too am not very happy with how horribly the graphics have been downgraded in this upcoming expansion, my character looks like another character entirely and I've been up all night unable to sleep grieving the loss of my warrior of light. I can't believe Naoki Yoshida would force this onto us after all these years. Its like I'm losing apart of myself, the character I know and loved for the past 10 years is being taken away in some vain attempt to "modernize" the game with graphics the game never even really needed. The game was literally perfect in Endwalker, I cannot believe that they thought this was a good idea. I'm appalled at how much of the game's soul is being sucked out just by this benchmark alone. Previously I was so excited for Dawntrail, it looked like it was going to be the best expansion yet, but now I have no idea how I feel.

Like many others I'm sharing a draw over of everything wrong with my WoL that they changed in this benchmark, I'm hoping we can find justice in these trying times and hopefully the devs will hear us and delay the expansion, or at the very least revert the graphics update so we can remain faithful to the visions we all had for our characters.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...231b4f59f3155&

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Weird, I just tried to create your character on 6.58 and it looks significantly different. I wonder why that is. It's especially odd that your hair is higher quality than what I'm seeing. Perhaps there's another explanation? It seems like that type of lighting you have in the 6.58 screenshot isn't replicatable either.

https://imgur.com/hCB22xT.png