Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

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Originally Posted by Eilous

Excuse me but im using Chiyo's female elezen comparison. Her nose, smile, eyes, eyebrows, are all different. It's so uncanny. Please, give back our old models, with updated textures.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...0e0f9e84c9462&

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Please don't.
The old models had some glaring issues that we had to hide by either overlighting or not letting any lights touch our faces at all. The old geometry constantly threw any sort of lighting completely out of whack, and the "sharpened" features were mainly just our low poly models making us look like Gothic 2 characters instead of anything fitting into this game at the current moment.
Other than that ye, more options would be nice. In my honest opinion the new ear clasps are a vast improvement, but a matte option would of course be nice and appreciated. The darker options for Wildwood Elezen are already pretty matte, but the more choices the better, especially for duskies who kinda got shafted in terms of customization concerning the clasps.
Some change should be embraced, yes we have seen our characters for thousands of hours, but that doesnt make imperfections which existed because of technical limitations features that should be celebrated. For years Elezen were called the most (unintentionally) lifeless race. Nice for screenshots under curated light and for cutscenes that just so happen to have every zoomed in character's face completely in shadow most of the time to hide the low poly misery (especially endwalker tried to hide a lot of uglyness with clever lighting).
Frankly, old Elezen models were bad, and no textures in this world could have fixed them. I liked them, but the new ones are an improvement in every way.

The moment we would revert to the old models, we would have us walking around like an army of Brandihilds.
Returning to a time where we had to avoid every single light source in this game to make our eyes not look like dead wooden objects, our faces like a bad clay mask, sounds just like a completely wrong step to take.

I'm also pretty unhappy about my character's updated face. (Highlander female, face 1, eye shape 1.)

https://i.postimg.cc/gJx5bbYR/Screen...-29-173735.png
Originally, she had a neutral, somewhat "bright" expression. Now she looks irritated and tired. A big issue is the shape of her eyes, and also the lighting- especially if there's ANY shadows cast on her. I have yet to find any lighting in game, old zones or new, that come even close to looking flattering again. She actually looks a *bit* better in the lighting from the benchmark/character creator

Some people's updated characters look great! But I feel like, after ten years of having the same character, the change is way too much for mine.

I liked the graphic update, but it just feels weird to me seeing my character and everyone else looking different (especially fem au ra lol) it would just take some time to get used to I imagine.

The one thing that I noticed, along with some of my friends, is that the graphics update is definitely more intensive than the benchmark has made it out to be. It makes my pc run hotter than it normally did on max settings (which I mean my pc is fine with it, but still it's a bit annoying). I'm not sure if anyone has noticed it, but it's the main thing I noticed, especially when there are a lot of characters loading into certain areas. I have noticed it running hotter in the newer areas mainly, not so much in the older ones (like Gridania and stuff like that).

Just to cover all my bases and keep all my feedback in the same thread, I'm going to add my complaint about Face 1 ♀ Highlander's issues with black hair and makeup against the darkest skin tones. I put this in a bug report too, but it's considered "Not A Bug," so...

https://i.imgur.com/7ota60m.png
This was an image initially posted in the JP thread when I was first noticing hair color display issues. Hairstyle 9 for Highlander women is particularly way too glossy, but so is their black eyeliner option under the "Facial Features" tab now, too.

It doesn't look like this was tested on the darkest skin tones at all, and that just feels really bad...

https://i.imgur.com/VIuTQw4.png
It was especially horrible-feeling when looking at my updated character portrait. I'm sorry for the strong feelings, but this just feels like such a definitive downgrade...it makes it hard to think about even playing her right now. My only option would be to white-wash her, and I absolutely do not want to do that.

https://i.imgur.com/kIBq2KD.png
I'm also going to post my Face 2 ♀ Xaela for the upteenth time, but I do want to be more specific. While I've only mentioned the glaring mouth difference because I think correcting that would help me the most, I can't pretend I haven't noticed her eye shape difference either (and limbal ring color, but there's somebody much more eloquent than me covering that issue).

For reference, I chose Eye Shape 2, the most downturned one. They made it significantly less downturned in the update, both due to actually changing the shape and how they decided to rebalance the density of her eyelashes. I know that's an unpopular option, because it's very droopy-looking and rather unconventional...but if I wanted her to look more conventional, I literally have 5 other options to choose from. It can't be said that I wouldn't want this to also be corrected, because I do.

Admittedly, she also has Mouth Shape 4, the narrowest option, but I chose that because I thought it balanced better with the more narrow cheek option I chose for her. If they don't correct the mouth, I'll probably try changing to Mouth Shape 1, but that's such a small difference that she still looks nowhere near the same...

I'm really trying to be reasonable. A lot of my characters have changed, but I feel like I can deal with most of them (although I still vastly prefer all the much more intentional-feeling designs of the old ones, lol). But I have to admit the changes to these two particularly make it feel really hard to play as them...

As somebody who's had these characters for a long time and enjoys roleplaying, it does, unfortunately, make me emotional.

So, were playing and got to meet Merlwyb again during the main story. Had to take a photo because she now too looks super off from her usual self with the changes to roegadyn.
I don't know if it is the angle of the cut-scene or what but.. just the eyes in particular is more crazy and wider than usual now.. and her smiling earlier in that scene got even more of that crazy "i'm gonna murder you" feel over the actual happy scene.

https://i.imgur.com/z9VIzNR.png

Again i don't have a before.. but most should know how Merlwyb looks right? So it isn't just player character that looks waaay different... but important npcs too.

I am disappointed in my character too. The eyes are very lifeless now. The limbal rings are either to dull or way too bright at night.
https://imgur.com/gallery/ffxiv-graphic-update-TCsAlDn
https://imgur.com/gallery/ffxiv-graphic-update-TCsAlDn

Female Miqo'te Face 3 with Mouth 4 makes me sad.
I had the cutest miqo'te in the universe, but after the update, if you look at me face to face, straight on, my upper lip texture looks like i have an underbite and something is just super off about my lips.
But when you look at my side profile, things don't look as bad. Image 1 and 2 are before update. Third and fourth images are after the update with my ugly lips and weird underbite (side profile is cute but straight on face to face is off-putting.)

https://i.imgur.com/aTt7ztv.png

https://i.imgur.com/fuv8zad.png

https://i.imgur.com/hRIkfy5.png

https://i.imgur.com/IpZ9Cpp.png

My miqo went from being the cutest thing ever imo, to being weird looking.

This is unacceptable. If they don't give us options to revert character models for "You" and "others" or "all players", I may have to resort to becoming a modder so that i can commission a mod maker to make a mod that makes me look like my old vanilla self. This is that important to me. You can't just mutilate my Feathetaria like this. I'm sad.

Edit: After doing research online, I learned the name of the lines under our nose. It is called a Philtrum. From just looking at the four images that I included here, I can already see that the spacing between the left and right crease of my Philtrum has been increased. I used to have a smaller philtrum but now it's a wider one and this is probably a moderately sized part of the problem.\

Final Edit: I made an extremely bad drawing that over-exaggerates the differences that are annoying me so badly between DT and Pre DT Lips of Female Miqo'te Face 3 when combined with Female Miqo'te Mouth 4. Keep in mind that i totally exaggerated these shapes. I'm just trying to make obvious the differences i see that are bugging me so much and making me sad:

https://i.imgur.com/TYXnf7v.png

And here is 1 more image i found of pre DT Feathetaria. I miss her :(

https://i.imgur.com/9NfDKmk.png

I'm actually really glad they added the lip gap back to Keeper of the Moon face 4 lips type 3. It gave my WoL a very unique and cute smile and I was super sad to see it was changed in the benchmarks.
I understand it's not for everyone, but they did say they wanted to preserve features as best as possible and changing it from how it was pre-update doesn't achieve that.

I just want to say that a I see a lot of very cute/handsome characters in this thread that are worth preserving. <3

@Feelynn Imo, lighting got worse. I was doing the 6.2+ msq before DT released and i still looked cute with the lighting in the cutscenes. But now that DT early access is here, my female miqo'te looks UGLY in almost all of the cutscenes. It feels like they simply added MORE of the bad light sources in awkward places, in addition to mutilating my miqo'te's Lips. I feel violated. Plastic surgery on my lips that I didn't ask for.

Speaking of lighting, why do light sources shine light through our skulls that hit our bottom lip? That's not how real life works...

I love the graphics update ONLY in the aspect of the world and environment. PLEASE GIVE OUR OLD MODELS BACK!