Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

I really worry at this point that there isn't a plan to further fix any faces at all. It feels like they're just waiting for the players to forget about the graphical update botching our character's faces. Or, as all the naysayers have been saying since last year, "you'll get used to it."

No?? Not when the mouths and smiles look this deformed and uncanny I sure won't. Like it's been over six months and I still think the faces look bad. I have zero desire to log in and just run around the world and play by myself anymore. I log in exclusively to play with friends on certain days and then log off and play something else when we're done, because my beloved characters look like they've been recast with a new (worse) actor out of nowhere. How much I loved my characters and the story was a huge reason happily logged in for at least a little bit almost every day, and then Dawntrail was like "oh, those two features about the game you love? Not our focus over here at CS3 anymore, so we got rid of those."

Personally I don’t think they will bother anymore at this point. Less players are around to keep the complaint thread going. Idk about JP’s thread though.

Like anything else, they’ll just interpret this as “it’s working!” when the reality is either (1)people don’t care enough; (2)people are tired screaming at the tone deaf; or combination of those two.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Personally I don’t think they will bother anymore at this point. Less players are around to keep the complaint thread going. Idk about JP’s thread though.

Like anything else, they’ll just interpret this as “it’s working!” when the reality is either (1)people don’t care enough; (2)people are tired screaming at the tone deaf; or combination of those two.

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definetly option 2

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

Or, as all the naysayers have been saying since last year, "you'll get used to it."
No?? Not when the mouths and smiles look this deformed and uncanny I sure won't. Like it's been over six months and I still think the faces look bad.

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Same. My characters' faces still stand out like a sore thumb. I still see the changes immediately when I look at them and I still dislike them as much. It just feels like "some" avatar now I use to run around and not like "my" character anymore. Most of the time I put on a mask glam so I can pretend it's the old face. Really sad when not seeing the face is an improvement. : P

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Originally Posted by IndraSyngiwyb

I'm a gposer, and the *ahem* tools we use only recently began working with older NPC faces.

So I tried logging in to gpose with my favorite grumpy Garlean and...

Jfc where are his pupils? What did they do? He literally looks dead/blind.

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...69f393e10e.png

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...c4ccb71706.png

I'm tired, boss...

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Ah, so that's where the Femroe face 2 eyes went. They gave us the dark pupils we never asked for, and gave light pupils to everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Anarnee

Ah, so that's where the Femroe face 2 eyes went. They gave us the dark pupils we never asked for, and gave light pupils to everyone else.

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I have to laugh so that I don't cry.

I wish we could have the old graphics back :(

Realizing Heavensward zones might be getting beautified in 7.2. Can't wait!

Id love for the lips on face four viera to be reversed to what they were. Now when they smile it looks like a banana. It is so awful. Only viera that came out ok was face 1.

I still miss my face... genuinely all my motivation and love for gposing and taking screenshots of my character has gone completely out the window, every time I think "eh, maybe I'll get used to it" I end up stumbling on old pre-DT screenshots and realizing no, it actually is that bad. Smiles look weird and creepy and somehow overall faces manage to look *less* expressive despite the million new bones.



Really, at this point, even if the dev response is just "eff you, we butchered everyone's mouths and we're not changing it back" it'd be more than just straight up ignoring the fact that probably over half the complaints are about that one specific aspect of the new faces.

I'm planning on making one more big post about midlander F face 1, now that I've had even more time to collect data. Because seriously, it is by far the worst "update" out of every face in the game, it does not resemble its old look even slightly, and the slight adjustments in 7.1 did nothing to help the issue.

In the meantime, I keep talking to people from all walks of the game, and finding that negative sentiment toward the update is still more common than not, with some form of "I didn't like it but I got used to it" being the most common attitude.

Yoshi P said we were gonna get the 6.0 job gear updated in 7.1 and all we got was poorly upscaled Scion gear in the cash shop. I believe that we will get drip fed the updated gear and A LOT of the upcoming gear is gonna be old gear with the update ( IE Neo Kingdom Gear being 6.2 crafted Rinascita gear).

I was hopeful but what we are gonna get is a watered down rollout of the graphics updated gear and I'm fine with that.

Was unsubbed for a long while, and the changes are still wildly jarring to come back to. I didn't 'forget' how characters looked, and I still find the remodel to be disconcerting and upsetting, especially following those promises mad about preserving the integrity of our characters. I'm also still having terrible eyestrain and headache issues, with additional motion sickness now. Not really much new to add about the situation, as it seems the feedback has not much been addressed since I unsubbed back in July. Or even much acknowledged. Disappointing, though I guess not surprising.

Picked up where I left off replaying ARR, and...
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...33f8cc4396.gif
Papalymo's got a laser light show on his chin lmao. With all the time the devs probably spent rebuilding their lighting system, did they really not have one single person look at how it would affect old content? This isn't even 10hrs into the game
(from Gridania's prologue, after you fight the Ixal at the guardian tree)

Also, you know how two textures look when they're placed inside of eachother and flicker uncontrollably as the game has no idea which to render in front? The hair on his forehead did that when he walked away :D

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Originally Posted by Cyrtip

With all the time the devs probably spent rebuilding their lighting system, did they really not have one single person look at how it would affect old content? This isn't even 10hrs into the game
(from Gridania's prologue, after you fight the Ixal at the guardian tree)

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I assume this is a result of old zone + new lighting system but I could have sworn that the ARR zones were somewhat updated for DT... I honestly don't know.

That being said, Bowl of Embers (which is definitely not updated) gives your character some fantastic lip and eye glow post graphics update.

https://i.imgur.com/4XQQLIm.png
https://i.imgur.com/biu7ytZ.png

I can't attribute this strictly to old zones, I've seen weird character model lighting in DT zones as well.

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Originally Posted by lunartears

I wish we could have the old graphics back :(

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I like the new graphics for the world itself but I would love the old character graphics back, especially the eyes, lighter color eyes don't look right to me for Miqo'te for example. They should give us the option to choose the new or old graphics for our characters and also make the old graphics higher polygon without messing with their shapes. The face stripes on Miqo'te are also too faded in the new graphics. I personally like the older ones because they had a sort of anime feel to them, especially the eyes.

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Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

I like the new graphics for the world itself but I would love the old character graphics back, especially the eyes, lighter color eyes don't look right to me for Miqo'te for example. They should give us the option to choose the new or old graphics for our characters and also make the old graphics higher polygon without messing with their shapes. The face stripes on Miqo'te are also too faded in the new graphics. I personally like the older ones because they had a sort of anime feel to them, especially the eyes.

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Same. My midlander is just staring into the void. It's so unsettling not to recognise his face anymore. I can't get used to it.

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Originally Posted by lunartears

I can't attribute this strictly to old zones, I've seen weird character model lighting in DT zones as well.

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Yeah these are from 7.1 cutscenes…
https://i.imgur.com/tqDdV2A.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/M58jeHL.jpeg

Beyond the shapes of her facial features being totally different, the lighting is just weird in almost every scene. Had to Fantasia, and unless they actually make some substantial changes in 7.2, I probably won’t be going back to Highlander.

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Originally Posted by Darko

Same. My midlander is just staring into the void. It's so unsettling not to recognise his face anymore. I can't get used to it.

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Yeah, that's another issue that makes my Miqo'te's look like they have that thousand yard stare war veterans have after deployments.


https://www.wearethemighty.com/wp-co...hua_Banner.jpg

I think one of my most-hated changes from the update is how many of the "painted-on" shadows they removed, ESPECIALLY from our eyes. I get that the idea is you don't need those with a more robust lighting engine. But the new lighting is barely more robust than the old, it absolutely does not re-add the feature depth and detail that was lost from taking out those shadows. Even if it WAS more robust, the painted shadows was a stylistic feature. The gradient shadow that blended into everyone's eyelashes? That is taken straight from an anime aesthetic; it was an expected part of the visuals, and its absence (or at least, SEVERE scaling back) is why there are so many complaints about characters looking wide-eyed or having thousand-mile stares.

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Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

Yeah, that's another issue that makes my Miqo'te's look like they have that thousand yard stare war veterans have after deployments.

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It's interesting how there's such a difference in perception over the new and old eyes. Your description is exactly how I would describe the old eyes. The new ones are a night and day improvement and look vastly more "alive" in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

It's interesting how there's such a difference in perception over the new and old eyes. Your description is exactly how I would describe the old eyes. The new ones are a night and day improvement and look vastly more "alive" in my opinion.

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The new ones are much more dependent on the environment lighting complimenting them. They got rid of or heavily toned down a lot of the baked in lighting and shading, so there's less consistency from zone to zone and expansion to expansion.

And all too commonly, some lighting creates a foggy sheen over the eyes that just makes them look like they have cataracts.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The new ones are much more dependent on the environment lighting complimenting them. They got rid of or heavily toned down a lot of the baked in lighting and shading, so there's less consistency from zone to zone and expansion to expansion.

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It makes sense that their appearance would vary depending on the lighting conditions but I haven't encountered a situation where they look bad in my view. Is there a specific zone or location you're thinking of that I can check out?

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

It's interesting how there's such a difference in perception over the new and old eyes. Your description is exactly how I would describe the old eyes. The new ones are a night and day improvement and look vastly more "alive" in my opinion.

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I wish I was having this experience with the new eyes. I've been replaying EW with a friend and in 90% of the CS my characters have no light in their eyes, dead fish eyes, and the last 10% of the time, only one eye gets lit. It's so perplexing. It was the same when I was going through DT too, so they didn't even consider that for the new stuff. I get so frustrated.

ngl I am not even LOOKING at the cutscenes at this point in attempting to finish a playthrough. I already know it's gonna be upsetting no matter which alt I try. Just reading the text (which, ouch, wtf did they do to the FONT anyways??) and trying to ignore anything but the back of my character's head (which still looks mostly right at least, just NO FACE, no eyes, and for Twelvesake no looking at any of the SCALES) to just... get through it :/

remember when we used to put so much time into gpose? Anyone? :c

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Originally Posted by zipkin

remember when we used to put so much time into gpose? Anyone? :c

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Yep, I have a huge collection of screenshots of my catboy from before the graphics update. Had an account on Eorzea Collection and everything. Poor sod now looks like he went through twink death and no longer looks good in many of the outfits and hairstyles he used to be able to pull off. I play games to get away from real life annoyances like this!

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Originally Posted by zipkin

remember when we used to put so much time into gpose? Anyone? :c

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Same as the post above. :( A big folder of screenshots and gposes, and lots of ideas for more that have just been... on hold, for far longer than I had expected, until at least the worst offending botched changes to my character's face have been fixed.
I had gotten a new PC and monitor too (not just for this game), and was excited to take higher resolution pictures, or even start my own Eorzea Collection catalogue of my favorite glams.

Before the update, I entered lots of gpose contests, both official and player-hosted. I even was a finalist in the most recent NA Fanfest. My gpose of my character was physically decorating their Las Vegas venue's wall. I wish they would more seriously take into account that the people passionate enough to give feedback on this are most likely their biggest contributors to community creations that make up their game's creative draw.

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Originally Posted by zipkin

remember when we used to put so much time into gpose? Anyone? :c

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I already posted a couple pages back about it, but... yeah. I used to take so many screenshots of my character, my folders from pre-DT are overflowing with almost too many pictures. Now I barely take any, and half the time if I do my character's wearing some sort of facemask or helmet. The dead eyes with no catchlight 95% of the time and mangled mouth just make me frustrated every time I open gpose.

I still do screenshots but it was more fun before they destroyed most of our chars faces. The problem is that it's not just a better textured
version of our faces. It's a redesign with different features for lots of faces.
All of my chars are broken since DT and have a slightly or extremely differnt look now. For example my celestrial male elezen look is
destroyed because they added that dark circles under the eyes (younger face) randomly also to the 2nd subrace. Before DT just 1 subrace had those.

Or for example female Aura face 2. The new one looks pretty, too (Besides the weird bending-up of the lower lip).
BUT it's not OUR Aura face 2. It has a completely different look. The eyes vibe different and the most pregnant feature of that face (the wide mouth with it's corners) is gone.
And 'that's' the problem. It's a redesign, instead of a texture update.

Also they should remove their new eye highlight feature if they can't manage it to work properly, and give back static highlight or let us choose between them.
Before DT I really loved Dunesfolk but they suffer so much from that new 'feature'. Most of the time they look just ded now. Now they really look like souless puppets. :C

When I search for ff14 screenshots, the most I see..., people who are still actively posting are modders.
I guess, because they don't depend on the weird things that SE presents to us. x3
They do what they like with mods and have still fun with making screenshots of it.

The texture improvements in dawntrail are great, especially for skin. Though some face textures still need a lot of work. I can't memorize them all but most the ones I noted were most of Male Midlander and Face 3 for Male Viera. Trancred notable had it too.
There is like, this sort of rainbow artifacting/splotches that shows up really badly when you zoom in, it looks pretty rough, like a low quality artifact. Compared to the tone I usually use which is Au 'Ra, which is quite smooth and detailed.

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Originally Posted by SalamanderIX

The texture improvements in dawntrail are great, especially for skin. Though some face textures still need a lot of work. I can't memorize them all but most the ones I noted were most of Male Midlander and Face 3 for Male Viera. Trancred notable had it too.
There is like, this sort of rainbow artifacting/splotches that shows up really badly when you zoom in, it looks pretty rough, like a low quality artifact. Compared to the tone I usually use which is Au 'Ra, which is quite smooth and detailed.

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It's really baffling, since you'd think the homogenized features would have lead to less blatant errors like that.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

It's really baffling, since you'd think the homogenized features would have lead to less blatant errors like that.

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Textures like those on Miqo'te♂ Face 1 (the base that Koana uses), where you can see really distinct artifacting outlining the facial markings, reveal that they used some pretty rudimentary upscaling tech, with little to no retouching, except on textures where they decided to reduce the painted on shadows/contour or repaint finer details. So I'm not surprised there's more evidence of that elsewhere.

I feel fortunate that the faces I use for my main and alt escaped without those obvious flaws, but others were not so lucky. :(

I am happy with some of the updates but when I look back on my old screens of my character I see the massive changes. I play a Midlander female and I loved face 1 and 2 but omg the eye bags on face one are still awful >.< and face 2 has lost it lovely shaped mouth and I am unable to fix this. I am now on a face I never really liked but it seems to work for me at the moment at least. I really feel they have made them look worse. I am unsure if anything can be done or even will be but I wont hold my breath.

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Originally Posted by Heavenchild

When I search for ff14 screenshots, the most I see..., people who are still actively posting are modders.
I guess, because they don't depend on the weird things that SE presents to us. x3
They do what they like with mods and have still fun with making screenshots of it.

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Or because they have the means to fix the problems that SE created with this "update."

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Originally Posted by noumen0nn

I think one of my most-hated changes from the update is how many of the "painted-on" shadows they removed, ESPECIALLY from our eyes. I get that the idea is you don't need those with a more robust lighting engine. But the new lighting is barely more robust than the old, it absolutely does not re-add the feature depth and detail that was lost from taking out those shadows. Even if it WAS more robust, the painted shadows was a stylistic feature. The gradient shadow that blended into everyone's eyelashes? That is taken straight from an anime aesthetic; it was an expected part of the visuals, and its absence (or at least, SEVERE scaling back) is why there are so many complaints about characters looking wide-eyed or having thousand-mile stares.

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this is 100000000000% how i feel about this! my miqo'tes definitely got it the worst, ESPECIALLY my main face 4 boyo with eye 3--the shape of the eye blocks a lot of the catchlight and the arthritic default idle pose means his head is tilted downward in 95% of cutscenes, further blocking out even MORE light from his eyes. he looks so dead now... my bright-eyed cinnamon roll... :(

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Originally Posted by glitteringcosmos

this is 100000000000% how i feel about this! my miqo'tes definitely got it the worst, ESPECIALLY my main face 4 boyo with eye 3--the shape of the eye blocks a lot of the catchlight and the arthritic default idle pose means his head is tilted downward in 95% of cutscenes, further blocking out even MORE light from his eyes. he looks so dead now... my bright-eyed cinnamon roll... :(

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And it's doubly weird how there's no consistency across races with how they handled this! Lalafell and Viera both got to keep the strong shadows on the upper part of their eye, as if the artists knew taking that away would mess up the look of the character. But it messed up the look of every race, so just why? Why remove it at all?

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Originally Posted by noumen0nn

And it's doubly weird how there's no consistency across races with how they handled this! Lalafell and Viera both got to keep the strong shadows on the upper part of their eye, as if the artists knew taking that away would mess up the look of the character. But it messed up the look of every race, so just why? Why remove it at all?

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A lot of artists/art directors are obsessed with things seeming "real", so they get rid of things like catchlights and baked-in shading and let the lighting engine do everything even if things looks worse as a result. You can see it in some environments, like Idyllshire, where the stylized direction is preserved in some textures but others are aiming for photorealism.

I have two complaints. For the most part, female hrothgar a lovely and I appreciate the quality put into their models. However, the new eye lighting seems to make some races look like they have cataracts, and I feel hrothgals get it bad. My pupils aren't as defined and look hazy.

Arms. In certain lighting, the female hrothgar arm seams can be seen, like a line from elbow to wrist. It is weird.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

However, the new eye lighting seems to make some races look like they have cataracts, and I feel hrothgals get it bad. My pupils aren't as defined and look hazy.

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Also true for Miqo'te, unfortunately. I hope they adjust that.