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

Don't mind me while I bump this thread. There was another thread a couple of weeks back that talked specifically about female Highlander face 2, this post in particular showed how different the eye shape changes are and it's something I feel is best brought up in a larger thread.

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Originally Posted by Aimed

The make up is masking an even bigger issue with this face.

Using facepaint to kill the makeup shows that the eye underneath is COMPLETELY different.

https://imgur.com/a/FccWKGC
https://i.imgur.com/cO6sTqS.png

These eye shapes are great and much needed but they are NOT a translation of the eyes choosen by the players. Can these please be made an option, rather than an overwrite?

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The difference in shape is quite staggering; the fold of the eyelid on benchmark is much further up, the eyes themselves feel a little wider, and the upper eyelid in particular curves differently. I currently use eye shape 3 on my character, but I'm not happy with how my characters eyes looked in the benchmark, I'll likely swap to shape 4 if it doesn't get fixed.

It'd be nice to see if the shape could be corrected by the time the new benchmark gets released.

Just discussion, I don't even see the necessity to this "upgrade." They didn't even upgrade anything? The skin textures look worse than the original in some of these photos. They either look so smooth it's like a plastic doll, or they're still bad and pixelated. I was genuinely trying to see what the improvement really was at times. They added more lines to the pupil... and some of the hairstyles are smoothed out. There's no huge improvement. I did notice lalafell (looked the same), highlander / elezen seemed to come out much better than the other races. At least with those models I can see a real difference with the skin textures being updated.

It really looks like they just went in and touched up the design of the faces, not the graphics in most of the pictures showing comparisons. It's like.. a whole new calamity. We had bahamut and now we have really weird face design decisions. I know many people may not be able to see the difference, but the way your character makes you -feel- can be altered with slight changes. It's like death by a 1000 papercuts. Rounded edges = swollen looking faces, not modern graphics. Rounding out the eyes = a softer / doe-like expression, not a bada** warrior look. Plump undefined lips = very bad plastic surgery look. These are probably the most common issues I've found with the updated faces. It's like every character either went to a bad plastic surgeon or they're having a permanent allergic reaction to something.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

The difference in shape is quite staggering; the fold of the eyelid on benchmark is much further up, the eyes themselves feel a little wider, and the upper eyelid in particular curves differently.

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It looks like they changed the ethnicity of highlanders. Wow.

Regardless of people being mean spirited about your current character, I think the point is we can see the differences but disagree that the character is ‘unrecognisable’ and ‘barely looks like the same character’. They look like pretty small changes to me that hopefully can be tweaked a little to bring the new character closer to the current look.

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Originally Posted by twobear

Regardless of people being mean spirited about your current character, I think the point is we can see the differences but disagree that the character is ‘unrecognisable’ and ‘barely looks like the same character’. They look like pretty small changes to me that hopefully can be tweaked a little to bring the new character closer to the current look.

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Except in a lot of cases they cannot be made to look closer to the original, because of how limited the options are, some looks are completely lost. This is a ridiculous take. Facial features are a key part of what makes people recognizable between each other. If it didn't matter people wouldn't get plastic surgery. It may not be a big deal for you, but for people that love their character, changing these characteristics to such a degree changes the mood of the character, and we loose something we cannot get back.

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Originally Posted by twobear

Regardless of people being mean spirited about your current character, I think the point is we can see the differences but disagree that the character is ‘unrecognisable’ and ‘barely looks like the same character’. They look like pretty small changes to me that hopefully can be tweaked a little to bring the new character closer to the current look.

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Tweaked how? By using a fantasia to choose facial feature options that don't exist anymore?

Or by sending the developer weird contradictory messages like "hey these before and after pictures look identical and we can't tell the difference but could you please make them more similar?"

It's plain and simple that those who downplay the differences are trying to stifle feedback and derail threads in the hopes that the devs do not adjust their new designs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by twobear

Regardless of people being mean spirited about your current character, I think the point is we can see the differences but disagree that the character is ‘unrecognisable’ and ‘barely looks like the same character’. They look like pretty small changes to me that hopefully can be tweaked a little to bring the new character closer to the current look.

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The changes may be small. But often, they take some character of a facial feature. It seems to me, that SQEX tries to homogenize the faces. Everything looks softer, rounder, less edgy, blurrier etc. The differences between the faces and facial features are fading. And i do not think, that this is a good idea.




Cheers

I think on some level it boils down to expectations. Some characters are less affected than others and fall within a range of "different" that met their expectations. Others see "different" and are immediately displeased because they expected a 1:1 HD version of their character. This is why there's so much disagreement on what determines a "totally different character".

What's most interesting to me is what the dev team can realistically do to correct the less severe issue i.e. preferences in eye shape, lip shape, skin texture, etc. I think it's one thing to fix a graphical issue but it's another to dig into finer details oriented around player preferences. I mean the dev team doesn't seem to care that people feel jobs are homogenized. So..

I'm basically just saying I'm not incredibly optimistic. I am expecting updates to lighting, texture loading issues, weird seams, maybe even the face paint effects, etc. I'm not sure if suddenly the shapes and proportions of face features are magically going to be improved.

I just took some more side by sides of my Miqo'te Moon with Face 2 - Eyebrows 4 - Eyes 6
https://i.imgur.com/q1qWAcM.png
https://i.imgur.com/APRTyUd.png
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...ality=lossless
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...ality=lossless
the face marks look more like paint (especially on the forehead)
Eyebrow shape has changed and kinda look more chopped?
Eyeshape change + eyeliner?? and some smaller lip change

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...960&height=482
Mouth changed and most important .. the fangs ;_;

https://i.imgur.com/iGg2Fps.png
I also noticed a change in this particular hairstyle as they now added a space for ears... ??
They also fixed the gap in the neck

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Originally Posted by Anarnee

Except in a lot of cases they cannot be made to look closer to the original, because of how limited the options are, some looks are completely lost. This is a ridiculous take. Facial features are a key part of what makes people recognizable between each other. If it didn't matter people wouldn't get plastic surgery. It may not be a big deal for you, but for people that love their character, changing these characteristics to such a degree changes the mood of the character, and we loose something we cannot get back.

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Sorry, I meant tweaked by the developer before the launch to bring it more in line with the current look, where shapes of eyes etc. have been changed for the update so far.