Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

Adding to the choir that I hope that the pupil slider in the update demo can also make the pupils smaller, + that we might get a pupil color setting for femroe, who used to have jeweled/light-colored pupils. That's the one thing that still kind of stings about the graphical update, f au ra eyes and femroe eyes became more like hyur eyes.

Im happy with the skincolourchange. I have always wanted moonmiqo skin on my sunmiqo and now I will be able to achieve it. I am also happy with the being able to use several facepaintings at the same time (I think I saw that was a thing at least) and the makeup? I mean....Idk I will see.
But yeah, my viera will never recover from what they did to her, that much is clear.

I can't freaking wait to give my Midlander the silver undertone Moonkeepers and Duskwights can access.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

I can't freaking wait to give my Midlander the silver undertone Moonkeepers and Duskwights can access.

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Same here!

I'm still waiting for the butt slider to be released...

Just going to copy/paste this post from last November since none of it has been fixed.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

1. Highlander Lips

I've been complaining about the lip issue on female highlander face 1 since the beta. To reiterate:

- The bottom lip has a very stark line running straight through the middle of the lip, separating it into a much darker half and a much lighter half. It looks very strange and unnatural, like you have three lips.
- There's a prominent inverted white triangle on the upper lip either not present or very very light in the original.
- The lips overall have various splotchy white parts that make them look almost infected, an odd interpretation of the low res highlights from the original.

https://i.imgur.com/L9T9oib.png

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This is still an issue.

https://i.imgur.com/kTlLv0M.png

I didn't want to bring up the mobile version in my previous post because I dislike that version for a different set of reasons and wouldn't want it either, but what is noteworthy is that the mobile version lacks the issues outlined above.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gu3dPvUW...g&name=900x900

- The bottom lip isn't strangely separated into two starkly contrasting zones.
- The weird white triangle on the upper lip is gone.
- The lips aren't covered in random white lines.

I am quite perplexed as to why on multiple different patches the devs took the time to erase small differences in eye makeup on face 1 (both of which were better than the original IMO) to get them closer to the pre-DT look, but they won't correct this massive and incredibly bizarre departure from the old textures.

To reiterate what they should look similar to in FFXIV from my previous post:

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

Interestingly, in certain lighting sometimes the lips look a lot better as I've shown below (everything on the right side is from 7.0). When the light is just right it blends the colors together and everything looks much closer to how it should (except the persistent upper lip triangle which shows how much more prominent it is now). If the lips looked like the below image all the time I'd have no complaints.

https://i.imgur.com/oWE8sfl.png

Devs, please blend out the details of the lips to match the example above and the original model. If at least the bottom lip gets fixed I can live with the rest of it.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

2. Shadows

Speaking of lighting, shadows are still broken since my bug report on the issue was accepted a year ago. In a recent patch there was a note about the engine taking multiples light sources into account to improve shadows but as far as I can tell that hasn't actually improved anything.

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Shadows are still very broken.

https://i.imgur.com/VcNgNyx.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/AbYgwsd.gif

https://i.imgur.com/4PUR6SH.gif

That last one is from an MSQ cutscene. Very distracting when you're trying to be immersed in the story.

And side note, the gifs above are another good example of how specific lighting sometimes blends the mangled lip shading together to make them look much better. Please just do that to the texture itself.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

Side note:
Please greatly increase the shadow rendering distance inside housing. Currently if a light source isn't directly in your face it doesn't properly account for the geometry around it.

https://i.imgur.com/B7XDnMO.gif

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This is still an issue. Lights inside housing do not take their surrounding environment into account when casting shadows unless they're right next to you. Look at all the shadows popping in and out with every step in this small room.

https://i.imgur.com/gtLZuvT.gif

Please greatly extend the render distance for lighting and shadows inside houses (and out in the world too IMO but that's a different issue). You should be able to stand at one end of a large house interior and see the correct shadows on the other side. Right now you practically have to be standing on top of light sources for things to look how they should.

We're up to 7.5 now and male Duskwight face 3 still has the incorrect clan texture, and female Dunesfolk face 4 still has outright bugged facial feature options. I can't be bothered to repost my (again, "planned to address") bug report that I made well over a year ago at this point, but as it stands right now I don't even trust them to fix these oversights with the character creation update.

It's probably minor and I didn't find a specific thread for "Character Creator Requests" but I wish the black tips for male miqo'te ears could be added to the Scars/Face Markings section instead of based on the hairstyle you pick. (Also add them for Fem Miqo too!);)

I am trying to be optimistic about the changes they mentioned in the keynote, but it's hard considering I still don't enjoy looking at my character the way I used to. I have a friend who also plays femra that used to be very happy about the fact that they could log in hour 1 of a patch and play but now they wait for 3rd-party plugins to come back just so their face doesn't look so horrible in cutscenes... but maybe with the alleged customization updates, we will be freed from the horrible tiny pinched mouths.


TBH, the main thing that makes me cautiously optimistic is the fact that the next expac seems like it's going to have a pretty heavy focus on Au Ra characters - so maybe the devs will actually take a look at what they did to the race finally and hopefully address or alleviate some of the complaints I've seen. I am still convinced the reason Au Ra got such a short end of the stick in the update is because there are no Au Ra in Tural or Alexandria, so players are not going to be looking at characters from the race very often unless they're playing as one. (aside from the fake one we just got, but that's a completely custom face so irrelevant).

I think they might have changed the Limbal rings on Au Ra again:

This picture was during 7.4
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...b97d764509ddd9

And this is from today:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...720&height=643

They'd given Limbal rings a glow and soft bluriness and now it's back to being a very distinct circle with the glow being much less noticeable.
Kinda disappointed because I had gotten used to the previous look and really liked the glow

Im not invested enough to say much, but I gotta say, I love how utterly incapable of making actual comparison pictures this thread is. Taking a pic of a character in a certain location at a certain time of day, and then comparing it to another picture in an entirely different location with entirely different lighting and ambiance at a different time of day and then complaining about how 'radically different' the two look and even then I can barely tell the difference. Doesn't apply to everyone but good lord half of these comparisons feel like they're only different because one is taken in the dark cave lit up by a tiny candles and another in the middle of sunny beach.

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

Im not invested enough to say much, but I gotta say, I love how utterly incapable of making actual comparison pictures this thread is. Taking a pic of a character in a certain location at a certain time of day, and then comparing it to another picture in an entirely different location with entirely different lighting and ambiance at a different time of day and then complaining about how 'radically different' the two look and even then I can barely tell the difference. Doesn't apply to everyone but good lord half of these comparisons feel like they're only different because one is taken in the dark cave lit up by a tiny candles and another in the middle of sunny beach.

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With what they did to the environment lighting, it could easily be the same location at the same time, and you just aren't able to tell.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

With what they did to the environment lighting, it could easily be the same location at the same time, and you just aren't able to tell.

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I can literally see the background of those pictures, and that those are two different places. I don't deny the lighting may have changed severely in some places, but that only makes attempts at drawing comparisons while taking pics in radically different circumstances even less sane lmao.

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

I can literally see the background of those pictures, and that those are two different places. I don't deny the lighting may have changed severely in some places, but that only makes attempts at drawing comparisons while taking pics in radically different circumstances even less sane lmao.

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So, save for the mobile version cap, these are all in the same spot but show the clear weirdness of them attempting to fix the lighting engine problems they've had since launch of 7.0:
https://i.imgur.com/3gnDRDv.jpeg

Yeah, the previous comparisons were in different spots, but you can still see the difference they were talking about given the limbal rings are really bright and it's something they've been tweaking on and off silently every patch release. You don't have to be rude about it though — people are stressed enough with the lead into 8.0 and the dread of another round of feedback likely being required without people coming in here and griping about people being "less sane" for seeing a clear visual difference on their character.

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

I can literally see the background of those pictures, and that those are two different places. I don't deny the lighting may have changed severely in some places, but that only makes attempts at drawing comparisons while taking pics in radically different circumstances even less sane lmao.

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I'll admit that was not the best after picture I could take and I'll have to find better before/after comparison, but the limbal rings are definitely different from before the patch

Edit: Found this before/after image online
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...ality=lossless

I was hoping the eyelid change in gpose would fix the eyelid bug, disappointed to see that’s not the case.

https://i.imgur.com/7fpLHng.png

Though I’m surprised to see the limbal ring glow doesn’t bleed as much into the eye as they used to when they glow brightly. This is more in line with the thickness limbal rings used to be in EW, which I appreciate.


However the intensity of the glow is still dependent on the surrounding light source. I wish that the glow intensity would be reversed between day and night. I understand that they want to avoid having limbal rings being barely visible during daytime as it was in 7.0, but I feel that they overcorrected the glow in 7.2.
I personally find it silly that they’re more intense during the day when in general light glows more brightly when the surroundings are darker.

https://i.imgur.com/IvB4rWJ.png



We’re soon nearing the end of this expansion and honestly it’s been frustrating to see how the graphical update has been handled. More polygons and higher resolution textures doesn’t automatically make things better when they’re misaligned and mismatched from original features.
Though I welcome the additional features shown during fanfest, they don’t bring much hope in regard to fixing these issues that’s been brought up since the very first Dawntrail benchmark.

Here's coping they'll finally show as much enthusiasm towards fixing these issues as they are in regards to potentially adding butt slider..

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Originally Posted by Tarath

Though I’m surprised to see the limbal ring glow doesn’t bleed as much into the eye as they used to when they glow brightly. This is more in line with the thickness limbal rings used to be in EW, which I appreciate.

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The limbal ring definitely looks more in line with EW, but I've gotten used to the new look, so at this point I really wished they just gave us an option to swap between this new one and the one from before with the bleed

Somebody posts a quick image neutrally saying "I think this might be different" and another immediately replies to get mad about a more exaggerated version of their claim that they didn't make. Classic.

Regardless it is pretty easy to see that the glow now stays within the circle of the limbal ring, when prior the glow "breached out" in all circumstances before from 7.1 onwards.

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Originally Posted by Sarantserel

The limbal ring definitely looks more in line with EW, but I've gotten used to the new look, so at this point I really wished they just gave us an option to swap between this new one and the one from before with the bleed

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I agree, it would be neat if we could adjust the intensity of the glow and bleed/thickness to our liking.
And hopefully that would be a fix to those using a darker limbal ring colour and wishes for it to not glow, which it currently does.

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

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

Im not invested enough to say much, but I gotta say, I love how utterly incapable of making actual comparison pictures this thread is. Taking a pic of a character in a certain location at a certain time of day, and then comparing it to another picture in an entirely different location with entirely different lighting and ambiance at a different time of day and then complaining about how 'radically different' the two look and even then I can barely tell the difference. Doesn't apply to everyone but good lord half of these comparisons feel like they're only different because one is taken in the dark cave lit up by a tiny candles and another in the middle of sunny beach.

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Frankly, they shouldn't and wouldn't have to be having to do all this work if the devs had bothered to do what they'd promised us in the first place.

The amount of time and effort the people in this thread and others have put in to show the discrepancies, for more than four years is an obscene amount of unpaid labor to be asking the people that are paying for a product, and to expect people to always be perfect is stupid too.

People would have the pics in the same place and then people just shift the goal post to it just looks different because of the new lighting anyways. This is not anyone's job, besides the devs who screwed it up in the first place, and they shouldn't even have to be doing this.

After checking my Au Ra I have to admit that I much, much prefer this change. I do hope the character creation expansion does include fiddling with limbal rings / tattoos (which share the same slot), but ultimately I like that this is closer to the ratio that the original limbal rings had. I am biased though because I have an Au Ra with one of the darkest limbal ring options that still glows blindingly despite everything, so I think this helps make her look just a little less bug-eyed again...

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Originally Posted by Jaltaer

I have a friend who also plays femra that used to be very happy about the fact that they could log in hour 1 of a patch and play but now they wait for 3rd-party plugins to come back just so their face doesn't look so horrible in cutscenes... but maybe with the alleged customization updates, we will be freed from the horrible tiny pinched mouths..

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Completely relate to this, I wish it wasn't the case.

It seems like the change has been made only for female Au Ra? I've checked my former character (male Au Ra), and it looks like his limbal rings are exactly the same as they used to be (wide and bleeding into the iris). I'm quite bad at noticing finer details, though.

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Originally Posted by Argantaelle

It seems like the change has been made only for female Au Ra? I've checked my former character (male Au Ra), and it looks like his limbal rings are exactly the same as they used to be (wide and bleeding into the iris). I'm quite bad at noticing finer details, though.

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The change has been made for Male Au Ra too.
It's harder to spot when they got smaller eyes, and I feel that limbal rings can give the illusion of being slightly wider when viewed further away.

https://i.imgur.com/MWVFL8W.png

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Originally Posted by Tarath

The change has been made for Male Au Ra too.

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Thank you! I don't play my former main, so it's easy for me to miss if something subtle has changed.

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Originally Posted by Tarath

The change has been made for Male Au Ra too.
It's harder to spot when they got smaller eyes, and I feel that limbal rings can give the illusion of being slightly wider when viewed further away.

https://i.imgur.com/MWVFL8W.png

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And yet not even a generic acknowledgement in the patch notes like we used to get lol.

I was thinking that something was missing but I could not pinpoint what's wrong from my character.
Apparently they lessened the limbal ring across the race? Or maybe just on my highlander. I have not checked on other race.

Now it is hard to read between iris and sclera if you have light colored iris :/ I hope they do something about this because this essentially just pushing people to choose darker iris color

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...9a4d2f70d2.png

Looks like they shrank the color of the iris so it no longer matches the cornea. What a strange thing to do. The effect is very weird and unnatural.

https://i.imgur.com/Sqglqm7.png

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Originally Posted by Astronis

Looks like they shrank the color of the iris so it no longer matches the cornea. What a strange thing to do. The effect is very weird and unnatural.

https://i.imgur.com/Sqglqm7.png

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This might explain it.

I thought my mind was messing around because from afar it seems that I were using smaller iris option, when I never messed with that on even with Fantasia!

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Originally Posted by potatsdevourer

This might explain it.

I thought my mind was messing around because from afar it seems that I were using smaller iris option, when I never messed with that on even with Fantasia!

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The color around the rim of the iris may have been changed a bit too. I am perplexed as to why they would change this! The only thing I can think of is prep for Evercold's iris-changing options.

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Originally Posted by Astronis

The color around the rim of the iris may have been changed a bit too. I am perplexed as to why they would change this! The only thing I can think of is prep for Evercold's iris-changing options.

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This is funny because I was thinking that the upcoming options might be why Au Ra limbal rings were also changed at all and that it's just coincidence that they look more like how they used to now--because when I was looking at how humongous the even larger pupil size for that fem Au Ra appeared, I was thinking there was no way you'd see any of her main eye color with limbal rings set on.

It's a shame what they did to masc Highlander eyes though. They never looked like that in the past, nor does that look very 'natural' or anything now...

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Originally Posted by Doopliss

This is funny because I was thinking that the upcoming options might be why Au Ra limbal rings were also changed at all and that it's just coincidence that they look more like how they used to now--because when I was looking at how humongous the even larger pupil size for that fem Au Ra appeared, I was thinking there was no way you'd see any of her main eye color with limbal rings set on.

It's a shame what they did to masc Highlander eyes though. They never looked like that in the past, nor does that look very 'natural' or anything now...

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I assumed the au ra limbal rings were changed to appear closer to the originals (even though they were always as thick as the originals, the added glow made them appear much bigger and drowned out the iris color). After looking at the rest of the races, it looks like only male highlanders have irises too small for their corneas now, so if they did do any kind of Evercold prep, they only messed it up on male highlanders. One way or another, it ain't right and I bug reported it. They're usually pretty responsive to clear graphical bugs so I hope they fix it.

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Originally Posted by Astronis

They're usually pretty responsive to clear graphical bugs so I hope they fix it.

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I'd be prepared to needing to stay on top of it. I can only hope they tend to it faster than the still unfixed Dunesfolk nose bug I've reported that's been sitting in planning to address since near launch.

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Originally Posted by Astronis

Looks like they shrank the color of the iris so it no longer matches the cornea. What a strange thing to do. The effect is very weird and unnatural.

https://i.imgur.com/Sqglqm7.png

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I had completely forgotten that sclera had gotten bump maps until this post, and I'm no closer to understanding why the fuck they did it.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

[I]
Shadows are still very broken.

Please greatly extend the render distance for lighting and shadows inside houses (and out in the world too IMO but that's a different issue). You should be able to stand at one end of a large house interior and see the correct shadows on the other side. Right now you practically have to be standing on top of light sources for things to look how they should.

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Holy, I thought I was the only one seeing these aberrations. I still can't believe that shadows are completely broken. You can notice this in limsa lominsa starter Aetheryte. Just look at the walls for market, its so bad. On faces, objects,etc.

I really wonder why they never want to fix this. It's driving me crazy how it can look this bad.

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Originally Posted by Doopliss

I'd be prepared to needing to stay on top of it. I can only hope they tend to it faster than the still unfixed Dunesfolk nose bug I've reported that's been sitting in planning to address since near launch.

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I'm not terribly worried; it's a minor texture error that a lot of people are reporting, so should be an easy fix for them. The other texture and animation errors I've reported all got fixed in the next major patch after they asked me for more info. But I'll certainly yell at them if it takes longer than Evercold's release to deal with it.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

I had completely forgotten that sclera had gotten bump maps until this post, and I'm no closer to understanding why the fuck they did it.

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They did it because it looks awesome and natural. Spreads the light out into a sheen just like on real sclera.

The more I look into it, the more furious I am

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...e358e085e8.png

Picture for comparison between races.

Somehow only male highlander got singled out from whatever eye patch they did. I don't know where or what or if they will even pay attention to this.
I simply have very low trust they will fix this or consider this bug.

Past history really show they do not care of male highlanders (Meffrid? Geode? dead. Arenvald? wheelchaired, might as well call him dead.)

Do better, SE.

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

Im not invested enough to say much, but I gotta say, I love how utterly incapable of making actual comparison pictures this thread is. Taking a pic of a character in a certain location at a certain time of day, and then comparing it to another picture in an entirely different location with entirely different lighting and ambiance at a different time of day and then complaining about how 'radically different' the two look and even then I can barely tell the difference. Doesn't apply to everyone but good lord half of these comparisons feel like they're only different because one is taken in the dark cave lit up by a tiny candles and another in the middle of sunny beach.

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It's really bad when you see the side by sides over and over of different things and quickly realize that if consistently think the newer versions look better in one of a million different ways, you're better off just staying silent. Bug reports and "it's different so now it sucks" are barely parsable in here.

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Originally Posted by Tarath

I was hoping the eyelid change in gpose would fix the eyelid bug, disappointed to see that’s not the case.

https://i.imgur.com/7fpLHng.png

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Hi, legacy player here who has been around since 1.0 (just reactivated after seeing FanFest, which got me interested again.. after my longest abscence of 2 years).

I haven’t personally experienced these changes yet, but… holy moly:
https://i.imgur.com/7fpLHng.png
Is this a joke, or were these adjustments *after* Version 7.0. actually made based on fan feedback, essentially rolling things back to the old eye design? I’d assume this came down to pressure from parts of the more hardcore FFXIV community.

Before (6.x) and after (7.2 and onward), it literally looked/looks like someone outlined the pupil with a neon marker or Microsoft Paint. It comes across as very cartoony.

Some of my own feedback from 1.0 even made it into ARR, so I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes—but honestly, looking at this, maybe the developers shouldn’t listen too much to player feedback sometimes hah :D

Final Fantasy has always leaned toward a semi-realistic style, not a cartoony one. This isn’t World of Warcraft.
You can clearly see the original design vision here in Version 7.0.: pushing the tech forward, aiming for a more semi-realistic look rather than something overly stylized. As people say nowadays: “let them cook” — they know what they’re doing.

Eyes in reality (or modern game graphics) simply look more like they do in Screenshot 2 (version 7.0), not like in 1, 3, and onward (screenshot above).
As shown in the Digital Foundry comparison, the eyes had much more depth there—fewer harsh color boundaries, more natural blending:

https://s1.directupload.eu/images/260503/xkntfjw2.png

It’s honestly a shame and a missed opportunity, especially since the overall changes are already extremely conservative and faithful to the originals.
And even with characters being this close to their original appearance, people seem to complain about every tiny millimeter of deviation—just because there’s more shading and a slightly more three-dimensional look?

https://s1.directupload.eu/images/260503/o82dchei.png

Sorry, but is this really serious? Back around 2002, I played Dark Age of Camelot, which years later received a major overhaul of character models along with a significant technical leap.

Here’s an example of the graphical character overhaul in Dark Age of Camelot (old classic MMORPG) back then for comparison:

https://archive.rpgamer.com/news/mmo...s/camelot1.JPG

THAT guys, is what you’d call a redesign that’s no longer fully faithful to the original .. and even then, players didn’t complain nearly as much as they do here in the Final Fantasy XIV forum, seriously?

Digital Foundry also mentioned about a year ago that the update could have gone further - for example, with more detailed skin and less of that “doll-like” appearance - but likely didn’t due to fear of backlash from the playerbase:

https://s1.directupload.eu/images/260503/al8temmq.png

Here’s the Digital Foundry video for reference:
>>Digital
Foundry Character Graphics Comparison Video

Reading through this thread and seeing people freak out over such tiny differences… holy moly.
As people would say today: let them cook. Unlike us, they’re actually experts in design, you could see the vision in 7.0. version (first screenshot).
It’s honestly a shame that the devs and designers (to their defense) were obviously held back by player backlash to the point where they had to roll parts of it back to the previous version.

I have actually no words for that. In my opinion its time, that SQE should actually listen (a little) less to their player base.
You can’t expect graphical change without accepting change.

Just my 2 legacy Gil Cents..

A number of Legacy players in Japan cancelled and refunded their preorders for Dawntrail when the benchmark came out because of how radically different some player characters are. So, Legacy or not, your mileage may vary, but the strong consensus over in their threads at the time was "you took more care downgrading our characters from 1.23 to 2.0" which I concur with.

I don't think it's a shame they've had to listen to feedback—in fact if they'd listened to it a lot clearer during benchmarking when things were are their worst we wouldn't all still be here providing feedback which they have not yet told us to stop giving, in fact Yoshida asked us TO keep giving feedback regarding our characters. You say faithful, I certainly do not agree they're faithful. SOME faces of SOME races got a really good conversion.

Some of us are still missing entire normal maps that used to exist and made the flat diffuse that remains on the face make sense instead of looking like a 3 year-old did makeup on the character:
https://i.imgur.com/xmygCLw.png

One of the highlander faces has the eyes femroe used to have before 7.0:
https://i.imgur.com/JCSTlcl.png

A lot of characters now look like plastic dolls because they decided huge pupils and overshadow is the way to go:
https://i.imgur.com/s69kjPL.gif

I want to STRONGLY REITERATE that the developers and art team clearly did not communicate, because what we were being sold on paper across various PLL and FanFest was not what we got:
https://i.imgur.com/GebOzoe.png
https://i.imgur.com/oT0HdOl.jpeg

So, no, sorry, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to keep fighting for them to fix LITERAL RACIAL TRAITS on characters—something that is going to become even more important with the (alleged) Character Creator update in 8.0 as we move into colour wheel era of things. The fact the rigging of the shiny new unified polygon face is so actually broken is still a problem:
https://i.imgur.com/q5oLsOf.gif

The fact the newest preview shows they are attempting to rectify the broken rigging and racial trait shaving, along with the limbal rings no longer bleeding into 1/2 of the eyes now, is a tiny glimmer of hope in the sea of horrible dread that 7.0 series has been for a lot of players.