Problematic Skin Tones: Character Creator vs. In-Game (Always Seem Off)

I am sure I am not the only one who has experienced this, but this game has a really big problem with inaccurate skin tone representation in the character creator vs. in-game. It seems no matter how many times I test it in on all environment lighting situations in the creator, the shade is always slightly different once I get into the actual game itself.

It seems lighter tans can skew to the yellowish hue side, darker tans go orange/reddish and too dark and you are looking like you took a mud bath and are preparing for a wrestling match.

Now, I know I know. The game lighting always changes how you look slightly depending on what location you are in, and inside inn rooms at night or places with that lovely golden light, orange is the new black.

I just don't get why they always look off. I have spent WAY MORE $$$ in Fantasia simply for skin tone adjustments than I care to admit. I finally gave up with my Hrothgar because I realized getting a flesh tan tone was futile within the browns/tans available.

I wish SE would make skin tone a part of the cosmetician along with hair color adjustments. However, I guess they know they will get suckers like me who will pay $50 in fantasias to try to fix it D:

I will say the Viera (Rava) seem to have the only REAL tans that translate into the game as tan without the yellow/orange/red effect.

That’s why whenever I know I’m going to fantasia, I make an alt and run around as them and do quests for a couple of hours to know that it’s what I want. Combat sounds too are important to test. I liked viera voice 5 from the benchmark but her fight noises sound like violent retching.

Yeah, it's pretty frustrating as a brown PoC in real life to have such a hard time matching my own skin to the provided swatches. Viera seem to be the only ones that don't have overwhelming and unnatural undertones of grey or orange for even the lightest tans. There have been many times that this simple but horrible obstacle has made me want to give up. It was hard to play a game where just matching my own real flesh color was so difficult, it made me feel like no one making these swatches could be inconvenienced enough to even look at pictures of Black/brown PoC to give our flesh tones the realism the lighter ones have.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

That’s why whenever I know I’m going to fantasia, I make an alt and run around as them and do quests for a couple of hours to know that it’s what I want. Combat sounds too are important to test. I liked viera voice 5 from the benchmark but her fight noises sound like violent retching.

---

You know....I never thought about doing the alt thing. $100 in Fantasias in the whole as I scream at my TV screen because one little thing is off this would have solved all my problems. Doing this today because I am still not totally happy. May be abandoning the tan color scheme and going Lost and snow white. They can't mess WHITE up.

Yeah, I do the alt thing all the time. I tried that with the new races and I could not get something I like. So, I just delete all those character configurations and then stuck with my current look.

Agreed, especially with certain races like Rava Viera, Sun cats and even some Lala skin. The best thing you can do is to create a new character and run around in game. All you really have to do is unlock the starting quest or two to be able to run around the starting area and see how different light affects your skin color. I've found Ul'dah is the quickest. Then you can also quickly run to the MB and try on various gear pieces/glamours and see how it looks with the new look.

The only frustration lately is Aether has been completely locked, so I've been having to go to the European data centers just to be able to do this. Luckily, I think that has now subsided.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Whelp

Yeah, it's pretty frustrating as a brown PoC in real life to have such a hard time matching my own skin to the provided swatches. Viera seem to be the only ones that don't have overwhelming and unnatural undertones of grey or orange for even the lightest tans. There have been many times that this simple but horrible obstacle has made me want to give up. It was hard to play a game where just matching my own real flesh color was so difficult, it made me feel like no one making these swatches could be inconvenienced enough to even look at pictures of Black/brown PoC to give our flesh tones the realism the lighter ones have.

---

It's just the engine and options. What you're describing sounds like a very, very personal problem (inb4 racist, I'm as black as Hershey's chocolate). Something that can be solved with the option of an environment with no shade cluttering the sunlight. Like Coerthas or the Steppes. Very bright, and more what you'll be seeing over trees, trees, trees.

Basically, they should make it so that we can customize everything from the aesthetician save for race and gender...

The struggle is real.

What I find myself doing is switching the background in the character creator to Ul'Dah in the day time and turning my character to where he's facing the sunlight. This give a good idea of what his/her skin tone will look like under certain lighting.

That's why they give you a bunch of different backdrops and a day/night option in the character creator. So you can test it against different forms of lighting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Averax

That's why they give you a bunch of different backdrops and a day/night option in the character creator. So you can test it against different forms of lighting.

---

Those are not good options. I say that because the trees. The shade of the trees and leaves is misleading as well as only being able to face towards the sun, which is adding yellow on you, for a clear view. The room is too dark, and the aetheric one isn't representative of what you'll be seeing 99% of play time.

I believe a new option should be added of the wedding dressing room, an empty field of the Steppe or Coerthas Central. Especially the wedding room for neutral, opulent light.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Averax

That's why they give you a bunch of different backdrops and a day/night option in the character creator. So you can test it against different forms of lighting.

---

If this were an accurate representation I wouldn't have made the topic. However, even when checking all of these different settings the skin tones still can look very different when you're in the real game. For some reason, the environments in the character creator don't pick up the orange/yellow/red tones the tan skin colors utilize.

Look, I get it is trivial and for some, you just won't get EXACTLY what you want. I just wish skin tone was part of the aesthetician's features and you didn't have to pay $10 to change it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gula

It's just the engine and options. What you're describing sounds like a very, very personal problem (inb4 racist, I'm as black as Hershey's chocolate). Something that can be solved with the option of an environment with no shade cluttering the sunlight. Like Coerthas or the Steppes. Very bright, and more what you'll be seeing over trees, trees, trees.

---

Nah, it's actually, like I said, an issue of undertones. Unnatural ones. Like I said. But good tactic calling yourself a racist when you speak on things you clearly don't understand. Nice preemptive dodge there.

Edit: Like, there are shades that should occur with certain flesh tones in lighting changes. It's OK to not know what an undertone is. Especially if you don't use make-up or create portraits. It's knowledge you just don't have to have. It's not OK to pipe in and blame color swatches on an engine and deflect like you did. But, whatever. I seriously can't believe you looked at this game and noticed how well non humanoid shades of brown adjust to lighting and how PoC skin tones react to lighting and you just said "This is fine, it's the engine." This whole assumption that I would call "racism" on what looks like a clear lack of knowledge in what is and isn't how a flesh tone reacts to light is pretty silly and only serves to make us look petty to others.

The lighting in CC is way of from in game.. ingame its a lil more natural in CC it literally a flashlight being beamed at you even if you choose the scenery options in CC the lighting is still off. ive had skin tones that look amazing in CC but terrible in game and vice versa. they need to update CC lighting to more accurately represent the ingame lighting.

I'd love to be able to change skin tone with the Aesthetician, eye color would be nice too. It's so hard to get the colors you want just right in the Character creator. Gridania in CC seems like the most natural light but there's so many shadows being cast from the trees it's hard to get a good look. Limsa in CC is golden yellow light but in game it's bright clear light.

Im all in on eye/skin color and voice change at Aesthetician it could help to prevent all those abandoned chars created as a workaround to test voices, have a quest to give the Aesthetician an oculist and tan-skin permit and voice tune lessons

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

That’s why whenever I know I’m going to fantasia, I make an alt and run around as them and do quests for a couple of hours to know that it’s what I want.

---

Yeah, that's what I do before switching using a fantasia. Another thing that I am doing when I'm not in a rush to fantasia is to have would-be characters as retainers. That way I can see their skin color in various lighting, location and weather.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gula

Those are not good options. I say that because the trees. The shade of the trees and leaves is misleading as well as only being able to face towards the sun, which is adding yellow on you, for a clear view. The room is too dark, and the aetheric one isn't representative of what you'll be seeing 99% of play time.

I believe a new option should be added of the wedding dressing room, an empty field of the Steppe or Coerthas Central. Especially the wedding room for neutral, opulent light.

---

You can rotate your character in the creator so that you can face towards, 3/4, away, whatever from the lightsource.

I may or may not have learned a long time ago that there is actually a limit to the number of characters you can create per day precisely because of this skin tone issue. That’s the hardest part of creating a character for me since they are always slightly off in the creator, so I always try to make an alt to see thr skin in game....and then make a bunch of alts because I’m having so much trouble getting it just right.... and then hit thr limit.

I've started using the benchmark to see how created characters actually look and animate in-game. It saves you from the character creation limit and you can even see them in a variety of armor sets.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eleken

I've started using the benchmark to see how created characters actually look and animate in-game. It saves you from the character creation limit and you can even see them in a variety of armor sets.

---

Same here. It's the only way I can see the character actually /in game/ with good lighting and it's saved me a bundle on fantasia's. They really either need to give us some benchmark like cutscene to see how our characters look in game from the CC or add /better/ backdrops. The ones they have, frankly, are horrid no matter what skin shade you're trying to apply. The only decent one is the Gridanian proxy from a lighting perspective, but that's also ruined by the sheer volume of shadows coming down from the trees.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renato

The struggle is real.

What I find myself doing is switching the background in the character creator to Ul'Dah in the day time and turning my character to where he's facing the sunlight. This give a good idea of what his/her skin tone will look like under certain lighting.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Averax

That's why they give you a bunch of different backdrops and a day/night option in the character creator. So you can test it against different forms of lighting.

---

You're suppose to do this. Thatz why the options are there.

Beyond just skin tone here, but I would support a 24 real world hours from the initial time you use your fantasia to re-edit your character to be able to do so again, or maybe unlimited edits for 24 hours from when you use the fantasia.

This would also have solved issues surrounding the viera voice 7 issue at the launch of the patch, and let people make other minor changes to their character if they see things aren't really working after they change their model without giving truely unlimited character re-editing.

I can remember twice after using a fantasia having to go back and purchase another one because of combat voices or because the skin tone looks worse in actual play than it did in the character creator. Though at this point I would like to just see some sort of tanning salon in the game to just let you adjust your skin tone without a fantasia, I don't think that's something they're likely to implement. I'm speaking from my current character look where I thought it was fine from the lighting options given to me in the character creator, only go get into the actual game and realize that I wished I had made his skin a shade darker, but am unwilling to buy another fantasia just to make that slight adjustment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

You're suppose to do this. Thatz why the options are there.

---

The options have bad lighting though, which is the issue. The only game I've played with worse lighting for character creation was Dragon Age Inquisition - and this one only just slightly edges that out by virtue of having options. Terrible options that make my inner artist cringe because if someone sent me references using any of them I'd send them back and ask for new ones, but options none the less. We either need the ability to change the time in each location, or for them to add new options that don't cause such a monumental struggle.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wereotter

Beyond just skin tone here, but I would support a 24 real world hours from the initial time you use your fantasia to re-edit your character to be able to do so again, or maybe unlimited edits for 24 hours from when you use the fantasia.

This would also have solved issues surrounding the viera voice 7 issue at the launch of the patch, and let people make other minor changes to their character if they see things aren't really working after they change their model without giving truely unlimited character re-editing.

I can remember twice after using a fantasia having to go back and purchase another one because of combat voices or because the skin tone looks worse in actual play than it did in the character creator. Though at this point I would like to just see some sort of tanning salon in the game to just let you adjust your skin tone without a fantasia, I don't think that's something they're likely to implement. I'm speaking from my current character look where I thought it was fine from the lighting options given to me in the character creator, only go get into the actual game and realize that I wished I had made his skin a shade darker, but am unwilling to buy another fantasia just to make that slight adjustment.

---

I just went through this...three fantasias for minor skin tone adjustments that in the CC don't seem all that different but IN-GAME they actually are.

We were just discussing in my ls discord regarding skin tones for femroes. One of my ls mates was trying to find a shade of red--or as close as to it as possible--but due to the various lighting in the game as well as different weather affecting the tones, it was next to impossible for her and she basically gave up and went for some discernible light tones. Funnily enough, I was in her exact same shoes a long time ago, trying to also find a color under the red umbrella of tones but gave up and went for dark tones.


You just can't win in this game when it comes to skin tones of the middle spectrum.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mavrias

You can rotate your character in the creator so that you can face towards, 3/4, away, whatever from the lightsource.

---

I'm sorry you seem to have missed where I said that adds yellow and isnt a fix. Please reread my post.

I think one of the problems is because the most natural lighting you can have on CC is using Gridania/The Shroud as a background, however the amount of trees make it impossible for you to see your character's face and body very well under that light. Limsa/La Noscea has a white-bluish undertone to it, and Ul'Dha/Thanalan has a grey-orangeish. If they reduced the amount of tree shadows on the Shroud it would be the perfect background for skintone testing.

Even if you create an alt and stuff, Gridania is the only place that reflects your character's skin tone a bit better, however it's always high noon at the prologue with clear skies and lighting that is exclusive to that prologue. So that's why when creating an alt, you are required to go all the way to the actual game. But then... boom: For some reason it always seem to be night time, raining or absurdly cloudy in Eorzea. lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

That’s why whenever I know I’m going to fantasia, I make an alt and run around as them and do quests for a couple of hours to know that it’s what I want. Combat sounds too are important to test. I liked viera voice 5 from the benchmark but her fight noises sound like violent retching.

---

Best answer, and if you have all your slots full you can start a trial account, well at least for he original races. But lighting changes from zone to zone and time to time. It's likely there will always be some place you character looks a little off, kinda like real life. :)

The default scene on the character creation has terrible lighting that actively messes with colors.

If you want the best possible idea using the the character creation screen just go through all the scenes, night and day and spin the character around a bit.