Graphical Update - Remove makeup from faces

I noticed female highlanders all seem to have forced eyeliner or eye shadow. Most of the females of all races have a very dark top eye ridge and implies eyeliner is applied—the basic face should not look like it has any makeup applied at all.

(Images are hidden since they're large)

https://i.imgur.com/h7CR8hD.png
https://i.imgur.com/VkFzigh.png
https://i.imgur.com/2YdwFLL.png
https://i.imgur.com/l214lAv.png

Makeup appearance options should be under Facial Features. You should have the option to make your upper and/or lower eyeline darker, as well as adding shadow to your eyes.

This female Elezen Facial Feature (while I still think the slight shadow it has by default should be removed) is a good example of how makeup should be an option—and I believe Highlanders also have an option like this. First photo is without the feature selected, second is with, as you can see in the upper right corner:

https://i.imgur.com/bjIwhMu.png
https://i.imgur.com/1X9O1Ba.png

As far as the shadows—there is a distinct difference between shadows cast by light and eye shadow makeup, and it seems like the shadows on the textures right now are forced makeup.

I don't even use makeup on my character, yet my femra has forced eyeshadow and what appears to be lipgloss. Completely goes against her and a lot of my other fem characters. Give us an option, don't force it on us??

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. I feel like the majority of the female characters have much darker makeup than before.
If the game is going to give us new makeup options, I would like to see an option to remove it as well.

Yes, I agree completely! I chose a face specific for lack of lower lid eyeliner, and having a "natural" look. Now my only choices are lots of make-up, and even more make-up. As a result it's like an age change too, to a younger face. If Meteor can get old I'd like my WoL to as well!

It's not every single eye/face combo, it's weirdly inconsistent. I am a huge fan of the eye overhaul overall, and even spotted some bug fixes with eyelashes? But adding forced eyeliner is a pretty big character image change.

https://imgur.com/auiY5QJhttps://imgur.com/gUqfsEf

I agree. As a woman I'm already annoyed with the lack of varied options in MMOs for female characters in general, and now having makeup baked into a large portion of fem faces is too much.

I want to be able to make an old woman. I want huge scars. I want the variety that is usually afforded to masc models. Forced gender confirmation in the form of unremovable makeup makes me want to scream.

This should absolutely be a toggle!

If it's an issue of forcing the makeup on female characters because there aren't enough resources to make it an option, then I much prefer for it to remain as is. But if it can be made an option, then I see no harm in allowing players to choose to not wear makeup if they don't want to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

If it's an issue of forcing the makeup on female characters because there aren't enough resources to make it an option, then I much prefer for it to remain as is. But if it can be made an option, then I see no harm in allowing players to choose to not wear makeup if they don't want to.

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It's already an option. The problem is that the toggle has very little difference in the benchmark, on or off there's a ton of eyeliner now. In Live there's distinct "almost no makeup" and "makeup" eyes.

Yeah, I'm really not a fan of the pronounced eyeliner on my character in the benchmark. If I'd wanted that on, I would have picked it.

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Originally Posted by Aimed

It's already an option. The problem is that the toggle has very little difference in the benchmark, on or off there's a ton of eyeliner now. In Live there's distinct "almost no makeup" and "makeup" eyes.

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It might be my own face, but I do not have the option to go completely without makeup. It's either little or heavy. That's it.

I agree, this changed the look of my character so much, I really hope they make it an option rather than a forced change.

I also have to agree. My Miqo'te uses face 2 and i like it alot because of the more natural look. Im overall happy with the update but the Eyeliner makeup bothers me alot actually.

i took a quick skim at the JP forum and it seems like a lot of them are dissatisfied with the forced makeup as well so i'd wager that's one of the first things SE will look into. honestly i'm starting to think there's also a visual bug with how the makeup straight up bleeds into half of the eye. that's... obviously not how it should work

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6437251

Really glad to hear that someone from JP's talking about it! I think though, that I have a little bit of a conspiracy theory about the eyeliner.

After staring at it for way too long, I think its the result of three things: darker painting on the upper eyelid texture for all female model WoLs ( and some male model ), changes to the lighting engine, and changes to the topology of the face.

I tried to take some comparison shots for Face 1 Female Hyur Midlanders (without Facial Feature 2, the eye shadow) in the Gridanian housing preset so I could use the static lights in there while making sure that all the graphics settings matched between 6.55 and the benchmark.

https://i.imgur.com/iFeW0eQ.png

I think we can all agree that direct lighting just looks plain better, and there isn't a stark difference between direct and indirect lighting now, which I think is good.


But I think that's where my conspiracy theory comes in. We can see that the lighting is doing very different things to the overall colour of the face when the light is behind, and that when the light is in front the shadows around the eyes are much more pronounced. Yet, the upper eyelid is always a very dark shade. I think that someone decided that was an important feature to keep in 7.0 with the new lighting, over-corrected by painting it darker, and now all of the female models have eyeliner.

As for the topology I mentioned, take a look at the WoL I actually play:

https://i.imgur.com/k0OBXwN.png

After staring at it for way too long, in different lighting and from different angles, I think the bottom lid region has been curled outward, making it look wider. So with the new indirect lighting and new textures, it looks like she has eyeliner on the bottom of her eye too when I never interpreted it like that before.


This is all really to say: please CBU3, reduce the intensity of the eye region's painting on female model facial textures. And the lighting in the character creator is just plain bad and isn't helping anyone give feedback on this.


Otherwise, 10/10. My WoL doesn't look like a frog anymore when you shine a single light at her face from a distance.

The lips do seem to have a forced matte lipstick on even with lip colour sent to none.
As for the eyes, (at least in the case of fem moon miqo face 4), it’s not that eyeshadow was added, it’s that the eyelashes have been outright replaced with very overdone and poor substitutes.

https://i.imgur.com/FSab6HN.png

You can see the lashes are extremely thick, cover more of the eye, and no care was taken to preserve the original look, despite their stated goal of doing so. The new lashes look like false glue ons, with too uniform a shape. Compared to the originals, the changes to eyes lips and brows seem like a graphical downgrade to me. It looks like makeup because it’s so unnatural.

I almost wonder if this is the result of crunch rush to get this done in time? Some races look much closer to their original appearance, and others seem to vary from looking odd to looking full on goofy. I’ve also seen a lot of images showing errors and problems, like with the edges around au’ra body scales. I really think if it’s not ready, they should delay pushing updates to character models and textures until they can spend more time on it. The rest of the games graphical updates look beautiful. The character updates don’t look up to the same standard. Our character is front and center at all points of the game. This is something that needs to be nailed. Everyone I know who played WoW still talks about the WoW character update with frustration, years later.

Ah, so that's where my eye makeup went. I would like it back please, dearest Devs. Sincerely, male viera veena face 4.

They added an eyeshadow to male elezen that I am very happy with because now I don't need to use the makeup to achieve the same eye definition and can instead use that option for something else.

He just looks like this now without me having to waste my one (1) makeup slot just to darken his eyelids.
I LOVE it.

That said, this should be optional like suggested in the thread.
Eye shadow should be a Facial Feature that can be toggled off and on for every face.

It's Maybelline. She was not born with it.

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

I agree. Especially in the first photos, this seems like a strange choice for the default.

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Originally Posted by crystallineAbyss

I don't even use makeup on my character, yet my femra has forced eyeshadow and what appears to be lipgloss. Completely goes against her and a lot of my other fem characters. Give us an option, don't force it on us??

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Yeah I noticed that too. My current femra has a bit of lip colour (the "weaker" of the two options) that's barely visible. In the bench mark it has transformed into some really bold lipstick. If I remove it completely her bare lips in the bench mark are still darker than the light lip colour I have currently put on her.