1.0 vs ARR vs DT For Context

I know a lot of people are saying their characters completely changed or look different, that they didn't stay as faithful to the character as they did in ARR from 1.0 and here is an image from a Character who was imported directly from 1.0 to ARR and the DT benchmark. As you can see, the expression and look of the character definitely went through a minor change, much less than the one we are seeing from ARR to DT so I believe the statement they tried to stay faithful is accurate. That is not to say suggesting changes is bad. I just want people to come here for reference and look at what players who went through a graphics change have already experienced. Despite those changes, the game became more successful, and people accepted the game was improving rather than getting worse.
https://i.imgur.com/cEWFa7p.jpg

If you need to see it bigger you can right click and open it in a new tab. it is a 4K image.

Per an additional request here is a gigantic mosaic with all races from 1.0 - DT BM. Remember to right click and open in new tab.

1. 1.0
2. ARR
3. DT BM

https://i.imgur.com/nuumsKF.jpg

DT looks closer to 1.0 than ARR-EW. Not necessarily a bad thing, it actually looks better mostly, but looks very different than what people are used to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naple

DT looks closer to 1.0 than ARR-EW. Not necessarily a bad thing, it actually looks better mostly, but looks very different than what people are used to.

---

Yeah, it does ask the question a bit if the better lighting is worth it. Least for a style that have been somewhat flat for 10 years now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naple

DT looks closer to 1.0 than ARR-EW. Not necessarily a bad thing, it actually looks better mostly, but looks very different than what people are used to.

---

The ARR models have various bugs like completely wrong normal maps in the face or white dots in the eyes etc. But the people got used to it. SQEX fixed it and now it looks different and the people are upset because it looks different.



Cheers

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fawkes

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

---

Of course someone would make this xD. I will point out it's sad the 1.0 model was still more detailed in some areas than DT which is releasing 14 years after. The Torso seems better in 1.0 as well. The hempen set was the small clothes of 1.0 so afaik this is as close as the comparison gets.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fawkes

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

---

I don't know -- the characters I have now and love don't have ten toes.
I'm not sure I like this change.

Yes, I'm joking.

https://i.imgflip.com/7xkido.jpg

No matter how much you shill, these are NOT the same characters.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...9c7bb9e3_c.jpg
Eyes are a completely different shape & darker, eyebrows are thinner and lighter, nose top lost it's slight widening towards the tip, top lip lost cupid bow-bottom became wider & more thin.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...f7fe1276_c.jpg

Again eyes are completely different shape and color, eyebrows thinner, lighter AND a different shape, nose is shortened and widened, top lip was raised making it thicker and lower was made thinner & wider.

And yes I played around with the BM CC, NOTHING came close to their original looks, even tried using different faces (big no-no for the au ra, picked for the horns) still couldn't get close.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Windfire

... these are NOT the same characters.

---

Of course they aren't: one has a lot more polygons.

Characters are going to look different after the graphics upgrade: that's the entire point of upgrading them.
Whether the new look is better or worse is a matter of taste, which as we all know there is no accounting for.

Now it's not inconceivable that they'll have made it better -- even in your eyes -- by DT launch, or sometime soon thereafter. But if in the end the "upgrade" is going to make the game unenjoyable for you, I think you know what your options are.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Windfire

No matter how much you shill, these are NOT the same characters.

---

They are the same. But the new model has repaired normal maps. And this is the reason why it appears brighter and less rough.


Cheers

Congratulations to the two of you for having Prosopagnosia I guess (though I wouldn't wish it on anyone). "The main symptom of prosopagnosia is having difficulty recognizing faces. You'll still see the parts of a face normally, but all faces may look the same to you." Taken from https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/face-blindness/

I am glad you have posted this as it takes me back to 1.0 and how lovely the characters looked. I am quite happy with the update as It is a little more like it was. The cartoon look is what we got for ARR and it really did make a lot of 1.0 players think wtf happened?

My character who I loved was gone and that was a massive blow and to be honest it kind of annoyed me but we just had to take the free fantasia and accept it. I managed to make a few characters that I love and I do fantasia a little more and I feel it is because I miss my 1.0 cat but I always felt she just did not port the way I remembered her.

I think there needs to be a few tweaks but to be honest they look nicer and my Husband said to me when I had my laptop open "What is the difference?" lol

I do understand there are slight changes the lip gloss is what I am wanting fixed and the Moon keeper teefs they need fixing that is quite bad.

I will make a proper comparison when I get onto my PS5 wish they had done a CC as more players do play on consoles now. I do hope they don't change it back as it is a improvement. I was able to make Hyur and a lovely Moon cat and Au ra. The lighting is doing a lot of things also as when in Gridania guild she looked more or less herself but with her hair sleeker and skin.

If you compare lalafell's eyes between 1.0&EW&DT will know that in fact ARR-EW are more closer 1.0 than DT. The new eyes are too dark...not a good idea indeed

I'm asking genuinely and not to be aggressive or provocative but is it possible to get a bigger picture?

Because even though this is 4k, at max size I can still only moderately zoom into the picture and a lot of face details are lost.
The thing is, the devil is in the details because we are talking about shape changes in lips and eyes. Those are harder to pick up from a distance but in close-ups they have a visible impact.

That said even with the picture in the OP I believe I already see some feature differences between 1.0/ARR (those seem consistent with each other from what I can see) and DT which go beyond lighting. Namely the shape of the eyes and the fullness of the lower lips (but this one is hard to discern with certainty without a larger picture). I've also loaded the image into Photoshop and traced the eye shapes which confirms my initial impressions.

I don't have time to post links right now bc work. I'll try to get around to it later. My apologies for that.

I believe this is the same base face they used for Y'shtola btw and if you look at her in 1.0 cutscenes I feel like you can see that her lower lips are not actually as wide (horizontally speaking) as the DT model. I have looked at most of the miqo feedback and the Y'shtola face is not brought up very often. Other miqo faces have clearly been changed which has been shown repeatedly. Perhaps the Y'shtola face dodged a bullet.

Some people have said after all their own characters don't seem very different. I believe that.

That doesn't undo all the other examples players have shown that very clearly demonstrate differences in face shapes that are not lighting, both on the English and the Japanese forums.

Also, even if DT and 1.0 are closer to one another (which I'm not convinced of atm) this doesn't do anything for players of newer races like au ra or viera.
Players have very clearly shown how their viera and au ra models do not look the same, with facial features being completely changed. My chars don't even look like their old selves from a distance. I can spot it right away because they have given them a complete lip job among other things. :/

I'm sorry to be a bit offtopic, but there is something that's been bugging me since I saw the first videos of 1.0 I feel they tend to be more realistic, and also the Elezen were better proportioned?? I saw Mother Myoune to look much better in 1.0, and with narrower shoulders (in my personal opinion)

I wonder why this changed so much with A realm reborn? I don't say I like ALL better in 1.0, I certainly not (since I prefer less realism in general, I like more colorful and stilized worlds). It's because the engine or change artistic direction? If someone knows...

I am unsure why they changed it so much but it was a downgrade....the way characters ran moved everything hair physics. I think a lot of people could not run the game at the time due to the specs it required. My Husband who played at the time said to me oh it wont be much different....his face when he logged in was one of complete shock.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KhujaRela

I'm sorry to be a bit offtopic, but there is something that's been bugging me since I saw the first videos of 1.0 I feel they tend to be more realistic, and also the Elezen were better proportioned?? I saw Mother Myoune to look much better in 1.0, and with narrower shoulders (in my personal opinion)

I wonder why this changed so much with A realm reborn? I don't say I like ALL better in 1.0, I certainly not (since I prefer less realism in general, I like more colorful and stilized worlds). It's because the engine or change artistic direction? If someone knows...

---

They changed engines which will have an inherent effect on how the game looks and presents itself, but they also made the visuals worse on purpose so that hardware (at the time) could actually run it. 1.0 was very intensive for 2010 and people really struggled even with the best PCs.

That, and they wanted to streamline the development process. Obsessing over visuals will really slow down how quickly you can make things.

Thank you both! so it was an engine/specs thing, I believe this also has to do with current graphics change, since they said they would use from Dawntrail the same mesh number on all characters and races equally (also to make easier adjust clothing), so maybe this is affecting to some face features and causing the glitches on the benchmark...

With this clarified, I want to think now they didn't had enough time to fine-tune faces, or maybe they wanted to see the public reaction on benchmark first? I'm just guessing tho, until they talk about I don't think we know for real...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KhujaRela

I want to think now they didn't had enough time to fine-tune faces

---

What's really strange is that there was a theory running around in the JP community that Dawntrail would release in late August. At Tokyo Fanfest, when they didn't announce the release date yet due to wanting to make sure they would not delay like EW, Yoshida even brought up a chat comment that said "it's gonna be October" to confirm that "no, it will be summer". Which proves that people were already expecting late summer.

And then at PAX he says "oh we wanted to release one week earlier, actually, but Elden Ring DLC" etc.

I was also mentally prepared for a late August release (even before reading about that theory), so when they announced early access late June I was "HUH?" (and suddenly I'm pressed for time with all the things I had planned to do before the 48h maintenance lol).

There was always bound to be some amount of negative reaction with the benchmark, but I think this is a lot more than what everyone expected. It does feel a little rushed (how did they miss the weird square shadow on the Hyur M shoulder, the dent in the Roegadyn M skull, the rigging issues on the Elezen F mouth, the scale artifacts on dark-skinned Au ra), and now they definitely don't have time to fix all that before release, they're probably in post-production already at this stage with the media tour coming up.

Content drought aside, I think no one would have been shocked if the release date had been in August (some would have complained, sure, as always, but then again... Elden Ring DLC), and with the same release date for the benchmark, it would have given them time to react to player feedback.

Also feedback wise: why do they send a survey to ask us what our favorite mounts and minions are to make funny statistics, and why did they not provide a survey with the benchmark when it was the appropriate time to gather players' opinion? The EN forums are an even bigger mess than usual since Sunday and if it's already hard for players to find the threads they were following in this tsunami of "here's my individual opinion on my own character, I love it/I hate it" threads, I can't imagine how much of a pain it's gonna be for the community team (or whoever looks at these threads) to try to synthesize what players' requests are.

To go back on topic:
Thanks for providing the comparative pictures! (I think you or maybe someone else mentioned it in the London Fanfest feedback thread already but couldn't find them at the time)

However, I also think that M'iqote F is probably the model the least affected by the benchmark changes (fangs aside ofc), so I'd be curious to see comparative pictures of all 1.0 races (if anyone has a private server around...)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Loggos

I'm asking genuinely and not to be aggressive or provocative but is it possible to get a bigger picture?

Because even though this is 4k, at max size I can still only moderately zoom into the picture and a lot of face details are lost.

---

You're not, what you were asking was a really hard request, here it is though. I have also updated the Thread front post with it. I hope this provides you the details you need and helps everyone else make feedback or compare.

https://i.imgur.com/nuumsKF.jpg

Remember to right click and open in new tab.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ath192

You're not, what you were asking was a really hard request, here it is though. I have also updated the Thread front post with it. I hope this provides you the details you need and helps everyone else make feedback or compare.

https://i.imgur.com/nuumsKF.jpg

Remember to right click and open in new tab.

---

This is so crazy jarring to look at. The lighting and model changes in the benchmark do such an insane disservice to literally every single one of these - they all look completely stripped down of defined features.They just look extremely dull and lack any sort of depth. The clothing texture improved though lol.

... I'm gonna go insane I actually find the 1.0 lighting the most interesting.

I know the lighting environment is not the same (if you look at the Roegadyn's hair you can clearly see blue and orange lights, and the other screenshots are lit from behind), but it feels like the way light bounces on the skin feels the most varied. The Highlander especially, even if his eyes look dead you can really appreciate the "relief" of the skin, it's not all hard edges like ARR-EW but it's not all diluted like the benchmark either.

Same if you look at the M'iqote, there's just the right amount of gloss on her lips and nose without it looking too oily (looking at you, benchmark), and her shoulders manage to look so soft without looking like plastic.

I think the light overpowering the materials a lot less is also helping, like ARR-EW cruelly suffers from light overexposure, but it's still present in the benchmark if you look at the white parts and compare them to 1.0 (again, not the same environment and lighting, I know, but I feel the materials react differently to the light).

Now I'm looking at videos and damn... That's some really nice skin!!

https://i.imgur.com/hT838dO.png https://i.imgur.com/MNORVgS.png

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Windfire

https://i.imgflip.com/7xkido.jpg

No matter how much you shill, these are NOT the same characters.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...9c7bb9e3_c.jpg
Eyes are a completely different shape & darker, eyebrows are thinner and lighter, nose top lost it's slight widening towards the tip, top lip lost cupid bow-bottom became wider & more thin.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...f7fe1276_c.jpg

Again eyes are completely different shape and color, eyebrows thinner, lighter AND a different shape, nose is shortened and widened, top lip was raised making it thicker and lower was made thinner & wider.

And yes I played around with the BM CC, NOTHING came close to their original looks, even tried using different faces (big no-no for the au ra, picked for the horns) still couldn't get close.

---

dawg, there are definitely some real issues with the BM CC, but your first picture is literally the same character but with slightly more open eyes and significantly higher fidelity

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Luluna

I am unsure why they changed it so much but it was a downgrade....the way characters ran moved everything hair physics. I think a lot of people could not run the game at the time due to the specs it required. My Husband who played at the time said to me oh it wont be much different....his face when he logged in was one of complete shock.

---

It was this. Our PCs today could have handled it, but in 2010 they could not. The same computer that had been running FFXI without any problems choked and died on 1.0, and it only became playable for me after I put in a newer GPU. There were many things 1.0 did better than ARR, but when I rolled into ARR alpha I breathed a sigh of relief because the whole thing felt so much more VIBRANT compared to 1.0. Y'all think ARR can be washed out? 1.0 was in pastels in comparison.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GreenLeafy

This is so crazy jarring to look at. The lighting and model changes in the benchmark do such an insane disservice to literally every single one of these - they all look completely stripped down of defined features.They just look extremely dull and lack any sort of depth. The clothing texture improved though lol.

---

I really, really, really wish we had better control of the lighting in the benchmark. I found once I swapped over from the static standing pose and over to the "unique" pose and got real movement in the character, I saw a much better lighting response on the 7.0 models.

You can still run the 1.0 benchmark. I ran it on my 2024 system, 7800x3d CPU, 7900xtx GPU, 64GB of ram, and even though I scored the highest bracket, it still stuttered and dropped frames. Because it's not anywhere near optimized. You can have the best PC in the world and it won't run right. 1.0 characters looked great, but 1.0 zones were a mess, and the performance was nothing worth talking about.

That said, I wish we could have character curves again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ath192

You're not, what you were asking was a really hard request, here it is though. I have also updated the Thread front post with it. I hope this provides you the details you need and helps everyone else make feedback or compare.

https://i.imgur.com/nuumsKF.jpg

Remember to right click and open in new tab.

---

yea idk this makes ARR -> DT look good actually they are very close to me. DT just has obvious diff lighting.