New Benchmark Feedback: Midlander Hyur Females

I don't see a lot of Midlander females, so decided to make a thread for feedback for the new benchmark released today (June 3rd). Please feel free to post your feedback for Midlander females here too, regardless of what face you use. :)

I was reasonably happy with the previous benchmark version, but not this one. Here is a comparison, 6.5 (live game) vs the new benchmark:

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

I'm not really sure what to say here. She looks so different to me, it is like the new lighting highlights her features in the worst way (ex: emphasizes the nose bridge, and the undereye area makes her look tired in anything but the best light I could find, which is this). She was so cute, and now she is much less so, to my eyes.

Edit to clarify: a big reason she looks less cute to me is because her expression looks different, especially the mouth. She looks like she has a touch of a smile before, but in the benchmark it is gone and combined with the undereye area she just looks bored and tired.

+ a small note in regards to the lips: in both versions she has "light" lip color. However in the new benchmark, I noticed that there is a glossy/reflective effect even when I choose no lip color at all.

Any more opinions/feedback about Midlander females is welcome. :)

I am very unhappy with the changes of the overal shape of face #1. Lips, eyes, nose, chin, hairline all look very different. And none of those are an improvement.

https://i.postimg.cc/HsnWCh2m/new-benchmark.png
https://i.postimg.cc/m2jWR8HT/new-be...k-outlines.png

The JP forum has a pretty good comparison post.

My problem is mostly related to lighting as several hairstyles have broken self-shadowing (on max settings)

https://i.imgur.com/Rr3hl7H.jpeghttps://i.imgur.com/lFCRJwY.png

And my favorite hairstyle has an odd seam in the middle of it

https://i.imgur.com/XtDPp6x.png

https://i.gyazo.com/82c50921688f0fe6...ade3316fb6.png
https://i.gyazo.com/f3c17c24b39e4ceb...d439a33a31.jpg

something definitely is *off*, and the addition of the eyebags/aegyosal doesn't really help. i really appreciate the devs hard work, i hope fem hyurs can be looked at in the future for further altering/fixing!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fleur

I don't see a lot of Midlander females, so decided to make a thread for feedback for the new benchmark released today (June 3rd). Please feel free to post your feedback for Midlander females here too, regardless of what face you use. :)

I was reasonably happy with the previous benchmark version, but not this one. Here is a comparison, 6.5 (live game) vs the new benchmark:

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

I'm not really sure what to say here. She looks so different to me, it is like the new lighting highlights her features in the worst way (ex: emphasizes the nose bridge, and the undereye area makes her look tired in anything but the best light I could find, which is this). She was so cute, and now she is much less so, to my eyes.

+ a small note in regards to the lips: in both versions she has "light" lip color. However in the new benchmark, I noticed that there is a glossy/reflective effect even when I choose no lip color at all.

Any more opinions/feedback about Midlander females is welcome. :)

---

I have noticed that a lot of midlander fem faces have a melty lower lash on the bottom outer corner. It's like their false lashes are starting to peel away at the end of a night out. It's changing the shape of the bottom lids on a lot of eye types and making them look saggy and palsy like.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jihos

and the addition of the eyebags/aegyosal doesn't really help

---

Face #1 always had somewhat baggy eyes in certain lighting conditions. That was smoothed away by overly strong subsurface sccattering in benchmark 1.0, but the live client always had it about as much as benchmark 1.1.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OgruMogru

I have noticed that a lot of midlander fem faces have a melty lower lash on the bottom outer corner. It's like their false lashes are starting to peel away at the end of a night out. It's changing the shape of the bottom lids on a lot of eye types and making them look saggy and palsy like.

---

It's not really the eyelash, the eyelashes are connected properly. The issue is that the eyelids are about twice as thick in the benchmark. The freakishly big exposed fleshy part of the lower eyelid is the green outline around the eye in my screenshot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aiqa

Face #1 always had somewhat baggy eyes in certain lighting conditions. That was smoothed away by overly strong subsurface sccattering in benchmark 1.0, but the live client always had it about as much as benchmark 1.1.



It's not really the eyelash, the eyelashes are connected properly. The issue is that the eyelids are about twice as thick in the benchmark. The freakishly big exposed fleshy part of the lower eyelid is the green outline around the eye in my screenshot.

---

Yeah that's what I mean, the lashline is really odd in that area. there are makeup techniques to make your eyes look larger for cosplay where you glue eyelashes way underneath the natural lash line and that's what it looks like here, except it's just like empty flesh lmao

Going to shamelessly copypaste my post from the other thread:

Bearable as long as I don't glance towards a light source! This is the result of turning a few degrees. Why is she so tired?!
https://i.imgur.com/PyksVNi.png https://i.imgur.com/b92LQPn.png
By the way, I notice the hair is only high res and wirey when zoomed in all the way. When zoomed in a little, only the hair closest to the camera is high res. Is there a graphics option for this?
https://i.imgur.com/Kw9CvoK.png
There's also an alpha transparency issue with hair overlapping hair in sunlight as you can slightly see above her forehead in the second image. In motion this looks much worse, but I haven't played with settings to figure out what's doing it.

I am unsure where my lovely pale gloss has gone as every lip colour to be beige/brown. I usually favour face 2 but the lovely pout she had is gone and I can not get the shine on her lip right. I am overall happy but there is a slight change to the nose on face 1 and the lips seem flat on the races I made.

yes i can agree with you, even the previous benchmark much more better :3
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...e6ecad2c637cc&
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...b5db07372835f&
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4fbf6a3b27a7c&

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fleur

I don't see a lot of Midlander females, so decided to make a thread for feedback for the new benchmark released today (June 3rd). Please feel free to post your feedback for Midlander females here too, regardless of what face you use. :)

I was reasonably happy with the previous benchmark version, but not this one. Here is a comparison, 6.5 (live game) vs the new benchmark:

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

I'm not really sure what to say here. She looks so different to me, it is like the new lighting highlights her features in the worst way (ex: emphasizes the nose bridge, and the undereye area makes her look tired in anything but the best light I could find, which is this). She was so cute, and now she is much less so, to my eyes.

+ a small note in regards to the lips: in both versions she has "light" lip color. However in the new benchmark, I noticed that there is a glossy/reflective effect even when I choose no lip color at all.

Any more opinions/feedback about Midlander females is welcome. :)

---

I do see the differences between the two pictures, but they all look like improvements to me. The image on the left is much more cartoonish than the right. The image on the right looks much more alive, but this might actually be unwelcomed to some players. The face shape and eye shape a very similar, and only the lips are vastly different. The most important thing though is that I can tell it's the same character. If this was my Hyur, I would be content with the update, but everyone is going to feel differently.

Personally im not a fan of face 5 midlander chicks, but the pics in the op show as improvements across the board for me. I use face 1 and I'm pretty happy with the changes in 1.1 vs 1.0 bench, although it'll take some getting used to. Looks like my character is A LOT younger than the current version, and I'm not really a big fan of controlling a teenage girl looking avatar. Hopefully they can add a touch up to make them look like actual adults instead of high school graduates

https://imgur.com/a/b7eLJFz
I really dislike the changes to face 1 midlanders :(

They went way too strong on the shadows.

Benchmark 1.0
https://i.imgur.com/QNC4WeB.png

Benchmark 1.1
https://i.imgur.com/GAEimQT.png


As you can see, 1.1 was updated with stronger shadows that are way too strong for those faces. Benchmark 1.0 had it spot on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fleur

I'm not really sure what to say here. She looks so different to me, it is like the new lighting highlights her features in the worst way (ex: emphasizes the nose bridge, and the undereye area makes her look tired in anything but the best light I could find, which is this). She was so cute, and now she is much less so, to my eyes.

Edit to clarify: a big reason she looks less cute to me is because her expression looks different, especially the mouth. She looks like she has a touch of a smile before, but in the benchmark it is gone and combined with the undereye area she just looks bored and tired.

---

I can see the dissimilarities to my character too. Differences in size of the nose, philtrum, and lips stand out to me the most. I'm not going to flat out say it's ugly, but it's certainly different and very noticeable (at least to me). Yeah, it looks like my character but at the same time it's not, lol.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aiqa

I am very unhappy with the changes of the overal shape of face #1. Lips, eyes, nose, chin, hairline all look very different. And none of those are an improvement.

https://i.postimg.cc/HsnWCh2m/new-benchmark.png
https://i.postimg.cc/m2jWR8HT/new-be...k-outlines.png

The JP forum has a pretty good comparison post.

---

I completely agree, and had even made a post for the old benchmark voicing similar concerns. You and IkaRR on the Japanese forum have done a really good job outlining the problems.

Bouncing off your post, here's an updated slider comparison of how the changes affect my main: https://imgsli.com/MjY5OTA1/0/2
It's got an option to compare the old benchmark, too.

I'm happy to see they've fixed the red cheeks, same-length lower lashes, and missing eyebags I mentioned in my old post. Her hair also looks better when running the benchmark itself than it did in the old one.

Unfortunately all the problems you've highlighted remain, as well as the others including the lower lashes being too far away from the waterline like OgruMogru has mentioned, the nerfed eyeshadow (Thundertron55 and SugaryMiraa do a good job showing it in this thread), and the red lip undertone despite having the darkest blue lipstick option selected.

In some ways it's worse than the old benchmark. The character creation lighting is more washed out for me even though I imported my game settings across all benchmark versions. I suppose this wouldn't be such a big deal if not for the lack of shading above her eyes. I'm not sure if that's because of the lighting or a change to the texture, but it makes them look smaller than they did even in the old benchmark, and puts too much visual burden on the under eye area which makes the eyebags look more noticeable than they do in the live game.

Overall, I'm very disappointed to see that they really did change the core shape of face 1 like I feared. :/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Leeca

My problem is mostly related to lighting as several hairstyles have broken self-shadowing (on max settings)

---

I'm seeing the same thing with other hairstyles. Hopefully they're just still in progress? This first one is especially baffling, but the second one looks worse in motion.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/9ac12232...77b2d858ab.pnj https://64.media.tumblr.com/e2bd67bd...4a17a374ee.pnj

I definitely agree with this. There's something off about the face that makes it look eerily like a different character. I also think that it's something about the reflection of the eyes, and also agree that there used to be what looked like a slight smile that's gone now (I use mouth 4). The expression looks much more blank around the mouth, and the eyes look like they're empty, without much life behind them. It doesn't look like the same character, it looks like someone else who's just a really good lookalike. I hope they have time left to still be fiddling with the graphics update a bit more before launch.

https://i.imgur.com/Lj0MzNh.png

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mdv8

I definitely agree with this. There's something off about the face that makes it look eerily like a different character. I also think that it's something about the reflection of the eyes, and also agree that there used to be what looked like a slight smile that's gone now (I use mouth 4). The expression looks much more blank around the mouth, and the eyes look like they're empty, without much life behind them. It doesn't look like the same character, it looks like someone else who's just a really good lookalike. I hope they have time left to still be fiddling with the graphics update a bit more before launch.

---

Supposedly they are working on it all the way up to launch, and I believe they are going to continue to work on it afterwards but I think that has more to do with updating all the NPCs and areas of the game.

I definitely see the differences here, especially considering this is the face I use. The passive smile helps to cancel out the resting B-face from my eyebrow selection. The benchmark version shown here looks like what could be considered to be the older sibling of the current 6.55 version.

Face 5 has a sharper, skinnier cheek line compared to before. I'm not the first one to point it out, but I want to also chime in that it changes my impression of my character which I do not want.

My partner's character. Open in new tab for fullsize. Even though they're really pleased with the way she looks and she doesn't suffer from the same problems a lot of the other faces and features do [just sad about the less intense makeup!] you can still clearly see the weirdly thick bottom eyelid and the missing "makeup" texture that serves to connect the lower eyelashes to the lid. Particularly the second picture from the left on the top row. Look at how thick that lower eyelid is! Like I said for this particular configuration of features and facetype it looks really good and the thick eyelid doesn't negatively affect the face in any way and I'd hate to see it change for this face config specifically - but I think it's what's contributing to the droop for certain eye shapes.
https://i.imgur.com/TtkLXm2.jpeg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I definitely see the differences here, especially considering this is the face I use. The passive smile helps to cancel out the resting B-face from my eyebrow selection. The benchmark version shown here looks like what could be considered to be the older sibling of the current 6.55 version.

---

That's totally accurate - in my pictures above it looks like an older sister of my character. The appearance of looking older might come from appearing more tired, without the light in the eyes and without the slight smile. It could also be the difference in the cheekbone appearance making the face shape look slightly slimmer without rounded cheeks (like Miki_L mentioned), which may be due to the lighting if the model itself hasn't changed.

For the record, the comparison picture I posted above is about as close as I could get the new model to look like the original character - from other angles it's an even larger difference (like in the benchmark video).

I think that there are definite changes in both my character's face (type 5), eyes (type 1), and mouth (type 4) that add up to give the impression that it's a different person. I don't know if it's a change in the model or lighting, but the cheeks look less round, the eyes look duller and empty, and the mouth gives off a different expression.

Did a tiny paintover to show how I would deal with that negative space between lash and eyeball. Obviously it's a lot easier to paint over a static image than it is actually correct a 3d sculpt but I hope it helps illustrate how much of a difference the shape of that one bit of space can cause ^^'
before: https://i.imgur.com/7BzCBqy.png

after: https://i.imgur.com/0qLTHoW.png

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

My partner's character. Open in new tab for fullsize. Even though they're really pleased with the way she looks and she doesn't suffer from the same problems a lot of the other faces and features do [just sad about the less intense makeup!] you can still clearly see the weirdly thick bottom eyelid and the missing "makeup" texture that serves to connect the lower eyelashes to the lid. Particularly the second picture from the left on the top row. Look at how thick that lower eyelid is! Like I said for this particular configuration of features and facetype it looks really good and the thick eyelid doesn't negatively affect the face in any way and I'd hate to see it change for this face config specifically - but I think it's what's contributing to the droop for certain eye shapes.

---

Yeah, I really don't mind the thick lower eyelid on my character either. It's still present for her original eyes (face 1 eye 3s, heavy makeup) and I like the way it looks there. It's worth noting that I only say that for the heavier makeup option, though. Without it there's a gap that I'm not a fan of between the waterline and lower lashes in the original model as well. I think it's a good example of what you're talking about.

Live Game - With and Without Makeup
https://imgur.com/KNcHIB0.jpghttps://imgur.com/XKQOR3r.jpg

2nd Benchmark - With and Without Makeup
https://imgur.com/CZZMeYf.jpghttps://imgur.com/k2a4DNh.jpg

So, like you said, the lower lashes aren't connecting nicely. I think a couple of things would fix this, and the eyes as a whole:

1. Moving the base makeup-free lower lashes up against the waterline, either by redrawing them there with some added length to compensate, or by filling in the gap as you suggested the way the original makeup option does.

2. Restoring the bolder winged eyeshadow for the makeup option.

3. Restoring the original upper lash shape. In the case of my character's eyes, that would mean shortening the upper lashes towards the inner eye, and lengthening them towards the outer in the spirit of the original eye shape.

4. Restoring the ever-so-slight shading above the inner eye to balance out the undereye bags.

5. Either restoring the shadow over the eyeball itself that Yenrz mentions here, or making it optional. I feel like it would be nice for this to be made optional because some might like the brighter look from the newly opened eyes.

If they do these things the lashes would look better than the original, in my opinion.

I will say they do look much better in this benchmark than they did in the last one, though. I'll give them that.

I'm very unhappy that the updated benchmark did nothing to fix the various off-model features of Hyur face 1. Here's a side-by-side of my WoL:

https://i.imgur.com/i4LAUG3.jpghttps://imgur.com/TH6bIYq.jpg

While she no longer looks like a wax doll like the previous benchmark, the impression of her face is still completely off, and her dark makeup accentuates the issues.

Going over the details, here's some traces I did of the eyes, plus an overlay of the traces for more clarity of what's changed.

https://imgur.com/X70l80z.jpghttps://imgur.com/xj4oaCQ.jpghttps://imgur.com/R0djTZj.jpg

Her entire eye (type 5) has "shrunk" for no apparent reason, and the overall shape of the eye is much less upturned and much more almond-shaped. Her eyeliner has shrunk as well, and received a similar de-slanting, giving her eyes a duller, less-intense look than before.

https://imgur.com/AxrbzUS.jpghttps://imgur.com/Zo4VVLz.jpg

Moving on, her nose (type 4) is noticeably more wedge-shaped, which along with the more flared-out nostrils gives her a witch-like appearance.

https://imgur.com/VmM5YmJ.jpghttps://imgur.com/AXhgTBt.jpg

And the lips (type 4). I don't even know what to say. The way the lipstick is drawn has changed completely, making the lips seem like a drastically different shape; she looks like her lips are permanently pursed. Her philtrum is much thinner, and her cupid's bow is an entirely different shape, even without the lipstick.

I know the devs worked hard improving the benchmark, but I cannot find it in my heart to thank them right now. I can't stand looking at my WoL in the benchmark, and I'm dreading the release of Dawntrail when I should be getting excited for it.

While I'm mostly okay with my WoL, I want to release a concern about her lips.
For reference, I use:
- Jaw 1
- Face 5
- Lips 1

I loved the fact we could see the tooth.
OLD (Endwalker)
https://i.imgur.com/e6HFZjg.png
https://i.imgur.com/DraLip6.png

New (June Benchmark)
https://i.imgur.com/3TgaJYh.png
https://i.imgur.com/izDXCtU.png

I know I'm kinda late to reply to the thread, but I absolutely feel the effects of this too and I'm gutted. Even while compiling these images I almost couldn't believe what I was looking at, she looks SO different.

https://i.imgur.com/iGXD17b.jpeg

1. The skintone got the warmth sucked out of it, and the eyes look stark and cold. Not just color-wise, but her entire expression too, and the smaller eye size only accentuates this.

2. The puffy bags under her eyes are... just awful to look at, honestly. They catch light in all the worst ways. The current-game "eye bags" have smooth & dark shading that looks almost like make-up, and I quite like the dramatic and edgy effect. The benchmark versions are fleshy and inflated and kinda make it look like she just finished crying (which feels ironically apt right now, LOL)

3. Her mouth doesn't have a slightly coy almost-smile shape anymore, its just outright neutral and unfeeling, and at worst it looks like a frown, which is the literal opposite of the effect I picked that lip shape for.

4. The eyebrows are higher up (or maybe its in combination with the eyes being smaller and more sunken into the head), and aren't as dark, which makes her look less focused & content. She just looks.. confused? Indifferent? No-thoughts-head-empty?

TLDR; All these factors combined make her look colder, unfocused/air-headed, and just outright unflattering in its own right.

Similar to what someone else in this thread & a few others mentioned, if these don't get fixed, I'm definitely going to fantasia. Which really breaks my heart because I'm very attached to her, but with these changes it wouldn't be HER anymore. The changes are too dramatic and detrimental to her appearance.

Going to add my voice here since my main is a hyur and while I'm happy with her overall look in the new update, there was a glaring issue that I hope will be addressed before the launch (or hotfixed after) of Dawntrail :)

Face 5, Eye Shape 3. The eye makeup in both current patch and the 1.0 benchmark were fine, there was a depth to it, though it looks a little strange like it's not completely fitted to the eye, but the current benchmark the shading has gone:

https://i.imgur.com/hH1nwGV.png
direct link for a larger image: https://i.imgur.com/hH1nwGV.png

https://i.imgur.com/rcuXjXz.png
direct link for larger image: https://i.imgur.com/rcuXjXz.png

Larger individual images for straight on: https://i.imgur.com/FQpf3s3.png, https://i.imgur.com/Bteva6u.png, https://i.imgur.com/1covK2D.png

Larger individual images for 3/4 view (not entirely exact but as exact as I could get): https://i.imgur.com/jLw5eD0.png, https://i.imgur.com/aHFWRaM.png, https://i.imgur.com/w7CC05Y.png

And with a red circle notating the exact issue on just the eyes; the 1.1 version I had to swing the camera some to get the eyes shaded slightly, since the lighting on the default view was very bright and made some of the details invisible, but swinging the camera did help it look like what I had in the first two:

https://i.imgur.com/6wcSXdr.png
direct link for larger image: https://i.imgur.com/6wcSXdr.png

From this shot you can see the current patch has some shading to make the eye look natural; B1.0 it's darker and not as much shading but still some definition around the eye and the eyeliner, but the definition from both current patch and B1.0 is completely gone in B1.1, making it look very flat when you look at it head on. It's the only real issue I have with her look, and I'm happy overall, but the eyelashes look off compared to the eyes on an otherwise fine look. I'm not sure if the eye needs to be enlarged just a bit, or if there needs to be shading to make the eyelid on the bottom look more natural (it looks more natural in the current patch), or if the lashes need to be sized down just a bit with more natural eyelid shading around the eye, but one of those would probably make it look nicer.

I am unsure on Hyur now as they are looking a little different. I agree with this thread. I feel they have some how lost a little of their charm and I do not know why. The lipgloss bland beige colours are bad and the lack of eyeliner that was on some eye choices is gone or small. I will have to see what they look like in game and on my PS5 and see if there is much difference.

hello dear hyurs sisters. I completely agree with you that some of the charm has simply evaporated. In the next topic, I made a clumsy comparison and I'm going to repost it here later. In the meantime, here's a gif
https://i.imgur.com/2YALFFC.gif

Going into the benchmark yet again even on my old laptop (I play PS5) I just can not see an improvement. I was fine with the first benchmark apart from her lack of lip gloss. I have already said in this thread but I am hoping other's will post their concerns. I feel a lot has change the mouths look odd and the shadows in certain lights are off. I hope it will look in game but not holding my breath.

My Wife was a female Hyur with Face one. When se saw the first Benchmark she cried. Second one she went into it expecting no changes which was for the better. She is a Bunny now.

Hi, I'm messing around with the graphics editor a bit and I got my character back, hehe. I just put in my old eyes, mouth and lips. And she didn't change anything else. However, the nose has not been able to make the colors of the new skin, brightness, contrast and saturation have changed many times and this is the best option. * it seems that the new character has yellowish skin, and the old one has pinkish skin. After spending five hours *using the poke method*, that's what I got :3

original vs benchmark
https://i.imgur.com/ZbEma9X.gif
benchmark vs edit version
https://i.imgur.com/plBuFsk.gif
original vs edit version
https://i.imgur.com/UF5FMxU.gif

what i added
https://i.imgur.com/JGIOLse.png
I wish they hadn't redrawn the old details of the face, but simply improved the detail, the number of polygons, reflection, and so on. * looks dreamily at Yoshida*

pictures.
old hyur
https://i.imgur.com/1oisrFm.png
benchmark version
https://i.imgur.com/MCETFyC.png
edit version
https://i.imgur.com/LfbeRD1.png

How important it really is to keep the proportions in these three elements, for me this is a clear example that the developers did not have a goal to make as similar as possible what we wanted. I have looked at 25 types of hyur lips and none of the lips now have a smile. There are 25 types because the lips are individual for each of the five faces. I even have 25 gifs of how they brazenly redrawn every kind of lip.
The way the company behaves is without comment at all. I made a conclusion for myself. I will be waiting for the mod creators to work.

I'm still bogged down in trying to do some more detailed diagrams and things, but I really need to get something posted as time draws short.

The graphics update hasn't captured my Midlander well at all.

Specifically this is face 3, jaw 3, eye shape 4, eyebrows 4, nose 5, mouth 3.

Some improvements were made since the first version of the benchmark - the heavy crease over the eyelid has been erased, and it helps her to look a bit better - but the eyes and the expression are still wrong. It feels like she has lost her confidence.

Comparison of all three including previous benchmark:

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...ce51c41d96.jpg

Comparison of current appearance and new benchmark only:
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...26b30d212c.jpg

And at a wider distance:
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...c75bdb6a30.jpg

You cannot tell me that these are the same person.

---

General issues with the face:

• The eyes are vertically lower and horizontally wider, giving them a drooping appearance and making her look sleepy or ill.
• The nose seems to be bigger and dominates the face in a way it didn't previously.
• The underside of the nose is more slanted instead of being fairly flat, so you see more of it from a front angle.
• The lips are larger - it seems like the shadow under the bottom lip has been reinterpreted as part of the lip. (Someone previously pointed out this had happened on one of the Au Ra faces, and I can now see that it has happened here too.)
• There is a weird pucker on the face (see below).
• The neck is narrower where it meets the head.

The eyes are my biggest issue. You can see in this comparison gif that it goes from being a very "upwards" sort of shape with the arc of the eyelashes basically centred over the pupil, to being low over the eye and heavily weighted towards the outside corner, which has been pushed outwards and become more slanted. It drastically changes the feel of the character.

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...8507f3fa35.gif



Specifically regarding the pucker on the face, it's difficult to describe but you can see it in this following picture from the benchmark. As soon as I saw the benchmark I immediately felt like she was pulling a weird face, although I couldn't say what gave the impression until I had it at the right angle for these creases to catch the light. From pulling some faces in the mirror, to get diagonal-inward lines like this to appear on my own face I had to make an exaggerated "ooh" sound with my lips sticking out. It's not a straight resting face at all.

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...08c2712cb5.jpg


Additionally there are some strange shadows being cast by the hair onto the face:
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...a9de08b554.jpg


And some particular weird lighting on the eyelid rims of the benchmark model, so they're brightly lit high up and then have shadows lower down, where the original version has a more controlled, permanently dark outer rim that better frames the eyes.

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...f91a3c9af7.jpg

I wrote it on the image but I'll say it again - my current character is beautiful and I don't want to lose her. She has a perfect balance of looking friendly and confident and sweet-natured, and the benchmark doesn't capture any of it. The soul isn't right.

Also, separate from the face itself, but the silver buckles on the blouse look horrible and tarnished now. Are we not allowed to keep our gear looking nice any more?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Iscah

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...f91a3c9af7.jpg

I wrote it on the image but I'll say it again - my current character is beautiful and I don't want to lose her. She has a perfect balance of looking friendly and confident and sweet-natured, and the benchmark doesn't capture any of it. The soul isn't right.

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Yep, I can definitely say that while there are surface similarities between the two, they are very different characters and I hope you get to keep her as she is :( As she is now, she has a very alert/confident expression where the new one looks more demure/almost bored/annoyed look. Not a fan at all.