graphic update expectations not met

So i love a lot that has been done with the graphic update, but honestly i expected so much more. They made it seem like it was gonna be much better than what we got.

Sure it has better lighting and the textures are cleaner, but i really expected so much more. I always use ENBs in my games and i was expecting the new shaders to look more like that. And the fact that they havent updated all the gear and the areas yet, i think i would rather they just did it all at once and let us wait a bit more. It all seems so unfinished.
I mean, i feel like the graphic update we have gotten is nothing like the teaser pictures they hyped us up with, i literally would look at these pictures and be so happy and psyched.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Rg9J...934/ff14.0.png

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YYrAxOGcpBM/hqdefault.jpg

how it looks in my game:
https://i.ibb.co/bNgGXSR/Skjermbilde...-30-233247.png

Im not saying it looks bad, it is definintely an upgrade from what it was. The shading is a bit better and the textures are sharper, but its not like what they hyped it up to be.

Also upgrading old poly models is fine, but why change some facial features like that? If Square dont like the old shapes anymore, just add the new ones in ADDITION to the old ones. How about that? The people that love the new changes that has been made to the features can still have them, and the people who liked the old features can still have them.

On another note, i got to say i also still have the same unfullfilment that i have always had from the game, in regard to creating a character. While i love my character, theres things i wish i could change. Didnt Yoshi say something about changing or expanding the character creator? I hope thats happening in an update or something? I need more eyeshapes, lip shapes, a long eyelash addon on the extra features thingy (GIVE ME HUGE FALSIES), body shapes(!) and more. WHy not? Everyone wants this stuff. Please add it in a update. Its honestly crazy how little options there is in character creator.
And also, the hair restrictions NEED TO GO. I have said it before, many people have said it before. Its just plain stupid and doesnt even make any sense. Its like its just there to annoy us. Same with gear restrictions.
Anyone can wear their hair like they want.
And before someone says the hair restrictions make the race more unique i just wanna say, NO it doesnt. The race makes the race unique. They have unique features, ears, tails, height, ect. They dont need unique hair because its just annoying and unrealistic since everyone can literally wear their hair how they want.
I just hate how little hair i can choose from, and theres many hairs i would die for to use on my miqo. Just imagine how many options we get if all racial AND gender restrictions were gone.

Post got too long, was gonna write this too:

Another thing i noticed while watching a cutscene, dont know if its related to the update:

https://i.ibb.co/Wzjsjkc/e.png
https://i.ibb.co/F3pRByJ/e-smaller.png

?? Has it always been like this? directly from the back the tail is an x? Its the fluffly one. It looks so bad. I hope it gets fixed! How can they allow stuff like that lol.

Thats all i have for now.

Tails have been that way since the beginning.

Yeah that specific tail was always screwed up, it's just more noticeable now.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Yeah that specific tail was always screwed up, it's just more noticeable now.

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Wow that sucks... I hope they fix it.

Yeah. The new in game character lighting is really broken so that specific tail looks ten times worse now. I agree that I wish they’d just held off on this until they could spend way more time on it. Overhauling the graphics at the same time as making a whole new expansion was too much burden to put on themselves. I think most gamers these days prefer studios to take longer to do something right, than to release things rushed and unfinished. In fact I know that’s the case. Just look at cyberpunk 2077.

That's genuinely just the common way of modeling a tail with fur in lower resource environments. Not excusing it, the game is supposed to have a graphical update and I think they can do better than that.

But I think it's less of a mistake and more of a technique of its time that was harder to notice bank then. I hope that makes sense.

Modeling fur, hair, grass, etc and making it in a way that doesn't destroy the resources of your machine is pretty hard. That's why a lot of stuff is a flat texture that always faces the camera.

Here, it's just a few textures on planes intersecting with each other.

I was definitly expecting a better "update" than we got. A lot of the gear is still blocky and pixulated. very dissapointing.

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Originally Posted by Tabmow

I was definitly expecting a better "update" than we got. A lot of the gear is still blocky and pixulated. very dissapointing.

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yup agreed, i read somewhere that not all the older gear is updated yet and it will be more with each update. I dont know if its true but i find that dissapointing though, why not just wait longer before releasing the expansion and do everything at once? Very wierd

I respect the graphical update, overall I'm satisfied with it.
My only expectation is that dawntrail-specific gear should have more overall polygon count and details than previous expansions. If they're still gonna lock poly count of new gear then that's a big waste of "graphics update."

Vehemently disagree on this one, outside of the DLSS being borked.

I thought this was one element of Dawntrail they NAILED. I was floored in some of these new zones and the texture work on newer characters, like holy crud they worked hard.

I've been present for several MMO visual overhauls and this is by far the most elaborate and impressive, especially considering they maintained the art direction. When they redid my character in Warcraft they completely destroyed her aesthetic.

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Originally Posted by Mapleine

Vehemently disagree on this one, outside of the DLSS being borked.

I thought this was one element of Dawntrail they NAILED. I was floored in some of these new zones and the texture work on newer characters, like holy crud they worked hard.

I've been present for several MMO visual overhauls and this is by far the most elaborate and impressive, especially considering they maintained the art direction. When they redid my character in Warcraft they completely destroyed her aesthetic.

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Huh yeah i cant speak for other MMOs since i only play this one. I understand your opinion and in glad you really like it, as i said there is parts i really like too. Im just mainly dissapointed that the real thing doesnt look like the pictures they showed us. And that the promised character creator expansion/rework/whatever didnt appear and i hope it does soon.

The game actively looks worse then it did before if you try to play on the same low settings as pre-update.

Particularly, when I use LoD for distant objects it's creating terrible shadow/texture flickering that didn't exist before so I'm kinda forced to leave it off even though it tanks my FPS hard in some places.

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Originally Posted by Mapleine

Vehemently disagree on this one, outside of the DLSS being borked.

I thought this was one element of Dawntrail they NAILED. I was floored in some of these new zones and the texture work on newer characters, like holy crud they worked hard.

I've been present for several MMO visual overhauls and this is by far the most elaborate and impressive, especially considering they maintained the art direction. When they redid my character in Warcraft they completely destroyed her aesthetic.

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I was a little disappointed that even some elements in Dawntrail seemed to have not gotten the upgrade. The older expansion content is understandable, though.

But the things that are upgraded look great and I look forward to seeing the complete graphics update when it's all done.

I just want them to fix the dead eye look on my character and many of other's. The new graphics are horrible in that aspect. they fucked up most the eyes in most faces...

Maybe it's just in my opinion, but all the characters, not just mine, began to look worse than they were. Was it worth it?

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Originally Posted by Tuchkin

Maybe it's just in my opinion, but all the characters, not just mine, began to look worse than they were. Was it worth it?

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I agree to an extent, i think personally its mainly because they toned down makeup on almost everyone, and no makeup vs makeup makes someone look worse lol. (not always but you know what i mean)
But like the cleaner lines and new skin texture looks better than before. So they look worse some places and better some places imo.

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Originally Posted by Rikizza

they toned down makeup on almost everyone

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I’m curious about this. Could you explain further, or show some examples?

Most of what I’ve seen has led me to believe the opposite is true: that characters appear to have more makeup now than they did before. Lips now look glossy without adding a lip color, lip colors look more opaque on some faces, eyelashes look more prominent and detailed on some faces. Though I do remember that one female midlander in another thread whose original eyes had a dark shadow that looked like extremely thick eyelashes, which was missing in the Dawntrail version. So I’m not saying I don’t believe that this happened to some faces.

Still not particularly happy they went and changed the artstyle a bit towards more realism. In particular to the area around the eyes which is a lot more pronounced now for some faces, as well as the eyes themselves. As well as chipping away edges, everything has been made more round when it didn't need it.

The game have always been stylized 3d anime. Don't add bags under peoples eyes and whatnot.

My biggest gripe is Koana. You introduce a new character and have them use old assets to where you can literally see the bad pixelation in his coat in cutscenes. Almost as if someone in QA didnt check

It was a big shocking to see my catboy that went from a neutral expression to *bedroomy eyes*

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Originally Posted by Rikizza

And that the promised character creator expansion/rework/whatever didnt appear and i hope it does soon.

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What "promised" rework?

If anything, I'm fairly sure they stated that they weren't doing any kind of rework of the character creator at this point.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

The game actively looks worse then it did before if you try to play on the same low settings as pre-update.

Particularly, when I use LoD for distant objects it's creating terrible shadow/texture flickering that didn't exist before so I'm kinda forced to leave it off even though it tanks my FPS hard in some places.

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I think the DLSS/FSR is causing some jank in places. I have a very beefy system with things set on max, but get weird flickering with some shadows due to DLSS.

They overpromised a lot imo. And I'm surprised how many people believed it too that they can successfully overhaul a decade's worth of assets whilst their team was also juggling development of a AAA FF game at the same time and expecting to maintain consistency across the board. Have been playing this game since ARR and been present for every expansion launch and have barely experienced many bugs but DT really took the cake - there hasn't been a day of login without some kind of graphical glitch be it texture seams clearly visible , lighting breaks , animation jank , glamour pieces not stacking proper and just straight disappearing or even smth as outlandish as my friend seeing her hair just randomly turn white out of nowhere whilst running a CE in Bozja lol.

Did they update some of the armour texture? Yes. Do the new areas have more crisp renders aswell? Yes. Do some of the new hairs look nice with the new textures? Yes. Are some of the spell effects cleaner and more shiny? Yes.

But as many as those shiny new things are added - so many other old ones remain and stick out like a sore thumb even more than they ever did before and absolutely ruin the game's stylistic and texture cohesion.

I had a couple side quests remaining from Endwalker that I decided to wrap up before proceeding with more MSQ and it was just painful going through the cutscenes for it now. The clash of glassy HD eye textures and hair next to huge paint by number pixels on gear is just bonkers. Hell even on my WoL he suffers from the same thing where his facial scars and eyes are with updated textures but the clan tattoos on his face are still in a lower resolution and every close up shot with him feels jarring.

Here's some screenshots I took whilst running the quests.
https://i.imgur.com/93PfhTS.png
https://i.imgur.com/IrwvkH6.png
https://i.imgur.com/hngZO0y.png
https://i.imgur.com/261REqj.png

Even Tataru got the outfit update treatment but they still left that giant goddamn feather on her hat in 20 pixels.

People wanted this after seeing Pixel Exarch but now so much more is going to look even more egregiously like him EVEN in MSQ. I don't have the screenshots but as Derio mentioned earlier its just a mindboggling decision to have a main character in the new story like Koana sport a 5 pixel belt buckle robe next to Wuk Lamat that's covered in glistening smooth gold jewellery , literally sharing the same scene. The inconsistency drives me insane. Where was any of the QA for this? Why did people lose so many facial features that made their WoLs as they are to STILL experience things like this? How can you say that sacrifice is worth it at all?

They should have stuck to updating the shader and textures and left the rest.

I was really surprised by how pixelated Koana's outfit is.

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Originally Posted by GreenLeafy

The inconsistency drives me insane. Where was any of the QA for this? Why did people lose so many facial features that made their WoLs as they are to STILL experience things like this? How can you say that sacrifice is worth it at all?

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Exactly this. Some specific things look great in the update, but now the mismatch between the highest and lowest quality textures are even more jarring than they already were, and many other problems were introduced (glitches, eyestrain and motion sickness for some players, unfortunate changes to a number of customization options). The graphics update doesn’t feel like much of an improvement when considered as a whole; I don’t think we even gained as much as we lost.

I do think it’s possible for future improvements to change this, but I can’t say I have faith that it’ll happen. The most obvious graphical glitches (such as the spontaneously color-changing hair, which I’ve also experienced) will almost certainly be fixed, but what will happen to character faces? Will the textures of old gear be considered “worth it” to update, and if they are, will they be done well? And so on. I’d rather they just release things when they’re ready, instead of pushing out an unfinished graphics update like this and leaving us to wonder when it’ll get fixed, if ever.

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Originally Posted by ConantSivrha

Exactly this. Some specific things look great in the update, but now the mismatch between the highest and lowest quality textures are even more jarring than they already were, and many other problems were introduced (glitches, eyestrain and motion sickness for some players, unfortunate changes to a number of customization options). The graphics update doesn’t feel like much of an improvement when considered as a whole; I don’t think we even gained as much as we lost.

I do think it’s possible for future improvements to change this, but I can’t say I have faith that it’ll happen. The most obvious graphical glitches (such as the spontaneously color-changing hair, which I’ve also experienced) will almost certainly be fixed, but what will happen to character faces? Will the textures of old gear be considered “worth it” to update, and if they are, will they be done well? And so on. I’d rather they just release things when they’re ready, instead of pushing out an unfinished graphics update like this and leaving us to wonder when it’ll get fixed, if ever.

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To be fair, they warned us multiple times that not all textures would be updated at once and to expect stuff like this. I just didn't expect in the Dawntrail campaign and zones since those were being made within the graphics update. As for faces and changing back things. I don't see them doing that when many folks really love their new updated characters. The risk of having to keep giving out free fantasies becomes really real if they keep altering the looks of faces enough.

Lighting is the biggest mystery to me. Go visit the Tuliyolal innroom. There's 5 identical desklamps in the room and 3 of them work differently, three of them cast a shadow normally, one casts a shadow on clothes only, and third one doesn't even cast light into its surroundings.

Also, gpose lights don't cast shadows.

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Originally Posted by Aulainn

Lighting is the biggest mystery to me. Go visit the Tuliyolal innroom. There's 5 identical desklamps in the room and 3 of them work differently, three of them cast a shadow normally, one casts a shadow on clothes only, and third one doesn't even cast light into its surroundings.

Also, gpose lights don't cast shadows.

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Noticed also that the multi-floor open houses in Tuli (one right beside the main atherite) have two roof lights, but neither of them is the light souce. The source is hidden in the middle of them and gives of a really pixelated shadow.

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Originally Posted by Aulainn

Lighting is the biggest mystery to me. Go visit the Tuliyolal innroom. There's 5 identical desklamps in the room and 3 of them work differently, three of them cast a shadow normally, one casts a shadow on clothes only, and third one doesn't even cast light into its surroundings.

Also, gpose lights don't cast shadows.

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They did mention there is a bug with interior lighting, so this may be fixed.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I was really surprised by how pixelated Koana's outfit is.

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This is my biggest complaint. If they were going to have him wearing that particular coat, they needed to update that coat. It's BAD.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

This is my biggest complaint. If they were going to have him wearing that particular coat, they needed to update that coat. It's BAD.

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Tataru getting an Outfit update and Koana not before the release of the Expansion shows a pipeline organizational issue