[ Graphical Update Feedback ] Examples of Darker Skinned Characters/Darker Lighting

[PercibelTheren]

I'm concerned about this, too. My character is a dark grey Duskwight (as you can see). I'm worried his skin will end up looking shiny and like plastic.

[PercibelTheren]

Some armor sets end up being unintentionally hilarious if you play a dark-skinned Duskwight like me. I have found out that the skin tone I picked out basically matches the Slate Gray dye. The Hailstorm armor set looks ridiculous because 90% of the fabric is invisible.

[ronibosch]

I've seen this feedback on social media too and I 100% agree with it!

SE also has a history of forgetting to test their gear sets on dark skinned characters, they've had to fix the 2B set, some YoRHa alliance raid sets, and recently Gaia's set because it's only after release that players and the dev team found out that it didn't display properly on dark skin... so it would be good to show what the tests look like with various skin tones, both to reassure the players but also to prevent themselves from having to deal with a HUGE oversight later, if they haven't learned from their past mistakes yet.

They need to test tattooed gear on dark (and "fantasy") skin tones, too.

The Yakaku dogi comes to mind. I really wish they'd given us a non-tattooed version.

[Wyssahtyn]

just whitewash yourself like y'shtola, problem solved /s

[WeebPolice]

Original Post

Citizen, I too believe that our enjoyment of the game should not be impacted by our immutable characteristics, such as the color of our skin. Let the call for equality echo from every mountaintop and throughout every valley of Eorzea.



Fight as one.

[SiriuslyEmily]

Seconding everything the op said here. My character’s skin is just mid-toned and I’ve experienced some of the issues that plague players with darker-skinned characters in terms of cutscene and environmental lighting. I’m glad the devs are taking the time to provide all these graphical updates but I really hope they keep in mind that a large number of player characters (and several significant npcs!) are not pale and need to have an equal amount of attention applied to them too. It’s going to be extremely disappointing if the only characters who wind up coming out of these changes favorably are pale.
—particularly when characters like Erenville are set to be featured in DT.

[Turtledeluxe]

They actually do have the Character Lighting setting, but even with that at max, it can be very hard to see darker skinned characters, and this is a failing of SE's testing and review phases of development. They need to be looking at both light and dark skinned characters as they're working on this next stage of the graphical update, and they need to test their cutscenes with darker skinned characters (and even just non-white/pale characters - there are red and green and blue characters too!) before go-live.

And maybe they should consider adding artificial lighting in cutscenes. A toggle in character settings maybe, so darker characters can actually be seen and paler characters don't get washed out horribly.

But the point is that all of the previews we've seen for the 7.0 graphical update have been pale characters, and SE really needs to show us some darker skinned characters so we can give timely feedback.

Edited to add that Character Lighting settings don't actually impact the cutscenes (at least viewed through the Unending Journey) - which means the control given to us to help us adjust for our own characters is also useless for the important parts. That would also be a nice fix, though tangential to the need to see darker characters in these previews.

I actually never knew this. So the screenshot in the original post is character lighting set at 30?

Only asking because such a setting seems useless. They don't look lit at all.

Or I guess if she lowered it to exemplify cutscenes then yes, it needs to be added to cutscenes. I'm not sure it should go too high in cutscenes because it could create a very superficial image (as in Horizon) where the character is glowing compared to everyone else. Maybe they should add a separate slider for cutscenes.

[eternalmagic]

I actually never knew this. So the screenshot in the original post is character lighting set at 30?

Only asking because such a setting seems useless. They don't look lit at all.

Or I guess if she lowered it to exemplify cutscenes then yes, it needs to be added to cutscenes. I'm not sure it should go too high in cutscenes because it could create a very superficial image (as in Horizon) where the character is glowing compared to everyone else. Maybe they should add a separate slider for cutscenes.

The character lighting setting on the photos I took of the Au Ra, my character, and my friend's are all at 100%. I've seen several people on social media share screenshots from cutscenes where their dark-skinned characters are so poorly lit that you cannot see any facial features--because the effect just doesn't even turn on for cutscenes. All this is 100% why I made the post in the first place--people are rightfully worried about how their characters will look, given how things look for them currently.

This also affects major NPCs that are dark-skinned, too, like Raubahn and Sadu.

[paninis]

I really hope they take darker skin tones into consideration. It's incredibly frustrating to play through an important cutscene with slightly darker lighting and only seeing a blob for a face with no visibility for expressions or anything of the like. The same goes for important NPCs. I'll take anything that will address the lighting issues with all the areas in game, where darker skintones won't be shafted and can be visible like the lighter skin tones in any lighting.

[SarriaKadijah]

So for lighting examples, here's my character in Ultima Thule. I just hid the UI so this isn't in gpose, this is just ambient area lighting. With the system setting Character Lighting at the following percentages:

0%


50%


100%


Kept the setting on 100% character lightning, and this is from a cutscene in UT:


And Sarria's not even that dark-skinned, as you can see in the picture on my profile. It's something people have talked a lot about on different social media, but I'm hoping CBU3 will finally address this, especially with the upcoming graphics update.