Quote Originally Posted by Ibbers View Post
I don't think the examples you give are analogous to the issue people are having. People have an emotional attachment to a character look that they created themselves and they spend far more time with the character than you or any other person.
I play the game too. I have for nearly ten years now. The strong emotional attachment to one's character is not a foreign concept to me. That is a huge reason why I will not use fantasias on my avatar even to change her eye color (I've been tempted to do so to make them blue instead of purple, but I just can't do it). This is also a reason why I tend to not favor certain pieces of gear that alter the choices I made to my character in the custom creator, but I still may use them from time to time because they are temporary.

What I am telling you is that based off of the images you have provided, these kind of changes would not make me feel the way you do. I am talking specifically to my own avatar. The only thing that is really going to do that are drastic changes that would make her not even look like the same character. That is what I would take issue with.

The other thing that I do take issue with is if the change seems to take steps backwards in terms of quality. An example of this is the post from Miki at the top of this page. While I can tell it is the exact same character, it is very clear to me that the original looks like the higher quality image. She is using the same face as my character so I can really tell the differences here. The only thing that looks better in the Benchmark is the parting in the lips has a natural dark shade instead of a white line.

These graphical updates should be unquestionably higher in quality, otherwise I have to ask WTF are they even doing and how much time did they spend on this? I/we should be awestruck by these images.