7.0 Graphic Update - Elezen feedback

[Beddict]

Kinda feeling like a downgrade here. Yeah, it's a benchmark, work in progress, and obviously character creator lighting is always wonky as hell, but I'm not really feeling it. Here is a comparison album, top two images are my current character in the Black Shroud and Thanalan, and then the second two are the new Dawntrail update in Black Shroud and Thanalan. All screenshots are taken head on rather than from the side since I didn't want to have slightly different camera angles by accident. My thoughts:

• Skin tone is slightly off, but can be tweaked I guess. I dunno, in some angles my character looked real yellow now which is awkward to look at, might need to change that a bit.
• Hair colour doesn't look as vibrant, seems kinda dull and flat. Definitely more detailed though which is really nice, and even if it isn't as vibrant it's still got better contrast between the main colour and the highlights. Also, so help me God, they better fix this before launch.
• Eyebrows have been changed, bugs me a bit. The old ones were more tapered at the top end, new ones are definitely thicker. I wish I still had the thinner eyebrows.
• Eye shape itself seems changed, and the Thanalan comparison in particular has them looking a lot bigger. Granted I might have just taken the old version screenshot while mid blink or something so whatever, I'll ignore that for now I guess. Pupil seems different as well, but could just be the reflection, I dunno.
• The shadows on the nose make it seem like she has a big ol' cat schnoz. Like, I made a Frothgar for fun, that's the kinda vibes the nose is giving me when viewed head on. It looks great when I actually rotate my character though.
• Lips are definitely not as glossy, and the line seems a bit harder? The old one has a bit of a softer blend from the lipstick to the normal skin tone, while the new one has a pretty hard cutoff. Also the expression has definitely changed and I do not like that. Old one has more of a neutral resting face but the Dawntrail one is smiling. Why change that? I dunno, this is the thing that probably bugs me the most.

So yeah, feeling like a downgrade. Stuff like skin tone and hair colour I can tweak, but it bugs me that they went and messed with the eyebrows and the mouth. It doesn't feel quite like my character anymore. I'm sure I can get used to it, but those are the big things that really need fixing.

And the hair around the ear, holy shit.

[cakesphere]

Chiming in to say my duskwight looks horribly washed out even with the gamma set to 50 (which is remarkable because I literally fantasia'd to deepen his skintone recently so he wouldn't be so washed out in bright lighting). Whatever they did to the lighting engine, I do not like it. I also really am missing his facial angles as they all seem to have been sanded off. Very disappointing and not sure what I'm going to do going forward. This sucks.

[karadazkar]

Face 2 Female Elezen got assassinated... Girl that's not a graphics update that's an entire different face. Even disregarding palette shifts or gamma funk—the right picture has Gamma = 100 just because I was testing something, so this isn't a "she's washed out" complaint—she's not even the same character anymore. Her whole head is shaped differently.

Yes, the textures are good, the lights are good, the ears are very good, the eyes are good. And if I wanted to make a character who had the facial characteristics of the picture on the right, that'd be great. But if I wanted to do that, I would've done it to begin with.

[linesthatinterlace]

This thread is full of people posting pictures of two identical Elezen and saying they're completely different. It's baffling to me. Ultimately this is why they're going to give people a free Fantasia: if you've formed a particular attachment with your current face of course it's going to want some tweaking, but at the end of the day this is just the way of things with any graphics update.

[Amariyali]

I am one of the (sadly) few people who are actually really happy with the change.
Like yes he looks different but not so different that I dislike anything too much.



In my case, lighting changes a lot of how my chara looks and I noticed that in the CC the lighting now changes if you wait long enough (at least the Limsa one does? Like if there is an actual small weather or day cycle going on) In the screen I took the light looks pretty yellow in comparison hence why his skin looks more green-ish, a screen I took 5 minutes later looks significantly different.

So the Pros for me are:

• The upgrade on the ears are the best thing, ngl

• Eyebrows showing up better

• General texture upgrade looks great

• The area around the eyes having more definition with little wrinkles and such

Neutral:

• The nose. It lost a bit of character, especially in the front view, but I don't hate it too much

• In a similar vein, lips loosing some definition though the lip color option can somewhat counteract that and is also heavily lighting dependant imo

• The new eye texture sure makes things look off at first, but that's something I can personally get used to

Con:

• The loss of the cheekbones, even if it not the most extreme case with my character but even I notice it when looking at him

• The plastic-y skin glow, especially on dark skin. Also depending on the light but it's noticable in the face and even worse on the body

• After looking at it for a while, I am not that much of a fan of the dynamic catchlights. It looks more realistic yes, but unless the light hit's juuuust right, which is rarely the case, the eyes just look lifeless. I think more static catchlights like before would be better for this type of game or maybe a combined solution? Just something to make the eyes more expressive in lowe rlight situations.

• The missing shine on the lip colors. I think before it was TOO much but now it just seems completely gone. Maybe making the shine toggleable would be a solution here bc some ppl like the shine and some want matte lips

• While not a concern for my character due to his very dark grey skin, but the shadows beneath the eyes on Duskwights should be reverted how it was before. While I like the details added like wrinkles and more dimension, the shadow is unecessary.

More of general things that caught my eye:

• Light colors like white on dark lips still looking like clown make up and not like lipstick

• The textures on a lot of long hairsytles (Like Emmanelains and Artoirels hair) just look like they haven't been updated much yet? Probably subject to change but I thought I'd point it out.

• Less to do with the character model but while the lighting on dark skin is improved, in some situations it still looks way too dark. For me especially in the opening close up there are some pretty harsh shadows

All in all I am pretty happy with the change on MY character. I know what to tweak to make him look more to my liking (adding lip color, making the eyes a shade lighter) and I can live with the rest.

But I also think that critique is fair and know that not everyone feels like this, so I hope there is still time to tweak some things and that stuff like the animations on F!Elezen mouths are more of a bug/glitch/unpolished job more than anything else.

[MascheRano]

There's this dirty texture that wasn't there before on the female elezen starter clothes, and it's super noticeable on white:


And her left thumb is mysteriously blackened for some reason, this issue doesn't appear on the other racial starting gear:

[elezenelezenelezen]

This sadly doesn't address the sculpting changes they made, or the changes that are not impacted by lighting. For example, face 3 women have a strange shadow on both sides of the nose that does not go away in any lighting, and is present even in 'shade'. It makes the nose look perfectly straight without any contour. The eyes are also shaped somewhat differently, and the head in general clearly has been as well because my hair now clips on my forehead and neck. Here are all four elezen faces to show the nose shadowing on 3. It's the only face, in the same lighting, that has this contouring that makes the nose look DRASTICALLY different from the in-game nose now. It's making her not even recognizable as the character I know.

[ChaChaOnIce]

Could be worse, but the sculpt changes to the nose and lips are really off. There's a prominent difference in the bridge (no bump in the new one), and the lip shape has been nerfed into the ground. IMHO the nose shape really should be left alone entirely, noses are a very important part of the profile and facial recognition, any tweak there is going to make a character read as "off." The lip thing just makes me mad there's only one thicker lip option on this face and it's also small now.

[cakesphere]

This thread is full of people posting pictures of two identical Elezen and saying they're completely different. It's baffling to me. Ultimately this is why they're going to give people a free Fantasia: if you've formed a particular attachment with your current face of course it's going to want some tweaking, but at the end of the day this is just the way of things with any graphics update.

Nobody asked you??? Sometimes the kindest thing is to keep your thoughts to yourself. This thread is for feedback and we're giving our feedback.

[linesthatinterlace]

Nobody asked you??? Sometimes the kindest thing is to keep your thoughts to yourself. This thread is for feedback and we're giving our feedback.

I gave my feedback too! They ruined what was to me my iconic haircut! I just dunno how much it's going to mean to the game's designers- I feel very sad for people who had formed a very close attachment to a character look that will not be returning, but many of this small details stuff was I think inevitable. The larger issues, like the general somewhat "plasticky" tone to skin and so forth, might well be something they can tweak, though. I do think that the look of the F!Elezen mouths is more like just their artistic choice.