7.0 Graphic Update - Elezen feedback

[Liamont]

What? Feedback absolutely should address the myriad of small issues. While I do also think some complaints are exaggerated and caused by lighting differences, a ton of them are actual, physical changes that were made for no reason. Eyebrows, in fact, being a great example and one of the easier ones to fix--it's a texture! They still have the old ones to reference from!

FFXIV is a MMORPG with one of the most player-character focused narratives a MMO has been capable of, while also being produced by a multi-million dollar company. Of course people are going to care and have some higher expectations. Comparing it to HD remasters of single-player titles is a nothing statement...which also tend to be reasonably disliked anyway, when objectively worse-looking AI upscales like FFX have been pushed out of the door by the same company.

I can never grasp the resistance to player feedback in the place that's meant to host player feedback. Most people aren't actually being malicious or attacking the devs in this case; people wouldn't be worried about the developers being given enough time otherwise. They're just emotional, and--regardless of how silly it may appear to some--not for a lack of reason.

Exactly this.

[Tsumdere]

What I'm saying is exactly the same as what you are: of course you're going to notice the difference of a face you spend hours and hours and hours staring at. It would be very strange if you got exactly the same look, honestly: I had to rework my character a little until she looked right again, and I'll definitely be taking the chance of the free Fantasias to make the change.

Look, I'm not saying you shouldn't be unhappy. I'm just saying that - while they should fix the obvious glitches - your standard for "my character looks the same" is going to be much higher than that of anyone else for your character. The graphical update is happening; none of us have any choice about it; feedback isn't going to address the myriad small issues (things like eyebrow tweaks!) that people have. If you look at any HD remake or remaster of a game, this kind of thing happens - it isn't surprising it has here. I just think we should make emotional peace with the change.

I think it is important for us to make a stink about changes that were very clearly the result of developer preference and not graphic updates.
Faces looking softer is a nasty result of us Elezen being five polygons and then getting more. I think these are the graphic updates that won't get addressed. Sometimes, I don't see the difference people are pointing out.

BUT! Eyebrow shapes changing, addition of extra textures (dark circles), harsh lip outlines, female Elezen bean mouths, completely changing features like Sir Grinnaux's lips on page 6 are not a result of upscaling but an actual human going in and making an alteration. These are the things that need to be addressed ASAP. These are 100% not okay.

Too many of these feel SE doesn't care about the "original feel" of the character. Like someone at SE decided they thought certain facial features were ugly and then sanded them down to be more in line with their apparent goal of plasticine beauty.

[cakesphere]

Posted this comparison on other threads as well but figured it's better to have it in more places than one!
Here is a comparison from the EW benchmark and the DT benchmark. The skin tone may be salvageable? I don't know, I haven't played around with it - but right now the changes look abysmal, and of course there's nothing I can do with the reduced angularity of my son's face. They really did remove any kind of sharpness in favor of ?????? not everything has to be smooth CBU3. Please.




Going forward I'd like to see
a) restoration of the cheekbones/chin
b) restoration of the brow ridge
c) duskwight have always been quite cool-toned but the jaundiced look that he now has is quite concerning. maybe look into that too.
d) the lips look kinda bad. I'm not sure what went wrong with their texture but the old ones look so much more full, less painted on, and less stretched.

[Ainariel]

In an effort to make the lips feel… distinct(?), I guess, they’ve added a small beam of light along the upper lip. To emphasis the curve of the skin connecting to the upper lip, I suppose? However, it does run the risk of becoming a bit of a milk moustache/down thing instead.

Seconding this opinion! The beam of light is quite distracting. In some cases it looks like a milk mustache, and also gives off the impression of filled lips which isn't the look I want for my character.

This is Face 4; skin tone is first row, third from the left.

[SpiritMuse]

I've been doing some more playing around and it appears to be the eyelashes that are the main culprit here. They've been made much thicker and darker, and because they angle downward on most male characters they start covering the eyes a lot more than they used to. This also contributes to the "dead eye" look as it covers up some of the highlights that are in the eyes.



In an extreme close up view it isn't too bad, because you can see more of the eyes in this angle, but go a little further away and it already starts to become different.



And then in this screenshot from the trailer, at this angle you can barely even see the eyes for all the lashes, and it becomes a very different face.



Because of the lashes covering the eyes so much, it affects and changes the apparent shape of the eyes, which leads to a different facial expression and with that a different mood and feel for the character.

This doesn't happen in the same degree for most female characters though, mostly because their lashes tend to be angled upwards and so don't get in the way of the eyes as much.



In this final image I've edited one eye a little to remove the Wildwood dark circles and lessen the effect of the eyelashes. It makes the eye look much more open, and gives back a little more of the original feel.



Basically, I would recommend either thinning the lashes so you can see more of the eyes through them, or angling them up more so they don't cover up so much of the eyes. Additionally, I would consider lightening up the top part of the eyes themselves a bit, too, as they tend to run a bit dark, even with lighter eye colors.

Edited to add: I do like most of the changes. The new skin textures look good, other than the slight waxiness, and I especially like the new lighting - there have been many times when my boy has looked exceedingly strange due to awkward lighting angles. Hopefully that won't be as much of an issue now.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

There is an inconsistency with Female Elezen mouth.

Before (6.5) :



After (7.0) :




As you can see, the inferiors lips seems to do a subtil shape like a W when Elezen use /cheers or even in the final image we have at the end of the benchmark when we cut the boss. This doesn't appear with the actual model of Elezen we have.

6.5 was way better in term of shape, please SE can you fix this ?

[GreenLeafy]

I think it is important for us to make a stink about changes that were very clearly the result of developer preference and not graphic updates.
Faces looking softer is a nasty result of us Elezen being five polygons and then getting more. I think these are the graphic updates that won't get addressed. Sometimes, I don't see the difference people are pointing out.

BUT! Eyebrow shapes changing, addition of extra textures (dark circles), harsh lip outlines, female Elezen bean mouths, completely changing features like Sir Grinnaux's lips on page 6 are not a result of upscaling but an actual human going in and making an alteration. These are the things that need to be addressed ASAP. These are 100% not okay.

Too many of these feel SE doesn't care about the "original feel" of the character. Like someone at SE decided they thought certain facial features were ugly and then sanded them down to be more in line with their apparent goal of plasticine beauty.

A lot of the changes I've seen really do give that vibe to me too. Nose/Lips/Eyebrow changes come off kinda..not right if you're a person who specifically went for it to avoid the rounded out/cutesy look but are now forced to conform to it. The viera flattened lips are just laughably bad by themselves though. Also weirdly amplified make up on a lot of the female faces with extra caked in eyeliner or thicker eyelashes that give a fake vibe is a weird choice considering the original look for some of them, especially when it genuinely changes the eye shape. And the bizzare catchlight choice that translated their chase for realism into all of us just looking more dead inside lol.

Honestly ultimately I just do hope that they become aware of some of these issues that people have pointed out across all forums that has taken the wind out of their sails for this new expansion because what they get isn't their WoL anymore. Its definitely something to be investigated after reading so many forum posts , both here and on JP , of people pleading to have an option to keep their current face instead of being forced into the new one.

[decomposer]

Looking at the beam of light that is cast on nearly every elezen's upper lip is especially frustrating because I can tell that it's where the lips were formerly drawn out to. Not only were the lip models changed, they were changed so poorly that the lighting is still catching on the vestiges of where they used to be. On one hand, this gives me hope that (maybe) through skin textures, the lips could be returned to their former glory, but on the other it aggravates me that they were ever thinned to begin with.

The lip two options for both Face 1 and Face 2 male elezen (the full lips) have been completely nerfed at an anatomical level. There's no lighting that can fix that. I really hope that these concerns are addressed, because it feels like whoever made these changes really did just decide that the original features on Elezen were ugly and needed to be tinkered with. The gaunt features, the smaller eyes, the full lips ; these were features, not a bug to be fixed ):

[Beddict]

I slapped together a quick comparison video for my character using an image slider. The images are from my original post a few pages back, and the main reason I did this is to highlight the difference on the eyebrows and nose. To me, that's a really big change in both angle and thickness for the eyebrows, and the shadows on the nose make it look weirdly straight and almost blocky. To me, those are the most glaring issues that need to be addressed, as well as the mouth looking terrible in certain emotes as other people have pointed out.

In my original post I did mention it seemed like the eye shape had changed, but it seems like it's just slightly bigger while the shape is the same. What might've been throwing me off is the makeup around the eye, but maybe that will get tweaked, and I'm less critical now that I know the eye shape is still the same. The skin tone and hair colour also aren't bad in the benchmark itself, but that isn't too surprising since as mentioned, lighting in the character creator has always been dogshit. Here is a screenshot from the benchmark proper:



Clearly that looks a fuckload better, and even the nose doesn't seem that bad now that the lighting isn't directly dead centre of the face. Doesn't make it a non-issue though because if there ever is a scene like that then my character is gonna look weird as shit. Also, seriously, I want my old eyebrows back.

[Amariyali]

New post bc I didn't want to edit my old one AGAIN, so...

I have finally found something that bugs me but couldn't put a finger on before.
As it seems, the culprit is, like for so many, the lip shape (M!Elezen Face 2 Lips 3 btw)



The lower lip is just way too round, it looses a lot of detail in light and just looks.... strange in shadow. Because of that the whole mouth in general looks wider than before, which is what's throwing me off both in the character creator and the Benchmark.

So yeah, I agree with all the people who said that lips are different than before and that it alters the characters general look too much.