7.0 Graphic Update - Elezen feedback

[Feelynn]

I really wish they'd add a neutral colored and well lit room for the character creation. My Duskwights look so weird no matter what environment I use.



The red hair looks way different from character creation to the benchmark cutscenes too.



On the final fight with the two head Mamool Ja, during what I assume is the Viper's lb3, the light effects make my characters look like they have tinsel in their hair. It's more prominent on black hair.




Regarding the Fem Elezen mouth, mine looks like she's wearing a mouth guard lol



Which makes this supposedly awesome part of the fight really awkward looking. It's like her lower teeth row is trying to escape her mouth.



I played around with my gamma settings to see if it would help with the inconsistent lighting in character creation but it looks like it only applies to the benchmark cutscene.

The benchmark character creator has moving clouds and thus constantly changing lighting in all outside areas. Makes the entire thing super inconsistent, I always had to wait for certain conditions before taking non waxy screenshots.

[yvesupaux]

i’m glad i’m not the only one who was upset by the earclasps ;w; not sure why they would make them smaller it seems like such a strange choice to me

[Mosha]

I'm eating good in Dawntrail.

[Viverna]

Lip type 2 for Face 1 male Elezen looks too drastically different. What had a rounder shape before is now WAY sharper - to be honest this looks like a completely different lip shape altogether with way less personality
The cupid's bow is far too sharpened in the Benchmark, unlike the original's more undulated and plumper shape. The upper lip also used to be fuller (and I miss the creases at the side of the mouth...)



Something about the new lips just overall looks worse than the previous models, they look so matte and have less definition which actually makes them look less natural than before.

[decomposer]

This lip shape (as well as Face 2 Lip 2) are some of the hardest hit in the game. Genuinely I feel like the Elezen lip examples alone should be shown to developers to ask "what happened?"

[Sated]

Overall I'm VERY happy with how my boy came out.
I think his features are all sharper and cleaner and his eyes are stunning.

My only complaint is the same that many players with darker characters are experiencing in how his skin looks less warm than before. He's greyer.

I'm hoping this is an issue with how historically awful the character creator has been at its one job of featuring characters, combined with the Benchmark's gamma settings.

Otherwise the character I'm most happy with is my elezen.
I'm excited to play him like this.

[cio]

I was a bit depressed when I saw the changes on my main.

His eyebrows got completely changed (that's what bothers me the most!!), his hair is way less textured and looks lighter, the scars look different, he has less wrinkles...
And I noticed that there is a big hole now between the beard and the jawline.





Mostly upset about the brow thing, the rest I can cope with I think (even though it's a downgrade like the hair).

[Quuoooote]

I posted my character's before vs. after in one of the larger threads already, but having had a few days to eye it over some more I couldn't help but feel that my character looked slightly off. Pictured here, for posterity:



Now, the main thing that annoyed me on face 1 were the eyebrows. It honestly looks like the 6.0 before picture has much more clearly-defined eyebrows, which is a bit ridiculous. How can the textures possibly be getting downgraded this badly in a supposed graphics overhaul? The Dawntrail eyebrow texture looks like a dark smear or smudge running across the character's brow; like a brush stroke. The eyebrows in the before image even have the thicker eyebrow facial feature turned on, yet the newer ones that have the option off appear to be bigger. So I decided to play around with the character creator a bit to see what I could do to mitigate or fix this issue, and found a couple of things.



Firstly, the eyebrows on face 1 have been given a 'shadow' underneath the eyebrows which, depending on the hair color, serve to make the eyebrows appear longer and thicker. It's about the same as the eyebrow face paint that Highlander men might use to give themselves faux-eyebrows in lieu of real ones. You can see in the close up using two extreme hair colors that the shadow extends a bit from the actual end of the eyebrow (most prominent in the black hair color), and is quite a bit thicker than the actual eyebrow itself (most prominent in the white hair color). From further away it's pretty easy to assume that it's just part of the eyebrow, which is likewise easy to see in the initial before vs. after split pic. A good way to recreate this and really see the problem is by booting up the benchmark, loading up a face 1 Elezen, and then running your mouse over the top row of hair colors while looking at the eyebrows. The shadowing becomes massively apparent, and not in a good way.



Secondly, none of the other Elezen faces have this problem. Not only do the other faces not have a shadow, but they also clearly have much more defined and detailed eyebrow textures overall. This collage with each of the Elezen faces included in it uses the same hair color, and it's clear as day that the latter three faces look sharper and darker, with detail high enough that you can see the individual hairs if you look closely enough. Meanwhile, how does face 1 look? Like a smudge. Awful.

The kicker for me is that the 6.0 Elezen face 1 doesn't seem to have this problem either—or at least, if the shadowing does exist, it's not nearly as overwhelming as it is in the benchmark. I realize this is an extremely nitpicky detail to be nitpicky over, but as someone who very deliberately chose Duskwight to have thinner eyebrow options compared to Wildwood, the new (not upgraded; this is clearly a totally new and worse texture compared to the original) eyebrow textures and their thickness slightly bothers me. It's subtle, but it does make a difference that's clearly noticeable enough to the naked eye if I'm sitting here committing a few hours of my life to cataloging it in-detail. The problem seems to exist between both Wildwood and Duskwight face 1 Elezen, although I have not spent as much time examining Wildwood since my own character is a Duskwight.

If anyone at SE happens to be reading this: please revert the eyebrow shadowing and touch up the eyebrow texturing for face 1!! I'm not really sure why you felt the need to introduce these changes, but the shadowing seems like it would be better as an optional facial feature and the texturing is simply bad compared to the other facial options.

[Tsumdere]

Overall I'm VERY happy with how my boy came out.
I think his features are all sharper and cleaner and his eyes are stunning.

My only complaint is the same that many players with darker characters are experiencing in how his skin looks less warm than before. He's greyer.

I'm hoping this is an issue with how historically awful the character creator has been at its one job of featuring characters, combined with the Benchmark's gamma settings.

Otherwise the character I'm most happy with is my elezen.
I'm excited to play him like this.

The new lighting is certainly only made for white skinned characters at the moment. Dark skin and fantasy skin tones seem a little odd. My boy is a very light grey with cool undertones and the CC made him a little yellow.

I'm so glad you like him! I love my updated boy a lot too (sans the dark circles). Elezen are certainly one of the better updates of the races.

[linesthatinterlace]

I disagree, I will fight for them to address what you call the "small issues" until it's obvious that they are not going to change it at all. Then, and only then, will I make my peace with it (or quit the game, I've got 13k hours at this point, it's not a bad thing for me to move on).

I politely refuse to sit down and say nothing if there's still a chance that things can be changed.

I'm very sceptical about how much feedback here will actually get anywhere - but you're right that it's as good a place as any for it and I do hope their final version gives you something that you're happy with.