Yoshida gives update on the benchmark/character creator

[Scintilla]

snip

It very much doesn't. It certainly wouldn't be hard to find examples of exactly this, given that forum is full of it at the moment.

1. People have tried many things, it's true. But it continues to remain the case that at any mention of the word 'lighting' or any slight suggestion from a kind-hearted user trying to offer help (who for all we know may not have been closely following the very active threads to realise it's already been suggested in the past), they are instantly labelled as 'troll' and bombarded with posts on how their views and opinion is irrelevant - with this quickly descending to outright insults just a few posts later. Which is quite funny given that 'lighting' and 'shaders' are mentioned repeatedly throughout most of the benchmark update post... but that's diverging from the point of my response.

2. Does it fix the problem? No. Is it rude or offensive? Also no. It is a perfectly understandable way for someone to try to offer reassurance to someone who is clearly quite emotional about a current change. Whether it's the best way to phrase it is debatable, I admit. But it certainly doesn't warrant the far overblown responses they've received in return. It's solely patronizing because you interpret it as being patronizing. Intent matters and many of these comments were not made with negative intent in mind. Practically anything can be read an insult if the 'victim' interprets it that way. It still does not mean it was.

There is little surprise that even the most understanding and empathic posters have quickly lost what patience they had with some of the players here.

[Loggos]

The thing is, I noted that stuff like eye-shines, hair shine, and lip shine worked in aetherial sea, but didn't work that well in the outside zones, which matches pretty much what Yoshi P said about the character creator lighting not being updated. The vast majority of the before/after shots we saw as the "apples to apples" were done in Ul'dah outside zone, and if that outside zone had lighting optimized for the old characters but not the new ones, it explains quite a few of the issues.

I'm not saying lighting has absolutely no influence on certain changes. Lighting is of course very powerful and I don't mean to dismiss that at all. But over the course of this discussion "you just have not tried xyz" has become a bit of a blanket statement towards many points of criticism even when people had already proven that their points of contention were in fact not caused by lighting (e.g., showing features had been remodeled) and that they had tried out the proposed solutions (shaders, lighting).

[Luca_]

I was really happy to see the news post this morning. Will definitely be looking forward to the update.

[ReynTime]

( Yeah, i know, some miss steps on characters doesn't make the game bad, but crying at a delay to fix things is pueril )

Poor Miyamoto. Even after the day he passes away people will continue to repeat that quote he never actually said.

[Isurith]

Poor Miyamoto. Even after the day he passes away people will continue to repeat that quote he never actually said.

That's a meme, my dude. Also he said a few times basically this, paraphrased, so even without that specific sentence being a meme, it's not far fetched.

[Rosenstrauch]

That's a meme, my dude. Also he said a few times basically this, paraphrased, so even without that specific sentence being a meme, it's not far fetched.

An interesting article on the aforementioned quote:

https://www.acriticalhit.com/solved-...me-bad-forever

The tl;dr: Miyamoto may have never said it himself, but it's a very common mantra in the video game industry dating back to the 80s.


On-Topic: Neat! This is a step in the right direction at the very least. Hopefully this also means addressing the unnecessary lip and nose modifications, too. I do so love my Lily's slanted nose—it reminds me of Kaiji Itō.

[Ath192]

I'm not saying lighting has absolutely no influence on certain changes. Lighting is of course very powerful and I don't mean to dismiss that at all. But over the course of this discussion "you just have not tried xyz" has become a bit of a blanket statement towards many points of criticism even when people had already proven that their points of contention were in fact not caused by lighting (e.g., showing features had been remodeled) and that they had tried out the proposed solutions (shaders, lighting).

Ok but this has to be said. Given the amount of changes and desires you do know they can't leave each character exactly like everyone likes it right? Even as we speak they are probably rolling back changes others liked and now they will be disappointed too.

This is where the playerbase needs to compromise and say, okay this is not the same but it's pretty good, maybe they can also do "X"

If you have a picture from 10 years ago that you love, but the paper and image is getting old, and you ask the creators to draw it again for you, it's going to be similar, but I think people can agree it will never be the same because it got redrawn. They didn't go to MS Paint and resized the image to 150% and added a sharpen filter in photoshop. They actually redid the characters.

[Isurith]

An interesting article on the aforementioned quote:

https://www.acriticalhit.com/solved-...me-bad-forever

The tl;dr: Miyamoto may have never said it himself, but it's a very common mantra in the video game industry dating back to the 80s.

Yup, being tied to this industry myself, I can't say I haven't heard anything like that ahah. That's why that meme still makes sense, even if he didn't say it outright.

And on-topic also : we don't care who said it, it's still true. I don't think they'll delay the expac, they could've launch it earlier if that was not for Elden Ring. They're probably very close to being ready.
But if they consider that it needs to be delayed, I don't see the point crying for that. It's better to wait a bit more than having a massive amount of negative on release to please the impatients.

Edit : And I say that as an impatient myself. I don't like the changes of my character, but I know I could live with it if it stays as it is in the benchmark, and I'm VERY eager to play through Dawntrail because that content drought is killing me.

[HollowedDoll]

Ok but this has to be said. Given the amount of changes and desires you do know they can't leave each character exactly like everyone likes it right? Even as we speak they are probably rolling back changes others liked and now they will be disappointed too.

This is where the playerbase needs to compromise and say, okay this is not the same but it's pretty good, maybe they can also do "X"

If you have a picture from 10 years ago that you love, but the paper and image is getting old, and you ask the creators to draw it again for you, it's going to be similar, but I think people can agree it will never be the same because it got redrawn. They didn't go to MS Paint and resized the image to 150% and added a sharpen filter in photoshop. They actually redid the characters.

Please don't equate 2D artist using 10 year old faded TP as a reference to 3D artists using 3D reference, it's embarassing. There will be some changes due to higher polycount but that would mostly be reduction in super sharp edges on jawlines and such, not completely a different shape. That said most of the actual issues people have bought up are on the texture side of things, some of which it does look like references weren't as heavily used. It's worth noting that the texture resolution has not drastically jumped up, so it's not exactly a guesswork of what was the original intention with said shapes. Another thing is that they cut down some unique features; like eye textures are frequently shared now between different races and clans, while as previously this wasn't the case. There's also the forced eye makeup and such that would be great as new options, but as it is I think they should just stick to their earlier promise and try to change as little as possible, then they can worry about people who want something else than what we had.

[Loggos]

It very much doesn't. It certainly wouldn't be hard to find examples of exactly this, given that forum is full of it at the moment.

1. People have tried many things, it's true. But it continues to remain the case that at any mention of the word 'lighting' or any slight suggestion from a kind-hearted user trying to offer help (who for all we know may not have been closely following the very active threads to realise it's already been suggested in the past), they are instantly labelled as 'troll' and bombarded with posts on how their views and opinion is irrelevant - with this quickly descending to outright insults just a few posts later. Which is quite funny given that 'lighting' and 'shaders' are mentioned repeatedly throughout most of the benchmark update post... but that's diverging from the point of my response.

2. Does it fix the problem? No. Is it rude or offensive? Also no. It is a perfectly understandable way for someone to try to offer reassurance to someone who is clearly quite emotional about a current change. Whether it's the best way to phrase it is debatable, I admit. But it certainly doesn't warrant the far overblown responses they've received in return. It's solely patronizing because you interpret it as being patronizing. Intent matters and many of these comments were not made with negative intent in mind. Practically anything can be read an insult if the 'victim' interprets it that way. It still does not mean it was.

There is little surprise that even the most understanding and empathic posters have quickly lost what patience they had with some of the players here.

We will have to agree to disagree.

It is interesting that you portray people feeling patronised as "interpreting it that way" when you do quite a bit of interpreting when it comes to others' feelings yourself.
You call it "clearly quite emotional because of current change". But perhaps that's an interpretation, and one that overlooks the fact that people are not averse to change but have valid concerns regarding existing issues and bring up lots of sourced constructive criticism.

You also call it "overblown responses". But perhaps that is an interpretation itself. Perhaps you perceive the responses as overblown when they might in fact be understandable frustration stemming from the issue that the sourced constuctive criticism is often dismissed and pushed into the "exaggerated, haven't tried this or that, rose-tinted glasses" corner.

The lighting thing is a good example. Several people have tried to point out that we don't think the current lighting is awesome and more flattering. It's not. What we tried to say is that there is congruence in our characters' features across all current lighting conditions, no matter how horrible, and that in the benchmark this congruence is not there. And some of that lack in congruence is not due to lighting but due to remodeling. Yet this explanation is mostly ignored and the much simpler narrative of "people are allergic to the lighting word" remains.

Anyways, it's clear we will not end up on the same page about this, since it seems we are not able to change each other's perspective.