7.0 Graphic Update - Elezen feedback

[TeaDodo]

First of all, I want to thank the team for quickly acknowledging the issues! However, a lot of the things frequently brought up in the forums were not mentioned, and while I hope that was done to make the announcement digestible, I would like to re-affirm some of them just in case.

A
-"Dead eyes" effect and skin glow issues are not limited to the character creation and are also noticed in the Benchmark itself.
- Some hair highlights drastically changed their shape and/or behavior in regards to color.
- Some hair look darker than others due to the updated textures and make hair color overall more inconsistent (especially crucial at the lightest and darkest ones, when further adjustment is impossible).
- A lot of face details: nose, lips, eyes, eyebrows and overall shape have been changed beyond what a texture or lighting affects.

B
- As was already multiple times mentioned in both EN and JP forums, addition of Wildwood dark circles to Duskwight faces. While I hope this was a texture mistake, I do want to accentuate that this part changes look of most characters drastically and erases one of the defining clan appearance differences.
- There's also an issue with how "eyeshadow" type facepaint behaves around new eyes, explained in-detail in this post , and I hope this will not go unnoticed.

Many eyeshapes for Duskwight elezens were affected by the issues under section B thus making an impression that the shape changed through excessively highlighting the outer bottom corner waterline (facepanit) or over-accentuating inner upper corner, making it much darker (dark circles in combination with more defined upper lid and nose bridge area).
However there're still modeling changes to size and/or shape of some of the eyes that go beyond that and are in further detail covered in this thread and I would appreciate if you take them into account.

In my case, a rough edit to remove dark circles and change to the original brow shape has pretty much brought back the original impression of the character despite slight changes to the eyeshape. (Sorry for he poor quality but I believe this is enough to bring my point across)



I hope this feedback would provide useful and thank you again for listening to our concerns. I would be looking forward to the updated Benchmark and thank you for providing us an opportunity to look at the addressed issues before the expansion release!

[GodModule]

Here's my WoL. On the left is the benchmark, on the right is live. I've tried to match lighting/position as best as possible.




Look how dead and lifeless his eyes look. He's in direct sun - There should be plenty of light reflecting in his eyes, but there's basically none. The catchlights on male elezen in particular, and really everyone, need to be turned WAY up. Dynamic is a great idea! But even in indirect light you still get light bouncing into your eye and reflecting. Make it more the size it was before and keep it from getting eaten by the new eyelashes and sure.

It's crazy how much of a difference the light dot in the eyes makes

[Reinha]

It's crazy how much of a difference the light dot in the eyes makes

Agreed! They need to crank up that new dynamic sparkle a lot.

[Mirikh]

It's amazing to me how stark the difference is in my case. The face has lost all definition and become super flat. I'm very displeased.



Top is old, backlit then frontlit. Bottom is new, same order.

Duskwight face 3
Hair colour: Row 2 Col 4

With the shadows being toned down in the new version it really looks like a different character (to me at least).

I am reposting your screenshots as I see this same problem across the board and yours highlight them very well. The faces have lost angles - cheekbones, jawlines have been smoothed out resulting in a more generic look. (Rounder jaws and less angular faces are currently achievable in character customization, but these changes impose a less defined face on all the models.) Also contrast of light and dark on the faces seems reduced, creating an over-exposed look. For me this is no upgrade. The faces don't all look bad to me, but they do look far less customized.

[Mirikh]

This is something I've been grappling with over the last few days. Are we really meant to think that hooked noses, strong profiles, smaller almond eyes, and full lips were "mistakes?" If so, I'm not sure why they let people build characters with those mistakes for ten years. A lot of people held onto those features as the only crumbs that allowed us to make ethnically diverse characters.

These customizations have been available to us for years and I am disappointed to see them "smoothed out". Some of us have chosen them on purpose - as did the artists who created Haurchefant for example. I am personally very fond of the Haurchefant hooked nose. The update has drastically altered his profile. I am going to miss cheekbones, noses, and angular jaws and all the other details we currently enjoy.

[thousandfeathers]

I'm using Duskwight face 4, eyebrow 2 and mouth 4 for my elezen.

I'm very disappointed with the changes they made. My cool, solemn, proud girl became soft, kind, neighbourhood big sister.

Other than many things people already mentioned in the posts above, here are my main concerns:
1. The shape of the eyebrow. I love the defined pointed turn in the eyebrow 2. It gives so much sharpness and coolness to my character. The new one looks too flat, and making her loses her personality.

2. The slight tilt up of the mouth corners. This makes her look like she's half smiling. It makes her loses the solemn and proud characteristics that scream Elezen. If you cover her ears, I would believe this is a new Hyur model.



3. The brow bone shape change. You see a clear line coming down from forehead, high at the brow bone, indent on the eye, then follow the cheek bone to the chin. This adds so much depth to the face. However, the new model has barely any change. This cause the face to look so flat.



These are all more than the lighting issue that YoshiP mentioned in the benchmark update post. Hope they can fix the model before the release of Dawntrail.

[GodModule]

It's amazing to me how stark the difference is in my case. The face has lost all definition and become super flat. I'm very displeased.



Top is old, backlit then frontlit. Bottom is new, same order.

Duskwight face 3
Hair colour: Row 2 Col 4

With the shadows being toned down in the new version it really looks like a different character (to me at least).

The freckles (or pores, idk) seem more pronounced than they used to be.
Eyebrows might have changes a little, I'm not sure.
The eyelashes have been removed/reduced significantly from the upper lid
The tattoo suggests that the iris size has been made smaller? That or the tattoo has become thicker.
The inner ear shapes have changed entirely. this one doesn't bother me, just something I noticed.

The bottom looks like the tops daughter

[posona]

Adding to this with my partner’s face 1 elezen male since she doesn’t have a PC. I made him in the benchmark today and the biggest problem is a face paint issue I haven’t seen mentioned. He uses the eyebrow paint to achieve a heavy caterpillar eyebrows look, but now the face paint doesn’t sit on the eyebrows.

[Gasian_Gaond]

Hello, I'm posting here in behalf of Nozomi Kei of the Balmung server, Crystal DC, NA. This is my first time posting here so apologies for some errors. This is also going to be a bit of a long feedback

Part 1 of feedback:

"I'm going to try to cover everything I can find wrong and pray that at least the biggest issues are addressed, otherwise I may have to retire the character I've played for almost a decade. I will be talking primarily about face 2 male Duskwight Elezen, as that is what I play. Some of these issues might be present in all Melezen faces or isolated to face 2, but I wouldn't know unless one of you here has talked about it.



First, an issue several others have mentioned: Face 2 Duskwight suddenly having the textures of a Wildwood; eyebags being especially noticable and unwanted. I chose my character to be Duskwight specifically because I didn't want the eyebags.



Actually something seems off with all of the textures on face 2 Duskwight? My previously powder-smooth, even-toned skin now has a mottled, almost artifacted appearance, same with the skin on the lips which have both mottling and oddly darkened edges on the lower lip especially. The eyelid textures seem to have just straight up been placed wrong, with part of the weights snagging a section of the eyebrow down and leaving a notch during blinks. The eyebrows also look like maaaybe they were misplaced and that's why they're thicker for some of us, because they're being stretched over a different area than intended that is bigger than their previous real estate."

[Gasian_Gaond]

Part 2 of feedback:



"The obvious texture stretching aside, the new eyelid has removed my faint eyeliner, and changed the gently pink lid to the same jaundiced beige as areas like the forehead. Eyelids are naturally pinker in real life because of the thin skin amd abundant blood vessels. This ties into the larger observation I've made about the changes to face skin textures for 7.0, which is that their color now looks unnaturally one-toned and even more lacking in the natural hue variation of living skin than the current faces.

A note on the eyebrows and lips that is more of a suspicion than confirmed, but I'm starting to feel like these features have just been outright homogenized? Perhaps in order to make applying morphs easier? Several people have made mention of their brows being straightened out and/or thickened. The elderly faced gentleman on page 12 posted by Cio had his magnificent, shapely brows reduced to mundanity. A lot of unique lip shapes are being changed in a consistent direction. The 'standard' shape is a strong cupid's bow on top with very pointed peaks, color wrapping around the corners of the mouth, a wide and shallowly curved underside to the bottom lip, and less fullness overall. Some are seeing their gently rounded peaks made pointy, others are seeing skinny-in-width bottom lips widened, folks with broad upper lips are being thinned. My little lift in the center underside of my bottom lip was flattened

My lips are also now weirdly dark by default, and trying to colorcorrect the unattractive mauvish beige leaves me looking like I'm wearing heavy lipstick. I think part of this is the change in how lips handle lighting, and part is the bad texture that was swapped in, plus the harsher edges to the liplines where previously there was a gentle, natural transition.



At first I thought I was imagining it before I imported my current settings, but now I am sure when I say my cute and small triangular ears whose shape added to the sharpness of my face have been made bigger and rounder. I made the smallest, most Tolkien elf ears I could because I wanted them to be subtle and elegant. This reshaping has added to the myriad changes that mean my character no longer looks like the same person."