Yoshida gives update on the benchmark/character creator

[Chasingstars]

"As reported by Square Enix fan news and resource site Nova Crystallis" is not a direct source from Yoshi-P himself. The tweet they're referencing from Nova Crystallis is from the same day as the JP Fanfest when the previously mentioned quote from Yoshi-P was from. The tweet itself does not contain a source or quote from Yoshi-P saying it's certain. I'll believe it when he says "you are all getting a free Fantasia" or I get one in my in-game mail.

Well yeah, the "working out the details" part is a statement from Yoshida. Especially from that youtube link. As then you get a follow-up statement of what Yoshida said: "Obviously even though the update will overall raise the quality, there is still the possibility it won't give you exactly the look that you want right away. So we do want to give you that fantasia so that you can go into character creation to adjust your character to suit exactly what you imagine."

[Doozer]

Well yeah, the "working out the details" part is a statement from Yoshida. Especially from that youtube link. As then you get a follow-up statement of what Yoshida said: "Obviously even though the update will overall raise the quality, there is still the possibility it won't give you exactly the look that you want right away. So we do want to give you that fantasia so that you can go into character creation to adjust your character to suit exactly what you imagine."

Keywords being "want to". There has not been a "we will" from Yoshi-P yet. That's my point.

[DiaDeem]

A few things from me:

- I hope the changes help ease some of people's concerns.
- People truly underestimate how important lighting is for 3D graphics.
- I'm glad they're not reverting to PS3 standards.
- No matter what they do, someone's gonna be angry about it.
- People need to stop treating WIPs as finalized products.
- Can we keep this as the most literal reminder that they are listening to feedback?

[D3AFN3SS1337]

They need the eyebrows for male highlanders. It been 10 years.

+100

Did you guys know that one of the recent NPCs is a male highlander with actual eyebrows? His name is Durante. I wonder if they forgot to add actual eyebrows to the graphic update.

Here is a close-up screenshot of him:

[Rudje]

I suspect this is the case. A *lot* of the problems people are pointing out will be washed away with better lighting, but not all. The devs added quite a lot of polygons to the models. They had to do something with them other than, "perfectly mimic a lower-poly model." In the case of my specific WoL, they added enough to his nose to make a subtle but noticeable difference; however it doesn't bother me because it is also clear to me everything that was added is in places that completely lacked polygons before and the result is a subtly different but much better looking nose. I also have a face 4 female Au Ra, and I can 100% see the difference in her mouth--I more or less chalk up the differences there to the same thing, a clear addition of polygons that add definition that otherwise the devs could not achieve with the lower poly model. I understand people being bothered by it, though, it does make her look a little less severe. For the sake of people truly bothered by this I hope the devs tweak it a little.

A problem I've been seeing (not from you, your post is reasonable, just in general across several topics) is people arguing against the people pointing out problems by saying that the altered traits are all old artifacting (they objectively aren't, especially in the newest faces, but that's the argument). The thing is, even if that was the case, those artifacts heavily influenced the flavor of the face and should have been preserved in some way, be it adding options that tweak the face a bit towards that old look or by preserving harsher looks in the upres. Neither of those things happened; instead, were being told that fully redesigned faces are what we look like now and there's no recourse due to how limited chargen is.

[DarkTonyBerry]

It's good to hear, I think the benchmark definitely served more than just a "can your computer run it" but also for things like this.

[Glenfiddich]

- Can we keep this as the most literal reminder that they are listening to feedback?

Yoshi P. had no choice. He had to react.
I doubt that he cares about what NA/EU has to say.
it's just that The Japanese Player would have ripped him and his Team appart. As they did in the past.

[Rudje]

A few things from me:

- I hope the changes help ease some of people's concerns.
- People truly underestimate how important lighting is for 3D graphics.
- I'm glad they're not reverting anything
- No matter what they do, someone's gonna be angry about
- People need to stop treating WIPs as finalized products.
- Can we keep this as the most literal reminder that they are listening to feedback?

We do not have the final product. If the WiP is all we have to respond to, it is what we should respond to. As a freelancer, that is like not speaking up about a problem you notice in the sketch stage until the artist is finished with the work. If anything, we should have had the benchmark sooner to give them more time to adjust to changes and not two months to release.

Also, personally, my problems haven't been addressed in that post at all, because the Viera face 3 changes still look awful and not like the old ones in the benchmark itself, which is evidence that they're not lighting-related problems, and nothing there looks like weird mouth scaling or rigging problems like FElezen or some FAu Ra.

E: I'm being rate-limited, but this would actively be solved by adding the changes as new options and not wholesale replacements like they currently are! This is not a difficult ask!

You literally don't know that. You seriously think you can just pop a PS3 model with half the triangles and make it work seamlessly with a new rig tailor made for a new model?

If we don't approach this topic accepting that what we need is compromise instead of our every whim accounted for and fixed to our specific taste, we're never gonna get anywhere, and people are gonna remain upset, no matter what they do.

And now you're deliberately reading me in bad faith! The options I'm talking about would obviously be upgrades that actually loyally keep to the old features instead of making new ones that keep none of them and telling me to live with my character not existing anymore, but I supposed someone determined to dismiss sensible feedback in favor of building a house of cards wouldn't know that.

yeah like, if anyone says "it's not hard" or "it's not difficult" or "I'm not asking for too much" or any other awful dumb assumptions about something tech-related, at this point my reaction is to ignore them, because that kind of downplaying of the real effort it takes to do most things in tech is both endemic (and worse with Gamers) and also speaks to profound ignorance of the process.

I'm literally in game dev. If you can make the changed version, you can make the version that more closely matches the old style and add it to the old Ui, especially if you aren't a two or three person team. We know they have space for more faces bc Hyur have several.

[Wasselin]

I spent some time reading the Japanese feedback using Google translate and I can see why they would listen to them. The feedback, even through the imperfect tool that is google translate, was excellent. It was really well stated, detailed, and civil.

[Arkdra]

Because more then a few of us have been through this song & dance with other games before : "It's just the alpha, calm down!" "It's just the beta, calm down!", "It's the new expac, should have said something in alpha/beta!" and given that there have been a number of things said they would/wouldn't and didn't/did, I don't have a lot of confidence in them doing it right.

Hell, I went through that with this game, sorta. I got into the beta for ff14 1.0 which took place about a month before launch. The beta forum was full to the brim with people saying that things could be fixed by release and to just have faith and lol.