New Benchmark (June): Au Ra Feedback

[Asteri]

As someone who uses Face 2 / Eye Shape 3 - I'd recommend if you can trying Eye Shape 4 on the benchmark and seeing if it might work better for you - in my opinion, Eye Shape 4 on the benchmark actually looks like the current Eye Shape 3!

Funnily enough, I've been toying with it lately but it's still frustrating that they've changed the eyeshape so much... I already bought a Fanta and waiting on the next Live Letter to see what other changes they're thinking of bringing before Dawntrail, if nothing is mentioned for Face 2 FemRas I might change to it the day before maintenance. :')

I still have issues with the lips and I've raised these in the JP thread - I want our frog mouths back!

Your edit would fix 99% of issues I have with the Benchmark to be honest... It looks so much better and removes the "puckered" look to the lips they've introduced. I really really hope something changes before Dawntrail... Also posted in the JP thread in the hopes for further changes. :')

[Lutin]

I still have issues with the lips and I've raised these in the JP thread - I want our frog mouths back! Here is what I would like to see:

OMG THANK YOU this is exactly what I want to see for face2. I don't like the way the current lips corners look on the benchmark and I was hoping they would get it better with the update but they didn't. I don't mind the "permanent smirk" that they seem to have given every face/mouth (although I understand some people might not like it, I stand neutral on that point) but the lack of depth in those new mouths really throws me off Also I complained enough on the limbal ring and I didn't want to come back and complain some more, especially since I can't figure out how to have visible images to save my life and make a decent comparison. I also find that Xaela lips specifically lack gloss compared to Raen lips. But maybe that's just me or maybe it's just still a work in progress... I do hope they fix this one, although like some people said, it seems to be an aesthetic choice so they might not Hoping for the best (crossing fingers)

Also, Plushy, respectfully, please just stop now, this back and forth is going nowhere. You made your point so let's stop. And you're burying our posts in your flood of comments and THAT will not help the FFteam to see our problems. We took time listing the differences and editing pictures to calmly and rightfully show our points to the devs and stuff. Please.

[Irishfae]

However, they themselves early on said that they will not go for hyper realism in parts because it is not possible for an MMO, but also because they do not wish for the identity of characters to be lost. In that sense they are failing with quite a few of their changes and we are simply pointing out where it is.

Just to add to this, from the Tokyo Fanfest

The eyes seem to have changed quite a bit since fanfest

Information on the eyes from London Fanfest

And most importantly from Las Vegas - Not changing the image you have of your own character

[Solazz]

Never posted on the forums before, but glad to see a thread where a lot of my concerns are voiced already. I'll just add to the chorus of concerns that I feel face 4 au ra looks softer now. I think I've pinpointed one of the biggest differences for me, being that the upper cheek and lower eyelid seem much more pronounced now.



On the left is my live character, the right the benchmark version of her.

On the live version the area under her eye is near flat. In the benchmark there's a clear angle. This is definitely a small gripe on my part and I like a lot of the new graphical updates. However this small difference, along with some pointed out earlier like the larger pupils, really changes the feel of my character I think. Been using the same face since au ra released in Heavensward so I'm a little attached hehe ������

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

I guess I could repost my newer feedback here too:

About the state of limbal rings

First concerns were raised in October 2023 after the tech art panel: [Graphical Update Feedback] Eyes and Limbal Rings on Au ra
(Tokyo Fanfest 2024: Yoshida acknowledges the concerns about limbal rings, and promises we would get to keep "the same look as before", even if that might mean "changing the parameters slightly")
Benchmark 1.0 feedback Part 1: アウラの目の輪郭と意外な色の変化
Benchmark 1.0 feedback Part 2: アウラの目の輪郭と意外な色の変化 Part 2
Benchmark 1.0 and 1.1 feedback Part 3: アウラの目の輪郭と意外な色の変化 Part 3
TLDR in English on page 4 of this thread
Benchmark 1.1 feedback Part 4: アウラの目の輪郭と意外な色の変化 Part 4

Click the link above for an extreme deep dive into limbal ring colors and why, even if the goal is to enhance the look of everyone's characters, it is important to respect the creative potential that was available to players with the limited tools they had until now, or they risk losing the impression of their character entirely.
And why feedback matters, no matter if it's positive or negative.

I wasn't planning on going this hard on it but MizunaSaeki's post made me open the benchmark and look at everything again lol (I'm almost jealous that your limbal ring is still showing!)

Small TLDR to spare you a right click:

To better illustrate my point I decided to look at Sadu and Allie in more detail too, so I'll post that here:

(in order: Aetherial Background -> La Noscea to show off the cool shader -> Black Shroud in different lighting settings)

Sadu 6.58 / Benchmark 1.1 / Proposed edit




Allie 6.58 / Benchmark 1.1 / Proposed edit




Gif version of these:

(check the link above if you want to see the same comparisons on my character in a lot more detail)

I had a pretty eye-opening (haha.) exchange with someone on the JP thread who's very pleased with the changes to the limbal rings (it's right below my post if you're curious), and made me realize that, yeah, in some cases, the current state of limbal rings really do look like a huge improvement.

From my perspective on both of those the new ones look better. The old ones just looks like they selected an area in MS Paint and pasted a color with no shading in that space. It looks rather awful. Its why I never, ever used it.

The new one looks like they at least tried to blend it a little better. While yes, its not as bright, perhaps that is just the trade off of better looking eyes.

While I think this is the worst and rudest way possible to give critique on something, RhaesDaenys actually accidentally raises a similar point:
Some players (like me and Rudje and others) were taking advantage of the brighter, more saturated colors to achieve specific results, while others (like RhaesDaenys, the JP player I mentioned, and others) wanted brighter colors that would not clash too much with the color of the iris to achieve other specific results.

The problem is, with the graphical update, one group lost what they had used until now as an integral character design decision, and the other gained what they were lacking in the character creator until now.

It's a little bit of a problem.
A problem that would be easily fixable if the color palette was simply expanded (I demonstrated that in Part 1 of my feedback already, again go check the links above).

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

...And then while working on that I noticed something else that was off lol
Link to the original post here

TLDR:



Eyebrows 1 on Au ra F Face 1 are off, and it changes the expression a lot.
There's a dynamic curve going from the brow to the nose that's perfectly mirrored by the curve of the forehead scale pattern, and in the benchmark that curve is a little bit more wobbly, and you lose that satisfying and dynamic line.
Pretty sure it's not a coincidence but artistic intention (it's Eyebrows 1 after all), so it would be a shame to see it go.

The result is that my character looks constantly a little worried (with good reason), GIF comparison here:

Mouth corners are also lit and modeled differently, so they're slightly drooping now, which adds to the constant worried expression. (she's just like me fr)

This is Mouth 2, but from what I can see it's the same thing on all options.

And I added a word on how mimicking the CGI trailer in the benchmark is all well and good, but because we've never seen facial animations like this on our characters before (and probably never will again, I doubt they'll reuse it as it is), there's a pretty big uncanny effect that is definitely not helping with the player reaction and feedback.
The Endwalker benchmark didn't have that problem at all (some facial animations were custom, of course, but it was all stuff pretty similar to what we've seen in MSQ cutscenes).

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

especially since I can't figure out how to have visible images to save my life and make a decent comparison

- Upload your pictures somewhere (I use Imgur, some people upload on a blog post on Lodestone first to grab the link from there, there are tons of other websites to do that, do NOT use discord URLs directly I think they don't like direct linking)
- Click on the squarish icon with a little tree picture in the forum form
- Paste the URL of your image in the pop up window and done.
Is this a generational problem, has humanity forgotten how to use forums... Am I that old already...


Also as I've stated before, if people have positive feedback to share on this thread, I think no one minds at all.
Just post your own picture and explain why you prefer your own character (or NPCs, if you've recreated them) now.
It's exactly the same principle everyone else has been following.
It is just as helpful as feedback asking for improvement.

And troll or not, sometimes it's better to just not engage any further, they'll calm down eventually.

[Plushy]

snip

Since you think I'm a troll this is my last reply to you and I'm putting you on ignore after this, its clear you're pretty disrespectful.
First, you don't get to decide what type of feedback is good.
You don't work for SE, you don't know what type of feedback they want and you don't know if the feedback people are even giving is useful to them. They could think someone pointing out the smallest detail of their character is useless feedback because they're not going to adjust the character just to move the eyelid folds slightly towards the left or add barely noticeable eyelashes, you don't know and I don't know. So stop being so arrogant in acting like SE agrees with your own personal standards on what is considered good or bad feedback.

Second, if you actually watched the video you would see it has shortcuts and secondly you would see that the people in the comments(on the video screen since it was a repost of a stream) were all saying they liked the au ra, some said it looked weird too but it was mostly positive, you can also checked the other video of the person that didn't like au ra, you would see that it was very much split meaning not everybody agreed with her saying that au ra's looked bad and once again that youtuber is pretty big for a ffxiv youtuber so to have that big of a split when her videos normally have high likes and low dislikes. Common sense should tell you a lot of people like the au ra change.
Its clear you didn't even look at the comments on the X/twitter posts as well because they're all focused on au ra and people praising it.

Third: I think you need to recheck what hyper realism look like. Being hyperbolic isn't going to help you. I suggest looking up "The Last Of Us 2" if you want to know what hyper realism actually looks like.
Also if you actually paid attention to your character, you would know au ra have always had eyebags (face 3 being really shown) and you can see it clearly in certain lighting.
Funny fact, it was actually gone in the first benchmark but since people wanted their characters to look closer to the 6.58, the devs redraw the maps like the 6.58 and now you have your eyebags back and now you(and others) don't like it. This should tell you that a lot of things do not translate well from the old model to the new model with the better lighting, shadows, higher polygons and sub surface scattering something to think about.
You guys asked for this, so lay in the bed you asked for. Enjoy your more noticeable eyebags.

Also please stop bringing up what yoshi-p said in the past regarding trying to keep characters the same because he quite clearly said there will be differences later. Which is why they're giving everybody a free fantasia. You people keep ignoring him saying that because you don't want to accept the changes and you cling on those words as an argument to anybody that says they prefer the changes.
It was in the benchmark follow up.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...ecd574ad0d397a

Here I'll even just grab section because its clear you click links but don't actually read them.
Even so, we imagine the subtle differences in nuance will inevitably cause some characters to look ever so slightly different compared to before.
So stop bringing up yoshi-p saying "we'll try to make characters look the same as before".

Lastly lets not act like they wouldn't have fixed the broken scales and seams before launch, yoshi-p even said "obviously these problems would have been fixed for the release version" so not sure why you're even bringing that up as if they would really launch with clear obvious things like that. The benchmark isn't the final product in case you didn't know that.
I get I shook you with the feedback I gathered because they're extremely popular and positive and you're going in full deflection mode so you feel better about having a chance about things getting changed but SE would have already seen this feedback anyway, so trying to deflect the feedback I gathered and trying to pretend SE won't look at it isn't going to help you.
Your bad faith arguments are taxing so as I said I'm just going to ignore you now. Have a good one.

Also, Plushy, respectfully, please just stop now, this back and forth is going nowhere. You made your point so let's stop. And you're burying our posts in your flood of comments and THAT will not help the FFteam to see our problems. We took time listing the differences and editing pictures to calmly and rightfully show our points to the devs and stuff. Please.

I'm not sure why you people keep acting like what I'm doing is getting in your way (and the same people are bumping this thread anyway) and honestly people were replying to me trying to deny me and the feedback I gathered(I wouldn't have even said anything if people didn't reply to me). But I'll obey your reply and leave this thread since its getting a bit too hostile for my liking when I didn't even do anything and I don't like being called a troll when I didn't even do anything to warrant that. It really just tells me most of you hate that I shown extremely positive feedback because you think it lessens your chance for change and I'm being called a troll for it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ew_au_ra_eyes/ 466 likes
posting one last thing from reddit this time and this is clear indication of people liking it and its specific this time(au ra eyes).
Notice how the most disliked comment is someone saying it looks terrible. (this is also from the old benchmark).

[Lutin]

- Upload your pictures somewhere (I use Imgur, some people upload on a blog post on Lodestone first to grab the link from there, there are tons of other websites to do that, do NOT use discord URLs directly I think they don't like direct linking)
- Click on the squarish icon with a little tree picture in the forum form
- Paste the URL of your image in the pop up window and done.
Is this a generational problem, has humanity forgotten how to use forums... Am I that old already...

NO do not worry you are not that old, I'm from the last century if you really want to know and usually know how to do these things, and I did those things, I did uploaded them on an imgur adjacent website but the pictures would not show on my posts in any way! Anyways, this is not about my skills or forum tutorials but I still wanted to thank you for trying to help <3

little message for plushy but maybe they won't even see it since they said they left) Plushy, we are not dismissing the positive, but we would LIKE the negative to also be voiced. As you said, there is plenty of positive review and the team will see that, don't worry. We are not denying the feedback you "gathered". We know it exist. Hell just 1 week ago I even saw an internet article saying people were losing their minds over AuRa face 3 because of how pretty they looked. We did not say that your positive undermines our negative but the sheer amount of posts you write, always confrontational of our issues does. I myself have A LOT of positive things to say about my xaela, hell I even go back to the benchmark every 2 days just to look at her because she looks THAT PRETTY! But I still have the right to voice my rightful complaints that I may have and that will NOT erase the positiv. Both can coexist. And both will exist, just like light and Darkness, just like Zodiark and Hydaelyn. I will end with what they literally told you on the japanese forums since I happened to see your post there (I was looking at what the japanese forums were saying in general about the benchmark I was not looking for your post specifically) and they immediately raised a very valid point. Maybe those people's tweet you linked do not want to be publicly posted on forums they may not have access to. You should consider removing them. As far as I know you did not ask for each and every single one's permission for that.
And we'll leave it at that. Have a nice day.

[Irishfae]

Is this a generational problem, has humanity forgotten how to use forums... Am I that old already...

This made me chuckle. I am "not young" and google photos didn't exist when I last used forums for real, so I had to look up how to do that here. :-)