Seriously, you are calling this a graphic update?

[Wildheaven182]

It was never a graphics *upgrade*. It is a compatibility update for xbox and ps3 performance for the changes they want to make to environmental lighting and shadows to make the game look brighter and more lighthearted in the new expansion after how intense Endwalker was.
Graphics on all platforms is limited to what the oldest console the game is available on can handle.
Due to the desired changes in environmental lighting and shaders, they have to change or get rid of some detail shaders that appear on characters and even go so far as to change models slightly. Characters are also now a light source themselves.

[KisaiTenshi]

It was never a graphics *upgrade*. It is a compatibility update for xbox and ps3 performance for the changes they want to make to environmental lighting and shadows to make the game look brighter and more lighthearted in the new expansion after how intense Endwalker was.

PS3 support was removed with Shadowbringers. The PS4 and PS5 are functionally identical and you just get a resolution nerf for the PS4. I don't know if the console versions have access to the high resolution textures or not.

Like the focus I've largely seen is on the character faces and the fabrics of the clothing (not all clothing actually looks better, some gear just looks the same probably because it was already higher resolution in the first place, like the Shisui sets.) It's very likely gear released during endwalker was already higher resolution, but not all the textures were exported as such during endwalker, like the crafted gear.

At any rate what they did to the faces was very much a shader code thing, but it also still has the problem of dark characters (eg Erenville) basically having no visible features unless standing directly in the light.

[Aerborn]

lips are horrible and dont match the flesh, the shadows under the eyes make him look like sleep deprived.

I'm with you. My WoL looks jarring compared to what she looked like before, and it is the lips and eyes that bother me but mostly the eyes...idk why we have bags under our eyes now.

[LaylaTsarra]

My character looks great and so do the environments I've seen thus far. Lighting is a lot different and is certainly a major change in my view. Resolution is also much improved and I run in 4K.

[Kaelah]

I'm lucky, I'm in the camp of liking how my WoL looks. I can see OP's point though, theirs looks quite different. Subtle, but different.

[Zaniel]

Well, technically it IS a graphical upgrade, the lighting is more effective and natural and the textures are better. However on a personal level you might have been screwed by some element that changed which altered your precise appearance.

I got SUPER SUPER lucky, my character is completely identical to her original appearance to a T, except 2 tiny points but those 2 points make her look even better than she did before (lips are more naturally lustrous and hair is thicker and more realistic). So I am very lucky, not everyone got the same roll of the dice and when we stare at our character for 10 years even the tiniest detail which another person would not see can break that link. So really its not up to anyone to judge how someone else feels about how their character looks.

[Eien713]

idk why we have bags under our eyes now.

This! Exactly this!

[Yeol]

[Fatty]

I'm with you. My WoL looks jarring compared to what she looked like before, and it is the lips and eyes that bother me but mostly the eyes...idk why we have bags under our eyes now.

They gave us spectacles to cover the eye bags.

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, this was meant to be funny. I completely agree that this update should be reverted or at least made optional. Nearly every character looks different than before.

[ConantSivrha]

If it makes you feel any better, yours is just a cosmetic problem. The game now causes unbearable eyestrain for me, and it looks like I won't be able to play the game anymore.

Oh well, guess I had a good run.

To me, everything looks brighter and unnaturally blue, especially in sunlit areas. Looking at it makes my eyes burn. Some operating systems have a built-in option to reduce blue light from your screen (Night Light on Windows 10/11, and Night Shift on MacOS, for example). This decreases eyestrain for me, so I prefer to have it on all the time, but FFXIV 7.0 seems to be especially bad without it.