Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Plasmaspy]

im pretty happy with it, im surprised so many people want their creepy uncanny valley features back

"creepy uncanny valley features back"
For some races it actually feels the opposite and they now look more uncanny valley irobot like

[miqomiqobeam]

From "I hate you all" to "Please let me leave".


The irises in general are much less defined and you can hardly see your pupil. Making the sun-cat option kind of redundant since you won't notice the cat eyes.

Yes Sun cat irises and eye shapes are far less defined. Irises lack vibrancy and light especially with lighter colors and the rounded out eye shapes make them less cat like on Face 3 specifically.

[Sairaag]

Male Miqo'te, face 1, eye shape 3, mouth 4.



First, his eyes from EW to the two benchmarks. In DT, the eyelid is much heavier and rounder. For some reason, they really doubled down on the size after the first benchmark. These large, hooded lids heavily affect his default expression and emotes.



Same MSQ scenes, different graphics. In EW, he has more variety. In DT, the eyelids dominate the expression. He seems less awake. The lighter eyebrows hurt a lot with face 1, because a smooth face really needs all of its points of detail and definition.



Different expressions. Looking at this, I'm making the same face.



Bright lighting shots, first in front of a window and then in the Praetorium. Even when being blasted in the face with light, the EW version has some deeper shadows giving emphasis to the more angular shapes of the eye. DT, on the other hand, is very soft and round. It's like all the subtle angles that gave this face character have been carefully sandpapered and blur-tooled off.



While we're in the Praetorium, my old face never had its features melt this like!

And so on. The benchmark trailer gave me hope for these changes since they put in a lot of lively expressions that disguised the problems. However, the actual MSQ cutscenes heavily use the now derpy default expression, and the constant half-lidded look makes my guy look lethargic even when he does use emotes. Any fixes? Well, not in the character creator, so the free fantasia is wasted on me. However, using the eyeshadow face paint helps a little:



Just, you know, don't use other face paints. That's a problem for me, because I like to use different face paints.

And the mouth? Other people have covered that in detail already, so let's just say if I had wanted a wide mouth, catboys weren't exactly lacking for options before. Honestly, looking at this new face is painful to me. It's not like I haven't tried to get used to it: I've been trying to talk myself into being okay with this ever since the first benchmark came out and I really made an effort with the MSQ. People say it's more realistic, but realistic isn't necessarily better and stylised isn't necessarily worse. I just want his energy back.

[cutestfox]

To sum everything up im not happy with the changes i feel a huge disconnect with my character and honestly i dont think i can bring myself to even try and do story, i got through all the lvl 90 quests up to the first dung and i cant bring myself to do anymore

I can relate to this feeling of dread exactly
It's sad that I have to cope by wearing a mask for the entire MSQ and pretend my character is still what she used to be underneath
Because one look at that new Miqo'te and I just feel like absolute garbage

[aiqa]

I'm not the world's best artist, but here is a sketch I made to emphasize the difference in features.

Thanks, I think that is a great sketch to illustrate the changes. To me the left looks like a sketch of a pretty women, who is slightly ammused. The right looks like a sketch of a severely traumatized women, who completely shut down emotionally. And who is empty from either lack of sleep or from crying to much. That captures exactly how I see the difference for my own character using hyur face #1.

[Router]

For the people pointing out the more egregious changes, I suggest you post them in the bug report forum. It's unlikely that a dev will see your complaints in this thread, but they are definitely reading bug reports and they are considering some of these graphical changes to be legitimate issues as they are marking them as "accepted".

[noumen0nn]

Thanks, I think that is a great sketch to illustrate the changes. To me the left looks like a sketch of a pretty women, who is slightly ammused. The right looks like a sketch of a severely traumatized women, who completely shut down emotionally. And who is empty from either lack of sleep or from crying to much. That captures exactly how I see the difference for my own character using hyur face #1.

That's pretty much the same impression I got. For the same reason, her new face looks really odd whenever she smiles, because it's a sad and pallid face trying to force a happy look (and also because the new mouth rigging across all characters seems... not polished)

[Sereneth]

it's like she has a different face now and she is just expressionless I'm horrified too see her like this iv kept her the same as the day I made her iv got 5400 hours in the game and 99% has been with her and now I barely recognise my character

[Fiorentine]

So, maybe unpopular opinion, considering the race I am, but like... I'm really disliking the update more than I should. I love how some races definitely have a glow up and some of the changes defintely made me like Au Ra more. (I do understand that many Au Ra people are upset and I can see why)but in my case it's a different problem I have, or well, not only a face discomfort when seeing my character in game.

So, without trying to sound uneducated, but anyone who uses skirts specially the shorter ones, have you noticed a change in your legs and/or arms? In general, the width of your thighs, or even a more "tubular" look on them? That has been happening to me over the last 24 hrs. I'm fem-Highlander (yeah yeah thighlander, and exactly cause of that is that I noticed) and I just noticed that whenever I'm using short skirts (like the Faire Kohakama) I dont have legs like before, like... feels like my legs got streamlined with midlander and miqo legs (slimmer legs) as well as my arms. Not saying it's bad, but if I chose highlander, it was cause I wanted to have that difference in spite of me really disliking some other innate features, like the way they run or some emotes.

I feel like changing skin, some features, adding textures etc would make expected changes like some face, eyes and hair changes... but, legs? arms? :|

Maybe it's just me, and I'm uneducated but dunno, just wanted to bring it up. (If anyone wants I can show pics of the kind of difference I noticed).

[Gaddes]

Final Edit: I made an extremely bad drawing that over-exaggerates the differences that are annoying me so badly between DT and Pre DT Lips of Female Miqo'te Face 3 when combined with Female Miqo'te Mouth 4. Keep in mind that i totally exaggerated these shapes. I'm just trying to make obvious the differences i see that are bugging me so much and making me sad:

I've been noticing that other people, like myself, who had mouths that used to have fuller, rounder/curvier lips (specifically the upper lip) had the most changes unfortunately.

My Elezen is the following:
Face 1
Eye 2
Eyebrows 4
Mouth 2

Mouth 2 was completely changed out with this expansion. Here's a side-by-side of my characters, and then a version with the drawover:



If I ignore how the eyebrows are now thicker and rounded on the inside ends and how the eyes are larger overall (I had to fantasia to Eyebrows 2 to even slightly remedy it), the lips are... literally not the same in the slightest.
And the most frustrating aspect is now all the male elezen lips are thin and narrower overall, so the one set of lips that at least had some body to them are just no longer there.

I've noticed the face options that are shared with important NPCs (like Haurchefant, Urianger, Estinien, etc) had the least if any adjustments made, because obviously they didn't want to radically alter established characters' faces. But woe be to anyone like myself that used options that are not found in prominent NPCs, because those are the ones that got butchered.

And I already commented in a previous post about how the change in brows makes my character not emote nearly as intensely as he used to, which is just such a major bummer in cutscenes like the one above.