Dawntrail Graphics Update - Feedback on changes to the world's aesthetic and feel

[Wyssahtyn]

i had the ceiling covered with those illuminated wooden lofts because of how dark you could get the lighting before. now, even at 0, it's like why did i even bother since things are so bright anyway. heck, one of my friends even made a cave out of his room, but now you can see the ceiling and gaps he left in because it's so bright at 0.

[Merton9999]

I feel the same way… I always thought the graphics were great for such an old game! New zones look great, but the old places have suffered for it. Is updating the old zones one of their projects to work on over the patches, or is this really the way things are going to look now? I think I remember them saying they weren’t updating any textures and such in housing at this time, but there’s something so wrong with this lighting inside. 0 used to be total darkness, and it looks about mid-level brightness from before.

I spent way too long trying to find the answer to this on Friday while my friends were out enjoying the new content. I didn't want to be the wet blanket, so I admit I probably missed details from patch notes or live letters.

What I've gathered is that zones from all patches have been updated, but not gear yet. I do not know about furnishings, which is what bothers me the most.

Currently, I have white leather couches with ugly pixelated bottoms and partitions from the same texture family in the same room where the same color dye applied to them does not match in the slightest. Cash shop gold walls that used to look glossy and smooth now look like dirty rust. Picture frame shadows look blocky and jagged. It's honestly impossible for me to think that these things were intentional... so I'm hoping that furnishing textures have yet to be updated.

[Tahli]

I don't have pictures to show at the moment, but when I recently went to the Hanging Barbs in the East Shroud (one of my favorite places) it looked...off. The lights weren't as softly glowing, and it just was not as magical at it used to be.

[Daralii]

Old areas looking terrible is especially appalling, as this graphical update was meant to attract new players (lets face it - who really cared among existing ones enough to quit over it?) - and now they are going to be stuck with ugly for 5 expansions. Where is the logic in it?
And based on how our characters turned out - I personally don’t have much faith that those areas will truly get their artistic vision restored even with more iterations.

My extremely jaded guess is that it was something that wasn't originally planned and was sloppily put together because CBU3 or SE marketing realized that the expansion didn't have many selling points that weren't just more of the same formula. I don't know how else to explain something as basic as updated characters from the neck down getting pushed back to "It's coming later".

[CidHeiral]

All the old areas I've seen so far have been a pretty clear upgrade.

[Loggos]

I've checked out Ultima Thule and for some reason they have added weird aurora-esque fog to the entire region, including the 3d space you fly in. They partially obstruct your vision now. I was flying through the Ea zone, relatively close to the ground and it looked like there were lots of gelatinous greenish layers in the air that made the zone a bit harder to see.
I also noticed how I didn't have a clear view at those bright half-destroyed planets anymore that are far in the distance (like the one with the bright blue core with crystals growing out of it).
I don't remember any of that being the case pre-DT (I liked looking into the sky and look at those planets in particular so I think if it had been there before I would have been aware of it?).
Or have they always been there and my memory is completely failing me right now?

I also went to Il Mheg and I'm not sure if my memory deceives me but the pink flowers seem much brighter now and have a deeper/darker shade of pink. Looking at them kind of hurt my eyes. I have no comparison screenshot right now but I could swear the flowers used to have a less saturated, lighter but very pleasant pink. Thy looked colourful and bright without straining the eyes.

[Granyala]

I don't know how else to explain something as basic as updated characters from the neck down getting pushed back to "It's coming later".

Because it's an extreme amount of work. Clothing does not go over the body model, the body model is part of it and slightly different for each attire. If you want to make changes other than simple texture upscaling / shader conversions (these two can be automated in many cases) ... if you want to make model changes you have to redo them.

ALL OF THEM.

Given how much gear a 10yr old MMO has, that ain't really feasible within a short-ish timeframe.

[Daralii]

I also went to Il Mheg and I'm not sure if my memory deceives me but the pink flowers seem much brighter now and have a deeper/darker shade of pink. Looking at them kind of hurt my eyes. I have no comparison screenshot right now but I could swear the flowers used to have a less saturated, lighter but very pleasant pink. Thy looked colourful and bright without straining the eyes.

Here's a random screenshot of it from the old Shadowbringers promotional site. The lighting will obviously be different without the Flood of Light skybox, but it shouldn't affect saturation too much.

[Loggos]

Here's a random screenshot of it from the old Shadowbringers promotional site. The lighting will obviously be different without the Flood of Light skybox, but it shouldn't affect saturation too much.

Thank you, I also just found some images online from when the zone from after the light flood and the flowers are much less bright. I used to love Il Mheg for it. Now it's colours have been thrown completely out of balance to the point they are unpleasant and exhausting to look at...

(Not sure if this one is edited but even if the colours were made brighter they are still not as bright as they are now ingame.)





Here is also one during the light flood that gives a good glimpse at the flowers and yep, they are not as pink.

[eternalmagic]

From what I saw in the patch notes for 7.0, the team prioritized 7.0 locations for the most part and will be updating older zones during future patches:

A number of features have been implemented following our first graphical update.

The following graphical details have been added:

Improved movement of certain weapons, tools, and gear.
Character tilting when turning on certain mounts.
Certain environmental effects such as water splashing and smoke will now appear darker in the shadow of nearby objects.
Wavering distortion effect when underwater.
Subtle eye movements for player characters and certain NPCs.

As part of our first graphical update, the following details have been improved:

Character hair and face textures.
The appearance of skin on player characters, animals, monsters, etc.
The appearance of hair on player characters, animals, monsters, etc.
Subtle hair movements.
The appearance of lenses in glasses and other glass objects.
The appearance of metallic material on certain gear.
The appearance of characters and objects that are wet.
The appearance of fog.
The appearance of water and waves.
The appearance of textures of distant terrain when riding a mount.
Soft shadows (PlayStation®5, Xbox Series X, Windows®, Mac).
Shadows used in backgrounds and in certain cutscenes.
Changes in lighting due to the passage of time.

* With few exceptions, these updates apply to all content implemented in Patch 7.0.
* Graphical updates will be applied gradually to older content in future updates.

Not entirely helpful, but it's being worked on. I do wish it had been a FULL update to all old zones and cities, but I at least get why they didn't do everything. At the very least, you can definitely see the improvement to grass and bushes in older zones, and I've seen some minor changes to things like cobblestone roads in the Dravanian Hinterlands and in Idyllshire. Since there's so many Il Mheg photos, here's some that I took a few days ago to compare against what we had previously:



I do agree the pink is a bit bright/saturated, though.