Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[FateweaverAlpha]

This one astounds me because I feel like Elezen men are one of the ones it's so noticeable on. Your chosen face type had the entire structure of its cheekbones changed to something more jagged. It's noticeable on Urianger, too.

They also straight up forgot the clan differences between Wildwood and Duskwight men. Dark under-eye areas are supposed to be a signature for Wildwood men, while smoother faces are for Duskwight men...but now they both use the same Wildwood maps.

Yep... I can't stand how he looks now and no amount of Fantasia has been able to "fix him" as people keep telling me to do. His cheekbones, his eye shape, the way his eyebrows are set. His emotes are all wrong. Smile looks concerned. Annoyed looks tired. I have no idea what the were thinking pushing this to live while so many players complained during the Benchmark but hey those Miqo fangs needed fixing more I guess... -_-
I don't blame the Miqos for getting the attention and the fixes I'm just disappointed that they didn't care about the rest of us.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Logged in to my Highlander alt for the first time since Dawntrail release, and there’s some issues… Again, the mouth scaling still does not seem correct for most races. Here the top lip was reduced. Not as much as some other faces I’ve seen, but on this character, it’s made more pronounced by the divot above the upper lip being so much more prominent than it was before, making her look like she has duck lips in most facial expressions. The eyeshadow was also darkened, and even the whites of the eye look gray, so even though her actual eye shape hasn’t changed much, the look is much different. The tip of the nose is also bigger.

I’m holding off on Fantasia for now, because I’m convinced this mouth scaling still isn’t right and maybe it’ll get fixed. My Midlander is okay, except for the dark bags under her eyes that appeared for some reason!

[Feathetaria]

Man, following this thread and also the ones on the JP forum is just so sad. So many people had their characters effectively taken away for absolutely no reason. I can‘t fathom how they looked at this in development and thought to themself „Yeah, lets just change all the facial features our players have used and became attached to for years and years instead of just improving texture quality. This is fine.“

You said it well. My Miqo'te has been depressed and refuses to get out of bed or do msq because she doesn't like the botched plastic surgery that was done to her lips. Anyone telling me to use a fantasia is adding insult to injury because fantasia just makes things worse.

This is honestly like a bad dream. I am just sad at this point

[MeiraStarborne]

If nobody else makes one, I'll make a separate post about limbals later.

I made a post about Au Ra limbal rings a few days ago, but I’d love additional voices. I feel like I’m the only one who turned off their lumbar rings in sheer disappointment and frustration and now feel lost with a character who no longer has her windows to her soul.

[GreenLeafy]

Do you guys think they shove the graphical update feedback threads in the same folder they put hrothgar/viera headwear threads? Some of these threads have been going for a while ,across NA and JP forums , and its gonna be 2 weeks since EA soon and there's hasn't been even a peep of mention about it from the dev side which has been nothing short of just disheartening tbh. And for people who spent hours of their time making very detailed specific images with image comparison / drawovers / explanations ,etc. it just straight up feels insulting. Like , ignore it until its dead and forgotten type of insulting. Even just a simple notice that they're working on it would be solace for many.

And its heartbreaking seeing so many voices of people who effectively lost their character just go unheard. People who WANT to enjoy the expansion as much as those around them but simply can't because their WoL just isn't the one they spent the years with.

Sometimes I think of the 2015 Rising event where they recreated their offices in the game that they teleported you to and you could talk to avatars of the devs and I feel like the things Yoshida's avatar said back then aren't really being taken into account anymore. :/



So much so for communicating with us.

[Cheapshot]

So much so for communicating with us.

To be fair, in a lot of instances they certainly have torn down what they wrought! They built a new face upon the wreckage of my old face.

[DynnDiablos]

I forgot to mention in previous posts I've noticed my female hrothgar tail hasn't been properly animated on some mounts. Particularly the Porxie Mount, my tale looks like some rigid L shape hook.

[azaleai]

I made a big ol' post on the femroe face 2 thread the other day, but. the more time goes on the more worried I become that all of this is just getting ignored, so I thought I might as well quote it all in here too.

Hi, professional roe face 2 whiner checking in.

I've made a lot of posts about this in various places but I think it's worth collating my complaints here.

I'm a 3D artist for games; I work with models and textures just like this for a living. And I can say for certain that there are severe issues with the normal map (the texture that simulates 3D shapes for the lighting to react to) for face 2.

The most egregious in my opinion is the complete erasure of the brow creases. It's a defining characteristic of the face that used to be a part of both the normal and the diffuse (colour) maps, but is now solely on the diffuse. This means the creases do not react to light, they do not have any manner of ambient occlusion (stronger shadows) compared to the previous iteration of this face, they cannot catch the light like they used to. Putting this detail only on the diffuse ends up looking plasticy and fake - like super strong cheekbone contour on a very round cheek; looks okay from one angle, but the illusion falls apart if look look at it any other way.


Both 7.0 screenshots. The lighting shadows (green) are seen crossing over the faux brow shadows (purple) without interacting with them. No highlights are visible surrounding any of the creases.

It's most apparent with the first crease due to that part of the face catching more light, but only the one crease closest to the eye (though greatly reduced) and the actual fold of the eyelid have been left intact on the normals. The creases catching the light on the 6.X face is apparent in Enforcing's image. This is no longer possible to recreate because of the removal of the normal map detail.


As part of this, the crease between the forehead and the nose is gone, making it look as if the forehead just funnels down into the nose. Additionally, they've made the incredibly bizarre choice to cave the brow inwards above the eyebrow as if the eyesocket begins half way up the forehead. In 90% of lighting situations, this just makes it look as if the character has black eyes. Not black coloured eyes, I mean 'got in a fist-fight and lost' or 'recovering from a broken nose' type black eyes. The impression of the underlying bone and muscle structure is completely ruined. This is the source of the haughty/snooty look some people feel the face has developed.


Comparison of the implied facial structure - 6.X (left) has a very defined brow ridge in line with the eyebrows, where as 7.0 (right) has a lifted soft brow ridge that does not align with the eyebrows. Also note in the 6.X screenshot the very defined shadow/highlight difference between the bottom of the forehead between the brows and the top of the nose.

The above diagram also illustrates my final complaint with the normals - The lips on the normal map and the diffuse don't match up, and the philtrum does not meet the peaks of the cupid's bow. The normal map has the upper lip incredibly flat, while the diffuse is very shapely. The peaks of the cupid's bow exceed the implied shape of the lips from the normals, giving it the appearance of poorly applied lipstick. Lip colour tends to fade before meeting the physical edge of the lip, not after.


Benchmark screenshot, but unchanged in the 7.0 release. Normal map highlighted in purple, diffuse map highlighted in orange, and an overlay of both.

Overall, the structure ends up being uncanny and makes no biological sense, completely antithetical to the update's attempt to make the graphics more realistic.

And of course, all of this is on top of the ash mark being faded. The textures making darker skintones look muddy and mottled. The overtuned shadow at the top of the eye making us look dead inside. The mouth shape being flattened and the rigging being changed to make emotes look awkward.

I think they completely and utterly dropped the ball with this face. I don't buy that there was an artist who looked at this face and decided they were proud of it as it is. It feels as if it's using placeholder textures. Or as if it was simply done by an AI that doesn't understand that Roegadyn brows are unlike human brows and just smoothed it all out. Or both.

And hey, just for fun. A quick little paintover of how I think it should have looked.
OG:


Paintover:


She looks a lot more like herself, huh?

I have three characters to get raid-ready for Arcadion's release but right now my main isn't even past the second dungeon because seeing... that. in cutscenes is straight up depressing. Tabbing into these forums or the lodestone confronts me with that horrible avatar and suddenly I'd rather unsub and go play something else. I love my girl, to me XIV is her story, and all the friends I've made were thanks to her. And now she's just... not there anymore. Thousands of screenshots taken, stories written and art created feel like a collossal waste of time now. It's bitter.

On top of that, the more I play my main class, the more I hate it. The updates made it janky and inflexible. I'm really struggling to find a reason to stay subbed... right now it's purely because I have an obligation to my statics and out of habit. I think, unless the raid tier is really something special... if they haven't made any statements about fixing this mess (and not just the generic "We'll keep updating in future patches!" stuff! I want to hear exactly what they're going to fix to decide if it's worth sticking around to see or not!) by the time I'm done with the tier, I think it might be time for me to move onto another game... Which is really unfortunate, because I was super looking forward to FRU. But I'm really not seeing myself enjoying much of anything in this game anymore.

I really don't want to sound bitter or petty or unpleasant or any of those things, but... what self respecting artist looked at this and said "yeah, this is better!"? Did my face get assigned to an artist who already thinks femroes are ugly, so 'making it worse' doesn't matter? Was this even done by an actual living breathing artist at all? There is no way that normal map was baked from a proper sculpt. Male Roes and that one older Miqo'te male face had such care dedicated to their creases and wrinkles while we just didn't, despite it being the defining characteristic of the face. The facial structure went from inhuman but plausible to straight up wrong.

I'm just... so angry and saddened by all of this. XIV was my favourite game, I basically spent every spare waking moment I had dedicated to it, and now it's just... gone.

[SturmChurro]

You said it well. My Miqo'te has been depressed and refuses to get out of bed or do msq because she doesn't like the botched plastic surgery that was done to her lips. Anyone telling me to use a fantasia is adding insult to injury because fantasia just makes things worse.

This is honestly like a bad dream. I am just sad at this point

How the characters look now has really made me not even want to log in for now. I have other presets I use much more than my miqo, like my au ra, but they all are worse off since.

[Cheapshot]

How the characters look now has really made me not even want to log in for now. I have other presets I use much more than my miqo, like my au ra, but they all are worse off since.

I have mostly the same face and I feel mostly the same way. I’ve barely touched Dawntrail. My motivation and excitement vanished. I finally won the housing lotto for a small plot after trying to get one since 2019 but I couldn’t even feel happy about it because I had planned to quit the game that day. Instead of overjoyed I felt bitter that I was denied it for all the years I loved and enjoyed my character and finally got it now of all times? Feels like a joke instead of a victory. I still have 3 months of sub on my account but I haven’t logged back in since and I don’t know if I will yet. Im just so disappointed.