Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Moonfallen]

Tossing a gif of my WoL before and after. I think if the mouth didn't change how she looked so drastically I might be fine with the other changes to the rest of her features, but I don't know. She just doesn't look or feel the same to me. :/

[BigCheez]

The problem is, and I appreciate your perspective, but it really doesn't matter if the characters looked next gen and beautiful across the board. I don’t think they do. Model complexity hasn’t increased much despite facial features changing sometimes dramatically. Many textures on characters changed without becoming any higher resolution. The way new lighting illuminates characters is often odd, unflattering, and buggy. Some characters look better than others for sure.

But even if all those details were higher resolution, higher polycount and calibrated perfectly, it was never the issue. We’ve spent years loving our characters and building a connection to them. In real life, familiarity and connection is one of the most meaningful and important aspects of humanity. If your family were taken and replaced with “more beautiful” imposters you would have to be a psycho to just think “oh, my family is better now”. Obviously characters aren’t as important as family, but the point I’m making is that there are important aspects beyond just beauty that people care about and are sensitive to. Losing that familiarity we feel for our characters is too uncomfortable and upsetting a blow for a lot of the player base. Pretty much everyone in here is mourning. That’s an awful thing for a product meant to be enjoyed to make people feel.

Yeah, not sure about comparing pixels to your family members, chief. One of these things should be markedly more important to you than the other.

[Reinha]

To be completely honest, I see a lot of people complaining about massive glow ups. Your characters definitely look better after the update.

Could you tell me what about my character looks better now? I would appreciate if someone who likes the look of my updated character would help me see what there is to like.

[cutestfox]

Yeah, not sure about comparing pixels to your family members, chief. One of these things should be markedly more important to you than the other.

Not sure where your argument is, chief
The character isn't same person, "technical glow up" or not. I don't wanna play someone elses character, it's not that hard to understand

[Lnemoh]

To be completely honest, I see a lot of people complaining about massive glow ups. Your characters definitely look better after the update.

Facial features are subtle. A few mm can make a huge difference to how a facial feature / face is perceived - after all, we use our faces for communication, so we kinda tend to stare at them. So what you are saying here is highly subjective, and frankly comes across as flame baiting. It looks better *to you*. The fact of the mater is, the dev team promised to keep the original shape and feel of the faces, and they utterly failed to deliver on that. They instead gave us digital plastic surgery nobody asked for. Some faces fair better than others - never mind all the technical issues with shadow casting.

They need to do a better job of preserving what was already there, and if they want to change things they can just add it as an option to the character creator. More options is always better afterall.

[Evergrey]

the dev team promised to keep the original shape and feel of the faces, and they utterly failed to deliver on that.

"As close as possible" which is what they've always said is not the same like a promise for a 1:1 update though.

[Cheapshot]

Yeah, not sure about comparing pixels to your family members, chief. One of these things should be markedly more important to you than the other.

Obviously characters aren’t as important as family, but the point I’m making is that there are important aspects beyond just beauty that people care about and are sensitive to.

Uhhhh yeah dude, I know. I said exactly that. I guess you missed it in your rush to reply to me condescendingly. I kinda regret also saying this now:

and I appreciate your perspective

Why do the majority of people coming into this thread with a conflicting opinion act so antagonistic? I wasn’t rude to you. I tried to explain my point of view respectfully. I’m getting tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt and having it be a wasted effort.

[Lnemoh]

"As close as possible" which is what they've always said is not the same like a promise for a 1:1 update though.

I mean, you have gifs that compare faces before and after - and in a lot of cases the changes are pretty darn drastic, to the point of being a completely new face/facial feature. You can try flipping it either way, but to me that is not "as close as possible". Especially considering they should have increased the polycount, thus making it actually easier to do better morphs.

Again, if they had a new vision - thats great, add it as an option! The CC could use more features anyway. But all of this was clearly super under cooked. I hope that over the next few patches they address as much of it as possible.

[Evergrey]

I mean, you have gifs that compare faces before and after - and in a lot of cases the changes are pretty darn drastic, to the point of being a completely new face/facial feature. You can try flipping it either way, but to me that is not "as close as possible". Especially considering they should have increased the polycount, thus making it actually easier to do better morphs.

Again, if they had a new vision - thats great, add it as an option! The CC could use more features anyway. But all of this was clearly super under cooked. I hope that over the next few patches they address as much of it as possible.

There's probably room for fine tuning on several features that they can do.
I was simply pointing out that they never promised anything more than "close as possible".
Which, to be fair could mean that maybe some alterations wasn't possible to do closer to their original shape.
Or they simply need more time to fine tune stuff.

[Lnemoh]

There's probably room for fine tuning on several features that they can do.
I was simply pointing out that they never promised anything more than "close as possible".
Which, to be fair could mean that maybe some alterations wasn't possible to do closer to their original shape.
Or they simply need more time to fine tune stuff.

That is fair, and I agree. As a gamedev myself, I honestly think they just needed more time. But it's also why I think any constructive feedback is super critical right now - these threads should help them know what to focus on, what people like and dislike, and shape this in a way so that they can appease as many people as possible - that will also make for a better game in general. It's a win/win for everyone.