Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[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.

[Argantaelle]

Well, in a day I won't be able to post anything or even upvote other people's comments on FFXIV forums because my character has been logged out for 14 days already and I cancelled my sub. So I'd like to share my final thoughts about the infamous character update.

I have a feeling that people who got hit the hardest with character changes are kind of roleplayers — not the "roleplayer" type so popular on forums and Reddit, but roleplayers who like to immerse themselves in their characters. They might be engaged in RP events or not (I never participated in one, for example). But they usually enjoy making little stories about their characters, thinking about their background, their preferences, maybe some kind of character development since ARR until EW, etc. They create their characters to make a certain impression, and facial features are very important in making this impression (a hardened veteran, an enthusiastic adventurer, a sarcastic stranger with a heart of gold, etc.). FFXIV is a MMORPG that promotes this kind of behaviour, considering the focus on the story and the large number of cutscenes.

If a person is content with slapping on their humanoid-shaped mannequen for raiding gear 2B bottoms or Healer's Culottes, they won't object to any visual changes as long as their character stays hot. If for a person the main criteria is cuteness, they can use a free fantasia to change their face or transform into another, more cute race without a doubt.

But if a person is attached to their character, if they designed them with the intent of making a particular impression, if they played the same character literally for years and never used fantasia, any changes in face shape and expression would be difficult to endure. Especially if the changes are to the worst or the design team just put this race/gender/face combination to the end of the queue and probably didn't have enough time to do the job thoroughly (like with male Au Ra, who literally missed jaws when transformed or had their faces warped beyond recognition using certain emotes).

So the question is if the roleplayers are important enough to the FFXIV team to make character adjustments. So far, there hasn't been any reaction from the FFXIV team, so, I'm afraid, their answer is clear enough.

[Aurumis]

So the question is if the roleplayers are important enough to the FFXIV team to make character adjustments. So far, there hasn't been any reaction from the FFXIV team, so, I'm afraid, their answer is clear enough.

The team usually answers this things in liveletters and such. So we just wait. They didn't say much when rothgar girls and bunnies were asked everyday until liveletters brought the topic.

[GreenLeafy]

So the question is if the roleplayers are important enough to the FFXIV team to make character adjustments. So far, there hasn't been any reaction from the FFXIV team, so, I'm afraid, their answer is clear enough.

The worst part of it all imo. Its those types of people that really rallied and gave them free marketing whenever the big hype boom happened in SHB. All the WoL art you would see on socials of those same people invested so deeply into this game they wanted to share it through all means of creative output with the world. The landscape paintings from Eorzea , the people writing the stories expanding the narrative of their WoLs even further , even including some for beloved NPCs! And now people like that who didn't luck out with the mess the character update has are just thrown on the road - Thanks for the free advertisement , you don't matter anymore.

I can't even fantasia , people know me for the character I have been for years and even they don't see him as the same person anymore because my face changed so much with the update. From him I made a whole new character of my own that carried me through the development of my art career which is now just -poof- disappeared. Lives only in the Endwalker benchmark and the thousands upon thousands of screenshots from his journey.

Sigh , Idk , even after going through the entirety of DT I just couldn't get over the changes. Marketing misdirection with DT story , false promises with character update attention , half the gear in the game still looking the same as it did before , lighting issues across the board. All of that kinda just trumps the handful of good things I enjoyed from this expansion which is a shame.

But as you said aswell , their answer to all of those has been clear enough.

[Loggos]

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.

I completely agree. It always baffles me when people say "it's just subtle changes so it doesn't matter" when real life examples like plastic surgery are very strong counter examples.
If they are not overdone or result in cartoonish differences plastic surgeries can successfully alter a person's face with only subtle changes. They may be small but they are effective.
If they weren't, they wouldn't be so sought after.

Changing your nose shape just a little? Your face will look different. Changing your hair line just a bit? Your face is framed differently. Changing your eye brows/your mouth shape/your chin shape/the fat distribution in your cheeks? Small changes but noticeable effects.

And now, if a person has several procedures done these changes, which are small individually, add up.
If you make adjustments to the mouth + the nose, + the eye brows + the face shape you have literally tweaked the entire face. And as pointed out before by others this also has a significant effect on facial expressions. Emotions can look vastly different depending on the eye brow shape, the mouth and/or the cheeks etc.
It's a chain of dominos.

Many small changes at once still result in a perceivably different whole, regarding both your resting face and your facial expressions.
A big chunk of your vibe/personality is represented by those factors. As a consequence a character's whole vibe/perceived personality can change depending on the alterations done to their face.

[Aurumis]

The worst part of it all imo. Its those types of people that really rallied and gave them free marketing whenever the big hype boom happened in SHB. All the WoL art you would see on socials of those same people invested so deeply into this game they wanted to share it through all means of creative output with the world. The landscape paintings from Eorzea , the people writing the stories expanding the narrative of their WoLs even further , even including some for beloved NPCs! And now people like that who didn't luck out with the mess the character update has are just thrown on the road - Thanks for the free advertisement , you don't matter anymore.

I can't even fantasia , people know me for the character I have been for years and even they don't see him as the same person anymore because my face changed so much with the update. From him I made a whole new character of my own that carried me through the development of my art career which is now just -poof- disappeared. Lives only in the Endwalker benchmark and the thousands upon thousands of screenshots from his journey.

Sigh , Idk , even after going through the entirety of DT I just couldn't get over the changes. Marketing misdirection with DT story , false promises with character update attention , half the gear in the game still looking the same as it did before , lighting issues across the board. All of that kinda just trumps the handful of good things I enjoyed from this expansion which is a shame.

But as you said aswell , their answer to all of those has been clear enough.

we don't have answers yet, they are still fixing things with graphics, it's not as easy as you might think to change an entire game with a new look, just have hope and continue with your feedback and opinions on the matter, like how obsessed hrothgar girls and bunny boys were asked over and over and over and over again until they finally did it.

[ConantSivrha]

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

You’re unintentionally pointing out a big part of the problem. Our characters shouldn’t have gotten “massive glow-ups”. If they look more attractive, it should’ve been because of improved lighting or higher-quality textures—even new models could’ve worked, in theory, if they were faithful to the original features. We were told that the update would alter character appearances as little as possible, after all. Instead, the shapes of facial features have been altered to be more conventionally attractive. Of course that one will look “better”, removed from context and intent, seen by you for the first time in a comparison image.

The quality of a character design isn’t determined by how attractive the character is. It is far more important for the design to be memorable and have distinguishing features, and for it to say something about the character’s personality. Character faces now have different apparent personalities than they used to, often being changed to look sultry, cutesy, or just calmer and less alert, and facial features have been homogenized. This is bad because it unduly limits the diversity of potential player character designs and the personalities that can be portrayed effectively through those designs, even if we don’t consider anyone’s preexisting attachment to their character(s).

[Sairaag]

At this point, they really should make some sort of announcement, anything. The Japanese general discussion thread for the update has also shown increasing levels of frustration because there's no communication (though someone's clearly reading the thread since messages keep getting deleted). They're saying the same things we are, feeling disconnected from their characters, facial features changed too much, very detailed feedback with images, yet there's been no reaction.

Personally I'm struggling to accept my Simon Cowell'd WoL, and I want to know if this is their final plan for his face or if they're actually going to work on it in the near future. I don't want to potentially wait for years to like my WoL's face again. Also, cancelling my sub while waiting would mean losing the house I moved servers to finally get, so really I'm just preparing to cut my losses.