Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[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.

[FateweaverAlpha]

I've been completely unable to play my secondary main Duskwight character since the last time I posted. I finally slapped a mask on him just to prevent me from having to stare at this utter stranger of a toon that certainly isn't mine with these alterations.
-_-

I can barely play my main Au Ra Raen cause her features were hit just as badly. She looks like she's perpetually stoned in any cutscene she's in and I had to add black limbal rings to her eyes just to make them look remotely okay again. I never used limbal rings before this update.

I keep testing new combinations of features for both of my mains to try and fix them but nothing ever works. I just end up getting more depressed about it and logging off and playing other games. Haven't touched the DT storyline cause I don't want to play through it with these characters that look nothing like they used to.

I just keep being reminded of the last MMO I played where the devs would randomly change things and never respond when folks asked why.

[juicybug]

another hairstyle contest as well (i know its a completely different topic!)
but ones specifically for hrothgar & viera.

Also, being able to use a color wheel + saturation wheel when it comes to makeup.
being able to tint and widen blush/facial accessories like blush/stickers/tatts.
more skin shading & fleshy looks.
flipping the hair to the other side: or swapping the side at which the hair parts.
a large selection of eyebrows.

- more idle animations that don't have our character just staring into space. Have them look around, make facial expressions, or doze off after a long idle, or shift between an animations without doing /random idle so we can pick the two which we want to swap between. a little more life to them in general.
the bodies still look a bit blocky.
skin tone very bland, especially on darker skin. definitely needs some remapping/shading!

[Khryseis_Astra]

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.

I wouldn’t consider myself a “roleplayer” by the general usage of the word, but more like you’re describing here: I have a background story for my characters and general personality traits and such. I also come from a Final Fantasy background, having played most of the older games, and one of the things about XIV that really sold me was the ability to make myself a part of the story by creating my own character, as opposed to the older games where you play with a pre-existing cast.

So yes, the promise of changing my characters “as little as possible” was very important to me. As I’ve said before, I truly think there may be some scaling errors that have yet to be addressed, and I’m hopeful they will be. But if not, I may have to retire my alts, because they’ve changed so much, they’re not the same people. And with so few options in character creator, there’s no fixing that, free Fantasia or no. What would I Fantasia them to?

Honestly I’d just like them to address all the issues people are having with actual shapes of facial features being different, especially the eyes and the mouths, but on some faces the nose and philtrum were changed as well, and not for the better. I think from all the screenshots and GIFs, it should be easy to see that these are not just “different lighting making things look different” in most cases.