Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[smitten_miquitten]

Spending all Dawntrail looking like a male Highlander ;.;

[smitten_miquitten]

Face 4
Literally all three other faces

[Doopliss]

EDIT: I have very conveniently just found an old screenshot in more objective lighting and could make a more proper comparison. Everything is the same except the hair color.

God, I've been trying to not get upset about the current state of the graphical update because I'm choosing to believe they're going to fix it due to the language they used on the second benchmark lodestone post, but it's so hard to not feel that way every time I see ♀ Au Ra Face 2.

All the faces have weird decision making, but this one straight up just feels like a new face entirely. I've seen nobody argue against this specific one--even my friends who struggle to see detail differences are like "holy shit, that should be a Face 5 or something".

The theory about letting a developer's personal taste get in the way of the design updates feels the most true for female Au Ra, while the other races feel like they were sort of haphazardly done instead. The lighter scales, the insistence on making their pupils way larger (they actually decreased the size for male Au Ra on release to be closer to their original size, but not female Au Ra lol), the narrower mouths all around...

"As close as possible" is a blatant lie here. Ugh, sorry.

[ConantSivrha]

This issue is currently in 'Accepted bugs' in the English forums and it's listed as "fixed" in the JP bug area (was marked fixed a week or so post-Dawntrail launch), but the fix definitely isn't in game yet.
(…)
Current

Yeah. This is something I’ve been bothered by, too, but characters with dark skin and light hair definitely got the worst of it. I assume this change was made so that characters with light skin and light hair would have dark eyebrows that are more visible against their skin, but the underlying assumption that everyone with light hair is also going to have light skin is…well, we can see the result here.

Granted, my face 4 female miqo’te does have light skin and light hair, but even I hate the dark eyebrows. I made the character’s skin and hair colors very similar to each other intentionally, so it seemed perfectly natural that the eyebrows wouldn’t stand out much against the skin. The new eyebrow color looks unnatural and out of place, like something that could only be the result of makeup. (Though, I should add, an eyebrow darkening toggle or slider would be a great addition to the character creator. That female elezen* from a few pages ago who got her eyebrows bleached by the graphics update would certainly appreciate it.)

I hope that the bug being “accepted” means it’ll actually be fixed. Though, there seems to have been some attempt to fix it already (eyebrows are slightly closer to the real hair color in Dawntrail, compared to the benchmark), so I’m not sure what to think.

*The female elezen I mentioned:

[Einnecy]

<snip>

Honest to god the picture makes me feel physically ill. Every second I spend looking at it I feel a psychic damage over time effect on me. :')
It is irrefutable proof that the changes go beyond lighting. Proof that they did not fulfill their promise of maintaining the coherence of the characters. Dealing with that betrayal, and then also three weeks of silence, is especially upsetting given how quickly they resolved the housing issue. Even a simple "we are still currently investigating and reviewing feedback" announcement would be good.

I'm sorry for ranting, I've been trying really hard to offer constructive criticism and comparisons and keep ranting on a low, but just... holy f*ck. I knew it was bad, but somehow it's actually even worse. I could cry, but it's been three weeks. I'm all spent.

[Doopliss]

Honest to god the picture makes me feel physically ill. Every second I spend looking at it I feel a psychic damage over time effect on me. :')
It is irrefutable proof that the changes go beyond lighting. Proof that they did not fulfill their promise of maintaining the coherence of the characters. Dealing with that betrayal, and then also three weeks of silence, is especially upsetting given how quickly they resolved the housing issue. Even a simple "we are still currently investigating and reviewing feedback" announcement would be good.

I'm sorry for ranting, I've been trying really hard to offer constructive criticism and comparisons and keep ranting on a low, but just... holy f*ck. I knew it was bad, but somehow it's actually even worse. I could cry, but it's been three weeks. I'm all spent.

I can't blame you, it really does suck and I've felt straight up "queasy" (it's more that that's just how my anxiety forms...) looking at several of my characters and have felt equally bad for several of my unhappy friends. Even JP users are asking for just a simple comment of acknowledgement... I miss it when they used to actually respond on the forums pre-SHB.

As much as others will try to argue against those unhappy, though, they did say in the final benchmark lodestone post verbatim: "As always, we will remain open to feedback even after the updated benchmark update and Dawntrail have been released, and will also continue to address any issues or necessary adjustments in future patches!"

This is not vague language. They didn't fulfill what they told us twice before implementing the graphics update, so don't give up. It took them a full month just to fix up male Viera to be in a significantly better state between the first and second benchmarks, so hopefully time is all they need. I'm really hoping for 7.1 at the worst, since that offers several months. I'd like to know the details more clearly from them, however, instead of pretending all of these are just "subtle differences in nuance".

[Tahli]

Face 4
Literally all three other faces

I use face 2, and have an Accepted bug report on it too but the eyebrows are NOT supposed to look that thin and angular.
They honestly looked great in the first benchmark, even if the tail needed to be less sharply upturned, but benchmark 2 and beyond compressed them so angrily...

[Cheapshot]

This issue is currently in 'Accepted bugs' in the English forums and it's listed as "fixed" in the JP bug area (was marked fixed a week or so post-Dawntrail launch), but the fix definitely isn't in game yet. For Miqote face 4, eyebrows are now super dark and look really not great on darker skin
No idea what the shchedule for the fixes are but it's definitely not looking any better in game.

Endwalker
Benchmark 1
Benchmark 2
Current

So fwiw I expect it was labeled as “fixed” because they were intentionally darkened. They were darker than hair shade before, lightened in the benchmark, and then redarkened in either the benchmark v2 or the DT release (Incan’t remember which). I think it’s a little overcorrected perhaps though, and especially more noticeable on darker skin. On my character, darker eyebrows looks better, but man do we ever need an updated CC. They should let you pick eyebrow colour separately from hair colour!

[smitten_miquitten]

I'm sorry but they were NOT this dark before. In my Endwalker photos they're very clearly white, and in the first benchmark they are the same white, and now they are definitely grey. They were NOT grey in Endwalker. This is an extreme overcorrection, and the bug that was marked 'fixed' called this out, not the supposed lightening.

[Doopliss]

I'm sorry but they were NOT this dark before. In my Endwalker photos they're very clearly white, and in the first benchmark they are the same white, and now they are definitely grey. They were NOT grey in Endwalker. This is an extreme overcorrection, and the bug that was marked 'fixed' called this out, not the supposed lightening.

They are really bad at checking these changes with dark skin tones and it's painfully obvious. There's also the huge problem with female Highlander's makeup looking weirdly gross on really dark skin tones now when it didn't at all before. They need to stop making these changes haphazardly.