Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Doopliss]

Re: Expressions: They really are scuffed on every single race. Some are worse and more buggy than others, but I haven't had a single one of my thirteen(!) characters manage to avoid all of their emotes having:
1. Twitchy lips
2. Twitchy brows
3. Eyes too narrowed or too widened
4. Smile pulled up unnaturally tightly
5. Some fifth other thing unique to them

I took screenshots of all of my characters' Adventurer Plates right before 7.0 hit, because I had a feeling the feature changes would mess up their expressions (and was half correct; turns out bugs also mess them up!) and wanted to save something simpler to reference.

Unfortunately I just never had the energy to go through a bunch of emotes and take reference-worthy screenshots of them... I play a lot of different race/gender combinations though, so hoping this might still help in some way for some...


♀ Elezen Face 4. This is one I did edit lighting on because, well, she's my main, and one of the like, three characters I'm still okay with. The eyes got more narrowed for some reason here, and while I'm fine with how this looks...this is supposed to be the "Concentrate" expression. Now it looks too much like "Annoyed".


♀ Midlander Face 2; "Concentrate". Eyebrow barely manages to lower at all... Also her eye shape difference is showing even too much at this angle, so it's kind of hard to tell what else is going on.


♂ Miqo'te Face 1; "Amazed". Eyebrows move in a different direction and eyes grow way too wide. Lips also don't curve enough. Looks more like "Frightened" now...


♀ Au Ra Face 2; "Taunt". Eyes feel too narrow and forehead scales stretch down with her brow for some reason now? Though also her face has just changed too much to even be certain on some things.


♂ Au Ra Face 3; "Think". Honestly this one still just takes me out. Lips are way too pursed due to the new lip shape, and the eyebrow on the right doesn't curve with the left one.


♂ Lalafell Face 2; "Smirk". Just miffed at this one because it feels like my Lalafell isn't allowed to have a hint of personality outside of "cute" for sure now, lol. Lips stretch in a completely different way and don't grow as wide, making the smirk look less like a smirk. Weirdly, eyes also can't look as far off to the side anymore? The upper area of Lalafellin eyes seem to have darkened way too much, like ♀ Viera now, too.


♀ Viera Face 2; "Furrow". I had her look down and away to give a more wistful expression. Why do her eyes...do that now...


♀ Au Ra Face 3; "Furrow". Her eyebrows do the worm in the update.


♀ Roegadyn Face 4; "Wink". God, this one is kind of just...everything. Poor Roegadyn women really did get shafted as usual. Her lips are pulled up too narrowly and too tightly, and her eye has pressed shut in the opposite direction. She looks like she forgot how to wink.


♂ Miqo'te Face 4; "Annoyed". Upper lip is pulled up too high, giving him a more pouty expression. It's also pulled up high enough that his teeth start to show.

Artifacting from the teeth can actually be seen slightly on the zoom in...


♂ Midlander Face 4; "Shush". Honestly, this emote seems fine... I think this image just further illustrates the facial feature differences. It helped me notice that it wasn't his nose that got shorter--it's that his mouth is placed lower on his face!


♂ Viera Face 2; "Grin". This one is, well, fine. I can live with this difference. But for reasons particular to me, I loved the slightly wider smile and more narrowed eyes...


♀ Highlander Face 1; "Victory". The expression might be fine? I honestly can't tell with this one still, because several things about her got so scuffed just because she has one of the darkest skin tones...

Anyway! Really sorry for this niche and definitely horribly organized post. It's honestly, really, really embarrassing showing off how many characters I play and care about--before this I enjoyed being quiet and not connecting them all together--but it's also just as hard to sit back and hope. I have so many characters because I do love this world, and I love creating characters with their own specific aesthetics, personalities, goals, and writing stories around all of that. Even though I'm not good at editing and definitely annoying about it at this point, I feel like I need to try as much as I can...

posting to the forum sucks aaaaaaa i hope everything goes well and we can all forget about this within a few months anyway hopefully my last post for a while since i just threw them all out there

[Iscah]

lAnyway! Really sorry for this niche and definitely horribly organized post. It's honestly, really, really embarrassing showing off how many characters I play and care about--before this I enjoyed being quiet and not connecting them all together--but it's also just as hard to sit back and hope. I have so many characters because I do love this world, and I love creating characters with their own specific aesthetics, personalities, goals, and writing stories around all of that. Even though I'm not good at editing and definitely annoying about it at this point, I feel like I need to try as much as I can...

Don't be embarrassed! I'm in a similar situation and a similar approach to creating lots of characters based on specific concepts and lore ideas, and I've been meaning to make a similar post myself once I gather up all my screenshots better. I unfortunately didn't think to take screenshots of portraits, but I've got stacks of glamour, cutscene screenshots and random admiring-my-character screenshots to go through.

---

On a separate note, I have ended up switching on the additional dark eye makeup setting for Aurelie and it helps a bit to get the clear outline of the eyes back, but they're still the wrong shape overall and it doesn't fix the weird things that lighting now does to faces. (Plus, if turning it on gets me back to sort of where my character previously was without it, what does that mean for the people previously using it?)

I feel like maybe the smaller eyes have changed the face proportions enough that the very high hairline of her previous usual hairstyle isn't quite working any more. Though maybe I'm thrown off a bit by having tried the newly released style for a few days (which has a particularly low hairline) so going back looked more odd. Now I'm trying some others but really I'd like to get back to her normal look.

[Doopliss]

Don't be embarrassed! I'm in a similar situation and a similar approach to creating lots of characters based on specific concepts and lore ideas, and I've been meaning to make a similar post myself once I gather up all my screenshots better. I unfortunately didn't think to take screenshots of portraits, but I've got stacks of glamour, cutscene screenshots and random admiring-my-character screenshots to go through.

Ahaha, thank you for the reassurance, I really do appreciate it. I actually do recall you mentioning something similar--about having many characters you care about--during the initial benchmark, and admittedly poked around the glamour page you have linked. I've always wanted to say that I love the glamours you make for your characters! They're so thoughtful and befitting of the setting; I can see clearly you love telling stories with them.

And that's a huge part of why I really, really want to continue hoping they'll look over this and correct things not just for myself. We've lost what diversity of options we had due to...whatever. It doesn't matter if it was beautification, simplification, or even an outright accident. Just please return those options to us. Certain shapes aren't obtainable anymore, meaning certain resting expressions aren't obtainable anymore, which leads to an entire character design getting thrown off.

At the very least, I'd like to see corrections or acknowledgement of upcoming corrections for the more obvious loss of clan features, like ♂ Duskwight's missing skin textures, or the basically missing ashy nose for Hellsguards by 7.05.

[Rueby]

Snip

I submitted a bug report about the twitchy everybrows (and later lips/mouth)...Fingers crossed they even see it and/or fix it. If that fits it, maybe you can post there too?
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...al-expressions

[Iscah]

Ahaha, thank you for the reassurance, I really do appreciate it. I actually do recall you mentioning something similar--about having many characters you care about--during the initial benchmark, and admittedly poked around the glamour page you have linked. I've always wanted to say that I love the glamours you make for your characters! They're so thoughtful and befitting of the setting; I can see clearly you love telling stories with them.

Thankyou! No need to "admit" you've been looking at my glamours; I love to hear it.

[Roido_Avingu]

Once again, I decided to do a comparison of my catboy, because damn I miss playing as him and... the sideview comparisons are fairly jarring. 6.58 Benchmark is on the left, 7.0 Benchmark on the right. I can appreciate the detailed hair and slightly better skin details, but that's where my praise ends. Aside from the obvious permanent lip gloss, you can see how noticeably different the lip shapes are now, and it looks like his chin hair doesn't even cover the bottom of his chin.

Eye shape seems to have shrunk in Dawntrail, as well as his eyebrows, and his eye markings look weird now. Overall, while the Dawntrail model has all the options I picked back when I first made him in Shadowbringers, it's not him. It looks sort of like him, but it's not the character I played all these years. He looks like he's permanently smiling slightly, instead of the neutral expression I was used to.

[Doopliss]

There is no shame in being passionate. I can't speak for everyone here, but I assume that no small amount of us here are roleplayers and artists of some caliber, myself included. This rich world is there for us to breathe more life into it, and how can we do so if we cannot connect to it because our characters are not the ones we've come to know and love for so long? Many have brought up that one Koji Fox post, so I shall only mention it. But for a game that seemed to treasure us, our characters, and our shared experiences, they have undoubtedly failed us. And I think we are right to be upset. There's no shame in that either.

I don't know who these changes were made for, but they are not for the people who have come to love the style of the game all the way from 1.0 up until 6.58.

Thank you, too, for being so understanding. I really, really do appreciate it. I also agree with everything you said. It's not an exaggeration to say it's been a relief to know there are other players who feel and see the same as us...but, at the same time, it's so disheartening to witness how many players they've failed with the update so far.

I submitted a bug report about the twitchy everybrows (and later lips/mouth)...Fingers crossed they even see it and/or fix it. If that fits it, maybe you can post there too?
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...al-expressions

Yeah, I'll try that. I hadn't made bug reports on them because I don't have a good resource for decent gifs, but I'll at least add the face options I've personally seen affected to your thread.

I should probably make a bug report for my Seeker's upper lip and my Seawolf's eye. I think somebody else already made one for Viera eyes closing too much when looking down?

Maybe another for the holes in my ♀ Viera's hairstyle, ugh. Although I already tried to report that in the JP forums all the way back during the initial benchmark.

[Einnecy]

<SNIP>

Every single character you've shown exudes a different energy than they did before DT. It truly is horrible how they've managed to mangle our characters, and under a promise to preserve them no less.

Anyway! Really sorry for this niche and definitely horribly organized post. It's honestly, really, really embarrassing showing off how many characters I play and care about--before this I enjoyed being quiet and not connecting them all together--but it's also just as hard to sit back and hope. I have so many characters because I do love this world, and I love creating characters with their own specific aesthetics, personalities, goals, and writing stories around all of that. Even though I'm not good at editing and definitely annoying about it at this point, I feel like I need to try as much as I can...

There is no shame in being passionate. I can't speak for everyone here, but I assume that no small amount of us here are roleplayers and artists of some caliber, myself included. This rich world is there for us to breathe more life into it, and how can we do so if we cannot connect to it because our characters are not the ones we've come to know and love for so long? Many have brought up that one Koji Fox post, so I shall only mention it. But for a game that seemed to treasure us, our characters, and our shared experiences, they have undoubtedly failed us. And I think we are right to be upset. There's no shame in that either.

I don't know who these changes were made for, but they are not for the people who have come to love the style of the game all the way from 1.0 up until 6.58.