Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Tarath]

6/7 Other observations

- Hands
One thing I feel this game desperately needs to update are hands. They did, yet they honestly look the same. There are added edges to the tips of the fingers, but the overall fingers are still square shaped. As much as I adore how well they have worked around these limitations before, it’s simply not enough when MSQ puts a lot of focus on the hands.


DT screenshots, Wuk Lamat in the middle

Could it be that Claws of the Beast are using old mesh? Doesn’t make much sense on Wuk Lamat as she’s a new npc.
However it could be the case on a player character. At first I thought the tips of the fingers were clipping through the claws, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the above image (thumb is rounded). The silhouette of the fingers remains the same which makes me unsure, yet the material on the skin seems off with the claws. Regardless if the claws are using old or new mesh, I was really hoping for a better upgrade on the hands as they needed it much more than the face in my opinion.


- Expression in Gpose twitching
Every smiling emote makes the mouth twitch in gpose.

Content, beam, taunt is shown here

Some other expressions like smirk have both the eyebrows and the mouth twitching.

The twitching didn’t align with the idle animation so they’re twitching twice in a row when the gif loops.

- Chest pieces with fur missing its edges
The fur on the shoulders for the edenmorn coats have lost its furry edges. I saw a bug report about it some time ago on a different chest piece, so I’m guessing several chest pieces with fur share the same issue.


- Retainer red under the eyes
Many of my complaints have been rather close up, but that’s not the case with one of my retainers.
Up close she’s fine, but from afar she looks sick and tired as it seems that she’s squinting along with being red under the eyes.


- Flickering Azem summoning circle
Final fight arena spoilers

When waiting for the queue to pop, I noticed the summoning circle flickers when zooming a bit in. I guess it has something to do with the camera colliding into the mesh, but I’m not sure.

[Tarath]

7/7 Final Thoughts

I’m not really bringing much new to the table as many have already posted about most of these issues. But I want to echo these things as I’ve encountered these myself without hunting for them.
A lot of people, myself included, feel a bit alienated from our characters not only because of the changes to face, but also the expressions being unfamiliar. Even though gameplay wise we don’t see our characters’ face, this is a story centric mmo that is not shy from being up close to character faces. Unfortunately a lot of the changes made to the graphical update feels rushed. Sure it looks fine on the surface, but give it some attention and a myriad of oversights shows up. Despite my criticism I genuinely have sympathy for the devs. The scope was simply too much with the time they were given. I know they can deliver stunning results as they have done in the past.
Though I fear that most of the changes are locked in now, I truly hope they will consider continuing to improve the player character and the overall graphics.

[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.

[CidHeiral]

Interestingly enough shadows on characters still have jittering textures which sometimes is worse than how they were before DT.

I noticed this as well and created a bug report about it here if you'd like to add your excellent examples as further evidence.

[Aco505]

I also experience something similar inside my house.

This happens to me in the market board of Gridania as well.

[lunartears]

This will be a lengthy one which I had to split up into several parts, please bear with me.

So well written, I really appreciate hearing from the perspective of a ♂ Au Ra player as I haven't seen many posts regarding them (at least ones that go into detail like this).

The sneer expression is one of the worst offenders, I can see that the same issue is on both ♀/♂. It doesn't seem as duck-like on ♂ Au Ra at the very least.

Looking at your ♀ Au Ra portraits, I get the impression of the lips looking more rougher. This has helped me to discover another factor where the "grotesque" feeling that I've been getting from ♀ Au Ra Face 1 is coming from.

I can see the face scales are warping like with ♀ Au Ra's, as you mentioned there's no doubt that this is an oversight considering how they fit on ♂ Au Ra. Really hope this gets fixed.

I agree with the hair texture losing detail, it happened with the hairstyle I use as well. It probably only affects the more "dynamic" hairstyles, the ones with a lot going on (which is plentiful for ♂ Au Ra).
It might be able to be resolved by darkening the hair in some very specific cases but with the limited colour palette and the changes to it there's only so much that could be done.

Also, I don't think the eyelash mention is a nitpick, my character's look feels totally lost with how they rotated and thinned them out and I can see the same on yours (though it might not bother you as much as me).

Your post has honestly inspired me to go and check for details I may have overlooked, but unfortunately I can't run the game at the moment.

[Khiiral]

Totally in agreement. My male Au Ra's scales are floating above his cheeks instead of actually being attached to them, presumably because they made the chin into a V instead of a U and didn't at all think to accommodate the narrower cheeks (which do not look great, and I would prefer them to be reverted). I had chosen his face because it was the "softest" and now he's just as angular as the rest. :\

[Feathetaria]

A more important one (to me) that I want to point out, though, is the nose.

This is just, straight up, again, a different shape? The little rabbit nose mark makes it fairly obvious, too... I chose the widest nose option for him (Nose 4) for a reason. Why make it less wide? It just looks like a slightly blown-up version of Nose 1 now.

The tattoo on the nose bridge is also no longer smooth like it was before, even from a distance. Please look over this...

lmao the first one looks cute and normal, but something... something about the 2nd one makes me want to just thrust my palm upwards into it like an uppercut. And i'm not even a violent person xD

[Doopliss]

lmao the first one looks cute and normal, but something... something about the 2nd one makes me want to just thrust my palm upwards into it like an uppercut. And i'm not even a violent person xD

Ahahaha, I don't mind the updated nose shape itself, but it's not his nose, so I definitely do feel that loss and frustration still. The original wide option was very cute...and the Viera nose mark looked especially endearing on it to me.