Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[smitten_miquitten]

New patch drops and still darker skinned, lighter haired Keeper of the Moon face 4 has no eyebrows ;.;
One day I'll be able to waggle my finally-visible eyebrows again, but it is not this day.

Please just copy/paste the Seeker eyebrows over, I beg.

[Moxxi]

All i saw in patch notes were texture fixes for some hairstyles and shadows on one style. Issues with headgear for female miqo'te hiding the ears too but doesn't exactly count.

[Tahli]

I hope one of these patches they also include a fix to decompress F Miqo face 2's squished thin eyebrows.

[Cheapshot]

I'm not sure if this means they'll fix it but they've accepted the bug report I made about female midlander face 1 eye shape 4. Fingers crossed.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-1-Eye-Shape-4

I’m very very glad for you but at the same time kinda dumbfounded. I have zero clue what they will and wont accept anymore. Just zero clue. Posts with every effort to be as detailed and compliant with their submission guidelines as possible get kicked back as “insufficient information” or “not a bug report” with no feedback as to what’s missing or what getting sent to “not a bug report” even means when there’s also a “working as intended” section. I still have no clue what they wanted from me when I was trying to report lip gloss being on despite none selected for lip colour, unlike how it was before. I assumed I initially got “insufficient information” because I summarized my system info instead of copy pasting that giant wall of text their launcher spits out. No idea though now. No feedback, no consistency. It’s like the wild west in there.

[SongOfTheWind]

I’m very very glad for you but at the same time kinda dumbfounded. I have zero clue what they will and wont accept anymore. Just zero clue. Posts with every effort to be as detailed and compliant with their submission guidelines as possible get kicked back as “insufficient information” or “not a bug report” with no feedback as to what’s missing or what getting sent to “not a bug report” even means when there’s also a “working as intended” section. I still have no clue what they wanted from me when I was trying to report lip gloss being on despite none selected for lip colour, unlike how it was before. I assumed I initially got “insufficient information” because I summarized my system info instead of copy pasting that giant wall of text their launcher spits out. No idea though now. No feedback, no consistency. It’s like the wild west in there.

The fact that they accepted it doesn’t mean it won’t go into “not enough info” or smth else like “working as intended”, they have done it multiple times. It just means that someone looked at it and did not see an issue with the format of the post.

[Doopliss]

I feel fairly certain they aren’t reading our feedback anymore, if they ever were reading the eng forum feedback. I reported a thread with racism and a slur in the OP and it’s still around the following day and over ten pages long. This forum is just abandoned and left as a troll playground. I’m just so frustrated because I want to stop subbing for a long time in protest but of course I finally won the housing lotto after trying to get a house for 5 years. Do I just give it up since I don’t want to play anymore with my face like this? Who knows how long it would take to win the lotto again on Balmung if they miraculously fix my face and I decide to come back??

They do still look here, they're just less active and way more silent about it vs. the JP moderators (who will always write a reason in the thread for their deletion of a comment). That thread you mentioned thankfully and finally got deleted, and even in this thread an insulting comment from one user simply calling another user insane is no longer anywhere to be seen.

I'm not certain what to suggest for your house, because I 100% can't blame you for wanting to vote with your wallet... However, I want to say that while all these individual changes are little things, together they add up a lot. It's annoying and aggravating because it's a several month wait, but I wouldn't expect to see major adjustments before 7.1 (although I think it's particularly insane that some clans are going to probably be running around with missing clan features for any amount of time).

Some folk on the JP thread were discussing how they did use the specific wording of "FFXIV's first graphic update", and I 100% wouldn't be surprised if they PR their way into any adjustments that come in a large patch as a "second graphic update", lol.
EDIT: Disregard this comment, somebody over on the JP forums linked an article where they go more in depth about why they called it that. Turns out they confirmed they have no current plans for a "second phase", but wanted to call it a first phase so as to not make players think this is the limit.

It's disheartening, but, again, they do have a history of fixing/updating things months later while being completely silent about it the whole way through. I don't know why they do that, and I wish they didn't, but they do. The Hrothgar missing ears incident comes to mind, which was another issue that seemed outside of their usual quality control. It took 4 months to get fixed while fans were left to rot with speculation on whether or not they were even listening.

They were also completely silent about a way simpler issue, like male Viera naming conventions, for 3-4 months--which was a completely unprecedented wait for that kind of update--while people were constantly asking for a simple acknowledgement on whether or not we were even getting them. They never acknowledged that; we just finally got the names one day.

Still, unlike those incidents, we did get any note of them confirming they'll continue to make adjustments, as small as it was. My hope is that they at least acknowledge it in the 7.1 live letter...

[Cheapshot]

It's disheartening, but, again, they do have a history of fixing/updating things months later while being completely silent about it the whole way through. I don't know why they do that, and I wish they didn't, but they do. The Hrothgar missing ears incident comes to mind, which was another issue that seemed outside of their usual quality control. It took 4 months to get fixed while fans were left to rot with speculation on whether or not they were even listening.

They were also completely silent about a way simpler issue, like male Viera naming conventions, for 3-4 months--which was a completely unprecedented wait for that kind of update--while people were constantly asking for a simple acknowledgement on whether or not we were even getting them. They never acknowledged that; we just finally got the names one day.

Still, unlike those incidents, we did get any note of them confirming they'll continue to make adjustments, as small as it was. My hope is that they at least acknowledge it in the 7.1 live letter...

I guess it’s that this situation is a little different in that unlike something missing or a bug, most of this is stuff they intentionally did. I don’t feel it lives up to their usual standard and it certainly let me down, but they might not see it that way? When it’s just a bug or something missing I can keep playing and not worry much about it because I figure it should get taken care of someday. It also doesn’t usually affect my enjoyment of the game overly much unlike the complete lack of desire to play I’m now experiencing. But since these were intentional decisions they made, and with them completely silent on this, there’s that anxious uncertainty. “Do they ever intend to fix/improve this? Am I waiting for something that will never happen?” I think that’s what makes this hit different.

The frustration of finally winning a house after trying at every opportunity since 2019, but it happened on, and I’m not kidding, the actual day I had planned to be my last day in the game until I had my character back again. Any day prior to having my spirits crushed by the changes in the benchmark and I would have been ecstatic to finally get my house. Now I can’t even enjoy it as I should. This game is too expensive for me, especially in Canada where my entry sub costs me 18$ a month. I was planning to vote with my wallet instead of paying for something I’m not enjoying anymore. But now I have to decide if I should keep forking over that money to keep hold of my house, waiting without any idea if more character adjustments are even being considered. I know I probably wont ever win the lotto again on my homeworld. I can’t believe it was on my last day. It almost feels like too much of a coincidence, farcical. Like what even??

[Doopliss]

[Snipped for post limit]

I understand where you're coming from and again I can't blame you at all. I'm really, really sorry for the situation this put you in. I only bring this up for the possibility of offering a little hope, because they do stuff like this all the time and, admittedly, a month isn't enough time for them to fix most things. Each adjustment between benchmarks was small and only on what select faces they could manage, after all.

In case it's difficult to remember, the Hrothgar missing ear thing was intentional. They laughed about it during the live letter and said something like "they're just hiding their ears under their hair!" like that made sense.

All in all, they probably think that little aggravating footnote is enough for now, and don't want to upset other players who are unbothered by the update by giving it a full announcement. Reading comprehension in FFXIV can be...wanting, and a lot of people tend to think "adjusting some shapes so they look more in-line with how the option appeared before" = "a call to downgrade the graphics". This is at least my guess from whatever bizarre pipeline and business perspective they have in this case, and considering some past events, like needing to dedicate basically two hours to explaining what a number squish in an MMO was so that players wouldn't misunderstand and get upset...

Again, though, I 100% understand where you're coming from. This is on a way larger and more disastrous scale than anything they've done before...but that is also the reason I believe they can't continue to ignore it forever. I hope people keep talking about it.

[Rueby]

I'm still upset over my character and decided "Well, I can just not look at her anymore, there's more to the game I guess" but now my eyes are constantly hurting, explosions that were bad became worse. Alot of areas have weird lighting, bright crystals, highly reflective floors, explosions, blinding light....I had issues with EW EX1 and EX2 for the scuffed visual clarity but it seems they're doubling down on this.

I want to play devil's advocate and say they're swarmed with issues but this is 100% on them. I hope our wishes for our characters and hopefully eye strain/mount tilt get resolved...

[GreenLeafy]

I saw people mentioning something about house lighting being fixed and figured I'd go and see how one of my favourite stained glass window corners looks and well...


Bonus pink hair at another part of the house.


Its been definitely an interesting experience to just accept that the game you've played for a decade for whatever reason just decided to get more buggy and messy than ever before but I guess that's just the product its decided to change into. Is it just for now? Couldn't say. Especially with how they've decided to throw all communication with their own playerbase to the wind and would rather just post engagement bait on their socials than address anything.

I want to play devil's advocate and say they're swarmed with issues but this is 100% on them. I hope our wishes for our characters and hopefully eye strain/mount tilt get resolved...

Honestly yeah , they stirred the shit pot themselves so they have only themselves to blame for this.

Seeing both NA and JP threads (with the JP ones having hundreds upon hundreds of upvotes of people just frustrated and upset at graphical issues and lack of communication) continuing even so long after Benchmark/EA/Official release , and any and all of that being ignored entirely truly sucks. But sure lets continue asking YoshiP and fans to ponder and argue over being horny for Bakool Ja Ja or the level of aggravating or nice Wuk Lamat is lol.

On a side note - kudos to all of you who put in the time and effort to make detailed bug reports , articulate your displeasure and overall really pull no stops on giving incredible ,concise and to the point feedback. Its terrible to see none of it get addressed or handwaved but am glad to see that I'm not the only one that just got driven insane by how incredibly mishandled and undercooked this update has been. You're the real ones.