Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Len_]

I'm here to repost my feedback since staff confirmed this thread is being looked at.
Time has passed and I still actually cannot stand my character's face as it currently is. I haven't bought DT and now I know I absolutely won't unless my character's face is restored. My WoL is basically dead now and he was my connection to the game. I'm just reiterating to say that I'm not coming from a place of petty nitpicking. In my case it's the reason I will or will not keep playing this game into the future. It's just how it is for me. Not a threat, just the reality of my personal situation.

I'm sorry if my feedback isn't as detailed as others with drawovers and such but I just wanted to speak up. I haven't seen a lot of feedback regarding the specific features my character uses.

Many subtle changes result in a face I didn't recognize as the same person.

<Mouth Type 2>

The lip shape change is so obvious I don't know what else to say. The top lip contour has completely changed.
Where the lips meet has become more of a straight line and the top lips lost plumpness.
The slight cleft in the bottom lip contour has been rounded out.
The original lips are a really beautiful shape, please preserve them.
I miss the option to give a high gloss effect on the lips by changing the lip color. In the new character creator it applies only matte color to the lips.
I would like it if the shine was still an option, even without having to add extra color.

<Face Type 1, Jaw Type 1>

The high cheekbone and shadow contour that previously gave a more gaunt/hollow cheeks impression is now gone.
The jaw, chin, and lower half of the face overall looks more plump and rounded out.
The combined effect is that the character looks 10 years younger than he does in the live version.

<Eyebrow Type 2>
The eyebrow shape is different. I noticed on all the eyebrows for this face (Wildwood Face 1) the outside edge of the eyebrow has a "notch." Where the hair texture seems to have a small gap in the bottom.
It seems like a copy-paste error.
The inside part of the eyebrow is also no longer tapered but I personally do not mind it.
The eyebrows, while different, I don't think are detrimental to recognizing the face.

<Eye Shape Type 4, Iris Size Large>

The eyes I would describe as looking too "young." The dark circles under the eyes align differently to the bottom of the eye, which may be making them appear de-emphasized.
It seems like the upper eyelid, inner brow and eyelash contour has been lifted, or changed in a way that makes the eyes overall look bigger and gives a more alert expression.
This undermines the tired, placid expression that appealed to me when I created him.
Not specific to my character but I noticed that the sclera of the eyes seem unnaturally bright in some situations. Even when the face is in shadow the whites of the eyes pop out and it looks odd almost like the eyes are glowing from within.

To be completely fair, I can kind of see the appeal of this young fresh-faced twerp I see in the benchmark but it just simply isn't the face I know anymore.
I think many people who chose to play male Elezen embrace their more harsh features and I don't appreciate changes that result in him looking de-aged and "prettified" overall.
I think these subtle changes would be nice additional options to add to suit other tastes, not as replacements.

Here's another gif that show the drastic differences of the eyes and mouth.


I might do another post with drawovers and such because I don't think these images capture how FAT the male elezen faces look now. Especially if you look at them straight on it looks like they put on 10 lbs or got stung by bees.


(Open this in a new tab for full size)

[Alice_Rivers]

I didn't notice very much difference with my character, I know a friend was overjoyed with the changes to Au'Ra eyes, the only complaint I have is that my Miqo's tail is still just two 2d textures at a perpendicular angle. I kinda feel like a lot more should have been done in the years between 6.0 and 7.0, it seems to me hard to believe that SE couldn't bring on more modellers and/or artists for this project. I know that this is merely the first part of the graphics update (according to the patch notes) and in general I think it's off to a good start, but the finer details do matter. I know it's unrelated to this thread but if it's being watched by someone talking to the dev team, I'd like to point out in Gridania there's a piece of metal bridging two sections of wooden flooring - it has a metal sound texture and I love it, it's exactly the kind of attention to detail I'd like to see in the rest of this game.

[Nyavenger]

Please increase the resolution of the Face Paints, they look very pixelated compared to the rest of the face textures

[Moonfallen]

I'm gonna be honest from reading some of the posts of completely new people to the thread that have cropped up AFTER the community rep post it kind of really feels like they have not even glanced at the thread beforehand , let alone bother reading the hundreds of posts on it. A lot of posts like the one you quote seem like a kneejerk reaction of people who are happy about some of the things they received with the update and because of the preconceived notion they have of forum people providing feedback being put under the label of , " dumb whiners that are going to nitpick everything instead of getting gud and accepting the change" , that has been perpetuated across the community's social media , it in turn leads to miscommunication like this. When literally from Day 1 we got to lay our eyes on these changes these threads have been fighting for having the option to keep the old for those attached to it and the new for those who like it.

They're scared just like we were scared when the benchmark was initially released and we've been in these trenches for what is now months.
We don't want people to lose the things they've grown to love about their characters the same way we were unfortunate enough to experience. For goodness sake people , the depressing part is refusing to realize we're all on the same side here. To say seeing these posts has been exhausting is an understatement.

Exactly this. We know how they feel because we've felt like this for months so I don't understand why they are attacking everyone else here. The whole time we've been advocating for our old characters and characteristics back and keeping the changes they made as additional options. We aren't trying to make this miserable and dampen their mood on the game when we've been feeling that way a lot longer than they have. I had dread as soon as they showed off the changes at each fanfest because they definitely were not anywhere close to what they were promising and the benchmarks confirmed that for us.

[Iscah]

Something I noticed with my face 4 male Miqo'te is that in addition to the face being generally too shiny, the eyebrows have the same reflectiveness as the skin.

The eyebrows also seem to be sitting entirely inside the eye socket rather than along the rim. I'm not sure if this was the case in the original model, but if so then it wasn't obvious there.

[Astronis]

I'm gonna be honest from reading some of the posts of completely new people to the thread that have cropped up AFTER the community rep post it kind of really feels like they have not even glanced at the thread beforehand , let alone bother reading the hundreds of posts on it.

My first post in this thread is on page 8, for what it's worth. And my post directed to the community rep is directed to the community rep as a response to the community rep, not to anyone else nor about anyone else. Perhaps you knew that, but just as I would hope you'd forgive someone for not reading every post in a 130+ page thread, I would forgive you for not noticing mine. A fair bit of this entire thread's worth of feedback is not directed toward the community at large. Your stated desire for options does not mean SE will do that. Feedback fearful of what we've got now being taken is not directed at you or the community here because you cannot do anything about that. It's for SE.

[GreenLeafy]

My first post in this thread is on page 8, for what it's worth. And my post directed to the community rep is directed to the community rep as a response to the community rep, not to anyone else nor about anyone else.

I do remember you from the early pages! And you've been by far the most civil when it came to approaching the subject , in terms of hey I'm happy with some of the things I got so I hope its not a full reversal. Compared to some people who outright refuse to believe that some people might disagree with the changes THEY received and would like for everyone to have a happy middleground. Especially when some of the things are a feature that can be as easy as a literal toggle in the character creator , e.g. lip gloss or heavy eyeliner. So if anything my post there isn't even directed at someone like you.

I just really dislike seeing people trying so actively to split camps and pretend like we're not fighting the same battle here for ultimately a larger scope of customization for everyone AND everyone being happy. Even more so when words are thrown around that we want to ruin it for the people that got lucky. No - we just want to also have the characters we liked and had for years instead of losing them. To be as happy about the update on them as you are. And get what we were promised by developers - integrity of characters preserved and updated to better textures instead of outright edit of facial structure that was something people got affected by to a varying degree.

And at the end of the day this is a public thread , with many voices , wanting many different things which however share the same goal - logging onto the game and being happy with how our WoL looks instead of dreading logging on because you mourn the character you had for years be replaced. I genuinely don't wish that upon anyone cuz it turbo sucks.

Your stated desire for options does not mean SE will do that. Feedback fearful of what we've got now being taken is not directed at you or the community here because you cannot do anything about that. It's for SE.

Welcome to the club homie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[SaraSin]

If possible and if someone has the time, could someone take a screenshot of EW vs DT version of this face? I'd do it myself but I dont think I have enough space for the EW benchmark :/

Sunseeker Miqo
Face 1
Skin 1,1
Jaw 1
Eye 4 Large
Eyebrow 2
Nose 3
Mouth 4 Light 6,2
Facepaint 4 (the slight eyeshadow) Dark Black

I feel like the eyes are way more open now, but it could be the lessening of the makeup in the update and it feels like the lips had injections. I just want to see what it used to look like

[Moonfallen]

My first post in this thread is on page 8, for what it's worth. And my post directed to the community rep is directed to the community rep as a response to the community rep, not to anyone else nor about anyone else. Perhaps you knew that, but just as I would hope you'd forgive someone for not reading every post in a 130+ page thread, I would forgive you for not noticing mine. A fair bit of this entire thread's worth of feedback is not directed toward the community at large. Your stated desire for options does not mean SE will do that. Feedback fearful of what we've got now being taken is not directed at you or the community here because you cannot do anything about that. It's for SE.

You're actually one of the people we refer to when we mean others have come to this thread voicing how and why they are happy with the current update without being hostile, at least for me. We all want the same thing and for the devs to do right by everyone for the absolute mess.

[Glyphs]

I posted this in the matching JP thread too, hence some of the notes on the images, but here are my thoughts!

I'm glad that feedback is still being listened to. I had a lot of fun playing through Dawntrail, but to be quite honest, I still feed quite sad when I look at my WoL... I did not get used to the update as much as I hoped I would, because her face still looks so different.



Eyes:
The iris is smaller, and the pupil is larger. The iris no longer reaches the bottom of the eye's waterline. These changes are intentional stylistic changes, rather than changes due to the lighting. The combination gives the eye a very different shape and feeling. I feel like the sizes could be adjusted slightly, to their previous proportions, for a better feeling.



The "eyeliner" option on Face 1 is now very light. The upper eye feels less defined because of this. Looking between the setting turned on and off, you can see how light it is... I think making this darker, like before, would help. If people do not want this darker eye, they can turn the option off. It's honestly so light, that I wonder if it's actually not working as intended?



Mouth:
The curve of the mouth when smiling is very different to before. This has been my biggest problem when playing Dawntrail... it's so sad to admit, but after loving my WoL's smile for almost 10 years, I now hate seeing her smile. Her expressions simply look so unlike her! Here are some comparison images:



These are all the "Simper" expression, which is the softest smile in the game. The cutscene screenshots are all from the exact moment in each cutscene. As you can see, her smile was quite subtle before, which has now been lost.

I hope our feedback is useful, and that the love we have for our WoLs can be taken to heart. Thank you.