Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Shnrnr]

Wildwood Elezen
Face: 3
Skin RGB: 247, 214, 189
Jaw: 1
Eye: 4
Iris: small
Eye RGB: 147, 157,89
Brow: 1
Nose: 6
Mouth: 4
Lip: Dark
Lip RGB: 74,26,66
Facial feature: 1 (dark brow)
Face paint: 4 (outer eye shadow)
Face paint RGB: 168,120, 185



The upper lip (mouth type 4) has been flattened:
Endwalker:

Dawntrail:


...but the biggest change is the eyes (settings: eye shape 4, small iris, color RGB: 147,157,89, eyebrow 1):

• DT brow is thinner, with hairs at a different angle
• DT lashes are thinner
• DT eyeliner on upper lid extends to the inner corner
• DT pupil is smaller
• DT iris is lighter, with greater contrast with the outer ring
• DT eye whites are more grey, with less contrast between the white and the iris (this alone helps account for much of the sense that the "light" has gone out of our characters' eyes)
• DT eye has darker shadow below the upper lid
• the inner corner of the DT eye is higher (note how the corner of the EW eye white lines up with the flesh corner, while the DT eye white does not)
• there's significantly more space between the DT eye and the brow

Endwalker:

Dawntrail:


These changes may seem "minor", but the overall effect definitely changes my character into someone I don't recognize. They make her look bored/annoyed or "soulless", as many others have commented about their characters. There was no reason for the basic design and geometry of any of these facial features to change. I tried a few fanta tweaks, but nothing makes my character look the way she did. If I had the option to "turn off" the entire graphics update just to get my character back, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Going to try to stop obsessing about this now. Thanks again to the devs for listening. My fingers are crossed.

[Doopliss]

I wonder what happened to the people that posted early on in the thread when DT first launched. Have you guys gotten used to the changes or has the graphics update just demotivated you from logging in whatsoever?
I ask because it looks like a lot of people didn't fanta into something else despite their grievances. Not trying to antagonize or belittle anyone; disliking the update is totally valid. Just curious where you all stand 2 months later.

In this thread, from what I've seen, it's a bit of everything. A lot of people have specifically mentioned taking a hiatus so they can quite literally no longer post, while others are still subscribed so that they can simply keep giving feedback and/or keep their house.

For me, personally, I'm just dealing with it because I still do love the game in spite of all my complaints, and have been coping for the past two months that they'll fix things up eventually. I'm also luckier because I'm mostly okay with my Elezen, but two months later her mouth line having an upwards, smile-like curve when it didn't before still bothers the hell out of me.

Several of my alts remain really difficult to look at, though, so I've just been doing as much on my main as possible and hoping they'll get fixed up (again, I'm not actually expecting things to be 100% the same, but I want the options I picked pre-DT to still resemble those options) by the time I "run out" of things to do on her, lol.

A lot of people in this thread specifically didn't fantasia because they're roleplayers or writers of some kind, and so what their character is and how they look are very important to them--myself included. Changing a character I've had for years to an entirely different race or even face, admittedly, just makes them no longer that character to me...and, well, to be plain, it's depressing to lose them, you know?

That's why some of the face/option changes being so drastic hurt, because there's really no equivalent to what you had before that you can switch to with a fantasia. That's why a lot of us are simply dealing with the face changes; it's still technically the closest option, even if we think it looks too different from before. Sorry, I hope that made sense.

[CuteBucket]

I wonder what happened to the people that posted early on in the thread when DT first launched. Have you guys gotten used to the changes or has the graphics update just demotivated you from logging in whatsoever?
I ask because it looks like a lot of people didn't fanta into something else despite their grievances. Not trying to antagonize or belittle anyone; disliking the update is totally valid. Just curious where you all stand 2 months later.

I have not gotten use to the changes at all and it does keep me from logging in and playing. I log in to raid with my static because that is a social commitment with friends that I agreed to, and then I log out. I keep my camera zoomed out and don't look at my character very closely because he looks wrong. I could fanta, yes, but I like my catboy. He's based on a character I love from Fire Emblem, so I don't want to change him into something different.

I've logged in on my Au Ra female (face 3) alt a few times, but she made it out of the graphics "update" even worse than my catboy, and it genuinely depresses me to look at her. She is a character that is very close to my heart who I have commissioned artwork of and has a whole detailed background and story. The face and the features I chose when I created her influenced what kind of person I decided she should be. To change her face is to change who she is.

[Tahli]

I wonder what happened to the people that posted early on in the thread when DT first launched. Have you guys gotten used to the changes or has the graphics update just demotivated you from logging in whatsoever?
I ask because it looks like a lot of people didn't fanta into something else despite their grievances. Not trying to antagonize or belittle anyone; disliking the update is totally valid. Just curious where you all stand 2 months later.

Still playing, while also waiting and hoping adjustments will be made. Not in any rush though.
My own personal preferences for adjustments for my character are a lot less than others I've seen: some bugs to be fixed, lighting/shading on characters to be adjusted in general, but most of all, for my eyebrows to be softened again. I've held off on gposing for now though.

[Windfire]

I wonder what happened to the people that posted early on in the thread when DT first launched. Have you guys gotten used to the changes or has the graphics update just demotivated you from logging in whatsoever?
I ask because it looks like a lot of people didn't fanta into something else despite their grievances. Not trying to antagonize or belittle anyone; disliking the update is totally valid. Just curious where you all stand 2 months later.

Have not gotten used to the changes, still hate em, unfortunately paid up till Nov, so really all I've been doing is pvp (but not shatter days, don't bother logging). Won't ever "get used to" the changes either, how do I know? Cause I'm STILL bitter about the butchery Blizzard did to my WoW chars years later.

[Iscah]

As a fellow male Miqo'te face 4, yes, they absolutely ruined the eyes. My character looks stoned at all times now with the shadowed eyes and placid smile they slapped on him. My man looks like he's about to fall asleep. Fitting through the Dawntrail MSQ but certainly not on purpose.

Why is that shadow over the eyeball texture there? Why is it SO DARK? My character is supposed to have these striking orange eyes and now I can barely see them, let alone see the "cat eye" pupil shape with how heavy they made the shadows.

As I posted earlier, I think there have been alterations to some extent on all the male Miqo'te eye shapes and it's easier to see what's going on with a big-eyed face like #3. The eye shape and structure have totally changed and it makes the eye extra-shadowed by the veiling eyelashes and the shadow cast by the eyelid instead of both those things being higher up and out of the way.

It's harder to see changes to the eyes on my face 4 Miqo'te – I'm not sure if his dark skin colour makes it harder to see the difference or if his particular eye shape is less affected by the changes.

I think the alterations to the face 4 eyebrow shape are having as much or more effect on the character's changed mood as the shouldn't-be-there smile. I think the underlying face structure is bending them into a less severe shape, in addition to being thinner than before.

[Iscah]

I wonder what happened to the people that posted early on in the thread when DT first launched. Have you guys gotten used to the changes or has the graphics update just demotivated you from logging in whatsoever?
I ask because it looks like a lot of people didn't fanta into something else despite their grievances. Not trying to antagonize or belittle anyone; disliking the update is totally valid. Just curious where you all stand 2 months later.

My characters are specific characters with names and identities; Fantasia is not an option unless it can magically take them back to their original appearances.

I have definitely not gotten used to the changes. Sometimes the character can still look good but they're still not right and the redone graphics are prone to making them look extremely uncanny, whether it's turning into a puffy-faced nightmare in bright sunlight or having a smile that looks unnatural when I used to love how they looked when smiling.

The game had a lovely style of character design and they've thrown it away for something inferior. It needs so much more polishing to bring it back to the previous level of presentation, whether they keep the new style or try to go back to the old one.

[Kaziek]

I wonder what happened to the people that posted early on in the thread when DT first launched. Have you guys gotten used to the changes or has the graphics update just demotivated you from logging in whatsoever?
I ask because it looks like a lot of people didn't fanta into something else despite their grievances. Not trying to antagonize or belittle anyone; disliking the update is totally valid. Just curious where you all stand 2 months later.

I appreciate you asking in a non-hostile way. Everyone has their own opinion and that's totally fine whether it's for or against the changes! For me personally it hasn't stopped me from playing the game completely but it absolutely has impacted how much I've been able to enjoy the expansion. Even two months in I still have way less motivation to do things like gpose, which means that I'm less likely to stay subbed during a content lull.

As many others have stated using a fantasia isn't really an option for me because any character that I make I have a pretty specific idea in mind for, so changing to something else entirely just really isn't something I'd bother doing. I'd probably just stop playing the character at that rate.

[azaleai]

I wonder what happened to the people that posted early on in the thread when DT first launched. Have you guys gotten used to the changes or has the graphics update just demotivated you from logging in whatsoever?
I ask because it looks like a lot of people didn't fanta into something else despite their grievances. Not trying to antagonize or belittle anyone; disliking the update is totally valid. Just curious where you all stand 2 months later.

I've honestly just been raidlogging since I already agreed to raid with several groups this tier and I didn't want to let them down... Just logging in frequently enough to do roulettes for tomes has been a struggle, I'm seriously considering finishing up this tier and unsubbing, but... I know at least one of those groups (and possibly two) are expecting me to do the new ultimate with them. I don't really see myself enjoying it much, though.

For me it's not just the graphical changes, I main(ed) black mage and the changes to it (and the fight design) make it incredibly unpleasant to play. I'm not hating raiding on other classes, but I'm always thinking "I miss black mage", except. old black mage. Picto is fun and cute and I certainly don't dislike it, but it feels like an alt class to me.

The graphics are kinda the same, now I'm done with MSQ and not having cutscenes that zoom in on the face thrown at me every 20 seconds. I can sit though a raid session or do some gathering and it almost starts to feel like the same old game... and then I turn the camera around or see my portrait and I cringe.

I didn't fantasia because my character is an intrinsic part of this game to me; it's her story, her world. Starting over with a new character would feel like starting to play a new game I have no attachment to (though, I suppose I'm already experiencing that). She's a muse to me - I would be wasting years worth of art, stories and screenshots if I were to start fresh.

I don't think I can adequately express how rough the past two months have been for me without divulging that I'm autistic and this game is (well... perhaps was) my special interest, and perhaps the stereotypical dislike of change has something to do with my refusal to fantasia. I used to play daily for hours, delving into any and every piece of content I could, racking up hundreds of days of playtime without ever getting burned out in the slightest. And now? It's not the game I fell in love with, that I devoted years to. Now, on days I don't have raid? I don't even log on. And raid days I'm on for the duration of raid and nothing more, no dailies, weeklies or achievement hunting. I haven't found anything to fill the void and occupy the extra time I have on my hands now either, so I have plenty of time to ruminate on why it feels so wrong.

Suffice to say... If I could 'vote with my wallet' without causing problems for my friends, I definitely would.

[Argantaelle]

I wonder what happened to the people that posted early on in the thread when DT first launched. Have you guys gotten used to the changes or has the graphics update just demotivated you from logging in whatsoever?

I couldn't play and stopped paying a sub for about a month, I guess (I don't remember), but then I sat and thought: I pre-purchased DT, I paid for it, and I didn't want to refund DT because of sentimental reasons (I've been playing FFXIV for about a decade; it's not that kind of ties that are easy to break), so I might as well create a brand new character. And if my main isn't fixed when I get to the end of DT, well, that will be the time to make a decision.

I'm not afraid of quitting a game because of character changes; I left WoW after 7 years and Destiny II when they changed my character's face and voice (the character remodelling wasn't the sole reason, but it was one of the major ones). I never logged back since then.