Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[noumen0nn]

but the shift towards what seems to be more semi-realism is not it. the characters are too stylized for it to work. i dont want to see my characters every pore and skin texture, i dont want to see every detail on his face, i just want it to look... good?

100% this. The artstyle in which XIV was created does not lend itself at all to realism, and trying to head in that direction was the wrong choice. It would be like if you took a classic, stylized anime like Sailor Moon, and overlayed realistic pore textures over all the skin and drew veins in all the eyes (I'm exaggerating obviously but you get the point). And what bugs me is, you don't *need* to head toward realism in order to up the graphics of a game. Guilty Gear Strive, Monster Hunter Rise, TotK, just to name a few, are all visually stunning games with distinct art directions, and none of them accomplished it by making sure to over-render every single wrinkle of every character's face.

[CidHeiral]

I think it's important to also state your character's race and character creation parts when saying things like this. You may be right but I don't think it's a true blanket statement for every race/option/maybe even color of eyes/etc.

I have yet to see a comparison where the old eyes look better than the new ones so I would say the upgrade is universal, but I concede there could be some niche graphical error I'm not aware of. However my feedback isn't really aimed at that, it's more toward the general "new eyes are soulless revert to the old eyes" feedback. The old vacant, lifeless eyes always bothered me and I would strongly prefer not to go back to that.

While I agree that the totally-pure-white eyes could look out of place in the new graphics, one look at the state of character portraits should be enough to see that eyes look terrible right now. They are dark grey and dead, and need some touching up

I'd have to disagree. I think they look fine, but to each their own.

The pure white sclera and radioactively glowing iris would absolutely look ridiculous now as they did prior to 7.0. Between that and their overly defined teeth the pre-7.0 characters remind me of the villain from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.



I'm not here to argue about it though I just want to let the devs know not everyone is in agreement on this "soulless eyes" feedback. I have no reason to push back on feedback for features that don't effect me but eye changes generally effect everyone. The last time they addressed that same feedback they turned up the catchlights to a degree that looks quite bad, in my opinion.

[Cyrtip]

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 didn't get used to the changes, I threw a mask on every single one of my gearsets so I wouldn't have to see the face. I looked at what limited option we have via fantasia, and none of them solved the problems I had with the update, so I'm stuck with what I've got...
It isn't solely the graphics update that's demotivated me from logging in, but its one of the big three. The character I played is a different person, the only four jobs I liked had changes ranging from ruined garbage I will never play again to simplification that just makes them boring now, and the new chapter in FFXIV's MSQ is the worst story I have ever played in a videogame. Adding on to the first point, the new graphics and lighting have also retroactively ruined playing any of the old MSQ again, because the mood lighting is gone, characters look like imperfect clones, and emotes look downright uncanny, so even though I've wanted to replay the old story again I've held off from doing it.
I used to spend most of my free time playing FFXIV, trying every single piece of content in the game, even achievement hunting. Now, I only log in twice weekly to play savage with friends, and a third time for tomes (Which consists of going AFK at an aetheryte waiting for a hunt train to begin, while playing a different game), and I'll stop doing that when I have enough for a single job's BiS.

[Astronis]

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'm not the exact audience for this question, but I'll answer from my perspective of someone who has been following this while every now and again coming back to say how much I love the updates--now that it's been two months, I am still very happy with the changes and I can't look at my old screenshots from EW without cringing a bit. The old graphics always had some issues I didn't like that have been fixed or vastly improved by the DT update, and now those issues just stand out to me even more in my old screenshots. So, yeah, I've gotten used to the change, but I loved it from the start so it wasn't difficult to do. My WoL now looks much more like he was always supposed to look, but that 2.0-6.0 was unable to portray.

I have yet to see a comparison where the old eyes look better than the new ones so I would say the upgrade is universal, but I concede there could be some niche graphical error I'm not aware of. However my feedback isn't really aimed at that, it's more toward the general "new eyes are soulless revert to the old eyes" feedback. The old vacant, lifeless eyes always bothered me and I would strongly prefer not to go back to that.

Yeah, overall, the new eyes look bloody fantastic. The new materials and the lighting put more life into them than they've ever had. That said, I can see people having some issues with the limbal rings on au ra since they look to be done differently so the glow effect can be overwhelming and also weird when it's a 'glow' around a dark color, or some Sunseeker miqo'te eyes, it's a little hard to see the slit pupil on some faces. Just the base materials though, I can't get enough of how amazing they look. It's been two months and I am still stopping to look at everyone's eyes because I love what they did so much.

[CidHeiral]

Yeah, overall, the new eyes look bloody fantastic. The new materials and the lighting put more life into them than they've ever had. That said, I can see people having some issues with the limbal rings on au ra since they look to be done differently so the glow effect can be overwhelming and also weird when it's a 'glow' around a dark color, or some Sunseeker miqo'te eyes, it's a little hard to see the slit pupil on some faces. Just the base materials though, I can't get enough of how amazing they look. It's been two months and I am still stopping to look at everyone's eyes because I love what they did so much.

Totally agree, I love the new eyes. I haven't seen the specific racial eye issues you're referring to but I have no problem with things like that being addressed. I just don't think they should wholesale revert or try to emulate the general features of the "no thoughts head empty" eyes from pre-7.0 which apply to everyone.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Totally agree, I love the new eyes. I haven't seen the specific racial eye issues you're referring to but I have no problem with things like that being addressed. I just don't think they should wholesale revert or try to emulate the general features of the "no thoughts head empty" eyes from pre-7.0 which apply to everyone.

This is an example of the eyes for my Highlander…



Left is EW, right is DT. Exact same portrait settings.

There’s no brightness to the eyes anymore, the whites seem too gray and dull, and the new eyeshadow (facial trait, not paint) has been darkened and overpowers them, but she looks bare without it. The eyes used to pop out, now they look like black holes. Add to that the redrawn upper lip and nose, and heavily pronounced philtrum, and her facial expressions look totally different now.

I think the races/faces with larger eyes get mostly better, although I think the luminosity of the eye color was better in the first benchmark, but on a face like this where very little of the white part of the eye shows, for it not to be white anymore really changes the look. And I’ve also noticed on some faces, the position of the eyeball itself seems changed, which is also very noticeable in emotes and cutscenes.

[Astronis]

Left is EW, right is DT. Exact same portrait settings.

The settings can never be exactly the same, because Dawntrail changed the lighting in the entire game. It's very likely that people who had portraits they liked in EW will need to adjust them in DT because of this, to take better advantage of those changes.

Frankly, in my opinion, I prefer the eyes on the Dawntrail version of your character. They don't look so cartoony and artificial. I do think her expression looks a little different, perhaps moving the light source a smidge would help with that.

My character has smaller eyes than yours, more deep-set, more shadowed by nature of being a male Highlander, and whether or not you agree, I think the new eyes are a vast improvement--the color is visible, he doesn't look slightly cross-eyed anymore, his eyes are more legible, more defined by the actual eyes rather than the single absurdly strong catchlight.

[GreenLeafy]

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The comparison between you two is crazy because the dullness/darkness that Astronis had in his eyes in EW is something that Kryseis ended up receiving POST update - he got the clearer view of the eyes that she had in EW lmao. Just these two posts alone show the absolute lack of quality control across the board to make everyone get a good update evenly.
I genuinely have no clue how you look at the picture of Kryseis' character in DT and say its clearer when it literally carries all the things you disliked about your character in EW.

[Doopliss]

The settings can never be exactly the same, because Dawntrail changed the lighting in the entire game. It's very likely that people who had portraits they liked in EW will need to adjust them in DT because of this, to take better advantage of those changes.

I actually think a problem with the portrait system is that the lighting hasn't been adjusted for Dawntrail. A lot--if not all?--of the "eye texture flatness" tends to be shown via portrait screenshots, versus the overworld. It's possible to make them look okay in certain poses, but in some others it's actually not possible to get the portrait lighting to hit the eyes just right. I haven't had problems personally on my Elezen, but I have experienced it on some other characters and haven't been able to fix it at all without limiting the poses I can take their portraits in. Overall, this is a wordy way of me saying I think (well, I hope) it is something that should be easy to fix without actually displeasing anyone.

Of course, I think this is a different issue from them messing with the color balance on some races' eye options, and don't mean to dismiss anyone concerned about that.

I do think her expression looks a little different, perhaps moving the light source a smidge would help with that.

Sorry, I'm also just taking this quote to give some more spotlight to that user's face option because it is an unpopular one. This is nothing against you, lol.

I just wanted to say that her expression looks a little different because they fundamentally changed how ♀ Highlander Face 2's eyes are to a degree that feels a little too extreme to me, and I don't even use the face. I really do hope that is something that gets fixed.

Another user--Aimed--posted this image as a really good example to show how drastically that face specifically got hit:

In fairness, they did raise the upper eyelid a little bit since the initial benchmark release, but the eye shapes on this face are still pretty fundamentally different... They took away the rounded, friendly feeling they used to have.

[eohippus]

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.

early poster, to the point I posted when the first bench dropped. I still feel pretty awful. I don't gpose or rerun content or old cutscenes like I used to. I'm really struggling with my hyur's skin either looking too washed out (as it did with his pre-fantasia skin color) or too dark (as it does now), but there's no options in between to switch to. basically he only looks ok during the golden hour in certain locations. He also is so. so. shiny. all the time. I miss his round eyes, and his old lip shape, old smile, and when his skin wasn't mottled. It hasn't gotten any better over time. Its hard not to feel like they specifically made all the male hyur models "more masculine" in a way that lost so much of my character's appearance. I miss him a lot! I'm holding off on even buying glams for him during the sale because I dont want to if he has to look like this forever.
That said, I AM hopeful for the update to fix or revert a lot of these issues! And checking in the forumns has made me feel a little less insane for feeling so awful lol