Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[owov]

I read the latest announcement, but it's just a vague description of the fix.
Since we’re not directly involved in development, it's hard to understand what’s changing and how based on what’s written.

Given that the graphics update has already happened and received a lot of criticism, the least Square Enix should do is provide a clear announcement with a proper explanation—not a vague one followed by an immediate update that leaves players confused. They also need to be open to ongoing feedback throughout the process.

I’m hoping they come back with a detailed announcement, including proper pictures before the 7.1 update.

[lunartears]

I've just read the announcement, but the vague phrasing made me feel more anxious. While I appreciate the announcement, I don't know if the scarce fixes coming in future patches are going to do much for my own WoL. It feels like more months of the same misery spent with this odd-looking character, now with an uncertain future.

I really wish that they would have mentioned more examples, especially the delibrate racial changes. I was also surprised at no mention of the teeth/tongue and confused by the comment of people largely liking the eye shapes.

Either way, I guess I'm in this despair for the long run now. Going to have to wait and see.

(personal impressions are listed under the spoiler tag)

I personally was surprised with this sentence:
"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

It's not the full truth, I'm afraid. He conveniently forgot to mention the universal mesh and overall unification.

"The corners of the mouth appear to be lifted or lowered with certain face types."
Excuse me, I have issues with not the corners of the mouth but with the entirely different mouth shape (male Au Ra face 2).

Well, at least they are going to fix the swollen lips with the built-in lipstic, so it's a gain...

My overall impression is that I will never get my character back. My major issue was with the eyebrows and the mouth, and if Mr. Yoshida thinks that the only difference is that the corners are slightly lowered (or lifted), there is no hope for me left. 8 years of my life are just... gone.

I will have some time to process all this and think about what I should do next.

Accurate to how I'm feeling.

[Minali]

I feel like this is a thing they should address in a setting where they have unlimited time. I was hoping the next live letter might be an opportunity to go into what they're planning in more detail (not just graphical update, also future content like Beastmaster, Variant Dungeons, relics, bugs and feedback), but considering it's part of another event, I doubt we'll get more than a rough general outline for 7.1. :/

[Eluvyel]

What's your impression of Mr. Yoshida's text?

I see that SE is not going to expand the character creation tool; they are planning to "adjust" the current features (to what degree I wonder). I'm afraid that the intended compromise between the people who like the update and the people who dislike it would just make everyone more upset.

Also, he's trying to do some damage control, presenting everything that was posted in this or the corresponding Japanese thread as "minor" and "slightly different.".

(personal impressions are listed under the spoiler tag)

I personally was surprised with this sentence:
"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

It's not the full truth, I'm afraid. He conveniently forgot to mention the universal mesh and overall unification.

"The corners of the mouth appear to be lifted or lowered with certain face types."
Excuse me, I have issues with not the corners of the mouth but with the entirely different mouth shape (male Au Ra face 2).

Well, at least they are going to fix the swollen lips with the built-in lipstic, so it's a gain...

My overall impression is that I will never get my character back. My major issue was with the eyebrows and the mouth, and if Mr. Yoshida thinks that the only difference is that the corners are slightly lowered (or lifted), there is no hope for me left. 8 years of my life are just... gone.

I will have some time to process all this and think about what I should do next.

This is pretty much exactly what's gonna happen.

Anybody liking the adjustments will simply be replaced by somebody new in this thread - or the next - that wants the 7.0 faces back. Minus the obviously and objectively broken stuff like some of the normal maps, aura scales and horrible clipping of hair and headgear.

This is quite literally impossible to prevent, unless they expand the creator with both options which they refuse to do because of ridiculous technical debt.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

Anyone with the basic capacity for critical thinking knew that the request to "allow people to revert to 6.58 faces" would go nowhere and that these threads would lead to universal changes to the 7.0 models with no extra options in sight, yet anytime that was brought up in here people were attacked for it. :/

Disappointing that we were given a free fantasia, encouraged to make changes and given more than enough time to try and adjust only to now have to worry that our characters that we've gotten used to will look different—again.

I get that people have been upset, but with this news, I really wish everyone would have left well enough alone, stayed quiet and attempted to adapt to the changes.
Now instead of some people being unhappy, the likelihood is that no one is going to be happy and the complaints will only be amplified.

Hopefully these changes will facilitate them to provide another free fantasia, as lip shape and the form of a smile can literally make or break the appearance of a character. I changed the mouth on a handful of my characters because the impression was altered by Dawntrail's updates.

I'm already upset by the story, so having to worry for two and a half months of whether or not my characters who I've grown to love the looks of again will look different for the second time in less than a year is putting even more of a damper on things.
The update to characters should have been one and done.

[Liamont]

Anyone with the basic capacity for critical thinking knew that the request to "allow people to revert to 6.58 faces" would go nowhere and that these threads would lead to universal changes to the 7.0 models with no extra options in sight, yet anytime that was brought up in here people were attacked for it. :/

Disappointing that we were given a free fantasia, encouraged to make changes and given more than enough time to try and adjust only to now have to worry that our characters that we've gotten used to will look different—again.

I get that people have been upset, but with this news, I really wish everyone would have left well enough alone, stayed quiet and attempted to adapt to the changes.
Now instead of some people being unhappy, the likelihood is that no one is going to be happy and the complaints will only be amplified.

Hopefully these changes will facilitate them to provide another free fantasia, as lip shape and the form of a smile can literally make or break the appearance of a character. I changed the mouth on a handful of my characters because the impression was altered by Dawntrail's updates.

I'm already upset by the story, so having to worry for two and a half months of whether or not my characters who I've grown to love the looks of again will look different for the second time in less than a year is putting even more of a damper on things.
The update to characters should have been one and done.

So what were you proposing those of us who did not like the changes to do? Just sit down and take it without submitting any feedback, which the devs themselves encouraged?

If they had just said, "We won't be changing anything, that's that," then none of us would have taken hours and hours taking screenshots and making detailed feedback submissions to the devs. Maybe we'd just rerolled another character, or just quit the game entirely.

While I also don't agree with how they're just changing the 7.0 features instead of making an option for both, I don't think you're being entirely fair to those who wanted to try and fight to get their sometimes decades old character back.

You know what would have solved this problem entirely? Not changing the player characters at all. The models were not ugly or outdated, I'm pretty sure most people would have been fine if they had just made higher resolution textures for armour and clothing so we don't have the situations like G'raha with pixel textures when zoomed in.

[eohippus]

I've been really quiet leading up to this update as it will be the deciding factor in if I keep paying my sub or not. They listed the issues as non-exhuastive, so I'm hoping things like "lip shapes being changed" "male lip shapes being made thinner" might actually be in a longer list of things that will be fixed, but I'm losing hope. Issues like skintones being completely washed out/made more gray by the lighting, and dark skin being too reflective, of course didn't merit mentioning per their standards but I really hope that's fixed as well. It was admittedly a bit stupid to pin so much of my optimism on "the update will fix things" but I'm happy they're at least trying. I'll try to get more bug reports in before my sub runs out I guess ):

[faiarrow]

I think it's very funny they hadn't acknowledged outright forgotten features (F4 ♀ Dunesfolk nose smudge option still missing; ♂ Duskwight having the incorrect face textures; Hellsguard nose ash being nigh invisible; ♀ Roegadyn and ♀ Au Ra having drastically different pupils--something that had to have been done by choice, rather than updating polygons; etc.), but pointed out the Viera nose mark being darker. I suppose it would be bad for development team morale though to publicly lay out that there were too many oversights or mistakes.

NGL I outright scoffed at that because yeah, same thought process.

I get that people have been upset, but with this news, I really wish everyone would have left well enough alone, stayed quiet and attempted to adapt to the changes.
Now instead of some people being unhappy, the likelihood is that no one is going to be happy and the complaints will only be amplified.

Well, all of us really wish the devs had left well enough alone too.

I and countless others completely lost our characters with no way to actively adjust the problems brought up in the current CC with fantasia.

If the developers had been genuinely transparent in their handling of the character update, instead of us getting fed a handful of tiny snippets of the default face of the first clan of each race and continual promises across multiple events about trying their hardest to keep the characters familiar and correct to the players, only to get horrifically surprised in the benchmark then there would be a significantly less of a mess for them to fix.

--

As for general thoughts:
I appreciate that they're doing ~things~ but because they refuse to actually acknowledge the outcry from people who are upset about the loss of racial traits (and other issues) it's hard to even grasp what they're actually looking at. "There is more aside from these but we are aiming to implement as many fixes as we can in Patch 7.1 for the items you have raised in your feedback that have been determined to be bugs" — great, so what are bugs, and what are human errors? Because 95% of the feedback given about genuine problems have been filed to Not A Bug.

Just rip off the bandaid and tell us what the heck is meant to actually be spec because I'm sure it's not just the eye highlighting system and the nostril shading system.

Because if this is what the art team considers spec for hellsguard femroe I'm outright quitting:


It's just a lot of PR hot air until we actually get to find out I guess.

[noumen0nn]

"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

Does anyone else feel like this is just an outright lie? These are not the same models that were present in Endwalker but upscaled with more polygons and better math; rather they are completely rebuilt from scratch. The issues are a result of them doing a shoddy job with the rebuild and getting the finer details wrong.

I really hope this is Yoshi P just being vague on purpose in order to not freak people out, or else this gives me very little hope.

[Len_]

It's funny how these bulletins are meant to give the appearance of transparency, communication and reassurance to players and then it's mostly PR and gaslighting. Like how they assured us we could "tweak" our characters with Fantasia originally. Now with this update you would get the impression there's only slight tweaks that need to be made and no egregious errors due to apparent rushed and poor quality and extreme lack of attention to detail. Like someone else said, I guess it would hurt some developers feelings to actually address what everyone knows and sees with their own eyes? Weird.