Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Astronis]

I'd say the issue is that "harsh, dramatic lighting" often just looked really bad. In those quoted examples above, the new one looks better every time to me because the old shadows were terrible. They often also ended up highlighting all the issues with the old face models.

Yeah, at least the last two in that example look better. I remember playing through that cutscene for the first time and thinking the lighting was atrocious. I don't know that they've gone through and adjusted that cutscene for the new lighting, but at least now the characters are visible, and the last shot of Alphinaud is nicely balanced artistically with the red in the background.

The first two...probably the before pics are better.

The first benchmark lighting did make my character look flat while in shadow, though I don't recall saying anything about it, since who knows what it would have been like live.

[Arzalis]

Yeah, at least the last two in that example look better. I remember playing through that cutscene for the first time and thinking the lighting was atrocious. I don't know that they've gone through and adjusted that cutscene for the new lighting, but at least now the characters are visible, and the last shot of Alphinaud is nicely balanced artistically with the red in the background.

The first two...probably the before pics are better.

The first benchmark lighting did make my character look flat while in shadow, though I don't recall saying anything about it, since who knows what it would have been like live.

The before pictures just remind me of that one Game of Thrones episode. The first two are so dark you almost can't see Ilberd's face and certainly can't see much detail. There's definitely a better middle ground there somewhere, but the after is still the superior image to me.

[lunartears]

I really miss my character.

[roseychan]

Me too. I really miss her gentle look, and smile. Why they screwed with the lips the most is beyond me. Tons of faces ruined thanks to a botox kardashiened pair of lips.

Not to speak lightly of all the other issues, or dismiss them, but the lips are one of the biggest things that bother me.

[noumen0nn]

Same. Primarily I miss gposing. Back in endwalker it's what I spent the majority of my time doing outside raid, and it's frustrating because I have so many ideas and projects I want to make, that I can't because my WoL functionally doesn't exist right now. At best it'll be another month and a half until I can do it again; at worst it'll be 5 to 6, and that's assuming they actually do good work across 7.1 and 7.2. A large part of me still worries they'll take a bunch of half-measures as to not mess with the "new" look too much. I wish we could do more than just wait around and see.

[Argantaelle]

It's sad that the translation team deemed Mr. Yoshida's words about character appearance adjustments too insignificant to include them into the Producer LIVE Part LXXXIII event digest.

[MAJRIS]

there's extra light reflection in the eyes that's q̶u̶i̶t̶e̶ s̶t̶a̶t̶i̶c̶ bound to camera no matter where real light sources are.

It is visible especially in night or without any light source nearby.

I wish there was way to have it optional /options checkbox/ rather than forced.


WoW has added similar feature last year and it also raised concerns.

https://i.imgur.com/OBFqNU3.png

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...lutely_broken/

[eohippus]

while it doesn't impact player characters, I'm happy that the changes to ancient npc eyes were directly addressed at the PAX panel and explicitly said to be in the process of being fixed! its small, I'm not getting my hopes too up, but I am glad to see that at least that very specific feedback on a pretty drastic change to npc appearances was checked, confirmed, and will be changed.

[Turnintino]

I feel like a good middle ground would be to adjust the character lighting slider to allow for it to go even darker than it currently is at zero. That would let people who enjoy the way things look now continue to do so, while letting those who preferred the old style have it back again.

This sounds like an inelegant solution to me, since this would necessarily mean our characters would also appear more darkly lit even in broad daylight with 'character lighting' at a subzero setting, creating the same problem in reverse. Only the players who were indifferent to begin with would be pleased with that, I think, since they wouldn't be adjusting the setting either way.

Toning down what we currently have to better match ambient lighting -- as it should have, to begin with -- and relegating the rest to the player's discretion through 'character lighting' makes the most sense to me.

[Kaziek]

This sounds like an inelegant solution to me, since this would necessarily mean our characters would also appear more darkly lit even in broad daylight with 'character lighting' at a subzero setting, creating the same problem in reverse. Only the players who were indifferent to begin with would be pleased with that, I think, since they wouldn't be adjusting the setting either way.

Toning down what we currently have to better match ambient lighting -- as it should have, to begin with -- and relegating the rest to the player's discretion through 'character lighting' makes the most sense to me.

I may not have put it in a way that was clear. Your idea is what I meant, where the new zero setting is more accurately reflecting environment lighting and shadow on the character (which will end up being darker in most cases compared to how it is right now). I was just suggesting that the character lighting setting have a wider range to keep people who enjoy the current options happy if changes were made.