Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Einnecy]

Something that I still don't understand about this graphical update is.... why now?
Once upon a time miqo'te and elezen had hats specially molded to their ears, and miqo'te had gear made to accommodate for their tails. Not only do viera and brothgar STILL have no hat support, but we're also seeing less and less gear that accommodates for these racial features. Additionally, hrothgar♀ have botched rigging. We haven't even gotten more customization options to make the graphical update (and the free fantasia) actually worthwhile.

And this is all without going into the technical details that in my honest opinion should have been addressed before giving this game a landlord's paint-over. The game is being held together by two toothpicks and the power of God, and yet what we needed and got was a botched facelift? It all seems counter-intuitive to me. Change for change's sake. Wrong priorities.


In regards to the feedback we've gotten in early September, you cannot convince me these faces look the way they do because of "an increased number of polygons and the improved accuracy of normal mapping":

Please disregard the difference in hair colour. Every other option is the same between the two pictures.

I'm still here. Still mulling things over. Whether this is the push I needed to get into modding and learn 3D, or accept what is and move on. I like to think some of my feedback was heard. I hope it was. I hope the next PLL and 7.1 bring good news and our characters back home. But a large part of me will always think this graphical update was entirely unnecessary. I wish they had left the game alone. As I said in the beginning, there were so many things which should have been addressed first.
I don't know how relevant this is to the thread anymore, but I thought it was worth putting out there.

[Loggos]

Something that I still don't understand about this graphical update is.... why now?

I've been wondering about something similar. Why release an update that is evidently not finished together with a new expansion, something highly anticipated, highly scrutinised, that is supposed to draw lots of attention (incl. professional and consumer reviews) to your product and attract new people?

The graphics update is so inconsistent, it feels like it was a chaotic last minute assembly. Faces have been "updated", bodies haven't.
Some hair and gear textures have been changed, some haven't.
Lighting has been changed but the quality in old regions or houses often went down etc. etc. Everything aboutit felt unfinished.

I'll forever be sad that we didn't get the kind of graphics update they were originally working on when they talked about it the very first time:

https://youtu.be/18-F5uAyRgw?t=424

(Yes, I know this was "still in development and subject to change".)

Here they only updated the shaders and the face models on the "high res" side are the same as the original ones if I understand it correctly.
The characters look so good, all while retaining their unique features and personality.
That miqo'te is stunning imo.
(The skin textures in particular look so much better and more realistic than what we got. The eyes too. And before you say "that's not ingame lighting, that's their 3D program" or something: it doesn't change the fact that they chose those images to advertise what it would look like ingame according to their plans at that point in time.)


Even if updating shaders will not be a solution forever and at some point you'll have to work on the models, it might still have been an interim update that's consistent as opposed to what we got now?
If you """just""" improve shaders and have no modelling work to do then perhaps the quality of your graphics will increase more evenly across your entire game?

I'm not saying it would be easy, I'm sure updating shaders comes with its own technical challenges.
But I wonder if those are higher than the technical challenges the devs had to overcome wrt the actual update we got (including future challenges to build on the current update for further improvements).
Or if they just didn't want to stick with their original shader plan out of convenience (e.g., for lip syncing purposes, saving money bc why reinvest into FF14, etc.).