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.

[jiangzai]

I saw that they were changing it so Au Ra horns don't have light shining through them anymore, which is a huge shame.... it was beautiful! Light shines through fingernails, even ear cartilage, it wouldn't be inaccurate for it to shine through the edges of Au Ra horns too, no?

[Cheapshot]

I saw that they were changing it so Au Ra horns don't have light shining through them anymore, which is a huge shame.... it was beautiful! Light shines through fingernails, even ear cartilage, it wouldn't be inaccurate for it to shine through the edges of Au Ra horns too, no?

Are they changing it so light doesn't shine through anymore? Or just adjusting it so it's not such a strong effect? I thought it looked nice on my au'ra's horns too but it was waaaaay overtuned. They have some serious problems with the lighting still in general.



Stood next to a window and my hair and horns went nuclear. Even the insides of my eyes and mouth catch light they shouldn't be.



Same on my cat. Glowing hair, and light coming through the head and lighting inner edges that shouldn't be lit.

[noumen0nn]

I saw that they were changing it so Au Ra horns don't have light shining through them anymore, which is a huge shame.... it was beautiful! Light shines through fingernails, even ear cartilage, it wouldn't be inaccurate for it to shine through the edges of Au Ra horns too, no?

The explanation they gave is that Au Ra horns don't actually contain blood vessels unlike all those other features, so the subsurface scattering is inaccurate in that case.

Stood next to a window and my hair and horns went nuclear. Even the insides of my eyes and mouth catch light they shouldn't be.



Same on my cat. Glowing hair, and light coming through the head and lighting inner edges that shouldn't be lit.

This is probably the most egregious problem with the lighting engine right now. Let's all pray our glowing lower eyelids aren't one of those mysterious "spec" items.

[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.).

[eohippus]

I think loggos' viera is another good example of how much more gray/cool toned dark skin tones have become with the update. I'm not sure if its partially because of how overtuned the shine is on dark skin now, but its really a shame. xiv has never had the best color palette or skin tone options, but now (other than male mooncats bizarrely being a little bit more warm toned for some reason), it feels like across the board a lot of the little warmth that was there has been pulled out of certain colors.
(There's probably more going on than just the shine though because I just remembered that some of my friends who play dark skinned au ra with fantasy skintones also had their undertones completely change)

[Loggos]

Yeah it's a lot ashier compared to the EW version and more desaturated as well. Even though pre-DT ffxiv always had lighting issues when it came to dark skin characters at least the CC options looked more alive. You had a wider variety of true undertones and different levels of saturation. Now it seems like all colour choices are kind of washed out and their undertones are a lot closer to grey, minimising the differences between them.

[Astronis]

I saw that they were changing it so Au Ra horns don't have light shining through them anymore, which is a huge shame.... it was beautiful! Light shines through fingernails, even ear cartilage, it wouldn't be inaccurate for it to shine through the edges of Au Ra horns too, no?

I believe what they plan to do is change the color of the subsurface scattering so it's not red. Light should still shine through to some degree, but without blood in the horns, the light won't be tinged red. I hope that's what they do, in any event.

Are they changing it so light doesn't shine through anymore? Or just adjusting it so it's not such a strong effect? I thought it looked nice on my au'ra's horns too but it was waaaaay overtuned. They have some serious problems with the lighting still in general.



Stood next to a window and my hair and horns went nuclear. Even the insides of my eyes and mouth catch light they shouldn't be.



Same on my cat. Glowing hair, and light coming through the head and lighting inner edges that shouldn't be lit.

Changing this would require something like ray tracing, which is not something they will do. I think we should be happy they managed to reduce the effect of it as much as they have. It used to be so much worse.

[noumen0nn]

It used to be so much worse.

Can you elaborate on this? Light shining through heads was not an issue prior to dawntrail

[Turnintino]

Can you elaborate on this? Light shining through heads was not an issue prior to dawntrail

It absolutely was. I have no screenshots, unfortunately, because -- well, why would I have wanted to commemorate that? But I would notice light shining through my character's head between their lips all the time, for example, even more glaringly than in Cheapshot's examples. In my experience, at least, it's much reduced now. But of course I'd love to see it completely eliminated, if that's feasible, because it's still jarring.