Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Einnecy]

Strong light, passing through the head, illuminating the lips in a completely unnatural glow-light kind of way. The light isn't coming from behind, that's the only thing missing. It is, however, passing through the model to make that poor lala's mouth glow.

There is a discussion here to be had about style and how much lenience it gives to these sort of graphical glitches. With a shift to a more realistic style these glitches and oversights become more jarring and harder to unsee. In my opinion the changes to the lighting only exacerbated whatever issues there were prior to DT. The example you mentioned still exists and personally I think they are worse:

I didn't notice my characters glow like this when standing in front of an aetheryte (shard) prior to DT.

Taken in Ifrit's trial. The lips in particular look awful.

Whatever issues there were prior to DT, and I say that knowing how terrible the overhead light in inn rooms was, they cannot be worse than this monstrosity:

And please, no more mentions of ray tracing. The system requirements have leaped far enough as it is. If the fix is to add ray tracing, then it is not a fix at all.

EDIT: noumen0nn put it very well. Basically, this:

It's subjective of course, but yours and Turnintino's screenshots give me the impression of "solid objects with janky lighting", whereas Cheapshot's screenshots look more like "hollow plastic figurines with light shining straight through them." I can't agree that they've mitigated it.

[Iscah]

I think what makes the lighting errors really glaring now is that they've claimed the purpose of the change being "more realistic" lighting cast by the actual shapes of the models rather than artificially set-up ones, so it's a bigger problem if it hasn't actually made it any more realistic.

[Astronis]

There is a discussion here to be had about style and how much lenience it gives to these sort of graphical glitches. With a shift to a more realistic style these glitches and oversights become more jarring and harder to unsee.

They aren't glitches. It's the nature of the beast. They cannot be eradicated without insane, counterproductive effort. That's my whole argument. Yes, they can be jarring. But are you willing to play an MMO that requires the processing power to truly fix the issue? That's how much 'leniency' you have to give the issue.

The hair--maybe that could be fixed, I don't know enough about that.

Taken in Ifrit's trial. The lips in particular look awful.

Ifrit's trial before Dawntrail. Up to you if you think Dawntrail is worse.

And please, no more mentions of ray tracing. The system requirements have leaped far enough as it is. If the fix is to add ray tracing, then it is not a fix at all.

Exactly right. That's why I keep mentioning ray tracing. To underline how there is no fix at all, there is only mitigation, and there will never be enough mitigation to eradicate it.

[Kaziek]

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)

I think at least part of this is due to the fact that the environmental light seems to have far less effect on characters now. Warmer lighting used to influence skin tone a more substantial amount, so now things tend to look off because our characters just stick out from the environment way too much.

[Larirawiel]

I was wordier but I had to snip it down so the forums didn't yell. Thank you for engaging!
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This is the reason why raytracing is so much better than light maps. If you use the latter techniques then you need a game engine, which creates exact light maps. But creating exact light maps is very CPU intensive. It can be more expensive than raytracing. So i guess, FF14 lacks of accurate light maps because the game would run very bad on slower PCs and consoles.

You can see here the lack of accuracy. Light bleeding artifacts:



And here is the light source over my character. So there is no chance, that the face would be illuminated.





Cheers

[Loggos]

I think at least part of this is due to the fact that the environmental light seems to have far less effect on characters now. Warmer lighting used to influence skin tone a more substantial amount, so now things tend to look off because our characters just stick out from the environment way too much.

I think that's certainly a reason! But even in the CC the entire palette of skin tones is a lot more desaturated to begin with so I guess it's a combination of many issues coming together.

[lunartears]

I really loved the old graphics, even with its quirks in certain zones (like inns), I thought that overall it was very nice and suited the game's aesthetic. I would have preferred to have stayed with it as a whole extending outside of the character update, but I know as questionable as the graphics update is - there's absolutely zero chance they'd throw away their work.
Since the original game graphics I fell in love with are gone for good, all I can do is direct my thoughts towards desperately wishing that the original character features would return - because I feel that even if I don't like how the world looks anymore, at least I would still have my character to enjoy playing with.
I think about this every day, I want to be able to enjoy playing this game again so badly.

[noumen0nn]

I really loved the old graphics, even with its quirks in certain zones (like inns), I thought that overall it was very nice and suited the game's aesthetic. I would have preferred to have stayed with it as a whole extending outside of the character update, but I know as questionable as the graphics update is - there's absolutely zero chance they'd throw away their work.
Since the original game graphics I fell in love with are gone for good, all I can do is direct my thoughts towards desperately wishing that the original character features would return - because I feel that even if I don't like how the world looks anymore, at least I would still have my character to enjoy playing with.
I think about this every day, I want to be able to enjoy playing this game again so badly.

Agreed on all counts. I get sad thinking about how the old version of the game is effectively lost media, and although the world changes don't bother me nearly as much as the character ones, nothing about the graphics update is an improvement to me. It's all sidegrades and downgrades, and when I think of everything graphics-related that they could have spent this effort on instead (a non-embarrassing double dye system that worked on every item from the start, more character creation options, viera/hrothgar hats, etc.) I can't help but feel like the entire update was just a gigantic waste of time. What's done is done, but this was a terrible decision.

[Einnecy]

I really loved the old graphics, even with its quirks in certain zones (like inns), I thought that overall it was very nice and suited the game's aesthetic. I would have preferred to have stayed with it as a whole extending outside of the character update, but I know as questionable as the graphics update is - there's absolutely zero chance they'd throw away their work.
Since the original game graphics I fell in love with are gone for good, all I can do is direct my thoughts towards desperately wishing that the original character features would return - because I feel that even if I don't like how the world looks anymore, at least I would still have my character to enjoy playing with.
I think about this every day, I want to be able to enjoy playing this game again so badly.

I'm in the same boat. I will miss the game that was before 7.0. The thing that first drew me in were the visuals. I've been mulling over this since my last response, words fail me still, but prior to 7.0 the visuals had this... harmony to them. Everything felt so vibrant. Alive. The animations are awkward and goofy, and yet they never felt out of place. The game as it is right now feels so ugly and uncanny, unrelated to the completion of the graphical update. The "realistic" philtrum, the sandpaper texture on the skin, the additional "realistic" shaders and catchlights... it all meshes so horribly with how the game simply moves.

I wish CS3 didn't fall into the graphical fidelity à la realism rabbit hole with FFXIV.

[MikatoKai]

Not so much of a 'graphics' update, but I'm noticing that the /annoyed emote for face 4 male viera looks pretty different now. It looks more... concerned than mad, compared to how it was before. My face 1 male viera looks /annoyed, so I can only assume some face bones made the expression on face 4 go weird. I didn't take a screenshot of the before, but it definitely looks... off now. Yet another grievance with face 4 male Viera I suppose...