Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Argantaelle]

I have a feeling that we all have been weighted and found wanting. It's clear that character correction is very low priority (otherwise the corrections wouldn't have been so minuscule and inconsistent and every race/gender combination would have been touched). I guess the (potential) loss of our subs is less than the price of devs work hours spent on character adjusting.

So we had to feed on scraps from SE table if they had time beside their more important occupations.

[DynnDiablos]

I am slightly sad they seem to have adjusted the lighting and facial shadows. The shadows no longer seem to naturally fall on the face. It seems with some things this update they under-corrected and others over-corrected.

[CuteBucket]

1. Why are they going back and updating ARR zones when, arguably, the most important priority they should have right now is the characters? Since that is one of the biggest things that draw people in and keep people playing in FFXIV at least? As far as I know, very few people were complaining about the ARR zones?

I apologize if this gets a little tinfoil hat, but I have been thinking about these things myself and this is my working hypothesis. They are putting priority on ARR zones because those are what new players see. New players don't care about the old graphics, they just started playing, after all. New players don't care about lack of endgame content, they're new players, after all. New players don't know about any of that, they just want a cool looking character and a pretty world to explore. That's what I wanted when I was new, I didn't know anything else. It's much easier to appeal to new players than keep old ones happy. And in this day and age of business, short-term profits are all that matter. Any invenstment that would make long term growth possible isn't as appealing because it doesn't make shareholders more money right now. It would be great if they made jobs feel better at lower levels for new players, but hey, new players don't know how bad that job feels until they experience it at higher levels, right? So why invest in overhauling it?

2. In addition, don't they have the original old models? Surely it is not that difficult to put them side by side, or even overlay them to see the exact differences between the two? If we as customers can make GIFs overlaying two screenshots to point out some rather blatant differences between models, surely it would be easier for them—with the source material—to spot the difference? The model of current business is that of cancer--growth at all costs, even if down the line it destroys itself in doing so.

Yes, you can--I've done it myself in Blender. It would be great if there was a way to simply shape one face over the other, but the files are so different that it just doesn't really work to try it. I tried my hand at fixing things myself, but frankly it is way above my skill level to accomplish, as I am very new to learning 3D modeling. It is hard to explain just how radically different the old and new 3D models are. There is no porting the old onto the new, they are fundamentally changed from the ground up. All of the bones are different. All of the weights are different. The texture maps are totally different, not just with some new formats, but even the orientation that the texture maps are laid out on has been changed. It's all different, at ever level of the model. All the old sculpts can do now is serve as a visual reference.

3. It honestly is starting to feel more and more to me that they wanted to change things for the sake of changing them, because they themselves didn't like what they had before and wanted to "update" it. Completely disregarding the fact that many people spent literal years making memories of their character, and thus would not want to log in and see a stranger staring back at them. Even though I tried to be hopeful in my post earlier, but to be frank I am really tired of waiting with baited breath on whether or not my characters were changed back to what I remember then as. At this rate, it will possibly take literal years to get a final answer, and I don't know about you, but I think there's something wrong with needing to wait years for the chance of my characters returning.

That is how I feel now too. Someone on the dev team decided that these models look better and our opinion as players doesn't matter. They will begrudgingly fix the very few things that weren't "spec" and then tell everyone else to deal with it, we like this look better. After all, why make a bunch of veteran players happy chasing after fixing their models when they can put money and dev time to things to bring more streamers and new players to the game? All those years of loyalty and monthly sub money? That's expected, that's just status quo, that's not growth.

They give detailed notes for the rest of the patch, why is it just the character feature corrections that do not get detailed notes? Can we please get a timeline and a detailed list of what changes will be made, for what race, face type, mouth type, eye type, etc from now on? That way we are not kept in this state of constant suspense.

That said, I am thankful that the dev team is still making changes, and I hope that they will hire or assign people who are more detail oriented to the tweaking process. Because right now it feels like those types of people are sorely lacking in the department.

We get such detailed notes on all the other changes being made--it does feel kind of lazy that they can't put what they're changing in the patch notes or give us any previews or indication of any kind whatsoever on what things they are working on or not. If they could just tell me flat out that my Au Ra's flat ugly lips are an intentional design choice, then I can at least have my answer and move on with my life. I get that the notes would be very long--maybe link to a separate document in the patch notes instead of in the patch notes itself--but we deserve to know what exactly is being worked on for each race and gender of face.

But I get the sense that they just don't care. I don't think they care that a percentage of players that have been playing longer than 6 months are upset by these changes and unsub from the game--they'd rather focus on new players.

Is this a good business plan? Gods no. But it sure looks like the direction they're taking the game if you ask me.

[Carnassial]

I wasn't able to find mention of some of these off details I noticed so I figured I should put in my two cents just in case (and to bolster existing ones).

I threw together a quick collage of references. The lighting in the images vary but I feel the issues I'm noticing are not significantly trivialised by lighting. My PoV is strictly regarding male Xaela au ra but probably pertains to other character profiles.

• Hair highlights are now very prominent, whereas they were previously barely noticeable (I think there's been talk of this but I couldn't find it. This is of course dependent on the colours you picked).
• As mentioned by others, in some cases limbal rings are too bright/washed out and the original colour is barely visible.
• Armour on the horns is discoloured and get strangely dark when light is shone on them.
• There's a very small dark area around the corners of the mouth. It's not very noticeable on neutral and frowning expressions but it's quite visible on upturned lips.

Should there be a single thing that's fixed out of these, I need it to be the last one. He's not allowed to smile until it's fixed because this bothers me to no end.

Also if anyone knows where I can find discussion about the latter two points, please share links!

[Reinha]

They removed male Duskwight dark circles.
Thank you thank you thank you!

Holy moly, finally this company corrects a singular mistake. I used the free fantasia to swap to my male elezen design because he doesn't look like an addict with insomnia anymore. This will make my last few days of game time a bit better.

Too bad my female elezen still has white eyebrows that blend into the skin instead of black like they used to be, thin lips instead of thick and eye color options that are either way too dark or too light with all the purple color washed out of them. Nothing was fixed. She was my most beautiful character but now I hate looking at her with her stupid missing eyebrows.

[Plasmaspy]

Please just revert the mouth already. Also this paired with the lack of light in the eyes makes her seem like an uncanny-valley android of herself

[Visthra]

Holy moly, finally this company corrects a singular mistake. I used the free fantasia to swap to my male elezen design because he doesn't look like an addict with insomnia anymore. This will make my last few days of game time a bit better.

Too bad my female elezen still has white eyebrows that blend into the skin instead of black like they used to be, thin lips instead of thick and eye color options that are either way too dark or too light with all the purple color washed out of them. Nothing was fixed. She was my most beautiful character but now I hate looking at her with her stupid missing eyebrows.

So, I SWEAR I logged in yesterday after the patch and still saw the eye bags. Once I saw your reply and Tsumdere’s reply in here, I logged back in and now they appear to be gone. Maybe I was so used to seeing them, I… hallucinated them?

Anyways, I stand corrected. \o/

[valphyrian]

Male Miqo'te Face 4 is still incredibly disappointing. The dramatically different mouth shape makes it almost unrecognizable. In fairness, it looks **GREAT**, but it does **NOT** look the way it did prior to 7.0, if it were a separate face option, it'd be great... but it's not, it's replacing the face I have used since Stormblood up until the end of DT MSQ. I'm currently fanta'd to female while I wait for it to be addressed.

For context, please refer to the forum post below for before/after photos :
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/499072

The mouth shape specifically is the worst culprit, imo. There's plenty to be said about whether or not the other things are or are not an improvement over the original, but the mouth shape is just TOO drastically different and realllllly changes how the face is intended to look.

Really, really, really hoping to see this fixed and was very disappointed.

[Jaltaer]

Femra Face 2 mouth 3... (because that was the one change I was really bothered by and hoped they'd do something about with this).

It's... better? I guess? But it still looks off...



My EW vs 7.0 comparison pics from earlier in the thread-

It seems like the mouth corners have regained a bit of their definition, but overall it still feels way too "pinched" and narrow, and the dimples are still MIA... I'm not flinching every time I see my character anymore, but it still doesn't look "her".

[Shougun]

I'm surprised they went to the characters so quickly in the graphic update, given that the environment and gear would have been such a safe yet still visually evident place.

How many tears for improved water and weather effects (if programmers are to spare)? Probably 90% happy, 5% perpetually confused, and 5% upset for whatever given reason. Whose going to be sad about getting better quality dye channels (vs.. buttons.. the buttons on the jacket are dyeable), tail armor, hats that fit and look good on the two hatless races (personally dont care about hats, but some do), better clipping, or perhaps higher quality textures to gear? I have some killer PvP gear with massive pixels on them. Like actual pixels, in the year of our lord 2024.. y, y tho? lol.

Meanwhile you touch a person's physical character, its a dangerous game. Even if it is objectively an improvement in terms of a checklist, that's just a dangerous game. Like when you first get your haircut and you're not sure you love it until you test it out, and that was voluntary....

I imagine the safest character changes would have been better toes, hands, hair textures, and then meaningful curve sliders through morphing (like getting that thicc booty, or making yourself leaner or fatter). I say morphing, so that default shape is the same. Maybe we'll get lucky and the changes they're making right now will get us to morphing to justify the differences.. otherwise I just find it interesting that characters is the playground they chose.

To be fair I am aware they are ALSO doing environments (which I like), but they split the activity across all elements...


My armchair worthless pence for this would be they should probably example what they imagine the finished product should be (like a catalog lol), and then get feedback on it. On a further aside, I still like my character so whatever they've done has at least been okay for me so far (and generally 'for me' its been an improvement, but I have read others posts here so I am not making a sweeping deceleration /onto/ others).