Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Daralii]

I just don’t understand their priorities. The players who were invested in their characters appearances are the ones who are likely to stay subbed in off months between expansions. More likely to buy mog station clothes and emotes. Maybe we didn’t buy as many fantasias, but now they’ve already given two free ones away to everyone. I just don’t understand why they seem so entrenched in sticking to these new appearances. Just pull the old meshes in, overlay them, and adjust the new meshes to match the old shapes better. Overlay the old and new textures and see where they differ and fix it. What were they doing if not that, and why?? They should be returning peoples appearances back to how we enjoyed them for up to a decade. After that, work on expanding the character creator to use sliders or a wider selection of options or both. This seems so straight forward. Im just so at a loss and confused.

I'm pessimistic and jaded enough at this point to think the goal first and foremost was to streamline the face animation process, which meant homogenizing features that strayed too far from the norm, and everything else was an afterthought.

[Cheapshot]

So much this… I was thinking about it last night when I was reading another post, and someone was mentioning the limitations and how they can’t possibly get exactly the same or even close to the original character design.

Now I freely admit that I don’t have the first clue about the tech involved. But you’re telling me the newer, better system can’t render shapes as accurately as the older, outdated one could? How is that an upgrade exactly? A lay person would think adding more polygons would give you greater control over rendering the shapes of the facial features, not less!

You would think that, and I would think that too. I have 3D modelling and texturing experience and I can’t think of much of a reason. I said what I said because that’s exactly how I would approach and resolve the problem. The new lighting would be the other factor that makes it very difficult. Perhaps that’s what the person you saw was speaking on, but I’m seeing a lot of evidence they’re doing their best in that area. I do not see them doing the same with the meshes and textures. I have no explanation for that.

I'm pessimistic and jaded enough at this point to think the goal first and foremost was to streamline the face animation process, which meant homogenizing features that strayed too far from the norm, and everything else was an afterthought.

I think you’re right, and yet, the system doesn’t work because the animations have not been scaling correctly across the different races and have needed tons of manual adjustment to fix. (and arguably, they can’t seem to fix many of them judging by eyebrow twitching and mouth deformation still being a problem.)

[Velvina]

Considering the live letter only brought up the 'character updates' at the end of the stream, I'm not surprised at all nothing has changed significantly. It could be an instance of paying attention to once race/sex/face option alone, or something else, I have no clue. We weren't told anything about the specifics regarding player characters. Only NPCs. No one is looking at the NPCs all day. We don't play the NPCs. Why is everything else getting more love and care then the characters we play? It's gotten to the point where I fantasia'd to the opposite sex since the male viera face option I use looks so bad to me now. It looks like a work in progress rather then a shipped product. This entire scenario of unhappy customers could've been avoided if Square just started true to their word of not changing our character appearances. Why lie to people who are literally throwing money at them??

[lunartears]

I would like to ask again if the development team could please consider looking into the Lip Colour options? I know the main problem with the lips is a fundamental model change but the forced coloration is causing problems too. The specific setting of white lips (light) cannot be used anymore, and it was useful for creating stylized looks similar to illustrations or anime characters.

EW | DT



And again, I would appreciate if the lips could be toned down on female Au Ra. The original appearance with the petite and gentle facial features is still absent and the changes still don't resemble that look at all. The mouth line is still too soft too.

Also the enlarged pupils, please revert the size back to normal as other female Au Ra players in this thread have echoed.

[ohmRICE]

Potentially unpopular opinion but they need to put the eyebags back onto male duskwight elezen face 2. or at least make it an option because I like my duskwight looking like a tired middle-aged man

I can't believe they took away my duskwight's sleep deprivation
Give them back SE...if I wanted to be a pretty little idol boy I'd play a Viera.

[Visthra]

I can't believe they took away my duskwight's sleep deprivation
Give them back SE...if I wanted to be a pretty little idol boy I'd play a Viera.

The texture was a bug. Duskwight didn’t have the ugly as fuck black bags before DT

[ohmRICE]

The texture was a bug. Duskwight didn’t have the ugly as fuck black bags before DT

I'm well aware and I still think it was an improvement even if it was unintended. At least let it be an option for once of the face types. I don't want to be all soft and squishy looking like Face 3 but also not a prune like Face 4. y'know?

[Arzalis]

This was the inevitability of changing things again in 7.1 honestly. Some newer players and players who liked how their char looks will get upset.

SE should just stop and commit because it's actually impossible to make everyone happy now. Every change from here on out makes a different group of people mad.

They're basically just pouring water into a leaky bucket at this point.

[DelSolstice]

Regarding the dead fisheyes effect that many players have complained about, I think I've figured out the problems.

Not everyone has this, but it does seems to affect quite a lot of us across different races. Graphics on either end have done nothing to fix mine. Also, the issue pretty much goes away for me on the rare extreme close-up.



So what I've found is, that the irises in characters gradiate to be darker up top to a much more extreme degree than in 6.5. In fact the top of the eye can be completely black. It can even touch the pupil. So for many of us, whenever we are close enough to notice our eyes, especially in /gpose, we look like we're squinting or have a permanent scowl.


On top of that, many faces now have narrower eyes for some reason. I don't think many people actually wanted this, as few of us play JRPGs to have a highly realistic face. It's not the main issue, but it contributes.


And this is further exacerbated by some mouths being narrower. My default expression went from a subtle smile to "I'm from H.R. and I'm judging you".




But a partial work around I found with my own character is to darken my eye color. I changed my eyes from gold to something to medium lavender to match my hair, and they finally looked okay. Emerald green had not worked for some reason.


Slight Workaround for the eyes below:


^^^My eyes are narrower, my nose still has issues, but it's a lot better.




And here is a pic in natural lighting fairly close up from 7.0. You can see where my eyes go completely dark at the top:







Here is a pic I showed earlier from 6.5 again in natural lighting, slightly brighter than before. But here you can still see the top of my irises from a distance.






My eyes had a much milder shading gradiant. It doesn't look unnatural, and it's the same expression on the same face and looks much friendlier. This is what I want and miss.


I am sorry about my limited pic selection, but for those on PC it is hard to explain how awkward it is transferring pics between a console and laptop.


Anyway, I have three wishes from Creative Studios 3, if they cannot give me back my entire 6.5 face:

1. Please lighten the tops of our eyes so that the tops of our pupils never blend directly into our irises. It's really bad in light-colored eyes, much worse than even my green-eyed pic above.

2. The dimensions of our mouths are also an issue. Mine is too narrow, others the lips are too thin, others the smile too wide. Please restore our mouths to what they were.

3. Please make our skin less reflective, particularly our noses? Hair and lips are one thing, but no one wants shiny skin either here or irl. I want my nose to blend in more subtly like it did before. Nearly every face looks prettier like that.

[DelSolstice]

This was the inevitability of changing things again in 7.1 honestly. Some newer players and players who liked how their char looks will get upset.

SE should just stop and commit because it's actually impossible to make everyone happy now. Every change from here on out makes a different group of people mad.

They're basically just pouring water into a leaky bucket at this point.

Oh hell no.


There are specific identifiable issues here that can be fixed with specific and fully implementable changes. More critically, all the changes I will list can be made optional, which should hurt exactly no one. Some were the result of very strange choices in the re-design in the first place.


Here are four that I think cover a huge amount of ground and are completely doable from a programming perspective, and I'm usually very sympathetic with the devs and people asking for insane technical challenges.




Here are the ones I can see the most, in order or priority, with feasibility included as part of priority:


1. The gradiant on eyes is much more extremely going from bottom to top on light color eyes due to lighting changes. This only seems to pop out when the irises are a lighter color, where the top of t1e eye appears black and touches the pupil. As you zoom out, it gives a "Resting Bitch Face" expression that wasn't there before. This is probably the most noticeable change for many, and could be fixed with a toggle.

2. Greatly increased skin reflectivity has had a wide range of negative repercussions, especially with how visible our noses are. This could just be fixed with a toggle or slider.


3. Many of our mouths have inexplicably changed shape. Again, just give us the option to have our old mouths back. This one is harder because the changes are so varied, but it's doable. Can be fixed with the old mouths being CAC options. More work than the above but entirely doable.

4. The shape of many eyes has also been changed for nor explicable reason except realism. It would not take a ton of work to give us our old mouths as options on the races most effected (basically everyone but Lalafell and Hrothgar). Can be fixed with the old eye shapes being CAC options. Again, work than the first two but entirely doable.



Frankly, the eye thing shouldn't even be a complicated fix. That's where they will get the most bang for their buck on man-hours. The skin one is probably similar. Those are just shading issues. Not that the other two aren't important.



To CS3's credit, they did mostly negate the issue with the philtrum.


Anyway great many people are attached to their WoLs because they identify as them, so it was always playing with fire to change the graphics to this degree. They will never satisfy everyone but it's not remotely at a place where I'd compromise. This will take far, far, far less work than a DC-wide PF or even just more glam space, and make a whole lot of people happy.