Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Aniya_Estlihn]

I've had the opposite experience with Auri limbal rings, I've been fighting real hard since the first benchmark (almost a year already...) to get my limbal rings back, which were pretty much gone in both benchmarks and 7.0 (except at night), and made a bit of a comeback since 7.1 (even if they're not exactly like before yet, and the dilated pupils are not helping). I'm not saying this to shut down your opinion, just to share that from my perspective, with the character creation choices I made, things have slightly improved. This has also been the case for some Au ra NPCs like Sadu and Allie, who in 7.0 looked very different from how they used to in 6.X.

However, it's far from perfect, and the 7.1 adjustments are much more sensitive to the environment lighting than before, which exacerbates the "high beam" effect you're talking about. That has also affected the appearance of Cirina and Yugiri, whose limbal rings have drastically changed colors after 7.1.
I wrote a very long debug post on the Japanese thread about how the color and thickness of limbal rings are strongly affected by the lighting (particularly the green and red values, and I'm pretty sure the game's lighting is a lot more yellow than it used to be...), in case you're curious to learn more about why that "high beam" effect is happening.

I hope a middle ground can be found, because I do agree that some color combinations looked better in 7.0, but others sadly didn't, and same in 7.1. I still think that the method of rendering/displaying the limbal ring is what is at fault, and I still struggle to understand why they decided to change it from how it worked in 6.X (like, I think the same gradient transition and glow-in-the-dark effect could be achieved, at the cost of maybe making the ring not perfectly round, but still with more polygons than in 6.X... but I don't know what their technical constraints are, so).

Hopefully we both get what we want in 7.2, but yeah I'm as anxious as you about the changes, even if we disagree on what was better lol

Oh my only issue with them is that they are a bit too bright in all settings; at night its egregiously bright, and how utterly thick they are around the iris compared to both 7.0 and 6.X, so in that regard we're kind of in the same boat. They are much thicker than they used to be both pre and post overhaul and it took me two months to get used to the change in 7.1... so I am dreading what they might do. I don't feel like you're shutting me down, differences in opinion exist and should be recognized.

I do, however, greatly miss how my face looked in 7.0. I know it wasn't the intended shape or look, but I quickly grew attached to it as I went into Dawntrail with an open mind that things would visually be different and I grew to quite love what they had done. Others don't and that's fine too... I really, really, really just want them look at their workflow, realize how futile doing a graphical update to characters every patch is and go into more detail about the character creation overhaul they spoke of in one of the previous lodestone topics on the situation.

As the biggest concern, as DynnDiablos above put it, is that we're about to witness death by a thousand cuts and in the end absolutely no one will be happy.
They've always struggled with proper prioritization and I think this should serve as a wake up call that the character creation system is too limited to satisfy all their players.

Limitations are fine, all well and good, but when you start to tweak the characters like they have in both benchmarks, 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2 they're showing people glimpses of what could be and potentially giving them things they like better, which is only going to lead to more compounding resentment, frustration, and dissatisfaction.

But I digress, back on our discussion, the limbal rings used to be a model that they super imposed on top of the eye, it then had a lighting effect applied to it; as each color was actually a color and a light value.
That system has been depreciated and replaced with a fully lighting and shader dependent replacement that I doubt they are wont to change or revert. So I don't see what they could do without tossing away however much they invested into the new system.

Also as a general statement: would it kill them to make another lodestone topic detailing the changes to character models? Just saying its happening and not having an itemized summary of everything is so inconsiderate to us when many people treat their character as their in game identity. I used to be pretty averse to any of the changes people were suggesting here, and while I am more open to others complaints... I still am averse to the idea of us enduring multiple iterations throughout 7.X; seriously they got it wrong three times... potentially four now... set it aside and find a better solution and communicate those plans clearly, but we need some clear open communication about their plans and what they are actually doing.