Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Doopliss]

To give them a single reluctant thank you (it's ridiculous this level of change took this goddamn long), I do think ♀ Highlanders got the most significant adjustment this patch.

They changed the makeup a lot so it no longer only looks good on light skin. My dark skinned Highlander now appears to know how to apply eyeliner again! Although Face 2 (not shown here), specifically, still has its issues with its eyes being a completely new shape, even its makeup looks a lot better and brings it slightly closer to its original, "cuter" impression.

7.0-7.1:


7.2:

[Iscah]

Highlander men have been begging for eyebrows on their hands and knees for a decade.

You might want to look closer at your phrasing there...

[Windfire]

7.0 functioned better than 7.1 and 7.2 combined and think it just goes to show that Square Enix should have stuck to their guns and told us to get over it as they actually had something that works, emotes that functioned and a consistent visual style that fit with the rest of the graphical update. Even if it wasn't what people expected it wasn't this mess. We are experiencing death by a thousand cuts, your suggestion is no better than them continuing to do updates.

Uh no 7.0 didn't function properly either, emotes/expressions were borked as soon as they put out the new faces. Oh but they'll have an easier time making rubber faces in Hildedrand for master Yoshi so it all good! /S

[Taranok]

Throwing my opinion in, again (though maybe not earlier in this thread.)

Old Au Ra face 4 had a 'fierce' expression to it with a narrowed, angular face.

3/4 profile Left is EW, right is Benchmark 1.0.

This is 7.2


Straight on. Same thing, left is EW, right is Benchmark 1.0.

And 7.2.


Surprisingly, the devs have made a significant amount of progress with face 4, but it's still not quite right. It's not as obvious in the 3/4 profile, but the jaw and cheeks are still a bit wrong. The jaw, in this case specifically female xaela face 4 type 2 jaw, is a lot wider than it was in endwalker still. Especially if you draw a straight line parallel to the lips. The rest of the face is actually close to how it is, but the jaw is an area still messed up in this particular face. But at least appears to be close to the end of things that need tweaking on this face. Narrowing the jaw should fix the cheek issue, and bring the face closer to what it was in EW.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

In what world was 7.0 functioning better? I had to make dozens of bug reports about expressions alone. Light shined straight through your hair like your head was a pane of glass. Philtrums were all puffy and several races were missing core clan characteristics. Characters with dark skin were shinier and it took until this patch for my female Highlander to have her baked-in makeup not look gross. Several scale textures were bumpy and misaligned and looked like they were done by AI. I understand being unhappy with some changes done post 7.0 (the limbal ring issues really screwed with my Face 2 Xaela girl as well, but at the same time the quality of her scales and face textures were way worse in 7.0) but I really struggle to take comments like this in good faith.

I liked the way expressions looked on all my characters in 7.0, I never noticed a single issue with the hair; other than the fact the one I used to use didn't get updated and still hasn't been changed to this day... thanks Yoshi P. I liked the more pronounced philtrums. The scales looked a darn sight better than they did in Endwalker and before as I wanted them to be bumpier and have more definition like they did with Dawntrail's initial release and the second benchmark. The adaptive lighting based on your environment for the limbal rings in 7.0 was a cool change as was the light refracting through the horns for Au Ra. You may not be able to take it in good faith that there are many things people HATED and complained about for 7.0 that others liked and potentially loved, but like me, there are people who weren't completely averse to the idea of these things changing or becoming more defined or simply being different.

There are genuine issues with the graphical update; some of which you mentioned, but a lot of the smaller, nitpicky things should have been chalked up to the dev team wanting to define things more and accepted more openly, rather than immediately being vilified and treated like any small change labels the team as the absolute spawn of satan for daring to even touch our characters.

People have differing opinions and can, in fact, like something that others don't.
That's been the issue with the character graphics update as a whole.

There's too many opinions and too many ideas for what "looks" good to individual people. Whereas some could have been happy in the past, we're at a point where the majority is not going to be happy until they release a character creator that reintroduces every single option that has been patched out since 6.58 and 7.0 and that's just the long and short of it. The people complaining and providing feedback do not consist of a majority of players, for all the pages in this thread, for all the feedback and criticism people are levying on this issue, there are those who either are paying absolutely no attention or are suffering in silence because they know the moment they speak up in favor of the changes that have been expunged from existence that people are going to accuse them of white knighting or of making comments in bad faith for a mere difference in opinion.

[mallleable]

Thavnair won so hard with the zone updates. Thank you!

[Kimeraandrel]

People asking for the devs to scrap all of the character graphics update might have spent too long in a bubble in here...

[Turnintino]

For whatever it's worth, I echo the recent frustrations about the continued neglect of ♂ Miqo'te Face 4 (and all others, for the record).

Still waiting for these sculpt issues to be addressed:




Which affects Mouth 2 and all nose shapes but 6 (I wouldn't be surprised if there was something wrong with 6 as well, but the others are all permutations of the profile pictured here). Not to mention I'm still mourning our reduced eyebrow thickness... u_u

[Doopliss]

[Cut due to post length]

I don't really have much to say to this because we clearly disagree, but nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody on either side here, knows what the majority does and doesn't want. Everyone's pool of experiences is different, and for as many people suffering in silence for the reasons you claim, there are also likely as many suffering in silence with issues brought upon from this graphic update because this forum is a cesspit and people continue to try to dismiss them as "nitpicky".

Regardless, the development team wanting to "define(?)" things more or change up the art direction isn't an excuse. They set the standards for expectations themselves on and on again and failed to meet them. That is their fault, and, yeah, they deserve the repercussions for it.

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

The adaptive lighting based on your environment for the limbal rings in 7.0 was a cool change as was the light refracting through the horns for Au Ra. You may not be able to take it in good faith that there are many things people HATED and complained about for 7.0 that others liked and potentially loved, but like me, there are people who weren't completely averse to the idea of these things changing or becoming more defined or simply being different.

There are genuine issues with the graphical update; some of which you mentioned, but a lot of the smaller, nitpicky things should have been chalked up to the dev team wanting to define things more and accepted more openly, rather than immediately being vilified and treated like any small change labels the team as the absolute spawn of satan for daring to even touch our characters.

These are reasonable arguments, but when the first and last thing that was said by Yoshida about the graphical update before 7.0 released is "the absolute premise is to preserve the image of the character as much as possible", this sets certain expectations, namely that existing features will not drastically change or look too different from how they used to be.
You want to give Au ra translucent horns? You want to give them larger pupils? You want limbal rings to glow a certain way? Cool, no problem. But add them as extra options, not by overwriting what already exists.
It stings even more when stuff like limbal rings and horns being affected by light were only in the benchmark, just a few months before release. Or when Yoshida said in January last year "don't worry, if you like the old limbal rings, you'll still be able to get the same effect" because people were already concerned and divided about the drastic change in October 2023, and uh, we still don't know what he meant by that, because that certainly hasn't been true.

Personally, I just wanted the same character with a bit more polygons here and a little extra pixels there. Because that's what was announced at the beginning. But that's not what I got.

People have differing opinions and can, in fact, like something that others don't.
That's been the issue with the character graphics update as a whole.

There's too many opinions and too many ideas for what "looks" good to individual people.

Which is exactly why the real issue of the graphical update is that the dev team did not take that into account in the first place.
They told us they'd be very careful about preserving the image of the character, precisely because they were anticipating that people would be upset if things changed too much because they are extremely attached to their characters, but then they didn't manage to deliver on that front and instead arbitrarily changed things on the fly, and created this rift between players instead.

The current situation, at its core, is the result of mistakes in the planning (dare I say scheduling), direction, execution, and communication around the graphical update.