Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[lunartears]

I just want to make it known that I'm still here and still hurting over what transpired nearly a year ago with the changes to my WoL. People say that grief is temporary but I think this is a permanent feeling.

I'm still subbed to this game (maybe out of some sort of desperation), but my love for it has dwindled rapidly. I dislike the graphics update as a whole, I prefer the grey, dark fantasy look to the game from the ARR-EW era. I thought it was so beautiful, I loved the simple graphics, the lighting, even the low poly and low resolution look. I can't stand the way gear looks in Dawntrail and I can't stand the way that the environment looks. Everything is over-designed, everything is soft, everything is shiny, there's a push for realism at every corner, the stylized simplicity is no more. Even the places that haven't been touched much feel wrong now.

I want to love being in this world, but with the changes that the graphics update have made I feel like I don't have a place here anymore. My WoL has been turned into an ugly, disturbing effigy, a poor replication of something I loved and held close to my heart. I've never wanted to change her, never felt the need to use mods, I loved her as she was in her original form. Now it's just been replaced, and I can't do anything about it. Everyone has to see this version of my WoL, and so do I. And to top it all off, the original look of the game has been changed. I know the majority disagrees with me, and say that the game looks better now but I don't see anything looking "prettier", and my personal tastes are clearly different. I can't change how I feel about something.

For the rare days that I feel I can log in and actually run Duty Roulette or the new patch content, I feel an emptiness. If I could just have Au Ra's old face back then the other parts would be easier to deal with, but the dev team has shown to me that nothing will improve with nothing changing in both 7.1 and 7.2.

[LuciaMirain]

I just want to make it known that I'm still here and still hurting over what transpired nearly a year ago with the changes to my WoL. People say that grief is temporary but I think this is a permanent feeling.

I'm still subbed to this game (maybe out of some sort of desperation), but my love for it has dwindled rapidly. I dislike the graphics update as a whole, I prefer the grey, dark fantasy look to the game from the ARR-EW era. I thought it was so beautiful, I loved the simple graphics, the lighting, even the low poly and low resolution look. I can't stand the way gear looks in Dawntrail and I can't stand the way that the environment looks. Everything is over-designed, everything is soft, everything is shiny, there's a push for realism at every corner, the stylized simplicity is no more. Even the places that haven't been touched much feel wrong now.

I want to love being in this world, but with the changes that the graphics update have made I feel like I don't have a place here anymore. My WoL has been turned into an ugly, disturbing effigy, a poor replication of something I loved and held close to my heart. I've never wanted to change her, never felt the need to use mods, I loved her as she was in her original form. Now it's just been replaced, and I can't do anything about it. Everyone has to see this version of my WoL, and so do I. And to top it all off, the original look of the game has been changed. I know the majority disagrees with me, and say that the game looks better now but I don't see anything looking "prettier", and my personal tastes are clearly different. I can't change how I feel about something.

For the rare days that I feel I can log in and actually run Duty Roulette or the new patch content, I feel an emptiness. If I could just have Au Ra's old face back then the other parts would be easier to deal with, but the dev team has shown to me that nothing will improve with nothing changing in both 7.1 and 7.2.

FWIW you are not alone in this feeling. I can't look at my previous viera without feeling a sense of loss and "ick" at her lips and eyemakeup. Sometimes, in shadows I can see "her" but then she moves and she is just gone and left is an empty husk of what was once her. I don't mind the rest of the graphical update. My miqo didn't suffer so much so I play her and enjoy her for the most part. But the loss, as you say, has never really gone away.

[NightHour]

Let's retire support for Playstation 4 already so this game can get better.

PS4 is literally holding the game back, it's decade and a half old hardware is stopping us having nice things because "cant put strain on PS4 users hardware!11"



PS5 is widely available now and is at a decent price.

[programcanaan]

Let's retire support for Playstation 4 already so this game can get better.

PS4 is literally holding the game back, it's decade and a half old hardware is stopping us having nice things because "cant put strain on PS4 users hardware!11"



PS5 is widely available now and is at a decent price.

Yeah and hopefully they don't wait another 4+ years to make actual improvements like when the 3 was phased out. And if FFXIV doesn't phase out 4 psn will urge them to anyway.

[Tarath]

Been meaning to write this for a while, but motivation has been quite lacking.
Honestly I don’t see the light being improved in this patch.
There’s still pixelated shadows in Solution 9.


Gif of the shadow which I’ve posted previously.

I’m also getting tired of seeing pixelated mess on my character’s faces during some cutscenes.


Though these are from two different instances, the shadow is still just as unflattering on the face. I believe this isn’t a lighting/shadow issue itself, but instead the light is highlighting how different the current face sculpts are compared to the old ones.What bothers me the most with these sculpts is the upsidedown triangle shadow on the cheeks connecting through the highlight of the philtrum, along with the highlight at the corner of the lips.

Futures Rewritten (Ultimate) (7.1) | Recollection (Extreme) (7.2)

On the older sculpts there wasn’t as strong emphasis on the corner of the mouth where on the DT sculpt it makes the face look more like an annoyed resting face. The triangle shadow is barely a triangle when the light source is right above the character. Here the shadows are softening the face to accommodate the round cheeks.

Pre DT screenshots

Though this is more noticeable on feminine faces, it is also present on male characters.


I made the horrible mistake of trying to recreate an old gpose with more drastic lighting… This isn’t the character I used to play as…

Pre DT, Coerthas Western Highlands | DT, The Final Day

Again, though not as visible, the shadows on the cheeks are heading downwards towards the philtrum with a highlight above the lip to connect the light hitting the cheeks. The corner of the lips have been softened so much which I believe is the reason light puts so much emphasis on that area. It really adds to a porcelain look to the new sculpts and part of why I find them so uncanny (along with the expression).

And before anyone tells me the lighting is too different to be comparable, the DT sculpts appear a lot more different with light cast on it compared to how it looks in the shadow.

The Prima Vista, Tiring Room

The light makes the face more obscure where the eyes feel heavily weighted down. The glow from the limbal ring helps lift the eye (which is missing here), however the DT sculpts like to emphasize the eyebags. This area likely doesn’t have the lighting updated, but the Inn in Tuliyollal shows the same result. Only difference is that the shadows aren’t as stark and the limbal ring glows a bit more (but not as much as I would prefer it to be, both in the dark and light).


Not the best comparison, but here’s some pre DT screenshots to show that the impression of the face doesn’t change as much between light and dark. Here the eyes don't feel as weighted down in the light and despite having similar shadow under the eye. The shadow on the cheeks aren’t afraid to wander towards the nose instead of going straight down to the philtrum. These new DT sculpts (and textures) remind me a lot of porcelain dolls, especially on female faces. And when it comes to the face type I use in DT it looks more of a cylinder with a nose slapped on it, while the old one had some more complexity going on between the cheek, nose and mouth.

Pre DT

Aside from my “failed” attempt at trying to recreate said gpose above and some clear screenshots, all my gposing plans have gone down the drain. The main reason I’m going into gpose now is to get a closer look at something and take comparison shots. I was really looking forward to gpose my characters with better light and textures as DT was promising, instead I’ve been greeted by uncanny faces that look ok enough in the dark, but so off in the light because the light highlights how different the sculpts turned out.

[Tarath]

Some other things I want to address, but don’t have much to say about:

This elderly npc stopped next to me who I believe has not been updated and she fits the style of the game a lot more than the updated elderly faces, if you ask me.


This is the worst case I’ve seen of the highlighted silhouette on a character. Only seen it there once though.

Small cottage, Mist

I’m baffled that the eyelid bug is still present in the game. I didn’t expect them to emergency patch it, but I assumed it would have been fixed with the latest patch release, considering this has quite a noticeable effect on portraits and cutscenes.



But then again, what is there to expect from Square Enix when it took them two weeks to patch a visual bug in Futures Rewritten (Ultimate) making a certain attack difficult to see in an already eyesore of a fight, a month to fix Core/Lateral naming error in Cloud of Darkness (Chaotic), but does an emergency patch a week after the bug was introduced for text that is fully optional, unrelated to any quest except that it appeared in Japanese after completing the final role quest in DT. I guess I’m expecting too much.

Yes the eyelid bug might be harder to fix than text, but doesn’t excuse the fact that their bug fixing priorities in general have been questionable.


I noticed Keternramm’s hair is a bit more pixelated than the upscaled hair texture we have in DT. I found this a bit odd since Keternramm is a character introduced in this expansion, and though it’s not as low rez as pre DT textures, it retains the depth that was lost with the current hair textures.


Texture comparison of my character’s hair

Pre DT on top, DT bottom

When it comes to the environment, they’re generally stunning, but I just want to point out this silly road leading to nowhere.

Urqopacha

However ocean fishing has gotten a downgrade since the release of DT. Tiled textures such as the grass, rocks and the ocean are not pretty to look at. I can’t be bothered to see if I have screenshots to compare, but the ocean was definitely not as repetitive-looking as it is now. I remember foliage had bugged textures on DT release which has now been fixed. Considering ARR zones have been updated, the cutscenes were reworked at the beginning of the expansion and that some bugs have been fixed, I have my doubts that they’ll update more to ocean fishing zones.




DT, good (but still) water in Thavnair, if they’re trying to mimic wavy water in Ocean Fishing, I fail to see it as such.


I’m aware I sound harsh in these posts, but I’m getting fed up with these continuous false promises and dismissal of issues, not just in regards to the graphics update, but gameplay and story related ones too. I’m tired boss.

[Hatsuoki]

Thank you for making your posts despite the low motivation. I also had gpose plans that I can no longer do. It's been at the front of my mind recently because I've been needing to clear out hard drive space and saw that I have 56gb of screenshots from my almost 6 years in the game. The folder is full of badly timed cutscene shots, ones that I thought I'd be able to do again with better lighting, or rejected shots from when I thought I already had the perfect one but I haven't been able to face deleting them because they're all I have left of my characters from before the update. I keep finding new reasons to kick myself over the course of a year since the update for not doing all of my gposes before then.


Also this is the now glorious view of the Ruby Sea from the top of Kugane tower during what was one of the prettiest times of day.

[noumen0nn]

Also this is the now glorious view of the Ruby Sea from the top of Kugane tower during what was one of the prettiest times of day.

This makes me so depressed. Obviously I care a lot more about the character visuals than the environmental ones, but it's the blatantly obvious stuff like this that just convinces me that our feedback will never be addressed. Even if they care (which I don't think they do), they simply don't have the skill to do it. They can't adjust expressions without breaking the weighting, they can't adjust tiled textures without getting ps2 water. It's just disheartening.

[Liamont]

Happy to see the viera and hrothgar finally get hats (after 6 years...), but was disappointed to see nothing about fixing our faces to be more in line with what they were like in EW and before. If they can take such meticulous care to upgrade characters like Aymeric faithfully, why can't they do the same for player characters?

[lunartears]

Has anyone seen screenshots of FFXIV Mobile? Just released in China recently but some are managing to access it regardless. It looks like a middle ground between EW and DT, like the character graphics update we never had. Maybe I am being too optimistic based on the little I have seen though. Also it currently only has ARR races so I can't look at anything Au Ra-related.