Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Argantaelle]

It's time to see how FFXIV girls are going!

Midlanders.
Midlander girls turned out to be luckier than Midlander men. All smiles are good enough (sometimes the lower lip is too protruded, similar to male lips, but it doesn't spoil the impression much).


Highlanders.
Unfortunately, faces 3 and 4 got the same half-baked default base mouths with the same U-shaped smile.

Face 3.

1.

2.

Face 4.

1.

2.

Elezens.
Elezen girls are more or less ok. The 2nd face lip movement looks a little bit suspicious, though. It is sad that the slightly curved shape where the lips touch got replaced with the arrow-straight line for the 3rd and 4th face mouths.


Miqote.
Catgirls are the most popular race/gender combination of all in FFXIV. Their lip movement when smiling and talking is better than many other race/gender combos.

Except for the 3rd face. The smile looks familiar, right?

Roegadyn girls are ok.
The 3rd and 4th face mouth corners are pulled a little bit too high when smiling, but they are good enough.

Face 3.

Face 4.

Au Ra.
Another very popular race/gender combination. One could have thought that SE had put lots of effort into their appearance. Unfortunately, they too can't escape the U-shaped curse.

The 1st face is ok.

The 2nd (Cirina's) face. They changed the mouth shape, and this is the result:

The 3d face. Once again, the same U-shape, but an little bit toned down.

1.

2.

The 4th face got the same unified mouths, but maybe because of the size of the lips, their lip movement looks more or less normal.

Viera.
Why is it always the 3rd face?

Conclusion.
In general, girls look better and seem to have received more care than boys. None of the girls' smiles reached the same level of creepiness as some unfortunate male race/face combinations (maybe except for the poor 4th face Highlander girls). But still, work has to be done to make some smiles less uncanny, more natural and pleasant to look at.

[Argantaelle]

Warning! Spoilers for Arcadion Tier 2 ahead! (Actually, it's just some NPC screenshots without story reveals, so they are probably safe to see.)


A. Sugar Riot

Once again I'd like to say that I'm very disappointed with how SE handled Lalafell noses. After the graphical update, their heavily stylised triangle buttons turned into misshapen Hyuran noses with a distinctive nasal dorsum.

Sugar Riot:

Sugar Riot, recreated in EW benchmark:

As you can see, there aren't any nasal bridges, just a small and cute button. That nose type looked more stylised and helped to create an impression that Lalalells aren't just short humans but a unique race.


B. Brute Bomber.
The infamous Highlander face 3, which boasts the most hideous smile of all Highlander faces. I was curious how SE handled his animations. They went the clever way, showing his close-ups from different camera angles, which helped to reduce the flaws of the unified wireframe.

1. This is good.

2. This is also good. The face is stylised, and not in a bad way ("sneer" emote).

3. When I saw him in the shock state...

...I coulnd't help but dig out this DT NPC screenshot:

It looks like SE did some adjustments to Highlander face 3 eyebrow position during certain emotes, but it's still not good enough, imo. Unfortunately, the 3rd face is quite unique in this regard; other Highlander faces look more tame when grieving.

4. For the sake of comparison, this is how BB could have looked before the graphical update. The smile and laugh were so good compared to what Highlander players have now.

1. Smile

2. Laugh

C. Once again, it's a smile.

1.

2. I can't help but think that these two pictures are similar. Maybe it's the eyes. Maybe it's unified polygons and face bones.

D. Amh Garanjy, face 3

I do enjoy when an NPC's face looks like an undercooked pancake.

This is what her face geometry used to be:

[Argantaelle]

Conclusion.

I'm very disappointed that SE decided to walk an easy path when performing graphical and character updates. Faces got unified, different textures got replaced with a single one and/or AI upscaled (poorly), curvy eyebrows got straightened, eyes of different races got narrowed at the exact same value when performing a "content" emote, non-standard eyes became almond-shaped, lips got replaced with two stripes (the size of the upper stripe is one-third of the lower one), etc.

I've even made a bad picture depicting my major grievances with the character update:

I'm not even talking about preserving the initial impression but the overall visual quality. All those previously existing small details, flourishes, curvy lines, different irises, Cupid's bow lips, different eye shapes, eyelashes painted in two colours instead of one – all these features used to enrich the visuals and make the choice of facial features more engaging. They helped to create characters with different personalities of the same race or even with the same face. Now it's not possible anymore.

Unfortunately, it seems like SE is not going to hire another designer to help with correcting their mistakes, so we are going to be fed a teaspoon once in 4 months. There is a chance also that Mr Yoshida decides that all players dissatisfied with the character update have already left and there is no need to divert a valuable human resource from creating yet another mog station outfit. So even these small, minuscule corrections would stop. I do wish that I were wrong, but time will tell.

Well, I've said everything I wanted to. Unless there are some major changes, there is no point in repeating the same things over and over again.

P.S. BTW, the release date of the second benchmark was Monday, June 3, 2024, almost a year ago.

[Hatsuoki]

No fixes for male midlander face 6 in 7.25 either. No lip fixes, fake smile still weird, talking + any smile still creepy, teeth are still like dentures, eyelids not fixed.

jumpscare warning, honestly I don't want anyone to see him like this other than the devs

[Metasaur]

1. My lips became thinner (★especially the upper lip).
2. Due to factor #1, the philtrum has become longer.
3. The upper eyelids became thicker, which changed the eye shape and the amount of exposed iris.
4. She’s got wrinkles under her eyes.
5. The width of the nose has become narrower.
6. A groove has formed below the area where the eyebrows and nose bridge connect.
7. The line from the chin to the ears has become slimmer.
8. Maybe it's a small change, but the irises definitely seem a bit bigger.
9. The eyebrows are different.

I've even made a bad picture depicting my major grievances with the character update:

Yes these are exactly the problem with my FemRoe! I noticed immediately the eye bag and lip issue and those are my biggest complaints. Granted, some of the lighting changes in 7.2 did make the eye bags less noticeable in most scenarios but the issue is that THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE. AT ALL.
And PLEASE give her cupid's bow back! Why is square so afraid of thicker lips? Nearly everyone got nerfed in that regard

[Hatsuoki]

PLL for 7.3 has been announced. Wasn't their goal to have the mouth fixes by 7.2x? Please give us some kind of communication about this during the PLL.

[Joralia]

Hello. I don't have much to add today. I previously promised to make some more comparisons for 7.2x but I have no energy left for it. Please know that Face 2 Miqo'te and Face 1 Au Ra still have incorrect eyes and mouths, making both of my most dear characters (mine and a friend's) look like beauty models rather than the scrappy warriors they once were. I wanted to be more open about the changes with another diagram but I have no hope the diagram will be seen, acknowledged, or taken into consideration after the previous three attempts. I wish everyone the best of luck in getting their faces fixed.

[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.