Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Doopliss]

I noticed immediately that in the mobile port both Midlander women and Lalafells have that dark, upper eye shading that gave their eyes that gentler appearance pre-DT.

I hate glazing macrotransactional mobile games for basically anything, but the fact they now have another version of the game with a different team that remade the models from scratch--who kept character design more accurate and consistent in many ways--is not a good look for them.

Does anybody know if male Duskwights kept their unique, clearer face textures in the mobile version? In the main game, they only managed to fix the textures for Face 2 ♂ Duskwights in 7.1, and no other fixes for any of their other faces have happened since then. I know in JP a lot of users have been trying to get Face 3 fixed still, specifically.

[faiarrow]

Does anybody know if male Duskwights kept their unique, clearer face textures in the mobile version? In the main game, they only managed to fix the textures for Face 2 ♂ Duskwights in 7.1, and no other fixes for any of their other faces have happened since then. I know in JP a lot of users have been trying to get Face 3 fixed still, specifically.

Just some quick shots before I go to work (let me know if I can help get more later!)

[Doopliss]

Just some quick shots before I go to work (let me know if I can help get more later!)

Thank you so much!

Interestingly, though, it looks like male Duskwight do still have the dark undereyes in this version. Even Face 2 has them in this version, in spite of their fix in 7.1... While I don't really hold much judgement for an entirely different team making models from the ground up for an essentially different game, I'm surprised this detail has gone unnoticed by designers every time outside of the 1.0 -> 2.0 transition. It does give a pretty drastic impression difference...

[Sairaag]

I'll post my own main character as well. Here's the change from Endwalker to Dawntrail that I've been complaining about for a year now:



That completely different mouth shape, those rounder and heavier eyelids, the faded eyebrows and so on.

And then we have the mobile version:




I just had to post him in all backgrounds, because look: not only are the sharper lines back, the creases of his eyelids actually disappear under different lighting conditions again and he once more looks bright and alert! That's the default expression I chose. That's my lad. And the eyebrows are thicker and darker, too!

One thing I do prefer in Dawntrail and it's the fully closed mouth. I know some people with female Keepers at least wanted that gap back, however, so maybe there could be a toggle when they get around to updating the character creator.

[Sairaag]

I noticed immediately that in the mobile port both Midlander women and Lalafells have that dark, upper eye shading that gave their eyes that gentler appearance pre-DT.

I hate glazing macrotransactional mobile games for basically anything, but the fact they now have another version of the game with a different team that remade the models from scratch--who kept character design more accurate and consistent in many ways--is not a good look for them.

It bothers me a lot, really. I'm not planning to actually play this mobile version, but it feels bad to see how improved and faithful to the original model my character would look on mobile and not being able to have that.

[Jaltaer]

In a way I'm almost glad the mobile game is currently ARR only, and therefore doesn't have Au Ra as a playable race yet... I still mourn the loss of my character's old face and I think seeing a comparison with the mobile version, which would likely be a more accurate "upgrade" vs what we got, would just be too upsetting.
It's so frustrating knowing that likely part of the reason these models are looking better is because Tencent has more than enough money to throw at whatever - and XIV itself does bring in that level of money too, especially since they are licensing out the game for this mobile version! But Square would rather use that cash to fund literally everything but the game that's actually making them money. That's a discussion for another topic, though.... but I wouldn't be surprised if the subpar changes we got stuck with in the actual game were due to XIV seeing barely a fraction of what money it makes. Why care about actually upholding that promise to preserve the original appearances of people's characters when you aren't getting paid enough to do so...

[faiarrow]

I mean the warning about it being more faithful was there from the start... on the Chinese and Japanese language pages only for XIV mobile. Not the English one.

But I also like to stress that this studio also have been doing this under full supervision of CS3/SQEX. So this is just making the complacency comment Yoshida made in the PLL worse, imo. I am absolutely bitter. I have a lot of JP feedback to write again this weekend from this, not how I want to spend a day but here we are on the over a year long crusade now to get our characters back.

Because this is my character. This is what a femroe should look like. Not a super smooth doll face, someone with actual shapes and hard lines and something clearly non-human-esque going on. Even with the jewel eyes missing there's so much more that's normal she doesn't look uncanny anymore, and it's depressing that level of care went into a money-hungry mobile game vs. the (also money-hungry, given they're bleeding subs since pre-DT) main release.




(They even fixed the side lock issue in this version... something that not even the DT "upgrade" did - where they made it worse.)

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

(psst how do I get my hands on the mobile version)

[faiarrow]

(psst how do I get my hands on the mobile version)

(slides this your way)

[Liamont]

C...Can someone check the eyebrows on Elezen male on the mobile version? From the screenshots earlier it looks to be much similar than the DT versions...

Actually I am also curious, are the expressions and emotes more faithful to EW? There's been some weird morphing of the mouth in particular when smiling for DT emotes. The JP thread has a lot of pictures of those, if anyone is curious.