Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

snip[…]

“Apathy” & “Bitter” are the perfect words to describe how I feel. Even moreso right after they’ve announced wanting to put more into AI garbage. Because of that, in my head there’s only two things that can happen: (1). No more major updates. It’s ‘done’. They want us to shut up. Or; (2). They do it anyway but rely on AI which would probably ruin more than fix anything at all. Call it fearmongering if you (general you) will, IDC.

There’s no ‘winning’ this. I’ve said what I needed to say; mostly consist of personal feedback about what parts I like and dislike from their 7.0 plastic surgery, & grievance to their code of conduct in general. I am ‘happier’ to just take the matter onto my own hands since 7.0 launch, which I wish I never had to do.

[Shistar]

I am ‘happier’ to just take the matter onto my own hands since 7.0 launch, which I wish I never had to do.

It is unfortunate, but in the end it might be the only way to get your character to look exactly as you wish... just remember the rules of Fight Club, and happy plastic surgery!

[lunartears]

“Apathy” & “Bitter” are the perfect words to describe how I feel. Even moreso right after they’ve announced wanting to put more into AI garbage. Because of that, in my head there’s only two things that can happen: (1). No more major updates. It’s ‘done’. They want us to shut up. Or; (2). They do it anyway but rely on AI which would probably ruin more than fix anything at all. Call it fearmongering if you (general you) will, IDC.

There’s no ‘winning’ this. I’ve said what I needed to say; mostly consist of personal feedback about what parts I like and dislike from their 7.0 plastic surgery, & grievance to their code of conduct in general. I am ‘happier’ to just take the matter onto my own hands since 7.0 launch, which I wish I never had to do.

I resonate with a lot of this, it was only this update that tipped me over the edge to see how I could personally cope. The only issue is that nobody can see how my character actually looks like when I made her and is meant to appear and instead see the horrifying effigy that DT has seemingly permanently left in all Female Au Ra Face 1's place.

I think I've had the exact words "apathy" and "bitter" circulating in my mind as early as 7.2. I appreciate that people still post about the issues even if it's apparent that they simply don't care enough. I don't think I'll ever redo my feedback in a better format because of that fact. At the bare minimum, I wish they would revert the Au Ra pupil size change, it's really easy to do it.

Regarding AI, just look at how they did Au Ra's scales in 7.0, it was undeniably automated to an extent (can't repost my pictures as it's all on imgur and it got banned here).

Still miss when this game wasn't aiming for a more GPU intensive hyper realistic look.

[CidHeiral]

Following up on some of my previous feedback post leading up to 7.4.

Side note:
Can there please be a higher draw distance setting? The new grass density looks great but you can only see it an inch in front of your face. This should apply to the mobs as well, they currently pop in very close to the player.

An increased draw distance setting was added for players and NPCs, which is great! Thank you devs! Please add a similar setting for grass and other objects as well.

1. Highlander Lips

I've been complaining about the lip issue on female highlander face 1 since the beta. To reiterate:

- The bottom lip has a very stark line running straight through the middle of the lip, separating it into a much darker half and a much lighter half. It looks very strange and unnatural, like you have three lips.
- There's a prominent inverted white triangle on the upper lip either not present or very very light in the original.
- The lips overall have various splotchy white parts that make them look almost infected, an odd interpretation of the low res highlights from the original.

This is still an issue.



I didn't want to bring up the mobile version in my previous post because I dislike that version for a different set of reasons and wouldn't want it either, but what is noteworthy is that the mobile version lacks the issues outlined above.



- The bottom lip isn't strangely separated into two starkly contrasting zones.
- The weird white triangle on the upper lip is gone.
- The lips aren't covered in random white lines.

I am quite perplexed as to why on multiple different patches the devs took the time to erase small differences in eye makeup on face 1 (both of which were better than the original IMO) to get them closer to the pre-DT look, but they won't correct this massive and incredibly bizarre departure from the old textures.

To reiterate what they should look similar to in FFXIV from my previous post:

Interestingly, in certain lighting sometimes the lips look a lot better as I've shown below (everything on the right side is from 7.0). When the light is just right it blends the colors together and everything looks much closer to how it should (except the persistent upper lip triangle which shows how much more prominent it is now). If the lips looked like the below image all the time I'd have no complaints.



Devs, please blend out the details of the lips to match the example above and the original model. If at least the bottom lip gets fixed I can live with the rest of it.

2. Shadows

Speaking of lighting, shadows are still broken since my bug report on the issue was accepted a year ago. In a recent patch there was a note about the engine taking multiples light sources into account to improve shadows but as far as I can tell that hasn't actually improved anything.

Shadows are still very broken.







That last one is from an MSQ cutscene. Very distracting when you're trying to be immersed in the story.

And side note, the gifs above are another good example of how specific lighting sometimes blends the mangled lip shading together to make them look much better. Please just do that to the texture itself.

Side note:
Please greatly increase the shadow rendering distance inside housing. Currently if a light source isn't directly in your face it doesn't properly account for the geometry around it.

This is still an issue. Lights inside housing do not take their surrounding environment into account when casting shadows unless they're right next to you. Look at all the shadows popping in and out with every step in this small room.



Please greatly extend the render distance for lighting and shadows inside houses (and out in the world too IMO but that's a different issue). You should be able to stand at one end of a large house interior and see the correct shadows on the other side. Right now you practically have to be standing on top of light sources for things to look how they should.


Hope to see improvements in 7.4!

[potatsdevourer]

Personally I still do not like how they add too much detail on Face 2 Male Highlander. Be it sunken cheekbones with extra cheek muscle, overly highlighted frowning brow bones, or just straight up changing nose shading.

It was never that detailed in the first place, and considering they never even touched this even from 7.0, I just assume they have no intention to take the player suggestions. Which, I guess developer's art direction it is.

I get it.

What I find it more annoying however (and sorry I hijack this into another 'where male highlander eyebrows') that they have not aced the eyebrow face paint placement. Every patch it changes back and forth, I think during 7.2 they were closer to what pre-DT supposed to be. But here comes another face paint change because every race use the same face paint and they have to fit them for everyone. And yet, the eyebrows paint are never the same anymore, it does really drive the message to home that as male highlander I have to re-apply new eyebrows each patch. Be it thinner on the tail end on older patch, then thick-like-Shin-chan eyebrows on the other patch.

ffs just give us our eyebrows, we are subjected to every race 3D mapping mercy right now.

[Argantaelle]

It's that time again, my fellow players! Only a month is left before the next major patch, so it's time to praise what a wonderful job the SE designers did with their graphical update of character faces. I'm not even talking about the faithful recreation of the "old" faces, but the unmatched graphical fidelity and artistic taste which were shown in the process.

I especially like the new face sculpt; it looks so natural.

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2.


3.


This is an "old" face for the sake of comparison.

What a thorough job SE did modelling eyelids when eyes are closed!

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This beautiful smile brings tears to my eyes.

BTW, one year and five months have passed since the DT launch. All these issues were noticed by players, and feedback was provided. Well, I'm quite sure that at least some of those issues will certainly be fixed in 8.0!

P.S. My poor girl still suffers from the bee sting on her lower lip. At least the upper lip was a little bit corrected; praise the Twelve.

[Iscah]

I especially like the new face sculpt; it looks so natural.

What a thorough job SE did modelling eyelids when eyes are closed!

That triangular lighting shape just makes my skin crawl every time I see it. I don't understand how it ever got passed as an acceptable representation of a human face shape, and it's a demonstration of why "accurate lighting of shapes" is worthless if you haven't got the shape right.

And eyelids -- I'm glad you brought that up too because it has bothered me the whole time and I don't think I ever had many good references of the original characters with their eyes closed, but the current look for Aurelie is like she's scrunching her eyes shut super-tight instead of just gently closing them.

[Argantaelle]

As a side note, Warframe is also going to do the graphical update of their characters (it's massive; they redo everything, starting from face sculpts and ending with hairstyles). But, as I learnt from one of the podcasts, if a player logs in after the update, the prompt appears with an offer to preserve the "old" face.

Warframe isn't exactly a story-driven game with lots of cutscenes; surely, the game has its kind of MSQ, and it's quite good, but the story isn't the main focus. But even a horde shooter recognises the power of attachment which has been built for many years. I guess SE is just too cool to do the same.

[Clover_Blake]

In my case, my main hyur in EU has improved since 7.0, so I'm okay playing her as a main now. Most of my alts are very dead though. I still can't stand my Au Ra alts or my female Viera, and some of my other hyurs.

From time to time, I still try to design new characters with the new graphics. Au Ra face 2 has become quite cute after the change, and might be my favourite now that face 1 has been brutally butchered.

[Doopliss]

Still here but barely. I continue to feel luckier with my main in most regards but it doesn't make me dislike the fact that faces lost their character and consistency in art direction for the trade-off of better normal maps any less. Still massively dislike the changes to ♀ Highlander F2's eyes, ♀ Au Ra F2's lips, ♂ Midlander F4's lips, Auri limbal rings glowing as brightly as headlights no matter how dark the color is, and all the other little plastic surgery-esque adjustments that I can't be bothered to list off for the umpteenth time anymore.

The game is in an absolutely pitiful state so I basically don't play anymore, though. I'm only subbed for RP and PvP really, but genuine RP has stagnated hard because of the continued artificial congestion that has existed since Dawntrail attempting to funnel people into their unsuccessful fourth NA data center. As for everything else, job and combat design is so dreadful I can't stomach doing something as mind-numbing as dungeons anymore, nor do I care enough to raid these days. Population is so low that current cycle 24-man queues struggle to pop as soon as 10pm CST. It also doesn't help the RP side of things when quest writing treats the reader like a little idiot on average now and readily discards any intrigue built up from writers and lore creators past.

Bug reports (and I mean actual, undeniable bugs; not just questionable model changes) I've made several times and have gotten accepted into the "Planning to Address/Fix" section of the forums continue to remain in the game for over a year now. Every patch comes with an extra emergency maintenance for hotfixes. Constantly unaddressed DDoSing, lol.

It's genuinely pathetic for a game that people pay $12+ every month to play. To this day I still don't understand how so little gets addressed each patch, both for adjustments and actual bug fixes. It's a shame because this game and the characters it allowed me to create used to mean the world to me.

It'd be nice if they managed to address even one of these aspects for real by 7.4, however I'm expecting more of the same but with unrestricted glamours, so I'll probably have longer lapses in my sub again. I don't really have any hope for anything being given genuine care.