Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[IttyBittyShark]

Grats to people who "won" or decided to put up with it, but I can't. A decade of worldbuilding with friends and expanding my own lore for the clan I play because we get nothing from the devs for roe or hellsguard wiped out as of the DT benchmark. It actually inherently broke something in me, who used to write and illustrate so much for this character, and killed my creative spirit.

i'm so sorry that you are going through grief with this. i was so devastated that my veena got destroyed by dawntrail as well. fortunately, they made female hrothgar and i love her more than i had ever loved my veena. but i am a minority and many people like you are just stuck with looking at a character who isn't themselves anymore. it really does suck and i sympathize so much. :<

[Heavenchild]

I wonder if they will again adjust and spend a free Fantasia. In my opinion they are much to silent about all this from the beginning. Also that there are never news of what they adjusted is frustrating. D:

[Luluna]

I just wish I could play face 1 or 2 on my Midlander...I miss the mouth on face 2 so much and she had a softness to her face which I loved. I hate the eyebags on face 1 but they seem to be on a few faces also now on other races I noticed.

Let us hope they give us another free fantasia and explain what they are doing going forward.

[RedLolly]

I wish they'd make a final update, and announce it. I loved the initial graphic update, and it's just been getting worse with every round of tweaks. I don't like the constant feeling of "are they going to make it worse again?". I'd rather they just make a choice and let people get used to it instead of the constant changes.

I actually agree...? There is ONE face I saw be redone in post that looked way better (Elezen F, face 1), but if they had spent that time tweaking gear and environments instead of redesigning faces 3 more times, I feel like we'd be singing a different tune.
I played the infamous Miqo'te face pre-update and recently swapped to it again, and I absolutely like the razor brow look more after playing her and at this point would be bummed to lose it.

One thing is the way characters look now, with better textures and more defined shadows, is probably closer to what the devs always wanted them to look. Some "Old" faces look like trash to me, personally, but now look alive and attactive based on little things like less pixelly lips and noses and more pronounced eye catchlights. But then the person who chose that face looks at this new version like a plastic surgery failure. No one can win!

I do appreciate the free Fantasias, though.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

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!

The biggest disappointment is, the fact all of these issues could’ve been avoided if they just expand their 10+ years old creator options rather than outright replacing the old looks.

[Argantaelle]

I wish they'd make a final update, and announce it. I loved the initial graphic update, and it's just been getting worse with every round of tweaks. I don't like the constant feeling of "are they going to make it worse again?". I'd rather they just make a choice and let people get used to it instead of the constant changes.

The main problem with such statements: they imply that all faces are good enough and tweaking them is just pandering to a small vocal minority and a matter of taste. Unfortunately it's not the case. Many face/gender combinations suffer from poorly implemented redesign borderline on visual bugs, like this poor fellow:

Certainly, it would be great if Mr Yoshida allocated some resources to hire an outsourced team to fix all faces in one fell swoop, but I guess he considers adjusting faces a low priority. Well, at least you get a free fantasia.

P.S. More examples of high-quality graphical update changes can be found in this post.

[Larirawiel]

I wish they'd make a final update, and announce it. I loved the initial graphic update, and it's just been getting worse with every round of tweaks. I don't like the constant feeling of "are they going to make it worse again?". I'd rather they just make a choice and let people get used to it instead of the constant changes.

It looks for me, that they used a sort of AI upscaling to recreate the faces with a higher poly count. Because all of the errors, the old faces had like wrong normal/parallax maps are still there. It seems, that they do not even know what they are doing. But they have memorized on which buttons they have to click.



Cheers

[slowpeach]

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.

1.


2.


3.


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

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

1.


2.


3.


4.

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.

that triangular face shadow definitely looks like a defect. I have a Fem Au Ra, face 4 w/ that same issue, i filed a bug report back when the DT benchmark was released but no luck. I'm hoping someone else has filed a bug report that was accepted. some of these issues w/ the character faces/models are very visible, and it genuinely makes me wonder how it wasn't caught during testing, or how it even got approved for production.

[faiarrow]

some of these issues w/ the character faces/models are very visible, and it genuinely makes me wonder how it wasn't caught during testing, or how it even got approved for production.

Given we have, on record, Yoshida confirming that there has been complacency across all teams (PLL where they discussed feedback relating to OC and Forked Tower) this doesn't surprise me in the slightest, frankly.

People gave extensive feedback from the get go, not just regarding aesthetic changes but literal bugs since the benchmark through to present day, for a multitude of issues which are still present to this day almost 2 years into the expac. How it got approved is that they don't care — whether that's CU3 themselves or pressure from up high making it harder for them to care we don't know.

The hard no to further details regarding the fixes from Yoshida's last official post about it with the whole 'check the changes we make every patch, have a free fantasia, good luck' mood certainly doesn't help that feeling at all.

[RedLolly]

Then you have people like me who see side-by-sides of the 6.55 and 7.35 appearances and consistently think the new versions look better in every way that I can see. But the old version is the one that has an untold amount of time that the player in question looked at and enjoyed and got attached to.

I don't think there is really any way to win this.