I find the characters in this game really ugly/weird

[KitKatnip]

I think lighting/shadows have a lot to do with it. My character looks super creepy under certain lighting effects. Very bright lighting seems to be the culprit here.

[_Pigzig]

WoW

Well I never said other games are immune to the problem either.
That said I played WoW for a long time and it doesn't have it nearly as bad, but I did see weird stuff occasionally with the newer models.

I think lighting/shadows have a lot to do with it. My character looks super creepy under certain lighting effects. Very bright lighting seems to be the culprit here.

It would not surprise me since there is a lot of graphic variation depending on hardware and I play on mid to low. If there's any settings worth messing with you can let me know.

[KitKatnip]

Your graphics is probably part of the issue. Not sure what setting you could try. Maybe fiddle around with the lighting settings. I play on High Laptop.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Well they ate not the most nice looking but not ugly as well. It's an old PS3 game and character creation was not a focus if the team what so ever. So much so they made it in some nearly working way (if to believe to why yoshi say he can't add more face options).

[Conundrum]

It's fun that WoW players come here and say the chars look ugly/weird when every char in WoW look like... But, Yea, I like playing here, so I'm going to refrain from my wording. But seriously, even a human without a beard looks like someone with grave Harmynta and has a fore head large enough to land a 747 on it.
in the end, FF14 chars is a work of art in comparison to WoW.

Yeah, when the streamers all came over (because they saw an opportunity to make money) and they and their fanboys all started talking about how weird FF looks I'm pretty sure my brain had a divide by zero error.

It's like...in your years of playing WoW, did you ever look at the game and it's hideous art style? Even once?

I'll just leave this here...

[Lexis]

I've always thought of FFXIV's character models as one of it's strong points honestly. After staring at WoW's cartoonish models for 15 years, this feels like a major upgrade, but I understand the more realistic approach isn't for everyone. The gear/glamour/transmogs in FFXIV are also vastly superior in my opinion.

In terms of game environments/terrains, though, WoW comes out of top in my opinion. Granted FFXIV does have some beautiful sights of its own but once you get closer, it all starts to look empty and pixelated.

Still, FFXIV wins in terms of overall visuals in my opinion.

[Mimilu]

For me, it's like a lot of the original 1.0 face options the devs had to bring into ARR look weird and, with in the race, look similar to each other with everything added ARR and beyond looking increasingly better and varied.

They're still some of the better characters I've seen in MMOs though.

(Also, the two examples you posted aren't even scrapping the surface of XIV's "ugly". At the very least, it would of been funnier if you post like a kawaii picture of a Miqo'te or something. It wouldn't of felt like low-tier bait then.") :/

[ValyrianBlood]

U are right- I have been thinking abt going back to highlander which Was my first race years ago but jfc the textures on the face are just so terrible. The old races got Mo shit on Viera and aura in this regard

[HollowedDoll]

The only thing that makes older races lesser great are facial expressions imo.
feel like they nailed those better on the newer ones, there were some horror faces back in early days, especially used by omg so crazy npcs.

[Vahlnir]

I think that any race/gender combo can look decent when done right. Elezen have odd proportions and animations, which I don't particularly care for. But I think every race is great to have around even if they aren't catered to my personal tastes.