Hello it's benchmark day and I'm bringing this thread back from the dead ∠( ᐛ 」∠)_
Once again I'm mostly focusing on eyes (mainly Au ra ones), I see there is another thread where people seem to be talking about Au ra lips and faces, so I wanted to keep the two matters separate.
So. Here are my comparisons.
As you can see, importing directly the character presets I currently have in 6.58 was a huge change, and my first impression was honestly shock and disappointment. The glowing limbal ring is barely visible with this color combination, and all contrast has been lost. I thought I would never be able to get my character again past 7.0.
By picking the next shade in the color palette, however, I was able to get something relatively similar, but it still feels like the light has gone from the limbal ring (even if, yes, technically, it glows in the dark, I checked).
It looks a little better in the benchmark itself, so it might be affected by the environment and lighting, but I'm a little sad that this means that the glowing limbal ring will look more or less visible in cutscenes, gpose and such, when until now it was always visible, sharp and striking, even from a distance.
Then comes another problem: I am aware that the shader used on the 6.58 limbal ring does not perfectly follow the color palette that is assigned to it, but that allows us to use colors that are not currently provided by the color palette, in this case a turquoise/cyan.
That shade of cyan also happens to be a color that is widely used in FFXIV (the Hydaelyn crystal, aetherytes, the eyes of several important NPCs, etc), and that is exactly why I had chosen these color settings when I made this character... (Warrior of Light etc, you get it)
So having them "upgraded" to a greenish teal is honestly disappointing. It respectfully follows the shade selected on the color palette, which I guess makes it less frustrating for some new players, but it does not respect the promise of "we won't change your character".
I think it's also high time that the color palette gets an upgrade too.
As you can see, there is very little diversity in the blue-green area, especially compared to yellow and orange. Pink is also not very well represented here, it quickly goes from purple to desaturated red. It would be nice to get more options there.
Hair color wise, I think we're also crucially missing more shades of brown, as well as more saturated colors. If you take the reddest shade of red, red hair will still look faded. If I remember correctly, the All Saints' Wake NPCs (the clown and his wife) have more saturated hair colors that are not currently available to players, so it would be nice if we too could be allowed to have more colorful hair.
I know the trend nowadays is to put RGB sliders and HEX codes in character creators, but I don't think it's necessary here (and I imagine these presets exist due to technical limitations and memory issues). So I would only like to request that we keep using the existing color palette, but that we get more options (and preferably colors that mimic the ones that used to be available on limbal rings).
I think this would both fix this issue, as well as satisfy all players, especially with a free Fantasia on the way. More options to choose from is always better. (also, it's Hyadelyn blue, come on, how can we not have the Hydaelyn blue)
I know this might seem like a very niche issue, and the dev team probably has a lot of other things on their plate already, but I wanted to bring it up nonetheless. I'm also curious to see what everyone's limbal rings look like in the benchmark, so please share comparative screenshots if you can!