[ Graphical Update Feedback ] Examples of Darker Skinned Characters/Darker Lighting

[eternalmagic]

I've been very excited for the upcoming graphical update since its announcement as someone who loves taking in the landscapes around me in game, and so far things overall look good. Something I noticed over time, though, was that most of the examples I've seen in the Fan Fest development panels are typically of characters with lighter/paler skin tones.





I went back through the first reel shown earlier this year, and almost all the races were like that--except Viera and Hrothgar.



I do appreciate seeing these examples of darker skin tones...but it's still only a glimpse of how it will affect such characters.

I've seen people I know who happen to play characters with darker skin talk about how worried they are about how the graphics update will affect how their characters look. This concern has only grown as we still haven't really seen any character like Erenville, for example, in the new update.

Dark-skinned WOLs already have a rough time, especially in locales with dark or dim lighting.



For example, my character looks fine in Ultima Thule...a bit dark, but good enough.



But what about my best friend, who happens to have a character with darker skin?



These screenshots were taken outside of GPose with the ambient lighting in Ultima Thule, meaning this is what she was seeing in cutscenes (EDIT: character lighting doesn't actually work in cutscenes, so her character was not even lit!). It's frustrating, and there's concern about how the new graphics will affect this.

Something that would be really appreciated would be future examples of the changes to come with the graphics update to have characters with darker skin tones. It would be especially welcome if some images of such characters in dark or dim lighting could be shown as well, just to help ease some concerns of players with darker-skinned characters. Seeing characters of varying skin tones in varying levels of light will really be helpful for us as players to appreciate what is to come.

Something I saw suggested was perhaps taking NPC characters we have come across before (like Sadu, Margrat, Erenville, etc) and showing what they would look like with the graphics update changes. That way, players could see the differences more clearly, and hopefully feel a little more at ease with how their character will look. With making sure players are happy with how the character looks being such a big priority based on what we've been told, hopefully that will be appealling and lead the dev team to ease some concerns.

TLDR: Please, please give us examples of dark skinned characters, and examples of darker or dimmer lighting.

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

I've seen this feedback on social media too and I 100% agree with it!

SE also has a history of forgetting to test their gear sets on dark skinned characters, they've had to fix the 2B set, some YoRHa alliance raid sets, and recently Gaia's set because it's only after release that players and the dev team found out that it didn't display properly on dark skin... so it would be good to show what the tests look like with various skin tones, both to reassure the players but also to prevent themselves from having to deal with a HUGE oversight later, if they haven't learned from their past mistakes yet.

[LenaTayuun]

I have a friend who plays a deep blue-skinned Au Ra whose character was simply a shadowy, faceless presence in Ultima Thule cutscenes. Dark-skinned Duskwights have the same trouble, as does anyone who uses more "human" dark skin tones. I'm now begging CBU3 to test their cutscenes and lighting on dark-skinned characters and adjust accordingly. Please let us see an improvement in lighting for all players, not just light-skinned ones.

[Turtledeluxe]

XIV does not go with artificial character lighting like say, Horizon's team specifically does with Aloy, regardless of skin tone.

I don't understand the posts ITT. Are you saying they need to add a light source to Ultima Thule? This has nothing to do with SE's portrayal of certain skin tones.

[Raiika]

Testing on dark-skinned characters and letting us see them ahead of time would assuage a lot of worries! I doubt my own threat would've even been made if there had been proper testing with a wide variety of skintones.

[SarriaKadijah]

XIV does not go with artificial character lighting like say, Horizon's team specifically does with Aloy, regardless of skin tone.

I don't understand the posts ITT. Are you saying they need to add a light source to Ultima Thule? This has nothing to do with SE's portrayal of certain skin tones.

They actually do have the Character Lighting setting, but even with that at max, it can be very hard to see darker skinned characters, and this is a failing of SE's testing and review phases of development. They need to be looking at both light and dark skinned characters as they're working on this next stage of the graphical update, and they need to test their cutscenes with darker skinned characters (and even just non-white/pale characters - there are red and green and blue characters too!) before go-live.

And maybe they should consider adding artificial lighting in cutscenes. A toggle in character settings maybe, so darker characters can actually be seen and paler characters don't get washed out horribly.

But the point is that all of the previews we've seen for the 7.0 graphical update have been pale characters, and SE really needs to show us some darker skinned characters so we can give timely feedback.

Edited to add that Character Lighting settings don't actually impact the cutscenes (at least viewed through the Unending Journey) - which means the control given to us to help us adjust for our own characters is also useless for the important parts. That would also be a nice fix, though tangential to the need to see darker characters in these previews.

[slingbees]

My character's skin isn't as dark as some of my friend's wols, but I second this!! My character is difficult to see in Ultima Thule's lighting even at max character lighting!

[eternalmagic]

The photos I included are at 100% character lighting, and the fact that it can be a struggle to see my friend's character is SO frustrating. ;n;

[mallleable]

I don't play a dark skinned character, but yes we need examples of how the graphics update will affect darker skinned characters.

[Doragan]

I really hope they will release more previews before DT releases. We have a lot of tones available on a lot of different characters models. While it would be pretty hard to showcase every single combination, I would really appreciate if the previews could reflect dark skin tones in an accurate manner.

On a side note, I'm "glad" to know that I wasn't the only one who felt completely invisible in Ultima Thule..