Benchmark/Graphics Update - Show your WoL's before and after

[Zulck]

Wwhat the heck man
I feel like the vast majority of the WoL upgrades look so pretty but...

Isn't mine looking kinda weird?? Am I crazy??? :C
I feel like she looks really tired in the benchmark, or that her soul left her body, something like that, her gaze feels waaaaay less intense to me. Also, what is she doing with her mouth? Girl did you put glue on it?? D': Are you fine??

I'm obviously pretty sad about these changes, even tho the textures, materials and lighting are an obvious upgrade in my opinion, I'm not sure I really recognize my character here I feel like she went from an angy warrior to a cute sleepy princess (a cute sleepy princess covered in blood, that is..).
That, or that I am paranoiac!

Either way, I'm probably going to be stuck with these changes from DT on.. I think that killed some of my excitement for the release

https://imgur.com/a/ZEzG0Wl

Wishing everyone one an awesome upgrade to their WoL!! At the very least a better one that mine got!

[EsmondForester]

I'm honestly a bit concerned by a few things, but the biggest of which is that my character's eyebrows seem very different than before:


Of course not everything in a graphical update can be perfect, but with a character with such fair skin and light hair, it looks like his eyebrows are hardly there at all from a medium distance. Here's another comparison with a different hairstyle to better display the eyebrows (side note -- the lighting in the benchmark character creator is incredibly unflattering now):

[noumen0nn]

Not happy with it at all. Some of my characters, my friends' characters, and my siblings' characters are drastically changed. Sure some might think they look better, or that it isn't that different, but they're not the same characters we've all played with since 1.0/2.0 and 3.0 (in the case of au ra). So below are some comparisons and comments by the respective players:



Here SE made the nostrils bigger, the philtrum smaller, the lips no longer have the tubercles, the oral commissure is less pronounced/barely visible, the bridge of the nose has changed entirely, the nostrils are wider and rounder, epicanthal folds were shortened and receded.
He looks soulless, aged, unhappy, like he's had blepharoplasty and rhinoplasty by force at the hands of some Steppe butcher. It's as if all of the characters' happiness and spirit was sucked out of them and shoved into their nostrils.
This is a character my brother helped design before passing away, so I'm especially displeased with how he's so drastically changed. It's not just different textures, his facial structure is affected. He looks similar, yes, but it's not the same character.

I couldn't quote your whole post, but THANK YOU for this breakdown. It's the subtle changes to the shape of some feature options that are making all of this seem so uncanny. Tiny changes like this can completely change the look and feel of a character, I have no idea what they were thinking.

[Kharabean]

I will fully admit I feel like my character looks completely different than she does on live. I even followed the suggestion to double check the gamma settings on the benchmark and turned it all the way to 0. Still, her skintone is a different color and her lips look so weirdly puckered! What happened to her wide mouth?

Before


After

[McGrump]

I did a few retouch of my cousin's character and to show you the difference (I got her permission to show her character)
The left is the retouched with the new graphics, the right is the new graphics one without retouch



The dot in the eye is a big thing for me. Without it, the eyes look souless.
I added a bit of eyebrow since it looked thinner
I added some color to her face since she's lost some of her blush

[Rhodeo]

Before and After. I am not happy with the changes. I made sure that all the settings were what I had in game currently and it just does not work for me.

[cutestfox]

Not sure how this can be considered a "graphical upgrade"... looks back to front
dawntrail vs endwalker character creator
no, the benchmark cinematic does not improve on it

[RivenWasTaken]

I don't think mine is as bad as some others (bring back mooncat fangs) but yeah.. I feel like they accentuated the freckles and rosy cheeks way too much on hyur face 5
(I personally do really love the eyes tho)

[dies-irae]

Before and after, no more dark nose on M-Viera Face 1, eyebrows look plucked skin tone seems to have changed... I can maybe deal with the rest but losing on the nose is a MASSIVE sad when imo that's the defining feature of Face 1.

[lunartears]

The appeal of FFXIV's graphics to me were that they were stylized more than leaning into aspects of realism such as with pores. I don't think this is an aesthetic change that I can get used to seeing even further down the line.

I feel the same way, like I 100% understand this sentence completely. One of the reasons I fell in love with the game.

There's so much in this thread that resonates with the way I have been feeling about this upgrade, but I can't give a unique response to it all so just let it be known there are plenty of us who get it.