Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

[knaveofcups]

generally can live with what they did here, but a few things:
1). scales/horns don't exactly look like they're an organic part of my body
2). my nose changed - like my nostrils are flared a bit more. definitely weird, not sure why they did that
3). lip gloss is gone (imo they need to fix this, or add a toggle) and lip colors still suck. i was hoping they'd finally make "true black" lipstick look good for once, but high-saturation and dark lip colors still look completely matte and washed out

my highlander preset on the other hand looks fantastic lol

[ACupofCobaltTea]

This is my first time ever posting on the forums. never wanted/cared to in the past, its not usually my thing.

but i had to come here to add my poor baby to the pile of failed 'upgraded' characters... i've been playing Solana for a long time. she's deeply personal to me, and i've never wanted to fantasia her even once- never even considered it.

she looks like an entirely different person, like someone made a bad doll or cosplay of her


Heres a close up headshot of her in game right now...


and heres her benchmark,,

I literally have no words- who is this??
i also tried my best to edit her to return any hint of her personality and face shape at all, and the best i got was this


its still not her. and at this rate, it'll never be able to be her. i'm genuinely devastated.

[awawaa]

Posting for a friend who can't log in right now: EW / DT





Super big fan of the eye texture, hair texture, horns, etc! Overall really positive and loving how she looks. However, I wish that she had her original mouth shape (less round), had more saturated skin, and had higher quality freckles.

[AiriDaemonia]

1st set of photos are side by sides of my character ported into the Benchmark via Save data. No changes made YET.
The top of the square is 7.0, bottom is what we have in game rn.

The face seems shorter, rounder? Outer eye corners lack original wing making eyes look massively bigger/rounded. Bottom inside corner used to have this little swoop & now the whole eye is just round? The black in the pupil is HUGE, this combined w/ new Limbal rings washes out over all color of the eye especially w/ this new starburst like pattern that is happening. The color is gone.
Nose looks upturned, assuming due to shadows?
Mouth shape is fundamentally different now making her look so much different. The outside corners mouth no longer look elongated, looks like her mouth just got cut off at the ends abruptly. Her cupids bow is gone. Color of the lipstick is also now this new matte?
I don't mind the matte but wish there was an option to have both a matte & glassy lipstick option because the new color combined w/ the new lip makes her look completely different.
The T zone where her cheeks are shaped & meet her nose have lost their angularness, again it's more rounded, it feels like her face got smooshed to me. Especially around the top part of the cheek face scales & where the eyes meet her bangs/hair line. She is round anime like, no defining bone structure or features.
When I look at her new form it just doesn't feel like home to me. Tbh I think I cried twice out of frustration during character creator trying to get her to look how she has always looked to me.

2nd set of photos are after making some changes in the character creator to try to achieve something that looks more like my character.

Had to change the color of both eyes. Left hand eye that is green w/ the limbal ring had to go over to the left 1 slot, same with the limbal ring. The gradient affect I have going originally just did not translate over. I also had to change her right hand blue eye 1 slot up as it had more greenish tone in it now rather than blue. I had to switch off of the lipstick as it was too dark for her in both the color & the matte.
Anytime I tried to change anything physical other than the coloring it feels like she gets more & more muddled & lost in translation so altering the colors & hoping this is not the final product is the best I can do.

The other 2 photos are just again side by sides of old vs new.

Some other things to mention:

Skin is too shiny. What will it look like with the wet filter on in gpose.
Scales have a strange cut out seem around them & for darker colors this translates even worse.
Raen scales look worse than the Xaela scales texture wise. The Raens scales are losing their golden bone like hue. They now look like a dried out sand dollar to me. They're more white?
Color swatches in general for eyes, lips, hair seem like they have been mixed around.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../blog/5378892/

[Kiku_Sazanami]

Agreed. Raen scales look terrible on females; less like scales and more like painted or stuck on plates.

[JaydeDancer]

I'm going to chime in to say that I also would like my old lip textures back please.

This is her currently:



Notice the shine on her lips and how her upper lip appears to be slightly thinner than her bottom lip. There is also a small dip and some nice "lip" type textures there.

This is her in the benchmark:



Her lips are really flat and no longer shiny. Her hair also looks pretty flat, which is kind of out of place given the shine on her skin in certain lighting. I don't like these two things, but I'm not going to cry over it because she still looks really good!



I did also have to adjust her limbal ring by scooting it to the left a few squares on the color selector so that it showed up again the way I wanted it to. But, that's not a big deal.

I do feel like the concerns expressed in this thread are valid concerns, and I see where people are coming from with regards to the scales. SE has never really explained to us what the scales are made out of, so perhaps they had some idea behind these changes that they haven't explained very well and that's why they look the way that they do. I hope SE takes this feedback into consideration and makes adjustments in the future (like, within the next year. Not the next 10 years please lol).

[stenovrain]

Agreed. Raen scales look terrible on females; less like scales and more like painted or stuck on plates.

This! The scale really looks weird as if they had never been washed since they were born.

[sleepystaccato]

I actually really love the face 2 mouth change, the dimples on the corner of her mouth used to make expressions that weren't just closed mouth smiles look really weird because it created the illusion of jowls depending on the lighting. I've seen quite a few people say they don't like this change but I'd be sad to see it reverted.


(I picked an expression that I had similar screenshots of to show off what I mean by the expressions being weird, but honestly this is mild too, it's been much worse in more extreme expressions like grimaces...)

The face itself I'm very pleased with, but the scales(especially on the neck) are much worse even though theyre definitely higher res. Theyre far too flat while also not looking like they really belong on the characters skin. The texture is weirdly dark and desaturated? I'll miss the sugar cookie-like color of the old raen scales

Edit: just to reiterate, I like the face change. The expressions that are currently in the live game are what were weird to me. She's cuter now!

[Kiku_Sazanami]

Exactly! There are some issues with Xaela scales too, and I hope they get that blended and textured better. The horns turned out great!