Viera Changes

[ElixAlexander]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was concerned about how my Viera looked. I was so very happy with how he looked before but there are some key things that I noticed were really making him feel unfamiliar in the Benchmark.

* Shading on the nose is quite dark in benchmark compared to the more subtle shadow. It's making the nose shape overall look less slim.
* The lips are lacking definition, specifically the highlight around the cupids bow and the actual mouth itself
* The eyebrows and hair are very bright compared to the original and sometimes I can barely see my characters eyebrows in bright lights
* The eyelashes are not nearly as full now
* The definition around the eyes is all gone too

[TomTomL]

Please Devs, can you revisit Viera face 3’s chin shadowing. There is a prominent ball of a chin now and extremely deep shadows around it that makes face look dirty, and chin look strange and disconnected. Especially with the new overly dark nose flattening the features out, this shadow around the chin creates way too much darkness and contrast on the face.

[Amvin]

I normally don't post in the forums - I just lurk and read. But this... what is happening! Yes he seems to be the same character but I was promised an upgrade and not a clear downgrade. I especially dislike how the lips look now, but also the eye make-up looks bright now when it was a darker color. The make-up is also unnaturally cut off on top, right under the eyebrows.

Not happy with the eyebrows either, but with my hairstyle they are somewhat hidden so I could live with that.

The eyes have an unnatural glow, it's kinda creepy! At the same time they look lifeless. The hair looks completely dull.

Altogether it looks like someone took the EW version and randomly colored it out in MS Paint, lol. I really hope they tweak some things.

[Katish]

He looks like a completely different person, this is face 2...they did him poorly. (It seems they didn't take solid black eyes into the equation)

1. Irises are dead, bug-eyed
2. Softness gone
3. Lips are no longer there
4. Eyes have increased darkness that accentuates the dullness in the irises
5. Nose has a weird shadow

[Oshirigami]

I'm... I'm not going to lie. this is just a video game. but I'm kinda...devastated. I love my girl so much and she's just...not the same.

why was the highlight placement in her hair changed? it looks like emo shit in the 2000s. even the base color is too bright.
why are her lips the wrong shape and with no subtle shine? where's her puffy bottom lip?
the nose could be better but I could also live with if I had to.
but it's the eyes... the eyes......!!!!!!!! they ruin everything. I could probably learn to live with everything else if the eyes were right. but instead of a wide-eyed adventurer, I get a dead-eyed zombie.

I want my girl back Yoshi-P, please, fix this... I know you and the devs have already done so much work and still have so much to do, but so many of us are so upset... I was at the US FanFest and this is not what we saw and what we were promised...

I think the new highlights look better because they look more normal, when they looked pretty random before. But I agree on everything else. Her eyes, mouth, eyebrows, and the depth of her face all look worse.

[Spooky_Biscuits]

does anyone have any faith that Square will actually acknowledge this or do people worry we are just yelling into the void? :c

[Doopliss]

I thought I'd actually share my Viera in a more organized way too, since it's more convenient.

Left is Endwalker, right is Benchmark

I've a bunch of characters of varying races, but my fem Viera was one of the ones I was most devastated to see in the graphical update preview.

Her lip shape is very distinct in the live version of the game. I chose it along with that eye shape intentionally, and added grey eyeshadow to hide some of her eyeliner to specifically give her a gentler, somewhat forlorn look.

In the benchmark her lips are much less defined, her lash line/baked-in eyeliner is darker and higher set, and the dark gradient in her upper eyes is more intense. Her grey eyeshadow is no longer capable of obscuring as much, and this all makes her impression completely different to me. Like, sultry(?) instead. A fantasia can't fix this. It also appears that her racial hairstyle is less fitted to her head, and possesses more jagged lines.


On the other hand, I feel like my male Viera got by more okay. I do consider myself lucky though, since he has darker skin and a dark lip color. I had to change his lip color to 'none' in the benchmark, so I know others going for different impressions aren't faring so well.

I tried to make this face option look a little more mature than it normally does, but while keeping a friendlier/disarming impression. While I feel like that's still there, it just seems less...good. The lip shape is still obviously scuffed like most other faces, and, thanks to his tattoos, you can actually see more clearly that his nose bridge is different. His eyebrows are also noticeably weaker, and his teal eyelashes are hardly noticeable.

While I'm more willing to chalk up parts of this one to lighting differences, I still hope all faces will be adjusted with care.

[Kurpse]

does anyone have any faith that Square will actually acknowledge this or do people worry we are just yelling into the void? :c

If it were just Viera? Then yes.. There could be a possibility of it being an acceptable allowance of unhappy players.

However, reading the forums it seems that while yes, there are players that have seen an improvement. There are lot who haven't. If the changes were just lighting and shaders etc it would be fine but they've changed models, be it the nose, eyes and even the fangs on the Catgirls/Catboys.

As of now I'm taking these changes as a solid second draft; something to be worked on. The dev team have and always will want to make a game the we love. There's enough healthy feedback from players to help them move things in the right direction. That being said, doing I expect DT to be delayed? No. But I'd love an acknowledgement or an update on what the plan is for this moving forward.

[Kyu-Kyu]

Another face 3 victim! I was really excited to see him with updated graphics but... what happened?
The eyes aren't as sharp as before, the nose looks so much larger and the lips are a lot darker. The lips are easily fixed when picking a lighter lip color but why making them so different in the first place? They're also completely matte now when they had a slight shine before. The nose mark should also be optional, I picked this face because it wasn't as visible as on the other faces, this makes him look completely different. Beauty mark is also bugged.

He doesn't look as bad once I jump into the benchmark but the nose mark is still an issue for me.

(Before on the left, after on the right)

[verticalmike]

Bit of a mixed bag for me, in terms of design the only real complaint I have is the lips, (face4 mouth 3) the top lip in particular is less defined, probably not much but the lighting perhaps makes it more obvious. Not awful, and in the benchmark proper for sure not super noticeable. Colours are a little different, think I prefer the old hair colour even if I'm not super opinionated between the 2 , I'm probably gonna make a point to use a slightly darker eye colour going forwards to accommodate for the difference though. Eyes in general in character creation look a little more soulless? I think its the reflections, which in the char creator I sort of look at and actively dislike, in the benchmarking it's less obvious, though at the end when the final score is given I felt my character was looking off camera towards the rating above the character rather than towards the camera itself, possibly related but at the same time maybe a whole lot of nothing.

The only thing, I consider truly worse is the way the ears are reflecting light, particularly along the top half, maybe intentionally going for a really glossy sheen but to me it looks like they are made of plastic, they could even be technically correct based on lighting but I just don't like how it looks personally.

Lastly I felt like lighting gives the jaw line less definition under some conditions but I expect that is an inevitable side effect of the changes. Not really a complaint, but i think it's added to why at times i felt my char looks very different but other times very similar Otherwise seems nice, indoors char creation lighting in particular made the char look much better.

Not to say I hate it all but figured might as well post my opinion here on the off chance square is looking for feedback.