Character graphical changes are NOT in an acceptable state, please make it optional

[Edfrick]

Tamlen captured my issues with face 2 au ra perfectly. I had to change her mouth 4 to mouth 1, make her two shades darker, and remove the lipstick. I'm admittedly fine with the lipstick change, as I did it to add more depth to her lips. The lips are still noticeably different even with the change of her looking "closer."

some images with comparisons, they're not great because I'm not at my main machine atm https://imgur.com/a/DsjA56m

[DiaDeem]

Can you please elaborate on this? Both of these screenshots were taken in the character creator of the benchmark and current game, and I made sure to match the angle and orientation to the environment as closely as I possibly could. I also have the same graphics settings in both. What should I change to get a more accurate comparison?

Oh! Sure!

See, the new character creator has this weird rotating light cycle. The sun like... gets covered by a cloud or something, but it basically causes general lighting to change in the Shroud/Thanalan/Noscea areas of the character creator every few seconds. If you let your character just sit there for a moment, you'll notice this weird effect taking place. Your second screenshot was taken when the sun wasn't hitting your character directly, so the comparison is a bit off.

If you see Sosoma and Thais's posts, you'll see how they're waiting for the sun to hit the character in the same way as the old character creator.
You can also use the Inn or the Crystal areas, which don't have the weird rotating light cycle. The Inn is kinda nice too because it also lets you match the background making sure your character is exactly in the same position.

All your second shot needed really was to wait for the sun to get in the right place once again. Mind you, I don't expect this to 180 your opinion, but it will give you a better before and after look of your character.

Cheers!

[noumen0nn]

Oh! Sure!

See, the new character creator has this weird rotating light cycle. The sun like... gets covered by a cloud or something, but it basically causes general lighting to change in the Shroud/Thanalan/Noscea areas of the character creator every few seconds. If you let your character just sit there for a moment, you'll notice this weird effect taking place. Your second screenshot was taken when the sun wasn't hitting your character directly, so the comparison is a bit off.

If you see Sosoma and Thais's posts, you'll see how they're waiting for the sun to hit the character in the same way as the old character creator.
You can also use the Inn or the Crystal areas, which don't have the weird rotating light cycle. The Inn is kinda nice too because it also lets you match the background making sure your character is exactly in the same position.

All your second shot needed really was to wait for the sun once again. Mind you, I don't expect this to 180 your opinion, but it will give you a better before and after look of your character.

Cheers!

Thank you! I'll try the inn and post the update in a moment.

[MaiSuu]

PLEASE FIX MIDLANDERS, OUR FACES ARE DEVOID OF FEATURES NOW!!! WE LACK DETAIL to the point where it is a mere round face merged into a neck with plastic skin and 2 nostrils for breathing. Please. IT IS BEYOND ridiculous how bad the lighting is, -- EVEN WITH the gamma to 0, where we still lack important contouring to give us that proper nose shadow or jaw shadow.

Please. Fix the lighting, and if you touched the models SE, give the old ones back...

[DBriggs304]

I do hope they make it optional or a toggle. They look worse to me. Seems like a massive waste of time and resources.

[thekavseklabs]

I've got nothing to add except that every point in the original post is completely correct. Please, Square Enix, make this optional.

[Elissar]

I don't know.


Most MMORPGs has mid characters (except Black Desert...maybe). I am more interested in world details and animations.

Facial details matters for roleplayers and hype moments in the MSQ (that bun lady crying in Shadowbringers for example...the VA caused more impact than the animation itself).

I would stand behind for better animations or more options for walk, running or standing ...specially for male Au Ra.
As i said in previous comments: in Heavensward we learn how to fly, in Stormblood we learn how to dive and since Stormblood we don't have any reward that substantially changes how we interact with the world or our characters. To be fair, we even obtain some emotes to show how much we grew up culturally...but it's not the same.

Not a fan of they they did to my Elezen myself. Her eyes are souless now.

This case is awful and just show that what we have now is good enough.
However, we don't know if they need to reinvent the wheel to add improvements that we want (better beards, separate eyebrows from the hair, separate horns and heads, etc)


Btw our current character creator is almost the same as 1.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWktMvjpivk

[Eluvyel]

I don't know.


Most MMORPGs has mid characters (except Black Desert...maybe). I am more interested in world details and animations.

Facial details matters for roleplayers and hype moments in the MSQ (that bun lady crying in Shadowbringers for example...the VA caused more impact than the animation itself).

I would stand behind for better animations or more options for walk, running or standing ...specially for male Au Ra.
As i said in previous comments: in Heavensward we learn how to fly, in Stormblood we learn how to dive and since Stormblood we don't have any reward that substantially changes how we interact with the world or our characters. To be fair, we even obtain some emotes to show how much we grew up culturally...but it's not the same.

The new facial rigs have a comically high number of new bones. Miqo alone has 56 new available bones in the lower face half. Animations are definitely getting better.

[noumen0nn]

All your second shot needed really was to wait for the sun to get in the right place once again. Mind you, I don't expect this to 180 your opinion, but it will give you a better before and after look of your character.

Cheers!

Here she is in the inn, and I also tried to retake my la noscea shots with as close to the same time of day as I could.






This is a little better, if only in that her skin doesn't look like wax anymore. That said, too much about her just looks different. The subtle things add up. Her eyebrows are thinner and lighter, the shape of her eyeliner is different and less dramatic, her eyes look a lot more flat and dead without the static shine, and her lips are just... awful. If I zoom out, it looks like she's gone back a console generation.

I think what's bothering me too, is that in the current version of the game, Mara looks like herself no matter what lighting she's under. Even in the incredibly unflattering top-down lighting of places like the Waking Sands, I never look at her and think "this is wrong." In the benchmark, why does she look dramatically different depending on the lighting, environment, etc? Should I spend 7.0 avoiding sunny areas so that my skin doesn't turn to wax and my features don't get erased in the light?

I don't know. Obviously some amount of change is going to be inevitable, and I want to be okay with that. But I have to be honest to my feelings right now, and in its current state, this is just making me feel bad.

[GrandTheDaughter]

I agree with OP here, these graphics are NOT ready for release. At the very least, they should make it optional, so that those of us who don't want our characters to look like half-baked wax candles during cutscenes where we would like to see the characters we've, assumedly, worked hard to customize the appearance of to our liking, actually look like what we are expecting.