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

[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.

[DiaDeem]

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.

These are good! The weird rotating light cycle is honestly a bit annoying, but as long as you keep an eye on it, you can rotate your character and see how she looks from different angles.

I think you have a nice looking character. More realistic lighting can cause more variance on how your character looks. I can tell you that I like it better, but I can't tell you which one works better for you. I often bring up the Occular as one of the worst lit areas in the current game. Everyone's faces look super weird. I know they won't anymore after the update.

Also, the Gamma correction is reportedly really weird, and people are recommending to set it to 0 to get better shadow contrast, so you can try that too. I'm not sure if it affects just the Benchmark or also the character creator portion. I haven't tried myself.

That said, we like what we like. On one hand, I hope SE keeps most of these changes, and on the other, I hope there can be a compromise and adjustments so more people can feel happy about their characters.

[Raim]

Some of you people need glasses. The lighting is not reshaping mouths and noses. The lighting is not sanding down Miqo'te fangs. A ton of parts were completely changed in their design. Trying to say its all just a misunderstanding of lighting is disingenuous, have some standards for once.

[mallleable]

I'm noticing I'm having to include a lot more red when picking skin colors to avoid the waxy look, even for darker skin colors. I think this is a result of skin behaving more 'realistically' in DT.

[justausername]

Okay. Reading through this thread is a trip and a half because I literally don't know what half of you are talking about...
Black hair is grey? I was literally asking myself why my character (with black hair) had so much darker hair in the bench mark then live game. His hair is PITCH BLACK, so dark I can't even see the detail of it.
Perhaps you should all check the settings you are using the benchmark. Check your gamma. It's probably way off from your game settings. A lot of you would probably be a lot happier if you imported your settings directly from the live game, gamma and all, in regards to the already existing settings.
I also commented about how much more life was in my character's eyes now, and how much more expression he had in the race specific emotes in the creator. Male viera look bored and dead in the live game, but in the benchmark they actually look like they FEEL something.

It's not perfect and yes there are issues with some textures they need to fix. But some of you do really need to take a step back and double check your settings.

90% of the 'my character looks like a different person' I'm seeing, they literally look like the exact same picture, or lighting position is causing all the issues they are pointing out. I get it, you're emotional about your characters, but take a step back, take a deep breath and reallllly look at it and think about it. Some of you, yeah okay... there are rare cases where WTF happened? but most of them are really not that different.

[decomposer]

Okay. Reading through this thread is a trip and a half because I literally don't know what half of you are talking about...
Black hair is grey? I was literally asking myself why my character (with black hair) had so much darker hair in the bench mark then live game. His hair is PITCH BLACK, so dark I can't even see the detail of it.
Perhaps you should all check the settings you are using the benchmark. Check your gamma.

I'm not replying to argue, but to show you that my characters with black hair no longer have black hair. My settings are the exact same. I have included color swatches, and the swatches are picked from the same place. I think it's quite obvious that the hair has been lightened. This was also an issue with black hair in Baldur's Gate 3 ; it's not uncommon in these newer "realistic" takes on hair despite not being realistic at all.



I am genuinely happy for those who experienced the exact opposite of me! In some cases, I have seen skintones darken rather than lighten, and in others I have seen hair darken rather than lighten. It seems very hit or miss.

[CidHeiral]

I'm not replying to argue, but to show you that my characters with black hair no longer have black hair.

You're definitely correct that it looks lighter. Not sure if that's the actual color or just the new lighting playing off of it.

Personally I always use black hair and I really like the change there. In the retail version black hair is often just a big black glob unless you put highlights in it. In the benchmark you can have fully black hair and still make out all the details.

[HeyMcFly]

I'm personally happy that the lipgloss is gone BUT I wish it was optional - lipstick with gloss as well as lipstick without gloss.
It's a feature for character creator that should have been options added forever ago.
I very much like the matte lipstick in the benchmark, because lipgloss has been plagued with a metallic look in certain lighting or would appear to have a 'glow' and looked awkward.

Other two issues I have are Why are the eyebrows so much lighter & thinner in the DT benchmark?
I chose the hair color for my miqo bc it was the perfect balance of darker eyebrow and lighter hair without it being too light or her eyebrows disappearing.
Now, in the benchmark, I'd have to darken her hair for the sake of her eyebrows, which then blends in too much with her skin.
Why can't we just have eyebrow color separated from hair color?? Why the devs make such things, even insignificant ones a bigger hassle than they should be?
With my complains set aside, I do love the glow up my miqo does have in the DT benchmark. I am swooning over her, but would also love to have subtle things fixed like eyebrows and fangs.


eyebrows in EW:


eyebrows in DT benchmark:

[SKAshe]

I certainly think there are a lot of issues, but I don't really get all the doom and gloom surrounding this, as it's a work in progress and given the outcry I imagine they will try to fix these issues. The vast majority seem to be related to a poor recreation of the old models with the new, Ultimately though I think they just need to tweak the new models to have more defined facial features to better match the old ones. As many have pointed out they didn't do so well and smoothed/altered a lot of the features way too much. It's good that we are pointing out specific cases though as it can show them which parts, exactly, to change. There are also clearly some texturing issues and lack of skin imperfections that make the skin look waxy and plastic-y.

Given that most of the complaints are about models and shader parameters, I genuinely think they can fix the vast majority of complaints before Dawntrail. That being said I think the devs should ABSOLUTELY focus fixing these issues before release because it's clear a lot of the changes have completely changed a lot of characters.

I was lucky enough that my character wasn't affected that much, but from the screenshots posted I can absolutely see why people are upset. I just don't think we should be thinking that these changes are permanent yet, because they haven't said that they aren't open to making any more changes. I think we should wait to see how square responds before making any conclusions about quitting the game or anything like that. If they can use this criticism to solve the issues, we should be good

I think the rest of the game seems to look great, at least. I don't think they should revert things back to the way they were with everything, but the characters certainly need to be polished up.

Edit: Some spelling and grammar