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

[Doopliss]

Would like to point out here that the new lashes are also a problem that needs to be fixed. The way they're much darker and thicker now is not only responsible for the "yassified" fake lash/ extra mascara look for many female characters, but it also affects the visible eye shape for many others, making eyes look more closed and narrow, which is a big factor in why so many characters have lost their original personality and look much angrier and more "evil" in the new version.

Absolutely agree. This was a big change that didn't feel like an error, either.

I was saving this image for a different reason, and not to flood things, but I think it makes a decent example of showing that happening to a male Miqo'te face.

It's one of the minor examples, but still there. His lip change bothers me more, though. Suddenly felt like he was giving "skylar white, yo" vibes. I wanted him to look a little goofy and perpetually angry enough that his resting expression caused his more handsome features to be harder to detect. Now it feels like they're trying to make that face's handsomeness apparent no matter what you do, which makes my character look goofy in a way that's different from what I intended.

I know some peoples' intention here are to calm others about the changes, but more often than not, it feels like people are posting here to come off as dismissive in a belittling way.

Even as someone who'd rather go without the changes, I admit even I think some changes are too small to matter, but those aren't my characters and I don't know their hurt. People forge bonds with inanimate things all the time.

If anyone looks through my posts, they'll see the few characters I've managed to bring up aren't my main. I think fem Elezen changes are one of the less egregious ones. Especially in cases like nose changes, I felt very lucky.

While I think my main's expression is less serious-looking and more awkwardly cute now, and I wish her lash line looked more natural again, and that her pupils kept their tint that matched the iris color, I can overall deal with these changes. I even think her new, slightly thicker and less combed eyebrows are much cuter in a way enjoyable to me.

Still, I'm very happy with how my characters' features for the past 10 to 2 years have looked, and would be perfectly fine with features I think are "better" in the benchmark being corrected to appear more how they do now, which I think is important to consider. Speaking strictly about facial features, there are likely far more who are happy with what they have now, than those who are happy with the changes.

I don't think it's fair that, hell, somebody like me who doesn't play a male Elezen, but thinks they look much more handsome with the changes, gets catered to with this update. It's more important to hear the voices of those who have enjoyed those original looks for years.

[slippdipp]

Similar or not, the benchmark is a WIP, and changes will be addressed since the JP community is working overtime, so don't lose your minds. The game is continually updated, so if they're not addressed by 7.0, they'll be addressed by 7.05 or 7.1. Take a breather, and just relax. Don't get grey hairs over a videogame!

[AirisRay]

I also want to say one thing. I hear a lot of opinions that this is not the final version, that our characters can still be corrected/repaired. I certainly sincerely hope so. But are our characters really such an insignificant thing that needs to be finalized in the last 2 months? Is it true?

I'm reading opinions that fixes may continue after 7.0 is released. And I really hope for this too. But the question is the same. Our characters are so unimportant that they need to be improved after the release of 7.0? Maybe it would be better to make them really neat and beautiful so that we could all be happy? Make this a priority. And to refine and correct not our characters, but the environment. Some unimportant flowers, trees, stones.

Maybe I'm wrong, of course. And the stone that is lying somewhere in Il Mheg is more important than my character. May be. Maybe NPC models that I only see during the main story are more important than my character that I see every day. Anything is possible. The question is about priorities. They have their own priorities, and now I have mine too.

[slippdipp]

The environment got the "priority" because there's a bigger volume of things to rehaul texture-wise, and also because yes, you are looking at the environment more than your character. Rarely will you be as zoomed in when in-game as you are in the character creator. An updated, "4k" character in an non-updated world is more jarring than the opposite, especially in XIV's case where the environment lagged behind the general quality of the character models.

[Somnolence]

Please, try to tell me that they are similar.

What is with gap in the head showing sky under??

[Nicola_Kunu]

Similar or not, the benchmark is a WIP, and changes will be addressed since the JP community is working overtime, so don't lose your minds. The game is continually updated, so if they're not addressed by 7.0, they'll be addressed by 7.05 or 7.1. Take a breather, and just relax. Don't get grey hairs over a videogame!

Players get emotionally invested in their characters. *Especially* in a several hundred hour story-based video game where your character is *the main character*.
I think it's a success of the game that players care so deeply about their characters.

I'd say it's unhealthy to bottle up the feelings, and as others have said, this is literally the time to provide feedback, and the fact that the community is making screenshots, pointing out the specific side-by-side details they feel are erroneous, and even sketching face composites is pretty darn good feedback.

[Iscah]

I think, while there are some actual changes that need to be addressed such as texture opacity and lips, saying you're "mourning" a videogame is generally just indicative of an overly unhealthy attachment to an ephemeral concept in your computer. What will you do, 10 years down the line, when XIV shuts down?
Either way, there's changes to be addressed, but this thread is a crash course on how not to do it. Look at the JP masterpost of criticism. Civil, proper with proper alternatives.
Please remember, it's only a videogame. Go outside and take a deep breath. Things will be ok, just a little bit different.

As I said, yeah it's an overstatement to actually call it mourning, but I think it has to be somewhere in that ballpark of emotion to at least a slight degree if a thing you like is going to be taken away from you permanently.

And yes, when the game shuts down I will also be sad, but at the same time that will happen when it's either a natural conclusion point or there's no other choice, and I simply won't be able to play any more – rather than this bizarre potential middle ground of the character still technically existing as a playable entity in the game but not being the same character any more, because face alterations have changed the personality that their face suggests.

I spun these characters from the impression that their appearance gave me, and now – if these changes go through as they are shown – that foundation is going to shift and they won't be themselves.

A character who looked calm and thoughtful now looks aggressive.

A character who looked friendly now looks cruel.

Minor changes, objectively, in the shape of things resolve into a picture unlike what existed before, and I don't know if I can play those characters any more while knowing how they should look and do not look any more.

I think it feels almost worse than the game ending altogether – not that I would prefer the game to shut down, of course, but it's a very different mood to have the character lost because the game is gone, versus the game still being playable but your character doesn't exist any more because someone decided that their face didn't have the right look.

[LianaThorne]

What is with gap in the head showing sky under??

Usually gaps mean the hair model isn't fit properly to whatever head model they're using.

Which is kind of a head scratcher for me, because if no shape alterations were made to models...why are there gaps now when there weren't before...? Should just kinda snap back on since face texture/lighting changes shouldn't physically alter the shape of the head or break models.

[Loggos]

Because that wasn't the case already, right?

Thankyou for this. It's quite flabbergasting to see some people start referring to the lighting update as not an improvement given how easy it is in the current version to make your character look like a space alien.

The thing is, yes the lighting is terrible, esp. in the first pic. But even in the creepy flashlight-to-the-face-and-telling-you-a-horror-story lighting context I can still recognise/perceive the coherence of her features and her "facial identity" if you will.

The shadows do resculpt certain parts but through that their characteristic look still shines through so to speak.
I may think "wtf is wrong with you girl - but you're still my girl" (not my char obviously, but I think you get what I mean).

For example, as weird as the eyes look, I can still perceive that the eye shape is consistent throughout all pictures. It's the same, it's just contextualised differently.
Never did I have the feeling the lighting takes what I perceive as my character's face's personality away. It may just be unflattering.

This is why I think the "it's just the lighting, move your char out of the shadows" mindset is not helpful for me.
Besides the by now well-documented point that actual features have been altered and it's not just the lighting, if lighting were to change my core perception of their identity and they'd only feel like themslves in the right light this would still lead to a suboptimal experience.
We can't control the light in cutscenes or in environments, e.g., when we do dungeons or do quests in shady forest areas vs. well-lit plains.
So due to external forces there'd be considerable portions of the game where we would not perceive the visual core identity we have designed for our characters.

Maybe I have a strange perception in that regard but for me "unflattering" is not the same as "feels like a different person". I can live with the first one. It's how I have experienced a lot of ARR to EW and often I was like "meh this looks really weird lol" but it never felt OOC, broke my immersion or profoundly upset me.

But as soon as I saw my char in the (better lit) benchmark video I had this feeling of "no, sorry, this isn't really you :/ " and was, as a consequence, less excited and immersed in it.

[HollowedDoll]

Usually gaps mean the hair model isn't fit properly to whatever head model they're using.

Which is kind of a head scratcher for me, because if no shape alterations were made to models...why are there gaps now when there weren't before...? Should just kinda snap back on since face texture/lighting changes shouldn't physically alter the shape of the head or break models.

The simple reason is that head models were reshaped ( more polygons )
but the hairs haven't been changed whatsoever model wise. Even the old setup had a bunch of pretty loose fitting hairstyles, but now it's worse for some, due to technically none of the hairs being actually fit to these new models.

I don't know if anyone was arguing there was no shape alterations to faces because that'd require an even bigger blindness than most show with being unable to recognize drastically different lips.