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

[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.

[Rueby]

Snip

I think this thread is worth adding to the first post as well, OP! It's about Skin Translucency and I guess gives some closure about this waxy/uncanny effect.
Here.

[dolldemons]

i've noticed that black hair does NOT look black but more like a dark gray on certain races? i hope this is just a shader/lighting issue but its a pretty noticeable difference compared to the current black hair

[DekaiTsuna88]

Changing environment graphics are dismissible, because you don't look at the same environment most of the time.
But changing the character design is huge. Our characters will be in view almost all the time and you'll grow some kind of attachment to it in one way or another.
It's probably why they opt to not show too much variation during multiple PLLs for the 'character graphical update' and most of the time they showed Lalafells. They actually changed the designs.

Making it optional is probably a stretch with how much resources they spent on other miniscule things, but this really needs to be addressed. Free Fantasia won't fix this issue.

[ameliaw]

My miqo looks like she's using a pretty intense Instagram filter in benchmark, but overall I like her. I will leave a image of her in this post.
I also like the female au ra changes(but they definitely lost flavor and most of their alien look), however...
All other races that I checked look changed for the worse imo. Something looks off. Also, Viera eyebrows are invisible in so many hair colors now. Not great.

[BadAtGames]

My midlander character looks great with the graphics update! But the changes they made to my male viera? Completely heinous. How is this even acceptable? Why does he look like an aquatic freak that just crawled out of the ocean? Can he AT LEAST have his EYEBROWS back!?!

I've mostly noticed this on male viera characters. These are literally the newest models in the game & they really did not need to change like this.

[Esmoire]

My midlander looks really, really good with the update. Lucked out; probably won't have to change anything.

[Boa-Noah]

Honestly I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people say they don't like the new skin, it just looks better to me, the current skin is 100% smooth plastic and the new skin at the worst just looks like fake skin, but way not even close to the ugly monotone plastic we have currently.

[wylantar]

Its really crazy to me how jarring the difference is in quality of the new hair compared to the old hair textures.

[NanaWiloh]

Things that assured right now.
1. Expansion not being delayed
2. Not all issues currently presented being addressed before launch.
3. Dev team tackling as many as possible.
4. Somethings not changing at all.