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

[Somnolence]

Yeah, I quit the game and moved away from the WoW's awful graphical update.

One is design created by passionate artists, another is corporate requirements driven "upgrade".

In a sense, FFXIV graphical update is similar.

Btw correct me if I am wrong, but weren't there plugins/mods that improved character models etc. already? If Square Enix will be slow to respond to feedback these might become even more widespread and there will be "revert to Endwalker designs" mods as well.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The overhaul definitely upsets me in plenty ways. OP have raised many of my current issues so I'm just going to add my comparison pics plus few comments on my own.

First, the pics themselves.

Today (taken in Aesthetician, and changed hairstyle because unlockable hairstyle aren't available):


And this is from Benchmark (copied 1 to 1 from saved appearance feature in login screen):


I... am speechless. He's a totally different character.
[-] Waxy/"Ken doll" skin texture. Quite possibly due to the skin translucense issue.
[-] His cheeks. The addition of nasobial folds immediately destroys his 'youthful look' and now he's like 15-20 years old to the future lol. Additionally, these same folds seem to also look more prominent on darker skin tone so my man is more affected vs those who has lighter skin tone.
[-] His lips, particularly the philtrum (upper lips) are thinned beyond recognition. Today we have "Average, Fuller, Puckered, and Thinner". In the benchmark it becomes "Thin, Fuller, Puckered, and Thinner".
[-] His eyes shape. Today's he's got a rounder shape. In the benchmark the shape is more oval/flat, completely butchering his 'Mr.Goodie two shoes/Innocent'-looks.
[-] Eyes are also missing today's catchlight texture would left him looking 'soulless' in places without proper lighting.
[-] His nose bridge. Benchmark's version shrunk it. I don't remember wanting a plastic surgery lol. I'm not sure about other nose options but those wouldn't alleviate how his face contour has been forcefully changed.
[-] Inconsistent shade of color on skin, lips, & hair. It looked like the only way for me to get what I wanted is to make them darker by 1 square but this might also impose an issue to my already established glamour aesthetic on him over the years. As a gpose & glamour enthusiast, this is a HUGE impact.
[+] Upside? His stubble now follows his hair color proper instead of staying black all the time. Might still want to make them look more defined though 'cause at the moment they look like some dried crusty something plastered on his chin.

A gem of a finding though... let's have a closer look to his stubble.

Today:


Benchmark:

"Oh my-- what the-- omg honey what happened to you???"

Yeah... so what's with that oddly cut stubble underneath his chin?

Oh yeah! Did I mentioned of having to change his hairstyle? Yes I did! This is what he looks like proper:


Please also, add the option to use the unlockable hairstyles in the benchmark. Look at how much of a missing hairstyle has ripped him off his character(s).

I should also add that I DO NOT enjoy playing any other character/race/gender than this character I have. Outside the inconsistent color shading, Fantasia will NOT alleviate my issues.

====

Overall? I'm very disappointed with how this turned out. It feels like they've taken 3 steps forward but then do a 15 steps backward after.

EDIT: I know lighting are also a prominent issue. But look it this way: if I keep my man's youthful appearance, then even under a bad lighting I will still see him looking youthful. In /gpose, I can tweak that lighting around to produce a fantastic shot. However if they insist on 'aging him 15 years to the future', then my man will not look youthful even under a good lighting. He's already a different character. I want them to fix BOTH the model and lighting. Telling me "Oh it's just lighting." will not fix the fact he's going to look 15 years older -everywhere-. Not even good lighting will preserve his youthful appearance.

[xbahax92]

That they decided to release the character creator (benchmark, whatever) this late just proves how detached they are from the community. Being quiet for so many months only to reveal a messy character creator and now, having less than 2 months to fix so many issues, I cannot describe my feelings about this.

So many issues, so many errors and bugs, yet so little time. I wish SE would be more forward and actually allow people to provide more feedback way earlier..

[Hejligan]

I agree on many points.

My female Miqo'te really has quite a different feel, which does not feel as good in my opinion. If it was merely due to how lighting interacts with more high-polygon models it would be more acceptable, but they hugely changed certain models, like eyelashes, eyebrows, certain skinfolds, et cetera. Why was that necessary? Those changes to eyebrows and eyelashes made my character look less cute and more sultry, as far as I can tell so far.

[Hejligan]

I would like to add "Very dark shadows in the upper half of the eyes that blend in with the eyelashes and make eyes look half closed"

That is something which took a while for me to realise, but the more I look, the more I realise that it is one of the main culprits of why characters look so different now.

[Mihka]

That they decided to release the character creator (benchmark, whatever) this late just proves how detached they are from the community. Being quiet for so many months only to reveal a messy character creator and now, having less than 2 months to fix so many issues, I cannot describe my feelings about this.

So many issues, so many errors and bugs, yet so little time. I wish SE would be more forward and actually allow people to provide more feedback way earlier..

CBU3 has never been particularly good with listening to and taking feedback tbh (still waiting on them to address how bad MCH is with high ping). But JP players are also unhappy with a lot of these changes, so there's at least a chance they'll listen. I doubt it'll be fixed up and perfect by 7.0 release, but hopefully it doesn't take until 8.0+

[Arzalis]

Wow, some of y'all need to chill. Yes there are some issues with the graphics update, but I'm pretty sure even Endwalker's benchmark didn't show the full range of character creation options that were released with the actual launch. I'm also pretty positive that the graphics on some things in the EW benchmark weren't the same with launch. I would bet money that what we are seeing in the benchmark isn't the 100% finished product that we'll get on release day.

The benchmark is a tool to make sure your system can handle the game and a give another "sneak peak" not give a 100% full look; and you would complain if it did. As graphics get better, harsher angles soften and round out. With heightened lighting systems there's going to be more highs and lows; that change tones, highlights and shadows, etc. That's pretty much how it works. If they only updated the graphics on the environment and world around our characters, we would stick out like a sore thumb and look horrible in contrast.

A lot of us have been playing FF14 for a long time, through good and bad updates. Why? Because ultimately the dev team keeps creating a game worth playing and they usually do right by the player base. So lets have a little faith and trust that DT will follow that tradition. I'm not saying don't voice our concerns, but lets be reasonable in our expectations and criticism. This update is not ruining the game, our characters still look like our characters in 99% of the pictures and vids I've seen and from what I've played around with in the Benchmark. This is just the same phenomenon that happened when TVs went to HD and then 4K.

If you've been here a while, you'll know people said that same thing about Hrothgar when we first got them and the benchmark did, indeed, contain the final options.

Realistically, we're so close to launch now that there really won't be many changes unless they delay it. Given the amount of changes, they really should've released the benchmark (or at least the character creation part of it) a lot sooner. Barring some obvious glitches like clipping and whatnot, this is most likely what we're getting.

It rings a little hollow that they claim to want feedback but haven't given anyone the ability to really provide it until we're so close to launch that it's unlikely any of it is implemented.

[Zaniel]

1) Literally NO ONE has the right to tell someone to "just get used to it". These are characters that we've spent watching through hundreds of hours of cutscenes and thousands of hours of gameplay and FF14 is one the most main-character-centric MMOs in history. The attachment people have to their characters is cosmic level. Yeah, I look at some of these pictures and think "that looks the same to me" but to their player that isn't the case, even some tiny adjustment is enough to throw it all off. In any case some of these differences are pretty radical and it's impossible to not see that if you have functioning eyes.

2) It's a lottery, some people got lucky, others did not

3) Some of these changes are egregious and completely UNNECESSARY. It isn't some trick of the lighting or whatnot, they've fundamentally altered some of the presets and/or not accounted for how some the settings work with the new engine (like light coloured hair). It also doesn't matter if they've updated the facial rig, it's resting state should resemble the original preset in all respects (chin, cheeks, mouth, nose, spacing, etc)

4) Fantasia won't solve these problems because of the limited character creator. This isn't Black Desert Online where I can tweezer out individual hairs and curl a lip end or meld multiple lip glosses or resize my cheek bones to rebuild each element. A face preset is a face preset and you're stuck.

[Supersnow845]

The overhaul definitely upsets me in plenty ways. OP have raised many of my current issues so I'm just going to add my comparison pics plus few comments on my own.

First, the pics themselves.

Today (taken in Aesthetician, and changed hairstyle because unlockable hairstyle aren't available):


And this is from Benchmark (copied 1 to 1 from saved appearance feature in login screen):


I... am speechless. He's like a totally different character.
[-] Eyes missing today's catchlight texture would left him looking 'soulless' in places without proper lighting.
[-] Waxy/"Ken doll" skin texture. I can see his cheeks proper now but they looked out of place & he looked like he just aged 15 years to the future lmao.
[-] His lips, particularly the philtrum (upper lips) are thinned beyond recognition. Now I don't have the 'average lips thickness' option.
[-] Inconsistent shade of color on skin, lips, & hair. It looked like the only way for me to get what I wanted is to make them darker by 1 square but this might also impose an issue to my already established glamour aesthetic on him over the years.
[+] Upside? His stubble now follows his hair color proper instead of staying black all the time.

A gem of a finding though... let's have a closer look to his stubble.

Today:


Benchmark:

"Oh my-- what the-- omg honey what happened to you???"

Yeah... so what's with that oddly cut stubble underneath his chin? Also I do want to add that the stubble is now probably too soft or less defined. But this is a rather minor gripe than what I've mentioned so far.

Oh yeah! Did I mentioned of having to change his hairstyle? Yes I did! This is what he looks like proper:


Please also, add the option to use the unlockable hairstyles. Look at how much of a missing hairstyle has ripped him off his character(s).

====

Overall? I'm very disappointed with how this turned out. It feels like they've taken 3 steps forward but then do a 15 steps backward after.

This is the kind of feedback I feel we should be aiming for, you can clearly see how different his character is, he has identified with photos what he doesn’t like and why he feels like it changes his character and he doesn’t give any vague “my character is ruined”without explaining why

All feedback is valid but this i think is the right way forward, especially since some JP players are translating our best feedback and putting it on the JP forums

Of course I’m not saying don’t give feedback, I’m lucky because my character is entirely unaffected, I’m just saying this is more likely to be productive so to speak

[Hejligan]

Here are the changes to the eye-area that I was talking about:



Left is old, right is new.

As you can see, the eyebrow is pretty much a different model, much wider and a completely different colour.

The eyelashes are massively more thicker, which darkens the upper part of the eye quite a bit. The eyelashes also essentially add a different perceived shape to the eyes.

There are also different skin folds where the eye ends in the direction of nose, or rather a lack of those folds.

Of course, the lighting in eyes are a different, but that I at least can accept more as a consequence of a different approach to the way graphics interact.

But the point is: why change models? Who asked for this? We have had these characters for a decade in some cases, and grown very attached to them. Who asked to be forced to suddenly have massively thick eyelashes? Who asked to be forced to have different eyebrows with a different colour?

Square Enix themselves stated:

"The goal is to improve the overall look you know and love, rather than to change things to meet a certain threshold. Players have been playing for 10 years, so they want to prioritize and take care to avoid situations where people don’t feel their character looks theirs."

Yoshida says the final version will be of higher quality, but they really did take care to make sure that your impressions of the characters wouldn’t change. The hair texture, eyes, and skin were ones they paid particular attention to."

Please Square Enix, strive to maintain that philosophy, which you yourselves stated you would! The benchmark is not upholding it...

The eyes are a window to the soul, I am not happy about these changes at all.