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

[Loggos]

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.

Completely agree.

Plus, we have not only invested lots of time into them, it's also a lot of money. Being forced to change our avatar, our anchor of identification, that we have paid for for years, can be quite upsetting. This is not the same as class changes. This is "me" (or my OC, etc.) and making "me" look different beyond what is necessary to upgrade the graphics has no positive or balancing impact on the game (necessary lighting changes vs. completely changing the shapes of facial features for no discernible reason).
But it will leave me without the "product", i.e. the personification I carefully crafted over the years, that I've paid for.
I understand some changes have to happen. I have not seen any convincing reason why actively remodelling the facial features we've grown to love into something different has to happen though.


If you now add to this that in the future I will also have to pay quite a lot of money to play this new avatar, that I did not choose and that was forced onto me to replace what I had actually originally chosen, it feels quite bad.
I will play Dawntrail, though I'll remain annoyed that a part of what I pay is for an avatar that doesn't represent me anymore and that I quite frankly don't really want. Other people might vote with their wallet and not feel like wanting to pay for this new avatar at all.