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

[Ceetee]

You wear a mask so why do you care? jk jk

I mean you aren't entirely wrong.

This is just my PvP outfit. My normal outfit DOES make use of the garlond goggles tho, which means I really do care less about the 'dead eyes' issue compared to others. In fact, my main looks fantastic! I'm so happy with how she looks! Some small tweaks to her makeup and removing the weird forehead jewel they turned into an LED, and I'm good to go.

But also, at the end of the day I'm a human being capable of empathy and my heart breaks for the people with their own issues. I have no interest in ever playing a mooncat. However, that doesn't mean I'm gonna sit here and roll my eyes when people who rolled mooncat specifically for the fangs end up losing them. I personally think a lot of the characters DO look better after the update. But that's because they changed stuff I personally didn't like about the models, but those exact features might be EXACTLY why someone picked them in the first place. I have a character I did that for, and it's absolutely devastating to see the changes. That character is the entire reason I came to the forums. I designed that character to look older by picking a rounder face that had the least natural makeup on it. It is now a slender face absolutely caked in makeup. A character designed to be my WoL's mom now EVEN YOUNGER THAN MY WOL.

It's an incredibly frustrating change to encounter, and I can only even begin to imagine how much more awful that feels when it happens to a character that IS your main. So yeah. I do care quite a bit. Even if you were looking at it from a purely selfish perspective, we all have to share a server together. And I dunno about you, but for me, people who are enjoying themselves are far more fun to be around than those who are miserable. I'd rather the changes make them happy.

[CidHeiral]

Yeah, I was there for this and some of the new models looked really rough at first. Rougher than FFXIV's new ones. There were numerous graphical glitches and some of them looked just plain bad and/or suffered from something we called "same-face syndrome" back then (different faces lost their unique "look" and all kind of looked the same with minor differences)

Haha yeah, I remember that. Orcs (which is what I played) had the "same face" issue as well until they did a pass to do different sculpts for each face. I think trolls had a problem with their tusks as well? I don't recall if those were actual mistakes or just something they hadn't gotten to yet when they first showed them off.

In any case, it's perfectly fine to bring up issues with the models and this is the time to do so. My comment was more directed at people who simply cannot accept anything that isn't exactly their current model down to the last pixel. There's always going to be some degree of change with an upgrade like this. I'm sure the devs will get them as close as they can and make tweaks over time but at some point they're going to be done and everyone will have to move on in whatever way they feel is appropriate.

[coffeepotz]

Sorry, I legitimately just chuckled cause I read your post and saw you wearing the mask. Didn't mean much by it.

[KisaiTenshi]

Lack of eye shine
It seems that the static "eye shine" spot was removed, to be replaced by dynamic lighting. This is an issue as if the lighting is anything less than perfect (so most of the time) it just makes our characters look dead inside.

Keeper of the Moon fangs downgrade
Thread

Lip shape changed on many race/gender combinations
Post


Certain miqote hairstyles missing ear patterns
Post



Lips are a downgrade across the board
This one is honestly baffling. How this texture passed quality control is beyond me, and lip glossiness is now a thing of the past.
Thread

These are the ones I noticed in like the first 10 seconds of the benchmark. "What did they do to the face??", but at first I couldn't put my finger on it. So since I have all the benchmarks on disk I went back and looked at it. The benchmark is representive of the "Final state" of the game, but not necessarily the costumes. Yoshi-P and the team can push changes to costumes at any time, but the base models have to be in the initial download, because it will be retroactive all the way to the 2.0 content.

Honestly the eye teeth ("fangs") changes to me suggests they overhauled how mouth and lower-jaw work. Because if they did what I think they did, it's very likely all characters now have the same teeth, and there's just a tunable for the eye teeth size somewhere so the cat-like races can have them more or less visible, and male characters could have bigger ones.


The eye shine is concerning because it's an anime aesthetic. I no doubt that that the game probably looks better than the benchmark, since they'll never update the benchmark. However if that's how it ends up looking in the game, people are probably going to riot (metaphorically.)

[Heavenchild]

The update has its problems but I am really glad how it turned out for my Hyr.
Yes, he looks different now, and I am happy about it. Because I really hoped that it will be so!

I also hope for new voices or body types. At the moment there is no voice option that really matches with this Hyr baseface in my opinion. Also the body is a little bit too massive for this face. It's the same situation with the younger Elezen face compared to the body.

They said that they want to add more options after the graphics update. So lets see when and what it will be. : )

*edit
I also tried with just other cosmetics and really loved it. : D

[witchymumma]

While I am in the crowd of people not entirely happy with the change to my character (bun-girl using face 4, for some reason they completely changed the shape of our lips), in general the update looks pretty good (the textures on the clothes look so good, for example). I'm also one of those people who find the creative thought process quite interesting so I would be curious to know what prompted some of the more dramatic changes. ie, the shortening/blunting of the moon kitty fangs I keep hearing about. Or in more personal instance, the change in the shape of bun-girl face 4's lips - did they perhaps feel that face 4's lips were too similar to face 1's and they wanted to difference between the two to be more obvious?

And while it's awesome that they're giving us all a free fantasia at launch, judging from a lot of the comments here on the forums and on discord, it kinda seems like little more than a band-aid. It's great if you wanna have a fresh new look, but for the people who are only wanting to make small tweaks it's not as useful with the current customisation system (having features locked to a specific face).
Using my bun-girl as example again, I love how she looks in the benchmark, except for the new lips and sadly there is no amount of fantasia that I can throw at her that will allow me to slap face 1's lips onto face 4.... do you think they will ever give us a little more freedom/flexibility with facial/body customisation (like being able to pick eyes, lips, horns (if you're an au'ra), etc separate from face shape)?

edit: oh, and just for reference, here's the before and after:

[persephius]

I fully agree with you here. The graphics update for a majority of the models really isn't up to par yet (M Au Ra is the only one that looks like an overall huge improvement) and so close to the expansion release I really hope that they give us an option to opt out of the character model update until they can actually fix all of the numerous things wrong with them.

I don't recognize my WoL at all. That's not Persephius, that's Ser Phephius, the imposter...

I also did a full critique on the M Viera model here if anyone would like to read and add on.

[PipiaPia]

The main thing that I want to point out specifically that I think are possible to change in time for Dawntrail release are the lip edits. Unfortunately in a lot of cases a character's default emotion looks different. I just think that the shapes were changed a bit too much. Below is my character and my husband's character.

Lalafell, which lost their upper lip:


Au Ra, which got plumper and not as long:

[Iscah]

It's been difficult to log in knowing so many of my characters may be changing in ways I can't even correct in just two months...

Really sorry for this dump. I love the art style of this game, and, admittedly, am very attached to it. I've accepted long ago that the character update would happen whether I wanted it to or not...but I'd appreciate if they tried more to stick to the art style, in terms of character features and expressions.

No need to be sorry, and I really hope the devs are reading.

I feel the same way. If we're really stuck with these alterations to our characters then some of my characters will be gone, and instead of the time I was planning to prepare for Dawntrail on my main character, I feel like I need to spend it all on these secondary characters who are going to be lost to me.

It feels silly to compare it to mourning, but I think my brain is processing it like that nevertheless.

[Shiro-Marusu]

Came to this thread looking for solidarity, lol. My mooncat sadly no longer looks like the same person. I think the eyes are the biggest factor, but I'm not sure.
I actually feel some texture changes could already do a lot to get the old impression back, even for the remodeled lips.

Slider 1
Slider 2
Slider 3

[...]

Going to continue from this because I made more comparisons. They aren't all lined up perfectly, but I think it's enough to show the differences in textures/shapes.
Another thing I noticed is that the eyebrows sometimes seem to sit on weird, and depending on the angle or emote it doesn't look that appealing to me. Sometimes they curve weirdly.







Disclaimer; I am aware that perhaps not all of this can be changed. Some issues look like they are inherently structural and possibly too complicated to retcon. But As for spacing between the eyes, eye-shape, mouth-shape. Eyebrows that curve or sit strangely. I feel like some changes could be made to make it resemble the old features more. In some angles my cat still looks like his old self, but in many others he seems like a different person.

Maybe some people will think I am exaggerating, but I really truly hope some changes will be made. I'm really worried about this.