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

[Scintilla]

"Only looks good in the right lighting" is not a solution. I don't want my character to look like someone else every time they turn around or step into a shadowed area.

Because that wasn't the case already, right?




I'm sorry, there are some valid points from players which I do totally understand. There are some changes which I question why they were done. And there are changes to my own characters which I dislike (I will definitely be using Fantasia to change my female Viera's eye colour. Possibly more if I find there are other small tweaks I can make to get her looking more like I imagine her to. And my male Viera might be going for a complete race change, but still undecided on that. My Midlander and Miqote will likely stay as they are). But the hysteria in a few of these posts is far overdone: "My character is a totally different person. They look nothing like they used to" - the only difference? A slightly rounder appearing jawline, partially due to the softening of the shadows there, which you have to look very hard to see anyway.

I'm not saying that there aren't some valid points being made. I do sympathise with some points made, for example hair highlights having been altered, race-specific features changed, 'bald patches' on some male characters, neck seams visible etc. However, some complaints are definitely being blown far out of proportion. This, alongside increasing hostility towards anyone who says the forbidden word 'lighting', is making me quickly lose what sympathy I had.

Sadly, they will never please everyone.
Some complain of skin being too plastic and doll-like. Others complain it's too textured.
Some complain it ages their character. Others complain it makes their characters look like children
Some complain of dimples now being far more noticeable. Others complain their dimples are now too subtle and/or unnoticable.

If they 'fix' one of these issues for one person, it will be considered worse by someone else. Yes, there are things which have been widely criticized by most, but we do still need to compromise a little more than some seem to be willing to.

[twobear]

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.

[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.

[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.

[Thrawn21]

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.

This is a good point. Even if my current character looks bad due to poor lighting or weird angles, he still looks like himself (there's visual consistency). The new version is far less consistent in my experience. He'll look totally different depending on the environment, which I find odd. Not specifically in a "good vs bad" way, but rather in a way that makes him look altogether different. It's something I've noticed more and more as I mess around in the character creator with both my current and DT versions.