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

[Reinha]

No jokes aside. There will be almost certainly no changes until release. This should be impossible because of how close the release is. Every Dev will tell you that. Our experience with older releases show the same. For possible changes the Benchmark would have released on the first or second month of the year.

Anyone who thinks the myriad flaws are getting fixed in 2 months is coping hard. These new assets were made last year, folks. They are doing tiny finishing touches on the expansion and creating 7.2 patch content right now. People who, like me, do not want to play their mangled character anymore are better off exploring other character creation options in the benchmark.

The best we can hope for is that someone is currently writing a slightly apologetic Lodestone post detailing how and when we get those free fantasias they mentioned in a live event.

[twobear]

I suspect that this feeling is the main reason there are many people butting heads on this matter. Again, as someone who admittedly doesn't want these character changes at all, I fully believe, realistically, they're going to push out this update on time in one way or another. I don't believe a rollback is happening.

Instead I'd just like to reiterate on a point I attempted to make earlier: I just ask that you try to look at things with empathy. From your icon, I think your Seawolf is very handsome, and I don't doubt the update makes him look even cooler.

However, I just ask that you consider there are some people who had that same level of excitement as you do now suddenly stripped away in place of fear, because their characters weren't as lucky. They're small things, but would it not make the anticipation even a little worse for you if his smile caused his brow bone to clip into his eyes? Or if his hair suddenly had more gaps in it? Or if it now felt like he was forced to wear deep lipstick and eyeliner no matter what you do?

The thing is, I absolutely want things to be fixed; at the very least, I don't play any of these races, so why wouldn't I. But we now seem to be moving into an even more dramatic phase where the entire thing should be abandoned or started from scratch because of very minor changes that hopefully can be fixed. Or the frankly disingenous argument that you can find particular lighting angles where the models don't look amazing (disingenuous considering how easy it is to find bad lighting environments currently).

Not that it's especially relevant but I think my own character has received bigger changes from the update than most of the characters getting posted. They've really changed the roughness of Roegadyn skin, and the way the lips look now makes his mouth a little wider than before. I'll probably swap to one of the slightly smaller mouths. I might even change the skin tone slightly because of the way it looks under the new light. But I don't want those taken away and replaced with a more conservative update across the board, as some people now seem to be suggesting. Yes, to a certain extent there is a 'reinterpretation' of the character going on, but I don't see how you can avoid that when you're doing a major visual overhaul. It's still my character just because he no longer has skin like a pumice stone.

Basically I hope that the developers are able to see that the things that are needed are minor changes and don't abandon what I think is by and large very good work.

[JaneHitoshura]

Definitely agree in the eye and lip departments. I could have sworn it was mentioned that they wanted to improve the look of the femra blank eyes back when they first started talking about the updates, but instead it seems like they've just extended it to everyone. Caps from the benchmark don't fix it at all, only thing that makes any difference is zooming ALL the way in. My astigmatism doesn't even know where to focus on the new eyes. I can live with the lip change on my femroe, but I really liked having a narrower lip option that didn't extend the color all the way to the corners.

Seeing as this thread is only people complaining about stuff are Miqote, Elezen, Humans, Aura and Vieras. And almost next to none hrothgar, roes and lalafells. Makes me wonder if the only reason Roes/Hrothgars and a bit of lalafels didn't see that much of a drastic changes in their characters because of how unpopular they are (Exception lalas). Tho i for sure see couple problems with the eye shape, and mouths being flatter which is a common thing in every race change it seems, its didnt affect that much afromentioned races.

[SongOfTheWind]

The thing is, I absolutely want things to be fixed; at the very least, I don't play any of these races, so why wouldn't I. But we now seem to be moving into an even more dramatic phase where the entire thing should be abandoned or started from scratch because of very minor changes that hopefully can be fixed. Or the frankly disingenous argument that you can find particular lighting angles where the models don't look amazing (disingenuous considering how easy it is to find bad lighting environments currently).i

I find it interesting how this “being dramatic” argument is coming solely from players who are happy with the changes and wish for them to be pushed forward no matter what. If you are not an affected party the least you can do is to not minimise or dismiss other people concerns and emotional response.

[Mosha]

I find it interesting how this “being dramatic” argument is coming solely from players who are happy with the changes and wish for them to be pushed forward no matter what. If you are not an affected party the least you can do is to not minimise or dismiss other people concerns and emotional response.

Abandoning or starting from scratch is indeed a dramatic solution to the problem.

[Scintilla]

snip

Thank you. So Hildy's unexpected appearance helped out more than just being a simple April Fools? I'm glad to hear that it helped you in some way.

It is much easier to look at another player's character and see a nice image: the differences are minimal and generally the newer characters look better quality. This is the case for an unfamiliar face, just like in those celebrated example images. We are looking at the face as a whole, not focusing our attention on one feature in particular.
There are some examples of before-after which are a bit more questionable, I admit, and I do greatly sympathize with those players. However, these such cases are in the minority. The general agreement in threads like these of how truly terrible everything looks are more a regular part of the echo-chamber: supporting each other through unquestioning agreement

When it's our own characters that these celebrated changes are applied to, suddenly the changes become a lot more obvious. For some players, it seems this has led to a major fixation upon the changes, leading to sudden heavy over-analysis of their characters facial structure, to the point where they now can't see anything except those new changes.
We are seeing the same product as they have been showing us for a while. The same product everyone has been praising. The only difference is that we are now seeing it applied to our own characters.

I'm not saying everything is perfect. There is one difference that I'm seeing between the example images and the current benchmark, and that is in the lips. In that Miqote example image there appears to still be some glossiness or shine to them. From what I've seen in the benchmark, though, that's largely absent. That appears to be one widely criticized feature so perhaps they will look to change it in the near future. And, as I said before, neck seams, lip shape, race-specific changes etc. will hopefully all be adjusted in future.

snip

Again, to try to say they're going out of their way to 'trick' players is unjustifiably suggesting malice. Yes, the example images we got were quite limited and I agree it would have been far, far better had we been able to see these changes applied to our own characters long before this so that there was time to adjust any identified flaws or community-wide complaints. I'm sure they wouldn't intentionally elect to have such an uproar so close to release, so I presume there was some behind-the-scenes reason for such a late benchmark release. This isn't a minor update in the slightest - there's bound to be issues and delays, many that we won't know about.

From what I've seen, the characters we have been shown in examples thus far seem very much the same as what we have now - as shown in that Miqote example. The dimples are there, the slightly wider face was there. But it being an unfamiliar face made all the difference

[Embran]

I find it interesting how this “being dramatic” argument is coming solely from players who are happy with the changes and wish for them to be pushed forward no matter what. If you are not an affected party the least you can do is to not minimise or dismiss other people concerns and emotional response.

But people who want the changes to go through will become the affected party if they don’t. It’s really just a battle of selfishness. They want this, you want that.

I’m going female hrothgar so I have no horse in this race.

[SongOfTheWind]

But people who want the changes to go through will become the affected party if they don’t. It’d really just a battle of selfishness. They want this, you want that.

I’m going female hrothgar so I have no horse in this race.

That is why I truly wish there was a way to have changes as options instead. Want to have enlarged pupils? Different nose? Options. Changing things while using the same limited variation is bound to lead to problems, even forgetting all the obvious bugs.

[twobear]

I find it interesting how this “being dramatic” argument is coming solely from players who are happy with the changes and wish for them to be pushed forward no matter what. If you are not an affected party the least you can do is to not minimise or dismiss other people concerns and emotional response.

Well I don’t know how else to put it. I can accept that people are unhappy with the changes. Upset by them, even. That’s completely reasonable and I can’t argue with your subjective experience.

But to say that the characters are ruined and don’t even look similar? That the changes are terrible and the new lighting is worse? These seem to be overreactions to me, sorry.

[Doopliss]

...The thing is, I absolutely want things to be fixed; at the very least, I don't play any of these races, so why wouldn't I. But we now seem to be moving into an even more dramatic phase where the entire thing should be abandoned or started from scratch because of very minor changes that hopefully can be fixed...

I understand where your anxiety is coming from, and I think it's as valid as anyone else's. I just ask that you stop trying to bring others down in your framing. And anyway, I do agree, all the changes and bugs are little things. It's just that there's so many of those little things--some appearing intentional and some appearing not so--that it feels like so much altogether; at least from the perspective of an individual. It does make me worry for the larger state of the expansion.

Again, though, just to throw out my two cents: this close to release I really don't think you have to worry about them throwing it out. They definitely aren't going to when the game is already being sold with new spec requirements and nobody has any faults with the environments. More than anything, though, your response only makes me more strongly feel that we really need to demand for more clear communication from the team. It is so rare they respond to anything directly anymore; you just have to wait and see. It feels ridiculous when we don't have any precedent for something this large.

I don't like guessing what they're going to do. It sounds like you don't either. Are they just going to ship the characters out as is, which, even ignoring the facial feature changes, includes many objective, unprofessional looking errors for several races? Will they just use the heads from NA Fanfest instead and call it a day? I remember in the first 10-year-anniversary roadmap stream, they said they'd be showing us the character graphical improvements every step of the way, but it turns out that only meant a whopping 3 times?

Environment, gear, etc, are all fine. Even a lot of the lighting making some characters uncanny as hell just has to do with the way character mapping interacts with the light. Hrothgar interact with it way more nicely than any of the new human-shaped head models. But them not letting any of us know why things are like this is only going to continue making people worry about the worst possible conclusions on both sides.