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

[Scintilla]

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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.

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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

[Doopliss]

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

Whuh? I don't have much to say since it seems like everything you follow up with is in agreement...? But my useage of the word "trick" was simply a shorthand to explain why people were thinking an image might have a different impression than what we got. I've no malice, only concern and questions. Which feels to be the majority, honestly.

EDIT: Actually, looking back at my response, it feels super disingenuous to snip my response and then imply that I used that word in such a way, when my sentence was "...I actually think people are getting tricked by these still example images..." Come on, man.