We need to compromise as a player base

[cutestfox]

[Reinha]

I saw the captions on this and it made me chuckle. It's easy to tell the new and old versions apart in every comparison picture even if contrarians and some visually impaired individuals like to pretend otherwise. All you need to do is see whichever character picture looks FUBAR and that's the new graphics!

[decomposer]

I'm not in the camp of "roll back everything the way that it was" because I think that's unfeasible and also disregards some genuine, much-needed improvements.

That being said, some of the "technical advances" seem more like mistakes or crunched corner-cutting, especially where the character models are concerned. For instance, applying one clan's skin textures to the entire race, or every race now sharing the same UV map (great for modders who wish to make cross-race makeup options, but not necessarily great for facial definition in base game.) Not to mention the literal bugs I've seen with hair textures, neck seams, etc.

One of the biggest "mistakes" (using quotes here, because I don't know if it's an actual mistake) is that it seems like the subsurface scattering (SSS) was not mapped properly, and instead extends to the entire head. This is why characters are looking waxen, self-lit even in low light, and why skin tones are changing per environments (ie. characters looking green in the La Noscea character creator portion, because the skin translucency is cranked up and is drinking up green environs instead of reflecting light properly.) I think this would also explain why for the female raen, horn colors are changing depending on skin tone, why dark hair changes 5 shades lighter depending on hairstyle, and why viera ears are turning into glowsticks.

There was a really good thread on this here.

A lot of people are saying "it's just lighting," and one, that is an issue in itself but two, a glimpse around the forums shows that features themselves have changed. Sometimes drastically. A lot of the times poorly.

I made a graph about lighting and skintone. But I also made one about features. And this is just my one, singular elf.



I think myself and most others would be happy to compromise. I would even tolerate the jank candle-effect on the skin if I could just have my character's lips, nose, chin, and eyes back. It's okay if he looks fine or better to others! But that's not (my) character who I've played, gposed, drawn, written, and commissioned for years ):

[Loggos]

A lot of people are saying "it's just lighting," and one, that is an issue in itself but two, a glimpse around the forums shows that features themselves have changed. Sometimes drastically. A lot of the times poorly.

I made a graph about lighting and skintone. But I also made one about features. And this is just my one, singular elf.

Thank you very much, those are great comparison images! They show the difference in mouth and eye shape as well as bone structure really clearly.

The mouth change really stands out here. It looks like it could be from a different face option.

I think myself and most others would be happy to compromise. I would even tolerate the jank candle-effect on the skin if I could just have my character's lips, nose, chin, and eyes back. It's okay if he looks fine or better to others! But that's not (my) character who I've played, gposed, drawn, written, and commissioned for years ):

I completely agree with this point. I can accept inevitable changes like lighting and texture but I'd like to keep my features of choice. If my chars look like themselves with suboptimal waxy skin I can still live with that.
But the feature changes make them look like different people.
I would never (re)design them like this in the character creator if I were given these new features as options.

[Luca_]

If so many characters look wrong and waxy and dead in most lighting conditions with the update... maybe the lighting update just isn't good and doesn't fit the game's artstyle currently.

I'm kind of tired of how many complaints are being brushed off as the lighting being at the wrong angle. The update somehow made the character creator worse, that's a huge problem that doesn't really bode well for the rest of the game.

[Erin1491]

There is not enough space on the forum to post here all "before and after" screenshots that I took from dozens of angles and lighting so different that you can’t even imagine. And also a frame-by-frame benchmark.
I say this completely seriously. It will take several dozen pages.
I know how and what light can affects.

I specifically attach screenshots with lighting in which the defect is most visible. Because I want this defect to be seen by SE, is this logical? I can attach here screenshots where she stands back to the light and there is no defect at all. Oh, she's beautiful there, of course. With a dark flat face.

What's the point of this? What's the point of giving advice to "turn the camera and change the lighting"?

In the cutscene, how do you turn the camera? In the game, I also have to constantly turn the camera away from the light, right? I will have a wonderful game, the essence of which will be “rotate the camera so that the character does not look like a freak”, thanks for the advice.

Again I agreed that a lot of complaints are valid I'm not painting everyone with the same brush here. But on the other side of the coin there's lots of folks who aren't being as thorough. I'm not invalidating how anyone feels because I agree some things definitely need to change. But you can't sit here and tell me all of the comparisons are valid because they simply aren't. Even though yours are doesn't mean everyone's are.

[AirisRay]

Again I agreed that a lot of complaints are valid I'm not painting everyone with the same brush here. But on the other side of the coin there's lots of folks who aren't being as thorough. I'm not invalidating how anyone feels because I agree some things definitely need to change. But you can't sit here and tell me all of the comparisons are valid because they simply aren't. Even though yours are doesn't mean everyone's are.

I don't need the same light to understand what has changed in the characters of people whose screenshots I see here. I don't even need the perfect identical angle. For the most part, everything is obvious.
Perhaps you need detailed accuracy, I won't argue. Not all people see things the same way.

[Loggos]

If so many characters look wrong and waxy and dead in most lighting conditions with the update... maybe the lighting update just isn't good and doesn't fit the game's artstyle currently.

I'm kind of tired of how many complaints are being brushed off as the lighting being at the wrong angle. The update somehow made the character creator worse, that's a huge problem that doesn't really bode well for the rest of the game.

Yeah that is a good point. Even if it was just the lighting, the lighting is still a major part of the aesthetic and the appeal of a game. Not only does it set the mood, it does have the ability to change the appeal of certain features by making them appear more or less prominent.
But if the lighting in the character creator is generally off-putting then this might also put off new players if that's their first taste of the game's visual presentation.
They may not necessarily think "oh not to worry, it'll look better in-game". The lighting options in the current creator are already not very good. I mostly stick with the aetherial sea because the ingame simulations of the shroud, la noscea or thanalan often make my char look a lot worse than their actual corresponding ingame counterparts.

It also makes creating characters less fun because you always have to guess "will my face/skin colour/hair colour look like this ingame or is this just weirdly sculpted due to the bad lighting". I already have this problem in the current creator. I often create dummies and run around ingame to see what they actually look like before I commit to a design.
Tbh that's not how it should be.

I really hope the lighting in the benchmark is just a work in progress. I know it's still under development so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[DiaDeem]

What I personally don't understand, is any argument that current lighting is better.

I'm not gonna even argue about the sculptures (even if I think some of the discussion is a bit overblown) because I can't tell you what your character is supposed to look like.

But guys...


Really?


Seriously??


We need a compromise, not to throw away all the hard work from the dev team and the many improvements the update is bringing to the table.

[AirisRay]

Do you think it will change much? It’s not even dark here







upd: I corrected the wrong words a little