We need to compromise as a player base

[Loggos]

I know this is not a perfect example because the video quality is bad and there is no direct comparison with ARR's character creator.

But unless I'm really blind I'm under the impression that this miqo'te face looks pretty much identical to its corresponding ARR+ counterpart (or at least preserves its key personality).
Its quality is just considerably better.

I'd pay such good money to get this back, seriously... ;__;

I had hoped the graphical update would have meant something like this.

Realistically, I am aware they probably can't just straight-up go back to 1.0 character graphics. This may very well not be possible from a technical standpoint.
And in many other aspects the current benchmark is probably much better, esp. when it comes to the portrayal of nature/the environment and the modelling of certain physical properties such as light, translucence, depth etc. etc.

But I think the example shows how to amp up the fidelity without losing character identity and uniqueness.

https://youtu.be/p64H66IurrY?t=72


Edit - Also, a little bonus:
https://youtu.be/ksuoipNWKWs?t=338
https://youtu.be/oD45euKWO1U?t=151
https://youtu.be/oD45euKWO1U?t=182

Again, I know, a direct comparison with 1.0 is not completely fair and I don't actually demand we go back, as much as I praise (some! of) its character graphics. But if this character presentation was possible in 2011, then I would have hoped we could have at least gotten something similar/that comes close in 2024.

I know the original reasoning to make ARR graphics lower quality was to make it more accessible. But time and technology have moved on. We are not in the PS3 era anymore.
PS4 is already an old hat (or as my ingame friend asked me "Why are you playing on an ancient toaster?"), although I understand that not everyon can upgrade to a PS5. That is completely fair.

But when it came out I ran ARR on a then up-to-date laptop without a GPU (2013).