We need to compromise as a player base

[Turtledeluxe]

Considering I left two games that "updated" characters already, I have zero problem leaving a third (have never been on the sunk cost train). That said, given Japanese players are complaining about many of the same things, I will stick around long enough to see if they make changes.

I am highly confident that issues that are obvious and reasonable will be addressed. People can certainly threaten to the leave the game in their posts or generally be over dramatic, I just don't think that's going to get more moderate players on board with your initiative. It comes across as fake.

I'd also note as a general thought that these are potential mistakes or artistic decisions, they're not personal attacks, When people frame it as that, it just sounds strange. And that really goes for any topic-- the relic quests, job design, whatever. No one's "taking things away" from players. That's not the primary goal of changes to the game-- it implies some kind of parasocial malice where there is none.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[AirisRay]

I'm in the same boat, I have over 100k screens of my character, unchanged since 2.0, never unsubbed from the game, using the same face as you and I know exactly how it's meant to be
I can tolerate loss of detail or the weird lighting even, but that facial sculpt is completely destroyed
Its warped, disfigured, that mouth is just straight up wrong

I also understand you so much and I'm so sorry we're going through this now. Let's hope this gets fixed. I created a thread in "In-Game Bugs", I hope it will be seen and read.

[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.

[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