Quote Originally Posted by Luca_ View Post
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.