I wanted to give my feedback for the changes I've seen with my female face 4 miqo'te in the benchmark, and thought it might be worth posting a new thread as I hadn't seen any general female miqo'te ones. I appreciate all the work the devs have gone through for this graphical update, and I think miqo'tes have gotten some of the better upgrades compared to most races, but there are many elements I find myself unhappy with and she doesn't feel the same anymore.

EW 6.58 left, DT benchmark right


My main thoughts are that I feel like many areas are being blended and softened and made incredibly shiny without thought for the general shape, in doing this losing all the quirks and traits that we all love of our warriors of light.

Nose - Currently her nose has a fairly large and flat shape and she has rounder nostrils, something I have always loved about her when many in-game noses tend to be smaller. In the benchmark has been blended into a shapeless, shiny form, nothing about the general shape of it remaining. She looks like she has had botched plastic surgery, and also been made into wax. Her nostrils look less defined, her nose in general smaller with smaller nostrils, and its overly way too shiny (something that seems to be apparent for all skin for some reason).

Eyes - Something I'm seeing often brought up is updated eyes looking dead and lifeless, which is apparent here too, plus very dark and full fake looking eyelashes. I feel like the new eyelashes are a downgrade, they feel way too intense and unrealistic and the originals have a far more natural look.

Lips/mouth - This is something I've seen many complaints about, as the new lips look somehow considerably flatter and the shape of the lip in general has completely changed for many people, my miqo'te included. Her current lips well defined puffy w shape with prominent round tubercles with her mouth being partially open and her teeth showing through. This has always been something I loved about these lips, giving them shape and volume, and I love that her mouth is a little open. Its now been reduced to a flat set of lips with basically a straight line between them, the original shape again lost, and the texture and depth seems to be less realistic, and they don't blend into the face in the same way and appear almost separate, like they have lipstick on.

Lighting/colours - For some reason I had issues with colours going very grey for her in the benchmark creator at times as seen below:



I really do appreciate all the work they've done, but many choices seem strange for the character upgrades, and as many of you know being with a character for 2000+ hours makes you love how they look a great deal