Moon Miqo'te Face 4 feedback

[Cheapshot]

[7/04/2024]I made a very big too much effort post detailing all my observations about what changed between Endwalker and Dawntrail.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6514992

[4/19/2024]I’ve seen the statement released today addressing planned changes to the benchmark. The things discussed in this thread should still be relevant going forward so please continue sharing your concerns about moon face 4.

[6/03/2024]The updated benchmark has just dropped today and I've gone in and made a summary of all the changes I noticed. Click here to jump to that post and check it out! Some of this OP is now out of date.

Let me preface this by saying I love this game and I appreciate the tireless work of the developers. It's the only MMO I've stuck with, and I've played it for years. I love the world that's been created, and I love my character and this is why I care so much about this. None of my feedback is from a place of malice. I want to be playing this game still in another 10 years. I also want to preface by saying these concerns are primarily mesh and texture changes. I have done my best to eliminate lighting as the cause of differing appearance. I've also edited this post to upload a new graphic with more direct comparisons that will hopefully be more clear. I want to illustrate the differences better so that my concerns are not passed over as lighting differences.

[7/15/2024]I’m replacing the outdated benchmark comparisons with the newer, updated comparison images I made now that 7.0 is live. Just embedding my post from further in the thread for convenience

Reposting this from the Dawntrail character graphics update megathread, just to follow up in here.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6513666

This took me a few days to put together. I want to be super super super clear, this isn't some big long post saying that I demand all this stuff be restored. That would be absurd. I don't expect that. I probably don't even want that. I'll make an effort at the end to detail a small wish list of suggestions that I think would help restore the original feel of the face.

This is just me doing my best to document everything that changed with my characters face in a useful and organized manner. My hope is it can be used as a general reference for people who don't fully know what changed about their Miqo'te Face 4 characters. With any luck maybe by the developers as well. I was a professional illustrator for years and I also have a 30 gig FFXIV screenshot folder of my character so obviously my eye is going to notice changes that others wont. Please understand that I KNOW this is a lot. Just try not to jump down my throat about it without reading my intentions.








Hopefully these images scale.

So with all that documented and out of the way, I'll make a shortlist of suggestions down below. I feel much less attachment to the game now that my character of years looks so uncanny to me. I don't like how doll-like and unfocused she looks now, or how my tomboy look was made more delicate.



A few things I think seem like problems that need to be fixed rather than intentional design:
- Solve the current "cloudy" greyness issue of the eyes, and make sure eye shine isn't dulled by shadows
- Remove the gloss from the lips when "none" is selected under lip colour as it was before and remove or reduce the incorrectly shaped drawn on lip shadow
- Tone down the shadows cast by the upper eyelids

And here is the list of what I would love to be changed specific to my characters features that might bring back her original feel better:
-Raise the corners of the eyes back up and switch back to the old lashes
-Restore all curves the nose used to have
-Rework the mouth shape and texture to be more similar to the original. Remove mouth corner indents.
-Reduce the shine on the nose to just the nose tip instead of the whole bridge

I would also love if things like eyelashes could be made a selection because I much prefer the look of the older lashes, but I know many like the new ones better. I don't like all the changes that made my character look more feminine, since when I chose this face it was my intention to have a character that was more of a tom-boy. The character creator could use substantial improvements in general.

Anyways, thanks for your time. Sorry this is so much. I just wanted to take my negative feelings about the update and be constructive with them instead.

I just wanted to update this thread with something I put together to better express my deires for my character. It’s one thing to point out in detail everything that’s changed, which I’ve absolutely done. But in the absence of clear guidance on what I would like to see done about it, it’s probably not as useful. I also think it’s important to convey my sincere hopes for what changes I’d like to see.

Here is a gif showing my face in 6.x, Dawntrail, and then a version where I edited the dawntrail appearance to reflect what I had hoped my character would look like in the graphical update.

[2024-04-07]I'm also going to edit this OP to include what seems to be more technical problems. Thank you to those in the thread who have helped discover these issues.

[snip. Previous bugs listed here were resolved. I’ll update this with some of the new ones introduced when I have time.]