Character creator complaints boil down to customization replacements, no new options

[Oshirigami]

No one is complaining that hair looks better, and that outfits looks better. We like the improvements.
We don't like things changed beyond our control and not being able to make a character look that fits what we want because certain looks and options from before are gone.

Looking at English, Korean, and Japanese language forums, Korea may actually really like the new Female Au Ra thick lips while Japan usually dislikes them. English seems split.
Why weren't new thick lips given as additional mouth options?
Why weren't the new noses given as new options?

Male+female Viera, female Miqo'te, and female Au Ra got their lips resculpted in a way that should have been new mouths.

Male face 3 Viera noses got resculpted in a way that should have been new options instead of replacements.

Cheeks changed on some Lala and female Miqo'te. I think the slimmer cheek on face 3 female Midlander is an improvement, but others may not.
Why isn't cheek option separate from Jaw?

Female Miqo'te face 4 and Middie face 5 both lost their overbite option with parted lips showing a little teeth.

Some English players seem to really like the male Elezen changes, but I see complaints about the eye bags in Japanese.

Some male Miqo'te like the new eye shapes. I think they're a big improvement, but others don't.

Some people used to use lipstick to make the lips match the skin color better, but lipstick no longer matches the shape of lips on male and female Viera faces so that is no longer possible. Though I've seen JP players who like this more because the oversized rounded lipstick is a cuter look.

Some characters, like female Miqo'te, got much thicker eye lashes.

People have differing tastes. The people at Creative Unit 3 may think they have improved things, but a large number of players disagree.

A character creator revamp should have been coming along side these graphical changes. This game has some of the worst customization of any MMORPG and this should have been a good opportunity to improve it.

To still have the old options with the new ones, we should have:

• 7-9 mouth and nose options for each face.
• 2 or more cheek options, separate from jaw or doubled jaw options.
• 2 lipstick shape/type options in addition to the dark/light/none.
• Additional eye options on the ones that got significantly reworked like some male Miqo'te faces.
• Matte/shine slider for lipstick.
• 2 levels of eyebrow thickness options and Highlander male eyebrows. Or 3 levels so we don't have to use that stupid face paint.
• 2 levels of eyelash size options. Ideally you should be able to toggle long/short and thick/thin so you can have short and thin, short and thick, long and thin, long and thick.
• Eyebags intensity and/or an age slider.
• Freckles slider separate from face paint.
• Clan mark options.
• Why not take this opportunity to separate Au Ra horn options from the face option?

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

tbh I also feel too that there's an expectation by the player base, which isn't based on what the devs intended, of going "I can import my character and they will look exactly the same But Better", with no changes on their part. And I say that I don't think the devs intended that at all because they're giving us the free fantasia, because they anticipated that people would have to make changes to more closely match (or make different!) their character to their original look.

[celestiyall]

tbh I also feel too that there's an expectation by the player base, which isn't based on what the devs intended, of going "I can import my character and they will look exactly the same But Better", with no changes on their part. And I say that I don't think the devs intended that at all because they're giving us the free fantasia, because they anticipated that people would have to make changes to more closely match (or make different!) their character to their original look.

I don't really buy this, given yoship was quoted saying that they didn't want to veer too far off of the characters that some people have been playing for 10 years now. Little tweaks from a fantasia is very different than feeling like your character's facial structure has been altered in a significant way.

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

I don't really buy this, given yoship was quoted saying that they didn't want to veer too far off of the characters that some people have been playing for 10 years now. Little tweaks from a fantasia is very different than feeling like your character's facial structure has been altered in a significant way.

so like, for example, straight-importing my Au Ra didn't wholly match what I had, but altering the: highlight color, skin color, lip color and intensity, and most significantly, switching which nose I used got me much closer to what I had. The colors in particular are a PITA because of how simulated* light works to change them if their material properties are altered, such as adding subsurface lighting or even something as simple as changing how shiny something is - such as adding detail to skin now which will always, inevitably look different. Some things like the mouths are definitely changed (and yeah, I liked the OP's post because more customization please! the puffy lips are weird!) but it kinda feels like some other features were just shuffled around for some reason as opposed to deleted or changed, like the auri noses.

which is to say in my rambling nonsense, I think they knew some things would be moved around enough that people would want to change them. It's strange to literally eat the money of a cash shop item on the level of millions otherwise.

*real light too! remember that stupid white/gold vs blue/black dress meme from several years back? light is dumb!

[celestiyall]

so like, for example, straight-importing my Au Ra didn't wholly match what I had, but altering the: highlight color, skin color, lip color and intensity, and most significantly, switching which nose I used got me much closer to what I had. The colors in particular are a PITA because of how simulated* light works to change them if their material properties are altered, such as adding subsurface lighting or even something as simple as changing how shiny something is - such as adding detail to skin now which will always, inevitably look different. Some things like the mouths are definitely changed (and yeah, I liked the OP's post because more customization please! the puffy lips are weird!) but it kinda feels like some other features were just shuffled around for some reason.

*real light too! remember that stupid white/gold vs blue/black dress meme from several years back? light is dumb!

The things that are affecting the shape and look of my face 4 miqo are things that aren't toggles, much like OP was talking about, unfortunately. A lot of what I would call "charm points" are gone based on dev decisions, not decisions I could alter.

[aulierre]

so like, for example, straight-importing my Au Ra didn't wholly match what I had, but altering the: highlight color, skin color, lip color and intensity, and most significantly, switching which nose I used got me much closer to what I had. The colors in particular are a PITA because of how simulated* light works to change them if their material properties are altered, such as adding subsurface lighting or even something as simple as changing how shiny something is - such as adding detail to skin now which will always, inevitably look different. Some things like the mouths are definitely changed (and yeah, I liked the OP's post because more customization please! the puffy lips are weird!) but it kinda feels like some other features were just shuffled around for some reason as opposed to deleted or changed, like the auri noses.

which is to say in my rambling nonsense, I think they knew some things would be moved around enough that people would want to change them. It's strange to literally eat the money of a cash shop item on the level of millions otherwise.

*real light too! remember that stupid white/gold vs blue/black dress meme from several years back? light is dumb!

Unfortunately, there's nothing to change them to. There's no options to replicate the looks we had in Endwalker. The issue with elements that have changed are that they're changed with no possible alternatives - it's not like we were given more presets or options. If you don't like any of the 4 options, then you're out of luck - and that seems to be the case for many players right now.

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

tbh I also feel too that there's an expectation by the player base, which isn't based on what the devs intended, of going "I can import my character and they will look exactly the same But Better", with no changes on their part. And I say that I don't think the devs intended that at all because they're giving us the free fantasia, because they anticipated that people would have to make changes to more closely match (or make different!) their character to their original look.

some elaboration here before I stop prattling, my context is that I work in tech and I have. never. seen a straight import work out of the box. I currently live in Upgrade Hell right now at work because we have an ancient system that we can't just press a big ol import button for and have it turn out working. If I have to import a model into blender I must tell it which way is up, otherwise the model will be upside down or turned inside out. You can't just stick a Skyrim mod into a script for Special Edition and have it come out working like before (RIP wearable lanterns). Your Python 2 code has to be changed to work in Python 3. And so on. Every upgrade process in anything is holding your breath and hope it doesn't break things too much, so it was kind of strange to me to see people immediately do a before and after like "this sucks!" out of the gate without attempting to alter it.

[EstelleCere]

I said this in another thread, but I think what bugs me the most is that the previews in the LL match up nothing to what we have now. In those previews at least our characters most likely would've still looked like the original with just updated graphics, but now we have a plethora of issues that people do not like, like for me personally I dislike the mouth changes on my au ra and miqo. Then there's the issue with the nose smudge on roe's, and with viera. The lips look drastically different no matter how you look at it for some races, where if you compare to the LL previews, at least they still looked normal to the models we have right now. Some of these changes have made people's characters completely unrecognizable to them, and I am apart of that. I hope that they will end up taking our feedback into consideration, and I am hoping that maybe there is just some bugs in the benchmark, I dunno.

[Fawkes]

They absolutely dropped the ball by not expanding the character creation options at the same time. A fantasia isn't going to help if there's no option that looks like the old face.

tbh I also feel too that there's an expectation by the player base, which isn't based on what the devs intended, of going "I can import my character and they will look exactly the same But Better", with no changes on their part. And I say that I don't think the devs intended that at all because they're giving us the free fantasia, because they anticipated that people would have to make changes to more closely match (or make different!) their character to their original look.

[GrizzlyTank]

The goal was effectively to increase polygons/mesh and texture quality, but the result has unfortunately been redesign instead.