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

[Luluna]

They should have made a new CC years ago instead of adding new races. After the Au ra they should have done this. They should also have removed horns being tied to a certain face along with newer hairstyles, makeup and newer faces. I have played 14 years and I am still staring at the same faces and hair and not a lot was done in ARR. The lack of customisation is bad they should have fixed it and maybe then we would not have this issue.

I love the update I feel the characters look so much better, I was never in love with the cartoon look we where given after 1.0 but I got used to it. I wish they had listened to feedback about the CC and all the posts for things to be added over the years. At the moment it is things like makeup and lips that are being talked about they need to really think about fixing the CC sooner rather than later. I can not see how Yoshi can say it will be 8.0 that seems so far away.

I understand people but also I feel it looks fine. I am on a old laptop need to see myself in PS5 and that is another thing that they should have done to include console players.

[smashBG]

They've already stated that overhauling character creation is on the to-do list, but the graphical update currently takes priority.

I understand not releasing the benchmark on console though. Benchmarks are specifically for stress-testing your PC to see if it can run a game. That this one happened to include a preview of the updated character models is incidental.

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

I remember him specifically saying something during the live letter like

"We are improving the eyes... for those that like the old eyes, the option for them will remain"

But there is no no hint of that in the benchmark character creator, or any other mention of it since then.

Right, so I've seen people mentioning this on Twitter/X too, and I was "Hmm. I remember that people on the forums discussed having both options, and it would indeed be the best scenario, but I don't think Yoshida ever said that" so I looked at the Tokyo Fanfest footage and it's actually a lot sneakier than that.

Quoting from the footage (Kate's translation, I don't know how accurate it is but I assume this has been rehearsed and she's not freestyling it), keeping in mind this is about Au ras and limbal rings specifically:

We've used some special shaders for the eyes, so while you can still get that look that you're used to, you can also get something that's slightly more defined in the eyes, like on the updated version example here

[the updated version example doesn't use limbal rings btw so...?]

Because we are aware that among the Au ra players, some of you really like that currently dead and soulless eye look that they have, if you adjust your parameters correctly you can still get that, so give it a go.

And in general, with all of the races, please look forward to adjusting your character to your preference.

You want to get into character creation, don't you, now? We're still working out the details, but I do want to get everyone of you a free Fantasia along with this.

Obviously, even though the update will overall raise the quality, there's still the possibility that it won't give you exactly the look that you want right away, so we do want to give you that Fantasia so you can go into character creation and adjust your character to suit exactly what you imagine.

So basically, what he said is:
- "yes you can have both" (and if you look at the benchmark, the brightest limbal rings glow, the darkest ones don't, so this is technically a true statement)
- "IF you adjust your parameters" (even if what he said just before was true, in practice the "current look" is not preserved and the colors in between the lightest and darkest shades are the most affected, that's why a lot of Au ra players had to change their settings a few shades lighter to achieve a similar effect, but even that doesn't work for everyone)
- "by the way, here's a free Fantasia" (everyone forgot about what he just said because holy shit free Fantasia)
- "we're giving you that Fantasia so you can adjust your character" (we are aware that things won't look the same, just figure out a way to make it work by yourself)

There never was any mention of "opting in or out" of the limbal ring change. They only settled for an awkward compromise in the middle, and it's up to us to "fix" our characters with that free Fantasia... within the boundaries of an already very limited character creator. In which some combinations of color and glow cannot be reproduced anymore.

But the cleverly placed free Fantasia announcement managed to give a lot of people a Mandela effect, so they assumed this meant "don't worry, we heard you, you'll be able to keep your eyes like you've had until now".

[Luluna]

They've already stated that overhauling character creation is on the to-do list, but the graphical update currently takes priority.

I understand not releasing the benchmark on console though. Benchmarks are specifically for stress-testing your PC to see if it can run a game. That this one happened to include a preview of the updated character models is incidental.

Dragons dogma released a CC on PS5 I was asking for something like that so console players can have a play around in the customisation ^^

[Boa-Noah]

One of the many dubious rumors I've heard attributed to Yoshi-P is that there IS a planned rework for the customization system sometime down the line, which would be great but I'm in the camp that straight up doesn't trust anything the developers state. Almost 5 years ago Viera and Hrothgar were added to the game and EVERYONE complained about hats and customization, I think it was maybe a month after launch that Yoshi-P stated they were aware and working on solutions to the problem and that going forward there would be new glams and hats would be made around them... Still hasn't happened, Hrothgar hairs are STILL tied to their face and even with the added hairs those are just that hairstyle tied to the face, now instead of maybe learning from that mistake and changing things for female Hrothgar the dev team has decided to... TIE HAIR TO THEIR FACES! It'll be almost 5 years exactly since the release of Hrothgar and they've learned absolutely nothing!

How hamstrung is their budget? How overworked is the team? What kind of mental gymnastics must happen on a daily basis in the SE offices where they REPEAT a known mistake as confidently as they breathe?

Any statements about how they'll be fixing things going forward should be treated like an outright lie if you ask me, there won't be any changes to customization, the lighting won't be tweaked, Miqo'te won't get fangs back, Viera won't get bunny noses, and realistically you have to prepare yourself to deal with that fact because I guarantee there won't be fixes to a vast majority of these issues and if that's a serious problem it's best you start grieving now.

[Rueby]

I wish they had added more options and stuck to the original look of the source, then a fantasia would make much more sense in a way 'hey guys we added new lip/nose/eye options, feel free to experiment and adjust skin tone as you see fit'. Now it feels abit like 'hey we made some changes, here's a fantasia, good luck'

I think people would've been happy if the new amendments to shape were optional and I think everyone would've been relatively content/happy. I'm very unhappy with the lip and nose changes- I can live with the rest eventually...or forever be in the shadow because my character looks weird when facing the light due to how glossy her nose and lip looks.

The English forums is an actual mess- which makes me feel like our voices and concerns fall on deaf ears and that no one cares about the English side of the forums. I'd hope that maybe someone on the JP forums voiced the same concerns as I did...

[smashBG]

Rumor mill says that JP isn't thrilled with the changes either, but in true Japanese fashion they're being incredibly polite about it. Nothing for it except to keep talking and hope the NA staff are listening.

[Rehayem]

Rumor mill says that JP isn't thrilled with the changes either, but in true Japanese fashion they're being incredibly polite about it. Nothing for it except to keep talking and hope the NA staff are listening.

Not only that, but they have the decency to keep everything in one thread, unlike we here, when there's 3-4 new threads about issue already mentioned before. If we had kept everything in one thread, they'd have an easier time reading our forums and actually understand the feedback.

[GoatOfWar]

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.

All the new lips and eye options will still look drastically different from the ones we have now.
I tried tweaking, it only becomes more and more jarring to look at my character. All the new mouth options look completely different from the ones we have now.
I can not go back to the look i've always went for. The nose looks completely different too.

https://imgur.com/a/6gAKOP7

[Fawkes]

Rumor mill says that JP isn't thrilled with the changes either, but in true Japanese fashion they're being incredibly polite about it. Nothing for it except to keep talking and hope the NA staff are listening.

I think the NA staff have absolutely noticed, it's all the forums are at this point. We have like 200 threads about it already.