The Graphics update was unnecessary

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

oh cool we have another topic like this. so anyway,

so you haven't noticed that we have three facial expressions and four animations in cutscenes? people around EW's release were memeing about how our WoL can only express anger by clenching their fist ad-nauseum.

How about yoshida saying in a live letter that the bespoke animation of Estinien in an optional cutscene cost them a ton of money to do? In what way is that even remotely sustainable for anyone?

What about the numerous face and body sculpt mods out there? The demand is there among the playerbase too for more than just "pretty lights" and "nicer textures", it's like 75% of the screenshots you see in most social media.

it continues to be insane to me that the same fandom that memes the Squapes and the Pixel Exarch can then turn around and go "it's fine actually"

[cutestfox]

Did we have beautiful antialiasing? no
Were the textures objectively deficient in a lot of places? yes
Could the lighting be improved? yes
The above, I consider a great upgrade and necessary, they fill a void that we didn't have

But the faces? why? What was the point in remodeling them, the system was not deficient on expressions.
Gposers have hundreds of thousands of photos out their with the most amazing expressions that were done with the current system we have now

Not only that, you can improve facial topology without resculpting the entire face.
"Adding more bones" isn't an excuse, you could add as many bones as you wanted to the current faces without changing a single polygon if you really want to go that far
Not only that, it's already been *done* by people for the entire body

[Tethan]

I do think that a graphical upgrade was needed, contrary to popular belief, I'm sure. But what we got is questionable at best.

First of all, people consistently struggle to see the difference between old and new, they get it mixed up. For characters, old often looks better to people. It is easy to convince an outsider that old is new and vice versa. A graphical upgrade of this caliber should be an obvious improvement. I think it is hard to justify the increased system requirements for such little gain.

For the environment I felt more "wow" seeing this game with a reshade that with the upgrade. The old graphics struggle with desaturated colors and low contrast, the new improves on that, but compared to simply using nvidia shader settings, the hit to performance isn't worth it.

Characters are more high resolution across the board, but at the cost of their integrity, and honestly nothing about it looks impressive from an artistic point. I'm very disappointed, I don't think this is up to par for Square Enix or Final Fantasy quality at all. It appears rushed and poorly planned.

I also fear the worst is yet to come if these issues are not addressed before launch (and I doubt they will).

[Johners]

But the faces? why? What was the point in remodeling them, the system was not deficient on expressions.
Gposers have hundreds of thousands of photos out their with the most amazing expressions that were done with the current system we have now

Not only that, you can improve facial topology without resculpting the entire face.
"Adding more bones" isn't an excuse, you could add as many bones as you wanted to the current faces without changing a single polygon if you really want to go that far
Not only that, it's already been *done* by people for the entire body

Are you by any chance a modder? You sure sound like one and you're conveniently forgetting that a ton of people play on the Mac, PlayStation and Xbox versions of the game that don't have access to mods. Updating the existing models is a huge W for people playing without mods or a platform with no support entirely.

[cutestfox]

Are you by any chance a modder? You sure sound like one and you're conveniently forgetting that a ton of people play on the Mac, PlayStation and Xbox versions of the game that don't have access to mods. Updating the existing models is a huge W for people playing without mods or a platform with no support entirely.

I have seen the ways this system has been pushed, and the point I'm making is that the complete facial reconstruction was unnecessary
The faces did not have to change the ways they did.

[Johners]

I have seen the ways this system has been pushed, and the point I'm making is that the complete facial reconstruction was unnecessary
The faces did not have to change the ways they did.

Except we've seen basically no new content that uses the new facial structures aside from the demo reel in the benchmark. This is the baseline for the next decade of content and as we already know, isn't even complete work. Some of the accompanying work in the graphics overhaul, such as enabling two dyes on gear pieces, will take the entire 7.x patch cycle to complete and there's no doubt that character models will be actiively tweaked in that time also. Not to mention these changes likely reflect improvements to SE's internal development toolkits.


So, to ask the question again, are you a modder? I've seen a lot of discussion on other parts of the internet in which many modders are starting to realise that the majority of their existing work will likely be rendered useless once Dawntrail hits because of substantial changes to the baseline models. At least that's the expectation based on the efforts so far to use mods within the benchmark.

[Rudje]

I do think that a graphical upgrade was needed, contrary to popular belief, I'm sure. But what we got is questionable at best.

First of all, people consistently struggle to see the difference between old and new, they get it mixed up. For characters, old often looks better to people. It is easy to convince an outsider that old is new and vice versa. A graphical upgrade of this caliber should be an obvious improvement. I think it is hard to justify the increased system requirements for such little gain.

For the environment I felt more "wow" seeing this game with a reshade that with the upgrade. The old graphics struggle with desaturated colors and low contrast, the new improves on that, but compared to simply using nvidia shader settings, the hit to performance isn't worth it.

Characters are more high resolution across the board, but at the cost of their integrity, and honestly nothing about it looks impressive from an artistic point. I'm very disappointed, I don't think this is up to par for Square Enix or Final Fantasy quality at all. It appears rushed and poorly planned.

I also fear the worst is yet to come if these issues are not addressed before launch (and I doubt they will).

This, functionally, is also how I feel. The environmental upgrades are purely upgrades, the closest I had to doubt over them was some small pang of loss at biodiversity in the plants (less height/color variance, mostly), which is a small detail and one that might not hold fruit in the game proper across more areas. The character changes are baffling, with most being sidegrades or even outright downgrades depending on the face. Some of the changes are even worse than certain earlier previews, which looked just fine to outright great with a couple of pain points that were already being pointed out even then but were not changed to accommodate the feedback. And even with the benchmark releasing early enough that some assets are obviously unfinished, I still dread the thought of what it would take to actually change them with this little time, or the final state of release.

It's especially baffling given that some of the worst-impacted faces are some of the newest. Those should have required the least reworking!

[Araxes]

No, the update was and is still needed. The Problem is that the update is to small to notice on many occasions since it still has to run on PS4 and XBOX Series S. There are to many restrictions for a REAL update on the Graphics.

[cutestfox]

Except we've seen basically no new content that uses the new facial structures aside from the demo reel in the benchmark. This is the baseline for the next decade of content and as we already know, isn't even complete work. Some of the accompanying work in the graphics overhaul, such as enabling two dyes on gear pieces, will take the entire 7.x patch cycle to complete and there's no doubt that character models will be actiively tweaked in that time also. Not to mention these changes likely reflect improvements to SE's internal development toolkits.


So, to ask the question again, are you a modder? I've seen a lot of discussion on other parts of the internet in which many modders are starting to realise that the majority of their existing work will likely be rendered useless once Dawntrail hits because of substantial changes to the baseline models. At least that's the expectation based on the efforts so far to use mods within the benchmark.

Why are you talking about random dyes and mods when the subject here is the faces?

I have seen what my character, among others looks like in the benchmark. I have watched the trailer clip multiple times
The faces are not the same. It wasn't necessary to overhaul them in a way that they look different

[Limecat]

Actually, I just realized the new most amusing thing. Someone is going to keep a copy of the pre-DT game data, and use it to make mods to revert the characters to their old versions.