The Graphics update was unnecessary

[Gyson]

I feel the overall improvement in visuals is too minor to warrant all the frustration the update has caused players. Perhaps the focus should have been solely on improving the visuals for the game's environments and not the character's faces, which were already fine.

[Nebelheim]

I would rather have the graphics update rather then keep the low quality/muddy textures and aging ps3 graphics that have been showing there age since at least stormblood. There are so many times in cutscenes where characters/gear/environments show so much ps3 quality pixelation that even the slightest texture update is worth having.

[VerdeLuck]

It's genuinely confusing why they redid so many elements of the faces and characters. We aren't getting any new features or new types of gear out of this that we didn't before, so I fail to see why there were so many changes instead of just punching up the textures and models to a higher poly count and resolution size.
Why did they have to remodel the viera face? Bake entirely new shadows into the texture, mess with eye and pupil sizes, mess with the face topology, remodel noses, etc? They said they were going to keep characters looking the same and then redid and redesigned a bunch of elements entirely.

[Tethan]

It's genuinely confusing why they redid so many elements of the faces and characters. We aren't getting any new features or new types of gear out of this that we didn't before, so I fail to see why there were so many changes instead of just punching up the textures and models to a higher poly count and resolution size.
Why did they have to remodel the viera face? Bake entirely new shadows into the texture, mess with eye and pupil sizes, mess with the face topology, remodel noses, etc? They said they were going to keep characters looking the same and then redid and redesigned a bunch of elements entirely.

As I understand it, it was necessary to unify the face topology to implement the new face rigs/animation system. Meaning that all faces, hyur, lala, roe, viera etc, have the same face structure, ie. the amount and placement of polygons. That, however, doesn't explain the lack of care in recreating all features, as some were preserved exquisitely and some were changed drastically, seemingly at random.

[Stechun]

It’s confusing that anyone seems to think the differences of character features are intentional or something, they had to remake the models and textures for over 60 unique character faces, it seems reasonable that there’d be inconsistencies since they obviously can’t give special attention to every single face.

And it sounds like they want people to give feedback now so issues and major inconsistencies can be fixed for expansion launch, saying this entire endeavor with overhauling the games graphics wasn’t worth doing just because there’s a small demographic of people who both downloaded the benchmark, and actually logged into the forums to complain about how their “perfect” reshaded female Au ra looks worse in the benchmark feels sensationalistic.

[Rudje]

It’s confusing that anyone seems to think the differences of character features are intentional or something, they had to remake the models and textures for over 60 unique character faces, it seems reasonable that there’d be inconsistencies since they obviously can’t give special attention to every single face.

And it sounds like they want people to give feedback now so issues and major inconsistencies can be fixed for expansion launch, saying this entire endeavor with overhauling the games graphics wasn’t worth doing just because there’s a small demographic of people who both downloaded the benchmark, and actually logged into the forums to complain about how their “perfect” reshaded female Au ra looks worse in the benchmark feels sensationalistic.

I play fully vanilla, and so do a lot of people pointing out changes. Making rude assumptions about why people are unhappy with a visibly rushed benchmark only two months before release is petty and completely unnecessary.

[Malthir]

I know they said there's going to be some more facial options which i really hope is the case because time spent on the new faces could have been used on maybe more customisation options like beards that so many have been asking about for years. I would more than bet if you polled the playerbase for the option of updated face textures and models or more customisation options it would overwhelmingly be the later.

[Tethan]

It’s confusing that anyone seems to think the differences of character features are intentional or something, they had to remake the models and textures for over 60 unique character faces, it seems reasonable that there’d be inconsistencies since they obviously can’t give special attention to every single face.

And it sounds like they want people to give feedback now so issues and major inconsistencies can be fixed for expansion launch, saying this entire endeavor with overhauling the games graphics wasn’t worth doing just because there’s a small demographic of people who both downloaded the benchmark, and actually logged into the forums to complain about how their “perfect” reshaded female Au ra looks worse in the benchmark feels sensationalistic.

I won't comment on it being intentional or not, but when doing re-topology on a 3D models it is entirely possible to preserve its shape down to even small details. Even in the event that features need to be remodeled from scratch, in any 3D software you can overlap with the old model to use for reference and recreate anything with basically millimeter precision.

Paying attention to every single face is their job. If they didn't have enough time to do it properly, they should have delayed the implementation of the update.

[cutestfox]

It’s confusing that anyone seems to think the differences of character features are intentional or something, they had to remake the models and textures for over 60 unique character faces, it seems reasonable that there’d be inconsistencies since they obviously can’t give special attention to every single face.

And it sounds like they want people to give feedback now so issues and major inconsistencies can be fixed for expansion launch, saying this entire endeavor with overhauling the games graphics wasn’t worth doing just because there’s a small demographic of people who both downloaded the benchmark, and actually logged into the forums to complain about how their “perfect” reshaded female Au ra looks worse in the benchmark feels sensationalistic.

Sorry, I like the vanilla look too
And modbeasting my characters face is not okay just because square enix randomly decided to do it

[Raim]

All the changes they made to zones and lighting are great. But I think the character changes needed more time or consideration. I think people were expecting to just get high definition textures and thats it, and maybe thats what should have happened.