Updated benchmark

[Oizen]

I like going through this thread and playing spot the difference games with people's pictures only to conclude they're 99.99% the exact same image.

[Reinha]

I like going through this thread and playing spot the difference games with people's pictures only to conclude they're 99.99% the exact same image.

I mean if you can't find the differences when they are outlined and drawn for you I'm glad you're not in charge of the graphical update. More competent people are handling that. We would've never gotten the second benchmark and fixes if the devs weren't able to spot what kind of changes people wanted.

[Larirawiel]

I mean if you can't find the differences when they are outlined and drawn for you I'm glad you're not in charge of the graphical update. More competent people are handling that. We would've never gotten the second benchmark and fixes if the devs weren't able to spot what kind of changes people wanted.

Yes. But sometimes, the differences are so small, that i hope, that the people, who complain, will never buy a new monitor or a new GPU. Because the game will become unplayable for them because with the new monitor the character will look completely different.



Cheers

[potatsdevourer]

My character is looking better under new lighting condition. Altho if I need to admit, he is looking years older than 6.58 version. Which means my complain from first benchmark for Male Highlander Face#2 still stands.

(no any facepaint/hair/lipstik to make comparison easier)

1) Dividing line on eyebrow ridge is too prominent on the benchmark version and not blended enough
Seems to be conscious choice to compensate the lack of eyebrows for more readable face mimic, which is strange hill to keep fighting on. I would rather have more blended eyebrow ridge. OR please make it an option to have more/less prominent eyebrow ridge, for people who likes to keep their eyebrowlessness.


2) Nose is boxier in benchmark version and look shorter becacuse of more prominent nasal alae
Personally I would really like they keep the curved shaped of the nose bridge from 6.58. And make ala part of nostril (the side of nose) to be less prominent, since it gives perception that the nose is shorter.


3) Cheek on benchmark is just straight up different from 6.58 version
Cheek region is not as continuous/smooth like the 6.58 version (is it what they call laughing line?). If other races have their laughing line smoothen by new benchmark, then I don't see reason that Highlander should be singled out on this. Personally I would like to see this fixed.


4) This one is more personal, but I miss the notch on the upper lip from 6.58 version. I would like to see this come back in benchmark instead just having flatter upper lip!


Apart from that, eyes seems to be bigger. AND facepaint eyebrow is still raised tad bit more, or it might be the case of different face morph. And in all fairness, I think each component of these changes are charming on its own, but combined together and all of sudden the character looks way older.

[Astronis]

My character is looking better under new lighting condition. Altho if I need to admit, he is looking years older than 6.58 version. Which means my complain from first benchmark for Male Highlander Face#2 still stands.

I use the same face and it looks like the same nose. Here is my feedback to Square Enix regarding this specific face: Thank you for fixing the issue in the last benchmark where it looked like my brow ridge was too soft and not angled correctly. Otherwise: please for the love of Rhalgr, do not listen to this player regarding the nose. DO NOT CHANGE THE NOSE. The nose is PERFECT AS IT NOW STANDS. Touch not the nose! It is different and that is a good thing. Please leave the cheeks alone. They are fantastic as they now stand. Please please please please please just stop fiddling with it, I love it as is and even prefer it.

[potatsdevourer]

I use the same face and it looks like the same nose. Here is my feedback to Square Enix regarding this specific face: Thank you for fixing the issue in the last benchmark where it looked like my brow ridge was too soft and not angled correctly. Otherwise: please for the love of Rhalgr, do not listen to this player regarding the nose. DO NOT CHANGE THE NOSE. The nose is PERFECT AS IT NOW STANDS. Touch not the nose! It is different and that is a good thing. Please leave the cheeks alone. They are fantastic as they now stand. Please please please please please just stop fiddling with it, I love it as is and even prefer it.

With all due respect, you are putting too much faith in SE that they will give any semblance of attention to male highlanders. The most likely scenario from this benchmark is that it will be left as-is, since highlander players are not much anyway.

I will however keep pushing for as little change as possible, pharaphrased. If that's what SE meant, then they should stick with their gun and aim to not making big difference to the newer form.

In wild scenario that they have limitless resource, it would be good that they make option for different creative directions instead of making players have limited option like this.

[Astronis]

With all due respect, you are putting too much faith in SE that they will give any semblance of attention to male highlanders. The most likely scenario from this benchmark is that it will be left as-is, since highlander players are not much anyway.

I am very puzzled by this, because the evidence is right before my eyes that SE is paying attention to male Highlanders:

I will however keep pushing for as little change as possible, pharaphrased. If that's what SE meant, then they should stick with their gun and aim to not making big difference to the newer form.

I do believe they have achieved this as much as is possible without just giving up and re-using the low-poly models. The model has more polygons. The original thinness of the nose was a result of lack of polygons. That's been corrected. It isn't a big difference--yes, it's noticeable to those of us who have been using this face for years, but it's an improvement over a model that didn't have enough polygons to work with. The original honestly always looked too thin too me, so I am glad SE has fixed what always looked something like an unfortunate sacrifice to the low-polygon requirements. So...yeah, as one of the few players of male Highlanders, I am going to register my satisfaction with this!

As for the cheeks...they looks pretty damned close to me.

In wild scenario that they have limitless resource, it would be good that they make option for different creative directions instead of making players have limited option like this.

Options are always nice for sure.

[Gyson]

I use the same face and it looks like the same nose. Here is my feedback to Square Enix regarding this specific face: Thank you for fixing the issue in the last benchmark where it looked like my brow ridge was too soft and not angled correctly. Otherwise: please for the love of Rhalgr, do not listen to this player regarding the nose. DO NOT CHANGE THE NOSE. The nose is PERFECT AS IT NOW STANDS. Touch not the nose! It is different and that is a good thing. Please leave the cheeks alone. They are fantastic as they now stand. Please please please please please just stop fiddling with it, I love it as is and even prefer it.

I disagree with different being a good thing. The goal was supposed to be improve the visuals while staying as true as possible to the original look. Whether anyone thinks the new nose looks better or worse, more interesting or less interesting, etc. is irrelevant.. it it looks like quite different from the nose it was meant to imitate and that is something that should be addressed.

I do believe they have achieved this as much as is possible without just giving up and re-using the low-poly models. The model has more polygons. The original thinness of the nose was a result of lack of polygons. That's been corrected. It isn't a big difference--yes, it's noticeable to those of us who have been using this face for years, but it's an improvement over a model that didn't have enough polygons to work with. The original honestly always looked too thin too me, so I am glad SE has fixed what always looked something like an unfortunate sacrifice to the low-polygon requirements. So...yeah, as one of the few players of male Highlanders, I am going to register my satisfaction with this!

As for the cheeks...they looks pretty damned close to me.

Options are always nice for sure.

Options are nice but you have options.. there are multiple noses already to chose from. I certainly wish there were more, but that doesn't mean we should replace the existing choices that players have gotten used to.

I don't understand this claim that the original thinness of the nose was a result of a lack of polygons. There are other nose options for male Highlanders that can in no way be described as being "thin", so it doesn't seem like a lack of polygons was the reason for making this particular nose thin. It is more likely it was made on the thinner side as an option to stand apart from the noses that are on the thicker side.

I suspect you just prefer this nose option over the others but have always wanted it to be a bit thicker, and that is certainly understandable but I can't agree with the idea of everyone just going along with the change to fulfill your wish at the cost of pushing their personal preferences aside.



Left is Endwalker, Right is Dawntrail. Face Type 2 is being used.

My character's nose (Type 6) was altered in the update (as were several other aspects, unfortunately) and I dislike the change. From brow to tip, the entire ridge of the nose is now more squared off and blocky, where as previously it was more smoothed/rounded. This gives the ridge the appearance of being wider. I dislike it. I chose the nose originally because it was the one I preferred, and I do not think it was too thin. If the goal was to stay true to the original, it failed. A result isn't an improvement simply because it has more polygons. If you can do something correctly in 100 polygons, using 1000 polygons to do it incorrectly doesn't make it better.

I could go on.. as I also dislike the changes to the mouth. Mouth Type 4 lips now appear larger, both in width and height. This is likely because the shape of the upper lip has changed. Significant space has been added into the cupids bow, where previously nearly none existed. Mouth Type 4 is the smallest sized mouth available to male Highlanders and should have remained as a small option, rather than being sized closer to the other larger options already available.

The hair, while more detailed when zoomed in extremely close, seems much less detailed when viewed from any reasonable distance. I believe this is due to the lack of shading that is now present in the hair, causing it to look very flat. Two-tone colors no longer blend nearly as well as they used to, and for the lighter color I am using the darkest shade available. I can not make it darker without switching to a different color entirely. Again, this seems to be a problem with lost shading or variance in its color, so rather than each tone having areas that are slightly lighter and slightly darker and allowing the sections to blend together better, each section now appears separate and distinct (which is not good when it's supposed to be a blend). I have not seen these issue on all hairstyles, so it seems to be a problem with this particular hairstyle.

The chin (Jaw Type 4) is a bit shorter than pre-Dawntrail, making the head look more squared instead of oval.

The skin tone (RGB 169, 133, 104) has changed and is darker than it is on live. I don't know how this can happen when we literally have the RGB values, but there it is.

And of course, the cursed Face Paint (Eyebrows) we're stuck with.. the placement of these markings is positioned significantly higher on the brow than it was pre-Dawntrail. This makes the character look more "surprised" all the time. Why can't it just be at the same position it's been for the past 10 years? Plus, now the coloring is off. Even with the darkest color (black) selected, the shade appears lighter or less vibrant than it currently is on live. This makes it difficult to pass these markings off as eyebrows, as the lighter they appear the more fake they look.

My friend asked me "what in the world is going on with that black eyeliner at the top of your eye?" I don't even know what the deal is there. Probably a result of some changes to shading, but it looks bad.

All of these are little things, but the little things add up and result in a character I don't recognize. I do not feel "upgraded".

[Astronis]

I totally agree with you, they have achieved to truly upgrade the characters and they did a pretty good job keeping the original ideas/shapes polygon-wise. (The only exception might be some mouths, but I don't think that could be easily fixed or should be fixed in some cases.)
At least on my female highlander it is true and they are one of the more problematic races here I think - yes, she felt extremely off for me at first (it was the reason to join the forums actually), but I've got out the ruler and her features anatomically are extremely close to the original.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6472664

[...]

All in all, I could recommend sitting down and comparing the faces in minute details, it was what made me accept a lot of differences, including the mouth. - When I compared the original with the benchmark, I asked myself: 'If I was the artist, what would I have done?' There are a lot of really minor differences, which makes the character look off, but if I was sitting next to the artist, I would have agreed to commit to them - upgrade the nose, yes, giving eyebrow definition, yes, define the texture at the corners of the mouth, yes, define the creases to look more dimensional, yes, etc...
Of course, there will be changes, but in the end, you can compare the original and tweak the textures to feel more similar. - And I do think we should only look at the characters to see what defines the face, what improves upon it and what is important to change to get closer to that definition. Not necessarily to achieve the same, but to get closer to it if needed.

I saw your post originally and thought you did a very fair deep-dive on the small differences. I'm glad doing that helped you accept the differences. Yeah, they do look different to us, but of course the devs were never, ever going to make a higher-poly model look identical to a low-poly model. It would defeat the purpose! Why even bother updating the model at that point? And you are right, the lighting change *really* affects how we perceive our characters.

The first go round there were 100% a good few things that needed to be addressed. Big things like some wonky mouth scaling that made Lalafel teeth completely change shape to quite subtle things, like the height and angle of my Highlander's brow ridge. Those things were fixed and they needed to be. Now...most of the differences people are pointing out are extremely subtle. They exist! People aren't making them up. But to keep on spending dev time addressing them...I just don't think it's necessary outside a very few things. Everyone's WoLs look great and it's so obvious the devs took great care in trying to preserve the original appearances as much as was within their abilities while still upgrading the models and textures and lighting.

[Astronis]

I don't understand this claim that the original thinness of the nose was a result of a lack of polygons. There are other nose options for male Highlanders that can in no way be described as being "thin", so it doesn't seem like a lack of polygons was the reason for making this particular nose thin.

It's still the nose on the thinner side. I'm not sure if I can properly explain what I meant by the original being "too thin" and caused by the lack of polygons, but I'll try. It's not too thin up by the bridge where there's a hook. It's too thin down by the tip and on the flesh of the nostrils, where it's very obvious to me that lack of polygons are responsible for the devs not being able to make nostrils that had any bulk to them, resulting in something that was not as extreme as what Michael Jackson had done to his nose, but something similar.

You can see this being a polygon issue most easily by standing in really harsh lighting, it makes it easier to see there isn't naught but triangles there when there should be more shape.

In any case, the Dawntrail version corrects that. The bridge isn't any thicker and I don't think the tip is much, if any thicker. Probably it's a lighting change, or a texture change, that resulted in the loss of the slight curve. If they found a way to change that I wouldn't mind, but I will be most displeased if they shrink the nostril flesh down.

I suspect you just prefer this nose option over the others but have always wanted it to be a bit thicker, and that is certainly understandable but I can't agree with the idea of everyone just going along with the change to fulfill your wish at the cost of pushing their personal preferences aside.

Naturally. I like this nose option. I like lots of things about it. I didn't really want it to be thicker per se, I wanted it to look less like it had some plastic surgery done on it, which it kinda had done when it got axed from 1.0 to ARR. One way or another, I'm telling SE I like the change!

The skin tone (RGB 169, 133, 104) has changed and is darker than it is on live. I don't know how this can happen when we literally have the RGB values, but there it is.

This is down to the change in materials and lighting. Endwalker doesn't have subsurface scattering while Dawntrail does. That will naturally change how the surface skin color looks, since the light is actually passing through it and bouncing back off a layer meant to suggest the underlying flesh with its blood and bone. It is subtle but it will change how the surface color looks. This is exactly why we are getting free fantasias. Hopefully a shade or two different from the one you have now will get you back to where you prefer the look.

I shall join the candlelight vigil for improved eyebrow paint though. I don't use it myself, but it sure would be nice for it to look better for those of you who do.