New Benchmark (June): Au Ra Feedback

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

I’ve kind of given up on the state of the EN forums, but I’ll still summarize the feedback I’ve posted in the JP thread because I’m losing hope by the minute.

About the state of limbal rings

First concerns were raised in October 2023 after the tech art panel: [Graphical Update Feedback] Eyes and Limbal Rings on Au ra
(Tokyo Fanfest 2024: Yoshida acknowledges the concerns about limbal rings, and promises we would get to keep "the same look as before", even if that might mean "changing the parameters slightly")
Benchmark 1.0 feedback Part 1: アウラの目の輪郭と意外な色の変化
Benchmark 1.0 feedback Part 2: アウラの目の輪郭と意外な色の変化 Part 2
Benchmark 1.0 and 1.1 feedback Part 3: アウラの目の輪郭と意外な色の変化 Part 3


TLDR:
The color of limbal rings has drastically been affected through the graphical update. For some people this might not be an issue, or it’s something they can easily fix by swapping to another color swatch.
For others, the color they used more or less disappeared.
I fall into the second category.

I’m not going to translate the text in these images because I’ve spent enough time putting together my original posts to begin with, but I think these should speak for themselves:









Again, please check the posts I linked above if you want to know the full process behind these pictures.
In case you're curious, yes, Part 1 and Part 2 each took one week to put together, manually taking all the screenshots and color samples one by one. That's how much I care about this.

You can see that the cyan I use is just not there anymore. So I can’t even correct the color with the palette we have available. I use this cyan for a very specific reason, which I described in Part 1.

In the image below I summarized what the options I currently have are, and what I would like to be able to have instead (the same color as before), achieved through methods A and B, which would expand the color palette instead of reverting changes. Check Part 1 for a detailed explanation of those methods:



Despite the support I received in my posts, and other players voicing the same feedback and the same concerns, in the 1.1 benchmark nothing has been improved.
I think that in this specific case, you’ll all agree that I’m starting Dawntrail with a downgrade rather than an upgrade.

I have no illusion that with only a little bit more than 20 days left before early access starts, nothing will be done about this before release.

But as this is something I basically designed my entire character around, going so far as to use gear and accessories that use the same color (!!!) as my character’s eyes, and this for more than 7 years, I sincerely hope that the devs will work on improving this in the patches after Dawntrail’s release.

Also, if you're curious, I found out that the limbal ring size depends on the brightness of the color you picked.



That's one of the reasons why some players have been reporting that the iris color seems to completely disappear.

[MizunaSaeki]

TLDR:
The color of limbal rings has drastically been affected through the graphical update. For some people this might not be an issue, or it’s something they can easily fix by swapping to another color swatch.
For others, the color they used more or less disappeared.
I fall into the second category.

I use a very similar colour for my character's Limbal rings you do; it's so odd to me because at night they're close to (but not quite the same as) the colour they originally were. I wouldn't mind it if the glow it has at night was visible in the day too.

Here's a comparison between direct light, in shadow, and at night.

[CecMiller]

Thank you for the Benchmark changes.

Unfortunately, it seems that there are still existing issues in the design of Au Ra. It seems Au Ra changes were largely ignored.

1. The pupils are too big/dilated. They were small originally. This changes the look of the character. It also blends in too well with the base colour of the iris which is a bigger problem for male Au Ra than female. Please change this back or add an option for the pupils to be big or small.

2. The colours of the umbral ring are more darked and cannot be easily replaced. My character was directly imported, and the colour is significantly darker. This colour can no longer be replicated as there are not many colours for blue. This blue was important as it represented the colour we’ve seen come up in the story multiple times with significant story relevance.

3. The lips are no longer upturned at the corners. This makes the characters expression change from slightly happy to neutral or expressionless.

4. The eye liner is less harsh. The eye liner above the eye lids has been reduced and changes the look of the eyes for many faces.

There are more issues, but I feel these are most pressing for my own Au Ra.

Before and after Slider: https://imgsli.com/MjY5Mzcx



If you're interested in the story relevance I'm pointing at in point #2 (posted in another thread by SchwarzwaelderTorte):

[Civea]

There's something odd about the way they made the shadows, there's a quite noticeable seam on the back of the shoulder that the shadows make very obvious, and it also gives the appearance of baggy eyes for some reason, maybe they've added shadows to the eyelashes? who knows.

I also agree with the others about the Femra 4 head, looks off..

Hope this isn't the final product, because there needs a bit more tuning on this.

[Leon-Valeren]

sadly my au'ra lady got suddenly heavy eyebags
she had some before but they never were as visible as they are now. i can see them even from afar and it makes her look tired while before the subtle eyebags were a nice touch to make her look mature

benchmark (june) eyebags:


current version:

[TheLiterateWolf]

Hello! Wanted to add my two cents to this after I tried the CC of the updated benchmark last night. I am very happy with the lighting and texture changes overall, as well as how the limbal rings look. My issues are, like many others here, with the mouth (*especially* the mouth), nose, and eye shape being very different to how they used to be.

For my Au Ra, I use face 2, mouth 4, and nose 3. The lips in both benchmarks appear thicker and have an inner curve to the upper lip that wasn't there before. The nose seems shorter to me, and the eye shape seems wider.

6.5 vs Benchmark 1.0 vs Benchmark 1.1


6.5 vs Benchmark 1.1


What I don't understand is why they felt the need to change options that were there, that people put many hours into choosing for their characters, rather then add them as new ones. In my case, I put literal weeks into choosing what I would prefer for my WoL. I take my character creation very seriously and, while it may not be the devs' intent, it feels like they're throwing all those hours and choices in my face, that they know better than me for what my character should look like.

What I think is the best solution would be to revert everything to how it was, update the graphics on them, and then add the new stuff as new options so that we have more diversity in our characters. Instead of replacing mouth 4 with a different style of mouth, add that as mouth 5, etc. To me that would make the most sense.

[Alice9]

A bit disappointing to see some of the continued feedback ignored, adding my voice to the mix to hopefully get some additional eyes on it or for at least some closure. There are so many grievances (completely misshaped eyes, lips, cheeks, jaws) that have gone ignored despite being repeated many times, while they continue to make random changes that weren't heavily requested at all.

[RhaesDaenys]

A lot of people are complaining about the bigger pupils... but I actually like them. I hope they don't revert that part... the eyes look less freaky with them a little larger. If anything, make the iris portion slightly bigger to compensate.

[Sekhar]

Gotta split this into two posts so this is part 1.

While there were some improvements to the general lighting etc. other things however feel completely unaddressed.

I could understand that if the new lighting requires them to make changes to the facial sculpt in order to keep the same character feel. But that does not appear at all why they touched the sculpting.

I mainly used Au Ra face 4 so I will focus on this but some of the complaints come in general.

1. As many people pointed out, the scale textures are not uniform, all optional scale textures are far more crisp for whatever reason.



2. Face 4 still has quite massive dimples. They are so deep that they can throw their own shadow. This goes so far that depending on the lighting the face looks like a dented in plastic doll. I also think the stare looks a bit unfocused.



3. I am unsure if this is simply a bug due to some weird lighting but the Au Ra face 4 horns throw a shadow onto the face that makes no logical sense

In this first picture you can see that the light is coming from the right side of the picture. However there is a small strip of shadow near the scales that gets projected onto the face



Now if I slightly adjust the rotation (a few degrees) then this shadow gets pushed further into the face. However as you can still see by the nose shadow, there should be no shadow projected onto the face