Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Heavenchild]

im just going to leave this here, and say. i want this reversed honestly. the old one was indefinitely better. and if anybody disagrees thats frankly astonishing to me.


6.0 vs 7.0

What did they do to your mouth? D :
Seems like a similar issue female Aura face 2 has. Sorry for you.
We can just hope that they fix those drastical mouthshape changes.

[Windfire]

Decided to level my femroe a bit after not having logged on any char in a while, queued up for msq and got pissed off all over again at how much they changed her face (face 2 seawolf). Finished the run and closed the game

[Heavenchild]

I also think that lalafells mouth is really worse than before. I always loved the smile of my little potatoguy.
It was so cute like he --> : )))))))))
Now the mouth looks extremly sharp and strange. It's not that cute anymore :c

Also his eyes seem to be more lifeless now. I know they wanted to 'improve' but I would like to have the static eyehighlights back.
It really looked better, because in so many situations the new system causes that there is no highlight at all and the eyes look dead.
I don't care if they think it's a cooler system now, when it just looks worse than before.
There are reasons why games like Stardew Valley are liked so much. It's often not about, "Hey we have to use new cool graphic systems!"
The important thing is to create something that people like. It does not have to has more modern features, that nobody really ask for and
that take away the beauty it had before.

I do not enjoy to log in on my alt like I did in the past, to be honest.
And nobody can tell me that the new version is same as cute as the old one. :/
I don't want to be mean but the DT version gives me serial killer puppet vibes.
And I really miss my lil guy and his original cuteness. :c

[Iscah]

What did they do to your mouth? D :
Seems like a similar issue female Aura face 2 has. Sorry for you.
We can just hope that they fix those drastical mouthshape changes.

Face 3 male Au Ra has been so horribly botched. I did a more in-depth comparison previously, but the TL;DR is that he's gone from cute to uncanny and I want him back. ;_;

[Heavenchild]

Face 3 male Au Ra has been so horribly botched. I did a more in-depth comparison previously, but the TL;DR is that he's gone from cute to uncanny and I want him back. ;_;

That picture is also a good example of why the dynamic eyehighlights are bad. Holy..., SE what have you done? :X

[Iscah]

That picture is also a good example of why the dynamic eyehighlights are bad. Holy..., SE what have you done? :X

If it was *just* the eye highlights it might be bearable, but the face has been remade so poorly as a whole. All the proportions are off, the mouth is horrible and the eyes feel like the whole area around them has been twisted and puckered.

As I said in my other linked post, I think there has been an inherent misunderstanding of how the original eye is structured, and they might have rotated a "normal" resting eye shape into the character's slanted eye shape, when it actually better matches the shape of an eye that is being pulled upwards at the outer corner and exposing part of the eyelid that would normally be folded up when the eye is open.

There's also a perpetual shadow directly under the eyebrows of the new model that drags down the apparent shape of the eyebrows, and no amount of lighting will remove it. Compared to the old one, you can see there's some amount of shadow there but it behaves more naturally. I really don't understand how the "more accurate and realistic" lighting can be doing this.

[lunartears]

Dawntrail released on the Chinese version today and there's people reacting to the graphics update. There's also some upset players over there.



(Google translated)

Here is a link to the official CN forum
Not too sure how to browse beyond the featured topics

[faiarrow]

Seeing 'The WoL's face has been destroyed in Yoshida's Eighth Ulterior Motive Calamity' in one of the posts on the CN boards both sent me and then made me wince because yeah. It sure feels like that.

A lot of mixed feedback: some negative feedback, some people happy, but the overwhelming tone is upset-to-negative on a lot of the posts. "My xaela's smile looks like a human skin mask" OOF.

[Argantaelle]

Ah yes, the Chinese FFXIV version launched yesterday. It's so difficult to navigate the Chinese lodestone without knowing the language, but I'll try. My condolences to the Chinese who had to suffer the loss of their WoLs. I had hopes that for Chinese and Korean players FFXIV would make some changes to characters, but perish the thought.

P.S. I'm reading the Chinese lodestone right now; most people are upset and are talking about the same issues we've been discussing in this thread. But surely it's only the length of the eyelashes, slightly turned up or down mouth corners, and better eyebrows, right? Right?

The most common complaints:

- catgirls face 4 (plus mouths across all catgirl face types)
- femauras with Cirina's face & face 4 (mixed)
- female midlanders (it seems like all face types are involved)
- male midlanders 1, 6 and with Oboro's face
- female lalafels (people complain about the loss of gem eyes and a wide geniune smile)
- male au ra faces 1-3
- female highlanders
- bunny girls (noses, eyes and eyelashes)

Who would have thought that FFXIV team step on the same rakes yet again?

Some comments are just glorious.
SHB spoilers

"I will never complain about ancient people again. If I were in your shoes, I would also summon Zodiark to go back to the past."

(me too, my friend in suffering, me too).

P.S.S. I'm kind of torn if I'm going to watch the PLL tomorrow. On one hand, maybe Mr. Yoshida will say something about character models. On the other hand, I'm very disappointed in SE and him in particular and don't want to endure another portion of gaslighting and being lied straight in my face. Decisions, decisions...

[CuteBucket]

I'm expecting nothing from this upcoming Live Letter since it's at a game convention. It's probably going to be all previews for the upcoming alliance raid and whatever other "new" content is coming in 7.1 to hype up the local gamer crowds. I've already seen other people in these forums say stuff like "ugh, I hope they won't spend valuable LL time talking about individual pixels on Lalafel noses, who cares?" because there are people seemingly convinced that us complaining in here is taking development time and energy away from new battle content, which is all they care about.

I highly doubt the battle content team and the character graphics team share lots of members, and if for whatever reason they did, that's on Square-Enix for bad management, not on us for wanting the character models fixed.