Quote Originally Posted by Einnecy View Post
EDIT: I have very conveniently just found an old screenshot in more objective lighting and could make a more proper comparison. Everything is the same except the hair color.
God, I've been trying to not get upset about the current state of the graphical update because I'm choosing to believe they're going to fix it due to the language they used on the second benchmark lodestone post, but it's so hard to not feel that way every time I see ♀ Au Ra Face 2.

All the faces have weird decision making, but this one straight up just feels like a new face entirely. I've seen nobody argue against this specific one--even my friends who struggle to see detail differences are like "holy shit, that should be a Face 5 or something".

The theory about letting a developer's personal taste get in the way of the design updates feels the most true for female Au Ra, while the other races feel like they were sort of haphazardly done instead. The lighter scales, the insistence on making their pupils way larger (they actually decreased the size for male Au Ra on release to be closer to their original size, but not female Au Ra lol), the narrower mouths all around...

"As close as possible" is a blatant lie here. Ugh, sorry.