Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[KhujaRela]

I'm really sad that Yoshida said they would adress and keep working on it after first patches but still no words... (it doesn't matter that much because I can't play ayway with the motion sickness isue tho...)

[Moonfallen]

The issue is you now have a large portion of the population who adore their characters and the new updates and looks. To revert it, or change shapes of things now would require not only a free fantasia for people to once again have to readjust their characters, but then you have people who will be furious because they've known grown used to new their characters as is. It's simply too late. I expect they will make minor adjustments over things in future patches, but I wouldn't expect them to make big enough changes where a fantasia would once again need to be required.

A lot of us that are calling for the changes they made to be fixed, are also saying in the same sentence that the changes they made to our faces should be additional options, not to completely revert or remove them. That has been echoed by so many of us within this whole thread that the changes they made to a lot of our features like making our mouth, nose, face/jaw shape completely different should have been additional options added since some races look near 1:1 and you can tell which ones received more care. There are issues with all the changes and some people are going to be happier than others, we're not asking to take away their happiness we're asking to have the changes they made be additional options and give our characteristics back.

Another thing to add is a lot of us that have given feedback are players of varying years of experience. I myself have been playing for a decade (ARR closed alpha) and have had the same character my entire time playing. I also have various alts for different races and looks. My alts I am not that unhappy with since they don't look as bad as my main that I've been playing the game with for a decade. Some of my characters I've only had during EW so I'm not that attached to their appearance. The entire time they were referring to graphic updates regarding player characters they made us all believe we would look damn near 1:1 to our old graphics and seeing bench 1, 2 AND DT that is farther from the truth. I noticed immediately the changes in the first benchmark about my character that made me feel uneasy about the whole thing. By the time the second benchmark came out I was even more worried by the changes they made because I really didn't like the changes they made to some lighting and characteristics (like the mouth). When I logged on for day one of early access I did not like my character at ALL and she looked nothing like she did compared to both benchmarks, EW and character creation.

[lunartears]

It's frustrating that reporting clear graphical issues as bugs results in a relocation to "Insufficent Information" despite being able to provide as much as possible. I'd appreciate if they could give a reasoning, but I suppose it's not realistic considering how many reports they get.

[EdwinChucklenuts]

"..Firstly it’s anecdotal in nature. We don’t know the size of the player base who prefer the new features"

No one's coming to the forums with positive feedback. The truth is the vast majority of people seem to enjoy the update (tune in to any random vod/stream of someone playing right after the update). The people who enjoy the graphics, enjoy the game don't need to come into the forum. This place is purely to grumble and complain lol.
The new textures/lighting/character updates are *chef's kiss*
Change is scary but eventually you'll come to accept your character in glorious high definition!

[Einnecy]

No one's coming to the forums with positive feedback. The truth is the vast majority of people seem to enjoy the update (tune in to any random vod/stream of someone playing right after the update). The people who enjoy the graphics, enjoy the game don't need to come into the forum. This place is purely to grumble and complain lol.
The new textures/lighting/character updates are *chef's kiss*
Change is scary but eventually you'll come to accept your character in glorious high definition!

If you had read even a single page of this thread instead of cherry-picking what you wanted to read you would come to the conclusion that people here are giving feedback and you would be aware of why they are giving feedback. Following your logic, I can also pull a statement out of my ass and say that a vast majority of people seem to dislike the update. I know of a dozen people who aren't posting on the forums, so surely those people I follow on social media and my friends speak for everyone, eh?

[Daralii]

If you had read even a single page of this thread instead of cherry-picking what you wanted to read you would come to the conclusion that people here are giving feedback and you would be aware of why they are giving feedback. Following your logic, I can also pull a statement out of my ass and say that a vast majority of people seem to dislike the update. I know of a dozen people who aren't posting on the forums, so surely those people I follow on social media and my friends speak for everyone, eh?

The same mantra shows up for every discussion area for every piece of media, but I don't know if there's a term for it or how often it's bait. "Only unhappy people make posts, and everyone I know loves it, so everything is perfect" is something I've kept seeing for maybe 15 years at this point.

[Doopliss]

No one's coming to the forums with positive feedback. The truth is the vast majority of people seem to enjoy the update (tune in to any random vod/stream of someone playing right after the update). The people who enjoy the graphics, enjoy the game don't need to come into the forum. This place is purely to grumble and complain lol.
The new textures/lighting/character updates are *chef's kiss*
Change is scary but eventually you'll come to accept your character in glorious high definition!

This again... You do know people who aren't happy are also just as likely to stay silent and hope things get fixed, right? People on the regular hate confrontation when they feel they can avoid it. And, again, I can't blame them. This place sucks.

But I take it if you've actually looked at the reports in both JP and ENG forums of all the feature changes, outright missing features, and bugs, it'd seem a little less "chef's kiss".

Feature changes were not done for the better and barely even offer a new option in the first place--unless it was making a base face look completely different like ♀ Au Ra Face 2--because most of them just ended up getting sanded down and homogenized to look like some other, already available option.

We're still missing ♂ Duskwights' clan-specific face textures, and Hellsguards' defining feature is still barely visible. ♀ Roegadyn are still missing normal maps. Most lips lost detail and became straight lines. There's texture errors everywhere; most high altitude areas are still covered in fog; shadows freak out and make strange, patterned lines over characters in a ton of areas. Emotes are constantly making your face twitch and look less natural across the board... Some races now look horrible with dark skin tones for no reason, other than they clearly didn't test it.

You know, I am personally cool with my Elezen having better normals. That's great. I don't actually want to go back to the old one. Most other things, though, just feel like a mess. I remember when I could take screenshots without backlight making my hair light up like an LED...

EDIT: Woops. I didn't realize there'd be two other replies in the time I took to write this. Well. Uh. My bad. You get the point.

[Rueby]

Snip.

I really hate what they did to our facial expressions especially the smiles. Going from subtle to uncanny upturned smile.

[Moonfallen]

No one's coming to the forums with positive feedback. The truth is the vast majority of people seem to enjoy the update (tune in to any random vod/stream of someone playing right after the update). The people who enjoy the graphics, enjoy the game don't need to come into the forum. This place is purely to grumble and complain lol.
The new textures/lighting/character updates are *chef's kiss*
Change is scary but eventually you'll come to accept your character in glorious high definition!

There have been people that have come to this thread and expressed that they enjoyed the updated graphics and why, and have done so without bashing on those that are unhappy with the changes. There are many more people not coming to the forums who are upset because of the lack of communication from the devs so they feel their input will also be unheard and think "what's the point?". I know because a friend of mine has extensively talked to me about their disappointment with how their character looks now since early access. I've even seen people earlier in the thread that were arguing with others and telling us all to quit crying because the update was great until it affected one of their characters personally. They then came here to post their disappointment. Most of the praises I have seen involved the environment while also taking into account that there are issues with changes to most races and character options. If you look closely and long enough you can find issues and some things on characters being completely half assed. You're just another troll looking to rile up everyone here.

[smitten_miquitten]

Darn, looks like my Keeper of the Moon face 4 too-dark eyebrows bug got marked as a dupe in favor of the original one from benchmark 2. I just hope they took the extra info from my new bug and added it to the old one like I asked, because the bug from the second benchmark is pretty barebones and there's no way for me to edit or add to it.

I really think it's silly that once the bugs get moved to "Accepted" you can't add any additional information. At the time i wrote the benchmark one, I had no idea that Sunseekers weren't having the same issues Keepers have, and if one specific clan is bugged I think that might help narrow down why the bug is happening.