Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Turnintino]

While I prefer them being separate parts of the face, I think I'd be more fine with it if they would sharpen the scales again. The way the textures look now make them look distorted.

Yeah; I suppose this is subjective, but I feel like it was silly to change the look of the scales so drastically. Again, they talked about original intent when explaining the changes there, but like Hejligan was saying, what players actually got upon the race's launch is what we've been living with for years, not whatever the artists may have originally wanted. It's one thing to improve texture resolution, it's another to completely alter shape and impression. And while I do appreciate the new visual clarity, I still think things were lost in translation there (as so many other things were, hence this thread lol).

Like, even setting aside shape, the new grey shading on Raen scales, for example, now make them look like they've collected dirt rather than lending depth in color or dimension, as I imagine was the intent.

[SongOfTheWind]

Sorry, I don't buy it. Just a load of PR hogwash to shift the blame to "'incorrect interpretations'" of the old faces so anything they fix now is out of the goodness of their hearts rather than them correcting their mistakes.

I agree, it what angers me as well. And I think it was exactly the goal of this announcement. It also worked if you go look how people react on twitter and such. “Why do they bother with such minor nitpicks? People are too obsessed with their characters appearance and need to learn to let go. Devs are pampering them instead of working on job balance and gameplay”
So to me it looks like it achieved:
- giving an illusion that it is not their fault, they just love their playerbase and try so hard to please them still
- there are no real big issues, so those who didn’t notice - won’t know the whole scale by them not acknowledging it publicly
- they can hide behind this massive effort to fix eyelashes beyond 7.1 for how long they wish then people happily applaud when they inevitably drop it and move it to “think later, in some years, perhaps, never”

[Cyrtip]

I wonder if they will address the scales morphing with the face on Au Ra, I tried to report it as a bug with emotes but it was marked as insufficient. They even warp based on eyebrow choice (Face 4 - Eyebrows 2 and 3 in this gif):



Surely this isn't intentional, it wasn't like that before.

All of the noses on face 4 also stretch the bottom of the forehead scale down like this too (Image shows nose #5). There's no choice out of the five that doesn't have those hard corners in the middle of the curve.

[Argantaelle]

It also worked if you go look how people react on twitter and such. “Why do they bother with such minor nitpicks? People are too obsessed with their characters appearance and need to learn to let go. Devs are pampering them instead of working on job balance and gameplay”

That was my impression as well. Mr. Yoshida's intent was to portray everyone in this or the correspondent Japanese/Chinese megathreads as some kind of madmen, pointlessly bickering over a loose pixel here and there. Looking at two major Reddit FFXIV subs, I see he achieved his goal: people are angered that devs resources go towards insignificant things instead of doing something more important (all of a sudden it's class balance or Savage difficulty—as we all know, these two are also SE artists' responsibility).

It's not nice.

P.S. Anyway, I have faint hope that this announcement is just PR empty talk, and they are going to correct their mistakes. There is nothing left but to wait for 7.1 and see with my own eyes.

P.S.S. I'd like to add that I'm conflicted about posting additional feedback. I'm receiving mixed signals: on one hand, they insist that player feedback is important; on the other hand, Mr. Yoshida has clearly shown that this feedback is minor and stupid. I've collected some samples through my MSQ playthrough (mostly about cutscenes and scenery), but now I'm not sure if it's worth to post them (also, the amount of my posts has reached a pretty round number, so I'm hesitant to ruin it, haha).

[Iscah]

I've collected some samples through my MSQ playthrough (mostly about cutscenes and scenery), but now I'm not sure if it's worth to post them (also, the amount of my posts has reached a pretty round number, so I'm hesitant to ruin it, haha).

Keep posting screenshots! Higher round numbers await you!

[Iscah]

I wish I could say I'm happy for this announcement – I really truly do – but I just feel deflated by how much the problem is downplayed when the differences are so obvious.

I'd be fine with a "sorry, we changed it because we honestly thought you'd like it more, but you're right that it doesn't match the old appearance" – but trying to tell us it was always like this and we're mis-imagining our own characters just feels so disheartening.

Also, ultimately it doesn't come down to being upset because the eyelids have moved X amount – the starting point in each case was looking at my character as a whole and feeling like they just don't look like themself, and the in-depth searching for changed dimensions, however subtle, is a search to explain what must be giving me that overall impression that the face is wrong.

And ultimately, whether my feelings are a rarity or widespread, people who are feeling how I'm feeling are a loss for Square Enix. In putting untold work hours into this character update, they have lost my inclination to throw money at them so I can make my pretty characters look prettier, or the gameplay time to keep building them up, because these changes have sapped the qualities that made me love the way they looked and made me want to play with all of them. The charm is gone and I'm left pressing through story on a character who just keeps reminding me how much I used to love how she looked.


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Edit to add: I should emphasise that I am very grateful for any further efforts the art team makes in getting the characters back to their old selves, but the way the statement minimises the issue makes me fearful that the fixes will also be minimal. I hope the art team can prove my fears unfounded.

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Edit edit: on a re-read on the post I can see that a lot of hopefully good updates are being promised and I really will be grateful for them. It just feels concerning that's it's wrapped up in talk of the issues being "small" and "slight" and "it's like this because it's an improvement". I wrote more in another post below.

[Gaddes]

What worries me about the announcement me are statements like this:

"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What especially bugs me is the: "[...] a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What exactly is that supposed to imply?

I do hold out hope that they might still fix things like this, since other parts of their post were more hopeful, but this talk of "what the data intends" really worries me. That is not how design works.

Yeah, I raised an eyebrow at that statement... "clearer representation of what was intended by the original data" Are they trying to pretend that the current faces were somehow more "accurate" than the faces we've had for ten years? Because you can't honestly tell me that the lips my elezen had are somehow the same when they're incredibly different now. If anything, I'm worried they'll keep going in the direction they're going and make my elezen's lips even more generic than this current version.






... I just want my full lips back

[sindriiisgaming]

If they fixed the wired dark lips, toned down the lighting and removed those sunken eyes I think everyone would look miles better

[Len_]

All of the noses on face 4 also stretch the bottom of the forehead scale down like this too (Image shows nose #5). There's no choice out of the five that doesn't have those hard corners in the middle of the curve.

It's crazy how the scale texture itself is totally different. It's not a higher resolution version of what was there before. It actually looks LESS 3-dimensional and there are now just a bunch of lines and thin ridges where there were actual shape forms before. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something AI spit out.

[lunartears]

It's crazy how the scale texture itself is totally different. It's not a higher resolution version of what was there before. It actually looks LESS 3-dimensional and there are now just a bunch of lines and thin ridges where there were actual shape forms before. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something AI spit out.

I've kept fairly neutral on the possibility that AI was used for the graphics update but the scales undeniably look like AI upscaling. It reminds me of when AI is used to upscale a low resolution drawing and it creates jagged linework where it attempts to guess what the shape could possibly be.
Though, I don't know if I believe the old texture was directly upscaled because the depth is flatter and colour is completely different however I also don't have a full understanding of how AI works.