Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Avisse]

Hyur Midlander eyes are looking very dead after the update. Would prefer if they'd add some life into them by editing the catchlights to be more obvious while bringing back some of the old shading at the inner upper eye area.

Something like this:

[Aco505]

I forgot to adress an important (imo) point. The character's bodys still look really low quality. Especially male chars still look wrong when wearing chest revealing pieces.
My male midlander Hyr hasn't even a normal visible belly button. That's because the visibility of the belly button is connected to the muscleslider.
And when turning the muscleslider to minimum then the belly button almost disappears. I really don't like that because it looks so wrong.

I don't expect SE to give us high resolution realistic nippels and belly buttons. That would be wrong, too. But I would like to see a middleway. A solution that looks kinda normal/natural.
Please! *prays*

Agreed. I've asked about this before so feel free to support that thread if you want.

If they do it though, it'll be in 8.0 or, worse, even later.

[Olliane]

My character lost the light in her eyes. I feel like her soul is gone. I had purposefully given her warm and kind eyes but now I feel like she has the eyes of a dead fish.
The next photo is supposed to be a /surprised expression, but she looks so unenthused.


The photo below was taken directly from cutscenes with no editing other than cropping.


Since the lighting in cutscenes can't be adjusted, every time she appears in a cutscene, her eyes have this same deadpan expression. This isn't a one-time issue, it happens in every cutscene.


Even when looking directly at the camera, her eyes feels unfocused and looks as if she looking beyond the camera like her soul has flown into the abyss.
It puts her into a perpetual daydream state.


I tried to reinact an old photo with white mage battle stance emote. Whilst the lighting is different, you can see the difference in expression

[Heavenchild]

Agreed. I've asked about this before so feel free to support that thread if you want.

If they do it though, it'll be in 8.0 or, worse, even later.

In the end I have no clue. But for me it just feels like that SE is treating their cashcow badly.

[Argantaelle]

Well, I've cancelled my sub. There is no point in staying subscribed if I can't play. It seems like it's the end of more than 10 years journey.

I'm actually more sad because I learned to trust the FFXIV team. They promised my WoL would stay more or less close to his former self, and then they completely changed his facial features and expression. Even the free fantasia could help, but only if I change him into another race. But I'd rather he lived and died with the same gender and race combination as when he was created.

[vekkro]

I'm actually fairly content with most of the changes or at least I've adjusted to them. My character looks a lot better for the most part but there were a few drawbacks like my eyebrows suddenly turning gray but I'm sure some things will get addressed... Eventually

My only complaint now would be I wish they would trim the sideburns on the new hairstyle at least for female characters. Looks great but the sideburns make it a little too masculine. From what I've seen it clips onto the cheek scales for Au Ras too lol. Not sure why they just left it like that. Kind of a glaring issue

[Iscah]

From what I've seen it clips onto the cheek scales for Au Ras too lol. Not sure why they just left it like that. Kind of a glaring issue

Nothing new for Au Ra, unfortunately.

Fixing this sort of thing is what I would have listed if I had been asked what graphics needed adjusting/updating.

[fishyhare]

I noticed that Face 2 Nose 2 option lost the bump on the nose. Also the nose tip used to be pointier than it's now in 7.0. The nose points more downwards and is more rounder.

The short hairstyle sideburns are slightly wrong. The under one is on top. → It should be other way around.

These are the things I noticed and would love, if they would fix these. Otherwise I've been happy with the update.

[Sairaag]

Even when looking directly at the camera, her eyes feels unfocused and looks as if she looking beyond the camera like her soul has flown into the abyss.
It puts her into a perpetual daydream state.

You know, this makes me wonder what else, apart from the lighting, is going on with the eyes of many characters that's been causing them to appear lifeless or otherwise strange. Some people have mentioned their characters look slightly cross-eyed now. This is the case for my Keeper as well, and I've felt like I must be going crazy because I can't tell anything's different about the position of the iris when I compare him to his 6.XX model. Then I compared this old screenshot to the updated graphics. He looks at two NPCs shorter than him in this scene, and there are a few shots where it feels like his eyes stray upwards and aren't focusing on the NPC. And sure enough, when he opens them wide...



I also watched a cutscene where he nodded at someone about the same height as him. The eyes are supposed to stay focused on the NPC while the head moves. I'm pretty sure there's something odd going on in that animation too now, that the eyes have become kind of "stiff", but I need to see if I have any video of that with the old graphics before I can compare properly.

But yeah, I feel like the animations don't work like they used to and that's contributing to the continuing problem of "dead" eyes.

[Heavenchild]

The idea of the dynamic lighting in the eyes instead of the more or less bright textured dots is great in my opinion.

But somehow it does not work that well. I experience a lot of situations where my characters eyes look lifeless
because there is no shine in it.
Also when designing portraits most of the time the light reflexion will not show up. I can't say how this works for
other races eyes but I struggle with making a good new portrait because of that.

And sometimes the environment seems to be somehow foggy, but when I checked the weather it said 'clear skies'.
I saw this mostly at night. Somehow foggy and washed out.