Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[MagicMush00]

As i said in another post, I think at least fixing how some lighting conditions affect some characters would do a lot already, there are certain areas for example where the sun shines from above on the character's eyes and it looks extremely weird, which was also present before but wasn't as extreme, while in other places or usually when in some insides the changes feel way better because the lighting is working with them and not against.

[Kaziek]

As i said in another post, I think at least fixing how some lighting conditions affect some characters would do a lot already, there are certain areas for example where the sun shines from above on the character's eyes and it looks extremely weird, which was also present before but wasn't as extreme, while in other places or usually when in some insides the changes feel way better because the lighting is working with them and not against.

Yeah, this alone makes several faces look much worse regardless of whether they're faithful or not. Just a standard sunny day or a light source that's slightly above your character makes all sorts of awful shadows on their face. You'd usually only see that in the old lighting if it was somewhere with harsh spotlights pointing directly down.

[diivuus]

dont know if anyone else is having/noticing a body discoloration issue at least for femras of a certain non-human skintone but its been bugging me so bad

[lunartears]

dont know if anyone else is having/noticing a body discoloration issue at least for femras of a certain non-human skintone but its been bugging me so bad

I'm not using the non-human skin tones but my pale skin often looks sickly and yellow now if that counts for anything.

[CantDecide]

dont know if anyone else is having/noticing a body discoloration issue at least for femras of a certain non-human skintone but its been bugging me so bad

Yes, I've noticed this on my hyur as well. Her face and hands are a different shade from the rest of her body, and there's a visible division on her neck and wrists where the old model ends and the updated parts start. I use the palest skintone option, but I would assume the others have the same issue. It really bugs me, too.

[KageTokage]

There's definitely something off post-update because there are way more "cursed" locations just scattered all over the world in general where if I look in a certain direction from a certain height and/or angle it tanks my FPS to 40 or lower.

Occlusion culling not working properly is the assumption I'm making as to why that's the case as it tends to be very cluttered areas like the SW portion of Heritage Found that set it off.

[astral_haze]

Posting on behalf of a friend:

My character is the main protagonist of the story. That's how an mmo always is. I'll see his face in countless cutscenes, every time I log in, every time I check my equipment, and sometimes when I'm standing still. Experiencing this for years with the same character would likely make you sensitive to the smallest changes. I thought my character was going to get more detail, not a complete style replacement. He looks like a cold robotic doll. I can't picture that as a hero. He just looks so unfriendly.

I don't mind things existing or being added, bad or not. I just can't tolerate things being replaced and forever removed. A game can never seem to stay loyal to what it is. Or what its style is.

There are only 4 faces. They should have no trouble adding more instead of replacing their style into something unrecognisable for some faces such as mine. Some games have far more complex character customization too.

I feel like they should have saved these changes for ff17 (If they follow the mmo pattern every 3 games), and there's a good number of expansions for this game now. I haven't started Heavensward yet, and I'm so upset that I won't ever get to experience all the expansions I've looked forward to getting into. But I have to feel even worse for those who have played for around 10 years, and feel the way I do.

His eyes are shorter and more circular, as well as his iris. His eyelashes have drastically changed. His idle mouth expression looks so much more unfriendly. The top of his eyes are below the top of his ears now. His jaw is smaller. The ears seem a bit bigger, pointier, and bony. As someone here said, the anime aesthetic is gone. But whether it looks better or not doesn't mean anything to me. All that matters to me is the style and appearance I had, and that it was taken from me. This doesn't feel like the same game anymore. I have no interest in committing and keeping engaged in a game that won't last. Memories I can never revisit.
My main character is dead. The story's over for me.

[ConantSivrha]

Posting on behalf of a friend:

Wow, those changes are pretty obvious. Up until now, I've been assuming that the changes to lalafell are largely in my imagination, since changes to other races have been more noticeable to me, and not a lot of lalafell players have been posting in these threads. I can clearly see that I was wrong, though.

This post prompted me to make a comparison image of my own lalafell:



Mine (male face 4) was altered significantly less than your friend's character. However, there are some issues, the biggest one being that the eyes (eye type 4) have lost their signature long and fluffy eyelashes. The lips looks smaller, and the shading under the bottom lip is missing (this is mouth type 3, though the same is true for the other options). The eyelids are even less defined than they originally were, making the space between the top of the eye and the eyebrow look featureless and strange. This face has an outdated, blurry texture that doesn't play nice with the new, sharper look of some other elements of the face; what looked like freckles before instead resembles dirt when you zoom in this close.

Like your friend's character, my character's mouth seems to smile less. This, combined with the eyelash reduction making the eyes look a bit smaller, creates a more subdued and and less cheerful look.

In my case, a few of the changes are positive: The nose smudge has a smoother transition with the surrounding skin instead of being a sharply defined ring. The slight shine on the skin looks nice. I think my character's ears (ear type 3) look like a better, more natural version of themselves (my character uses a different ear shape from your friend's character; his appears to be ear type 2).

Thank you for posting. This situation must really suck for people like your friend, who didn't even get to play the full story before having their character replaced. What a disastrous introduction to the game.

[Havokoc]

I've been trying to give it some time to see if it's just that I'm not used to it, but after having played with it for a couple of weeks, I'm really not a fan of the changes, specifically to dunesfolk lalas.
I've got a bit of an identity crisis with my character now, as it just doesn't feel like the same character I've played with up until now.

The 3 biggest issues I have with these changes for my Lalafell is:

1. The eyes feels a lot more dead than pre-DT. The irises are a lot darker and in some cutscenes, there's no light at all shining up the irises.
2. The makeup feels a lot worse, especially the forced purple/black makeup on the top of the eyes even without any extra face paint/facial features (see image



3 (and the most prominent one for me). The lips looks incredibly bad compared to before. The new lips feels a lot more plastic compared to the previous one. The expressions with it doesn't give the cute feeling.



It really makes me sad to see that the character I've loved to play for over 4 years doesn't feel like my character anymore. While I doubt it's going to happend, I really hope some of these changes can be reverted/toggled.

[Einnecy]

Something else in regards to this update I particularly can't wrap my head around is which races got the subsurface scattering on their ears and which did not. To my current knowledge, only elezen and raen au ra* (your guess why is as good as mine) have it enabled. Other races that should have the effect, namely lalafell, miqo'te, viera, do not.
*My female raen au ra has it and so does every female raen face, but I can't tell if all the other au ra combinations do not have it or if it's more subtle.

Some of the most drastic changes to F midlander face 1, such as the smaller and more rounded jaw, doubly-long lashes, smaller philtrum, and much more triangular nose, all seem like attempts to make the face appear more traditionally feminine and "pretty". What we were promised was that the aim of the update would be to preserve the looks we know, but that simply isn't what happened, and it's clear that the intention was to make sweeping aesthetic changes to suit the artists' individual preferences, such as "beautifying" female characters.

Another thing that bothers me a lot which I would like to add in regards to this particular topic is that they've basically bleached the female raen scales and horns in an attempt to further "beautify" them (read: butcher). I was under the impression the horns were basically bone, which are naturally more yellow. Male au ra did not get this treatment.

I desperately hope they are reading feedback and taking notes. Too many inconsistencies and errors despite what was promised. The update is a mess and the shiny new lighting will not cover that up to those who bother to look closer.