graphic update expectations not met

[dullneedles]

It was a big shocking to see my catboy that went from a neutral expression to *bedroomy eyes*

[Iscah]

And that the promised character creator expansion/rework/whatever didnt appear and i hope it does soon.

What "promised" rework?

If anything, I'm fairly sure they stated that they weren't doing any kind of rework of the character creator at this point.

[angienessyo]

The game actively looks worse then it did before if you try to play on the same low settings as pre-update.

Particularly, when I use LoD for distant objects it's creating terrible shadow/texture flickering that didn't exist before so I'm kinda forced to leave it off even though it tanks my FPS hard in some places.

I think the DLSS/FSR is causing some jank in places. I have a very beefy system with things set on max, but get weird flickering with some shadows due to DLSS.

[GreenLeafy]

They overpromised a lot imo. And I'm surprised how many people believed it too that they can successfully overhaul a decade's worth of assets whilst their team was also juggling development of a AAA FF game at the same time and expecting to maintain consistency across the board. Have been playing this game since ARR and been present for every expansion launch and have barely experienced many bugs but DT really took the cake - there hasn't been a day of login without some kind of graphical glitch be it texture seams clearly visible , lighting breaks , animation jank , glamour pieces not stacking proper and just straight disappearing or even smth as outlandish as my friend seeing her hair just randomly turn white out of nowhere whilst running a CE in Bozja lol.

Did they update some of the armour texture? Yes. Do the new areas have more crisp renders aswell? Yes. Do some of the new hairs look nice with the new textures? Yes. Are some of the spell effects cleaner and more shiny? Yes.

But as many as those shiny new things are added - so many other old ones remain and stick out like a sore thumb even more than they ever did before and absolutely ruin the game's stylistic and texture cohesion.

I had a couple side quests remaining from Endwalker that I decided to wrap up before proceeding with more MSQ and it was just painful going through the cutscenes for it now. The clash of glassy HD eye textures and hair next to huge paint by number pixels on gear is just bonkers. Hell even on my WoL he suffers from the same thing where his facial scars and eyes are with updated textures but the clan tattoos on his face are still in a lower resolution and every close up shot with him feels jarring.

Here's some screenshots I took whilst running the quests.





Even Tataru got the outfit update treatment but they still left that giant goddamn feather on her hat in 20 pixels.

People wanted this after seeing Pixel Exarch but now so much more is going to look even more egregiously like him EVEN in MSQ. I don't have the screenshots but as Derio mentioned earlier its just a mindboggling decision to have a main character in the new story like Koana sport a 5 pixel belt buckle robe next to Wuk Lamat that's covered in glistening smooth gold jewellery , literally sharing the same scene. The inconsistency drives me insane. Where was any of the QA for this? Why did people lose so many facial features that made their WoLs as they are to STILL experience things like this? How can you say that sacrifice is worth it at all?

[GrizzlyTank]

They should have stuck to updating the shader and textures and left the rest.

[DynnDiablos]

I was really surprised by how pixelated Koana's outfit is.

[ConantSivrha]

The inconsistency drives me insane. Where was any of the QA for this? Why did people lose so many facial features that made their WoLs as they are to STILL experience things like this? How can you say that sacrifice is worth it at all?

Exactly this. Some specific things look great in the update, but now the mismatch between the highest and lowest quality textures are even more jarring than they already were, and many other problems were introduced (glitches, eyestrain and motion sickness for some players, unfortunate changes to a number of customization options). The graphics update doesn’t feel like much of an improvement when considered as a whole; I don’t think we even gained as much as we lost.

I do think it’s possible for future improvements to change this, but I can’t say I have faith that it’ll happen. The most obvious graphical glitches (such as the spontaneously color-changing hair, which I’ve also experienced) will almost certainly be fixed, but what will happen to character faces? Will the textures of old gear be considered “worth it” to update, and if they are, will they be done well? And so on. I’d rather they just release things when they’re ready, instead of pushing out an unfinished graphics update like this and leaving us to wonder when it’ll get fixed, if ever.

[DynnDiablos]

Exactly this. Some specific things look great in the update, but now the mismatch between the highest and lowest quality textures are even more jarring than they already were, and many other problems were introduced (glitches, eyestrain and motion sickness for some players, unfortunate changes to a number of customization options). The graphics update doesn’t feel like much of an improvement when considered as a whole; I don’t think we even gained as much as we lost.

I do think it’s possible for future improvements to change this, but I can’t say I have faith that it’ll happen. The most obvious graphical glitches (such as the spontaneously color-changing hair, which I’ve also experienced) will almost certainly be fixed, but what will happen to character faces? Will the textures of old gear be considered “worth it” to update, and if they are, will they be done well? And so on. I’d rather they just release things when they’re ready, instead of pushing out an unfinished graphics update like this and leaving us to wonder when it’ll get fixed, if ever.

To be fair, they warned us multiple times that not all textures would be updated at once and to expect stuff like this. I just didn't expect in the Dawntrail campaign and zones since those were being made within the graphics update. As for faces and changing back things. I don't see them doing that when many folks really love their new updated characters. The risk of having to keep giving out free fantasies becomes really real if they keep altering the looks of faces enough.

[Aulainn]

Lighting is the biggest mystery to me. Go visit the Tuliyolal innroom. There's 5 identical desklamps in the room and 3 of them work differently, three of them cast a shadow normally, one casts a shadow on clothes only, and third one doesn't even cast light into its surroundings.

Also, gpose lights don't cast shadows.

[GrizzlyTank]

Lighting is the biggest mystery to me. Go visit the Tuliyolal innroom. There's 5 identical desklamps in the room and 3 of them work differently, three of them cast a shadow normally, one casts a shadow on clothes only, and third one doesn't even cast light into its surroundings.

Also, gpose lights don't cast shadows.

Noticed also that the multi-floor open houses in Tuli (one right beside the main atherite) have two roof lights, but neither of them is the light souce. The source is hidden in the middle of them and gives of a really pixelated shadow.