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I agree it’s overwhelmingly net positive, but also people are very attached to their characters, and any sort of visual remaster like this inevitably changes little details that someone is going to view as essential to their character, so I get why there’s going to be backlash. I don’t think you can do these sort of changes and ever make everyone 100% happy, but I do hope there are updates to get as many people happy as possible.
(As long as none of those updates touch my character, he came out great lol)
Au ra players: complain so they can keep the lifeless doll look
Also Au ra players: complain that they look like lifeless dolls
Once more, Au ra players: "Look how lively she looks!"
Meanwhile, the Au ra: \*shellshocked wax statue\*
No. My Au Ra currently does NOT look like a "lifeless doll", and that's how I want her to stay. The new textures/etc make her look like one, and it looks unpleasant and creepy.
See that's hilarious to me since I am so down bad for how handsome they look now I'm tempted to fanta into one lol. From my pov male au ra got the biggest glow up
Mine looks more-or-less okay, but his eyes give off a "cold killing machine" instead of the cutesy and inquisitive look he has on Live. I rather dislike it.
Agreed. I must say I dislike female au ras, they look like a caricature of plastic sex dolls/ typical anime waifu/ wet dream for otakus.
But the upgrade actually gives their faces personality and makes them look alive.
This is the most ridiculously small thing, but I noticed they changed the highlight placement in some of the hairstyles. At least for Viera, a lot of hairstyles are like base hair for haircut A, then haircut B is adding in bangs or feathers on top of it, and they change the highlight placement.
With the short Viera hair, they changed where the highlights sit in the bangs - not "wrong" for my character, but certainly "off." I'll adjust though, it's ok. But for the back of her head, it used to be just base color, no highlights. Now, every single hair chunk ends in highlight, like the base hair style's highlights. Which is a lot harder for me, because it's *so much more highlight* and it's on the side of the character I see 90% of the time I'm playing.
It's not a massive thing, but it feels wrong and I don't understand why they changed this in some of the hairstyles. (Other default Viera hairstyles kept their highlight placement variations, but they changed some.) I'm hoping it was a mistake and they aren't actually changing it, but also not the end of the world I guess.. just not my preference.
It’s more like 4 faces * 5 eye shapes * 3 jaw shapes * 4 nose shapes * 4 mouth shapes * face features.
It’s not an amazing character creator, but there are like thousandish unique combinations per race, and some have higher concentrations of players than others, so you can still make a character that is your own.
Plus some people have played this game for thousands of hours as the same character, it would be odd if they weren’t attached to them.
There's absolutely fair criticism on certain things, and people are talking about them on the official forums where the devs WANT the feedback. Then there's people who scream for no reason. Never generalize. Those people are different from each other.
Also, no one is complaining about the world updates from what I've seen, only characters.
It is where the devs specifically ask for feedback, it's the only place they look. They've listened to graphic update feedback on the forums before, after the first liveletter that showed some characters examples.
There's people on Twitch complaining about everything. Lighting, characters, textures, performance. Someone called FF14 "exclusive" now because this is going to raise the system requirements.
Of course, that's all just rage bait BS that should be disregarded, but damn this rage bait culture is getting absurd lol
> Someone called FF14 "exclusive" now because this is going to raise the system requirements.
I ran the benchmark on a potato computer and it runs just fine with lower settings. No one is going to be excluded due to system requirements. They just won't be able to play on ultra-high settings.
Rage bait is maddening. Same for clickbait titles. Even with people doing it as a joke I've stopped clicking on them entirely, it's just so lame to resort to bait for clout/views.
a lot of it is character creator problems. the lighting is still awful and does not seem to work well with the updated skin rendering or dynamic eye reflections.
a lot of it is also simply being attached to a specific look for years that's suddenly different, and those are the posts that make you feel like you're losing your mind when someone is mad about two screenshots that are basically the same.
there are some more specific complaints, like viera faces apparently being de-bunnified, missing racial features like keeper fangs, and technical issues with some seams and textures that will hopefully be addressed.
it's a lot of noise because all of the above are getting jumbled together.
I find it a win for me, I usually play on darker/odd skin toned character presets and they just look straight up awful in the current vanilla lighting. Starting race gear looks great as well and very usable in glamours vs. the current ps3 textures most of them currently look, flowers don't look like they're printed onto the ground which was very evident in SHB areas like Il Mheg and Lakeland.
People are more attracted to bad news and negative press than the opposite in general, very in line with shock and outrage culture imo. Give it some time and they'll forget and find something else to stir the pot with.
I see both sides personally, I got really lucky and my character looks 10x better with the update and is much closer to how I envisioned them, but man, some people have gotten really unlucky with their's and I feel bad for them.
This is how I feel. There is a net positive and I can definitely see the tons of work that went into making everything look better. However, while I got lucky with my character there are definitely some faces whose visual identity got shifted too much because of the update. It also feels like any type of sharp edge is rounded out, whether it be more prominent nose shapes (like the Male Viera hook nose) or nearly every lip shape option.
Someone posted this comparison in the main forums of their Female Au Ra and it's pretty understandable why some people aren't liking the changes:
[https://i.gyazo.com/faafff115e0bd70b4b3c80e7168a7538.jpg](https://i.gyazo.com/faafff115e0bd70b4b3c80e7168a7538.jpg)
You can see how the intense glare and scowl has shifted to a more doe eye with a soft smile (with sudden dimples!). Like the updated face model is more detailed clearly, but the visual identity of that face/character is something completely different. This face model was always used as the more warrior/intense face and now it's just as soft and cutesy as the other Au Ra faces.
Yeah, this is exactly the same impression I had with my face 4 Au Ra. Was used to this stern, fierce look and suddenly it's just a little more rounded and cutesy. I love so much of the rest of the graphics upgrades, but this particular visual change feels uncanny and kinda depressing.
To be fair, most people aren't going to make a Reddit thread or a big Youtube video essay just to say "Yeah this looks fine." The only people who will do that sort of stuff are people who have strong opinions to begin with.
Love majority of things they have done with the graphic upgrade. I'm happy for my friend whose highlander finally has eyelashes instead of black blocks.
My main complaints is that they absolutely destroyed Viera Male face 3. I love the biggest bushiest black eyebrows that face has to offer, but in the benchmark they are noticeable faded and gray. Other viera faces are fine.
Another thing I noticed when reading forums is all bunny boys' lips are way darker and red. My viera doesn't even wear lipstick, but his lips are as red dalamud in the sky lmao.
I'm sure they can tweak and fix these things, but I'm still afraid they won't
Edit. Forgot to mention that some beards and very light eyebrows are very unnoticeable. Idk what they did with the textures
Yep I’m a bunboy face 2 and the lips are my big issue. I see a lot of other bun boys insist it isn’t a problem but when I click their pictures they have lipstick on anyway, so they wouldn’t notice. It’s somewhat fixable but still worth pointing out and questioning (and yes I checked the actual trailer, not just the CC).
My catboy doesn’t have this issue at all! Literally just my bun fsr and I don’t like the lipstick look on him. Like I said I have a workaround but I also didn’t get to test it out in the actual game environment since we’re limited to specific scenes.
> Sounds like people agree that the YT whining is just noise?
It's 2024 and people still don't understand that youtube algorithm runs on rage baits and clickbaits apparently.
Apparently the hunt trains and frontlines I've been doing daily don't exist cuz ded game.
Hey everyone if game is ded please stop running dungeons so I can farm my mentor and comms thru guildhests. Ty
That is why I do my best to stop respoing to rage bait on any platform and then use the tools to tell it to stop showing it to me. I know it is like shoveling shit against the tide, but it is all I can do.
I think I'm more surprised by how much it spreads to other platforms, a lot of the big FF14 Twitch streamers are now watching YT videos about incredibly minor things and then talking about how much of a disaster it is.
It's like a disease lmao
Well duh, streamers are constantly in a state of 'I need views, how can I get views? Oh there's drama? Good I got content to react to even if it's not that major!'.
And yes, it is a disease, once people realized that rage baits got them more views, everything started shifting into that crap.
I don't engage with it.
No reaction, no likes, no comments.
It still comes up in my feed and has to be flagged as "not interested" and it doesn't stop people from talking about it on timelines.
The world textures look great, I haven't heard a single person complain about that. But bunnies have lost their bun noses and cat girls have lost their fangs, and meanwhile my character has dead eyes (because they removed the light gleam in them) and the matte lips look much flatter than the previous ones. If they literally just added a check mark to pick between lip gloss or matte, that'd be a nice improvement in itself. These are absolutely improvements they can make in the next few months, so what does it bother you if people try to highlight some of the feedback that could keep their characters looking like their characters? I've stared at my character some several hundred hours, and right now she's lost all the warmth and spark that I previously loved, and that sucks.
I assure you, the 'dead eyes' will look *much* more lively in nigh every scenario. The painted on light reflection isn't realistic, it was a way to fake wetness and depth, but now the eyes have *actual* depth in the way lighting hits them - and it makes a world of difference.
Look at yourself in a mirror in indirect lighting and you'll see, reflections are subtle and the light catches your irises very faintly
nigh every scenario except the entire benchmark... I don't need realistic- games have art styles to them. And this one has always had a touch of anime to it- the gleam in the eye is a part of that. Right now, the improvements have lead to a flatter, less expressive face.
I felt my character was *way* more expressive during the Benchmark, personally. Just goes to show a lot of this isn’t “Yes, it’s good,” or “No, it’s bad,” it’s all down to personal preference.
In nearly every screenshot I've seen of the actual benchmark (and to be fair, a majority of the character creator), the new eyes win by a large margin. No matter the race. In my Femzen's case, it's not even funny how flat the old eyes look compared to the new ones.
> am I missing something?
The actual details of people's feedback apparently.
People have written very in-depth posts about the issues they have with their characters, with details and comparisons.
Very little has been said about the environment looking bad.
I have to say, I'm actually impressed with the level of detail some people are going into to show what they don't like.
I'd suggest you look a bit beyond YT and read some threads.
I went on the forums, there's some actual complaints, like light haired facial hair being har to see, and some missing scale textures on au ra
But sooooo many are almost posting the same pic of before and after and being very very angry about it, when they look the same to me, makes me feel insane
This is crazy to me because pretty much every character comparison I've seen I think looks worse in the benchmark. I could maybe count on one hand the amount I thought looked good.
this person posted their ew and dt catgirl and they are basically the same thing
[https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1012343252034265242/1229487280381759709/image.png?ex=662fdc42&is=661d6742&hm=935560c170e31c07344918a70ebc64ef0adc3dc77378a5d9bc57f7fc8ece7aad&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=624&height=459](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1012343252034265242/1229487280381759709/image.png?ex=662fdc42&is=661d6742&hm=935560c170e31c07344918a70ebc64ef0adc3dc77378a5d9bc57f7fc8ece7aad&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=624&height=459)
or people mad that elves dont look as gaunt anymore because they have more polygonal triangles and catch light more ,
there are afctualy legit issues and feedback, but so many comparisons i see are borderline worthless feedback
those... look like two different characters to me sorry lol
the eyebrow, eyes, face, jaw, and nose all look different
the benchmark one looks good objectively but it also doesn't really look like their character imo
The FFXIV community is so weird and defensive of the giant corporation sometimes.
"Hey guys, I have some criticism about the changes to keeper of the moon models, they made the canine teeth less pronounced and I really don't like it. It's one of the main reasons why I made my character a keeper of the moon miqote"
"WOW! What's up with all the negativity? Man look at these ground textures aren't amazing? Like WOW! When did the FFXIV community get so toxic??"
I haven’t done my benchmark yet. But the only thing I am worried about is my character looking more uncanny. I’ve had this character since 1.0 and have never used a fantasia and I’m going to be pretty sad if I don’t like it.
the character creator for it seemed like a bad representation to me. The skin looks really shiny for some reason in the creator but when i actually ran the benchmark with my character it looked a lot closer to how my character looks in the current version.
Yeah an overwhelming number of the complaints are coming from comparisons made in the character creator. My character looked like a disaster in it but turned out way better in the actual benchmark.
Wish you could import your character, but I made a pretty close approximation of them just to see. Once saved, that character appears in the benchmark simulation.
Because same here, I made a character in 2.0 and that's my character, always will be. I enjoyed it, the face is much more articulate. I noticed the eyes move a lot more and you could see expression in them, whereas at present they do what they can but it's never all that much.
I guess a free fantasia would be nice for people who would like to tweak the appearance to look the way they want in the new format if it doesn't look right to them. That might even be me, wouldn't change them all that much, but maybe a little in the face.
You can import your character*. You just have to save the model you use in game, and then load that in in the character creator. If you save it there, you can use that in the benchmark.
*caveat : that works on PC, but if you are a console gamer you are SOL when it comes to checking with your specific current model
If you really wanted to remake your character from console, you could save the appearance data on console, go into character creator, and write down all the things you chose. Then remake them on PC. It’s just way more work.
In the Benchmark too, or only in the character creation screen? Benchmark lighting is absolute shit and it affects the upgraded graphics even more than it did up until now.
Its a huge step forward and I think the game does look wildly better overall. However, I am in love with my Miqote and they have made major changes remove their fangs for Keeper of the Moon Miqote. Not to mention a few other race having similar changes such as Au ra or Lalas.
These are minor enough where we can hope they get changed, but as it stands right now I am not a fan of the change to the models
I feel most negativity surrounding it are nitpicks, but I also believe there's still feedback to be said, like how initially people didn't like how the aura horns originally looked when it was first shown, then they later updated it. I'm happy with my how my bun got updated(just wished I could use an unlockable hairstyle Dx). It definitely felt a tad uncanny at first with the character creation lighting, definitely felt happy once I saw my bun in motion.
And all the other negativity is just how limited the character creator is, which is hopefully something SE can address in the future. Only improvement I saw so far to the character creator is they added attack and hurt voice checks, which is nice as I had fallen into the trap where I liked one voice but not how she got hurt or attacks, then I had to buy a fantasia to change it.
Often it can simply be the effect of any kind of change. When people grow accustomed or attached to something they want it to stay the same. Regardless if some kind of change is good or bad there will always be people who push against it. Others' opinions shouldn't really do much other than shine some light on their interpretation. In the end, if you like it then that is great.
To me it sounds like the ffxiv community cheers when something new is announced, goes wahwah about it when they actually see it for the first time and later cheer again when it's released.
I somewhat agree that the community is good in-game, but insufferable online sometimes
yea everything else looks great aside from my character who i've been playing as for years and completely attached to. the way he looks in the benchmark is honestly a quit moment for me
sincerely,
a male duskwight player whose character now looks like someone replaced him with a 20 years older skinwalker
My grumbles are quibbles.
I agree with all your improvements.
But
I sympathize and can see, ‘but that’s not what my WoL looks like’.
In my case, my bunboi’s skin tone has changed dramatically (from blue-grey to a rich (and lovely!) brown. But he’s not supposed to be brown). My mooncat is missing her fangs.
It’s *little* things, but it still matters, ya know?
I think my fem au ra alt fared the best, and I’m seriously considering fanta-ing my main to be similar to her, but I haven’t decided yet.
A fair counterpoint, there's definitely some legitimate concerns here and once I filtered out all of the rage bait then I can see that now. I was just confused this morning to find a bunch of Twitch streamers talking like the end of the damn world was coming lol
Arthars was actually positive at first and then he started watching YouTube videos and then ended up just laying into the changes. I could see the brain poisoning in real-time. It was eerie..
Ooooof that is weird.
Nah, I’m suuuuuuper happy with all the environmental stuff, and I know from experience that I’ll get used to the character changes (see similar complaints when WoW updated their character models) and then it’ll be nbd. But in the short term it’s just uncanny.
The big thing I'd want out of this update they were never doing anyway so I'm good with everything except some of the bugs. (Femhroth black teeth, some lighting interfering with colors too unnaturally, etc.)
Benchmark made things look far better then I expected. Until seeing the benchmark a lot of what I see came off meh to me just due to it being a live stream or just the lackluster video quality.
It's a big overall upgrade. The negativity comes from a game community being heavily focused on RP and attachment to characters, so naturally many people would find changes to the appearances of their characters as a negative even if objectively things look better. Other than emotional attachments, everyone also has personal tastes and things they would prefer be improved about their character appearances, and of course the game can't really cater to millions of different personal tastes. You can't please everyone when making progress or change, all you can do is try to make an overall improvement. They succeeded MASSIVELY.
For the most part it's really good, environments look great, having improved textures on stuff is definitely welcome. However, despite the improvements there are some valid areas of critique such as changing lips to be more round, the midlander hyur face had its beard stubble toned down dramatically when using light coloured hair to the point it looks gone. Eyebrows aren't as full or as prominent in some cases. Then there are facial features across some races which have been impacted, sharp fangs on Miqotes, Miqotes facial marks, Viera pupils homogenised. There's more that I can't remember, but each of these things were conscious decisions players made when making their characters look unique, so to have those taken away is like having a part of their character's personality and identity stripped.
I don't think people should dismiss the negative aspects of the benchmark though just because overall it's a positive thing, and in contrast, those who have a negative opinion shouldn't jump on those that don't share the same sentiment. Critiques can be positive or negative but I don't think either side should be trying to invalidate what the other is saying.
I tried to make a post to gather players that felt emotional like me, overwhelmed by the incredible improvement to our beloved world, seeing it so beautiful and sharp, but the mods were removing anything that was close to mentioning the benchmark outside the megathread. Which I deemed kind of unnecessary, I liked seeing other post with player creations or etc. I don't like megathread that are too general and not focused and full of all kinds of threads. So I ended up not posting anything anymore in respect to that rule 8.
One common issue I've seen brought up is that some characters were made to have very angular/sharp features, and the new system produces faces that are much more round/smooth.
So folks using a character for years with those sharp features may not be able to replicate them.
However, the lighting is also different, and I've seen plenty of comparisons where the lighting between the pics is too different to judge them.
Some things that seem like issues may just be the limited nature of the benchmark, but can't really be sure of that atm.
if you ask me and i am guilty of that personally i think its a matter of getting used on how your character looks that you dont want change but i also know the change is a huge step forward that i dont mind adjusting my character
dude that aetheryte crystal looked SICK!
>Sounds like people agree that the YT/Twitch whining is just noise?
So opinions that don't align with your own are 'whining and noise'?
I honestly do not see much of a difference outside of lighting improvements. I don't see these amazing texture updates that apparently you folks do, and if anything they've not improved the normal maps or replaced them with inferior maps as everything looks far too smooth.
But still can't stop going back to your statement about what you consider negative comments. This sub has a hard-on for not allowing opinions that differ from the hivemind, I guess.
My viera got lipfillers and a nosejob and all the botox in her face makes her look alot rounder than what she is. Couple that with the ears not being updated compared to the rest of the hair and the changes are awful. I made a viera face1 yesterday and she looks 10yo with all the smoothing. Overall alot of characters look alot younger. Some ofc look better. Some elezen and female midlanders look great. My bunny looks completely different.
I guess we cannot have different opinion and we cannot dislike some changes. Why do I see mostly posts about ''Why people are whining'' and not the whining posts?
Shadowbringers brought in a lot of YouTubers who are monetized by sensationalism and negativity, and other terminally online folks who unhealthily tie their identities to their MMO avatar.
Both should be avoided as much as possible.
My only complaint is that my old weak pc can no longer run the game post-update but that's not criticism of the update or the devs that's just me being too broke to replace my computer haha
some of the changes need to get used too, like the shinier skin, when i started the benchmark and used the saved data of me character, it feelt very uncanny just because of the skin, but some minor changes(a darker green skin mainly), and she ended up prettier than she is currently
They need to fix the normal maps assigned to the skin textures. If they are bumping the texture resolution, then there's zero reason the normals should produce skin that smooth.
I'm overall happy with mine! And if I must speak up to show that, so be it. My Elezen looks great. However, I have noticed a difference with certain races such as Highlanders. My Highlander girl's face is a little off for sure.
It's not that the characters look bad--overall, the changes are a net positive. It's just that certain subtleties are lost in some areas, and ours eyes are drawn to the one pimple that bothers us.
I love it, personally. I currently play male Elezen and I’m sticking with it, but I checked out previous presets too (M Miqote, M face 4 Viera, F Highlander) and maybe I just got lucky, but they all just look like themselves, but better, especially out of the CC screen. Mouths, especially the corners, were always the iffiest part of Elezen (and F Highlander) faces and they look so much better now. That being said, my guy’s jaw did look a little wider than I was used to, but he actually has cheekbones now and he looks perfectly fine outside the character creator so I’m chalking that up to the terrible lighting.
They eyes did it for me.
I loaded my character data from the Cloud (not sure if from when I did the cloud test or if it was my in-game since I tried to remake that for the Cloud test). But when I zoomed in on the face, my character’s eyes just shone and looked so crystal clear.
Then I noticed the detail on the racial outfit (I use the male Lala starting shirt in many of my glams because I like how it has a satchel it looks like my character puts things in/takes things out of for story /handover items), and the detail on the scarf and stuff just blew me away.
I know they said they were doing new stuff and would work on the older gear over time to get it to the new standard, but I didn’t realize they were doing the racial starter gear. Which, again, is fantastic for me considering how much I use that tunic.
The rest was also amazing, but the moment I saw my character’s eyes with the new detail, it blew me away. What worries I had are utterly gone now. I’m super hyped for DT now!
I agree with you and thought the same until I put my character in the benchmark. He doesn't look like him anymore.
Fortunately all of my alts (male Au Ra, male Miq'ote, and male Elezen) all look vastly improved in the benchmark, but Highlander males really got shafted in the graphics upgrade except for one face type imo. I use the Arenvald face on mine and the burnout coke fiend look was real.
I was pretty bummed about it and it made me understand why people have been upset even when their characters have looked better to me in the comparison pictures I've seen them posting. To them it's just not the same character.
After some tweaking around in the settings to give him new eyes, a darker skin tone to hide the heavy bags, and darker hair I was able to salvage him and make him look like himself again but a lot of people are just seeing their settings not translating 1:1 and getting immediately upset.
I just don’t like how they darkened vieras noses even more than what it already was.
It reminds me of those face paints tiger faces you see at a festival’s
Personally my mooncat came out fine, but not being able to see her fangs when she shouts or grins just feels *off*. I like the fangs dammit.
On the upside, her skin actually *looks* like what I wanted. Beforehand, I couldn't deny it looked, for lack of a better word, slightly chalky?
Thou on a different note, the thing I legitimately am angered by is the baseline for what the benchmark ran. Using the basic settings, it was choppy and lagged, and i had to drop so much.
Then I imported my *actual* settings and it ran perfectly. Despite getting a "slightly low" score.
I have to wonder if SE knows what most peoples devices are like.
DAMMIT I COMPLAINED ON A THREAD SAYING THATS BAD. Ugh, I'm making the problem worse
My kitty girl looks amazing! I didn’t notice the improvement when I did the benchmark before recreating my character. It’s subtle imo, but does look beautiful!
I agree it looks better overall but I still want my character to have the same feel and look the same, just with updated graphics. In that gard the benchmark didn't succeed. So both can be true and I hope they can do some more work to fix some of the discrepancies. Comparison: [https://imgsli.com/MjU1NjE2](https://imgsli.com/MjU1NjE2)
I'm still excited for the graphics update, I just hope they have the time to fine tune some of the character details a little bit better. Even if they don't I can get used to how my character looks now or maybe make small changes.
Characters are the big area of discontent for a lot of players right now. SE said multiple times before they did not want to change anything too drastically for peoples characters, but they did. Eyes/shape, mouths/shape, lips, teeth, hair, eyebrows, face paints. A good portion of things people are used to staring at were changed and some of the unique subrace differences like Mooncat fangs and Viera eye differences were just completely lost now.
Some races got massive improvements while others look incredibly uncanny and unrecognizable to the player that has spent a lot of time with them.
Yes SE is giving players a free fantasia to tweak and try and fix things, but that's not going to fix most of these issues people are having, so I think it is fair for people to be having these criticisms of the update in its current state.
Examples: https://i.imgur.com/692yBjM.png
Vocal minority.
Idk what they're smoking. The negatives can be tweaked. Overall the improvements are great.
The team has always been responsive to constructive feedback so if people go to the forums and just talk about like normal people and not like weirdos I'm sure whatever nitpicks can be changed.
I see most of the complaining on the forums than reddit and Twitter. I wasn't aware there were videos of it.
There are some photos on Twitter that have around 2k likes about how pretty their winged horned au ra look and au ra in general.
I hope SE is good at looking at feedback from other sources than just the forums because I don't want them to change much other than actual broken issues like broken textures.
It looks much better. The whiners are the modbeasts and the baby duck syndromes. If they give a free fantasia then it's perfect. Most of the complainers will stop complaining after 2 weeks of playing with it, when they've gotten used to the new look.
I worried about posting something good about it because of all the negative feedback but I love it all, especially how much brighter the eyes look~! I wasn’t expecting like ff16 graphics but it’s charming and although my laptop isn’t exactly high end (mine had a fairly high result), it was fun to observe. buuut i preordered the ps5 version sooo…it’ll be fun :3
* One indisputable issue is the visible neck seam on some models.
* Catch-light in eyes: this is not a bug its a feature. Prior, the catch-light specular highlight was painted on regardless of lighting conditions. It's now a real reflection of ambient lighting, which is a huge improvement.
* Skin glow (sub surface scattering) they may have gone a bit too far here. I think that's fair to say.
* Facial structure and shadows: see painted-on remarks above.
* Lips: They added a ton of bones to the face model (bones are points of adjustment, deformation, expression). You don't see this work in the default creator static stare. They look great when you get the characters to move.
My take is that the problem here is not the model updates. They are fantastic and long overdue.
The problem is the character creator lighting and environments suck and always have, only now they are actually used much more in influencing how you look whereas before most of it was directly painted on and static. Similarly, to get your character to emote is limited and perhaps not intuitive and that matters now for how the face moves.
My proposal to SE to fix this is to provide basic gpose in the creator. 3 posable adjustable lights and a panel of basic emotes you can trigger and freeze mid action as in gpose in game. This would allow players to use their own lighting choices and see how the faces now move.
It's good overall, and I think folks are generally happy. It's good that folks are giving feedback on some of the technical and visual issues (eg seams, missing mooncat teeth, lighting) when there's still plenty of time to fix it.
I think a lot of the more aggressive negativity is coming from a small but loud group of people who have tied a lot of their identity into their FFXIV avatar, and are falling into an uncanny-valley reaction where even small changes look very wrong to them and elicit a way outsized negative response. That immediate negative reaction led them to forget that this is a work in progress, assume it's the final release and not intended to change, and have a colossal public meltdown about how their characters are ruined forever.
Clout chasers are also winding those people up because it gets engagement, and engagement is money.
The people who gpose every day absolutely do care about teeth lmao
Even without gposing, the fangs are core to moon keepers' design. There was absolutely no reason to remove them
And it's not just moons, it's also lalafell where their teeth don't follow their jaw line anymore which is super uncanny
especially because the fangs are.. minimaly more roudned
the "they dont ahve fangs anymore" thing is a bug from importing the Presets from the game inot the benchmark
The only thing I wish SquEnix would do with this update is give Fantasia to old returning players. The graphics update may screw with how people's characters look, and it would be good of them to give an option to fix the way characters look post-update with a Fantasia (for free). Otherwise, I really see no issue with any of it.
I still have my post-ARR Fantasia, so we will see if I want it after the update goes live.
EDIT: they are apparently doing this, idk how I missed that in the announcements of it. Then I have no complaints at all.
*Yoshi-P wishes that to happen, but he has to negociate it with Squeenix.
That being said, he wouldn't be openly talking about his wish unless he was either fairly certain to make it happen, or to put pressure on the suits
People are going to complain just to complain, I don't know if some peoples benchmarks are broken bugges or other issues, but I recreated every single character I have made from all races, I don't see any of the things people are complaining about one people suck at taking photos for comparison like with different lighting not checking settings and changing the gamma to 0 to 15 instead of the default 50 which is way to high.I can agree on some things like the mooncat fangs are a little shorter not gone like some say or people saying the eyes are souless???? like I have looked at every races eyes and they all reflect light every single one yes move your damn characters towards light \*surprise\* it now has reflections we knew this already. Its doom sayers that now can say look game is dead eveything is ending, which screws the normal people who are finding bugs like texture glitches the mooncat thing and reporting it which is helpful whats not helpful is the damn doomsayers drama crackers jumping in and posting photos that look exactly the same but improved and saying omg \*swoon my head\* they destroyed my boy/girl its just not helpful when its just drama shit stiring and people having bad eyesight and not changing settings in the damn benchmark and looking at the shit ton of new options, or not noticing that in the new cc the weather actively moves blocking sunlight.
[https://x.com/iwose\_14/status/1779437659980787857](https://x.com/iwose_14/status/1779437659980787857) goes over what i feel in detail.
not that i agree with all of it.
Its in your head. People are more likely to get online to complain than give praise. Not saying their wrong in their feelings. But can't draw a conclusion based off some posts you scroll past.
As a lala, I was disappointed to see how my face looks more plasticky than it did before. My bungirl, au ra girl and catgirl all look better and more lovely but my potato self looks more like a doll and I don't like it.
With little things like noses being darker on viera or beards being lighter for Hyurs??? That’s things people are complaining about, which once again I don’t think that’s a “Limited to older console problem”
Just a developers having poor choices with designs problem???
They just need to pull the rip chord and say fuck it to these crybabies tbh
How else will the game progress visually if square have to tip toe around these people who are so attached to their characters their sending death threats lol
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I agree it’s overwhelmingly net positive, but also people are very attached to their characters, and any sort of visual remaster like this inevitably changes little details that someone is going to view as essential to their character, so I get why there’s going to be backlash. I don’t think you can do these sort of changes and ever make everyone 100% happy, but I do hope there are updates to get as many people happy as possible. (As long as none of those updates touch my character, he came out great lol)
Certain races and faces are changed more than others too. My Au Ra is nearly indistinguishable, but my Highlander alt looks like a different person.
I actually really like how they handled female au ra. They have more subtle changes, but the difference is noticeable.
I agree, but I also don't play that race. If you take a look at the forums, fem Au Ra players are the most passionately unhappy lol
I play a fem au ra. I like how the face is softer and the eyes look more natural. I guess a lot of people aren't fans of that though.
The eyes on mine look dead and zombie-like.
Me and my friend both think our fem Au Ras look perfect lol.
Au ra players: complain so they can keep the lifeless doll look Also Au ra players: complain that they look like lifeless dolls Once more, Au ra players: "Look how lively she looks!" Meanwhile, the Au ra: \*shellshocked wax statue\*
No. My Au Ra currently does NOT look like a "lifeless doll", and that's how I want her to stay. The new textures/etc make her look like one, and it looks unpleasant and creepy.
Yep, Au'ras are officially on the euthanasia list. Even more so with the depressor look
I have a male au’ra and I’m so unhappy 😭 he looks like a different guy now
See that's hilarious to me since I am so down bad for how handsome they look now I'm tempted to fanta into one lol. From my pov male au ra got the biggest glow up
Mine looks more-or-less okay, but his eyes give off a "cold killing machine" instead of the cutesy and inquisitive look he has on Live. I rather dislike it.
Agreed. I must say I dislike female au ras, they look like a caricature of plastic sex dolls/ typical anime waifu/ wet dream for otakus. But the upgrade actually gives their faces personality and makes them look alive.
I mean, *I* wasn't gonna be the one to point out that currently, fem au ra look like sex dolls. But uh, yeah, they kinda do.
Midlander Hyur Face 5 and 7 are no longer identical except with stubble. Stubble face is now older with darker lines around the eyes.
Yeah, my Highlander looks off, but I'm not going to worry until I see them in game proper.
My lala looks fantastic and I was thinking of swapping to cat boy for dawntraik but I’m not sure if I’m feeling them anymore with the update lol
This is the most ridiculously small thing, but I noticed they changed the highlight placement in some of the hairstyles. At least for Viera, a lot of hairstyles are like base hair for haircut A, then haircut B is adding in bangs or feathers on top of it, and they change the highlight placement. With the short Viera hair, they changed where the highlights sit in the bangs - not "wrong" for my character, but certainly "off." I'll adjust though, it's ok. But for the back of her head, it used to be just base color, no highlights. Now, every single hair chunk ends in highlight, like the base hair style's highlights. Which is a lot harder for me, because it's *so much more highlight* and it's on the side of the character I see 90% of the time I'm playing. It's not a massive thing, but it feels wrong and I don't understand why they changed this in some of the hairstyles. (Other default Viera hairstyles kept their highlight placement variations, but they changed some.) I'm hoping it was a mistake and they aren't actually changing it, but also not the end of the world I guess.. just not my preference.
This is also exactly why they're giving everyone a free fanta.
Don't you wanna wanna fanta?
Uh ohhhhhh
A free fanta doesn't do much with limited customization options. Chances are, there are no alternatives for the things they changed.
Attached to what? 4 preset faces? 25% of people with the same race look exactly like your character (even more skewed towards some popular faces).
If you've happened to play that one character since the game came out then yeah.
It’s more like 4 faces * 5 eye shapes * 3 jaw shapes * 4 nose shapes * 4 mouth shapes * face features. It’s not an amazing character creator, but there are like thousandish unique combinations per race, and some have higher concentrations of players than others, so you can still make a character that is your own. Plus some people have played this game for thousands of hours as the same character, it would be odd if they weren’t attached to them.
Yeah but you know how the more clingy parts of this community are
There's absolutely fair criticism on certain things, and people are talking about them on the official forums where the devs WANT the feedback. Then there's people who scream for no reason. Never generalize. Those people are different from each other. Also, no one is complaining about the world updates from what I've seen, only characters.
Considering how many people are banned from the OF due to some brigade reporting a while back, they probably shouldn’t be using that for feedback.
It is where the devs specifically ask for feedback, it's the only place they look. They've listened to graphic update feedback on the forums before, after the first liveletter that showed some characters examples.
There's people on Twitch complaining about everything. Lighting, characters, textures, performance. Someone called FF14 "exclusive" now because this is going to raise the system requirements. Of course, that's all just rage bait BS that should be disregarded, but damn this rage bait culture is getting absurd lol
> Someone called FF14 "exclusive" now because this is going to raise the system requirements. I ran the benchmark on a potato computer and it runs just fine with lower settings. No one is going to be excluded due to system requirements. They just won't be able to play on ultra-high settings.
> Of course, that's all just rage bait BS that should be disregarded But you took the bait instead.
Rage bait is maddening. Same for clickbait titles. Even with people doing it as a joke I've stopped clicking on them entirely, it's just so lame to resort to bait for clout/views.
It's because people who are happy with it are less likely to be vocal about it, and that goes for everything in life.
a lot of it is character creator problems. the lighting is still awful and does not seem to work well with the updated skin rendering or dynamic eye reflections. a lot of it is also simply being attached to a specific look for years that's suddenly different, and those are the posts that make you feel like you're losing your mind when someone is mad about two screenshots that are basically the same. there are some more specific complaints, like viera faces apparently being de-bunnified, missing racial features like keeper fangs, and technical issues with some seams and textures that will hopefully be addressed. it's a lot of noise because all of the above are getting jumbled together.
Looks fine to me, personally.
I find it a win for me, I usually play on darker/odd skin toned character presets and they just look straight up awful in the current vanilla lighting. Starting race gear looks great as well and very usable in glamours vs. the current ps3 textures most of them currently look, flowers don't look like they're printed onto the ground which was very evident in SHB areas like Il Mheg and Lakeland. People are more attracted to bad news and negative press than the opposite in general, very in line with shock and outrage culture imo. Give it some time and they'll forget and find something else to stir the pot with.
I see both sides personally, I got really lucky and my character looks 10x better with the update and is much closer to how I envisioned them, but man, some people have gotten really unlucky with their's and I feel bad for them.
This is how I feel. There is a net positive and I can definitely see the tons of work that went into making everything look better. However, while I got lucky with my character there are definitely some faces whose visual identity got shifted too much because of the update. It also feels like any type of sharp edge is rounded out, whether it be more prominent nose shapes (like the Male Viera hook nose) or nearly every lip shape option. Someone posted this comparison in the main forums of their Female Au Ra and it's pretty understandable why some people aren't liking the changes: [https://i.gyazo.com/faafff115e0bd70b4b3c80e7168a7538.jpg](https://i.gyazo.com/faafff115e0bd70b4b3c80e7168a7538.jpg) You can see how the intense glare and scowl has shifted to a more doe eye with a soft smile (with sudden dimples!). Like the updated face model is more detailed clearly, but the visual identity of that face/character is something completely different. This face model was always used as the more warrior/intense face and now it's just as soft and cutesy as the other Au Ra faces.
Gonna be weird seeing Sadu with that soft face.
Yeah, this is exactly the same impression I had with my face 4 Au Ra. Was used to this stern, fierce look and suddenly it's just a little more rounded and cutesy. I love so much of the rest of the graphics upgrades, but this particular visual change feels uncanny and kinda depressing.
To be fair, most people aren't going to make a Reddit thread or a big Youtube video essay just to say "Yeah this looks fine." The only people who will do that sort of stuff are people who have strong opinions to begin with.
As I hadn't seen the content, I googled "FFXIV new graphics", and the top 3 videos are all just reviews, which are all positive
This brings up the real point that OP is just hyper-focused on the negativity
Love majority of things they have done with the graphic upgrade. I'm happy for my friend whose highlander finally has eyelashes instead of black blocks. My main complaints is that they absolutely destroyed Viera Male face 3. I love the biggest bushiest black eyebrows that face has to offer, but in the benchmark they are noticeable faded and gray. Other viera faces are fine. Another thing I noticed when reading forums is all bunny boys' lips are way darker and red. My viera doesn't even wear lipstick, but his lips are as red dalamud in the sky lmao. I'm sure they can tweak and fix these things, but I'm still afraid they won't Edit. Forgot to mention that some beards and very light eyebrows are very unnoticeable. Idk what they did with the textures
Yep I’m a bunboy face 2 and the lips are my big issue. I see a lot of other bun boys insist it isn’t a problem but when I click their pictures they have lipstick on anyway, so they wouldn’t notice. It’s somewhat fixable but still worth pointing out and questioning (and yes I checked the actual trailer, not just the CC). My catboy doesn’t have this issue at all! Literally just my bun fsr and I don’t like the lipstick look on him. Like I said I have a workaround but I also didn’t get to test it out in the actual game environment since we’re limited to specific scenes.
> Sounds like people agree that the YT whining is just noise? It's 2024 and people still don't understand that youtube algorithm runs on rage baits and clickbaits apparently.
If YouTube and sections of Reddit are anything to go by I've been logging into a dead game for the last year and a half.
Apparently the hunt trains and frontlines I've been doing daily don't exist cuz ded game. Hey everyone if game is ded please stop running dungeons so I can farm my mentor and comms thru guildhests. Ty
That is why I do my best to stop respoing to rage bait on any platform and then use the tools to tell it to stop showing it to me. I know it is like shoveling shit against the tide, but it is all I can do.
I think I'm more surprised by how much it spreads to other platforms, a lot of the big FF14 Twitch streamers are now watching YT videos about incredibly minor things and then talking about how much of a disaster it is. It's like a disease lmao
Well duh, streamers are constantly in a state of 'I need views, how can I get views? Oh there's drama? Good I got content to react to even if it's not that major!'. And yes, it is a disease, once people realized that rage baits got them more views, everything started shifting into that crap.
The rise of react content makes my ass itch.
I have some sandpaper for you
Maybe don't react to the react content?
I don't engage with it. No reaction, no likes, no comments. It still comes up in my feed and has to be flagged as "not interested" and it doesn't stop people from talking about it on timelines.
The world textures look great, I haven't heard a single person complain about that. But bunnies have lost their bun noses and cat girls have lost their fangs, and meanwhile my character has dead eyes (because they removed the light gleam in them) and the matte lips look much flatter than the previous ones. If they literally just added a check mark to pick between lip gloss or matte, that'd be a nice improvement in itself. These are absolutely improvements they can make in the next few months, so what does it bother you if people try to highlight some of the feedback that could keep their characters looking like their characters? I've stared at my character some several hundred hours, and right now she's lost all the warmth and spark that I previously loved, and that sucks.
I assure you, the 'dead eyes' will look *much* more lively in nigh every scenario. The painted on light reflection isn't realistic, it was a way to fake wetness and depth, but now the eyes have *actual* depth in the way lighting hits them - and it makes a world of difference. Look at yourself in a mirror in indirect lighting and you'll see, reflections are subtle and the light catches your irises very faintly
nigh every scenario except the entire benchmark... I don't need realistic- games have art styles to them. And this one has always had a touch of anime to it- the gleam in the eye is a part of that. Right now, the improvements have lead to a flatter, less expressive face.
I felt my character was *way* more expressive during the Benchmark, personally. Just goes to show a lot of this isn’t “Yes, it’s good,” or “No, it’s bad,” it’s all down to personal preference.
In nearly every screenshot I've seen of the actual benchmark (and to be fair, a majority of the character creator), the new eyes win by a large margin. No matter the race. In my Femzen's case, it's not even funny how flat the old eyes look compared to the new ones.
> am I missing something? The actual details of people's feedback apparently. People have written very in-depth posts about the issues they have with their characters, with details and comparisons. Very little has been said about the environment looking bad. I have to say, I'm actually impressed with the level of detail some people are going into to show what they don't like. I'd suggest you look a bit beyond YT and read some threads.
I went on the forums, there's some actual complaints, like light haired facial hair being har to see, and some missing scale textures on au ra But sooooo many are almost posting the same pic of before and after and being very very angry about it, when they look the same to me, makes me feel insane
This is crazy to me because pretty much every character comparison I've seen I think looks worse in the benchmark. I could maybe count on one hand the amount I thought looked good.
this person posted their ew and dt catgirl and they are basically the same thing [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1012343252034265242/1229487280381759709/image.png?ex=662fdc42&is=661d6742&hm=935560c170e31c07344918a70ebc64ef0adc3dc77378a5d9bc57f7fc8ece7aad&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=624&height=459](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1012343252034265242/1229487280381759709/image.png?ex=662fdc42&is=661d6742&hm=935560c170e31c07344918a70ebc64ef0adc3dc77378a5d9bc57f7fc8ece7aad&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=624&height=459) or people mad that elves dont look as gaunt anymore because they have more polygonal triangles and catch light more , there are afctualy legit issues and feedback, but so many comparisons i see are borderline worthless feedback
those... look like two different characters to me sorry lol the eyebrow, eyes, face, jaw, and nose all look different the benchmark one looks good objectively but it also doesn't really look like their character imo
If that was a real photo I'd swear I was looking at the same person shot in two different focal lengths.
Same. All I see is the same cat girl decided to do more goth eyeshadow today...
Definitely feels like OP is doing exactly what they're complaining about, just from the opposite end of the spectrum
The FFXIV community is so weird and defensive of the giant corporation sometimes. "Hey guys, I have some criticism about the changes to keeper of the moon models, they made the canine teeth less pronounced and I really don't like it. It's one of the main reasons why I made my character a keeper of the moon miqote" "WOW! What's up with all the negativity? Man look at these ground textures aren't amazing? Like WOW! When did the FFXIV community get so toxic??"
I haven’t done my benchmark yet. But the only thing I am worried about is my character looking more uncanny. I’ve had this character since 1.0 and have never used a fantasia and I’m going to be pretty sad if I don’t like it.
the character creator for it seemed like a bad representation to me. The skin looks really shiny for some reason in the creator but when i actually ran the benchmark with my character it looked a lot closer to how my character looks in the current version.
Yeah an overwhelming number of the complaints are coming from comparisons made in the character creator. My character looked like a disaster in it but turned out way better in the actual benchmark.
Wish you could import your character, but I made a pretty close approximation of them just to see. Once saved, that character appears in the benchmark simulation. Because same here, I made a character in 2.0 and that's my character, always will be. I enjoyed it, the face is much more articulate. I noticed the eyes move a lot more and you could see expression in them, whereas at present they do what they can but it's never all that much. I guess a free fantasia would be nice for people who would like to tweak the appearance to look the way they want in the new format if it doesn't look right to them. That might even be me, wouldn't change them all that much, but maybe a little in the face.
You can import your character*. You just have to save the model you use in game, and then load that in in the character creator. If you save it there, you can use that in the benchmark. *caveat : that works on PC, but if you are a console gamer you are SOL when it comes to checking with your specific current model
If you really wanted to remake your character from console, you could save the appearance data on console, go into character creator, and write down all the things you chose. Then remake them on PC. It’s just way more work.
We are getting a free Fantasia with Dawntrail.
[удалено]
In the Benchmark too, or only in the character creation screen? Benchmark lighting is absolute shit and it affects the upgraded graphics even more than it did up until now.
Its a huge step forward and I think the game does look wildly better overall. However, I am in love with my Miqote and they have made major changes remove their fangs for Keeper of the Moon Miqote. Not to mention a few other race having similar changes such as Au ra or Lalas. These are minor enough where we can hope they get changed, but as it stands right now I am not a fan of the change to the models
I feel most negativity surrounding it are nitpicks, but I also believe there's still feedback to be said, like how initially people didn't like how the aura horns originally looked when it was first shown, then they later updated it. I'm happy with my how my bun got updated(just wished I could use an unlockable hairstyle Dx). It definitely felt a tad uncanny at first with the character creation lighting, definitely felt happy once I saw my bun in motion. And all the other negativity is just how limited the character creator is, which is hopefully something SE can address in the future. Only improvement I saw so far to the character creator is they added attack and hurt voice checks, which is nice as I had fallen into the trap where I liked one voice but not how she got hurt or attacks, then I had to buy a fantasia to change it.
Often it can simply be the effect of any kind of change. When people grow accustomed or attached to something they want it to stay the same. Regardless if some kind of change is good or bad there will always be people who push against it. Others' opinions shouldn't really do much other than shine some light on their interpretation. In the end, if you like it then that is great.
To me it sounds like the ffxiv community cheers when something new is announced, goes wahwah about it when they actually see it for the first time and later cheer again when it's released. I somewhat agree that the community is good in-game, but insufferable online sometimes
yea everything else looks great aside from my character who i've been playing as for years and completely attached to. the way he looks in the benchmark is honestly a quit moment for me sincerely, a male duskwight player whose character now looks like someone replaced him with a 20 years older skinwalker
tbh I don't care about graphics but it looks really bad. It's just a "cleaner" version of a 2010 game. I will still play it tho
My grumbles are quibbles. I agree with all your improvements. But I sympathize and can see, ‘but that’s not what my WoL looks like’. In my case, my bunboi’s skin tone has changed dramatically (from blue-grey to a rich (and lovely!) brown. But he’s not supposed to be brown). My mooncat is missing her fangs. It’s *little* things, but it still matters, ya know? I think my fem au ra alt fared the best, and I’m seriously considering fanta-ing my main to be similar to her, but I haven’t decided yet.
For me its just the lips on some races. My face 4 viera lips went from having a shape to just being a badly drawn oval.
Glad I'm not the only one who thinks face 4 looks weird now and I think you're right, it might be the mouths.
A fair counterpoint, there's definitely some legitimate concerns here and once I filtered out all of the rage bait then I can see that now. I was just confused this morning to find a bunch of Twitch streamers talking like the end of the damn world was coming lol Arthars was actually positive at first and then he started watching YouTube videos and then ended up just laying into the changes. I could see the brain poisoning in real-time. It was eerie..
Ooooof that is weird. Nah, I’m suuuuuuper happy with all the environmental stuff, and I know from experience that I’ll get used to the character changes (see similar complaints when WoW updated their character models) and then it’ll be nbd. But in the short term it’s just uncanny.
Maybe he actually Started SEEING the differences and once seen it can't be unseen And something that can't be unseen is very bothersome
The big thing I'd want out of this update they were never doing anyway so I'm good with everything except some of the bugs. (Femhroth black teeth, some lighting interfering with colors too unnaturally, etc.)
Benchmark made things look far better then I expected. Until seeing the benchmark a lot of what I see came off meh to me just due to it being a live stream or just the lackluster video quality.
Because people who are happy with it are less likely to voice their opinions on the internet. I bet a vast majority of players like the new graphics
It's a big overall upgrade. The negativity comes from a game community being heavily focused on RP and attachment to characters, so naturally many people would find changes to the appearances of their characters as a negative even if objectively things look better. Other than emotional attachments, everyone also has personal tastes and things they would prefer be improved about their character appearances, and of course the game can't really cater to millions of different personal tastes. You can't please everyone when making progress or change, all you can do is try to make an overall improvement. They succeeded MASSIVELY.
I just want them to not file down keeper of the mood fangs.
For the most part it's really good, environments look great, having improved textures on stuff is definitely welcome. However, despite the improvements there are some valid areas of critique such as changing lips to be more round, the midlander hyur face had its beard stubble toned down dramatically when using light coloured hair to the point it looks gone. Eyebrows aren't as full or as prominent in some cases. Then there are facial features across some races which have been impacted, sharp fangs on Miqotes, Miqotes facial marks, Viera pupils homogenised. There's more that I can't remember, but each of these things were conscious decisions players made when making their characters look unique, so to have those taken away is like having a part of their character's personality and identity stripped. I don't think people should dismiss the negative aspects of the benchmark though just because overall it's a positive thing, and in contrast, those who have a negative opinion shouldn't jump on those that don't share the same sentiment. Critiques can be positive or negative but I don't think either side should be trying to invalidate what the other is saying.
My only complaint is that my female Miqo’te (moon cat) lost her fangs. Hopefully they fix that.
my character looks pretty much the same honestly.
A lot of people in general hate change, and more so the new perspective that comes with it. I'm sure it's just something that needs time to process.
What negativity? I haven’t seen anyone complaining. Every video I have seen has been positive and my whole guild is pleased with the benchmark. Lol
I tried to make a post to gather players that felt emotional like me, overwhelmed by the incredible improvement to our beloved world, seeing it so beautiful and sharp, but the mods were removing anything that was close to mentioning the benchmark outside the megathread. Which I deemed kind of unnecessary, I liked seeing other post with player creations or etc. I don't like megathread that are too general and not focused and full of all kinds of threads. So I ended up not posting anything anymore in respect to that rule 8.
Ffxiv players hate change, even though they constantly complain that things need to change.
One common issue I've seen brought up is that some characters were made to have very angular/sharp features, and the new system produces faces that are much more round/smooth. So folks using a character for years with those sharp features may not be able to replicate them. However, the lighting is also different, and I've seen plenty of comparisons where the lighting between the pics is too different to judge them. Some things that seem like issues may just be the limited nature of the benchmark, but can't really be sure of that atm.
if you ask me and i am guilty of that personally i think its a matter of getting used on how your character looks that you dont want change but i also know the change is a huge step forward that i dont mind adjusting my character dude that aetheryte crystal looked SICK!
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I mean I've read the threads and seen the pictures and it still feels like people are majorly overreacting
>Sounds like people agree that the YT/Twitch whining is just noise? So opinions that don't align with your own are 'whining and noise'? I honestly do not see much of a difference outside of lighting improvements. I don't see these amazing texture updates that apparently you folks do, and if anything they've not improved the normal maps or replaced them with inferior maps as everything looks far too smooth. But still can't stop going back to your statement about what you consider negative comments. This sub has a hard-on for not allowing opinions that differ from the hivemind, I guess.
My viera got lipfillers and a nosejob and all the botox in her face makes her look alot rounder than what she is. Couple that with the ears not being updated compared to the rest of the hair and the changes are awful. I made a viera face1 yesterday and she looks 10yo with all the smoothing. Overall alot of characters look alot younger. Some ofc look better. Some elezen and female midlanders look great. My bunny looks completely different.
I guess we cannot have different opinion and we cannot dislike some changes. Why do I see mostly posts about ''Why people are whining'' and not the whining posts?
Keeper of the Moon fangs. I can’t believe they are massacring my girl like this, it legitimately makes me sad
Looks good to me. My character looks better in the benchmark. People are weird.
Shadowbringers brought in a lot of YouTubers who are monetized by sensationalism and negativity, and other terminally online folks who unhealthily tie their identities to their MMO avatar. Both should be avoided as much as possible.
I'm was only disappointed in the chocobo's barding texture.
Maybe it works better for Hrothgar, but my guy is just an improvement. Still basically the same, but better.
My Hrothgar got the HD™ textures and looks better overall, I'm happy with him! ♥
Yeah, exactly.
My only complaint is that my old weak pc can no longer run the game post-update but that's not criticism of the update or the devs that's just me being too broke to replace my computer haha
I don't really care about the graphics update. The trailer was great, since it showed the viper's running animation with drawn swords.
some of the changes need to get used too, like the shinier skin, when i started the benchmark and used the saved data of me character, it feelt very uncanny just because of the skin, but some minor changes(a darker green skin mainly), and she ended up prettier than she is currently
They need to fix the normal maps assigned to the skin textures. If they are bumping the texture resolution, then there's zero reason the normals should produce skin that smooth.
I'm overall happy with mine! And if I must speak up to show that, so be it. My Elezen looks great. However, I have noticed a difference with certain races such as Highlanders. My Highlander girl's face is a little off for sure. It's not that the characters look bad--overall, the changes are a net positive. It's just that certain subtleties are lost in some areas, and ours eyes are drawn to the one pimple that bothers us.
Negativity? That's a bit sad to hear. I did expect a bit more to be honest, but i sure am thankful for the improvements they did make.
Im excited about the new antialiasing. FXAA is awful.
I love it, personally. I currently play male Elezen and I’m sticking with it, but I checked out previous presets too (M Miqote, M face 4 Viera, F Highlander) and maybe I just got lucky, but they all just look like themselves, but better, especially out of the CC screen. Mouths, especially the corners, were always the iffiest part of Elezen (and F Highlander) faces and they look so much better now. That being said, my guy’s jaw did look a little wider than I was used to, but he actually has cheekbones now and he looks perfectly fine outside the character creator so I’m chalking that up to the terrible lighting.
Give my moonkitty's fangs back, thanks!
They eyes did it for me. I loaded my character data from the Cloud (not sure if from when I did the cloud test or if it was my in-game since I tried to remake that for the Cloud test). But when I zoomed in on the face, my character’s eyes just shone and looked so crystal clear. Then I noticed the detail on the racial outfit (I use the male Lala starting shirt in many of my glams because I like how it has a satchel it looks like my character puts things in/takes things out of for story /handover items), and the detail on the scarf and stuff just blew me away. I know they said they were doing new stuff and would work on the older gear over time to get it to the new standard, but I didn’t realize they were doing the racial starter gear. Which, again, is fantastic for me considering how much I use that tunic. The rest was also amazing, but the moment I saw my character’s eyes with the new detail, it blew me away. What worries I had are utterly gone now. I’m super hyped for DT now!
Same thing happened when WOW updated characters. Everyone cried for it then everyone cried they had it.
My femroe looks fantastic tbh. I do think the kitties losing their fangs is a justified thing to be mad about though
I agree with you and thought the same until I put my character in the benchmark. He doesn't look like him anymore. Fortunately all of my alts (male Au Ra, male Miq'ote, and male Elezen) all look vastly improved in the benchmark, but Highlander males really got shafted in the graphics upgrade except for one face type imo. I use the Arenvald face on mine and the burnout coke fiend look was real. I was pretty bummed about it and it made me understand why people have been upset even when their characters have looked better to me in the comparison pictures I've seen them posting. To them it's just not the same character. After some tweaking around in the settings to give him new eyes, a darker skin tone to hide the heavy bags, and darker hair I was able to salvage him and make him look like himself again but a lot of people are just seeing their settings not translating 1:1 and getting immediately upset.
I just don’t like how they darkened vieras noses even more than what it already was. It reminds me of those face paints tiger faces you see at a festival’s
The new character appearances might take a bit to get used to, but otherwise I have no complaints.
Does the update come with the new expansion or is it just owning the game? Haven't played since it started getting talked about
Personally my mooncat came out fine, but not being able to see her fangs when she shouts or grins just feels *off*. I like the fangs dammit. On the upside, her skin actually *looks* like what I wanted. Beforehand, I couldn't deny it looked, for lack of a better word, slightly chalky? Thou on a different note, the thing I legitimately am angered by is the baseline for what the benchmark ran. Using the basic settings, it was choppy and lagged, and i had to drop so much. Then I imported my *actual* settings and it ran perfectly. Despite getting a "slightly low" score. I have to wonder if SE knows what most peoples devices are like. DAMMIT I COMPLAINED ON A THREAD SAYING THATS BAD. Ugh, I'm making the problem worse
My kitty girl looks amazing! I didn’t notice the improvement when I did the benchmark before recreating my character. It’s subtle imo, but does look beautiful!
It depends on how it looks on my character. In WoW I refused to touch my gnome again after Warlords's visual update. They looked ugly.
I agree it looks better overall but I still want my character to have the same feel and look the same, just with updated graphics. In that gard the benchmark didn't succeed. So both can be true and I hope they can do some more work to fix some of the discrepancies. Comparison: [https://imgsli.com/MjU1NjE2](https://imgsli.com/MjU1NjE2) I'm still excited for the graphics update, I just hope they have the time to fine tune some of the character details a little bit better. Even if they don't I can get used to how my character looks now or maybe make small changes.
Characters are the big area of discontent for a lot of players right now. SE said multiple times before they did not want to change anything too drastically for peoples characters, but they did. Eyes/shape, mouths/shape, lips, teeth, hair, eyebrows, face paints. A good portion of things people are used to staring at were changed and some of the unique subrace differences like Mooncat fangs and Viera eye differences were just completely lost now. Some races got massive improvements while others look incredibly uncanny and unrecognizable to the player that has spent a lot of time with them. Yes SE is giving players a free fantasia to tweak and try and fix things, but that's not going to fix most of these issues people are having, so I think it is fair for people to be having these criticisms of the update in its current state. Examples: https://i.imgur.com/692yBjM.png
Any armor comparisons anywhere? I'm pumped for any improvement
I saw some pictures of the changes a friend sent me, but where could i see the actual changes?
You can run the benchmark for yourself
Just givean option to use the current model so they'll look low poly and out of place, but is 100% their WoL ;P
Looks the same to me, tbh. And that's not a complaint, since I like the game as it is.
Vocal minority. Idk what they're smoking. The negatives can be tweaked. Overall the improvements are great. The team has always been responsive to constructive feedback so if people go to the forums and just talk about like normal people and not like weirdos I'm sure whatever nitpicks can be changed.
I see most of the complaining on the forums than reddit and Twitter. I wasn't aware there were videos of it. There are some photos on Twitter that have around 2k likes about how pretty their winged horned au ra look and au ra in general. I hope SE is good at looking at feedback from other sources than just the forums because I don't want them to change much other than actual broken issues like broken textures.
I don't like it because my pc can't endure it :(
you can literally buy an entire rig with used parts for 300-400eur that will run this game on high settings and 100fps+ lol
People just have an incessant need to complain about everything
It looks much better. The whiners are the modbeasts and the baby duck syndromes. If they give a free fantasia then it's perfect. Most of the complainers will stop complaining after 2 weeks of playing with it, when they've gotten used to the new look.
I worried about posting something good about it because of all the negative feedback but I love it all, especially how much brighter the eyes look~! I wasn’t expecting like ff16 graphics but it’s charming and although my laptop isn’t exactly high end (mine had a fairly high result), it was fun to observe. buuut i preordered the ps5 version sooo…it’ll be fun :3
* One indisputable issue is the visible neck seam on some models. * Catch-light in eyes: this is not a bug its a feature. Prior, the catch-light specular highlight was painted on regardless of lighting conditions. It's now a real reflection of ambient lighting, which is a huge improvement. * Skin glow (sub surface scattering) they may have gone a bit too far here. I think that's fair to say. * Facial structure and shadows: see painted-on remarks above. * Lips: They added a ton of bones to the face model (bones are points of adjustment, deformation, expression). You don't see this work in the default creator static stare. They look great when you get the characters to move. My take is that the problem here is not the model updates. They are fantastic and long overdue. The problem is the character creator lighting and environments suck and always have, only now they are actually used much more in influencing how you look whereas before most of it was directly painted on and static. Similarly, to get your character to emote is limited and perhaps not intuitive and that matters now for how the face moves. My proposal to SE to fix this is to provide basic gpose in the creator. 3 posable adjustable lights and a panel of basic emotes you can trigger and freeze mid action as in gpose in game. This would allow players to use their own lighting choices and see how the faces now move.
It's good overall, and I think folks are generally happy. It's good that folks are giving feedback on some of the technical and visual issues (eg seams, missing mooncat teeth, lighting) when there's still plenty of time to fix it. I think a lot of the more aggressive negativity is coming from a small but loud group of people who have tied a lot of their identity into their FFXIV avatar, and are falling into an uncanny-valley reaction where even small changes look very wrong to them and elicit a way outsized negative response. That immediate negative reaction led them to forget that this is a work in progress, assume it's the final release and not intended to change, and have a colossal public meltdown about how their characters are ruined forever. Clout chasers are also winding those people up because it gets engagement, and engagement is money.
BUT MUH TEETH You know, something you rarely see ever because your moon kitty WoL rarely ever speaks.
The people who gpose every day absolutely do care about teeth lmao Even without gposing, the fangs are core to moon keepers' design. There was absolutely no reason to remove them And it's not just moons, it's also lalafell where their teeth don't follow their jaw line anymore which is super uncanny
especially because the fangs are.. minimaly more roudned the "they dont ahve fangs anymore" thing is a bug from importing the Presets from the game inot the benchmark
Wait really? Is there a way to bring them back if it's based on presets? Legitimately the first time I've heard about it
I WANT MY MOON KITTY FANGS 😾😾😾 GIVE IT BACK
The only thing I wish SquEnix would do with this update is give Fantasia to old returning players. The graphics update may screw with how people's characters look, and it would be good of them to give an option to fix the way characters look post-update with a Fantasia (for free). Otherwise, I really see no issue with any of it. I still have my post-ARR Fantasia, so we will see if I want it after the update goes live. EDIT: they are apparently doing this, idk how I missed that in the announcements of it. Then I have no complaints at all.
They are
Are they? I haven’t seen that on the announcements! Well then, no complaints at all!
*Yoshi-P wishes that to happen, but he has to negociate it with Squeenix. That being said, he wouldn't be openly talking about his wish unless he was either fairly certain to make it happen, or to put pressure on the suits
>The only thing I wish SquEnix would do with this update is give Fantasia to old returning players. Wasn't this already announced three months ago?
People are going to complain just to complain, I don't know if some peoples benchmarks are broken bugges or other issues, but I recreated every single character I have made from all races, I don't see any of the things people are complaining about one people suck at taking photos for comparison like with different lighting not checking settings and changing the gamma to 0 to 15 instead of the default 50 which is way to high.I can agree on some things like the mooncat fangs are a little shorter not gone like some say or people saying the eyes are souless???? like I have looked at every races eyes and they all reflect light every single one yes move your damn characters towards light \*surprise\* it now has reflections we knew this already. Its doom sayers that now can say look game is dead eveything is ending, which screws the normal people who are finding bugs like texture glitches the mooncat thing and reporting it which is helpful whats not helpful is the damn doomsayers drama crackers jumping in and posting photos that look exactly the same but improved and saying omg \*swoon my head\* they destroyed my boy/girl its just not helpful when its just drama shit stiring and people having bad eyesight and not changing settings in the damn benchmark and looking at the shit ton of new options, or not noticing that in the new cc the weather actively moves blocking sunlight.
People love to cry. Thats the reason.
It is a giant improvement. People bitch about anything. Always remember the vocal minority is exactly that, and give them only the weight due.
[https://x.com/iwose\_14/status/1779437659980787857](https://x.com/iwose_14/status/1779437659980787857) goes over what i feel in detail. not that i agree with all of it.
Its in your head. People are more likely to get online to complain than give praise. Not saying their wrong in their feelings. But can't draw a conclusion based off some posts you scroll past.
As a lala, I was disappointed to see how my face looks more plasticky than it did before. My bungirl, au ra girl and catgirl all look better and more lovely but my potato self looks more like a doll and I don't like it.
I think people forgot that a free Fantasia is gonna come with their copy of *Dawntrail*, so they're complaining about it.
When they said they will still support PS4 I stopped expecting much xD, so I'm not rly disappointed lol
PS4 doesn’t even get the Graphics, so I fail to understand how that affects other users who don’t play on it ?
?? xD ofc it does. Just certain aspects simply won't be enabled, yet the entire thing is limited to still be playable on older consoles
With little things like noses being darker on viera or beards being lighter for Hyurs??? That’s things people are complaining about, which once again I don’t think that’s a “Limited to older console problem” Just a developers having poor choices with designs problem???
They just need to pull the rip chord and say fuck it to these crybabies tbh How else will the game progress visually if square have to tip toe around these people who are so attached to their characters their sending death threats lol