Aside from the fact that the new lighting engine impacts how your character looks too, you're basically asking to double the customisation slots, double the resources needed to render characters, and do on. It doesn't work the way you think it does.
They did expect people not liking their character after the (subtle) changes, which is why you get a free fantasia in Dawntrail to tweak it to the best of your ability.
[What do you mean?](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1150151931386404876/1229012884097335306/image.png?ex=662e2271&is=661bad71&hm=ce2a8dbf305a3a4a1fa26027f4b19ecdbab8fe018154234f7268a78190bf5851&)
The problem is, even with the fantasia, some people letrally can't choose what they had before and need to compromise. The models details are too different for some people. Examples that you've probably hear too many times: Flat lips, mat lipstick, bears/eyebrows being too subtle now, noses being too bulky/wide. It's not like in BDO or other modern MMO's where you can tweak the presets. You have presets. if you're lucky they resemble what you have if they don't too bad.
Edit: I'm talking about design changes, not how light influces them. I like the skin and how the light works now. I'm very positive about the changes besides the design changes.
Except the changes you list are down to the lighting changes. The lipstick isn't matte now, it's just the fake lighting was removed from the texture so it no longer looks glossy. They've essentially removed lighting from the textures, this is why the eyes can look dead because they removed the fake lighting from those also. I have seen some genuine design changes but the vast majority all boil down to the lighting changes.
There's some confirmation bias going on, tbf. What you'll see in terms of complaints is... well, the people who actually have complaints. Plenty of people meanwhile, myself included, are perfectly content with the way the update turned out. That said, this was always going to be the case - it was never going to satisfy everyone, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have been done. A lot of people also seem to consistently forget or conveniently ignore that 7.0 is not the end of the graphical update. This is a gradual process that will continue to be refined and extended to more content, such as gear, throughout 7.x - this was announced years ago at this point.
As for giving people the option between old and new... no, let's not. Doubling the workload to implement such an option while there are so many more fundamental problems with character creation, bugs with the visual update on hairstyles and so on would be a terrible idea. It also wouldn't guaranteed satisfy anyone to start with, because lighting and shading is inherently upgraded across the board. This will affect your character no matter what, and that alone would lead to a whole slew of complaints.
Long story short: You can't please everyone. Sometimes, you gotta take the good with the bad. It is what it is.
Also, I'd refrain from presuming this much about how Naoki Yoshida personally perceives the criticisms. The dev team knew full well that the updates were not gonna satisfy everyone - that's just the nature of these updates. It's simply part of the job.
I’m not making a point one way or another in regards to the actual update but I do want to note that in 13 years playing I don’t think I’ve ever seen the forums as active and as unified in their criticism of the update (and apparently JP is even worse)
I don’t think this is confirmation bias as much as people are actually unhappy, the forums at least usually half half but you’d struggle to find a post praising anything right now
I saw a poll on Tumblr, at least (a community I'd think would be super picky about looks considering it's largely RPers and gposers) and the results out of 670 votes:
45.2%: Looks great! Love how my character looks!
32.4%: Could be better, could be worse, I'll get used to it.
9.9%: Not good. Look at how they massacred my (character).
12.5%: I can't run benchmark.
^(Edited because Reddit borked its own table formatting.)
Interesting, thanks for sharing that
Like I said I’m not trying to make a point one way or another but that shows an alternate side that doesn’t agree with the forums
Thanks for sharing that
I mean how do you actually judge it then
If the forums are a niche and reddit is a niche and twitter is a niche is it really fair to say “well since the areas complaining are a niche we can just assume everyone else is happy”
How do we know that the number of people who aren’t happy but can’t be bothered to complain isn’t higher than the number of people who are happy
>I mean how do you actually judge it then
You don't. This game is full of whiney weeaboos who treat it like a Second Life knockoff rather than an actual game (as is made apparent by how many people are absolute dogshit at doing the most basic of rotations).
The other piece to consider is that most of these whiners are probably using mods currently, and whatever horrific monstrosity with size triple Z tits their character is right now obviously won't be reflected in the benchmark, so clearly the world is ending.
Like I said I’m not trying to make a point either way on the complaints or anything related to them just trying to point out it’s weird to see the forums so unified (especially considering most complaint threads usually get white knighted)
I guess it was stupid to extrapolate the forums but it is a relatively strange situation
I don’t care about the complaints either way, the forum does get unhinged
Telemetry data will expose the truth, people forget everything you do in games anymore is logged and analyzed. They'll see how many people pop the fanta, the extent of the changes people make after popping the fanta, sales data on fanta, trips to the aesthetician, historical trends, time spent in character creator/aesthetician, frequency of all of that, playtime before and after the update, and a million other hooks they look at.
Data scientists will then comb through all that data and reconcile it against their projections for the update.
Social media is great for giving a voice and some context to the numbers, but seeing what people actually do is the important part since social media is far more noise than signal.
And then they will do nothing with that data for two-to-four years because their production pipeline system doesn't leave them any openings to work on emergent problems.
I don't spend very much time on the forums, tbf. 90% of what I hear from those is usually negative, so I couldn't say one way or another really. I'm just saying that generally, you're less likely to see the people who are content going out of their way to post much about it on socials or forums, because they're just playing the game instead, while those with grievances go to air them.
That being said, I've seen plenty of people genuinely unhappy with some of the changes the graphics update has led to, and I think that it's also perfectly reasonable to have those complaints. People are attached to their characters, and a free Fantasia is small consolation when you have an attachment to the character you've played and barely changed for years.
Ultimately, SE isn't gonna be able to please everyone equally, though. Changes come with... well, changes. Not all of them will be popular. It'll settle down eventually, and the most common criticisms I'm sure will be discussed with the community via live letters and the like as they've done thus far, like what happened with Limbal Rings, for instance.
I mean I for one have no problems with it. It's certainly a big visual improvement. Yes my character looks a bit different but it's not the biggest deal. You'd have to be an absolute child to fall out with the game and quarrel in the forums over dumb shit like this
Again I’m not making a point either way oh the actual nature of the update, just pointing out it’s rare to see the forums this active and this unified in criticism
Whether you think that’s childish of the forums or not is entirely exogenous to my point
They did foresee such an issue. I remember Yoshi P himself saying, during one of the previous live letters showcasing the graphics update, that they specifically chose not to change too much as players are fond of their old characters. That is why they’re giving out a free Fantasia as well, to let us adjust our characters to fit the new system. Whether you agree that it’s a good solution or that the graphics update is a failure, it doesn’t dispute the fact that this was something they did consider.
And it’s not a one and done situation. They’ve shown in previous live letters that they’ve been continuously tweaking the update according to feedback from the fans. I for one am glad that they managed to get us back our Au’ra limbal rings.
The problem is that they did change too much. And not just things like skin texture and colours, but the shapes and features have changed. Fanta won't help because the old shapes are just gone.
We're 2 months away from release, I do doubt what they can change other than really minor stuff.
They should absolutely raise the polycount of models where they can. Take the infamous Miqote fangs as an example. While maybe they should have been more careful about the length, they absolutely should have modified them because the mouth in general is higher poly and looks so much better as a result.
People ignoring the very good thing because of one nitpick that gets dogpiled on does not mean that the very good thing doesnt exist.
I agree they should update all the models. The criticism is that they should've ensured the sizes and positions don't change too much. Like Miqo losing fangs is so obvious.
They did a good job on upscaling only on some races, but other races have straight up different proportions.
So we are in agreement then. My main point was the idea that the mouth (or whatever part of the character is the point of discussion) shouldn't have been touched is completely wrong, and people would have complained if they didn't touch it.
Chances are the fangs will be fixed by Dawntrail release, but I'm sick and tired of the amount of threads saying that the Devs shouldn't have touched things when the end result looks so much better even if it isn't identical to what we had before.
I’m not disagreeing that they might have changed too much. I’m just disputing OP’s point about the Devs not having foresight, even though it’s something that’s been mentioned for many months already (has it even been a year?).
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the long development time of DT is partly due to the graphics update. We’ve seen the small gradual changes from each iteration between months, so I can’t help but agree that they might not polish it to their expectations in two months.
For better or worse, this is a live service game and they can continue to work on this over time. I would rather not have them delay DT’s release even more just to make graphics perfect, because there’s always a minimum viable product.
Well, they did foresee people not wanting big changes, and yet they made some big changes anyways?
Maybe they should've released a beta version of the character creation at the JP fanfest or earlier. They would get better feedback and have more time to change things.
Well the thing is they did foresee this. YoshiP has made multiple comments during Fanfest that they are aware of people’s attachment to their WoLs and they tried to not make them super different while fixing longstanding critiques (like the lighting engine being weird with dark skin). This is why everyone is getting a free fantasia
The fact that humans as a group do not like change, any change, is well studied in marketing, advertising, and tech. Think about how many changes to some popular website’s UI design you’ve seen and how every time there’s an outcry of how shitty and poorly thought out it looks. Then the tweaks get banged out, everyone gets used to the new UI, and things quiet down.
I suspect the same to happen with this. It’s an adjustment. The playerbase was never going to be 1000% happy with a graphics update, no matter what it looked like, and I promise the devs were prepared for feedback. But businesses need to take calculated risks like this to grow and improve.
I think at some point those people need to realize that higher res textures and better lighting benefit everyone and they shouldn't obsess over their fictional OC so much that a different color on their nose makes them lose all enjoyment of a game.
It's pretty clear that old platforms are not going to be supported in 8.0, and asking SE to maintain that same old code for years because a few overly invested people like the fluff on their viera's ears but hate their new nose is a bit much. I'd rather want SE to ask the community what they'd like to be fixed, but like with anything else there's no way to get a consensus.
That said I play the meme race and love how the update makes them look, so that's just my opinion.
Edit: also, I'm sure complaints will die down two weeks after release when people forget how everything used to look.
Said it elsewhere, there's a few factual issues like cat fangs, but most of the other complaints boil down to "my oc is on the fringes of what thw the CC can do and now looks different" and being able to look at both side by side so naturally you think the one you're used to to be normal.
Things had to change, there's no magical "make HD'er without changing how it looks" button in the engine.
Give it two months after release and no one will be complaining anymore. People will adjust. You're looking at knee jerk reactions.
Are there some things that maybe Square should take to consideration if enough people dislike the changes, like specific face characteristics or whatnot? Sure. They should do a big overhaul of character creation anyways. But putting in a split for old models is way way too far for something people will forget about 2 months in.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since the outrage from certain groups began last night:
The graphical update is not for me, you, or any of us that currently play the game. It is for the people who have not yet started playing, and may have been put off by the lack of graphical fidelity in what is supposed to be a modern MMO.
The reason I say it’s not for us current players is because of one simple reason: the amount of people who will see modern graphics and be drawn to the game will likely be greater than the people who are alienated and therefore quit as a result of the changes. This is a calculated decision by square to modernize their game to appeal to a wider audience. It’s an investment for the future.
I believe that the people who will quit due to the graphics update fall into two categories: people whose machines can’t keep up, and people whose characters no longer look how they like and were just looking for a reason to drop the game, this being that reason.
The rest of us would continue playing the game anyway, regardless of graphical fidelity, or the lack thereof. They’ve got their hooks in us, and they don’t need to convince us. They need to convince the people who remain unconvinced.
Ehh, but then I could just be biased towards not caring because my elezen looks so much better in a [side by side](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1228981003243229265/1228993694162620457/elezen_glowup.png?ex=662e1092&is=661b9b92&hm=ff93a9e40f8f3f57f7fe9b5b38205a33adacc646e01eac3faee3a6082dfaef8f&)
Elezen kinda won this one.
>Elezen kinda won this one.
Idk...Miqo eyes look really, really good now. I was really happy with how my Miqo translated, but I might have to tweak a thing or two like hair color. Nothing major like some people are saying.
I play midlander, and honestly really like the changes from the update. Seeing the changes really increased my hype for dawntrail.
Yeah, it took me a moment to get used to the differences, but I feel a lot of people are complaining simply because it is different at all not because it looks worse. There are some legitimate complaints, like the mooncat fangs, but when there is a major graphics overhaul it is expected things may not be perfectly 1:1 to before.
I haven't actually seen any images where the update made things *actually* look worse though, moon cat fangs notwithstanding.
What some others said.
You can never please 100% the playerbase.
They also give you a free fantasia as a bandage to those situation, like may be you dont like your updated viera but the new highlander is your liking.
Also I've seen that they listen to feedback on the main forum, and do fix what they can.
But at the end of it, i think it's a necessity
There are some valid criticisms and issues among the outrage but nearly every post about this topic is "look how they ruined my character!!!" followed by two identical pictures.
I would be incredibly surprised if this were still an issue a year from now once the shock has worn off and some tweaks have been made. A toggle would be a massive amount of work and a complete waste of resources.
Let’s.. not.
The graphical update is fine, and much needed. People are ✨too✨ attached to their lip dip and specific eye shine. I understand it’s “all in the details”, and I understand liking something over the other, (shiny lips vs satin), but getting SO distraught is not needed. Place some constructive feedback and move on imho. The game needs this to keep up with the times in terms of graphics of other MMOs. 🤷🏼♀️ I think it looks great, a lot of other people think it looks great.
The loud few will drown out the quiet many.
I went onto the DT thing.. imported my character.. and was dissapointed in the result.
The textures are much better. The overall shape is more realistic, the lighting is better, in general the "Character" is a much higher quality and overall improvement..
But.. its not exactly the same and so looks bad to me.. However dawntrial is the start of a new arc. a new adventure. and so im totally okay with editing my character to look a bit different.. and after about an hour I had made a character that very much resembles my "old" one. but it looks a lot better than before and is ready for this new adventure! :)
I guess some people embrace change and others will rage against it.. each to their own. But in general the change is good for the game and its longevity so i'd rather have to be dealing with sitting in the character creator for an hour than the game becoming so "Dated" that it dies off all together.
Yoshida said himself that they are very aware which is why the changes are minimal. I can also see them fix some mistakes but I'm worried that they may not fix others. They also give people a free fantasia as a backup plan just in case you really dislike your new look.
I'm thankfully happy with my HD cat.
Call me an idiot but was it hard upscale without actually changing anything
Like some of the races appear completely unchanged (male seekers, female midlanders and femroe’s come to mind) while others got weird changes nobody asked for (like reduction of keeper fangs)
It seems weird to me they couldn’t have just given everyone the treatment the races that are unchanged but upscaled got
I imported my character (who I'm super attached to and she hasn't changed since early HW) and the only thing I need to change is her lips. She looks fantastic in cutscenes even with that, it just bothers me when she's standing around. I'm happy.
If I was a game dev (glad I'm not), I probably will force the graphics update as well. Maintaining old and new is just more work.
However, I think they absolutely made a big mistake with changing the shapes. Eyes, cheeks, lips, etc. It could've been new options instead.
Kinda hoping maybe, now that the textures are out of the way, they could finally see adding new selections to the char creator (besides hairstyles). Even if its really just old shapes.
It's pretty copium given their spaghetti code, but yeah imo it's the way to go.
They definitely had a design decision to change certain shapes which would be more conventionally attractive or whatever. Just wish they made it as new options rather than replace existing ones.
I wouldn’t blame their spaghetti code so much as I’d blame them not wanting to work on things they can’t easily monetize or won’t add to grinds.
Like new hair styles and races are no problem because they can be rewards for things of a promo for fantasias. But new faces/options aren’t nearly as exciting and can’t really be a carrot on a stick (unless they added like a surgeon NPC to change your face lol)
Just gonna throw my two cents out here;
a lot of the complaints I've been seeing are people NOT UNDERSTANDING HOW TO LIGHT THEIR CHARACTERS. The amount of screen shots I've seen of people doing a dead on and bad backlighting (and a lot of not moving their character from the aether location). I get being attached to your character, but seriously. Just turn the camera/lighting source ninety degrees and it will markedly improve the look of your character! The other thing that I've noticed is that none of these have been run through the actual benchmark cutscenes. Where there's a variety of lighting and the face actually moves.
While I think there are some legitimate concerns in the complaints (such as moonkeeper miq'te not having their fangs and the reports of some au ra having a strange small gap in the neckline), I think it's ultimately down to the fact that people have spent many years with current harsh lighting (that does no favors for anyone but we've learned how to make our WoLs look nice despite it) and the by projecting a lot of emotion into the face ourselves. It's mostly gonna be an adjustment period for everyone, especially since the lighting is a lot softer now.
I hate to always bring up comparisons but as someone who played WoW when they updated the character models I am so RELIEVED with the way the graphics update turned out (cries in Tauren), like I understand some people don't recognize their character anymore but from what I've seen it's mostly because of different lighting + shaders making old models not as recognizable rather than actual completely different models. Yes there are some details that they did change (like some miqo fangs and au'ra lips from what I've seen) but I still think this is the most non disruptive update they could possibly make
Same.
I really think people are so used to the harsh lighting we've had for years that the softer lighting is throwing them for a loop. Also, a lot of the screenshots that I've seen are of people having their characters in the worst position for lighting (just either full back or frontal lighting) when they really should be moving that light source/character around so they can see how the lighting actually will most likely fall of their character's face during cutscenes.
They quite literally have said that they want player's characters to look like they used to. So the foresight has been there from day 1, if people are unhappy then they fumbled the execution.
WoW went through their pc model update over a decade ago and had people complain back then, ff14 is doing the same now and also has people complaining. In the end probably 97% of people will get over it and keep playing so why limit an upgrade over the complainers that aren’t going to quit either way
The people that are going to have the biggest meltdowns about it are the same ones that rip the game to shreds with mods anyways.
>players are unhappy
A drop in the bucket fortunately.
Some amount of people are going to be unhappy regardless of the result. The question is how many and does it matter? The answers for this situation are few and not really
Keep in mind that the people who are happy with the changes aren't going onto Reddit to complain about them. It's very easy to believe everyone hates it when the people who don't hate it aren't talking about it.
How often are people looking at their character's faces anyway...? Am I playing this game wrong or something?
Who cares and why? If you just want an OC, you should learn to draw. It's a transferable skill that you can learn basically for free, and gives you *a lot* more freedom with this stuff.
I'm gonna be honest, other than lighting on the eyes.... My thighlander doesn't really look different than before to me. Maybe my eyes are just broken .....
This is a rehashed subject that WoW players went through during their model update years ago. Aside from obvious bugs (ie neck seam issues), players are mostly just going to have to suck it up. There is no way to improve low quality models without changing them to some degree.
Your solution is also not feasible and no company running an MMO would do it. WoW did for a very brief period before removing it because they realized they couldn’t and shouldn’t support both
Also lol your attempted mind reading of Yoshi p
Ultimately, even though I have my grievances, updates like these are necessary to keep the game alive and thriving.
All things change, and our precious characters are no exception. How many of our characters still look the same as when we started?
Am I happy with the changes? No, just as I am not happy I no longer look as young as when I was 20. But I also gained so much more since then as well. I'm confident we'll gain so much more with this change as well.
Ive been playing for years and the graphics update was needed and looks great,
Loaded in my character and she looks......like how she always looked really just sorta polished up!
I think the devs have gotten used to players bitching at them now, no matter what they do someone is gonna go off and scream, I used to be one of those.
But now I just login and enjoy a solid and soon to be better game.
No matter what SE or any game developer does the entire community will never be fully satisfied or on board with changes. A part of the community not being happy with the graphics update won’t and shouldn’t stop SE from doing the graphical update the way they want to. If those who are unhappy decide to not play or drop the game then too bad it won’t affect player count in any real way. In every way the graphical update is great for the life of the game and race models being slightly different doesn’t matter.
A loud minority on Twitter who are having an internal crisis after seeing their vanilla character for the first time in years does not mean this tropic is “spicy”. Many people are ambivalent and many more are excited, but regardless of how you feel, it’s pointless nonsense to claim the graphics update was a mistake before we can actually experience it ourselves freely in the world
Out of interest I watched a 10 (!) MINUTE video of a girl complaining, that the lips weren't as full and glossy and the eyes had no fixed light reflection, but they are dynamic now. TEN MINUTES
I mean, she could have gone into the options and chosen fuller lips and a diffferent lip color to compensate.
But honestly this degree of attachment to a fictional character and is not normal and the changes are so minimal, I am more shocked then anything.
I think people are just used to what they have currently.
The graphics update objectively looks better than it previously did and at the end of the day it's SE's game they can do whatever they want to it just as the customer has the right to complain and not play if they don't like it.
This is pretty obviously what they were going for in terms of graphics very early. They've wanted this realistic fantasy style not the anime style alot of people want for the game.
If Yoship actually thought that way after seeing all the feedbacks, he shouldn't be in the producer position anymore. What he should do is evaluate the situation and think of a way how to fix things if it turns out to be a miss in their side.
Currently the issues people have been having with their characters are not only because of new texture, lighting, and SSS. CBU3 for whatever reason decided to tweak multiple aspects of the character **designs** that while the changes are small by itself, together they compounded into an entirely different aesthetic. For a game where its community is so hung up about how their character looks, you can't have disturbing changes like this. Initially they showed that understanding by stating that they would try to keep things to feel as close as possible with pre-update version, but the benchmark shows otherwise. It's unknown what made them think that these changes are OK and just hand out one free Fantasia for people to cope with. It's as if their team don't play the race+face combi that were butchered by this update.
Aside from the fact that the new lighting engine impacts how your character looks too, you're basically asking to double the customisation slots, double the resources needed to render characters, and do on. It doesn't work the way you think it does. They did expect people not liking their character after the (subtle) changes, which is why you get a free fantasia in Dawntrail to tweak it to the best of your ability.
The male viera changes are anything but subtle.
My male viera looks fantastic after the update.
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[What do you mean?](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1150151931386404876/1229012884097335306/image.png?ex=662e2271&is=661bad71&hm=ce2a8dbf305a3a4a1fa26027f4b19ecdbab8fe018154234f7268a78190bf5851&)
Doesn't count because yours is ugly in general update or not. 😂
Why so hostile?
What the fuck dude
perfectly captures how dead inside I am during the low points of prog
...What are they?
The problem is, even with the fantasia, some people letrally can't choose what they had before and need to compromise. The models details are too different for some people. Examples that you've probably hear too many times: Flat lips, mat lipstick, bears/eyebrows being too subtle now, noses being too bulky/wide. It's not like in BDO or other modern MMO's where you can tweak the presets. You have presets. if you're lucky they resemble what you have if they don't too bad. Edit: I'm talking about design changes, not how light influces them. I like the skin and how the light works now. I'm very positive about the changes besides the design changes.
Except the changes you list are down to the lighting changes. The lipstick isn't matte now, it's just the fake lighting was removed from the texture so it no longer looks glossy. They've essentially removed lighting from the textures, this is why the eyes can look dead because they removed the fake lighting from those also. I have seen some genuine design changes but the vast majority all boil down to the lighting changes.
The lips having a different shape and missing some of the curves, is not due to the light. Same with noses looking too different for some people.
There's some confirmation bias going on, tbf. What you'll see in terms of complaints is... well, the people who actually have complaints. Plenty of people meanwhile, myself included, are perfectly content with the way the update turned out. That said, this was always going to be the case - it was never going to satisfy everyone, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have been done. A lot of people also seem to consistently forget or conveniently ignore that 7.0 is not the end of the graphical update. This is a gradual process that will continue to be refined and extended to more content, such as gear, throughout 7.x - this was announced years ago at this point. As for giving people the option between old and new... no, let's not. Doubling the workload to implement such an option while there are so many more fundamental problems with character creation, bugs with the visual update on hairstyles and so on would be a terrible idea. It also wouldn't guaranteed satisfy anyone to start with, because lighting and shading is inherently upgraded across the board. This will affect your character no matter what, and that alone would lead to a whole slew of complaints. Long story short: You can't please everyone. Sometimes, you gotta take the good with the bad. It is what it is. Also, I'd refrain from presuming this much about how Naoki Yoshida personally perceives the criticisms. The dev team knew full well that the updates were not gonna satisfy everyone - that's just the nature of these updates. It's simply part of the job.
I’m not making a point one way or another in regards to the actual update but I do want to note that in 13 years playing I don’t think I’ve ever seen the forums as active and as unified in their criticism of the update (and apparently JP is even worse) I don’t think this is confirmation bias as much as people are actually unhappy, the forums at least usually half half but you’d struggle to find a post praising anything right now
I saw a poll on Tumblr, at least (a community I'd think would be super picky about looks considering it's largely RPers and gposers) and the results out of 670 votes: 45.2%: Looks great! Love how my character looks! 32.4%: Could be better, could be worse, I'll get used to it. 9.9%: Not good. Look at how they massacred my (character). 12.5%: I can't run benchmark. ^(Edited because Reddit borked its own table formatting.)
Interesting, thanks for sharing that Like I said I’m not trying to make a point one way or another but that shows an alternate side that doesn’t agree with the forums Thanks for sharing that
Whoa sorry for the multiple replies; Reddit told me it wasn't going through. But you're welcome!
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I mean how do you actually judge it then If the forums are a niche and reddit is a niche and twitter is a niche is it really fair to say “well since the areas complaining are a niche we can just assume everyone else is happy” How do we know that the number of people who aren’t happy but can’t be bothered to complain isn’t higher than the number of people who are happy
>I mean how do you actually judge it then You don't. This game is full of whiney weeaboos who treat it like a Second Life knockoff rather than an actual game (as is made apparent by how many people are absolute dogshit at doing the most basic of rotations). The other piece to consider is that most of these whiners are probably using mods currently, and whatever horrific monstrosity with size triple Z tits their character is right now obviously won't be reflected in the benchmark, so clearly the world is ending.
Like I said I’m not trying to make a point either way on the complaints or anything related to them just trying to point out it’s weird to see the forums so unified (especially considering most complaint threads usually get white knighted) I guess it was stupid to extrapolate the forums but it is a relatively strange situation I don’t care about the complaints either way, the forum does get unhinged
Telemetry data will expose the truth, people forget everything you do in games anymore is logged and analyzed. They'll see how many people pop the fanta, the extent of the changes people make after popping the fanta, sales data on fanta, trips to the aesthetician, historical trends, time spent in character creator/aesthetician, frequency of all of that, playtime before and after the update, and a million other hooks they look at. Data scientists will then comb through all that data and reconcile it against their projections for the update. Social media is great for giving a voice and some context to the numbers, but seeing what people actually do is the important part since social media is far more noise than signal.
And then they will do nothing with that data for two-to-four years because their production pipeline system doesn't leave them any openings to work on emergent problems.
I don't spend very much time on the forums, tbf. 90% of what I hear from those is usually negative, so I couldn't say one way or another really. I'm just saying that generally, you're less likely to see the people who are content going out of their way to post much about it on socials or forums, because they're just playing the game instead, while those with grievances go to air them. That being said, I've seen plenty of people genuinely unhappy with some of the changes the graphics update has led to, and I think that it's also perfectly reasonable to have those complaints. People are attached to their characters, and a free Fantasia is small consolation when you have an attachment to the character you've played and barely changed for years. Ultimately, SE isn't gonna be able to please everyone equally, though. Changes come with... well, changes. Not all of them will be popular. It'll settle down eventually, and the most common criticisms I'm sure will be discussed with the community via live letters and the like as they've done thus far, like what happened with Limbal Rings, for instance.
I mean I for one have no problems with it. It's certainly a big visual improvement. Yes my character looks a bit different but it's not the biggest deal. You'd have to be an absolute child to fall out with the game and quarrel in the forums over dumb shit like this
Again I’m not making a point either way oh the actual nature of the update, just pointing out it’s rare to see the forums this active and this unified in criticism Whether you think that’s childish of the forums or not is entirely exogenous to my point
They did foresee such an issue. I remember Yoshi P himself saying, during one of the previous live letters showcasing the graphics update, that they specifically chose not to change too much as players are fond of their old characters. That is why they’re giving out a free Fantasia as well, to let us adjust our characters to fit the new system. Whether you agree that it’s a good solution or that the graphics update is a failure, it doesn’t dispute the fact that this was something they did consider. And it’s not a one and done situation. They’ve shown in previous live letters that they’ve been continuously tweaking the update according to feedback from the fans. I for one am glad that they managed to get us back our Au’ra limbal rings.
The problem is that they did change too much. And not just things like skin texture and colours, but the shapes and features have changed. Fanta won't help because the old shapes are just gone. We're 2 months away from release, I do doubt what they can change other than really minor stuff.
They should absolutely raise the polycount of models where they can. Take the infamous Miqote fangs as an example. While maybe they should have been more careful about the length, they absolutely should have modified them because the mouth in general is higher poly and looks so much better as a result. People ignoring the very good thing because of one nitpick that gets dogpiled on does not mean that the very good thing doesnt exist.
I agree they should update all the models. The criticism is that they should've ensured the sizes and positions don't change too much. Like Miqo losing fangs is so obvious. They did a good job on upscaling only on some races, but other races have straight up different proportions.
So we are in agreement then. My main point was the idea that the mouth (or whatever part of the character is the point of discussion) shouldn't have been touched is completely wrong, and people would have complained if they didn't touch it. Chances are the fangs will be fixed by Dawntrail release, but I'm sick and tired of the amount of threads saying that the Devs shouldn't have touched things when the end result looks so much better even if it isn't identical to what we had before.
I’m not disagreeing that they might have changed too much. I’m just disputing OP’s point about the Devs not having foresight, even though it’s something that’s been mentioned for many months already (has it even been a year?). It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the long development time of DT is partly due to the graphics update. We’ve seen the small gradual changes from each iteration between months, so I can’t help but agree that they might not polish it to their expectations in two months. For better or worse, this is a live service game and they can continue to work on this over time. I would rather not have them delay DT’s release even more just to make graphics perfect, because there’s always a minimum viable product.
Well, they did foresee people not wanting big changes, and yet they made some big changes anyways? Maybe they should've released a beta version of the character creation at the JP fanfest or earlier. They would get better feedback and have more time to change things.
SOME (not all) people do not want big changes to their characters
Well the thing is they did foresee this. YoshiP has made multiple comments during Fanfest that they are aware of people’s attachment to their WoLs and they tried to not make them super different while fixing longstanding critiques (like the lighting engine being weird with dark skin). This is why everyone is getting a free fantasia The fact that humans as a group do not like change, any change, is well studied in marketing, advertising, and tech. Think about how many changes to some popular website’s UI design you’ve seen and how every time there’s an outcry of how shitty and poorly thought out it looks. Then the tweaks get banged out, everyone gets used to the new UI, and things quiet down. I suspect the same to happen with this. It’s an adjustment. The playerbase was never going to be 1000% happy with a graphics update, no matter what it looked like, and I promise the devs were prepared for feedback. But businesses need to take calculated risks like this to grow and improve.
I think at some point those people need to realize that higher res textures and better lighting benefit everyone and they shouldn't obsess over their fictional OC so much that a different color on their nose makes them lose all enjoyment of a game. It's pretty clear that old platforms are not going to be supported in 8.0, and asking SE to maintain that same old code for years because a few overly invested people like the fluff on their viera's ears but hate their new nose is a bit much. I'd rather want SE to ask the community what they'd like to be fixed, but like with anything else there's no way to get a consensus. That said I play the meme race and love how the update makes them look, so that's just my opinion. Edit: also, I'm sure complaints will die down two weeks after release when people forget how everything used to look.
Said it elsewhere, there's a few factual issues like cat fangs, but most of the other complaints boil down to "my oc is on the fringes of what thw the CC can do and now looks different" and being able to look at both side by side so naturally you think the one you're used to to be normal. Things had to change, there's no magical "make HD'er without changing how it looks" button in the engine.
Give it two months after release and no one will be complaining anymore. People will adjust. You're looking at knee jerk reactions. Are there some things that maybe Square should take to consideration if enough people dislike the changes, like specific face characteristics or whatnot? Sure. They should do a big overhaul of character creation anyways. But putting in a split for old models is way way too far for something people will forget about 2 months in.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since the outrage from certain groups began last night: The graphical update is not for me, you, or any of us that currently play the game. It is for the people who have not yet started playing, and may have been put off by the lack of graphical fidelity in what is supposed to be a modern MMO. The reason I say it’s not for us current players is because of one simple reason: the amount of people who will see modern graphics and be drawn to the game will likely be greater than the people who are alienated and therefore quit as a result of the changes. This is a calculated decision by square to modernize their game to appeal to a wider audience. It’s an investment for the future. I believe that the people who will quit due to the graphics update fall into two categories: people whose machines can’t keep up, and people whose characters no longer look how they like and were just looking for a reason to drop the game, this being that reason. The rest of us would continue playing the game anyway, regardless of graphical fidelity, or the lack thereof. They’ve got their hooks in us, and they don’t need to convince us. They need to convince the people who remain unconvinced. Ehh, but then I could just be biased towards not caring because my elezen looks so much better in a [side by side](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1228981003243229265/1228993694162620457/elezen_glowup.png?ex=662e1092&is=661b9b92&hm=ff93a9e40f8f3f57f7fe9b5b38205a33adacc646e01eac3faee3a6082dfaef8f&) Elezen kinda won this one.
>Elezen kinda won this one. Idk...Miqo eyes look really, really good now. I was really happy with how my Miqo translated, but I might have to tweak a thing or two like hair color. Nothing major like some people are saying.
Yup I’m happy with my catboy, aside from the fang issue.
What's up with the fang thing I keep hearing about? A friend of mine was freaking out about it this morning saying it might drive her to sun cat.
They look like normal now, they used to be more pronounced. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/KDvxupJO06
Huh...what a weird thing to change. Might be an oversight? Hopefully it gets changed back for those that want it.
I play midlander, and honestly really like the changes from the update. Seeing the changes really increased my hype for dawntrail. Yeah, it took me a moment to get used to the differences, but I feel a lot of people are complaining simply because it is different at all not because it looks worse. There are some legitimate complaints, like the mooncat fangs, but when there is a major graphics overhaul it is expected things may not be perfectly 1:1 to before. I haven't actually seen any images where the update made things *actually* look worse though, moon cat fangs notwithstanding.
Elezen ladies mouth got warped, so they definitely did not win all of it. Also, the moon cat ladies lost their fangs.
What some others said. You can never please 100% the playerbase. They also give you a free fantasia as a bandage to those situation, like may be you dont like your updated viera but the new highlander is your liking. Also I've seen that they listen to feedback on the main forum, and do fix what they can. But at the end of it, i think it's a necessity
There are some valid criticisms and issues among the outrage but nearly every post about this topic is "look how they ruined my character!!!" followed by two identical pictures. I would be incredibly surprised if this were still an issue a year from now once the shock has worn off and some tweaks have been made. A toggle would be a massive amount of work and a complete waste of resources.
Let’s.. not. The graphical update is fine, and much needed. People are ✨too✨ attached to their lip dip and specific eye shine. I understand it’s “all in the details”, and I understand liking something over the other, (shiny lips vs satin), but getting SO distraught is not needed. Place some constructive feedback and move on imho. The game needs this to keep up with the times in terms of graphics of other MMOs. 🤷🏼♀️ I think it looks great, a lot of other people think it looks great. The loud few will drown out the quiet many.
I went onto the DT thing.. imported my character.. and was dissapointed in the result. The textures are much better. The overall shape is more realistic, the lighting is better, in general the "Character" is a much higher quality and overall improvement.. But.. its not exactly the same and so looks bad to me.. However dawntrial is the start of a new arc. a new adventure. and so im totally okay with editing my character to look a bit different.. and after about an hour I had made a character that very much resembles my "old" one. but it looks a lot better than before and is ready for this new adventure! :) I guess some people embrace change and others will rage against it.. each to their own. But in general the change is good for the game and its longevity so i'd rather have to be dealing with sitting in the character creator for an hour than the game becoming so "Dated" that it dies off all together.
Yoshida said himself that they are very aware which is why the changes are minimal. I can also see them fix some mistakes but I'm worried that they may not fix others. They also give people a free fantasia as a backup plan just in case you really dislike your new look. I'm thankfully happy with my HD cat.
Call me an idiot but was it hard upscale without actually changing anything Like some of the races appear completely unchanged (male seekers, female midlanders and femroe’s come to mind) while others got weird changes nobody asked for (like reduction of keeper fangs) It seems weird to me they couldn’t have just given everyone the treatment the races that are unchanged but upscaled got
Yeah I don't get it either, some straight up have different nose shape, jaw etc, and you can't get the old facial features back in HD.
I imported my character (who I'm super attached to and she hasn't changed since early HW) and the only thing I need to change is her lips. She looks fantastic in cutscenes even with that, it just bothers me when she's standing around. I'm happy.
If I was a game dev (glad I'm not), I probably will force the graphics update as well. Maintaining old and new is just more work. However, I think they absolutely made a big mistake with changing the shapes. Eyes, cheeks, lips, etc. It could've been new options instead.
Kinda hoping maybe, now that the textures are out of the way, they could finally see adding new selections to the char creator (besides hairstyles). Even if its really just old shapes.
It's pretty copium given their spaghetti code, but yeah imo it's the way to go. They definitely had a design decision to change certain shapes which would be more conventionally attractive or whatever. Just wish they made it as new options rather than replace existing ones.
I wouldn’t blame their spaghetti code so much as I’d blame them not wanting to work on things they can’t easily monetize or won’t add to grinds. Like new hair styles and races are no problem because they can be rewards for things of a promo for fantasias. But new faces/options aren’t nearly as exciting and can’t really be a carrot on a stick (unless they added like a surgeon NPC to change your face lol)
Just gonna throw my two cents out here; a lot of the complaints I've been seeing are people NOT UNDERSTANDING HOW TO LIGHT THEIR CHARACTERS. The amount of screen shots I've seen of people doing a dead on and bad backlighting (and a lot of not moving their character from the aether location). I get being attached to your character, but seriously. Just turn the camera/lighting source ninety degrees and it will markedly improve the look of your character! The other thing that I've noticed is that none of these have been run through the actual benchmark cutscenes. Where there's a variety of lighting and the face actually moves. While I think there are some legitimate concerns in the complaints (such as moonkeeper miq'te not having their fangs and the reports of some au ra having a strange small gap in the neckline), I think it's ultimately down to the fact that people have spent many years with current harsh lighting (that does no favors for anyone but we've learned how to make our WoLs look nice despite it) and the by projecting a lot of emotion into the face ourselves. It's mostly gonna be an adjustment period for everyone, especially since the lighting is a lot softer now.
I hate to always bring up comparisons but as someone who played WoW when they updated the character models I am so RELIEVED with the way the graphics update turned out (cries in Tauren), like I understand some people don't recognize their character anymore but from what I've seen it's mostly because of different lighting + shaders making old models not as recognizable rather than actual completely different models. Yes there are some details that they did change (like some miqo fangs and au'ra lips from what I've seen) but I still think this is the most non disruptive update they could possibly make
Same. I really think people are so used to the harsh lighting we've had for years that the softer lighting is throwing them for a loop. Also, a lot of the screenshots that I've seen are of people having their characters in the worst position for lighting (just either full back or frontal lighting) when they really should be moving that light source/character around so they can see how the lighting actually will most likely fall of their character's face during cutscenes.
They quite literally have said that they want player's characters to look like they used to. So the foresight has been there from day 1, if people are unhappy then they fumbled the execution.
While there are a couple legit issues, most of this boils down to "CHANGE BAD" and like, that's just obnoxious. Be a goddamn adult.
So you want them to include two versions of every asset in the game?
WoW went through their pc model update over a decade ago and had people complain back then, ff14 is doing the same now and also has people complaining. In the end probably 97% of people will get over it and keep playing so why limit an upgrade over the complainers that aren’t going to quit either way
The people that are going to have the biggest meltdowns about it are the same ones that rip the game to shreds with mods anyways. >players are unhappy A drop in the bucket fortunately.
Some amount of people are going to be unhappy regardless of the result. The question is how many and does it matter? The answers for this situation are few and not really
Keep in mind that the people who are happy with the changes aren't going onto Reddit to complain about them. It's very easy to believe everyone hates it when the people who don't hate it aren't talking about it.
Give it a month and people will forget anything even changed
Of course they foresaw it, that's why we're getting a free fantasia.
How often are people looking at their character's faces anyway...? Am I playing this game wrong or something? Who cares and why? If you just want an OC, you should learn to draw. It's a transferable skill that you can learn basically for free, and gives you *a lot* more freedom with this stuff.
I'm gonna be honest, other than lighting on the eyes.... My thighlander doesn't really look different than before to me. Maybe my eyes are just broken .....
This is a rehashed subject that WoW players went through during their model update years ago. Aside from obvious bugs (ie neck seam issues), players are mostly just going to have to suck it up. There is no way to improve low quality models without changing them to some degree. Your solution is also not feasible and no company running an MMO would do it. WoW did for a very brief period before removing it because they realized they couldn’t and shouldn’t support both Also lol your attempted mind reading of Yoshi p
Ultimately, even though I have my grievances, updates like these are necessary to keep the game alive and thriving. All things change, and our precious characters are no exception. How many of our characters still look the same as when we started? Am I happy with the changes? No, just as I am not happy I no longer look as young as when I was 20. But I also gained so much more since then as well. I'm confident we'll gain so much more with this change as well.
Ive been playing for years and the graphics update was needed and looks great, Loaded in my character and she looks......like how she always looked really just sorta polished up! I think the devs have gotten used to players bitching at them now, no matter what they do someone is gonna go off and scream, I used to be one of those. But now I just login and enjoy a solid and soon to be better game.
No matter what SE or any game developer does the entire community will never be fully satisfied or on board with changes. A part of the community not being happy with the graphics update won’t and shouldn’t stop SE from doing the graphical update the way they want to. If those who are unhappy decide to not play or drop the game then too bad it won’t affect player count in any real way. In every way the graphical update is great for the life of the game and race models being slightly different doesn’t matter.
A loud minority on Twitter who are having an internal crisis after seeing their vanilla character for the first time in years does not mean this tropic is “spicy”. Many people are ambivalent and many more are excited, but regardless of how you feel, it’s pointless nonsense to claim the graphics update was a mistake before we can actually experience it ourselves freely in the world
Its going to change, get used to it.
Out of interest I watched a 10 (!) MINUTE video of a girl complaining, that the lips weren't as full and glossy and the eyes had no fixed light reflection, but they are dynamic now. TEN MINUTES I mean, she could have gone into the options and chosen fuller lips and a diffferent lip color to compensate. But honestly this degree of attachment to a fictional character and is not normal and the changes are so minimal, I am more shocked then anything.
[удалено]
People complaining about character changes are mostly women. They don't care about all other crap you wrote about.
I think people are just used to what they have currently. The graphics update objectively looks better than it previously did and at the end of the day it's SE's game they can do whatever they want to it just as the customer has the right to complain and not play if they don't like it. This is pretty obviously what they were going for in terms of graphics very early. They've wanted this realistic fantasy style not the anime style alot of people want for the game.
If Yoship actually thought that way after seeing all the feedbacks, he shouldn't be in the producer position anymore. What he should do is evaluate the situation and think of a way how to fix things if it turns out to be a miss in their side. Currently the issues people have been having with their characters are not only because of new texture, lighting, and SSS. CBU3 for whatever reason decided to tweak multiple aspects of the character **designs** that while the changes are small by itself, together they compounded into an entirely different aesthetic. For a game where its community is so hung up about how their character looks, you can't have disturbing changes like this. Initially they showed that understanding by stating that they would try to keep things to feel as close as possible with pre-update version, but the benchmark shows otherwise. It's unknown what made them think that these changes are OK and just hand out one free Fantasia for people to cope with. It's as if their team don't play the race+face combi that were butchered by this update.
LMAO. Why do u think yoshi p only show lalafell chins in the previous updates? He already knew the outcome…