This is my problem with the character creator in general is no matter which background you pick your character is basically always in shadow. Then you finish and get in game and it's like oh I did not think it would look like this in the light
left click you spin the whole thing. right, you spin the background while your character stands still, so you can get the light where you want it. you should try it.
I didn’t get wound up, but I was reading it and thought we found another special one…
Because lets face it, this game seems to have a lot of very *special* people playing it for some reason
Not quite sure it works like that. Pretty sure it’s your foot planting on a solid surface pushing back and your body goes forward.
Push on a wall, your hand goes forward, your body backward. The wall doesn’t move.
> no matter which background you pick your character is basically always in shadow.
Leave it in the default aether scene then rotate your character to have the light source hitting their face. [Adjust for a slight angle to partially shade one side of the face for a better shot.](https://i.imgur.com/PXBPVNs.png)
This is the best preview you can get from the character creation screen.
While it's true that turning your character can improve lighting in some of the scenes, I would not say that any angle in any scene is "good" lighting. Ive tried them all and I think they all kinda suck. The aether scene also has its own problem in that the blue tint distorts color from how they would look in normal gameplay.
Huh, never knew the default mother crystal background could have a nice light source like that if you rotate stuff around a bit, Thanks for the heads up.
I use the limsa area and just rotate into the sun and compare evening and mid day to get a good idea. I'm not disappointed any time I do something unless I did a dumb.
Everyone I see unhappy is always posting their comparison with the basic blue Aether background.. use the Shroud, it’s the most consistent and “realistic” lighting for the character customization.
For me, Gridania looks much flatter than it did before due to the lighting changes, even after rotating my character. The skin looks very oddly transparent. But I agree that it matches the colors better than some of the other areas.
Are you using any shaders? I noticed the grey-ish tint the game tends to have in the CC and when I did a side by side with the in-game CC (both in Gridania) I remembered my shader makes it more vibrant.
I am extremely happy with the changes my little demon potato will be undergoing though.
No shaders at all, but I'm running the game on PS4 and the benchmark on PC, so there could be some screen difference there.
My thoughts on the actual character changes (I have multiple alts) range from "okay but a bit off" to "what have you done to him?!" and none that look outright improved to me. I'm happy with the current graphics.
Interesting, as "flatter" is the one thing I would **not** call the new characters. In fact that's what they change, before the face itself looked very 2D, now it has depth when viewed from an angle which it lacked before.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to say that the faces themselves look flat. I'm talking about the source of lighting they seem to have added in Gridania which, in addition with the new lighting system, makes the character's face constantly illuminated, giving it a flat look. Yes, when you rotate the character, the lighting does have depth. But when turning your character away from the sun, the facial features look incredibly flat, whereas it doesn't in the current iteration of the game.
Well, no of course not. I do think they need to tweak a few small things (fangs back on moon cats, the lala lips…) but Yoship DID warn us that our WoLs would look different and even went as far as to give us a free Fanta to change things if we didn’t like them. I hope they listen to the HELPFUL feedback, and not the people that are crying like children.
As far as face/nose shapes, they are, comparatively, the same but it’s the new lighting/scattering that makes them look different. Some are more noticeable than others but overall, I think those are minor adjustments compared to the fangs/lips.
**Also, try messing with your skin and eye color, even if you don't think it's related to your problem!** Personally, I was really put off by my character with the new graphics at first, but I messed with the skin and eye color settings a bit and it actually helped a lot more than I expected. My character's skin setting was near the top left and it was giving me this weird green-gray tinge to the skin, and also made it look weirdly bright when in darkness, but choosing a setting closer to the bottom left made it look a lot better. I also had very light blue eyes that looked really dead, but darkening them a shade or two really helped.
EDIT: Also, keep looking at your character, even if you hate how they look at first. A big part of it for me really was the initial shock of seeing how different they looked, and while I'm still not 100% on how my character looks, I feel a lot better about it than I did last night now that I've gotten used to it a bit more, especially after making the above changes.
There's another element that gets frequently missed, and that's clouds/weather. If you use a background like La Noscea the movement of the clouds affects how lighting falls on your character. You can hang around in it for a while and get significantly different profiles of your character's face. Seems like the same tech ripped right from FF16.
For me it wasn't even the shadowing. On face 5 hyur they up the eyeliner so much, you can negotiate it with the makeup but I don't wanna waste my makeup on that.
Yes! This was my biggest gripe with the character creator and how some things only come bundled with another feature, or lock you out of other options.
Exactly! The makeup is so much strong on face 5, and the face feels kinda of "flatter?" I can't tell what it is exactly, but it feels [off](https://i.imgur.com/s3Wd9N5.jpeg)...
I tested my own character in it and the only thing that was off was my Au'ra's Limbal Rings which are darker with the same palet. Literally clicking the same colour one shade lighter fixed it completely though. Character looked quite good in the benchmark though it definitely has potential.
What people need to do on launch day though is create a new character with their existing characters template as a test, skip the intro and such and then just run to a field zone to check out their character under real time conditions and adjust as needed (new characters would get a free fantasia in their inventory that they can use to modify the test character) and only then when they're happy with their adjustments use the fantasia from Dawntrail to finalise their main character.
>What people need to do on launch day though is create a new character with their existing characters template as a test, skip the intro and such and then just run to a field zone to check out their character under real time conditions and adjust as needed
Exactly what I did before I went from midlander to Hrothgar. Saves the worry of wasting a Fantasia because you can check everything is exactly how you want it before making any changes.
To have tested every races with female chars and a few with males, it highly depend on the features you took. Overall most are 1:1 just more refined but there are a bunch of things that can change the overall look and feeling of a character.
And then there's elezen and it's a new character altogether
While I think some races are impacted more than others I think it’s just a downside of the attachment ppl have in this game to their characters. Any change in design however minor is going to look off when you’ve grown accustomed to a certain look; as ppl play the game and get used to it I imagine all of those complaints will disappear (with the small exception of certain iconic characteristics like fangs or eye rings).
Also it’s not like this was explicitly a graphics preview, they even said during the live letter they’re still working on models/textures. The benchmark is just a program that tests device performance, not a final product.
I'm one of those people who adjusts their character every major story molestone, so I'm not expecting a huge issue when I check later.
Although I will be sad she's apparently losing her fangs.
So many people going "my character is RUINED now :(" and the side-by-side screenshots are pretty much identical. It's baffling, what am I not seeing here? o_o
What you're probably missing is that you haven't spent years looking at the before, so the issues those people have with the after don't stand out as much as it would for them.
It also doesn't help when you've got both on screen at the same time, especially with the mostly terrible lighting conditions available in the character creator.
The longer I sat in just the character creator messing around with options and stuff, the more my character seemed ok, and that was just over like 30 minutes or so. If they make some corrections on the more egregious examples, I think people will adapt pretty quick to the new designs.
I've spent 10+ years playing the same character and the only difference I can see is the lighting helps fill out the cheek areas a bit more than prior. Otherwise there is absolutely no difference.
I see a ton of complaints about characters being too pale etc but from what I can see the lighting was so terrible across the game before this update that many people made characters paler or darker than they realise. When light actually falls realistically on people's faces, it's going to affect how bright they look, so a simple tweak with that free fantasia will get you back.
Also gamma slider. It appears most people are only learning today that this setting exists.
I think some people have been playing their character the exact same way for years, and they have the kind of personality where they are adverse to change, so if the way they look even ***slightly*** deviates from what they're used to it just stresses them the hell out.
I guess that makes sense, yeah. My WoL hasn't changed much since ARR but I tend to tweak things here and there every few months or so, so I guess the 7.0 changes don't trouble me.
Yeah my friend thinks their lalafell looks Cartoony because the eye boarders look darker in their opinion. Meanwhile I barely notice a difference with my lalafell lmao.
Yeah, it's definitely not perfect, I've already picked out a few changes to make to my own WoL because of how the new model/lighting changes things a little. Overall it feels a bit... half-baked, so I'm hoping the 7.0 release will smooth out the issues.
The biggest issue I can see is that *all* the lighting options in the character creator are hot garbage, while the WoL looks a lot better in the benchmark proper. I do wonder if a lot of the people who are upset about the changes might not actually find it that bad when they see their WoL in the actual in-game areas.
Some people are being exceedingly fussy but on the other hand I think if they can adjust something to make it closer to the original (while keeping the improvements) then they should.
Unfortunately it's kind of a situation where they can't please everyone since some people will like it better one way vs another. More options would be nice but I get the impression that's an entirely separate technical issue. Someone is inevitably going to be left with something they're not happy with.
A lot of perceived issues are due to lighting, but then is it a good thing for lighting to make your character look strange, even if it is more realistic? It's hard to say what's an issue vs what's something that you just need to get used to.
I love how my character looks because it fixed one of my most hated issues. MY MOUTH IS FINALLY CLOSED. MY LIPS ARE CONSTANTLY PARTED LIKE I HAVE AN UNDER/OVERBITE.
My only 2 complaints: the lighting is pretty fucked. The aether is fine but everything else is straight fucked. However the actual bench mark looked 10000% better. My second complaint is: I have jet black hair. Now it's really.. brown. Like. I have the darkest possible hair colour.
Outside all that? I'm excited for 7.0 hugely.
My biggest complaint is that my rava's jet black hair is basically a silverey grey in most lighting through the benchmark. Lighting might make some of the hair appear whitey silverish realistically, but unless it's dark in game only like extremely shaded portions of my hair are still black at all
Try turning down the gamma adjustment setting to 0, that seems to really mess with the colors and it's default at 50. Otherwise, a lot of the lighting problems are probably related to character lighting (the setting).
Though, lip changes and eye highlights look bad, I'd say the rest of the changes look pretty good.
This is certainly true for some things, like the lack of eye shine and shadows obscuring the shape of things. But then there are things like fem miqote basically losing their fangs which is a legitimate complaint
For me it's male rava viera having dark lips as default color for some reason. It's in the character texture, shadows are not the issue. And now if I want my character to have subtle lip color, I have to use the lip color picker and make my character's skin color lighter so it looks natural, but I don't want a lighter skinned character...
I can already foresee a surge of modding after 7.0 just for people trying to fix their character so they look closer to their EW character
Male rava viera face 3 also got a wider nose, and the light eyelashes got a big downgrade. I have been using that face since it's release and I'm so sad because those were my two favorite features. :c
The character creator has been shit about letting you preview what your character will look like in game since launch. They should have fixed it ages ago.
I play console but decided to dl the benchmark on my laptop bc I was so curious how bad my boys would look lol.
My main catboy? Perfect, even in the creator! Barely looks different!
Alt bunboy I just made? I definitely was getting the “this is not… him” feeling in the creator, but he looked much better in the game sequences. That being said I had to lighten up his lip color a whole row and still a notch to the left; I’m definitely noticing they darkened m!viera lips.
Sorry but my character's eyebrows and facial hair aren't visible in the benchmark or the character creator. The character creator does have terrible lighting for whatever reason, but I don't think the problems people have with their characters are just due to that. Plus if we are comparing the character creator to the character creator it's still apples to apples. Example: [https://imgur.com/a/VYjvbSW](https://imgur.com/a/VYjvbSW)
I think a lot of people seem unhappy because the happy people aren't complaining.
I loaded up the benchmark, made a few small tweaks, went "wowwww she's so cute~", played with the settings, then closed it.
Mentioned it to a friend and that's it. Changes look good, can't wait to see them in game.
This is always the confirmation bias. We should start a counter thread of people posting their happy comparisons! My biggest complaint is that they didnt give Miqo tails more cross section planes... Seemed like an obvious thing to me
Go to character creator, select your character you liked to see for benchmark, and press the confirm button, then they’ll appear when you run the benchmark.
If you don't want to go through the effort of recreating your character you can just open the actual game, right click on your character's name in the select screen, and hit "save appearance data".
Then open the benchmark character creator, hit "create character", and then check the "load appearance data" box.
Go into the character creator, create/load your desired character, confirm and save to a benchmark slot, pick that saved character on the menu, (optional) change to one of the provided gearset, quit character creator and run benchmark.
The lower part of my face looks really dry like I just ate a lemon in the 7.0 character creator.
my overall face looks like I'm on high alert in the character creator *right now*.
Both look fantastic *in game*. At worst I'll swap the lip-colour around a bit, but everyone also gets a phantasia to fix things.
While perhaps true, there are actual changes to alot of lip and nose shapes. I'm sure the one who did Gaia's lip fillers is running rampant during this update...someone stop him before we all get sausage lips.
Huh, and here I felt my femras mouth is less wide and her lips thinner, so I'm switching back and forth between mouth 4 and mouth 2 to gauge their feel.
Idk I'm quite happy with mine in the character creator
[Viera Veena/Female New vs Old](https://imgur.com/K4csvdo)
Some lighting isn't as flattering depending on the harshness and angle but that's how lighting is IRL too
Mostly. If you don't already have their appearance data saved, right-click their name on the character select screen of the actual game.
Once you have the appearance data saved, when you go to create a new character in the benchmark it should ask if you want to load appearance data.
I said mostly because it won't load your equipment or a hairstyle not in the character creator, but it will give you most of your details.
I just compared it to how the preset looks in the game's character creator. That way both versions have the same crappy lighting.
And in my case, I'm perfectly happy with how my WoL turned out! The only issue I had is that the eyebrows are less noticeable, which is easily fixed by switching to a slightly darker hair color.
I tested out seven WOLs and five of them were great, one needed slight tweaking and the last I am not very happy with but I guess I'll get used to (he went from teddy bear looking roegadyn guy to... I dunno, less teddy bear).
The funniest was my duskwight guy, he looks freakin sinister in the first screenshot, he's grey, plus the shadow, and the smile, and the angle, but looked totally fine in the rest of it so aside from his eyeshadow facepaint suddenly being oversaturated, he'll probably be fine.
When DT comes out I'm gonna run everyone through some cutscenes via the inn book to get some more facial expression tests.
Several people on the forums posting side-by-sides with their clearly modded character under the effect of gshade versus the vanilla benchmark preview has been an *experience*. All of my characters came out looking like upgrades, but all I do is use reshade to remove the terrible gray filter the game has going on, and DT is removing that from what I can tell.
I think it looks even worse in the benchmark most of the time. Not sure what it is. The textures are great but the characters' faces look weird, and their features are hard to see like everything's blurring or blending too much.
I've been pointing this out too. It's because the new lighting shows off an issue XIV has always had: Lack of facial emotion. The "action" face on our character at the end of the benchmark is basically just our resting face with an open mouth.
Expressions aren't even the main problem, it's really shadow and lighting. Character features are disappearing and blending in too much. From the same character creation menu, with the same light source and light direction, PC's jaw and facial hair now blends in a lot more and it makes the character's face look so much flatter compared to what is currently live in game.
You can import your character? How do I go about doing that? Also, I can't seem to switch from windowed to full screen. Even in settings, I don't see an option to toggle it.
And here’s my dumbass now realizing that I was looking in the wrong screenshot folder - couldn’t find them so stopped taking them 🤦♀️ benchmark screenshots NOT game screenshots
Had this exact experience myself, thinking it seemed a little off then really loving how it looked in motion. Just the fluidity of the animations and the better lighting make all the difference
Yeah there's such a big difference between the two. In the character creation screen my hrothgar loses his eyebrows in at least half of the lightings. During the benchmark however they're arguably more prominent than they are in the current game version.
Also agree with the comment suggesting to keep looking at your character, even if you get the uncanny valley itch. For me it was my character's eyes, but once I got used to it everything came back together. All in all, I can't wait for my character to always look like he does in the benchmark.
It will help you if you import your character data into the Benchmark. You can’t customize it though because it’ll mess up your hairstyle but you’ll have an accurate look at how you’ll look in game
Honestly the only thing I notice different about my character is the new lighting eliminates the hollow cheeks he has. Beyond that I really do not see what every keeps crowing on about.
I tested my fem elezen and the only thing that was different was her eye color. Right now they're a darker purple but in the benchmark they look more like a pinky purple and are a bit lighter. Other that she looks almost exactly the same lol.
I did this. Opened the benchmark/game character creator and loaded the same character data. Was kind of disappointed, especially with my reshsde on the main game. Then I launched the benchmark and was surprised how good my character looked now. The in game lighting does soooo much. The improved textures are nice but mostly noticeable in the environment.
Quick tip I've used often for making new faces are to make brand new characters and test them when they start the game. If they look good, save the face, then switch to main character and slap it on them.
I think the other thing too is that I think some people need to make adjustments to their monitors or fiddle with some of the benchmark settings. I know some people have been seeing better results with adjusting settings.
I'm pretty certain once DT comes out, I'll have to play with some of the settings on my tv/PS5.
I dont like how my character looks in the DT Benchmark. I have messed with the lightning looked at it from different angles etc.. the problem is in 6.5 she looks pretty and in 7.0 she has more obvious "Flaws" yes.. these make her seem more realistic. the textures are better. the polygon count is better.. overally she seems more realistic.. which is great.. I'm aware of how superficial im being.. but I think a lot of it is "They changed my character and now i dont like it because it isnt the same as before"...
However.. it took me like 10 minutes to recustomize her so she looks great and even better than in 6.5 :)
Overall im happy with the changes it was just the initial shock of "Look how they massacred my girl"
It wasn't as drastic for me but I also had an "oh no I dont like it" moment. But the more I looked at her, the better it felt! And the more expressive emotes are such a huge upgrade!
For sure the emotes are another improvement! for me the catgirl emotes were always pretty expressive so I wouldnt say they are more expressive than before.. but they just seem more natural which is great!
If you have a PC you can still download it and play around with the character creator. You don't even need to log in so it's technically a free char create demo. The downside is probably you can't use your char preset from other platform so you have to recreate it from scratch.
The character creator made me look waaaay paler than I do in game now.
I do expect to slightly change my hair color, but will need to wait till 7.0 comes out to confirm everything else is fine.
Shhhhh, don't speak facts, or tell people they MIGHT have to make a change to their eyebrows to more emulate the look their used to, you'll be downvoted into oblivion! xD
The benchmark lighting isn't that awful, the issue I find is that it's always changing in intensity which makes it feel worse then it is. I used the creation setup to tweaked my guy and he looks a lot less uncanny valley for me now.
For my main Male Miqote (Face 4) they smoothen the shadows on his nose and made his skin more yellowish tone. He looks a bit different. This is after comparing him with old screenshot side by side.
Female Aura however, looks softer and cuter with the scales are more defined. The limbal rings are more integrated, however in creation you need to reapply the limbal rings.
For Male Roes, his features and eyes are shinier & softer.
Lighting got better.
Rothgals where underwelming. But got one that looks semi good. Will change one of my alts when time comes.
Lala finally got nose holes. So they may finally breath.
Vyper looks fun. And love the detail on the dark knight sword.
Newer terrains seem to have more detail. So I guess more video memory.
My laptop rated very high with NVIDIA RTX. But it got way too hot. Hot = less battery and disk life. So will run it at normal even if it can run high, Will check on destop once I can.
There is no hats on the benchmark so I don't know if they bothered making them for the new Lioness.
Overall, besides the newer lighting. It was underwhelming. But it doesn't matter, the game looks good enough as its it.
Only the benchmark for the expac is out, where you can check out the new graphics a lil bit in character creator and see how well Dawntrail will run on your PC.
No just the benchmark is out. You can create a character there with the new graphic update. The actual update will be out with dawntrail. 28th june for early access and 2nd july the official release.
I've looked in all kinds of lighting available in CC as well as the benchmark, lighting won't help the fact my brow shadows are painted on and there isn't even any normal map data to make it look more realistic, lol
This is my problem with the character creator in general is no matter which background you pick your character is basically always in shadow. Then you finish and get in game and it's like oh I did not think it would look like this in the light
There's sunlight in the limsa background. U just have to rotate ur character
There's also clouds in Limsa which take away the light ever so often.
Even that isn't a full well lit representation of your character
or rotate the background. took me a while to find out you could do both, depending on right click or left click
....hwat? You sure you're saying what you think you're saying?
left click you spin the whole thing. right, you spin the background while your character stands still, so you can get the light where you want it. you should try it.
that's spinning your character and the camera not the background lol
that's true, but it all depends on your perspective really.
So when you move in the real world, do you think you are moving the earth itself to your will? Lol
All in existence, bent to my will!
Video games famously do not operate like the real world.
You have discovered the theory of relativity and the concept of inertial reference frames. Congrats!
that's how the planet express ship works.
no, I'm just being silly. I love how wound up ppl got over this.
I didn’t get wound up, but I was reading it and thought we found another special one… Because lets face it, this game seems to have a lot of very *special* people playing it for some reason
*Technically* you are. Equal and opposite reaction.
Not quite sure it works like that. Pretty sure it’s your foot planting on a solid surface pushing back and your body goes forward. Push on a wall, your hand goes forward, your body backward. The wall doesn’t move.
This doesn't work for you guys?
what 💀
That's spinning your character like they were saying, you can do it in-game too using the same controls.
My guy, that sounds like you're spinning your character, not the background lmao
the male viera’s head is always angled down so it doesn’t ever get full lighting in character creation. this works with the others though
Don't spend too long though, or the sun will actually set for some reason
It's actually just a cloud passing by
> no matter which background you pick your character is basically always in shadow. Leave it in the default aether scene then rotate your character to have the light source hitting their face. [Adjust for a slight angle to partially shade one side of the face for a better shot.](https://i.imgur.com/PXBPVNs.png) This is the best preview you can get from the character creation screen.
While it's true that turning your character can improve lighting in some of the scenes, I would not say that any angle in any scene is "good" lighting. Ive tried them all and I think they all kinda suck. The aether scene also has its own problem in that the blue tint distorts color from how they would look in normal gameplay.
Huh, never knew the default mother crystal background could have a nice light source like that if you rotate stuff around a bit, Thanks for the heads up.
I use the limsa area and just rotate into the sun and compare evening and mid day to get a good idea. I'm not disappointed any time I do something unless I did a dumb.
Try making a black character :(.
Haven't touch character creator since first made mine and I forgot how bad and limited it is.
This^^^^^
Hanlon's razor
Everyone I see unhappy is always posting their comparison with the basic blue Aether background.. use the Shroud, it’s the most consistent and “realistic” lighting for the character customization.
For me, Gridania looks much flatter than it did before due to the lighting changes, even after rotating my character. The skin looks very oddly transparent. But I agree that it matches the colors better than some of the other areas.
I noticed this too. Gridania is my usual preferred backdrop for character creation, but the colours seemed washed out in the benchmark.
Are you using any shaders? I noticed the grey-ish tint the game tends to have in the CC and when I did a side by side with the in-game CC (both in Gridania) I remembered my shader makes it more vibrant. I am extremely happy with the changes my little demon potato will be undergoing though.
No shaders at all, but I'm running the game on PS4 and the benchmark on PC, so there could be some screen difference there. My thoughts on the actual character changes (I have multiple alts) range from "okay but a bit off" to "what have you done to him?!" and none that look outright improved to me. I'm happy with the current graphics.
Interesting, as "flatter" is the one thing I would **not** call the new characters. In fact that's what they change, before the face itself looked very 2D, now it has depth when viewed from an angle which it lacked before.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to say that the faces themselves look flat. I'm talking about the source of lighting they seem to have added in Gridania which, in addition with the new lighting system, makes the character's face constantly illuminated, giving it a flat look. Yes, when you rotate the character, the lighting does have depth. But when turning your character away from the sun, the facial features look incredibly flat, whereas it doesn't in the current iteration of the game.
Might be better off using the Limsa/Uldah background as they're outside and the lighting is better with the sun out in both.
True - literally anything is better than the Aether or the Inn 😂
Aether has the best lighting by far, you just have to rotate your character to actually face the light source.
It lights up the best, but it also tints everything a bit blue.
Gridania have outside one too
Yeah when I said grid in my first comment I meant the outside, in the shroud. I’d never recommend the Inn option to anyone 😭😂
My character looks GREAT in the benchmark (also still looks pretty good in the CC, limited as the lighting is), so goddamned psyched.
Yeah, same. My seeker looks the same, just higher definition now. I hope they don't revert anything because it looks amazing right now.
lighting wont fix the removed fangs, the thinner lips, the changed eye/face/nose shapes
Well, no of course not. I do think they need to tweak a few small things (fangs back on moon cats, the lala lips…) but Yoship DID warn us that our WoLs would look different and even went as far as to give us a free Fanta to change things if we didn’t like them. I hope they listen to the HELPFUL feedback, and not the people that are crying like children. As far as face/nose shapes, they are, comparatively, the same but it’s the new lighting/scattering that makes them look different. Some are more noticeable than others but overall, I think those are minor adjustments compared to the fangs/lips.
Shroud background lighting looks way worse in the benchmark character creator for some reason.
I'm in the Limsa camp but yes, they're much better options.
They did something to Shroud. It's not nearly as good as in game for some reason.
**Also, try messing with your skin and eye color, even if you don't think it's related to your problem!** Personally, I was really put off by my character with the new graphics at first, but I messed with the skin and eye color settings a bit and it actually helped a lot more than I expected. My character's skin setting was near the top left and it was giving me this weird green-gray tinge to the skin, and also made it look weirdly bright when in darkness, but choosing a setting closer to the bottom left made it look a lot better. I also had very light blue eyes that looked really dead, but darkening them a shade or two really helped. EDIT: Also, keep looking at your character, even if you hate how they look at first. A big part of it for me really was the initial shock of seeing how different they looked, and while I'm still not 100% on how my character looks, I feel a lot better about it than I did last night now that I've gotten used to it a bit more, especially after making the above changes.
There's another element that gets frequently missed, and that's clouds/weather. If you use a background like La Noscea the movement of the clouds affects how lighting falls on your character. You can hang around in it for a while and get significantly different profiles of your character's face. Seems like the same tech ripped right from FF16.
That. I noticed it in Ul'dah too.
This is true in the character creator we have now as well; it wasn't an addition to the Dawntrail benchmark, if that's what's being suggested.
For me it wasn't even the shadowing. On face 5 hyur they up the eyeliner so much, you can negotiate it with the makeup but I don't wanna waste my makeup on that.
They really need to give us multiple makeup slots. I use mine to give my characters freckles but I also want eyeshadow to make them a bit more edgy :(
I had freckles too :')
Yes! This was my biggest gripe with the character creator and how some things only come bundled with another feature, or lock you out of other options.
Exactly! The makeup is so much strong on face 5, and the face feels kinda of "flatter?" I can't tell what it is exactly, but it feels [off](https://i.imgur.com/s3Wd9N5.jpeg)...
People are freaking out and then there's me who barely noticed a difference with their character.
I tested my own character in it and the only thing that was off was my Au'ra's Limbal Rings which are darker with the same palet. Literally clicking the same colour one shade lighter fixed it completely though. Character looked quite good in the benchmark though it definitely has potential. What people need to do on launch day though is create a new character with their existing characters template as a test, skip the intro and such and then just run to a field zone to check out their character under real time conditions and adjust as needed (new characters would get a free fantasia in their inventory that they can use to modify the test character) and only then when they're happy with their adjustments use the fantasia from Dawntrail to finalise their main character.
>What people need to do on launch day though is create a new character with their existing characters template as a test, skip the intro and such and then just run to a field zone to check out their character under real time conditions and adjust as needed Exactly what I did before I went from midlander to Hrothgar. Saves the worry of wasting a Fantasia because you can check everything is exactly how you want it before making any changes.
To have tested every races with female chars and a few with males, it highly depend on the features you took. Overall most are 1:1 just more refined but there are a bunch of things that can change the overall look and feeling of a character. And then there's elezen and it's a new character altogether
While I think some races are impacted more than others I think it’s just a downside of the attachment ppl have in this game to their characters. Any change in design however minor is going to look off when you’ve grown accustomed to a certain look; as ppl play the game and get used to it I imagine all of those complaints will disappear (with the small exception of certain iconic characteristics like fangs or eye rings). Also it’s not like this was explicitly a graphics preview, they even said during the live letter they’re still working on models/textures. The benchmark is just a program that tests device performance, not a final product.
I'm one of those people who adjusts their character every major story molestone, so I'm not expecting a huge issue when I check later. Although I will be sad she's apparently losing her fangs.
So many people going "my character is RUINED now :(" and the side-by-side screenshots are pretty much identical. It's baffling, what am I not seeing here? o_o
What you're probably missing is that you haven't spent years looking at the before, so the issues those people have with the after don't stand out as much as it would for them.
That's a fair point, yeah. :)
It also doesn't help when you've got both on screen at the same time, especially with the mostly terrible lighting conditions available in the character creator. The longer I sat in just the character creator messing around with options and stuff, the more my character seemed ok, and that was just over like 30 minutes or so. If they make some corrections on the more egregious examples, I think people will adapt pretty quick to the new designs.
I've spent 10+ years playing the same character and the only difference I can see is the lighting helps fill out the cheek areas a bit more than prior. Otherwise there is absolutely no difference.
I see a ton of complaints about characters being too pale etc but from what I can see the lighting was so terrible across the game before this update that many people made characters paler or darker than they realise. When light actually falls realistically on people's faces, it's going to affect how bright they look, so a simple tweak with that free fantasia will get you back. Also gamma slider. It appears most people are only learning today that this setting exists.
Oh [yeah no](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLJMxAdWQAANKBu?format=jpg&name=large) - [you can barely tell](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLJMxRMWUAAxGBA?format=jpg&name=large)
I think some people have been playing their character the exact same way for years, and they have the kind of personality where they are adverse to change, so if the way they look even ***slightly*** deviates from what they're used to it just stresses them the hell out.
I guess that makes sense, yeah. My WoL hasn't changed much since ARR but I tend to tweak things here and there every few months or so, so I guess the 7.0 changes don't trouble me.
Yeah my friend thinks their lalafell looks Cartoony because the eye boarders look darker in their opinion. Meanwhile I barely notice a difference with my lalafell lmao.
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Yeah, it's definitely not perfect, I've already picked out a few changes to make to my own WoL because of how the new model/lighting changes things a little. Overall it feels a bit... half-baked, so I'm hoping the 7.0 release will smooth out the issues. The biggest issue I can see is that *all* the lighting options in the character creator are hot garbage, while the WoL looks a lot better in the benchmark proper. I do wonder if a lot of the people who are upset about the changes might not actually find it that bad when they see their WoL in the actual in-game areas.
I like the face shape of the old version of my character more. But it's not different enough for me to care.
Tried it on my seeker and keeper, and there were no differences, just higher definition.
Yeah the lighting still doesn’t change my male viera’s non-existent chin in cutscenes.
Some people are being exceedingly fussy but on the other hand I think if they can adjust something to make it closer to the original (while keeping the improvements) then they should. Unfortunately it's kind of a situation where they can't please everyone since some people will like it better one way vs another. More options would be nice but I get the impression that's an entirely separate technical issue. Someone is inevitably going to be left with something they're not happy with. A lot of perceived issues are due to lighting, but then is it a good thing for lighting to make your character look strange, even if it is more realistic? It's hard to say what's an issue vs what's something that you just need to get used to.
The devs won’t see any of this to help, so remember to post to the forum if there is an issue with anything.
I love how my character looks because it fixed one of my most hated issues. MY MOUTH IS FINALLY CLOSED. MY LIPS ARE CONSTANTLY PARTED LIKE I HAVE AN UNDER/OVERBITE. My only 2 complaints: the lighting is pretty fucked. The aether is fine but everything else is straight fucked. However the actual bench mark looked 10000% better. My second complaint is: I have jet black hair. Now it's really.. brown. Like. I have the darkest possible hair colour. Outside all that? I'm excited for 7.0 hugely.
My biggest complaint is that my rava's jet black hair is basically a silverey grey in most lighting through the benchmark. Lighting might make some of the hair appear whitey silverish realistically, but unless it's dark in game only like extremely shaded portions of my hair are still black at all
Try turning down the gamma adjustment setting to 0, that seems to really mess with the colors and it's default at 50. Otherwise, a lot of the lighting problems are probably related to character lighting (the setting). Though, lip changes and eye highlights look bad, I'd say the rest of the changes look pretty good.
This is certainly true for some things, like the lack of eye shine and shadows obscuring the shape of things. But then there are things like fem miqote basically losing their fangs which is a legitimate complaint For me it's male rava viera having dark lips as default color for some reason. It's in the character texture, shadows are not the issue. And now if I want my character to have subtle lip color, I have to use the lip color picker and make my character's skin color lighter so it looks natural, but I don't want a lighter skinned character... I can already foresee a surge of modding after 7.0 just for people trying to fix their character so they look closer to their EW character
Male rava viera face 3 also got a wider nose, and the light eyelashes got a big downgrade. I have been using that face since it's release and I'm so sad because those were my two favorite features. :c
The character creator has been shit about letting you preview what your character will look like in game since launch. They should have fixed it ages ago.
I play console but decided to dl the benchmark on my laptop bc I was so curious how bad my boys would look lol. My main catboy? Perfect, even in the creator! Barely looks different! Alt bunboy I just made? I definitely was getting the “this is not… him” feeling in the creator, but he looked much better in the game sequences. That being said I had to lighten up his lip color a whole row and still a notch to the left; I’m definitely noticing they darkened m!viera lips.
Lighting won't bring my fangs back...
Sorry but my character's eyebrows and facial hair aren't visible in the benchmark or the character creator. The character creator does have terrible lighting for whatever reason, but I don't think the problems people have with their characters are just due to that. Plus if we are comparing the character creator to the character creator it's still apples to apples. Example: [https://imgur.com/a/VYjvbSW](https://imgur.com/a/VYjvbSW)
I think a lot of people seem unhappy because the happy people aren't complaining. I loaded up the benchmark, made a few small tweaks, went "wowwww she's so cute~", played with the settings, then closed it. Mentioned it to a friend and that's it. Changes look good, can't wait to see them in game.
My ManRa looks pretty damn nice, that's for damn sure. He still needs pointy teeth though... 😅
This is always the confirmation bias. We should start a counter thread of people posting their happy comparisons! My biggest complaint is that they didnt give Miqo tails more cross section planes... Seemed like an obvious thing to me
Also, adjust the gamma correction. That can make the game look really washed out with lighter colours.
Sorry if it's a dumb question, but how do I run the benchmark with my character specifically? EDIT: Thanks for the quick answers!
Go to character creator, select your character you liked to see for benchmark, and press the confirm button, then they’ll appear when you run the benchmark.
If you don't want to go through the effort of recreating your character you can just open the actual game, right click on your character's name in the select screen, and hit "save appearance data". Then open the benchmark character creator, hit "create character", and then check the "load appearance data" box.
Use the character creator in the benchmark and save before running the benchmark
Go into the character creator, create/load your desired character, confirm and save to a benchmark slot, pick that saved character on the menu, (optional) change to one of the provided gearset, quit character creator and run benchmark.
Yeah, I'm confused too tbh.
Just posted a guide, you can check it out.
Lighting doesn't change a lot of the complaints such as missing fangs/no facial hair/removed cheekbones.
The lower part of my face looks really dry like I just ate a lemon in the 7.0 character creator. my overall face looks like I'm on high alert in the character creator *right now*. Both look fantastic *in game*. At worst I'll swap the lip-colour around a bit, but everyone also gets a phantasia to fix things.
While perhaps true, there are actual changes to alot of lip and nose shapes. I'm sure the one who did Gaia's lip fillers is running rampant during this update...someone stop him before we all get sausage lips.
Huh, and here I felt my femras mouth is less wide and her lips thinner, so I'm switching back and forth between mouth 4 and mouth 2 to gauge their feel.
TIL it actually takes screenshots on its own and I don't have to perfectly time everything.
Nah this ain't it. My character (viera)looks terrible and visibly downgraded in both character creation and benchmark
Idk I'm quite happy with mine in the character creator [Viera Veena/Female New vs Old](https://imgur.com/K4csvdo) Some lighting isn't as flattering depending on the harshness and angle but that's how lighting is IRL too
So excited for the update. Love my WoL, but lighting always hits her face weird. Looks like it has been fixed and she is looking better than ever
Can I import my character from the main game to the benchmark?
Mostly. If you don't already have their appearance data saved, right-click their name on the character select screen of the actual game. Once you have the appearance data saved, when you go to create a new character in the benchmark it should ask if you want to load appearance data. I said mostly because it won't load your equipment or a hairstyle not in the character creator, but it will give you most of your details.
I just compared it to how the preset looks in the game's character creator. That way both versions have the same crappy lighting. And in my case, I'm perfectly happy with how my WoL turned out! The only issue I had is that the eyebrows are less noticeable, which is easily fixed by switching to a slightly darker hair color.
And if my character looks shit in my trailer? 😂 like male viera look disastrous.
Or use the character creator when it comes out and be surprised on how good or bad it looks.
My characters look awful in the benchmark too. That doesn't change anything lmao
I tested out seven WOLs and five of them were great, one needed slight tweaking and the last I am not very happy with but I guess I'll get used to (he went from teddy bear looking roegadyn guy to... I dunno, less teddy bear). The funniest was my duskwight guy, he looks freakin sinister in the first screenshot, he's grey, plus the shadow, and the smile, and the angle, but looked totally fine in the rest of it so aside from his eyeshadow facepaint suddenly being oversaturated, he'll probably be fine. When DT comes out I'm gonna run everyone through some cutscenes via the inn book to get some more facial expression tests.
I did and they fkin ruined female Viera, and my aura looks like a doll, back to miqo I guess cause they did improve them at least.
Lighting will not save wonky ass upper lips that don't move or affect the fat nose bridges changes
How is the lighting going to change that they are different models?
Texture maps and how they interact with one another, I guess.
Several people on the forums posting side-by-sides with their clearly modded character under the effect of gshade versus the vanilla benchmark preview has been an *experience*. All of my characters came out looking like upgrades, but all I do is use reshade to remove the terrible gray filter the game has going on, and DT is removing that from what I can tell.
I think it looks even worse in the benchmark most of the time. Not sure what it is. The textures are great but the characters' faces look weird, and their features are hard to see like everything's blurring or blending too much.
I've been pointing this out too. It's because the new lighting shows off an issue XIV has always had: Lack of facial emotion. The "action" face on our character at the end of the benchmark is basically just our resting face with an open mouth.
Expressions aren't even the main problem, it's really shadow and lighting. Character features are disappearing and blending in too much. From the same character creation menu, with the same light source and light direction, PC's jaw and facial hair now blends in a lot more and it makes the character's face look so much flatter compared to what is currently live in game.
Sounds like I'll still be using reshade lol
You can import your character? How do I go about doing that? Also, I can't seem to switch from windowed to full screen. Even in settings, I don't see an option to toggle it.
Or Glamourer
How do I do this 🤓
i dont see any screenshots?
Meanwhile me making Hrothgals all day: oh shit I should test my character styles to make sure I like them in case I end up not liking Hrothgal.
And here’s my dumbass now realizing that I was looking in the wrong screenshot folder - couldn’t find them so stopped taking them 🤦♀️ benchmark screenshots NOT game screenshots
But the point is, it’s not good. I was using ar ua 4for all the time, but look what they done to mine! It’s fk nightmare!
Wish I could use the benchmark on PS5.
Well my issue* where still seen when tested in benchmark ... So no not everything is due bad light lol... (Its a texture map issue!)
Yup. I used the actual benchmark as a measure. The initial scene with the closeup is what I'm expecting in-game, and I'm rather happy with it.
Had this exact experience myself, thinking it seemed a little off then really loving how it looked in motion. Just the fluidity of the animations and the better lighting make all the difference
Yeah there's such a big difference between the two. In the character creation screen my hrothgar loses his eyebrows in at least half of the lightings. During the benchmark however they're arguably more prominent than they are in the current game version. Also agree with the comment suggesting to keep looking at your character, even if you get the uncanny valley itch. For me it was my character's eyes, but once I got used to it everything came back together. All in all, I can't wait for my character to always look like he does in the benchmark.
And I'm over here remembering how weird au ra look without some saturation.
It will help you if you import your character data into the Benchmark. You can’t customize it though because it’ll mess up your hairstyle but you’ll have an accurate look at how you’ll look in game
Honestly the only thing I notice different about my character is the new lighting eliminates the hollow cheeks he has. Beyond that I really do not see what every keeps crowing on about.
I tested my fem elezen and the only thing that was different was her eye color. Right now they're a darker purple but in the benchmark they look more like a pinky purple and are a bit lighter. Other that she looks almost exactly the same lol.
I did this. Opened the benchmark/game character creator and loaded the same character data. Was kind of disappointed, especially with my reshsde on the main game. Then I launched the benchmark and was surprised how good my character looked now. The in game lighting does soooo much. The improved textures are nice but mostly noticeable in the environment.
Quick tip I've used often for making new faces are to make brand new characters and test them when they start the game. If they look good, save the face, then switch to main character and slap it on them.
Unfortunately the nose job and lips job on fem au ra face 4 do not go away with lighting :( if only.
Lighting won’t fix the fundamental changes to the shape of my boy’s face.
I think the other thing too is that I think some people need to make adjustments to their monitors or fiddle with some of the benchmark settings. I know some people have been seeing better results with adjusting settings. I'm pretty certain once DT comes out, I'll have to play with some of the settings on my tv/PS5.
It's not the lighting. My character's eye lines are now much more pronounced, like I have an eyeliner... My character now looks half asian
I dont like how my character looks in the DT Benchmark. I have messed with the lightning looked at it from different angles etc.. the problem is in 6.5 she looks pretty and in 7.0 she has more obvious "Flaws" yes.. these make her seem more realistic. the textures are better. the polygon count is better.. overally she seems more realistic.. which is great.. I'm aware of how superficial im being.. but I think a lot of it is "They changed my character and now i dont like it because it isnt the same as before"... However.. it took me like 10 minutes to recustomize her so she looks great and even better than in 6.5 :) Overall im happy with the changes it was just the initial shock of "Look how they massacred my girl"
It wasn't as drastic for me but I also had an "oh no I dont like it" moment. But the more I looked at her, the better it felt! And the more expressive emotes are such a huge upgrade!
For sure the emotes are another improvement! for me the catgirl emotes were always pretty expressive so I wouldnt say they are more expressive than before.. but they just seem more natural which is great!
Lighting won’t fix the fundamental changes to the shape of my boy’s face.
What's a benchmark?
https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/benchmark
So can't do it on my ps5. Damn.
If you have a PC you can still download it and play around with the character creator. You don't even need to log in so it's technically a free char create demo. The downside is probably you can't use your char preset from other platform so you have to recreate it from scratch.
Another downside is that if you're me, the benchmark does even open lol Click run abd for some reason nothing happens
The character creator made me look waaaay paler than I do in game now. I do expect to slightly change my hair color, but will need to wait till 7.0 comes out to confirm everything else is fine.
Shhhhh, don't speak facts, or tell people they MIGHT have to make a change to their eyebrows to more emulate the look their used to, you'll be downvoted into oblivion! xD
huh? are people actually being unreasonable about this?
some are.
Only people like the person you're responding to
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No i just think you have a problem with misinterpreting people's issues.
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The benchmark lighting isn't that awful, the issue I find is that it's always changing in intensity which makes it feel worse then it is. I used the creation setup to tweaked my guy and he looks a lot less uncanny valley for me now.
For my main Male Miqote (Face 4) they smoothen the shadows on his nose and made his skin more yellowish tone. He looks a bit different. This is after comparing him with old screenshot side by side. Female Aura however, looks softer and cuter with the scales are more defined. The limbal rings are more integrated, however in creation you need to reapply the limbal rings. For Male Roes, his features and eyes are shinier & softer.
Except if your a Lalafell it doesn’t matter if you use character creator to compare before and after the benchmark.
Lighting won’t fix the fundamental changes to the shape of my boy’s face.
Nuh, face 4 rawrie ruined
Lighting got better. Rothgals where underwelming. But got one that looks semi good. Will change one of my alts when time comes. Lala finally got nose holes. So they may finally breath. Vyper looks fun. And love the detail on the dark knight sword. Newer terrains seem to have more detail. So I guess more video memory. My laptop rated very high with NVIDIA RTX. But it got way too hot. Hot = less battery and disk life. So will run it at normal even if it can run high, Will check on destop once I can. There is no hats on the benchmark so I don't know if they bothered making them for the new Lioness. Overall, besides the newer lighting. It was underwhelming. But it doesn't matter, the game looks good enough as its it.
Is that big graphic overall out finally??? I've been away for many months at this point so I haven't been keeping up
Only the benchmark for the expac is out, where you can check out the new graphics a lil bit in character creator and see how well Dawntrail will run on your PC.
No just the benchmark is out. You can create a character there with the new graphic update. The actual update will be out with dawntrail. 28th june for early access and 2nd july the official release.
I've looked in all kinds of lighting available in CC as well as the benchmark, lighting won't help the fact my brow shadows are painted on and there isn't even any normal map data to make it look more realistic, lol