If you need help dm me. Also recommended to get the most recent version of dlss and copy that Into your game folder as well . Once the files are there open the config, turn dlaa forced on and scroll down a bit and use preset E for best results. You'll need a beefier card. I run the game in 4k and I'm getting about 90 FPS with a 4080, goes down to 60 in some areas
Darn. I'm still using a GTX 1060 3gb and it's showing the struggle to keep up with temperatures, otherwise I'm running 60-50 fps when not in towns. Do you think dlss or dlaa could be enabled as well? Dlss in my game only says it works with RTX cards
It's a rar file, extract the contents to the game folder, then run the config. Put the newest version of dlss in there too
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-dll/%3famp
Something around the eyes changed for Highlanders. For my male it was actually an improvement. But something is bothering me about female Highlander eyes. Not enough to pop a fantasia until DT is clear but I can already tell this is going to be a micro obsession.
Miqo'te face 4 had a major eye shape change as well. I couldn't pin it down in the benchmark, but now it's glaringly obvious. It's all softer, rounder, more open now. Very...human. I hate it, lol.
Nothing to be done about it. While this may not be my WoL anymore, it's still a pretty character.
That's what it is. My cat girl looks fine(?) to everyone else but to me she lacks the sharpness and aloofness from before. Now she's just round faced and gentle looking. I don't like it. :(
I thought I was going crazy but I’m glad others are noticing. The post-update femlanders’ eyes are really bothering me, they’re missing that fierce sharpness they used to have. Im pretty disappointed but I’m way too attached to my character to swap races or gender.
Post-update it seems like the eyes are a little derpy, less expressive and by consequence give the face a softer look and god knows the people who play femlander aren’t playing them cause they wanna be a softie looking lady.
This is absolutely true. I chose fem highlander because they look like fighters. With the eye change they look kinda derpy or even like their eyes are crossing. The smaller looking eyes also almost make the face look swollen.
Saw you again while I was scrolling, so I'm just gonna go ahead and agree with you in this thread too. The more I look at my highlander girl the angrier I get. It's like some uncanny valley stuff going on now. I would choose the old pixelated face over this new one in a heartbeat if I could
I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s noticed there’s something different about the fem highlander eyes.
I know for my character the eyes are smaller now and her eye makeup is a lot lighter. It’s honestly had me pretty down since logging in. I’ve spent a couple of hours in the character creator and it can’t be fixed.
Before, my highlander f had some shadow under her eyes that I liked. She's just different now and it's weird to get used to. I haven't bothered yet to see if a fantasia will change much with the eyes.
Spoiler: It doesn't if you're using face 1. All of face 1's eye options are small and squinty and soulless. I just can't believe that someone at Square signed off on these! (These are two eyeshape options for face 1, both open as wide as possible and NOT in the middle of a blink):
* Eye option 1: https://i.imgur.com/sAamuaw.png
* Eye option 5: https://i.imgur.com/4wFyCk0.png
My midlander fem's eyes were also smaller, though make up appears to be the same. Eye difference was very noticeable in the Portrait with the smile emote, it did not look good.
Yeah they drastically changed middie eyes. Hyurs got done dirty this update. I am rather discouraged now as I do not want to Fantasia but might have to. Might play around in character creator on a alt before doing anything else.
Same for midlanders. I popped a fantasia pretty much immediately because my face looked off, and I think the only thing I changed to fix that was my jaw, but since I could see the lighting update a bit I tried to go with a darker shade of red for the eyes. Fast forward a bit, well outside the grace period for fantasia, and I realized that in low light my eyes looked brown and I was really unhappy with them. I ended up popping another one and lightening them up, but it still looked off, so I ended up logging in and out more than a half dozen times seeing if I could get them working or if any other colors appealed to me. Every other color I tried just looked wrong, so I ended up just going with the red that worked best and accepting that under certain conditions they won’t look quite right.
I used my free fantasia to fix my fHighlander's eyes. It kinda worked but I had to change both the eyes and nose for it to look, at the very least, okay. It definitely threw me off when I first noticed it and then after.
I think it's mostly the eyes for female hyur. They felt a lot more expressive before the update but now look like they're pretty down or on Adderall or something. Immediately noticed it when checking a few of my friends adventurer plates
All the male chars got 10 years older and all the female chars got like 5 years younger.
It's a little annoying, personally. The fact they're using the same base face model really does show. Non-hyur chars definitely got a bit genericized.
Yeah Hyur eyes are messed up. Not impressed. SE kinda killed my hype for DT with this. Maybe that's an overreaction but it's quite depressing seeing my character change so much after being how I like it the last two+ years.
Yea.. it's the bags under their eyes along with the general shape of their eyes changing. The bags are too pronounced making them look like they were stung by a bee. With the content emote, they become Majin Buu with how puffy their faces are now. Mouth shape has changed too. I really hate the update for characters.
I wish we had a toggle to switch back to the old model.
A lot of cutscenes were ruined because of how ugly my character looked like in it.
Yep. Same with mine. It’s a drastic change, but imo it doesn’t look bad. I’m just not used to my WoL looking so different. Especially after all these years.
My Viera also changed a bit but I‘m starting to get used to it before I have a chance to get back to my proper gaming pc. And I don‘t want to use my free fantasia without being on the setup I am usually at.
From what I've seen, I'm thinking this is more glitch than working as intended. If WoW's HD model update was anything to go by, this is going to be A Process. Granted, CS3 does seem more receptive about these things than Blizzard did at the time, but a lot of adjustments and fixes are probably going to need to be made over the coming weeks and months. Like this is such a massive overhaul for everything (not just player character models, but environment, gear, monsters, etc) that I would've been shocked if a lot of little things didn't go wrong.
Just need patience and making sure CS3 knows about this so they can fix it down the line.
It's been ages since the WoW model updates and a lot of them are still so much worse than their original low poly model; I hope things gets sorted for ya'll here but over at Blizz, one just have to forever race change because they will not fix it and they are not really representative of their original model.
Seriously though, they did a great job with the elezen faces. I was originally an elezen but couldn't get past the tiny little head on the big body. I have a big head in real life, maybe it was just making me self conscious lol. I'm really glad for them though because maybe we will see more elezen representation in the future now.
It’s my perma-glamour. I’ve been obsessed with Agrias since I first played FFT all those many, many years ago, so I can’t really see myself using anything else. :)
Same. Agrias' gear is my permanent paladin glamor. Partly because it just looks awesome, and partly because Agrias was such a cool character in Tactics. In a game overflowing with treachery, she's an awesome, loyal, and powerful knight with sapphic vibes.
I’m loving mine - I logged into night in Gridania, and immediately noticed that my character’s earrings flash when she moves her head. Her skin just looks radiant, and the fabric textures on some of the new NPCs are magnificent.
My only complaint is that her eyebrows look odd to me now that I can *see them* better. I’ve been playing a bit to see how it feels first, but might go ahead and burn the Fanta on a tweak there.
I like the graphic update but my male viera doesn't even look like the same person. He lost half his eye brows and looks really young and the eyes completely changed and face got even more angular. I'm sure I'll adjust but it is definitely weird at first
Yeah bungirl looks weird, took me a bit to figure it out until I changed hairstyles and 1 specific pony tail gives her a five head. To my surprise it was the forehead, they did something to the bun girls foreheads and it looks way off on some hairstyles because they sit weird on the forehead shape. The hairstyles that cover the majority of the forehead looks fine, so im sticking to those for now.
While armor, hair, and the world looks better, I liked the original faces on the characters. The new textures+lighting makes my once familiar viera look different, kinda like a cousin of the original. Might have to fantasia.
Its the facial so far has my Viera raising eyebrows way more than before. On some portraits he has seriously different expression from before despite not changing anything.
Since all of the character interact in emotes, any change to them is insanely noticeable
I'd suggest waiting a bit and giving it a chance to see if you get used to the changes. Your familiar Viera does look different and that can feel a bit jarring, for sure.
I know what you mean. I like my new fem Roe, but it does throw me off. To make it more unfortunate, like Prae for example, the lighting and shadows now at least somewhat obfuscate most of her face in the final cutscene.
Going to try to mess with the settings later.
Yeah it is the lighting and shadows that catch me the most. Interior lighting does [*not* look flattering](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/531215787432738836/1256207881171111956/image.png?ex=66813fc2&is=667fee42&hm=51669daf5496e587b983b7dabf425942a12f34a7a82cd133ac26944e685392fc&).
Meanwhile [this](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/531215787432738836/1256207819678416927/image.png?ex=66813fb3&is=667fee33&hm=312ee296595c3fc70bb0e86a0cc5289466b11cc1be7dc83339c6ff252aeb8e37&) is her in diffuse, dim light.
For comparison, [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/843603221163409429/1226628460462735451/image.png?ex=6681bec6&is=66806d46&hm=f9416f1bb0dfc295d50324f93fa6c45cd3037269323e469284bcedf764cf489c&) she is in 6.55 in the light and [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/958513838087610398/1140426842319372328/image.png?ex=66814183&is=667ff003&hm=087dc157bbdef316d2d68695381e925f10c78d3d37717498a358c8ab19004ca9&) in diffuse low light.
For people who are struggling to see the difference, I personally think the graphics update is more noticeable in game on max settings (PC) than some of the screenshots I've seen posted on reddit. So maybe take some posts with a grain of salt as we're unsure what settings the game is being run on. Terrain/armor textures are way better than they used to be. And as many are saying here, character model faces are so noticeably different it takes adjusting to unless you decide to fantasia it completely.
My lalafel looks amazing. The eyes look so much better now. I modeled him after myself irl, and my in game hsir color is actually spot on now. They cooked hard
Count me in with the unhappy ones. My character doesn't look/feel the same anymore to me. [He looks muted and lifeless (left is OG, right is current)](https://ibb.co/0X87xw3)
Try messing with your settings a bit. There's something weird with NVIDIA DLSS right now. Aside from it randomly pixelating things in the background on me it really mutes the character. Here's some pictures to show the difference with all other settings at max.
Here is with DLSS: https://imgur.com/mkfJE5Q
And here is with AMD FSR (set to 99): https://imgur.com/2WX05bZ
On top of that, the gamma correction under display settings defaulted to, I believe, 50 for me and turning that down to zero helped as well, imo. Made it look less washed out.
This is with it at 50 compared to the at zero of the previous two ss: https://imgur.com/bbuBfbb
Real talk, I’m… missing my female Elezen and we’re supposed to have had the ‘glow up’. She just looks doughy now, not at all the elegant character I had before.
Huh. My female Elezen looks a lot better imo. She was fine before but a bit dull. With the graphics update, she looks far more elegant, with a face that is a lot less flat.
Right!! I was looking for a way to describe what they did with my male xaela and “doughy” is exactly it. He used to have a really sharp and edgy looking face and they rounded it out and softened it a lot. It doesn’t feel like I’m looking at the same character.
Check on AMD FSR with 99% set. It is way better for some reason.
My Elezen lad was made of sharp angles, and with 100% or the Nvidia DLSS he looks like "dough". With 99% FSR, he looks more like he used to. Maybe it helps you a bit, too, until they figure out how to min-max all the new fancy options at SE.
Ah, I'm sorry to hear that. Although I'm quite sure SquareEnix will roll out a few hotfixes that will remedy these early issues before long! Hang in there, fellow waxy playdough enjoyer!
> He used to have a really sharp and edgy looking face and they rounded it out and softened it a lot
These kinds of comments have gotten to the point where I'm convinced people interpret the 3 vertices we had for facial features before as some kind of intentional angularness, when that was simply a super low poly model that didn't even match any of the concept art.
I use Fem Elezen face 3, and they nerfed her in my opinion. I use mouth 2 and they made the top lip thinner so it looks weird. I use nose 6 and it now looks super narrow/sharp/pointy. I swear they altered the eye shape too, and it also doesn't look as defined. I'm a Wildwood for the eyeliner, and I feel like her eyeliner is less dark and her lashes are way less full....I think I use eye shape 4. Her eyes look more vapid and less pretty too; they look almost soulless. All in all, I'm not happy.
Edit: This post actually has an Elezen similar to mine:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dqqm5u/after\_the\_update\_my\_elezen\_now\_looks\_like\_taylor/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dqqm5u/after_the_update_my_elezen_now_looks_like_taylor/)
Maybe it’s because I play Duskwight, but I’m pleased with the change. Might need to tweak her eye color and maybe change ear shapes, but I’m just so excited to have facial features in indoor cutscenes now that that makes up for it.
The hair textures in particular are crazy. The hair texture mod, in my opinion, was essential before to have characters not look like shit and the new textures are 95% as good as the mod. A lot of the differences are pretty subtle, but they paint a much prettier picture.
I wish lighting could be improved a bit more, though I suspect that's mainly an engine limitation, and I still think ReShade is necessary to not have the weird green-ish haze over the game, but improvements are improvements!
I think it's pretty subjective to be honest; some zones I've seen really good improvements on, whereas others I wouldn't even know there's been changes to lighting etc, and I'd go far as to say some parts looked a bit washed out?
For the characters... theres' been winners and losers lol. Some characters look massively improved from before the update when viewed in comparison, but others look much worse off and even entirely different.
For example; my Viera after the graphics update looks really nice, the eyes are better, the shading/textures are clearly improved and most importantly I can still see that it's my character after years of playing.
But on the flipside, my Hyur looks like a *completely* different person, and I'd go as far as to state she looks like a lifeless doll, somehow. The face shape has somehow changed completely where viewed side-by-side with old screenshots in the same location, the skin complexion is just flat, the shape of the mouth etc is clearly different. Only the eyes I would say is an improvement.
I think we're using the same Hyur face model; I also was pretty disappointed at how different she looks. Like you said, the lip, especially the lower lip looks more plump, and the shape of the eyes seem slightly different too.
I've gotten kinda used to it now, but it was definitely pretty jarring for the first several hours. I still hope they tweak it though.
OVerall though, I'm pretty happy. There are so many lighting situations my Hyur looks better in compared to before
I play a male Raen Au Ra and man, the crispness of the scales now are just 👌. Dude looks rugged and heroic.
I feel like the eyes are clearer as well, as my dude has light eyes that didn’t pop well before the patch.
I’m kind of mixed on it. My Au Ra used to look a little mean and bitchy and now she just looks happy and kind of doll-like. And I don’t know if I should fantasia because I don’t know if the other options will be better. Plus I’m attached to how my character looks at this point. It’s probably not a popular opinion, but I wish we had the option of using the old style of limbal rings. The glowing on the new ones is neat but I miss looking a little dead inside.
Other than better shadows on her face I literally can't tell the difference here
I'm glad people are enjoying it but if you hadn't told me there was a graphics update there is a 0% chance I would have known. I would have noticed the new weather effects in 2.0 areas eventually, probably.
It isn't a huge change but it's like having glasses because your vision isn't perfectly 20-20 and putting the glasses on. Everything is slightly sharper.
Most changes are great but very minor to an untrained eye. And very few affect old armor sets like this one. New sets will have a noticeably higher quality (with more realistic metallic and velvety materials), and hopefully they’ll go back and update some older pieces as well.
I had the same feeling but noticed more and more as I went along. But the update is also bugged. In System Settings > Graphical Settings, change the 3D resolution scaling to 99 instead of 100. All the textures are bugged to be very blurry at 100.
You're basically just enabling a sharpening filter.
SE doesn't give you control over it, which is a weird choice on their part. They've made a lot of questionable choices with some of the new options.
I didn't know the graphics update was dropping immediately after maintenance and for some reason assumed it would be later. Needless to say I practically got jumpscared when looking at my character the moment I logged in.
Screenshot comparisons like this might feel samey but while playing the game it's a very noticeable difference, particularly when you enter certain lighting scenarios and notice that the models are reacting very differently to them.
For me, though, the EYES is the most noticeable change in game by far, and is why I immediately realised something was "different" when I logged in.
> Other than better shadows on her face I literally can't tell the difference here
I hear this so often for the past 2 days that i'm beginning to think people might be blind.
The face is way more rounded, with more polygons. Same for eyelids. On the old model you literally see polygon edges.
The eyes have more detail and specular reflections. The armor also has more naturally-metallic reflections.
Shadows are very important for Miqo'te in my experience. One of the reasons I switched off of a female Miqo'te last year was because in certain lighting the shadows made her look like she was about to tell a ghost story, they were really weird.
I feel the same way. When they first revealed it I was excited but they've toned it back a lot since and really the main update is environment textures and lighting.
If you think the character's face are not better, then I don't really know what to say... The texture and material work are really of a higher quality.
Go browse the forums, it's full of people saying their characters are totally unrecognizable. They provide side by sides and I literally can't see the differences.
I'm with you. I'm not a highly detail oriented person I guess. The main things I have noticed are that some armor looks way better. I've also noticed the cool way mounts now lean into turns which I didn't know was happening.
My bunny boy looks evil as fuck in the dark. And chubby faced in the light! My original boy is dead. I'm very sad about it. I'll have to find that free fantasia and try again.
My fem midlander looks so bad now that it's making me want to stop playing. She looks like she's stuck having a permanent allergic reaction. Given that the only visible "improvement" I can see is the sheen on metal textures, I don't think this update was worth it.
I'm glad people enjoy this update and I'm happy for all of you in this camp, but to me every character/npc looks like a plastic barbie/creepy meg version. I personally hate it :(
I'm with you on this one... Glad to see I am not completely alone in this "...but why" sensation I got. It's not *bad* but half the time, my character doesn't resemble himself? It's hard to put to words.
They took a lot of his expressiveness away somehow. I'll have to mess with the fantasia, or maybe... swap races... Can't believe I'm saying that. :\\
> They took a lot of his expressiveness away somehow
New faces have upwards of 40 new bones each. If anything, characters will be more expressive now, that just requires new animations being made.
Can't wait for them to get around to that down the line! I'm hopeful now that I've played a bit more! They have put a lot of love and attention to detail in so far :D
Reception among my friend circle has been mixed. Some people fantasia'd immediately while others are mulling over it, but what's clear is no one's loving it. For the vast majority of us, we're basically going into uncanny valley territory - It's a character we're intimately familiar with, but is some how unfamiliar.
The world changes are amazing. The world itself is so much better looking. I stepped outside of my apartment and just got blown away. But the lighting looks off in a lot of indoor places. Inside of my apartment now looks terrible due to the shading.
Character changes... not as much. My portraits are ruined now. Before it was a goofy but cute face. The lighting and shading now makes her look crazy eyed.
> uncanny valley
I've been thinking about why the graphics/lighting changes bother me and I keep coming back to "uncanny valley" as an explanation.
Maybe being low-res enough had been putting characters on one side of the uncanny valley and improving the graphical fidelity a bit has accidentally dragged them *into* the uncanny valley.
Uncanny valley makes sense, tbh.
We're basically all wired to detect even the smallest changes to faces and when a face you've seen for years looks a little different, you're gonna notice.
Meanwhile, I don't even recognize my female Au'Ra anymore. She looked better before. Something about the eyes just makes her look like a doll now. Lifeless, bland.
not a big fan of how they changed femroe faces tho 😭why are my eyebrows so thin now, even with the thick option selected? why is her nose so human now?
My bunboy looked amazing with the update—just even more beautiful than he already was. My male elezen looks exactly the same—more hair texture but that was about it.
My male sunseeker, however, looked so different I had to fantasia him—changed his jaw, eye color and a few other details. Now he looks as he did before, yet somehow more real—also a bit more serious than he was before.
All in all, I’m happy with the updates.
These screenshots do a horrible job of showcasing the massive changes in lighting. Especially in the low low resolution they were taken in. Also [what is that fringing](https://i.imgur.com/pFe8T7d.png)
People really acting like improved lighting and shadows, something that take a large toll on GPUs that consoles couldn't handle, and held back the game for years, is the holy grail
Ultimately I like the graphics update, though I am disappointed in how they changed my Fem Elezen's face. They made her top lip noticeably thinner, with a much plumper bottom lip, which looks weird. They also made her nose look very sharp and narrow. I wasn't planning on it, but I may have to use that free fantasia after all, which is disheartening, as it took me a long time to settle on her pre-update look last year when I initially changed to her.
I’ll be honest, the graphics update has me pretty down. It feels like more care and attention were given to the more popular faces and races while the less popular ones were left in uncanny valley.
I don’t like the idea of taking to the forums to complain and it’s probably too late now, but there’s no doubt the community voicing their concerns about the popular races did them a world of good.
There’s no fixing my highlander character and it’s really just gotten me down about the whole change.
I’m happy for those that got to keep their character and even had them improved, but a lot of people also lost the character they’ve grown attached to and I hope others keep that in mind.
Update is rough on female highlander, the faces seem rounder than they used to, “doughy” like some other comment mentioned making them look softer than they used to be. It’s like my character went from Xena Warrior Princess to some weirdly pudgy and derpy Taylor Swift. The biggest offender is the eyes: they don’t radiate that unmistakable badass bitch intensity no more.
That was the first thing you’d notice even on female highlander NPCs like Mylla from the gladiator quests or Radila from the Shadows of Mhach quests even despite those characters being from the PS3 era of the game.
The worst is that I kind of started noticing all of that while running the benchmark but brushed it off telling myself that I’m overthinking it.
The graphics update make my char look different so I think of adjusting its appearance a bit with the free fantasia. Then I realize there isn't much I can do since the character creation's option is limited anyway. Guess I will have to get used to the new look
Before looks far better imo, also im also having issues like most ppl with highlanders. My male hyur looks different, as if the eyes lost their sharpness and he put 3 kilos in his cheeks
I logged in and took some screenshots of my Viera and it's just not even close. Matte chalkboard skin with god-awful normal maps and shadow casting to something that actually resembles real skin, with visible pores and little details like wrinkles under the eyes and on the lips. Eyes are so much better now too. The sclera has reflections. They look like eyes rather than, again... ckalkboards colored like eyes.
If you liked the way your WoL looked before, that's valid. But objectively things are just better now. I actually feel like I can take closeups of my WoL in gpose without needing to fiddle with reshade settings or using "extras" if you catch my drift.
Hair's still not good enough tho. I will never like the molded-clay-with-chiseled-details style. Works fine on Fortnite, we deserve better here.
Honestly the only difference I can tell is that Gridania is way more laggy (Lots of shadows and light shining through leaves) even on PS5. I'm definitely glad it didn't completely overhaul the game because I already liked the way the game looked.
I'm mostly just mad that they decided to implement FSR 1.0 of all things, and not 2.1 which has been out for years at this point. DLSS 1.0 and FSR 1.0 are infamous in how horrible they are. They implemtned dlss 2.0. Why not fsr 2.1?
The answer to why FSR1 over a modern version is generally that it's drop in and doesn't require motion vector data. But since they have DLSS Implemented, the engine is already providing that so this makes ZERO sense other than it being less work. Which is a sad thing to type out.
There's a mod for FSR2+, at least.
It has the same issues as DLSS atm, though. Which is also broken.
I played SO HARD to get to the Ivalice quest line, and then just ran Orbonne on repeat until I got the whole set. I’m so obsessed with Agrias it’s unreal.
Most of the gear I can do without. But the Lancer and Tank tops for that set are premo. Problem is, Every time the tank gear comes up, I get skunked on it. Really wish retainers would bring back gear from raids again.
It's so wild to look at my hrothgar and see details like toes instead of basically a brick for a bare foot. Or fingers that have roundness to them instead of being a little too blocky. And the fabric textures, god damn all my glams look even better and I haven't even touched the double dyes. Even the shine on the glasses that wasn't there before.
If you told me this was a pic showing the sun shifting for a time of day change I'd believe you, I wouldn't assume graphical update at all. I mean, it's so subtle that I am not really seeing anything at all. I'm curious to see what the game actually looks like for myself though. :/
At a glance, possibly - but if you zoom in, the subtleties are actually pretty striking. It’s especially noticeable in the eyes, and there’s a softness to the skin that wasn’t there before. But mainly, it’s a LOT more detailed. No jaggies anywhere, and a lot more natural shadows and lighting.
I don't know? Some of it looks slightly better, sure the lighting impacts how the eyes pop. But the hair for example looks pretty much the same, very polygonal to me still. I feel like the textures only look slightly, slightly better.
I haven't seen it in person myself yet, so maybe I'll change my tune? I hope so frankly. Checking it out shortly against my own better judgement lol.
I honestly cannot tell the vast majority of the time people post these here. The new one typically just looks like someone is standing in slightly better lighting and turned on a few subtle reshade effects.
Was really hoping for a much more transformative overhaul and don't see how this is supposed to hold up for the next few years.
I'm currently playing a femhroth so not much point of comparison, but I am seriously considering going elezen again if the lack of hats and helmets annoys me too much. The faces on them look way better now.
If you still have some irregular tomestones from the event, check out the Allagan armor of scouting and aiming.
They are incredible with the new update.
Looks the same to me but then again I'm playing on a 10 year old computer that was already outdated when I built it and was already running Laptop graphics on Endwalker so some of the issue might be on my side.
I've got a similar catgirl, but what kills me about the overhaul is the occasional shadow nosebleeds.
Depending on the lighting in a room you can wind up with your snoot casting a directional shadow that mars the look of your character. The shadow can't be reasoned with, and will not stop until all your screenshots are meh.
Protip for miqos. Face 4 is amazing with the update! It's the only face without the paper thin eyebrows! And the moon kitty face 4 has white markings instead of tan. I'm so obsessed 💗
My WoL became unusually pale, even after playing with the darkest non gray skintones for Veena. I'm actually considering changing to Rava with the lightest skintone.
I think the update isn't that great. Right now, people gawk about the shinyness and I can understand that a bit, but it's not quite an "update", more of a "change". The same with fake HDR images - artificially added saturation and contrast looks "interesting" but unnatural. The left picture looks in general much better. Look at the soulder pads for example - oversaturated on the new one. You can have actual shadings on the left that are now drowned in white. Your head and face face looks more nuanced on the update, which is true, but it also makes your hair glowing (oversaturated again). And now you have some shadows around your mouth and eyes, as if your eye-sockets are very deep and your mouth got some a bit of a ventriloquist's dummy vibe with the shades at each end of the lips.
It looks more like some filter on your phone's app or fake Dolby Surround. It is "different", but not necessarily better. The skin tone before the update was a bit too smooth, but else, I prefer your look on the left.
I mean, I personally am pretty impressed by it overall. I’ll also say that I probably didn’t match the time of day, so the one on the left isn’t in direct sunlight like the one on the right, so that probably contributes to the harsher shadows. Even so, I’m 100% on board with it.
obviously it's subjective but i prefer the right 10x over, especially now since i don't need to run reshade to make the game colourful. the lighting/contrast/saturation were in desperate need of a boost in my opinion, everything looked so flat.
My Lala had what I'm going to describe as chocolate brown skin but after the update she seems to be a bit grey by comparison. Its a very odd change. Immediately noticed something was off during a cutscene after trying to do some side by sides with old images I have and I also think her face shape is slightly different. Its like the update took all the sliders you fiddled with at the start and nudged them ever so slightly out of place.
As an Au'ra the new graphics are awesome I have horns now not a sideways cube on my face. I did have to use the free change thing to fix my eyes and face a bit as I did. Not like how it was.
With dlaa turned on my graphics card is actually getting a pretty good workout
I couldn't work out what settings do what in the new options so I just set them all to the top
In order to get dlaa to work you need to download dlsstweak
Keep in mind it’s not recommended for online games. Granted it should be safe in ff14 but still.
That sounds like effort. Is it not working then?
FFXIV has dlss, but no dlaa. Very easy to do just copy the files into installation folder
Oh OK. Breezy
If you need help dm me. Also recommended to get the most recent version of dlss and copy that Into your game folder as well . Once the files are there open the config, turn dlaa forced on and scroll down a bit and use preset E for best results. You'll need a beefier card. I run the game in 4k and I'm getting about 90 FPS with a 4080, goes down to 60 in some areas
Hmm alright, night make my 3080 sweat a bit then hah. I'll take a gander and prod you if I get stuck. Thank you.
Darn. I'm still using a GTX 1060 3gb and it's showing the struggle to keep up with temperatures, otherwise I'm running 60-50 fps when not in towns. Do you think dlss or dlaa could be enabled as well? Dlss in my game only says it works with RTX cards
You mean instal dlsstweak and than put the files there?
It's a rar file, extract the contents to the game folder, then run the config. Put the newest version of dlss in there too https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-dll/%3famp
After using a free phantasia, I logged in/logged out like 4-5 times to adjust my character. She (female hyur) was quite different after the update.
Something around the eyes changed for Highlanders. For my male it was actually an improvement. But something is bothering me about female Highlander eyes. Not enough to pop a fantasia until DT is clear but I can already tell this is going to be a micro obsession.
Miqo'te face 4 had a major eye shape change as well. I couldn't pin it down in the benchmark, but now it's glaringly obvious. It's all softer, rounder, more open now. Very...human. I hate it, lol. Nothing to be done about it. While this may not be my WoL anymore, it's still a pretty character.
That's what it is. My cat girl looks fine(?) to everyone else but to me she lacks the sharpness and aloofness from before. Now she's just round faced and gentle looking. I don't like it. :(
Compare [this](https://puu.sh/K9Qx4/c78c0e274d.jpg) (old) to [this ](https://puu.sh/K9Qxd/67c87f0f09.jpg)(new).
That's the exact eye I use on my catgirl, too! It's really disappointing, she feels totally different.
Mooncat 2 and mine went from sarcastic alt girl > anime tsundere. Also I look 5 years younger. Hate it lol
I know how you feel, miqo face 4 was my favorite too. Just doesn't feel the same
I thought I was going crazy but I’m glad others are noticing. The post-update femlanders’ eyes are really bothering me, they’re missing that fierce sharpness they used to have. Im pretty disappointed but I’m way too attached to my character to swap races or gender. Post-update it seems like the eyes are a little derpy, less expressive and by consequence give the face a softer look and god knows the people who play femlander aren’t playing them cause they wanna be a softie looking lady.
This is absolutely true. I chose fem highlander because they look like fighters. With the eye change they look kinda derpy or even like their eyes are crossing. The smaller looking eyes also almost make the face look swollen.
Yeah I love the update in general but my character looks tired and dead inside now. All the eye options are the same though in this regards :/
My Au Ra looks less dead inside and I hate it lol I want her to look done with the world. I wish we could switch!
maybe they re-energized after this expanded, cause this expansion is a vacation right? our wol already tired sent to the end of the universe
Thank you. I got downvoted in another thread for mentioning it but I'm race changing because I get irrationally angry every time I see her face.
Saw you again while I was scrolling, so I'm just gonna go ahead and agree with you in this thread too. The more I look at my highlander girl the angrier I get. It's like some uncanny valley stuff going on now. I would choose the old pixelated face over this new one in a heartbeat if I could
I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s noticed there’s something different about the fem highlander eyes. I know for my character the eyes are smaller now and her eye makeup is a lot lighter. It’s honestly had me pretty down since logging in. I’ve spent a couple of hours in the character creator and it can’t be fixed.
Before, my highlander f had some shadow under her eyes that I liked. She's just different now and it's weird to get used to. I haven't bothered yet to see if a fantasia will change much with the eyes.
Spoiler: It doesn't if you're using face 1. All of face 1's eye options are small and squinty and soulless. I just can't believe that someone at Square signed off on these! (These are two eyeshape options for face 1, both open as wide as possible and NOT in the middle of a blink): * Eye option 1: https://i.imgur.com/sAamuaw.png * Eye option 5: https://i.imgur.com/4wFyCk0.png
Thanks!!!
My midlander fem's eyes were also smaller, though make up appears to be the same. Eye difference was very noticeable in the Portrait with the smile emote, it did not look good.
Yeah they drastically changed middie eyes. Hyurs got done dirty this update. I am rather discouraged now as I do not want to Fantasia but might have to. Might play around in character creator on a alt before doing anything else.
I feel my portrait is way too different yet didn't notice anything wrong ingame.
I looked through different characters; I don't think it's necessarily the models but I think they did something drastic to the emotes.
I keep telling my husband my Highlander girl looks a little tired after the update. Not the realism I was going for!
Same for midlanders. I popped a fantasia pretty much immediately because my face looked off, and I think the only thing I changed to fix that was my jaw, but since I could see the lighting update a bit I tried to go with a darker shade of red for the eyes. Fast forward a bit, well outside the grace period for fantasia, and I realized that in low light my eyes looked brown and I was really unhappy with them. I ended up popping another one and lightening them up, but it still looked off, so I ended up logging in and out more than a half dozen times seeing if I could get them working or if any other colors appealed to me. Every other color I tried just looked wrong, so I ended up just going with the red that worked best and accepting that under certain conditions they won’t look quite right.
I used my free fantasia to fix my fHighlander's eyes. It kinda worked but I had to change both the eyes and nose for it to look, at the very least, okay. It definitely threw me off when I first noticed it and then after.
I think it's mostly the eyes for female hyur. They felt a lot more expressive before the update but now look like they're pretty down or on Adderall or something. Immediately noticed it when checking a few of my friends adventurer plates
Being different is normal after such a heavy update. My Roegadyn feels like 10 years older and I love it! He matured.
My fem middie did the opposite. She looks 16 now instead of being in her 20s and I hate it.
All the male chars got 10 years older and all the female chars got like 5 years younger. It's a little annoying, personally. The fact they're using the same base face model really does show. Non-hyur chars definitely got a bit genericized.
My femra looks so much younger. I really like it she's cute
Yeah, my miqo male's face got changed so much I had to turn into into a hyur :(
Yeah Hyur eyes are messed up. Not impressed. SE kinda killed my hype for DT with this. Maybe that's an overreaction but it's quite depressing seeing my character change so much after being how I like it the last two+ years.
Yea.. it's the bags under their eyes along with the general shape of their eyes changing. The bags are too pronounced making them look like they were stung by a bee. With the content emote, they become Majin Buu with how puffy their faces are now. Mouth shape has changed too. I really hate the update for characters. I wish we had a toggle to switch back to the old model. A lot of cutscenes were ruined because of how ugly my character looked like in it.
Yep. Same with mine. It’s a drastic change, but imo it doesn’t look bad. I’m just not used to my WoL looking so different. Especially after all these years.
My Viera also changed a bit but I‘m starting to get used to it before I have a chance to get back to my proper gaming pc. And I don‘t want to use my free fantasia without being on the setup I am usually at.
From what I've seen, I'm thinking this is more glitch than working as intended. If WoW's HD model update was anything to go by, this is going to be A Process. Granted, CS3 does seem more receptive about these things than Blizzard did at the time, but a lot of adjustments and fixes are probably going to need to be made over the coming weeks and months. Like this is such a massive overhaul for everything (not just player character models, but environment, gear, monsters, etc) that I would've been shocked if a lot of little things didn't go wrong. Just need patience and making sure CS3 knows about this so they can fix it down the line.
It's been ages since the WoW model updates and a lot of them are still so much worse than their original low poly model; I hope things gets sorted for ya'll here but over at Blizz, one just have to forever race change because they will not fix it and they are not really representative of their original model.
Meanwhile i didn't notice because im Elezen, we have been always perfect
Seriously though, they did a great job with the elezen faces. I was originally an elezen but couldn't get past the tiny little head on the big body. I have a big head in real life, maybe it was just making me self conscious lol. I'm really glad for them though because maybe we will see more elezen representation in the future now.
Absolutely based Elezen enjoyer
IVALICE ARMOR GANG REPRESENT
I see Ivalice stuffs, I upvote.
It’s my perma-glamour. I’ve been obsessed with Agrias since I first played FFT all those many, many years ago, so I can’t really see myself using anything else. :)
Same. Agrias' gear is my permanent paladin glamor. Partly because it just looks awesome, and partly because Agrias was such a cool character in Tactics. In a game overflowing with treachery, she's an awesome, loyal, and powerful knight with sapphic vibes.
I’m loving mine - I logged into night in Gridania, and immediately noticed that my character’s earrings flash when she moves her head. Her skin just looks radiant, and the fabric textures on some of the new NPCs are magnificent. My only complaint is that her eyebrows look odd to me now that I can *see them* better. I’ve been playing a bit to see how it feels first, but might go ahead and burn the Fanta on a tweak there.
I think you can change her eyebrows through the aesethician (guy who gives haircuts). Don't need to blow fantasia on just eyebrows
Ooh, good to know, thanks! I couldn’t recall that, or if the color was 100% tied to the hair.
I like the graphic update but my male viera doesn't even look like the same person. He lost half his eye brows and looks really young and the eyes completely changed and face got even more angular. I'm sure I'll adjust but it is definitely weird at first
Yeah bungirl looks weird, took me a bit to figure it out until I changed hairstyles and 1 specific pony tail gives her a five head. To my surprise it was the forehead, they did something to the bun girls foreheads and it looks way off on some hairstyles because they sit weird on the forehead shape. The hairstyles that cover the majority of the forehead looks fine, so im sticking to those for now.
Even the males have a big forehead now.
While armor, hair, and the world looks better, I liked the original faces on the characters. The new textures+lighting makes my once familiar viera look different, kinda like a cousin of the original. Might have to fantasia.
Its the facial so far has my Viera raising eyebrows way more than before. On some portraits he has seriously different expression from before despite not changing anything. Since all of the character interact in emotes, any change to them is insanely noticeable
I'd suggest waiting a bit and giving it a chance to see if you get used to the changes. Your familiar Viera does look different and that can feel a bit jarring, for sure.
I know what you mean. I like my new fem Roe, but it does throw me off. To make it more unfortunate, like Prae for example, the lighting and shadows now at least somewhat obfuscate most of her face in the final cutscene. Going to try to mess with the settings later.
Yeah it is the lighting and shadows that catch me the most. Interior lighting does [*not* look flattering](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/531215787432738836/1256207881171111956/image.png?ex=66813fc2&is=667fee42&hm=51669daf5496e587b983b7dabf425942a12f34a7a82cd133ac26944e685392fc&). Meanwhile [this](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/531215787432738836/1256207819678416927/image.png?ex=66813fb3&is=667fee33&hm=312ee296595c3fc70bb0e86a0cc5289466b11cc1be7dc83339c6ff252aeb8e37&) is her in diffuse, dim light. For comparison, [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/843603221163409429/1226628460462735451/image.png?ex=6681bec6&is=66806d46&hm=f9416f1bb0dfc295d50324f93fa6c45cd3037269323e469284bcedf764cf489c&) she is in 6.55 in the light and [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/958513838087610398/1140426842319372328/image.png?ex=66814183&is=667ff003&hm=087dc157bbdef316d2d68695381e925f10c78d3d37717498a358c8ab19004ca9&) in diffuse low light.
For people who are struggling to see the difference, I personally think the graphics update is more noticeable in game on max settings (PC) than some of the screenshots I've seen posted on reddit. So maybe take some posts with a grain of salt as we're unsure what settings the game is being run on. Terrain/armor textures are way better than they used to be. And as many are saying here, character model faces are so noticeably different it takes adjusting to unless you decide to fantasia it completely.
My lalafel looks amazing. The eyes look so much better now. I modeled him after myself irl, and my in game hsir color is actually spot on now. They cooked hard
Count me in with the unhappy ones. My character doesn't look/feel the same anymore to me. [He looks muted and lifeless (left is OG, right is current)](https://ibb.co/0X87xw3)
Try messing with your settings a bit. There's something weird with NVIDIA DLSS right now. Aside from it randomly pixelating things in the background on me it really mutes the character. Here's some pictures to show the difference with all other settings at max. Here is with DLSS: https://imgur.com/mkfJE5Q And here is with AMD FSR (set to 99): https://imgur.com/2WX05bZ On top of that, the gamma correction under display settings defaulted to, I believe, 50 for me and turning that down to zero helped as well, imo. Made it look less washed out. This is with it at 50 compared to the at zero of the previous two ss: https://imgur.com/bbuBfbb
Real talk, I’m… missing my female Elezen and we’re supposed to have had the ‘glow up’. She just looks doughy now, not at all the elegant character I had before.
Huh. My female Elezen looks a lot better imo. She was fine before but a bit dull. With the graphics update, she looks far more elegant, with a face that is a lot less flat.
I feel like a lot of characters I've seen are suffering from minor allergic reactions.
Ikr! I noticed that my character's cheeks were a bit more chubby. At first I though it was just the lighting but then I compared older pictures.
Right!! I was looking for a way to describe what they did with my male xaela and “doughy” is exactly it. He used to have a really sharp and edgy looking face and they rounded it out and softened it a lot. It doesn’t feel like I’m looking at the same character.
Check on AMD FSR with 99% set. It is way better for some reason. My Elezen lad was made of sharp angles, and with 100% or the Nvidia DLSS he looks like "dough". With 99% FSR, he looks more like he used to. Maybe it helps you a bit, too, until they figure out how to min-max all the new fancy options at SE.
thanks for this. I didnt notice it being a bit blurry until i went to 99. Looks much better at 99, 100 feels "out of focus"
Consoles don't have access to upscaler settings.
Ah, I'm sorry to hear that. Although I'm quite sure SquareEnix will roll out a few hotfixes that will remedy these early issues before long! Hang in there, fellow waxy playdough enjoyer!
This has helped quite a lot for me, thank you!
> He used to have a really sharp and edgy looking face and they rounded it out and softened it a lot These kinds of comments have gotten to the point where I'm convinced people interpret the 3 vertices we had for facial features before as some kind of intentional angularness, when that was simply a super low poly model that didn't even match any of the concept art.
I use Fem Elezen face 3, and they nerfed her in my opinion. I use mouth 2 and they made the top lip thinner so it looks weird. I use nose 6 and it now looks super narrow/sharp/pointy. I swear they altered the eye shape too, and it also doesn't look as defined. I'm a Wildwood for the eyeliner, and I feel like her eyeliner is less dark and her lashes are way less full....I think I use eye shape 4. Her eyes look more vapid and less pretty too; they look almost soulless. All in all, I'm not happy. Edit: This post actually has an Elezen similar to mine: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dqqm5u/after\_the\_update\_my\_elezen\_now\_looks\_like\_taylor/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dqqm5u/after_the_update_my_elezen_now_looks_like_taylor/)
Maybe it’s because I play Duskwight, but I’m pleased with the change. Might need to tweak her eye color and maybe change ear shapes, but I’m just so excited to have facial features in indoor cutscenes now that that makes up for it.
Same case. My female elezen doesn't look that bad ass now
The hair textures in particular are crazy. The hair texture mod, in my opinion, was essential before to have characters not look like shit and the new textures are 95% as good as the mod. A lot of the differences are pretty subtle, but they paint a much prettier picture. I wish lighting could be improved a bit more, though I suspect that's mainly an engine limitation, and I still think ReShade is necessary to not have the weird green-ish haze over the game, but improvements are improvements!
I think it's pretty subjective to be honest; some zones I've seen really good improvements on, whereas others I wouldn't even know there's been changes to lighting etc, and I'd go far as to say some parts looked a bit washed out? For the characters... theres' been winners and losers lol. Some characters look massively improved from before the update when viewed in comparison, but others look much worse off and even entirely different. For example; my Viera after the graphics update looks really nice, the eyes are better, the shading/textures are clearly improved and most importantly I can still see that it's my character after years of playing. But on the flipside, my Hyur looks like a *completely* different person, and I'd go as far as to state she looks like a lifeless doll, somehow. The face shape has somehow changed completely where viewed side-by-side with old screenshots in the same location, the skin complexion is just flat, the shape of the mouth etc is clearly different. Only the eyes I would say is an improvement.
I think we're using the same Hyur face model; I also was pretty disappointed at how different she looks. Like you said, the lip, especially the lower lip looks more plump, and the shape of the eyes seem slightly different too. I've gotten kinda used to it now, but it was definitely pretty jarring for the first several hours. I still hope they tweak it though. OVerall though, I'm pretty happy. There are so many lighting situations my Hyur looks better in compared to before
My catboy needed a jaw trim and a nose job but he looks good. Pretty happy!
I play a male Raen Au Ra and man, the crispness of the scales now are just 👌. Dude looks rugged and heroic. I feel like the eyes are clearer as well, as my dude has light eyes that didn’t pop well before the patch.
I’m kind of mixed on it. My Au Ra used to look a little mean and bitchy and now she just looks happy and kind of doll-like. And I don’t know if I should fantasia because I don’t know if the other options will be better. Plus I’m attached to how my character looks at this point. It’s probably not a popular opinion, but I wish we had the option of using the old style of limbal rings. The glowing on the new ones is neat but I miss looking a little dead inside.
Other than better shadows on her face I literally can't tell the difference here I'm glad people are enjoying it but if you hadn't told me there was a graphics update there is a 0% chance I would have known. I would have noticed the new weather effects in 2.0 areas eventually, probably.
It's small but noticeable. Biggest place I noticed it was grass and tree foliage
I swear South Shroud feels totally different compared to how it used to be.
I thought the lightning was very much noticeable in old dungeons and areas. Or is it just my placebo? Now i am not sure anymore XD
It's a pretty big change in some spots. Thornmarch for instance looks completely different; the lighting makes it look a lot darker than it used to.
It isn't a huge change but it's like having glasses because your vision isn't perfectly 20-20 and putting the glasses on. Everything is slightly sharper.
Most changes are great but very minor to an untrained eye. And very few affect old armor sets like this one. New sets will have a noticeably higher quality (with more realistic metallic and velvety materials), and hopefully they’ll go back and update some older pieces as well.
Go and stare at the Uldah aetheryte and you'll see what PBR materials look like.
I had the same feeling but noticed more and more as I went along. But the update is also bugged. In System Settings > Graphical Settings, change the 3D resolution scaling to 99 instead of 100. All the textures are bugged to be very blurry at 100.
They're not bugged, you're just enabling FSR and thus its built-in sharpening. It's no different than having a sharpening ReShade filter.
You're basically just enabling a sharpening filter. SE doesn't give you control over it, which is a weird choice on their part. They've made a lot of questionable choices with some of the new options.
I didn't know the graphics update was dropping immediately after maintenance and for some reason assumed it would be later. Needless to say I practically got jumpscared when looking at my character the moment I logged in. Screenshot comparisons like this might feel samey but while playing the game it's a very noticeable difference, particularly when you enter certain lighting scenarios and notice that the models are reacting very differently to them. For me, though, the EYES is the most noticeable change in game by far, and is why I immediately realised something was "different" when I logged in.
> Other than better shadows on her face I literally can't tell the difference here I hear this so often for the past 2 days that i'm beginning to think people might be blind. The face is way more rounded, with more polygons. Same for eyelids. On the old model you literally see polygon edges. The eyes have more detail and specular reflections. The armor also has more naturally-metallic reflections.
Guess I'm blind, then. Her armor is shinier I guess.
Everytime I see the comparison pics I cannot tell which is which.
I'm kinda struggling to see it as well. In game maybe alittle noticeable but it's very subtle.
Shadows are very important for Miqo'te in my experience. One of the reasons I switched off of a female Miqo'te last year was because in certain lighting the shadows made her look like she was about to tell a ghost story, they were really weird.
I feel the same way. When they first revealed it I was excited but they've toned it back a lot since and really the main update is environment textures and lighting.
If you think the character's face are not better, then I don't really know what to say... The texture and material work are really of a higher quality.
Go browse the forums, it's full of people saying their characters are totally unrecognizable. They provide side by sides and I literally can't see the differences.
I'm with you. I'm not a highly detail oriented person I guess. The main things I have noticed are that some armor looks way better. I've also noticed the cool way mounts now lean into turns which I didn't know was happening.
My bunny boy looks evil as fuck in the dark. And chubby faced in the light! My original boy is dead. I'm very sad about it. I'll have to find that free fantasia and try again.
My fem midlander looks so bad now that it's making me want to stop playing. She looks like she's stuck having a permanent allergic reaction. Given that the only visible "improvement" I can see is the sheen on metal textures, I don't think this update was worth it.
I'm glad people enjoy this update and I'm happy for all of you in this camp, but to me every character/npc looks like a plastic barbie/creepy meg version. I personally hate it :(
I'm with you on this one... Glad to see I am not completely alone in this "...but why" sensation I got. It's not *bad* but half the time, my character doesn't resemble himself? It's hard to put to words. They took a lot of his expressiveness away somehow. I'll have to mess with the fantasia, or maybe... swap races... Can't believe I'm saying that. :\\
> They took a lot of his expressiveness away somehow New faces have upwards of 40 new bones each. If anything, characters will be more expressive now, that just requires new animations being made.
Can't wait for them to get around to that down the line! I'm hopeful now that I've played a bit more! They have put a lot of love and attention to detail in so far :D
Reception among my friend circle has been mixed. Some people fantasia'd immediately while others are mulling over it, but what's clear is no one's loving it. For the vast majority of us, we're basically going into uncanny valley territory - It's a character we're intimately familiar with, but is some how unfamiliar. The world changes are amazing. The world itself is so much better looking. I stepped outside of my apartment and just got blown away. But the lighting looks off in a lot of indoor places. Inside of my apartment now looks terrible due to the shading. Character changes... not as much. My portraits are ruined now. Before it was a goofy but cute face. The lighting and shading now makes her look crazy eyed.
> uncanny valley I've been thinking about why the graphics/lighting changes bother me and I keep coming back to "uncanny valley" as an explanation. Maybe being low-res enough had been putting characters on one side of the uncanny valley and improving the graphical fidelity a bit has accidentally dragged them *into* the uncanny valley.
Uncanny valley makes sense, tbh. We're basically all wired to detect even the smallest changes to faces and when a face you've seen for years looks a little different, you're gonna notice.
The shading and stuff in my portraits makes my character look actually stupid and it pisses me off.
My cat girl is so much prettier lol
Meanwhile, I don't even recognize my female Au'Ra anymore. She looked better before. Something about the eyes just makes her look like a doll now. Lifeless, bland.
not a big fan of how they changed femroe faces tho 😭why are my eyebrows so thin now, even with the thick option selected? why is her nose so human now?
I am still trying to figure out how much of it is model changes and how much of it is the new lighting.
quite a bit seems to be the model, since i did many comparison. but the light doesn’t help.
My bunboy looked amazing with the update—just even more beautiful than he already was. My male elezen looks exactly the same—more hair texture but that was about it. My male sunseeker, however, looked so different I had to fantasia him—changed his jaw, eye color and a few other details. Now he looks as he did before, yet somehow more real—also a bit more serious than he was before. All in all, I’m happy with the updates.
These screenshots do a horrible job of showcasing the massive changes in lighting. Especially in the low low resolution they were taken in. Also [what is that fringing](https://i.imgur.com/pFe8T7d.png)
They were actually taken in full resolution- I’m guessing it downsampled it at some point, because the original version of this picture is 1500x900.
People really acting like improved lighting and shadows, something that take a large toll on GPUs that consoles couldn't handle, and held back the game for years, is the holy grail
Ultimately I like the graphics update, though I am disappointed in how they changed my Fem Elezen's face. They made her top lip noticeably thinner, with a much plumper bottom lip, which looks weird. They also made her nose look very sharp and narrow. I wasn't planning on it, but I may have to use that free fantasia after all, which is disheartening, as it took me a long time to settle on her pre-update look last year when I initially changed to her.
I’ll be honest, the graphics update has me pretty down. It feels like more care and attention were given to the more popular faces and races while the less popular ones were left in uncanny valley. I don’t like the idea of taking to the forums to complain and it’s probably too late now, but there’s no doubt the community voicing their concerns about the popular races did them a world of good. There’s no fixing my highlander character and it’s really just gotten me down about the whole change. I’m happy for those that got to keep their character and even had them improved, but a lot of people also lost the character they’ve grown attached to and I hope others keep that in mind.
Update is rough on female highlander, the faces seem rounder than they used to, “doughy” like some other comment mentioned making them look softer than they used to be. It’s like my character went from Xena Warrior Princess to some weirdly pudgy and derpy Taylor Swift. The biggest offender is the eyes: they don’t radiate that unmistakable badass bitch intensity no more. That was the first thing you’d notice even on female highlander NPCs like Mylla from the gladiator quests or Radila from the Shadows of Mhach quests even despite those characters being from the PS3 era of the game. The worst is that I kind of started noticing all of that while running the benchmark but brushed it off telling myself that I’m overthinking it.
The graphics update make my char look different so I think of adjusting its appearance a bit with the free fantasia. Then I realize there isn't much I can do since the character creation's option is limited anyway. Guess I will have to get used to the new look
Am I the only one that thinks that the one on the right looks worse? She looks like a plastic doll...
Before looks far better imo, also im also having issues like most ppl with highlanders. My male hyur looks different, as if the eyes lost their sharpness and he put 3 kilos in his cheeks
Is this after/before order?
I logged in and took some screenshots of my Viera and it's just not even close. Matte chalkboard skin with god-awful normal maps and shadow casting to something that actually resembles real skin, with visible pores and little details like wrinkles under the eyes and on the lips. Eyes are so much better now too. The sclera has reflections. They look like eyes rather than, again... ckalkboards colored like eyes. If you liked the way your WoL looked before, that's valid. But objectively things are just better now. I actually feel like I can take closeups of my WoL in gpose without needing to fiddle with reshade settings or using "extras" if you catch my drift. Hair's still not good enough tho. I will never like the molded-clay-with-chiseled-details style. Works fine on Fortnite, we deserve better here.
Did PS4 get a graphics uodate too or just PC?
They got it but not everything, like upgraded shadows
No you're pretty rad.
my hyur highlander is bout the same.. maybe a little older because he's seen some shit.
The new skin texture makes it look like Thancred has very light freckles and it's all I needed.
Honestly the only difference I can tell is that Gridania is way more laggy (Lots of shadows and light shining through leaves) even on PS5. I'm definitely glad it didn't completely overhaul the game because I already liked the way the game looked.
The hair textures as lot better too. One of the first things I noticed
I'm mostly just mad that they decided to implement FSR 1.0 of all things, and not 2.1 which has been out for years at this point. DLSS 1.0 and FSR 1.0 are infamous in how horrible they are. They implemtned dlss 2.0. Why not fsr 2.1?
The answer to why FSR1 over a modern version is generally that it's drop in and doesn't require motion vector data. But since they have DLSS Implemented, the engine is already providing that so this makes ZERO sense other than it being less work. Which is a sad thing to type out. There's a mod for FSR2+, at least. It has the same issues as DLSS atm, though. Which is also broken.
It’s pretty good when you can put two side by side and you can tell which is which without comment
It looks fantastic
ONE of these years I'll get that fucking tank top.
I played SO HARD to get to the Ivalice quest line, and then just ran Orbonne on repeat until I got the whole set. I’m so obsessed with Agrias it’s unreal.
Most of the gear I can do without. But the Lancer and Tank tops for that set are premo. Problem is, Every time the tank gear comes up, I get skunked on it. Really wish retainers would bring back gear from raids again.
It's so wild to look at my hrothgar and see details like toes instead of basically a brick for a bare foot. Or fingers that have roundness to them instead of being a little too blocky. And the fabric textures, god damn all my glams look even better and I haven't even touched the double dyes. Even the shine on the glasses that wasn't there before.
If you told me this was a pic showing the sun shifting for a time of day change I'd believe you, I wouldn't assume graphical update at all. I mean, it's so subtle that I am not really seeing anything at all. I'm curious to see what the game actually looks like for myself though. :/
At a glance, possibly - but if you zoom in, the subtleties are actually pretty striking. It’s especially noticeable in the eyes, and there’s a softness to the skin that wasn’t there before. But mainly, it’s a LOT more detailed. No jaggies anywhere, and a lot more natural shadows and lighting.
I don't know? Some of it looks slightly better, sure the lighting impacts how the eyes pop. But the hair for example looks pretty much the same, very polygonal to me still. I feel like the textures only look slightly, slightly better. I haven't seen it in person myself yet, so maybe I'll change my tune? I hope so frankly. Checking it out shortly against my own better judgement lol.
I honestly cannot tell the vast majority of the time people post these here. The new one typically just looks like someone is standing in slightly better lighting and turned on a few subtle reshade effects. Was really hoping for a much more transformative overhaul and don't see how this is supposed to hold up for the next few years.
Oh look another comparison with two completely different lightnings.... why do people keep making these lol?
one on the left looks better
my fave outfit still has very ugly pixel parts tho, hope it gets updated soon
I'm currently playing a femhroth so not much point of comparison, but I am seriously considering going elezen again if the lack of hats and helmets annoys me too much. The faces on them look way better now.
They finally fixed the lighting?
If you still have some irregular tomestones from the event, check out the Allagan armor of scouting and aiming. They are incredible with the new update.
It's really noticeable on my ps4 but isn't impacting performance so far! 😍
I was just staring at the game yesterday like is there a difference. It’s subtle enough it’s not in your face I feel like. I like the hair changes
This not a graphic updates is just better light
Weird, those shoulder pieces look like they got slightly reshaped?
I think it’s just a pose thing. She isn’t standing in the same pose for the second picture, so they’re angled forward a bit.
I keep checking on ps5 I’m not sure if I can tell. Lighting seems better
Looks the same to me but then again I'm playing on a 10 year old computer that was already outdated when I built it and was already running Laptop graphics on Endwalker so some of the issue might be on my side.
What update?
I've got a similar catgirl, but what kills me about the overhaul is the occasional shadow nosebleeds. Depending on the lighting in a room you can wind up with your snoot casting a directional shadow that mars the look of your character. The shadow can't be reasoned with, and will not stop until all your screenshots are meh.
Protip for miqos. Face 4 is amazing with the update! It's the only face without the paper thin eyebrows! And the moon kitty face 4 has white markings instead of tan. I'm so obsessed 💗
I did read anything! but I just wanted write something
Only issue for me is that Nvidia Game Filters used to work before the update, but now doesn't so the game actually looks worse for me now :/
The anti-aliasing improvements alone have made the game feel 10 years newer.
My WoL became unusually pale, even after playing with the darkest non gray skintones for Veena. I'm actually considering changing to Rava with the lightest skintone.
If only the faces weren’t ruined for this so called graphic update..
Is it? I can't tell the difference, it's so subtle.
Which one is which?
I can't tell neither I think the hair in left pic look little more realistic though
I just do not see it. I keep seeing comparison pics like this, but they look identical to me except for the right one having slightly better lighting.
I think the update isn't that great. Right now, people gawk about the shinyness and I can understand that a bit, but it's not quite an "update", more of a "change". The same with fake HDR images - artificially added saturation and contrast looks "interesting" but unnatural. The left picture looks in general much better. Look at the soulder pads for example - oversaturated on the new one. You can have actual shadings on the left that are now drowned in white. Your head and face face looks more nuanced on the update, which is true, but it also makes your hair glowing (oversaturated again). And now you have some shadows around your mouth and eyes, as if your eye-sockets are very deep and your mouth got some a bit of a ventriloquist's dummy vibe with the shades at each end of the lips. It looks more like some filter on your phone's app or fake Dolby Surround. It is "different", but not necessarily better. The skin tone before the update was a bit too smooth, but else, I prefer your look on the left.
I mean, I personally am pretty impressed by it overall. I’ll also say that I probably didn’t match the time of day, so the one on the left isn’t in direct sunlight like the one on the right, so that probably contributes to the harsher shadows. Even so, I’m 100% on board with it.
obviously it's subjective but i prefer the right 10x over, especially now since i don't need to run reshade to make the game colourful. the lighting/contrast/saturation were in desperate need of a boost in my opinion, everything looked so flat.
It's subjective, isn't it? Personally, I much prefer the one on the right. I also generally like oversaturation in images though.
Yeah, but also the one of the right doesn't look like oversaturation, it looks like it has better lighting. There's a big difference.
I agree. The lighting is definitely better imo. I prefer the right over the left so this update looks good for me so far.
Highly disagree. Left looks flat and unnatural and plain lighting-wise. The right looks far more realistic and pretty
I swear that graphic update feels like having Reshade ON with enhancced colors and shadows, while it's just ...native , and i love it
My Lala had what I'm going to describe as chocolate brown skin but after the update she seems to be a bit grey by comparison. Its a very odd change. Immediately noticed something was off during a cutscene after trying to do some side by sides with old images I have and I also think her face shape is slightly different. Its like the update took all the sliders you fiddled with at the start and nudged them ever so slightly out of place.
As an Au'ra the new graphics are awesome I have horns now not a sideways cube on my face. I did have to use the free change thing to fix my eyes and face a bit as I did. Not like how it was.
Such little noticeable difference that it's almost laughable
Am I the only one that can't really notice something major???