Update Coming to Dawntrail Benchmark to Address Feedback 

Thanks for reading the Lodestone for me as always.

Character Creation has always been an eye-sore. I hope the update fixes this issue.

The benchmark drastically improved my elezen in literally every way, but boy did it massacre my mooncat and highlander retainers.

The thing I value about these updates over reading the Loadstone myself is the added context. You see a whole lot more of the community than I do and know more about the circumstances. In part because you have covered this game for so long. It makes all the logical sense for the Benchmark to be an old build, but that some builds you've played in the past were three months behind gives it all a very different context. And I'm not faulting Yoshi-P and the team here. I've heard about what kind of effort goes into a Games Con demo, for example. That we even are getting a Benchmark for *_every_* expansion since Idk when is far and wide the exception. Though some of the complaints are really ironic, given that (part of) this was to showcase the graphics update. In any case. The team keeps on communicating and explaining things well. And that is something I will never complain about.

take-

Finally, my days of testing a whole alt in game just to see if they even look accurate to what I made in the creator is over I was content with the battle voices added in the benchmark, but this is a welcome adjustment

Actually, more than anything, I felt like my Au Ra’s mouth was very odd and didn’t look quite correct, her bottom lip looked thicker and the corners of her lips ended I’d somewhat deep dimples. Unsure if either of those is related to the issues tho

So until next time, take-

Really hope they can fix some of the lighting as that’s always been such a pain since colors aren’t the same between creator and in game. However pretty happy with some other things as things like lil color better match like I’ve often wanted red shades but currently in game with a darker skin tone they just tend to darken lips, now I can get a more matte red going. Am a little sad as the lumbar rings can stand out a bit more in some ways. Currently I have a blue and green eye, and found a shade that each color could bring out in the glow so they were both glowy eyes. Now though I can see that the glow is a bit more green in the blue eye so either gonna glow up one eye or have to consider one eye color for double glow. However I have time to decide (currently leaning towards letting the green eye pop)

Got to run the benchmark on Steam Deci after a couple downloads in desktop mode and got surprisingly good results, very excited to play DT on my oled

Be nice if they released a viable way for console players to see their characters in the new creator and lighting before release.

FFXIV: A Benchmark Reborn

when i tried to run the bench mark it caused by PC to crash and it wasnt very stable

I wish I could try it out, but I don’t have a PC. From what I have seen, though, as a sea wolf Femroe main I’ll be quite happy. I hope they fix though Hellsguard puppy nose, tho!

My current Viera WoL looked fine in the benchmark, however I did notice how flat the lighting made her look. Had to mess with it a bit and change scenes a bunch. I actually didn't realize how widespread the criticism was up until recently and it's sounding like it was pretty valid. No real skin off my back personally - I was happy to check out the benchmark and Hrothgals (who I'm definitely fantasia'ing into. Love my Viera WoL but her name literally means "Earth Tiger" so there ya go). If they're gonna update it fully to Dawntrail standards then I'll happily dive right back in. I agree it was a smart move to release it early and get feedback. Though did they state that was their goal? I don't remember if they did or not. That said it probably would've been wise to also state the character creator wasn't fully updated yet and that another version would be released later. Personally not a big deal to me, but it seems to have riled up some folks.

Glad to see that the character creation is being address, as that's where I saw most people making their complaints. However, I feel like a lot of people just "imported", and I do want to remind everyone that they said some of the features have been modified and they are giving us all a free fantasia to select the new detail that most closely resembles what they wanted.

Its sad that the character creation was overlooked, I expressly told my friends months ago that it likely would end up overlooked, If they had considered adding 2-3 new faces per race alongside this update, i dont think it would have been overlooked, but i guess they feel like they didnt have time for new faces. That being said, Weapon attack and damage taken animations being added to the character creation makes me wonder what went on internally. Character Creation overhaul should have been a consideration alongside the graphics update, especially considering certain things in it are currently dated af.

My only real problem I had with the benchmark was my chars always looked too glossy and the hair looked oily even if it wasn't raining.

Never knew that there was a problem.

I called this. Back when people were saying "It doesnt make sense for them to put benchmark now" before the liveletter, I said how dumb it was to not release the benchmark when a huge graphics update is imminent and they need all the time in the world to fix it. It was pretty obvious in hindsight.

I think my Viera looks a heck of a lot better but it was definitely hard to see that if you didnt know the lighting in the creator is weird. I'm used to janky lighting in character creators and knew the tricks but the devs realized that you shouldn't need to know any tricks to see your character at their best. A big enough percentage of players had a bad impression and they cared which is why this team is so great.

Need to add an option to get rid of the male hrothgar slouch. Literally the only reason I don’t play a hrothgar.

maybe i wont have to make alts to make sure i have my skin tone correct anymore lol

The benchmark is what is making me change races lol. Just cause I can't do what I have atm on Au Ra

anyone who's a fantasia addict, (like me) learned a long time ago that the creator sucked and never did the characters justice, instead you'd be smart and just make a throwaway new character to try out your changed looks in game before you lock it in on your actual character. hopefully now the character creation will be representative of your looks in the game game.

I was very happy with my midlander post update, so I'll be eating very good soon then 😊

As a m-viera my character was great in the benchmark.

Sad that we're not hearing anything about mooncat teeth yet

Honestly i never took this benchmark seriously or really any benchmark because its obvious and i mean very obvious that these are not the same benchmarks the devs are showing right before they give it to us it might be in some cases but i dont think they want to send a benchmark out to us that even they have problems with on live streams so thats why i only took this is a baseline of hey my character is fine and more importantly with this one hey i can actually play the game going into dawntrail over whatever my character looks like here when she will change again going into dawntrail. nonetheless i am glad they are doing fixes for the things that matter just hope this doesn't affect dawntrails release because of this as well though

It's very bold of you to assume improvement constructive feedback skills from the NA side of things. Lol

I hope they change how lip colours look. The black lip colour right now is disappointing. It looks very filtered or thinned out so it's not as dark as it should be. Dark purple looks exactly the same as black lip colour. Most of the lip colours just don't appear as they should in the current character creation system.

Uncorrected mouth scaling probably has to do with female Elezen, I saw a couple of pictures on the forums of how their moutths just seemed weird.

Hopefully this is step 1 of people complaining about a true character creation overhaul. There really should be more options and sliders.

Honestly I had no issues with the changes.

Glad I never got around to downloading it.

I've always hated the lighting in the character creator.

My fear is how difficult making a unique hrothgal will be. I really hope they add highlights to the hair bc i hate seeing a slightly darker version of the hrothgal i made in mr happys thumbnail

Though I’m happy with how my character looks in the benchmark, derplander (and a lot of other people’s characters) looks downright uncanny.

All I wanted, was being able to choose different horns and faces for au ra. But nope. Faces are still tied to horns.

The Playstation 3 and its consequences have been a disaster for the Final Fantasy XIV community.

We can all complain to yoshi p so that he can give us the option of increasing the buttocks of the characters in general M/F.

2:40 What a Karen thing to say... You JUST said that you thought they'd release it now and update later, then you give a rude remark when they do just that.

Except they didn’t listen to our feedback and this post comes off dismissive and tone deaf. There are fundamental differences in my character that I’m unsatisfied with and they aren’t caused by the environment of the character creator, as they persisted into the benchmark cut scene and screen shots. I don’t want my characters face to look rounded and glossy I want it to look sharp and flat like it does in the live client. Other people want their fangs, or noses back. This reeks of a development team that would rather tell us what’s best for us than actually listen. I have not seen a single side by side comparison that looked like an improvement including back from fan fest images. They need to include an option to turn off the update on at least your own character.

This isnt a graphics upgrade, it's a graphics compatibility update for xbox. Thats why your character looks like a plastic toy.

Not sure why you give us back hand comments of not checking the lodestone. Isn’t this easy content for you? Some people prefer to hear your voice rather.

Why did they even release this version of the benchmark if they are "currently expediting a rework of the environments and light sources of character creation"? This is the type of bad management and stupidity that leads to the bigger picture being rushed. This type of thinking and development leaves me thinking once again that they are trying to do too much, a quantity over quality frame of mind they've had since 6.1 from what I can tell. I hope I'm wrong.

''TAKE-''💯💯💯💯🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣