While Final Fantasy 14’s graphical overhaul brought some great upgrades to characters, it’s a video game, so things may go a little wonky. Luckily, apparently, the team has been looking into getting fixes for what issues they’ve managed to pin down.
In a new blog post titled “Responding to Feedback on Player Character Models,” director Naoki Yoshida provides an overview of some issues that the player base has noted with the overhaul to the characters.
At the end of the blog, Yoshida also generally claims they’ll “look into adding more character creation options, among other things”—but as it often is with dev, it seems like a promise with no specific date in sight. That’s a cool update to hear, but it's only a brief comment, as the bulk of the blog is spent addressing the problems of the present.
The character model issues that the blog outlines appear to be a continuation of adjustments made due to an upgrade to the 11-year-old game’s graphics. For instance, when the benchmark was released, there were dramatically different shaders on the character creation screen, which was left over from 2.0 rendering, and the actual benchmark “cutscene” that ran. Even then, the team called out certain adjustments they realized they needed to make and released a new benchmark with major graphical updates that carried over into the main 7.0 patch.
This new blog outlines a few types of issues. Some items have fixes impending, likely in the upcoming Patch 7.1, and others will be more time-intensive and will see fixes down the line. More still have been identified by the team, but still need to be diagnosed and/or looked at more closely otherwise, and probably won’t see a fix for a while.
There’s a “non-exhaustive list” of the issues that are meant to be addressed in 7.1:
- The depth of the area from below the nose to the upper lip (the "philtrum") has become more pronounced.
- The slight corners of polygons originally present disappear when viewed at a downward camera angle of approximately 45 degrees.
- Skin blemishes, redness, and pores are more noticeable with certain face types.
- Certain face types have thicker or darker colored lips.
- The corners of the mouth appear to be lifted or lowered with certain face types.
- The shape of polygons around the eyes, including the eyebags and inner eye shadows, appear slightly different with certain face types.
Another bit is dedicated to discussing eyelashes and eyebrows, which they hope to fix by 7.1, though with the caveat that people already seem to like them on a lot of races and face, so they’re being a little more cautious about it.
Issues that’ll be addressed later on include jawline issues (which have to do with the rigging), wonky-looking eyelashes, smudging face paint, and Auri horn glowing.
Beyond these, there’s also plenty that the team is already looking at, but probably can’t address reasonably soon. However, they recognize these items, which include but are explicitly not limited to beard and scar coloring, Viera nose tips looking dark, floating hair, rougher Au Ra scales, eye highlights (which they get into in depth) and more.
Besides these, we’re also just waiting for more general updates that’ve been vaguely promised for FFXIV’s graphics. Already, the main Dawntrail Patch 7.0 did some heavy work in upgrading the shader interactions of metals, stone, trees and grass, and more similar game-wide objects, plus plenty of clothes and fabrics, but chances are there’ll be more tweaks to past content in the future to make sure everything is aligned.
