Did your character look wonky in Final Fantasy 14’s recent Dawntrail Benchmark software? Great news: your Warrior of Light will soon get the shine they deserve (literally). As part of the ongoing saga of the heavily-criticized Benchmark, the FFXIV development team, received an update in Letter from the Producer Live (or the “Live Letter”) via leader director and producer Naoki Yoshida and producer Toshio “Foxcon” Murouchi.
First shown is the now-infamous 2.0 character creator lighting, which was considered much of the core of how the graphical updates’ models were shown. Basically, the character creator’s environment was carried over from the 2.0 (and onwards) version, as opposed to being properly updated with the graphical update, while the models were proactively changed. Due to this unadjusted lighting, features weren’t actually shown as they would be in Dawntrail, resulting in a mix of misrepresentations of models and exposure of many of their flaws.
The developers have already shown this new screenshot about the changes, and it’s objectively a drastic improvement. It also gave the team a chance to fix the creator itself; for instance, Thanalan’s lighting was meant to be “cloudy,” but the parameters had some remnants of “rainy” lighting.
If you were upset about the Keeper of the Moon Miqo’te fangs being shorter, you weren’t alone. Apparently, the feedback regarding them being shortened were “global.”
Due to this popular demand to bring back Keeper fangs, most Keeper face types have had their faces elongated, so they look closer to the older “fang” versions that made them a popular choice.
Unfortunately, as shown above, there's the exception of Keeper Face 4. According to the devs, these longer fangs won't work with the facial type anatomically, so they have to be closer to the Benchmark's original shorter fang style.
Lalafell jaws were also addressed, as many pointed out they looked too sharply curved in for the Lalafells’ skulls, resulting in “baby shark” jokes. The jaws have been widened to reflect the odd shapes.
The team also addressed the facial structures and “folds” (per se, assuming they meant dimples) of the faces, which didn’t seem to look as good in the new lighting. These will be adjusted for the benchmark as well.
The team is looking to re-release this Benchmark in the last day or two of May to reflect these changes, which is just about a month from Dawntrail’s early access release–and the graphical update, with it–at the end of June.
