Will there ever be a player model graphics update?

netch_a_sketch · June 23

The landscapes in this game are beautiful, but the player models have looked... Not ugly per se, but in need of an update in my opinion for a long time now. The models have jagged edges, the textures are flat and blurry, the hair and eye colours are severely limited. I understand wanting it to be lore immersive but I don't know, hair dye exists?
I know it's due to how the character creation sliders make a sort of negligible difference and the triangle to change facial features isn't something that feels like it can be particularly finely tuned, but characters suffer from having 'same face' syndrome, too. It would be nice to have something more unique.
The hair textures also suffer in my opinion, and the way the colours work on the hair doesn't look good, they're shiny and metallic looking.

I'm no game developer, but I've made skin and hair textures for models before and it's not something that takes an enormous amount of effort to look good.
I also understand that the increase in triangle count for smoothing the rougher edges of the model could be a problem when loading a lot of characters at once, such as in PvP or hub cities, and higher resolution textures require the computer to use more memory.

That's just a subjective opinion! I'm by no means trying to compare the games but I just came back from FFXIV that just had a graphical update with the last expansion and it makes ESO look incredibly dated in comparison. People want their characters to look unique, it would be nice if the NPCs did as well.

What do you think? Would love to hear the opinions of both players and moderators alike.

Gabriel_H · June 23

My contribution to the discussion will be in the form of a comparison to a certain other MMO.

vs.

As for FFXIV's update. You say ESO looks dated by comparison. I'm not sure I agree. The update is an improvement to shading, but there is little realism about it, and it looks just as airbrushed as ever.

IZZEFlameLash · June 23

Sure, I'd love to have actual armor pieces that doesn't fold like some fabric or skin whenever my character uses a crafting station, but you do have to recognize that MMO cannot prioritize that and risk massive performance issue. Eye candy always come at the cost of performance from both the client and server. And for MMOs, smooth performance is always better than stuttery but pretty looking performance.

NoticeMeArkay · June 23

The only model update I pray for is a separation between fur/scale patterns and body markings.
It sucks to own hundreds of body markings and not being able to use a single one of them without losing half of your characters base design. Seriously, how is that still a thing?

Udrath · June 23

It’s okay for a game to look its age. I wish they’d update movement so it has some weight to it though. New World kinda had that. Most new players say the game feels floaty sometimes.

James-Wayne · June 23

If only they let you to replace the models and textures in the game files so your own local copy at least reflected updated models similar to what we do with mods in Skyrim and other games.

It wouldnt be hard but performance on some machines may take a huge hit, especially on the older consoles.

tsaescishoeshiner · June 23

Setting performance aside, it would also change how people's very customized characters look (mainly for faces).

When some older MMOs have updated their character models, they were practically potatoes where you just selected 1 out of several face options, not the detailed sliders that we have in ESO. So adjusting them would have an impact on people's characters.

As for body models—different armor pieces and costumes modify your body (limb shape and thickness, etc) even when they're not covered, so it would actually be quite a big undertaking. Not that it couldn't be improved, I just think general updates like skyboxes, far distance view, weather and environmental effects, or a screenshot mode would all make more of an impact.

bmnoble · June 23

They would be risking screwing up the looks of peoples characters, some people put a considerable amount of effort into how their characters look going so far as to buy character change or race change tokens to edit stuff.

And didn't they just increase the inactivity kick timer for character creator recently.

Worst case we could get have peoples characters looks screwed up like with Pokemon go a few years ago or the games system requirements might go up again screwing over people on lower end hardware in a time when upgrading is currently annoyingly expensive.

SkaiFaith · June 23

Udrath wrote: »

It’s okay for a game to look its age. I wish they’d update movement so it has some weight to it though. New World kinda had that. Most new players say the game feels floaty sometimes.

The ONE aspect where I'd want the game to be floaty is the one where it's too damn heavy grounded: Mounts physics!!! WHY??? Why any time my mount "falls" for 1 inch it loses its sprint and has to restart from stopped - oh c'mon, please!!!

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Personally, I'd really much approve a similar upgrade to ESO models.
EDIT: BUT looking at the light in the eyes fading away, I think we can guess that's exactly what happened with Ithelia's model, and that model was really baaad; nothing as advertised too.
One thing happening (at least on console) often recently is that characters body will show the lines of the polygons. I thought we got rid of that bug, but it's still there: I can see a line going down the spine and one around the neck; one over shoulders too. It's kinda subtle, but it is there.

LunaFlora · June 23

yes it would be nice to have character model improvements, but i am not expecting it

tomofhyrule · June 23

Remeber that Ithelia was the “improved model,” and how well she was received.

One thing that I see a lot is that people normally think “high quality = better” and don’t consider how things for in the world. You see that all the time with mods for games like Skyrim or the Sims or whatever, where some people love modded hairstyles that look like some anime fantasy that is incredibly highly-detailed and delicate… which is then placed in a world with a completely different artstyle. For others, this is jarring. I know that Skyrim mods like Apachii hair and the like are super popular, but I personally think they just look so incredibly out of place in the world.

And again, ESO character creation is based on sliders and not BG3’s version of “choose one of 5 faces.” Many players spent a lot of time on that, and those are also the players who would jump ship if their characters changed out from under them. Every time some company has said “it’s not going to change what exists!” it does. Very obviously.

Finally, ESO is a huge game. They’re already cutting things (animations) to keep it playable on older hardware, and crossplay is still coming as well. Making the game footprint even bigger for something that’s not necessary is not a good idea.

Gabriel_H · June 23

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Udrath wrote: »

It’s okay for a game to look its age. I wish they’d update movement so it has some weight to it though. New World kinda had that. Most new players say the game feels floaty sometimes.

The ONE aspect where I'd want the game to be floaty is the one where it's too damn heavy grounded: Mounts physics!!! WHY??? Why any time my mount "falls" for 1 inch it loses its sprint and has to restart from stopped - oh c'mon, please!!!

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Personally, I'd really much approve a similar upgrade to ESO models.
EDIT: BUT looking at the light in the eyes fading away, I think we can guess that's exactly what happened with Ithelia's model, and that model was really baaad; nothing as advertised too.
One thing happening (at least on console) often recently is that characters body will show the lines of the polygons. I thought we got rid of that bug, but it's still there: I can see a line going down the spine and one around the neck; one over shoulders too. It's kinda subtle, but it is there.

ESO's models are much more detailed than that. It would be a downgrade.

As for the console problem, that's a technology limitation as much as a coding snafu.

A very quick screenshot and edit:

Left is ESO, lots of detail on the skin and shading. Right is FFXIV with no detail and some simple shading.

SkaiFaith · June 23

Gabriel_H wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Udrath wrote: »

It’s okay for a game to look its age. I wish they’d update movement so it has some weight to it though. New World kinda had that. Most new players say the game feels floaty sometimes.

The ONE aspect where I'd want the game to be floaty is the one where it's too damn heavy grounded: Mounts physics!!! WHY??? Why any time my mount "falls" for 1 inch it loses its sprint and has to restart from stopped - oh c'mon, please!!!

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Personally, I'd really much approve a similar upgrade to ESO models.
EDIT: BUT looking at the light in the eyes fading away, I think we can guess that's exactly what happened with Ithelia's model, and that model was really baaad; nothing as advertised too.
One thing happening (at least on console) often recently is that characters body will show the lines of the polygons. I thought we got rid of that bug, but it's still there: I can see a line going down the spine and one around the neck; one over shoulders too. It's kinda subtle, but it is there.

ESO's models are much more detailed than that. It would be a downgrade.

As for the console problem, that's a technology limitation as much as a coding snafu.

A very quick screenshot and edit:

Left is ESO, lots of detail on the skin and shading. Right is FFXIV with no detail and some simple shading.

But I was not comparing FF14 to ESO XD
I get why you got confused, I was not clear. I was simply saying that I see a difference in the two FF14 images and that if I was an FF14 player I would have very much appreciated the efforts made to make that upgrade. So, in a similar fashion, I would appreciate an equivalent upgrade to ESO models - not in the sense that they have to look like those of FF14, neither in level of quality, but that as FF14 has seen an even so slight upgrade, I'd gladly get any improvements to ESO models... But they have to be improvements and not the weirdness we've seen with Ithelia.

EDIT: btw, there is no way you can't see a difference in the hairs from FF14 character and the ESO one you choose. Also, call it "lighting" or whatever, but I never see shadows on ESO characters faces.
EDIT 2: And I wouldn't blame the difference on technology and age because FF14 is older as a release.

CptTekashi · June 23

The nords bog eyes have needed fixing since time began ....

Arcturus · June 23

Think about all the free Appearance Change Tickets!

AScarlato · June 23

Gabriel_H wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Udrath wrote: »

It’s okay for a game to look its age. I wish they’d update movement so it has some weight to it though. New World kinda had that. Most new players say the game feels floaty sometimes.

The ONE aspect where I'd want the game to be floaty is the one where it's too damn heavy grounded: Mounts physics!!! WHY??? Why any time my mount "falls" for 1 inch it loses its sprint and has to restart from stopped - oh c'mon, please!!!

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Personally, I'd really much approve a similar upgrade to ESO models.
EDIT: BUT looking at the light in the eyes fading away, I think we can guess that's exactly what happened with Ithelia's model, and that model was really baaad; nothing as advertised too.
One thing happening (at least on console) often recently is that characters body will show the lines of the polygons. I thought we got rid of that bug, but it's still there: I can see a line going down the spine and one around the neck; one over shoulders too. It's kinda subtle, but it is there.

ESO's models are much more detailed than that. It would be a downgrade.

As for the console problem, that's a technology limitation as much as a coding snafu.

A very quick screenshot and edit:

Left is ESO, lots of detail on the skin and shading. Right is FFXIV with no detail and some simple shading.

Yet the XIV face looks better especially in the setting IMO. It's hard to make good looking faces especially on male characters. That character from ESO looks rather hideous lol.

ESO's characters have a very "blocky" feel to their bodies and sometimes square-looking heads like in that screenshot. I'd love some improvements.

xencthlu · June 23

Yeah, ESO's character creator is weirdly limited. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit for improvements there. More hair colours. Less locking hair styles, facial hair, hair colour, and skin colour by race. Improved feet textures (as people keep noting the sausage toes on outfits with sandals/bare feet, it's actually distracting how bad those are.) Tusk customisation. Separating out eye customisation from face paint customisation from scar customisation from makeup customisation. Allowing players to colour their hair, eyebrows, and facial hair separately, which is a very normal thing in real life. Most people don't have identically coloured hair across their entire bodies. An option to hide all body hair, which is the norm in some Elven cultures. An option to customise a character with collections items you have unlocked on your account, like premium skins, hairstyles, body markings, etc. The ability to change the lighting in the character creator. None of those changes have to alter existing characters. I mean, I guess on the feet. If someone here wants to argue in favour of the current sausages, I'll be genuinely shocked.

We're going to get a pretty wide spread of responses on how necessary something like this is because different races have better and worse character creators. The Orc Male one is atrocious, I'd really like to see some expanded options and a second glance at the absolute marble-sized hives they have packing their gums near their jaw. But let's appeal to some common sense: generic NPCs shouldn't be able to look more distinct and unique than player characters, right? Because under the current system, they can and do. NPC Altmer can wear black hair. Players can't. And does anyone love a system where you need to pay 25 real dollars to unlock 90% of customisation options in the free base game? Because that's what we have currently with the cosmetic packs on the store. If you roll a Redguard and want to wear an Imperial hairstyle, that's 10 USD. If you roll a Dunmer and want to wear an Altmer earring, that's 10 USD.

I personally wouldn't mind a texture update either, but I understand the general concerns around it. Zenimax built up some good will with me as far as visual design goes when they did right by the werewolf visual overhaul. I'm willing to believe they could do well revisiting player characters.

Cin_Vhetin · June 23

xencthlu wrote: »

Yeah, ESO's character creator is weirdly limited. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit for improvements there. More hair colours. Less locking hair styles, facial hair, hair colour, and skin colour by race. Improved feet textures (as people keep noting the sausage toes on outfits with sandals/bare feet, it's actually distracting how bad those are.) Tusk customisation. Separating out eye customisation from face paint customisation from scar customisation from makeup customisation. Allowing players to colour their hair, eyebrows, and facial hair separately, which is a very normal thing in real life. Most people don't have identically coloured hair across their entire bodies. An option to hide all body hair, which is the norm in some Elven cultures. An option to customise a character with collections items you have unlocked on your account, like premium skins, hairstyles, body markings, etc. The ability to change the lighting in the character creator. None of those changes have to alter existing characters. I mean, I guess on the feet. If someone here wants to argue in favour of the current sausages, I'll be genuinely shocked.

We're going to get a pretty wide spread of responses on how necessary something like this is because different races have better and worse character creators. The Orc Male one is atrocious, I'd really like to see some expanded options and a second glance at the absolute marble-sized hives they have packing their gums near their jaw. But let's appeal to some common sense: generic NPCs shouldn't be able to look more distinct and unique than player characters, right? Because under the current system, they can and do. NPC Altmer can wear black hair. Players can't. And does anyone love a system where you need to pay 25 real dollars to unlock 90% of customisation options in the free base game? Because that's what we have currently with the cosmetic packs on the store. If you roll a Redguard and want to wear an Imperial hairstyle, that's 10 USD. If you roll a Dunmer and want to wear an Altmer earring, that's 10 USD.

I personally wouldn't mind a texture update either, but I understand the general concerns around it. Zenimax built up some good will with me as far as visual design goes when they did right by the werewolf visual overhaul. I'm willing to believe they could do well revisiting player characters.

Agreed - You've said it all!

coop500 · June 23

That's a slippery slope. A lot of players adore how their characters look right now and wouldn't be happy about having a change suddenly forced upon them. Even if it's technically higher rez or higher poly or whatever, aesthetic is more important.

SilverBride · June 23

Not unless we can choose between the current models and the new models. And/or are given a free character customization token for each of our characters.

noblecron · June 23

I'm wary of updated character models becuase sometimes a model update changes a character's looks completely. FF14 had a large swarm of player rage becuase their charactres got altered in ways they don't like once the update happened. 14 had to give out free appearance changes as compensation. Multiple times.

heaven13 · June 23

No thanks. I spent a ton of time on all of my characters to be pleased with them. I don't trust that some "tweaks" wouldn't outright change them.

I'd be fine with adding additional hair colors, separating eyebrow color from hair color (and have the default match the hair color so existing characters continue looking the same), separating the "face markings layer" into separate scar, tattoo, and make-up layers so we can properly use those different things together. But no updates to the actual textures or meshes.

Marto · June 23

Character models are far, far behind the quality seen anywhere else in the game. Environments, lighting, materials... even some particles and effects. This is specially glaring with armors and motifs, that we see literally next to them.

I reaaally hope ZOS considers updating the base models. It would make player characters more appealing for screenshots. It would make NPCs and dialogue look better.

While it would be nice to see a full remake, that might be unreasonable to ask for at this point. Specially with the amount of dialogue, animations, and customization options.

But, keeping the same skeleton and animations while increasing polygon count and texture resolution would go a long way. I don't think there's urgent need of anything more drastic than that.

Arunei · June 23

I think what would be nice (but is very unlikely to ever happen) would be an update to character creation to have more variation in the sliders so we don't run into this problem of characters within X Race looking alike, or at least looking like they could all be related. I feel like they could expand the sliders without changing what everyones' characters' sliders are already at? And then they could give everyone a couple of free Appearance Change Tokens, so people could fiddle with the expanded sliders and see if anything would fit what they had in mind for their characters.

Not sure if it would actually be possible to give us more variation without changing current characters, but again I don't see it as something that would happen even if they can. And I definitely don't see them giving out Appearance Tokens. But hey, one can dream.

James-Wayne · June 23

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Remeber that Ithelia was the “improved model,” and how well she was received.

Who's that?

Vaqual · June 23

More beards and hairstyles is all I need.

AllenaNightWood · 12:32AM

i hope so because hands and feet textures really need work

netch_a_sketch · 4:23AM

Marto wrote: »

Character models are far, far behind the quality seen anywhere else in the game. Environments, lighting, materials... even some particles and effects. This is specially glaring with armors and motifs, that we see literally next to them.

I reaaally hope ZOS considers updating the base models. It would make player characters more appealing for screenshots. It would make NPCs and dialogue look better.

While it would be nice to see a full remake, that might be unreasonable to ask for at this point. Specially with the amount of dialogue, animations, and customization options.

But, keeping the same skeleton and animations while increasing polygon count and texture resolution would go a long way. I don't think there's urgent need of anything more drastic than that.

Pretty much what I had in mind when I made the post, I'd be happy with just better character textures. And removing the perma-stubble on some races men.

Gabriel_H · 5:22AM

AScarlato wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Udrath wrote: »

It’s okay for a game to look its age. I wish they’d update movement so it has some weight to it though. New World kinda had that. Most new players say the game feels floaty sometimes.

The ONE aspect where I'd want the game to be floaty is the one where it's too damn heavy grounded: Mounts physics!!! WHY??? Why any time my mount "falls" for 1 inch it loses its sprint and has to restart from stopped - oh c'mon, please!!!

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Personally, I'd really much approve a similar upgrade to ESO models.
EDIT: BUT looking at the light in the eyes fading away, I think we can guess that's exactly what happened with Ithelia's model, and that model was really baaad; nothing as advertised too.
One thing happening (at least on console) often recently is that characters body will show the lines of the polygons. I thought we got rid of that bug, but it's still there: I can see a line going down the spine and one around the neck; one over shoulders too. It's kinda subtle, but it is there.

ESO's models are much more detailed than that. It would be a downgrade.

As for the console problem, that's a technology limitation as much as a coding snafu.

A very quick screenshot and edit:

Left is ESO, lots of detail on the skin and shading. Right is FFXIV with no detail and some simple shading.

Yet the XIV face looks better especially in the setting IMO. It's hard to make good looking faces especially on male characters. That character from ESO looks rather hideous lol.

ESO's characters have a very "blocky" feel to their bodies and sometimes square-looking heads like in that screenshot. I'd love some improvements.

The game strives for a sense of realism, not airbrushed catwalk models.

There you go, have a pretty boy.

Gabriel_H · 5:27AM

xencthlu wrote: »

Yeah, ESO's character creator is weirdly limited.

Limited?

3 different face types than can be mixed plus 31 sliders for different parts of said face.
3 different body types than can be mixed plus 12 sliders for different parts of said body.

That is an absolute truckload of customisation

xencthlu · 7:42AM

Gabriel_H wrote: »

xencthlu wrote: »

Yeah, ESO's character creator is weirdly limited.

Limited?

3 different face types than can be mixed plus 31 sliders for different parts of said face.
3 different body types than can be mixed plus 12 sliders for different parts of said body.

That is an absolute truckload of customisation

The active word here was "weirdly." The ways they've chosen to limit the character creator are weird. At no point did I mention the sliders, because I'm not interested in sliders. You are free to defend the terrible triangle to someone else. (Anyone else notice the face triangle inexplicably also changes the texture of your face? Seriously, look at your character's skin as you move your dot around the triangle. Isn't that extremely weird?)

This isn't a moral assault on the design decisions made in the character creator. My original post offered some simple, low effort tweaks that could make a wide variety of players (myself included) disproportionately happier. I'd also like to see a wider range for sliders, but my primary concern is that I want to be able to have white hair and black eyebrows.

Also, that's not a pretty boy. That boy isn't pretty at all. He's got a 5 o'clock shadow, empty, hopeless pits for eyes, and a face that sags to the right. That man is going on forty, drinks regularly, and I can tell he works a regular 9 to 5. A pretty boy should look like he belongs in a boy band. You didn't even put eyeliner on him! How can you claim to have a pretty boy without eyeliner?

I've made prettier Orcs.

Look, Gabriel, I know you can't and won't roll many alts because of your problems with OCD. I don't think character customisation improvements are for people like you. But they're absolutely good for the game and the larger community.