Post 7.6 Character Modernization

[EricMusco]

Hey folks,

If you haven’t done so, definitely read my previous post as it will highlight a bit of the history of modernization from livestream announce, through PTS, and now to launch. Especially for the specific changes we have made as I am going to reference that a bit in this post.

Before I get into that though, here is a TLDR - 7.6 was a huge step forward for us and the culmination of an art and tech effort to modernize our characters for the first time since our games inception, which is amazing. But that huge step is also only our first, we aren’t done. Our modernization efforts mean subsequent changes can and will continue.

First up, thank you for your feedback. We knew coming into character modernization that we wanted to take extra care regarding changes we made to your character's appearance. It’s one of the reasons why, to reiterate our goal from my original post, we wanted to make sure that you maintained your identity as a character after modernization. But that didn’t mean there would be no change in appearance, as that is necessary to the modernization process. So it was important for us to try to match up both our own artistic goals and the feedback we were receiving from PTS. 

In my last post I talked a lot about what we changed from our initial launch of PTS, through its run, and now to live. For this post I want to talk about how those changes were made because that context (if you want to peek behind the curtains a bit) will set up some good context for what we are looking towards changing as we move forward!

Let me define two different terms for you really quick that I am going to use in this post:

• Artistic changes - Any time I refer to artistic work, I am talking about some kind of change being made by hand by an artist on our team. Imagine someone holding a paint brush painting some details on your character's skin, or hair, etc. 
  • Example: I apply some lighter colors to skin tone 3 of humans around the eyes for some specific effect, hand painting this effect.
• Programmatic changes - Any time I refer to something being programmatic, this means something that is happening automatically and across everything all at once, like a filter. 
  • Example: I programmatically make every human skin tone one shade lighter.

Ok, with those two terms in mind I want to talk about how we went about making some of the changes we did during PTS, why, and what we are adjusting post 7.6!

Early on you will all very likely be familiar with our most common piece of feedback, that a lot of the texture work that we did (which was artistic) went too hard. Now, that was caused by a shader bug (programmatic) which we addressed, but, even after we fixed the bug, we still were seeing a lot of that sentiment. The places we saw this the most was for things like wrinkles around the face, etc. 

So, given how universally the feedback we were seeing was around the hardness within our texture (artistic) work, we decided that the best course to address that feedback was going to be programmatically. Since even though that would be a more universal change, there would still be levers we could pull within it. Let me give you a very specific example to what you have seen play out in 7.6 to showcase this:

• We were able to tone down the definition of wrinkles and hardness within the textures, but since this is programmatic, it means that other texture definition, like your sweet abs also lost some definition.

As we went through PTS we were able to tweak multiple of these variables up and down to try to land at a place that we felt met our goals while still being as reactionary as possible to your feedback. Again, another example:

• What you see now in 7.6 is that those same abs are not 100% as defined as they were pre-7.6 but it allowed us to similar tone down some of the hardness seen in the textures elsewhere, such as face wrinkles.

As we continue to plan beyond 7.6, we have a few different primary initiatives that we want to tackle:

• Replace "overall programmatic softening" with a more targeted, artist controlled softening of facial features while keeping definition in other areas - Super important context, this does not mean you should expect to see a dramatic change in how your character appears from today (or a rollback). But, it would give our artists more control over individual changes impacted by modernization such as ear, nose, and muscle definition and the appearance of aging.
• Textures on vibrant colored species, such as Chiss - So a couple of notes here. This would be helped by the first change around moving away from programmatic softening. Also, fun fact, Chiss as an example, technically use human textures, so this isn’t like adding a new species, this is more about having a bit more artistic control over how existing textures interact with non-human skin tones.
• Neckline seam - I talked about this in my last post but we obviously are aware of and investigating this too.

That isn’t a comprehensive list, but those are our “high nails” that we are talking through and prioritizing right now. Again as I TLDRd above. We know these changes to your character feel, and are, personal to you and so we take them very seriously. 7.6 has set a baseline that we are so, so excited about and so continue on this journey with us. Keep giving us feedback. I will do my best to make sure you stay informed on exactly what we are planning, what we are changing (or not), and why, whenever possible.

Thanks all!

-eric
 

[VilianSW]

10 minutes ago, EricMusco said:

(snip)
to reiterate our goal from my original post, we wanted to make sure that you maintained your identity as a character after modernization. But that didn’t mean there would be no change in appearance, as that is necessary to the modernization process. So it was important for us to try to match up both our own artistic goals and the feedback we were receiving from PTS.
(snip)
 

Task failed successfully - identity has not been maintained, in way too many cases.
Artistic work went too far, too freely.

[DaddyAlduin]

So we are stuck with busted, objectively worse characters for however long it takes yall to fix them; and even once they're "fixed," they're still gonna look fundamentally different than what we liked or want?

Edited December 11, 2024 by DaddyAlduin

[JenaSalton]

Appreciate the update Eric. Any chance we can have an estimate as to when we might see some further changes to those primary initiatives?

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

17 minutes ago, EricMusco said:

this does not mean you should expect to see a dramatic change in how your character appears from today

 

Yeah, this concerns me a lot.

 

You guys don't seem to be listening, because there wasn't just a lot of criticism on the PTS, there's a lot of criticism now. Right now, in the thread you posted yesterday, there's a good 5 pages of feedback from after the patch went live with the overwhelming message that these changes are a downgrade. If there's not going to be a dramatic change to get things back to a similar to feel to what we had before, then that's going to be a big problem. It makes sense that things won't look exactly the same, I get that, but there's a difference between something looking different because it's a higher quality but the same design, and then something looking different because it's a different design. A character that's supposed to be 19 looking over 30 is a design change. That's not "Oh it's higher quality now", no, the art implies something different than it used to. You've changed the design. So just off that, the wrinkles are still way too strong. There should be a dramatic change there. If there's not, that's a problem.

 

Beyond that, though, there are still issues of faces outright looking different structurally, things that were pointed out on the PTS and called out as known issues that made it to the live servers. Why? Is this what you consider a starting point? Knowing this is going to stay like this for months? (Again, as I pointed out on the PTS a month ago, look at the nose please):

 

 

I don't think a rollback was ever going to be realistic, but your warning that we shouldn't expect drastic changes when they're needed is heavily concerning to me. You say you wanted to "make sure that you maintained your identity as a character" and then make changes like this. To me, that makes your reassurance come off as lip service, you don't care. The characters are changed beyond just being upgraded to higher quality, in ways that fundamentally alter their design, and I'm getting the impression that Broadsword's response to that is "Deal with it." You guys need to do better than that, this is unacceptable.

Edited December 11, 2024 by The-Kaitou-Kid

[cannibithobbal]

So, universal reviling of this update from the playerbase.

Dev response: we're working on changing it post launch, but we won't roll it back or give you a toggle to turn it off.

So how long do we have to have hideously unplayable characters while we wait for these updates???

I want to eventually have good looking updated characters, but I don't even want to play the game on ANY of these updated characters until everything is fully fixed.  And I'm sure I'm not alone.

 

Also, sorry, but how is "lips completely changed shapes on half the male faces and a few of the female ones too" not a primary initiative to tackle??

on the list of things which make your character look like a completely different character, that is HIGH.

I want the old age look to be fixed too but at least with the aging our character still look like the same person only way too old.

Different lip shapes = looks like a totally different person = breaks the stated goal of "maintaining our identity as a character"

Sorry to just repeatedly bang on about this, but seriously how is that not even being talked about for being addressed?  Or are totally different lip shapes just being lumped into "your characters are just going to look different now soz lol"?

[ThaddeusPondgull]

Thanks for the update! 

I'm pretty happy with what we have so far. There's some quirks that still need to be worked out as Eric mentioned. But I think overall my character looks a lot better. There is still some funky stuff where certain areas of lighting really emphasize some of the new facial features, but that's my only real nitpick currently. 

[khamseen_air]

Since there is a lot of negative feedback on this I just want to voice that I actually do like most of the changes. I only have one character who I personally don't like after the changes but the vast majority of my toons I feel do look better post 7.6.

Stating this on Reddit got me downvoted into oblivion but it's personal. I can understand some people's response when seeing how their characters were affected, but yeah I like mine and I'm glad you're going to keep improving on them instead of rolling them back. 

Edited December 11, 2024 by khamseen_air

[cannibithobbal]

The fact of the matter is, this release was pushed out unfinished.

The devs KNEW it was unfinished, this very post proves that.

If they were going to push out an unfinished product, it should have been on a toggle to be optional from DAY ONE.

If they aren't going to roll it back and take it away, it NEEDS to be toggleable at LEAST until the modernization is actually finished.

Then people who want to experience all the updates along the way on their characters can continue to do so and give feedback, and the rest of us can wait until it's actually ready for use before we turn it on.

[ThaddeusPondgull]

Just now, khamseen_air said:

Stating this on Reddit got me downvoted into oblivion but it's personal. I can understand some people's response when seeing how their characters were affected, but yeah I like mine and I'm glad you're going to keep improving on them instead of rolling them back. 

I have noticed some hostility towards those that are saying that they like the changes, which hopefully doesn't become commonplace. I think it's only natural that some people will not like the changes, but I think overtime people will get used to them. I don't think most of the characters I've seen look all that fundamentally different. Of course there have been a few outliers.

[starschwar]

Why was there a massive effort to fix something that wasn't broken?  All of my characters look worse now.  What a waste of resources.  Please, roll this back.  I was completely satisfied with character models beforehand, and now they look like something out of that AI remaster of True Lies.

[Kappymcknight]

Just now, ThaddeusPondgull said:

I have noticed some hostility towards those that are saying that they like the changes, which hopefully doesn't become commonplace. I think it's only natural that some people will not like the changes, but I think overtime people will get used to them. I don't think most of the characters I've seen look all that fundamentally different. Of course there have been a few outliers.

I was literally threatened on reddit earlier for pointing out it's still being worked on and that some people like it.

[Lady-Drake]

33 minutes ago, EricMusco said:

• We were able to tone down the definition of wrinkles and hardness within the textures, but since this is programmatic, it means that other texture definition, like your sweet abs also lost some definition.
• What you see now in 7.6 is that those same abs are not 100% as defined as they were pre-7.6 but it allowed us to similar tone down some of the hardness seen in the textures elsewhere, such as face wrinkles.
• this does not mean you should expect to see a dramatic change in how your character appears from today (or a rollback).

 

Directly addressing these points in order:

• You didn't tone down the wrinkles, though, especially not on the men, who still look terrible with wrinkled faces, jaws, necks, backs of their heads, and have awful lips. Nor did you tone the abs (or any other muscles for that matter, like the arms) back up. SEE POST HERE FOR SCREENSHOTS.
• Again, this clearly did not work. The abs are almost a complete casualty and the wrinkles remain.
• So what this means is: all of our feedback is largely ignored, and we should just shut up right now about asking for a rollback or even an option to turn these shaders off.

I appreciate the response and even the vague attempts made to address this ensuing and well-deserved outrage, but this remains a terrible business practice.

The majority of your paying members were and are actively expressing outrage here on the forums across all the topics that have existed about this subject, and your response is "well, we kind of tried but it didn't really work, and we might keep trying but don't expect it to actually change."

As I've mentioned, I apologize if I sound harsh, but I feel berated for my own posts attempting to point out these issues and frankly I feel like I'm being berated even for caring so much. I love this game. It means a lot to me. What I am seeing are unnecessary changes that are destroying our characters on a base level - and the response is negative.

The response is: roll this back or else ADD AN OPTION TO LET US TURN IT OFF.

WoW has proven the option can exist. It is a viable and reasonable thing to ask from oldschool players who don't want our graphics messed with for no reason at all, because we loved it the way it was, and we are the ones paying for this game to continue existing. You shouldn't spurn us and count on potential new paying members to keep games like this alive.

I remain crushingly disappointed, and I feel like I'm being pushed away as a long-time player and paying member of this community and supporter of this game.

Add an option to turn these shaders off.

The game shouldn't suffer in live while trying to endure you guys figuring this out. It was FINE. It was NOT BROKEN.

If it is this much work to tweak and fix, it should not have left the PTS yet.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Lady-Drake

[DaddyAlduin]

5 minutes ago, ThaddeusPondgull said:

I have noticed some hostility towards those that are saying that they like the changes, which hopefully doesn't become commonplace. I think it's only natural that some people will not like the changes, but I think overtime people will get used to them. I don't think most of the characters I've seen look all that fundamentally different. Of course there have been a few outliers.

We shouldn't have to "get used to them" when they're something the vast majority of the community has been against since day 1, even more so when you consider the real life financial investment thousands upon thousands of people have in their characters 

Edited December 11, 2024 by DaddyAlduin

[cannibithobbal]

1 minute ago, Lady-Drake said:

Directly addressing these points in order:

• You didn't tone down the wrinkles, though, especially not on the men, who still look terrible with wrinkled faces, jaws, necks, backs of their heads, and have awful lips. Nor did you tone the abs back up. SEE POST HERE FOR SCREENSHOTS.
• Again, this clearly did not work. The abs are almost a complete casualty and the wrinkles remain.
• So what this means is: all of our feedback is largely ignored, and we should just shut up right now about asking for a rollback or even an option to turn these shaders off.

I appreciate the response and even the vague attempts made to address this ensuing and well-deserved outrage, but this remains a terrible business practice.

The majority of your paying members were and are actively expressing outrage here on the forums across all the topics that have existed about this subject, and your response is "well, we kind of tried but it didn't really work, and we might keep trying but don't expect it to actually change."

As I've mentioned, I apologize if I sound harsh, but I feel berated for my own posts attempting to point out these issues and frankly I feel like I'm being berated even for caring so much. I love this game. It means a lot to me. What I am seeing are unnecessary changes that are destroying our characters on a base level - and the response is negative.

The response is: roll this back or else ADD AN OPTION TO LET US TURN IT OFF.

WoW has proven the option can exist. It is a viable and reasonable thing to ask from oldschool players who don't want our graphics messed with for no reason at all, because we loved it the way it was, and we are the ones paying for this game to continue existing. You shouldn't spurn us and count on potential new paying members to keep games like this alive.

I remain crushingly disappointed, and I feel like I'm being pushed away as a long-time player and paying member of this community and supporter of this game.

Add an option to turn these shaders off.

The game shouldn't suffer in live while trying to endure you guys figuring this out. It was FINE. It was NOT BROKEN. If it this much work to tweak and fix, it should not have left the PTS yet.

I ran out of reactions for the day, but just wanted to say: YES. YES. YES to all this, so much this, YES.  thank you.  very well said.

[ThaddeusPondgull]

2 minutes ago, DaddyAlduin said:

We shouldn't have to "get used to (the changes" when they're something the vast majority of the community has been against since day 1, even more so when you consider the real life financial investment thousands upon thousands of people have in their characters 

It's a visual change. No matter what they did this was going to take some getting used to. See the visual changes on hutta and Ilum for example. Those felt like entirely different planets to me but I think they are an improvement. I have spent a frankly embarrassing amount of money on this game and on my characters since I've started playing.  As I said, people are going to have differing opinions about this change, but people need to find a way to navigate these conversations in a civilized way without putting each other down. That's just simply not constructive.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

1 minute ago, ThaddeusPondgull said:

I think it's only natural that some people will not like the changes, but I think overtime people will get used to them.

 

I imagine this is where a lot of the hostility is coming from, from the implication that "they'll get used to it." These changes are half-baked, they look bad in a lot of places, and fundamentally change the designs of the characters (again, look at Mako as a great example, she's supposed to be 19 but she doesn't look like it anymore, that is a fundamental change to her design).  Some characters do look fine, I don't disagree on that. I have a Guardian that I looked at that looks fine. It's possible his beard is covering the wrinkles a bit, but I thought he looked good. That doesn't invalidate the ones that are bad. That doesn't magically my main's nose "correct" now, even though it's wrong and has been wrong since the first PTS iteration. I shouldn't have to get used to my main looking like that, it's not how the face looked when I created the character. I wouldn't have picked that face if it did.

 

These changes can be good, they're going in the right direction, but they weren't ready to go live yet. They shouldn't have been included in this patch. I will stand by that point even more strongly now that the patch is up and I've seen what they put out. This needed more time, and now players are the ones that have to "get used to it" when we shouldn't have to. Broadsword should have taken the time to get this right.

[VilianSW]

There is one thing that wasn't addressed at all, not even in the "we've tried but our artists got carried away" manner. 
What happened to the hair? Cherry red hair of my main is now vibrant red. On my PT her orange hair is now some neon variation on the color. Neither is matching their respective outfits anymore, hair shade is too bright. What happened with hair shaders?

[Kappymcknight]

1 minute ago, VilianSW said:

There is one thing that wasn't addressed at all, not even in the "we've tried but our artists got carried away" manner. 
What happened to the hair? Cherry red hair of my main is now vibrant red. On my PT her orange hair is now some neon variation on the color. Neither is matching their respective outfits anymore, hair shade is too bright. What happened with hair shaders?

I think they updated the textures on the hair to look more hair-like and less clay-like and it messed with the colors a bit as there's more definition to things like strands/bangs.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Kappymcknight

[Gedgenator]

I really just do not get why this couldn’t be a toggle. Many people (myself included) are very fond of the classic art style that the game launched with, and hate seeing that creative work erased from the game. 

The update also was obviously not ready, so why not just delay it until it is ready. Face wrinkles on women, neck Wrinkles on men, ab definition lost on men and cleavage lost on women are all still present. The Chiss especially look awfully patchy. The textures as a whole are muddy. When asking my brother who doesn’t play the game to pick which of my screenshots were the new models, he picked the old ones cause he thought those looked better. Overall just not a good look.

I said in a previous post that I would cancel my subscription if this went through, and I wasn’t lying. After today’s update it’s evident that I will be following through on that promise. I hope you can fix it, but honestly I’d rather prefer to just have a toggle to switch back to the old textures. For now though, I’m done giving money to the game.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Gedgenator

[VilianSW]

4 minutes ago, ThaddeusPondgull said:

It's a visual change. No matter what they did this was going to take some getting used to. See the visual changes on hutta and Ilum for example. Those felt like entirely different planets to me but I think they are an improvement. I have spent a frankly embarrassing amount of money on this game and on my characters since I've started playing.  As I said, people are going to have differing opinions about this change, but people need to find a way to navigate these conversations in a civilized way without putting each other down. That's just simply not constructive.

Please be reminded that there is already a 9-pages-long thread full of constructive criticism - what failed, how, where; and what should be improved to make things right. Wrinkles, baggy eyes, altered nose shape, altered lips shape, muscles removed or baggy, skin blotchiness, it's all there, listed and with multiple screenshot examples. If that's not civilised, I don't know how else we're supposed to flag the issues that should've not be there in the first place.

[SunlightCatcher]

Please make them toggleable - everyone will be far more charitable to these changes and to the time it will take for the team to make them if they can be turned off, or opted out of. Please. 

[Clarian]

44 minutes ago, EricMusco said:

We were able to tone down the definition of wrinkles and hardness within the textures, but since this is programmatic, it means that other texture definition, like your sweet abs also lost some definition.

Funny, the original versions had no harsh wrinkles, AND sweet abs...at the same time! Problem solved.

27 minutes ago, The-Kaitou-Kid said:

It makes sense that things won't look exactly the same, I get that, but there's a difference between something looking different because it's a higher quality but the same design, and then something looking different because it's a different design.

EXACTLY.  A higher-res image of a photo does look 'different' than a lower-res image of the same photo...you can tell them apart. But more precisely, it looks the same, but better.  If modernization looked 'exactly the same' there would be no point, but the characters have to look like the same people, just higher quality. 

But it is illuminating to hear a little about the process.  What we're seeing may be the best that anyone could do with what you have to work with, but the end result is still a downgrade.  (And, none of that explains going live with it in this state.)

If the goal is (as it should be) to preserve characters' visual identity while increasing quality, I don't think there's any getting around the fact that it would require an increase the resolution of the 3D models - adding more polygons.  Look what WoW did, look what FFXIV did.  Whatever their merits artistically, technically their output was high quality...but this isn't.

Now, I don't know whether SWTOR is still considered an AAA MMO (and I don't care, personally), but it shipped with AAA art assets...and to actually improve them would take an AAA budget again, it would seem.   If you don't have the resources to do it properly, then you don't.  

Still, I wouldn't object to whatever you end up with, as long as I can opt out of it - not only for my characters, but also my companions and all other NPCs who share player character assets:

 

[ThaddeusPondgull]

Just now, VilianSW said:

Please be reminded that there is already a 9-pages-long thread full of constructive criticism - what failed, how, where; and what should be improved to make things right. Wrinkles, baggy eyes, altered nose shape, altered lips shape, muscles removed or baggy, skin blotchiness, it's all there, listed and with multiple screenshot examples. If that's not civilised, I don't know how else we're supposed to flag the issues that should've not be there in the first place.

I know. I posted my concerns in those threads. I even started the initial character modernization feedback thread for the pts before the devs created an official one. I even posted the Chiss skin blotches. I am quite well aware of the issues that exist with this patch. If you read my earlier posts, I've fully acknowledged that there's issues with it that need fixing. Unfortunately those devolved into a lot of shouting and ad hominem attacks, which I feel drowned out the people actually attempting to give genuine feedback with screenshots and sliders. Certainly, there are people being civil, but regrettably there's bad actors who are drowning them out. 

[SparkySquirrel]

Well I can live with my character looking a little cross-eyed, but I CAN'T LIVE WITH A 12 HOUR RESET ON A WEEKLY!!! 😕

 

Update: ok it has reset in 5 days now, I pvp I have to be dramatic!!

Edited December 11, 2024 by SparkySquirrel
fixed