Character Modernization Updates going into 7.7

[JackieKo]

Hey everyone!

There has been a flurry of activity behind the scenes as we wrap up our character modernization efforts for Game Update 7.7, and with it came some changes since the last time you were on the Public Test Server (PTS).  The team wanted to give you all one last update before 7.7’s release to showcase the improvements that were made based on your feedback, track current known issues, and talk about what to expect as we look beyond 7.7!

First and foremost, what has changed since the close of PTS?

• Rattataki. Originally, there were plans to address issues with Rattataki neck seams and rendering for 7.7, but we needed to shift this back a bit to accommodate the work going into making additional face definition changes shown below.  We have certainly not forgotten about our Rattataki players, and hope you can be patient just a little while longer.
   
• Facial definition and skin texture changes. Over the course of our character modernization journey, we’ve re-evaluated our tools and approaches to better apply player feedback and set us up for our future efforts.  Doing so has allowed us to deliver what we see as a solid balance between your suggestions and our modernization goals. Below are some changes we wanted to highlight.

 

• Facial depth. Our facial definition and smoothing changes inadvertently made the faces render flatter than we would like.  We have made some adjustments since the close of PTS to address this, but will continue to make refinements as we move forward.
   
• Skin splotchiness. This issue was more difficult to solve due to the complex ways our assets interconnect, but we have made broad texture changes which address the bulk of the problem.  However, there are still some specific skin colors that need to be tweaked in order to fix the issue as a whole.  The changes you will see in 7.7 affect the full faces and bodies of Humans, Cyborgs, Miraluka, Miralians, Imperial/Republic Zabrak, Chiss, and Togruta.

 

  

• Preview Window. One of our big goals with the adjustments to Preview Window lighting was to remove the harsh, overly blue, and oftentimes misleading rendering that did not properly represent what you would see in general gameplay.  While reviewing everything, we found a stark difference between the Preview Window lighting prior to 7.7 and what was seen on the PTS (especially when comparing older screenshots taken in the window) so we’ve made adjustments to compensate.  

 

Other player feedback. We have seen the demand for a toggle or slider to switch between the pre-modernization appearance and the current one. Back in November, we acknowledged that we couldn’t make any promises as we needed to understand the scope of that request as it is not as easy a task as some assume. 

The reality is that due to the way the appearance system works within our tools and engine it is a technical impossibility to implement such a feature at this time. We understand where this request is coming from and we’ve had many conversations about it, but for now, we want to be clear there is no expectation of such a feature being added.

Known issues as of Game Update 7.7’s release. While this list is not all-inclusive, everything listed has already been investigated and will be addressed in future bugfix patches:

• Player neck seams  -  Under certain lighting conditions a subtle neck seam can be seen on Humans, Cyborgs, Miraluka, Miralians, Imperial/Republic Zabrak, Chiss, and Togruta.
   
• Character Level of Detail neck seam  -  Currently a neck seam is visible when you have Character Level of Detail set too low on certain species.
   
• Companion neck seams  -  While many of our humanoid companions have had their neck seams fixed already, there are a few with unique facial textures that need special consideration to address.
   
• Skin splotchiness  -  As mentioned in the previous section, we have addressed the bulk of the issue, but certain skin colors will still show more splotchiness than we would like.  
   
• Dark Side corruption  -  Certain skin colors slider selections will show the complexion changes when under Dark Side corruption, but the skin color is not turning pale as expected.  We are investigating the cause of this issue, and hope to have it fixed soon.

All of that said, we would like to showcase how far we have come since PTS, and what you should expect to see when Game Update 7.7 releases soon!

Hopefully you all are as excited for these changes as we are!  

That being said, as we’ve stated previously, our character modernization initiative is a continuous effort.  We will continue keeping an eye on feedback and make improvements in future game updates.

Thanks for your continued support and patience and we'll see you when 7.7 releases next week!

Linking the Post 7.6 Character Modernization thread for ease of reference. 

 

 

 

[cannibithobbal]

34 minutes ago, JackieKo said:

 

 

Are my eyes deceiving me, or did at least some of the lip fixes I have been begging for finally happen??????????

Please don't be getting my hopes up on this, omg please let this be true.

I am waiting for it to go live to see it on my characters to really know, but based on these pictures, this is SO SO SO much better in every way imaginable, at least on the faces given as examples here.  If this amount of improvement has genuinely been done across the board and this amount of improvement continues across all faces, I will be so happy.

I have been one of the most vocally frustrated people here over the lack of improvement on the male faces and lack of fixing a lot of the reported issues, but based on these pictures, the amount of improvement just since PTS is HUGE and makes me really really REALLY relieved to see.

Edited May 23 by cannibithobbal

[DakhathKilrathi]

I'll reserve final judgement until this goes live, but I'm genuinely surprised by this. I wish it hadn't been released in the state it was, and it's frustrating that it took six months to get here, but I'm glad to see that our feedback has at least been heard. Things do look quite a bit better in the screenshots above.

 

Edited May 23 by DakhathKilrathi

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

57 minutes ago, JackieKo said:

Other player feedback. We have seen the demand for a toggle or slider to switch between the pre-modernization appearance and the current one. Back in November, we acknowledged that we couldn’t make any promises as we needed to understand the scope of that request as it is not as easy a task as some assume. 

The reality is that due to the way the appearance system works within our tools and engine it is a technical impossibility to implement such a feature at this time. We understand where this request is coming from and we’ve had many conversations about it, but for now, we want to be clear there is no expectation of such a feature being added.

 

 

I'm gonna hold off on anything else until 7.7 is live since it seems like there are more improvements here than what we saw on the PTS and I'd like to get my hands on them before I try to collect any further thoughts. But I wanna highlight this here for a second.

 

I mentioned in the last thread a couple times, I've been pretty harsh lately, but the main thing I've been wanting to see is more communication. Biggest thing I think is needed here by far and I think this is a great example. I'm sure it's not what people asking for a toggle want to hear, and they may have more comments to add as a result, but you've set the baseline for the conversation. They know why you're not doing it and can tailor their comments accordingly. It won't shut these kinds of conversations down, and it doesn't need to, but it can pull them out of this negativity loop things have been in for months. Maybe an idea will pop up that hadn't been considered, I'm not particularly invested in that whole request so I'll leave it to those that want it to try and suggest things, but at least they have an answer and an explanation. This is good.

 

Going forward with this whole initiative, if we could see more of this for other pieces of feedback, whether you're acting on them or not, it'd be a good step I think. It doesn't have to be on every single thing of course, but I'm sure you guys have picked up on the common pieces of feedback by now. If that feedback continues past 7.7, blurbs like this would at least be a nice frame for the feedback going forward. You're not looking at X issue because of Y reason. You are looking at Z issue. Etc. I can disagree with your choices there, such is life, but I'd at least appreciate the explanation.

 

This, plus the tangible evidence that you're making improvements, at least gives me some hope here. So please keep that up.

[cannibithobbal]

25 minutes ago, The-Kaitou-Kid said:

I mentioned in the last thread a couple times, I've been pretty harsh lately, but the main thing I've been wanting to see is more communication. Biggest thing I think is needed here by far and I think this is a great example. I'm sure it's not what people asking for a toggle want to hear, and they may have more comments to add as a result, but you've set the baseline for the conversation. They know why you're not doing it and can tailor their comments accordingly. It won't shut these kinds of conversations down, and it doesn't need to, but it can pull them out of this negativity loop things have been in for months. Maybe an idea will pop up that hadn't been considered, I'm not particularly invested in that whole request so I'll leave it to those that want it to try and suggest things, but at least they have an answer and an explanation. This is good.

As one of the people who IS one of the people who's been asking for a toggle, I completely agree.  Just hearing that the devs looked into the option and genuinely considered it but just couldn't implement it, that's the kind of communication I want.  And if it genuinely is just too difficult to implement, then that's understandable.

The fact they also said that alongside showing how they have actually taken our input and are working to give us the next best thing which is to actually make the updated characters look the way we have been asking for, that is also huge.

Still reserving final judgements for the release of the update next week, seeing the characters in cutscenes, and seeing how the faces they didn't showcase look, but tentatively impressed and relieved by the amount of improvement already shown in the sample pictures posted here.  It goes a long way toward giving me hope back that the final end result WILL be good looking and at least much closer to what we actually wanted to begin with which is just less shiny faces, higher res, but otherwise looking the same as our characters before.

[Hasiiomi]

I really hope that broken teeth on female heads would be fixed too. It affects both NPC's and player characters of different species.

[davidfreddie]

2 hours ago, JackieKo said:

 

 

 

 

 

This is a downgrade 100% You only had to remove the wrinkles. Not make the skin look like a paint job

And I'm really disappointed in no wrinkles sliders 

[dorotealla]

Whatever they have will not change between now and Tuesday. It may be bad - it probably will be bad. But all we can do now is aggravate ourselves. 

I suggest we all stop adding to this thread and relax. We will see the final look soon and it may not be identical to what was on the test server at the end.

Then we can start new threads saying the changes suck and need to be reverted or made optional with a toggle.

[Obiwantheboldwan]

From these images I see improvements, which is lovely! 

But... I also notice that the eyebrow line is still there and the nose folds (which I hate), the forehead, body and neck still looks rough, but it looks better than on the pts and live.

I'll have to see for myself in-game whether I find it acceptable.

[Obiwantheboldwan]

3 hours ago, JackieKo said:

The reality is that due to the way the appearance system works within our tools and engine it is a technical impossibility to implement such a feature at this time. We understand where this request is coming from and we’ve had many conversations about it, but for now, we want to be clear there is no expectation of such a feature being added.

Understandable, hopefully one day it's figured out.

[orichichan]

All these improvements are really satisfying and really appreciated. Thank you for this work.

[Jimtec]

The last few look a bit too smooth in the screenshots. Not that we'll need a toggle at the end anyway, but for the opposite direction. ^^

I haven't really followed the discussion, but weren't the tired under-eye circles and "nose-to-mouth" wrinkles the problem? And mostly only for female human? Smoothing the entire skin seems like using a cannon to shoot at sparrows. Or to crack a nut with a sledgehammer. Depending on the language...

Well, it's unnecessary to worry about it now. Let's see how it looks live.

[DarthEndonae]

6 hours ago, JackieKo said:

• Facial depth. Our facial definition and smoothing changes inadvertently made the faces render flatter than we would like.  We have made some adjustments since the close of PTS to address this, but will continue to make refinements as we move forward.

I agree that they do look a touch too flat, but this is fine in the interim. 

[KianSri]

These all look SO much better to me. I especially appreciate the darker skinned human example, as my main has one of the darkest skin tones and he was hit hard (in a bad way) by the modernisation update. I'm still reserving full judgement - been disappointed too many times now - but for the first time since this all started I feel a bit of actual hope that I'll be able to play my lads again.

[cannibithobbal]

2 hours ago, Jimtec said:

I haven't really followed the discussion, but weren't the tired under-eye circles and "nose-to-mouth" wrinkles the problem? And mostly only for female human? Smoothing the entire skin seems like using a cannon to shoot at sparrows.

No, while under eye bags and those wrinkles near the nose and mouth were definitely a big issue, they were not the only problem.  A lot of the faces (especially men) were massively over-textured all over the face (they had a sandpaper-like texture with raised bumps across their entire skin) and had ugly lines on all different parts of the face, smoothing the entire face on every model was absolutely necessary. 

These updates definitely look way way better than what we had before, but will have to wait until they go live to just how much better they really are once they get into cutscenes and such.

[JakRoanin]

Well, I feel vindicated, it's nice. 

[Zenithan]

We'll see, but these look like great changes. Thank you.

[Tiranea]

Any plans to remove the thick eyeliner that was added to all female togruta with the original update when they were previously make-up free? Just asking since I don't see it mentioned anywhere else.

[davidfreddie]

7 hours ago, cannibithobbal said:

 A lot of the faces (especially men) were massively over-textured all over the face (they had a sandpaper-like texture with raised bumps across their entire skin) and had ugly lines on all different parts of the face, smoothing the entire face on every model was absolutely necessary. 

No.

Now they look like plastic dolls who have been dating their plastic surgeon 

[Dacaidan]

To me the coming changes are definitely going into the right direction but I want to see them in game first. One thing that those pictures don't show, is if the female cleavage has been brought back. Many of the revealing outfits simply look bad without it. Also nothing about those broken noses. Thumbs-up for fixing the chiss skintone. though.

Edited May 24 by Dacaidan

[Atalantia]

Sure would have been a lot easier if they had the saved files before 7.6 copy and paste didn't work so well

 

That said it is an improvement if it really looks like what Jackie posted

[cannibithobbal]

4 hours ago, davidfreddie said:

No.

Now they look like plastic dolls who have been dating their plastic surgeon 

Considering they looked before like they went to a blind drunk plastic surgeon who butchered their whole face, this is a massive upgrade.

While we haven't seen it go live yet so we don't even know if what they did was enough or if they still need to be smoothed and improved further, from the sample images it looks like they are maybe finally giving us our good looking characters back.  If you want your characters ugly (which my characters are as of current live), then sorry, but you are in the minority and the rest of us are relieved to have our characters maybe look good again.

Edited May 24 by cannibithobbal

[hazke]

I love the changes so much especially what you have done to male lips. Their lips look literally amazing. What I would like now - do female lips same as male lips. Make it plump and soft not dry and wrinkly.  I don’t know if anybody else see this issue but for me new male lips are so good I want females to look equally good. @cannibithobbal thank you for your feedback and staying active on forum 🩷

[Hegiedia]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb cannibithobbal:

Considering they looked before like they went to a blind drunk plastic surgeon who butchered their whole face, this is a massive upgrade.

While we haven't seen it go live yet so we don't even know if what they did was enough or if they still need to be smoothed and improved further, from the sample images it looks like they are maybe finally giving us our good looking characters back.  If you want your characters ugly (which my characters are as of current live), then sorry, but you are in the minority and the rest of us are relieved to have our characters maybe look good again.

Calling others that actually did enjoy the 7.6. update "the minority" is delusional - especially when you spend a lot of time in an echo chamber spouting negativity towards the update and the developers - an echo chamber in which you have successfully silenced and bullied out the other opinion. Of course you eventually think that you are the majority.

I actually DO want my characters "ugly" - thank you! I LOVE their pores and little imperfections! Thank you for calling my characters ugly!

Your opinion is not "the right one" nor is it objectively correct - stop acting like it.

 

 

[cannibithobbal]

4 minutes ago, Hegiedia said:

Calling others that actually did enjoy the 7.6. update "the minority" is delusional - especially when you spend a lot of time in an echo chamber spouting negativity towards the update and the developers - an echo chamber in which you have successfully silenced and bullied out the other opinion. Of course you eventually think that you are the majority.

I actually DO want my characters "ugly" - thank you! I LOVE their pores and little imperfections! Thank you for calling my characters ugly!

Your opinion is not "the right one" nor is it objectively correct - stop acting like it.

According to the feedback on this forum, people who enjoyed the update when it launched in 7.6 and think the improvements done are worse ARE the minority lol  you can claim that's not true all you want, or that the rest of the fandom disagrees, but here on the forums is where the devs have asked for our feedback and where we have given it, and that feedback at launch was majority negative, it was not just me, and those of us who have been unhappy at our characters not looking good and not looking like our characters WANT these improvements.

My characters ARE ugly now, and have been ugly since the launch of the modernization, and I want them fixed, and I've wanted them fixed since day one, and I will keep asking for them to be fixed until it is done.  If you think your characters aren't ugly with the updates or you like them ugly, then, welp, genuinely sorry, but I am glad the devs actually listened to those of us who gave them feedback on how bad the updates had made our characters look.