Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida, Producer and Director of FINAL FANTASY XIV, has announced that the MMORPG will be receiving a new and improved Dawntrail Benchmark following complaints by players about visual issues in the tool, including what some have described as “lifeless eyes” and overly glossy characters. Work on this new version of the benchmark is ongoing, but Yoshi-P believes it will be out on May 23.
Some of the complaints include:
- Graphical issues
- “Lifeless” eyes due to a lack of highlights in the pupils
- Facial contours appearing flattened due to incorrect lighting conditions caused by backlighting
- A lack of gloss or excessive appearance of gloss due to character creation-exclusive weather conditions (i.e., the use of thunderclouds)
- Data and process issues
- An issue with unimplemented high-resolution textures, including those for certain playable races
- An issue pertaining to special data processes
- An issue with necklines for playable races under certain circumstances
- An issue with uncorrected scaling for the mouth of certain playable races
A look at what the current benchmark looks like:
Yoshida has also reassured fans ahead of the Dawntrail expansion’s release:
Our reviews and finishing touches for the release version of Dawntrail are going smoothly, and while they are being carried out in tandem with the additional tasks for the graphical update mentioned above, rest assured that our Development, Operations, and QA teams, and I are collectively giving our all. (Ideally, I would have liked to share some screenshots of the review process, but as you can imagine, I was unfortunately short on time…)