After a wealth of player feedback, Square Enix has announced its working on a new update for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail benchmark, which will incorporate a handful of updates and changes.
The benchmark, released last weekend, lets players test how their PCs will handle the graphical update coming with Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. However, it quickly drew some criticism from fans because of its limited character creator and how the appearance of existing characters was changed.
In an update on Lodestone, director Naoki Yoshida provided some context for why the character creation might not look quite right.
“The character creation system was created over ten years ago, based on the release version of A Realm Reborn. Although it used the same processes as the actual game, certain aspects (such as weather) were combined to create special conditions exclusive to character creation,” says Yoshida “This was done to present the texture resolutions and shaders at their best based on the quality standards at the time, which included the PlayStation 3 version. Furthermore, its light sources take advantage of backlighting which, in this case, proved detrimental for showcasing the upcoming graphical update.”
While character creation wasn’t updated for the benchmark, it apparently will be for the launch of the graphical update in Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. To that end, the team is “expediting” a rework of environments and light sources, and once done, the benchmark will be replaced. Here’s a quick overview of what it will update in Final Fantasy XIV.
- A. “Lifeless” eyes due to a lack of highlights in the pupils
- B. Facial contours appearing flattened due to incorrect lighting conditions caused by backlighting
- C. A lack of gloss or excessive appearance of gloss due to character creation-exclusive weather conditions (i.e. the use of thunderclouds)
At the same time, Yoshida says that based on feedback the team was able to pinpoint a number of issues in data processing, which should help with how the benchmark runs as well. Here’s what those issues are:
- A. An issue with unimplemented high-resolution textures, including those for certain playable races.
- B. An issue pertaining to special data processes.
- C. An issue with necklines for playable races under certain circumstances.
- D. An issue with uncorrected scaling for the mouth of certain playable races.
There’s currently no date for when the Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail benchmark will be updated, as Yoshida notes there’s still some investigation that needs to happen. But any changes made to the benchmark will also be made to the full release of the game when the graphical update is fully implemented with Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail.
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail launches on July 2 for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
