Au Ra and elezen players have really come out on top, from all I've seen so far.
Pros:-NO MORE PIXEL HORNS!!!! Actual details on horns and scales. Biggest upgrade of them all imo
-I love how the new limbal rings look like they're actually part of the iris and not like shitty circle contact lenses. I feel like the panic and outcry about them was unfounded.
-Lighting is so much nicer. I'm holding out my opinion on indoor lighting since everything we've seen has been outdoors, but I am very hype.
-Elezen ear subsurface scattering!!!!! Elezen ear translucency!!!!!
-I wanna know when we get that new DRG Nidhogg skill. I'm already reskinning it as Hraesvelgr for Kitali but I am very
about it.
-Viper LB3 looks sick as fuck.
-New crafting gear is gorgeous I cannot wait to get my hands on it.
-HROTHGALS. Fem Hroth pretty. I may have to make another alt.
Cons:-skin and hair tones are presenting WAY lighter than current when I loaded in appearance data for some of my retainers and alts. I had to step down a couple shades darker to get one of my Duskwights to show up proper, though I have not tried the gamma reduction trick yet.
-Keepers lost their fangs, and I believe there's already a forum thread open to lodge complaints.
-Very rubbery/shiny skin texture. I have seen someone fix it by lowering the specular but I don't know if that's going to be a vanilla option.
-Makeup colours seem to be very off? I don't know if it's because they're being applied differently than they are now but WOW they are all over the place.
Misc.:
-Elezen mouth weight seems to be off when it opens? I haven't seen it on any other race and it may be a fluke that has yet to be addressed.
-Most notable change I've seen across the board is the mouth shapes have changed, some more drastically than others, and I am going to guess that this is the result of the scuplts being homogenised to having the same amount of polygons.
Overall, I have a very positive outlook for the updates, and I hope that some of the more objective issues are addressed (like how the viera two tone nose was put back in after the initial upgrade demo).
I can understand that not everyone is as pleased, and that's fine! There is no way to cater to literally every player. But I feel I must also remind everyone that 1) the benchmark has only just released and change takes adjusting to and 2) it's a bunch of fucking pixels. It ain't that deep.