Sylvari
Female
Elementalist
I recently rolled a sylvari and noticed some interesting shader issues, as well as a few other small details that struck me as ‘off’. I decided to rather extensively document them and ended up realizing that ‘Max Shaders’ (on high) end up creating some rather bugged looking effects. I took a good collection of screenshots in the attached images.
The following all applies to High shader settings, and more minorly so at Medium. These issues are absent from Low shader settings. Due to the sloppy and odd look these have, I am inclined to believe they’re not intended.
Hairline: There’s a weird disconnect at the hairline, a much paler ‘gloss’ seam cap that makes the hair look more like some strange headdress than part of the body. They apply in any light, though most noticeable at night. None of this is present in the character creator, only in-game.
Hair/leaves: Weird blocky patches appear in various parts of hair and leaves, blotchy in appearance and looking unfinished.
Face: The face in general is a blotchy mess, with weird ‘eyebrows’, lips, and directly around the eyes. Lips that are glossed to the point of completely losing their original color. In daylight, sylvari faces are so glossy that they look like they’re covered in a thin sheen of cellophane or vaseline.
Eyes: This is less of a shader issue, and more of an ‘eyes in this game are incredibly dull and dark’. This might be more realistic, but almost all eyes in this game look incredibly dull and lifeless once in-game, as opposed to how much brighter and ‘alive’ they look in the character creator. What was ‘off white’ in the creator turns deep gray or even dark blue, human eyes often look black or severely ‘shrouded’… it robs the character models of their life. This, from my study of NPCs, other PCs, ect,. applies to all races, all genders. The only exception being sylvari at night, when some eyes glow. My character looks so much more alive at night, but during the day she almost seems to have cataracts or a film on her eyes.
Queensdale, Lion’s Arch and other ‘very sunny’ areas are the worst when it comes to glossy sylvari faces. I also noticed shader issues cropping up on various pieces of armor (Examples being the Vigil shoulders for Light Armor – odd highlights on the scarf/Tier 2 Sylvari racial armor – a strange patch that completely distorts the colors).
All of these issues are also present underwater and, I assume, in every other instance/area of the game. I’ve observed them in multiple zones, in any armor set or even without any armor altogether. They’re also more apparent on darker colors, for obvious reasons.
I really, really hope none of this is intentional, as it looks distressingly low-quality. As much as I love some of the effects in High shader settings, I’ve started playing in Medium or Low because the odd blotches on my character are excessively distracting.
Edit: I’d also like to mention that my face of choice has an odd sort of ‘powder face’ effect. While this was a relatively smooth transition in the character creator, in-game the transition from the head to the face is very low quality (on high texture settings) and makes her face look like she dipped her face in a bucket of flour. I believe the screenshots I took (most notably, the top row) show the issue.
