I usually priotize quality over filesize, so I chose to ignore mod size complaining, it's meant to be an extra enhancement and enhance the overall quality level of animations so i would say to them "deal with it or don't use it"
Do as I do: ignore irrelevant criticism
AV1 encoding makes sense but i don't know the performance impact compared to h264 or VP9 for low-end PCs
gofile and pixeldrain are fine for your uses. you can also use Mega but only for a small quota
For me setting a CRF value is still the best way because it lets the encoding algorithm choosing the optimal bitrate when needed even though I don't think our disagreement has much impact on the final result.
I'd agree on this one, these animations definitely need a face-reconstruction model (iris or rhea for topaz video AI)
IMO, this workflow seems far too complex for the small details it could add, as well as increasing the risk of bugs and artifacts.
That being said, it's important to remember that the complexity of enhancement for this game is absolutely tedious, and I share don Kilot's pain just looking at the original animations.
Very poor encoding, plastic character models, inconsistent artifacts between scenes, poorly realized character movements sometimes worsen by interpolation, etc.