Lackluster Graphics in FFXIV

Anyway, the point is, with CryEngine you don't have to sacrifice as much graphical effects because the textures and geometry are loaded in dynamically in a certain radius around the character, i.e., "seamless world streaming". SE hasn't been able to create a really seamless world with the Crystal tools engine and has had to sacrifice certain features (water, apaprently). Instead of a seamless world, they just created a bunch of huge zones with repeated doodads to give the effect of huge seamless areas.

And if the water was a sacrifice they needed to make for large zones, then why in cutscenes and on the boat between continents, is that sacrifice still made unless the engine simply fails?

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

Anyway, the point is, with CryEngine you don't have to sacrifice as much graphical effects because the textures and geometry are loaded in dynamically in a certain radius around the character, i.e., "seamless world streaming". SE hasn't been able to create a really seamless world with the Crystal tools engine and has had to sacrifice certain features (water, apaprently). Instead of a seamless world, they just created a bunch of huge zones with repeated doodads to give the effect of huge seamless areas.

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When the cryengine will be able to render a MMORPG game that looks even remotely overally better than FFXIV, then you'd have any ground about it's superiority. So far there's none, and even between future games, there's none that looks even nearly as good.

There are always tradeoffs when chosing different engines, but for now (and for the foreseeable future), FFXIV is by quite a large amount the best looking MMORPG on the market. That wasn't achieved with your beloved cryengine, but with the crystal tools.

Cryengine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG5qDeWHNmk

Unreal Engine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSXyztq_0uM

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Originally Posted by BelgianRofl

Cryengine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG5qDeWHNmk

Unreal Engine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSXyztq_0uM

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MMORPGs please. Everyone is able to make an extremely limited tech demo look impressive.

Don't make too much of an effort, though. There's none. Don't want you to lose your beauty sleep.

Idk if ppl remember this but, 99% of all npc/pc character animation and movement was done up by motion capture. Like in Avatar. Not many games use this techinc yet. Only heavy rain and ffxiv the only ones I know of.

Your point was that SE is unable to add reflections to water because there are a lot of characters on-screen. #1, water doesn't have to reflect characters. Reflect world is fine. #2, adding an option to correct shading in the game will simply allow people who have a rich-man's graphics card the ability to look at a game that doesn't look like it was made 10 years ago. #3, adding reflections and adding real shading will not tax the system as much as ambient occlusion does, and it will make the game look much better and lifelike.

The technology is widely available. There is no excuse as to why it would not be added even as an option, when Ambient Occlusion (a more recent video-game tech) is an option.

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Originally Posted by Kilta_Firelotus

Idk if ppl remember this but, 99% of all npc/pc character animation and movement was done up by motion capture. Like in Avatar. Not many games use this techinc yet. Only heavy rain and ffxiv the only ones I know of.

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Character animations [excluding Lalafell] in this game are great. most games nowadays use motion capture. It's a very commonly used tech that saves boatloads of development time.

"Video games often use motion capture to animate athletes, martial artists, and other in-game characters.[2] This has been done since the Atari Jaguar CD-based game Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods, released in 1995." - Wikipedia

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Originally Posted by Abriael

When the cryengine will be able to render a MMORPG game that looks even remotely overally better than FFXIV, then you'd have any ground about it's superiority. So far there's none, and even between future games, there's none that looks even nearly as good.

There are always tradeoffs when chosing different engines, but for now (and for the foreseeable future), FFXIV is by quite a large amount the best looking MMORPG on the market. That wasn't achieved with your beloved cryengine, but with the crystal tools.

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In some ways Crystal Tools seems better given the fact that FFXIV is a very beautiful MMO in 90% of cases, but I would like to have seen what SE was capable of doing with another engine just for comparison. It's hard to tell how much of FFXIV's beauty is due to SE's artistic flare and what is courtesy of the tools used to make the game.

As I said earlier, SE isn't able to render water or fire properly with the Crystal Tools engine, nor are they able to create a seamless world. Some of these factors have contributed to the copy-and-paste situation everyone is so fond of. For example, in order to create such a large world, SE had to employ the cheat of using repeated blocks of land which are loaded in as you zone into the area. If they had used an engine capable of loading in the geography around a player as he moves, then they wouldn't have needed to make this compromise.

Also, there is no blurring between low-res and high-res textures in the distance. So as you move, you see a definite line between the two qualities of textures. Up close, everything looks good, but far away, you realise something is wrong.

The most attractive thing about FFXIV is the fluid character animations and artistic style. I am not so satisfied with the quality of the construction of the rest of the world though.

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Originally Posted by Kilta_Firelotus

Idk if ppl remember this but, 99% of all npc/pc character animation and movement was done up by motion capture. Like in Avatar. Not many games use this techinc yet. Only heavy rain and ffxiv the only ones I know of.

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I thought that there were a lot of games which used this technique. In any case, it certainly adds depth to the animations in FFXIV. It's probably one of the best features of the game.

Ahh ok, Not the games I've seen or very limited in use. You can tell the difference actually between artifitale created movement and motion capture. I know Avatar pushed the envilope with it. I know all game/ movies are acted out and artists watch the models or themselves and draw it out. I know ffxi didn't use it. You can tell by the way some of the legs moved. Like elvaan females had a slight jerking look when they ran like it was artificaily made. Like each limb looks like it was pulled to create motion.