Is most of FFXIV's failings due to their choice of engine?

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Originally Posted by Ilean

Again, not engine traits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqnZfqjTiM

I don't see scratched silver edges, gooey surfaces or textures popping. Same goes for the mass effect inventory thing, the developers simply decided to let the inventory screen open up and show low-res textures instead of waiting until hi-res ones are fully loaded. My guess is they rather not waste RAM by keeping the hi-res textures loaded at all times, but whatever reasons they had, it doesn't mean the engine couldn't do it.

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Look at it closely. Every scene is sharp only in a very limited area of view. Everyhting else is blurry the foreground and even more so in the background. The bloom makes every bright surface look blurry no matter where they are in relation to the camera.

Honestly I don't know why people are talking about this. It's the visual blandness where XIV graphics fail the most and that has nothing to do with technology. Even if it did game engine isn't something that can be switched EVER in a game like this.

More realistic would be to request SE to make the landscapes look less boring. That has nothing to do with reflections or normal maps. Mossy fields just aren't and never will be that interesting when compared to the environments in ANY other FF title.

yah I have to agree with Seif, could have the best looking materials and bump maps in the world, but if you model up a turd, its nothing more than a turd.

Whoever is in charge of world/level design needs to be fired (if not already switched from that previous adjustment) and someone with creativity needs to be put in charge.

ps. I love UE3, TERA runs on it :D and is beautiful!

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

Examples of Korean Indie company MMO with CryEngine 3:


There is a closed beta for the above game with no NDA in two weeks, so I guess we will expect to see more examples of what an MMO made on an actual engine can do... *shrug*

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And then you see the characters (not to mention the actual landscapes in motion, instead of some static cherry picked pics, that already show one of the flattest low-rez grounds ever), and laugh your rear off :D

It's always funny to see how you're *very* selective with your choices of materials to present, gifthorse.

Sorry to burst a bubble, but the only real reason why so many devs use the UE3 and the cryengine is because they can't afford to create and test an engine in-house and have to resort to third party *generic* engines, that limit what they can do (and the way they can evolve their games) by quite a lot.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

And then you see the characters (not to mention the actual landscapes in motion, instead of some static cherry picked pics, that already show one of the flattest low-rez grounds ever), and laugh your rear off :D

It's always funny to see how you're *very* selective with your choices of materials to present, gifthorse.

Sorry to burst a bubble, but the only real reason why so many devs use the UE3 and the cryengine is because they can't afford to create and test an engine in-house and have to resort to third party *generic* engines, that limit what they can do (and the way they can evolve their games) by quite a lot.

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I think you're missing the whole point, hes noit saying these guys have better graphics/textures. hes saying the environments are more varied and engaging, basically the design. He is claiming that maybe the reason they recycle so much is because they are using a poorly optimized engine.

Creating engaging environments is only mildy about your maximum graphical settings. Our environments are pretty repetive, while no name MMOs in small companies can create seemingly over all more entertaining environments. However i still say i dont know if its the engine, because hey, snes games have surpassed this game in creating varied and engaging environments

From ArcheAge page:

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All locations in the game impress you with their atmosphere. They have lots of details, which you might not even notice - flocks of birds, rabbits, sheds in the gardens, mysterious runes on some strange rocks. All of this is accompanied by marvelous music and stunning ambience. Actually, screenshots can never show all the beauty and dynamics of this world. Only watching videos might transfer this feeling. But you should play and see it yourself. However I will try to tell you more about Archeage and pass you a part of what I've seen.

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Wow can't wait to see that... This is the shit that SE should be going for.

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However i still say i dont know if its the engine, because hey, snes games have surpassed this game in creating varied and engaging environments

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I was going to defend SE but then I realized... I don't even know what to say. The copy/paste in this game is about as bad as when you realized that the clouds and bushes are the same recolored asset in Mario 1. It's that disappointing.

The copy/paste wouldn't be nearly as bad if the areas had some life to them. Some random critters that inhabit certain areas, something in the area that doesn't look like the other areas (copy/pasted ones), etc. The biggest flaw is that they repeated the same texture without even so much as rotating it about 6 times while walking down the same road. That may or may not be a flaw with the engine but its an inherent failure for the game and no one can argue that.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

And then you see the characters (not to mention the actual landscapes in motion, instead of some static cherry picked pics, that already show one of the flattest low-rez grounds ever), and laugh your rear off :D

It's always funny to see how you're *very* selective with your choices of materials to present, gifthorse.

Sorry to burst a bubble, but the only real reason why so many devs use the UE3 and the cryengine is because they can't afford to create and test an engine in-house and have to resort to third party *generic* engines, that limit what they can do (and the way they can evolve their games) by quite a lot.

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I didn't mean the game i cited was better than FFXIV in every aspect. But the developers of AA obviously have access to something SE doesn't have in order to make more varied landscapes more readily and easily... and to make them without loading screens. Only a portion of ArcheAge landscape has been revealed so far and yet the size of it already surpasses the copy-paste landmass of FFXIV, despite everything being individually crafted.

Some of the pitfalls of designing an in-house engine are that A) you cannot optimise it as much as with a third party which gets better and better with repeated usage and B) third party engines have more middleware support like Speedtree which decrease development burden.

And while you could say that some terrain is a flat tile in AA, you could say the same for water in FFXIV. So one fault is neutralised by another.

At the end of the day, the overall effect is what should matter.

Is it really worth the extra graphical prowess of Crystal Tools if it means being hampered and beleaguered by the selfsame engine.

Has anyone even watched the gameplay viideo of FFvXIII? It is the same engine, and it shows it properly used, it is all on the development team on how they use the tools given to them. The Crystal Tools engine is not bad.

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Originally Posted by Xmbei

Has anyone even watched the gameplay viideo of FFvXIII? It is the same engine, and it shows it properly used, it is all on the development team on how they use the tools given to them. The Crystal Tools engine is not bad.

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I also think so. The FF13 staff and part of Versus one, are the best programmers in SE. And the ff14 ones are not the top notch in this department, sadly. I was hoping they would have lent some ff13 crew to rebuild some graphics in ff14.. but i presume it is not possibile right now (to much work to do for FFVersus maybe).