Let's Talk : GRAPHICS

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Originally Posted by Valaskor

Show/Unshow Helm / Show/Unshow Belt {I can have it ?}

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This would be a perfect compromise.

And let's add earrings while we're at it :p

looks like people are running on ice unless you cap frames to 30 lol

Now that we're on the topic of graphics, I really don't like the flat, perfect, and straight graphics. Here's a comparison that is so difficult to ignore.

FFXIV
http://i.imgur.com/8V8aocl.jpg

GW2
http://i.imgur.com/ZVl4jQF.jpg


FFXIV
http://i.imgur.com/fA6K5aI.jpg

GW2
http://i.imgur.com/PIt9oOy.jpg


I could have used this pic instead but I felt it would have been too unfair.
http://i.imgur.com/pFRUySX.jpg

Graphics are the thing most people concentrate on far too much imo. It makes you wonder how games years ago did so well doesn't it? I mean all those 2D,Text and ASCII games from years back.
You would think people wouldn't want to play them with the terrible graphics or no graphics at all.

Games are about game play yet ever since i can remember people break out in sweats about the games graphical look.
I have played games for far too many years and i never was interested in graphics, yes i got excited when things looked better but that was just the sign of the times. The thing i did notice however is that as graphics improved the more consumers wanted it improved and in turn the more game play suffered.

The reason game play suffered was because of the graphics craze, game producers threw as much money, time and energy into out doing their competition. People who gamed through the late 90s will remember the drop in game play quality.
Games that used to have long story's and for instance if they had 40-90 hours of game play they suddenly only had 4-8 hours. It was a huge drop. It is pretty much still here today. Obviously there have been exceptions to the rule but in general that is the way it has been.

The way i see it these days asking devs to spend time on graphics is like asking the ice cream van guy to wash his van to make the ice cream taste better.
You need to ask yourself this. Can i tell what i am doing in the game, do mobs look as they should look, does a tree look like a tree etc. If the answer to this is yes then why this need to make it better?

In the next 10-20 years gaming graphics will hit a wall because it will be pretty much like playing with real life. When that day comes i will cheer, not because games look real but because people who make games will be able to concentrate 100% on game play.

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Originally Posted by Sixmp

Graphics are the thing most people concentrate on far too much imo. It makes you wonder how games years ago did so well doesn't it? I mean all those 2D,Text and ASCII games from years back.

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It's not about having perfect graphics. It's about stylized graphics. When EQ2 and WoW came out I 100% hated the realistic graphics of EQ2. Everything was so perfect it felt fake. I couldn't play the game cause the graphics were so distracting. On the other hand WoW's graphics had character. I loved the art style behind it. Now SOE is trying to go that route with EQNext. No more life like graphics. I am actually liking their art style.

Back on track, FFXIV has a mix of both. However, the copy/paste of the textures on things makes it extremely distracting. I notice patterns extremely quickly and I focus on them. That's what happens in FFXIV with the same 10x10 textures.

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Originally Posted by Shadowgloom

It's not about having perfect graphics. It's about stylized graphics. When EQ2 and WoW came out I 100% hated the realistic graphics of EQ2. etc.

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You are correct there is a difference between perfect and stylized. What i am referring to though is how people concentrate on the overall graphics of a game and regardless of how good it is they always want more.

Like FFXIV ARR right now. It looks good enough, it is perfectly playable but no, lets try and get the devs to spend X more hours on making it look better. While there is nothing wrong with that in itself it is a never ending cycle.

Lets say SE make a ton of changes to the game. So much that they need a separate client making and everyone has to rush out and buy new PCs to play it with everything up full. In a month or two people will be wanting even more.
People just can't enjoy what they have now.
I could understand if it was improving game play because that is more important and will help the game in the long run.

Improving graphics wouldn't help the game in anyway at this point in time. Spending as much time as possible on improving the experience in the world would.

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Originally Posted by Jennica

Probably cost is why they didn't do that.

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There's no "cost" associated with higher res textures, cos if SE were developing the right way, all their source work should be multiple times higher res.

Here I thought it was just me who felt the textures were poorly detailed. Hopefully they improve them some day when they don't have so many issues to deal with.

the game was released on september. as of now we still don't have the dx11 client. that kinda answers why we don't have two clients at launch date.
the min requirements have 32bit CPUs listed, the game is a 32bit application hence it cannot use more than 2GB of memory and so higher resolution textures. to double the current textures resolution means to quadruplicate their size.

when playing, the main process already sits on 1GB of ram.

maybe the dx11 client will be a 64bit application and allow SE to release high res packs.

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Originally Posted by kazaran

MMO's have to balance it due to data usage.

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I really hope you didn't mean to say the models and textures are being downloaded realtime while you're playing. Cause they're not.

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Originally Posted by Talligan

I hate to tell you this ... but these are the best animations I've seen for any MMO. It's the only one that has made humans look normal and not like some awkward person with a stick for a spine.

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I wonder what you would say if you played 1.0 It had all realistic animations, safe for maybe dragoon jumps, that were motion-captured, including turning, starting and stopping to run. I sometimes spent minutes just watching my character move. All gone now. Instant 90/180° turns, bodies twisting under physically impossible angles, archers dislocating their joints shooting away from the target and still hitting, characters sliding around the ground...

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Actually they specifically talked about the directx version in response to this problem. They directly told us the textures were low because of directx 9 limitations and that the directx 11 engine would fix that allowing for larger textures. Stop letting your jimmies get all rustled because you aren't reading all the known info.

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The known info is a load of BS. Else why did 1.0 have much higher resolution textures? Which, surprise, surprise! was using directX 9.0c as well!

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Originally Posted by ZohnoReecho

the game was released on september. as of now we still don't have the dx11 client. that kinda answers why we don't have two clients at launch date.
the min requirements have 32bit CPUs listed, the game is a 32bit application hence it cannot use more than 2GB of memory and so higher resolution textures. to double the current textures resolution means to quadruplicate their size.

when playing, the main process already sits on 1GB of ram.

maybe the dx11 client will be a 64bit application and allow SE to release high res packs.

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32bit software can address 4GB.. why they don't is a different matter. Also texture packs don't sit in system RAM, they sit in VRAM on your GPU...

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Actually, they've acknowledged on multiple occasions that they dropped the graphics to support the ps3 and to support lower end pc's. They absolutely did do exactly what you say they weren't.

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Hold on a minute, *if* the PS3 is genuinely holding back the PC client, how can the PC client run at anything beyond 720p? How can it have additional physics, better textures and effects than the PS3 - *if* the Ps3 version is holding it back? Clearly the PC client can run higher than 720p, it has additional physics, more effects and more detailed textures than the PS3 version. Sure the engine can also handle low end PCs, and funnily enough that is a positive effect since it allows more people to play, the efforts ti include lower end PCs and PS3 results in far more players being able to play, but for people with a high end PC, the graphical experience is much better than the low end or PS3 - because the engine scales with the hardware. Claiming that the PS3 held it back ignores the fact that the game OBVIOUSLY looks better on a high end PC at 1080p or greater, than it does on a PS3.

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Originally Posted by Fateatality

if PS4 is the lowest common denominator, and we all know it will, that in its own right might hinder the graphics for PC users, as we all don't want just ps4 port, i mean for some people ps4 will look same as pc,
**snip**
now what would stop them for pushing what graphics are like for MMO's, if they scale correctly, and use AMD mantle, sucks for Nivida users , then should even see more implementations for better graphics instead of use of DX11 API, as DX11 APi is bottleneck to what GPU's and CPU can do, as it most people should know DX11 is not great, future is mantle , metal on metal performance . well closer then anything MS has with DX11

Mantle is a low-level API specification[2] developed by AMD as an alternative to Direct3D and OpenGL. Currently the only implementation is for AMD's GCN graphics processing unit architecture

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Um, OK, whatever, but you are aware - I guess(?) - that PS4 uses a GCN GPU (and not the low end variant found in the Xbox One), in addition to the new Jaguar based CPU cores. the PS4 APU (CPU cores and GPU cores on a single die with shared cache and data bus) maintains a single high speed, wide data bus to the GDDR5 system memory, allowing both CPU and GPU to access the same memory at GPU memory speeds. As far as 'Mantle' is concnered, "Currently the only implementation is for AMD's GCN graphics processing unit architecture" - that's nice because PS4 runs an entirely AMD hardware platform that is ideal suited to "mantle , metal on metal performance".

PS4 will not be as powerful as a mid-high end gaming rig, but it will be lots more powerful than most consumer grade PCs sold at launch, not to mention the simple fact that it is a targeted platform optimized for gaming without the software overheads of the Windows world to worry about. I don't think you need worry about PS4 holding the game or graphics engine back at all.

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Originally Posted by samfisher

32bit software can address 4GB.. why they don't is a different matter. Also texture packs don't sit in system RAM, they sit in VRAM on your GPU...

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In DX9 they sit in both, one of the big issues with it. DX11 is a lot more than pretty effects, its very significant back-end changes.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Hold on a minute, *if* the PS3 is genuinely holding back the PC client, how can the PC client run at anything beyond 720p? How can it have additional physics, better textures and effects than the PS3 - *if* the Ps3 version is holding it back? Clearly the PC client can run higher than 720p, it has additional physics, more effects and more detailed textures than the PS3 version. Sure the engine can also handle low end PCs, and funnily enough that is a positive effect since it allows more people to play, the efforts ti include lower end PCs and PS3 results in far more players being able to play, but for people with a high end PC, the graphical experience is much better than the low end or PS3 - because the engine scales with the hardware. Claiming that the PS3 held it back ignores the fact that the game OBVIOUSLY looks better on a high end PC at 1080p or greater, than it does on a PS3.

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You act like running in a higher resolution means anything to this discussion. Obviously the pc version has higher settings than a locked down ps3, but you ignore that the engine was made in directx 9 explicitly to help make the ps3 version run better. Regardless of 1.0 the entire engine is different and likely performs better than the original engine would have on the ps3. So to everyone saying "omg the 1.0 engine was supposed to be launched on ps3" I respond that you all have no idea how effectively it would have actually achieved that. Consider for a moment how monumentally bad the 1.0 launch was in so many ways and you have such faith that 1.0 was all ready to go for the ps3? Even after it required blisteringly fast pc's just to run the game?. I say that is very doubtful indeed. Also, I never said pc's couldn't exceed the ps3, but to suggest the development of the engine didn't take into account ps3 limitations for the launch is lol-worthy. It absolutely did, and with time and release of the directx 11 version we will exceed the ps3 handily. Everyone is just fretting over this like it won't come in time. It will. They already talked about it before. However, right now it isn't a priority compared to getting the game stabilized.

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Originally Posted by Tiraelina

In DX9 they sit in both, one of the big issues with it. DX11 is a lot more than pretty effects, its very significant back-end changes.

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Directx 11 also supports larger texture sizes. Which is one of the most significant things really.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

You act like running in a higher resolution means anything to this discussion. Obviously the pc version has higher settings than a locked down ps3, but you ignore that the engine was made in directx 9 explicitly to help make the ps3 version run better.

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I'm not ignoring that, nor am I ignoring your own statement that it enables players with less capable PCs to play as well. Aside from anything else PS3 doesn't use DX9, it uses different APIs, and is not bound by the limits of DX9. Lower performance PCs on the other hand are explicitly limited by DX9 hardware.

have people already forgotten that when the PS4 version comes out, there will be a DX11 client for PC? there you go, the DX9 version and the DX11 version.

A 64 bit client would be amazing. Would be nice to actually see my 16gig's of ram get used instead of just 2 to 3 gig's of it. This game uses so little of my ram that I can run my SharePoint 2013 Virtual Machine in VirtualBox (4 cores and 10 gig of ram) and play FFXIV at the same time and down titan while code on my VM is compiling and the IIS Sites are recycling....

Imo they should have made this game with two clients out the gate, and put ps3 on their own servers. Then make it so if you want to play on PC you transfer your character to a PC server or vice versa to play on PS3. Then their would be isolation, no complaining, alleviated congestion, and they could focus one team on PC and one team on ps3/ps4.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

Imo they should have made this game with two clients out the gate, and put ps3 on their own servers. Then make it so if you want to play on PC you transfer your character to a PC server or vice versa to play on PS3.

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So, you believe in segregation for the win....? ::rolls eyes::

Yeah I believe in segregation for the win. You don't see Toyota Corolla's in a NASCAR race do you? I'm sure you don't see donkeys on the track at the Kentucky derby either. What SE has done with this game on PC and PS3 is equivalent to forcing NASCAR to randomly run their races with racers that are driving anything from a Ferrari to a moped. And because of the Duty Finder they don't know what kind of racer their going to get. And what's more these mopeds are invisible, they don't know they have one till their into lap 1.

Now I know some people can play on ps3 just fine. Our MT plays on PS3 and does a pretty good job of it. The problem I have with people on ps3 is anytime someone is royally screwing up repeatedly to the same thing over and over again, the first thing I see them type in chat is "Sorry I'm on PS3", it makes me want to rage kick them instantly and rep them. If PS3 is fine, stop blaming your fails on it. Saying it's causing your problems doesn't make me feel any better about it, it causes me to build bias towards the platform over time until eventually I'll leave my FC and form an All PC FC where I'll make people run a tool to give me their DXDiag's to join the FC.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not saying PC is perfect. Plenty of people are playing this game on toasters with 20 fps failing to get out of plumes on Titan HM. I even had a guy the other night tell me he plays with the arrow keys to move his character, his spells are bound to number pad, and he uses his mouse to move the camera. So when the dude needs to move he was to move his right hand off numpad to his mouse and move with the arrow keys. And doing so he says he can't always use his abilities before they are off the GCD.... When things got rough he would move without adjusting his camera, and as such walked off the titan platform a couple times....

Imo, people who play with WASD, and bind their abilities to shift 1-5, ctrl 1-5, alt 1-5, shift q, shit e, shift d, etc and keep their right hand on their mouse to move and never move their hands from their abilitiy to move or execute attacks with keybinds will always out perform most other setups. With 1 hand I can use every ability I have, and I can target anyone in my group with f keys and tab. As a tank I even have q and e set to cycle enimity targets so I can move through the enimity window targets with q,e since I use the mouse I can hold right click and straff with A D.

So I know PS3 is a viable platform, it just seems to me that more PS3 players play inefficiently on PS3 than they pc users. Also the shear fact that FFXIV is one of 2 cross platform mmo's ever made means more First Time MMO players are on PS3 than PC.

As such I think it would be a lot more fair to both sides if they were on their own servers.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

Yeah I believe in segregation for the win. **snip to remove Elitist PC player BS**
...eventually I'll leave my FC and form an All PC FC..

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Whatever, don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you....

Edit: (stupid forum posting restrictions, now we have subs in place, can we PLEASe lift these asinine restrictions on posting?)

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Originally Posted by Ryios

Don't let the door hit me what? First off I'm not religious, second off I'm not leaving.

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It's an expression and more polite than saying don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.

If you're so hot on respect, then where does your respect stand when you desire to segregate players by platform and discriminate against players based on their DXDiag output?

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Originally Posted by MadMacallan

I don't like playing with PS3 players, but only because their communication sucks (not their fault).

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Well, PS3 supports this weird device called a keyboard, sadly though not everyone uses it, then again, I have heard that many PC players use controllers and are not touch typists either. Discrimination/segregation based on platform is a mightily epic failure in my opinion, and those who subscribe to it are pretty weak minded. Someone was complaining that controller users were too slow, then it was pointed out that in the time of a GCD, a controller user can click numerous buttons long before their GCD is up and they need to select an action. In a game with a 2.5 second base GCD, the speed advantage claimed by mouse/keyboard players is a fallacy, as is the proposition that the PS3 gimped the graphics of the game. the game engine was built for DX9 PCs on lower power hardware to maximize the audience.

In XI, i waited and waited for an expansion that would be like the EverQuest expansion "Shadows of Luclin." Where you would be able to enable/disable higher graphics, it never came. I would really like to see it in XIV. We could have PS3/PS4 graphics and then have "high end PC" graphics.

Don't let the door hit me what? First off I'm not religious, second off I'm not leaving. I like this game, problems or not, and Have been playing SE MMO's Since the launch of FFXI. I'll just deal with it. And it will be better once the PS4 comes out and the dx 11 client.

I have opinions, if you don't like them, that is ok, because they are opinions and I respect that. So respect it back if I don't like your opinions.

I don't like playing with PS3 players, but only because their communication sucks (not their fault). Back to the point, I like the graphics. I think they're solid. It's really the art direction / variety in environments I have a problem with. Oh, that and the Bard's armor. I couldn't look more effeminate if my bow shot Sex and the City DVDs and the only food my character could consume were dick-shaped gummies.

Dear PC people who wish to separate the community. It wouldn't be just PS3 on their own servers
What about people who run on settings about the same on PC? Then what?
What about when PS4 shows up? Split the community up based on the PS4 specs including people on PC with specs that match the PS4s?

Remember people on PC with specs like the PS3 or PS4 will be running the game worse than the consoles due to OS and other programs running at the same time.

It's quite funny how people who are obviously so antisocial play a game that rests on people being social .

I can understand that for many PS3 players this will be their first MMO. Help them. I'm sure you were all instantly epic at your first MMO.