can someone explain the whole 1.0 graphics > 2.0?

1.0's extreme bloom definitely worked well for the Garuda intro, I can agree there. Lack of self-shadowing in 2.0's half of the video was really noticeable too - mayhaps the DX11 update will bring that back in?

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Originally Posted by Kaizlu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_R56msMZW8

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I'm looking at those two side by side and i get an odd feeling...
Sure it seems like the 1.0 Garuda had more detail (sometimes an unnecessary amount, such as the feathers descending with her in the very beginning) but the 2.0 Garuda feels like she has more impact, more "punch" and power. Garuda 1.0's "power" seems to be what's flowing around her, the wind and the feathers, which are very pretty, but feel like they lack the force they should have. It feels like I'm watching a movie of a windstorm behind her rather than feeling it. 2.0's garuda's power seems to be coming from herself.
Kind of a fitting example, really. 1.0 was pretty and detailed, but lacked the "oomph." ARR is "less" pretty (yet still one of the prettiest MMOs in existence) but has a lot more "oomph" to it.
I remember my biggest complaint about 1.0 was how every attack seemed to take time to perform, then return to the default position. And that if I didn't save up a LOT of money or dive into ALL OF THE CRAFTS, I wouldn't be able to get a new weapon for a long time.
Then I saw ARR, where the attacks hit in rapid succession as part of combos. And then I played the beta, where my reward for doing a lancer quest was...
a new spear!
YAY!

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Originally Posted by Kaizlu

I spent so much time trying to defeat Garuda back in 1.0 that I started to appreciate and love the opening scene for the fight. When I saw the same scene in ARR I was totally dissapointed :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_R56msMZW8

I'm still angry about it lol

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The 1.0 garuda looked like a wax figure, more detailed (a little too detailed) and really shiny, can't put my finger on it but it reminded me of FF8 cutscene graphics for some reason.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Isn't it the same voice actor? I believe all scions reprise their role from 1.xx. Minfilia and Urianger did not have voice actors in 1.xx.

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1.0 Voice @ 2:45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXNLGvEznvY

2.0 @ 3:20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmtkxpOMF7E

They do not sound the same, at least not to me. 1.0 sounds like the fox guy with the bombs in the Slayers Series and 2.0 sounds different. You be the judge! (I cant find a Voice actor list for 1.0 and 2.0, only 2.0.)

Hi Ezra,

As others have said, some things in 1.0 blow away what's in 2.0, but it's hard to see at first on some of these Youtube videos.

If you had your settings on PC at max in 1.0, you could really notice a lot of things better. Things like Armor / Textures (you could ZOOM all the way in on your character and see super-high-detailed textures for your Armor (like the details on a Haubergeon Body Piece) vs. in 2.0, zooming in, you can clearly see textures pixelate / can't hold up).

Character Models also had higher poly counts.

Animations were smoother and better (look at Dragoon's Chaos Thrust in 1.0 vs. 2.0's truncated version).

However, 2.0's Lighting Effects and VFX especially really blow away 1.0. The World Environments are leagues ahead as well (1.0's The Black Shroud full of Copy & Paste "tunnels" was an embarrassment). I love the world in 2.0 (too bad Yoshi P underutilizes it (there's no need to level out in the world / EXP Camp)).

In 1.0, anyone remember the Visual FX (or complete lack thereof) for Ancient Magic? LOLOL. :p

2.0 has better lighting effects and polish and VFX and a more colorful, vibrant color palette, (and far better UI Polish, Level 1 - 50 experience for a new player, etc.). So it's hard to look past that to see what you're missing from 1.0, but if you ever found HD Videos (w/ the user's settings set to Max) perhaps you could see some of the things people are talking about here.

Hopefully DX11 and 3.0 help bring back some more finer details / polish.

I really need to make some fidelity comparison screenshots.
1.0 had:
-higher polycount.
-higher resolution textures.
-higher resolution displacement maps.
-natural looking light sources.
-better specular detailing(better metals and subtle reflections on specific materials)
-depth of field.
-animation blending for naturalistic movement.
-transition lighting effects.

In all honesty, the difference isn't *staggering* or anything, but the camera work definitely looks nicer, and there seem to be more fluid animations.

I've not seen enough of 1.0 to say if it's better or worse, but I've actually been quite pleased with the voice-acting of 2.0. And yeah, given how much content they've been pushing out, I understand they can't give every cutscene the amount of TLC shown in some of the 1.0 cutscenes, but hopefully they'll be able to do more in 3.0 for those big story-moments, as well as Hildibrand (which I would be shocked -- SHOCKED I say -- if they didn't continue).

In my eyes, it's clear as day on how to make 2.0 cutscenes so much better. Give them more goddamn animation life. Seriously, I never played 1.0, and just by watching one cutscene, I already love it because of the life that everyone and everything has. Their faces, their movements, the cutscene structure, your character actually has life and feel to it. I wouldn't care about their voices or their lighting. Just get their animation together and it'll be spectacular. Your character actually look like a bloody iconic hero in all the land.

The 2.0 main story characters voice quality doesn't match a stiff robotic animation with an overly dramatic face. I don't feel like a hero when all I do is stand, pivot, smile, nod... stand, pivot, smile, nod... the whole way through. When all I see is, this, all I can feel is how much of a computerized robotic figurine I am, only having motions selected from the emote list rather than having any unique effort in cutscenes. This is why I enjoy Hildibrand cutscenes a few notches more than the main story.

So much above-and-beyond potential, wasted.

skill/spells effects WERE WAAAAYY BETTER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OA6i0RuBAY

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

skill/spells effects WERE WAAAAYY BETTER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OA6i0RuBAY

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The only thing I didn't like about the animations in 1.0 were the no-weapon casting for the DoM classes. They at least needed some sort of 'in-combat' ready pose even without the weapon drawn, because otherwise they just looked like they were standing around totally bored and disengaged from the violence going on around them.

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Originally Posted by Tayolynn

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100% well said

2.0 lacks life/heart from the first place its really sad , yet 1.0 my only problem was the clunky annoying UI for crafting ;).

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Originally Posted by ErzaScarlet77

they scaled down character model? really? because this game has crazy detail for character model
especially fi you looks at the more intricate armor like ironworks stuff

hard to imagine how detailed 1.0 must be

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http://oi61.tinypic.com/9bc5qt.jpg

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Originally Posted by Felis

(image)

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Behold! the actual framerate of someone on the PS3 trying to display that many 1.0 characters at once :D

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

The only thing I didn't like about the animations in 1.0 were the no-weapon casting for the DoM classes. They at least needed some sort of 'in-combat' ready pose even without the weapon drawn, because otherwise they just looked like they were standing around totally bored and disengaged from the violence going on around them.

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yeah the aura when casting was a bit lame too .... and casting for all of them looked like praying (makes sense lorewise) / casting ninjutsu in FFXI XD

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Originally Posted by kyuven

Behold! the actual framerate of someone on the PS3 trying to display that many 1.0 characters at once :D

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On PC it was limited to 20-30 characters/objects (the limit the PS3 have now in ARR).
So, on PS3 it would have been maybe 4? ^^

I'm not going to argue which one had the better graphics, as such things are subjective and IMO each one did some things better and some things worse than the other.

However, no matter which you prefer, 2.0 is what we have now and they are trying to improve the graphics without tanking the performance, we'll just have to wait for the dx11 client to see how much of an improvement is made.

One thing that I definitely agree on is the camera work for the cutscenes. It was more more dynamic, with better framing and movement that added to the energy or feel of the scene. While I don't expect them to go as far as some of the 1.0 examples shown, I feel that they could definitely make some improvements that wouldn't really require more development time, such as camera work. The Hildi team does a good job though.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

Graphics were far more detailed back in 1.0 but it had a cost of requiring a F load of system requirements that can make a PS3 over heat.

Just look at the detail for 1.0 cutscene compared to now...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvXSHLPB1aM

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I don't like it to be honest. It's too overly-shaded, everywhere and it's too dark.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

skill/spells effects WERE WAAAAYY BETTER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OA6i0RuBAY

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The bard looks alright here but I hate the fact everyone is praying up for a spell.
:/ Looks so lame...glad we are ACTUALLY using our weapons here, I like bards animations for attacks though.

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Originally Posted by Mugiawara

I don't like it to be honest. It's too overly-shaded, everywhere and it's too dark.

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The environment lighting was my biggest beef with the 1.0 graphics. During the day, the game was beautiful beyond measure; everything stood out sharply and brightly, so vibrant. The miasma weather in Mor Dhona was breathtaking. But when it got overcast, then it just got dull and samey. And at night it was impossible to see without driving up the gamma so far the daytime became an eye-murdering level of contrast and washed out colors.

And the trees! My first reaction to the 2.0 screenshot of the PLD in the Shroud was, "Holy crap! That looks like an actual forest!" The Shroud of 1.0 was less a forest and more roots growing over endless tracts of shrubbery and moss-covered rocks. It seemed like there was one (giant) tree per square malm, and the overhead canopy was just those few trees' branches spreading through each others' branches.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

skill/spells effects WERE WAAAAYY BETTER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OA6i0RuBAY

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O man reminds me of some XI and I like it. If we could have those graphics and a hybrid of the current and that gameplay I think I would be in heaven.

1.0 had a lot more technical bells and whistles. If you honestly never played the game much in 1.0 - you would never truly understand.

For example, in 1.0, the belt slot had graphics associated with it. Changing the belt item would visually change on your character as well. Now, the belt graphic is baked into whatever you have equipped on your torso slot.

Cloth and other "soft" armors would naturally deform depending on other armors worn. There was a video where it showed an artist pulling a gauntlet overtop a cloth sleeve and as the gauntlet went further up the arm, the folds in the sleeve would adjust accordingly. If I understand correctly, the deformations were done dynamically through the rendering engine - where today, they are baked into the graphics data. This would explain some of the clipping you get with certain combinations of gear.

Animations were just all in all more immersive. Little things like when you were running and stopped, your character would naturally slow down as opposed to just stopping. When changing direction, there was a subtle animation that naturally mimicked what you'd see in real-life. I would also guess that each animation simply had more frames associated as well. In 2.0, some animations can appear choppy or jerky - especially compared to those in 1.0.

I believe models typically featured more geometry and textures higher res.

However.... with all that said, while I do miss some of those bells and whistles, 1.0 cannot compare to the performance of 2.0. The dev team made some very hard choices in this area, but overall, I think they made the right ones. Even without those bells and whistles, 2.0 is still a very beautiful game.

Weren't most of the animations motion captured? I don't think those come cheap.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Weren't most of the animations motion captured? I don't think those come cheap.

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Most of them were motion captured. I believe they altered it slightly when they added the animations to make them more flashy once Yoshida took over.

The movements all had weight to it because of the motion capture why they looked more natural in 1.0. If you youtube making of the realm or something like that I believe that is one of the videos.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

skill/spells effects WERE WAAAAYY BETTER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OA6i0RuBAY

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are you serious? that looks so bad wtf
it takes like 5 minute to kill an enemy and everything looks so stiff. also was 1.0 battle turn based or something?

sometimes i feel like saying 1.0>2.0 is an inside joke that im not a part of

I feel that 1.0 was better at some individual parts of graphics (notably textures), but 2.0 has a much more cohesive and unified graphical feel to it. And the parts of 1.x that were good, were not enough to make up for the parts of 1.x that were very very bad. (Like the fact that most people's slightly outdated gaming systems couldn't run it better than 720p at 20 FPS so we couldn't appreciate those pretty graphics.)

I actually disliked the "weight" that Lalafell had when running and stopping. There was also terrible vertical juddering of the images and names while running. Made me queasy if I had to go someplace on foot for too long.

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Originally Posted by Mugiawara

The bard looks alright here but I hate the fact everyone is praying up for a spell.
:/ Looks so lame...glad we are ACTUALLY using our weapons here, I like bards animations for attacks though.

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Am I the only one bothered that the BRD sings like they're casting a spell? There's no music...

indeed, the bards were casting with their hand the songs. almost all casting spell was with the same animation, Cure as paladin was awesome tho !

I remember 1.0. I think 2.0 looks considerably better. And unlike 1.0, you can change the graphic settings and resolution in game on the fly. In 1.0, if you wanted to do this, you had to exit the game, run the game config utility, relaunch the game. This really stunk. And if you ran full screen mode and alt-tabbed, pressed the window key, or did anything that caused the game to loose focus, the game would exit. A game released in 2010 should not function this way. Although the game allowed you to run it in a bordered non-sizable window. It was so awkward that a third party tool (WindowerXIV) was released.

2.0 uses the same textures as 1.0 for characters. 1.0 had a few awful textures for the environment (the ground). The game also used some very ugly environmental texture mipmapping. It was very noticeable in towns. Setting the Graphics Quality option to 9 or 10 help remedy this efect, to this but doing so resulted in a large performance hit. Most players felt it was simply not worth it, and stuck with setting "8" or lower.

1.0 had much more complex movement animations. It also had animation lock. Reversing direction would cause your avatar to stop, lean as she turned around, and slowly start running the opposite direction. It looked nice while being INCREDIBLY ANNOYING! I remember this most with Ifrit (Hard). I can only imagine if a fight like Titan existed in 1.0.

Weapon skill animations we're more elaborate in 1.0. But w/ the animation lock, they could be annoying to execute. Sure they looked nice, but not being able to move or execute anything else until the animation completed was a pain.

I did make a video of the "Spirits Within" and "Rage of Halone" weapons skills, slowed down 50%. Interesting to look at, if you'd like. It's short too.

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Originally Posted by ErzaScarlet77

are you serious? that looks so bad wtf
it takes like 5 minute to kill an enemy and everything looks so stiff. also was 1.0 battle turn based or something?

sometimes i feel like saying 1.0>2.0 is an inside joke that im not a part of

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Not turn-based, but heavy auto-attack based
Like in ARR, the skills in 1.0 cost TP. But unlike ARR, you don't start with full TP, but with 0 TP and every hit you did to an enemy gave you some TP.
So the battle begin with you standing there, let the auto-attack hit the enemy until you earned enough TP to begin the real fight.

1.0 is that classic tale of developers focusing way too much on graphics without thinking of the repercussions of having said focus in them. Yoshi-P said himself one of the biggest faults of 1.xx's development was that the developers focused way too much on the graphics and then tried to work the game play in afterwards. The results we got were really poor optimization that eat up even the best (at the time) PC's graphical and processing power. You could only load 20 people at once, game could easily crash if there is too much going on, and so on. So yes, while 1.xx's graphics are technically better, their faults outweighed everything else.

2.0 took game play into consideration first, and then optimized the graphics around it. What common sense developers should be doing. I still like 2.0's graphics more because it does a ton more quality of life features than 1.xx ever did. You can complain and argue about how realistic they look in comparison, but being "realistic" isn't always the best design choice. I believe 2.0 did a better job transitioning the art and design to the world and it definitely feels a lot more Final Fantasy in terms of design and the world. 1.xx felt like it focused too hard to make it look appealing to westerners, when 2.0 focused more making a FF world.

In short:
http://i.lvme.me/oozm79d.jpg

1.0 looked better than 2.0 in many ways, but 2.0 is overall better because it combines good graphics, with great performance optimization and a more lively world and environments. I do miss the 1.0 lalafell run, stop and run in circles animation, it was very very well done.

It really doesn't matter how nice 1.0 looked if it lost most users from a performance standpoint, and wasn't capable of displaying more than two dozen characters at a time. That doesn't make for a good MMO.

It would be nice if they could implement a Shadow of Mordor-like system (basically, you get a choice for every graphic settings such as meshes, textures, lighting, shadows, anti-aliasing and so on). It would be a nice way to future-proof the graphics (for example, if the settings are Extreme>Ultra>High>Medium>Low, then today's most powerful gaming PCs can run all settings in Extreme at a reliable 30fps at 4K resolution, but in a few years, it'll be 60fps. All Low would be the lowest we currently have). Because the users would be mixing and matching (Example: Medium meshes with High textures and Ultra lighting) they would hopefully get what works best on their system (some gpu/cpu combinations choke on anti-aliasing but handles lighting better, for example).

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

I'm with the OP on the comparison of 1.0 to 2.0.

To put it kurtly, too much bloom! Everything looks like it's glowing! How can I appreciate the detail when it looks so washed out?!

So, yeah, I much prefer the color palette and lighting of 2.0.

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The good thing about a PC game is stuff like bloom is optional.

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Originally Posted by Gramul

-depth of field.

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Which was almost mandatory to have on, otherwise you see the horrific LoD transitions in the environment in plain sight. Boy was anything in the distance pretty ugly without it.

Main thing I remember from 1.0 was fantastic ground textures, too much bloom (anything yellow would blind you), and wall textures looked like they were made of paper mache. Lack of proper light sources as well. People seem to forget 1.0 had no shadow casting in the environments. It was just whatever was prebaked into lightmaps, and the one shadow per character model on the ground.

Some technical trivia: 1.0's engine was the same engine used for FFXIII.

It was optimized for displaying cutscenes in small environments. It looked pretty, but it was an absolutely terrible idea to even try using it for an MMO.

I watched the 1.0 cutscenes for new characters in Uldah, Gridania and Limsa Lominsa and it was shocking to me how much better and more exciting and interesting they are versus the opening cutscenes for those places now. The starter cutscenes now are so boring.

People think the focus was graphics alone but from playing XI and seeing some of the cs's and gameplay on videos I think the goal was to make a world. XI felt like a world I could live in with lore everywhere, I'm thinking 1.0 was similar. Anyone who played chime in and tell me my hopes and dreams are true? Also tell me I'm going to win the lotto soon.

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Originally Posted by Kaisha

People seem to forget 1.0 had no shadow casting in the environments. It was just whatever was prebaked into lightmaps, and the one shadow per character model on the ground.

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I like that we have dynamic shadows, I just wish they could be softer when it calls for it. Shadows in 2.0 almost always have very sharp edges in spite of the distance and intensity of the light source. Looks great when there's harsh light, but kinda cheap when the light is supposed to be more dispersed.

And one thing I actually really hate about ARR's lighting system is how light sources (especially colorful ones like fluorescent plants) have this ugly splotch around them as an excuse for a glow. It looks remarkably corny and simple.

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Originally Posted by Kule

The good thing about a PC game is stuff like bloom is optional.

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Too bad it wasn't in 1.xx.

What the game looked like if you put it on the lowest possible settings:

http://oi51.tinypic.com/iypo4k.jpg

I think it's hilarious that people argue saying they think graphics are better in 2.0. The Deve team specifically stated that they scaled the graphics down. This has been quoted with references multiple times in this thread. It's not really a debate.

The current Dev team, did a much better job at optimizing graphics/processing power. On that, there's also not really a debate. Our clients don't crash nearly as bad as they did in 1.0, AND the game runs on lower end systems. (AND Lower end systems don't crash as much as our PC's did in 1.0.) Mind, I now have a Supercomputer, but . . nya.

The Graphics engine was replaced, and doesn't allow for some of the complexities that 1.0 had, but it still has a large range of capabilities, and the dev team responsibile for managing does a great job.

All in all, this thread is mostly a +1 for the current Dev team.

Thank you for providing us with a game that uses a realistic amount of processing power, while still providing competitive quality in modern gaming.

I do wish, that you would put a bit more effort into cut scenes, similar to the Hildebrand quest line. They don't need to all be silly, but that much effort going into main scenario, and perhaps 1-2 other quests on the same patching schedule similar to hildebrand. (And, I don't mind if they are nonlinear. It would be nice to have diversity)