EU Graphical Update Feedback - Hands and Feet

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Originally Posted by Ath192

As a matter of fact, I have a stock picture of a Miqo from 1.0

here it is:

http://i.imgur.com/SJif0fN.png

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That clearly shows how much better the models were in 1.X, I wish they brought them back.


Modern GPUs should be more than enough to handle the high polygon count.

Well if the Hrothgal legs are any indication that is most likely being addressed in the graphical update. I assume the model they're using is just a downscaled version of the Dawntrail one.

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Originally Posted by SigmaOZ

That clearly shows how much better the models were in 1.X, I wish they brought them back.


Modern GPUs should be more than enough to handle the high polygon count.

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I remember running this game in 1,000 dollar laptop in 2010. It wasnt smooth but it was playable. Surely 13 years later we can run even better looking models imo.

Is reason why nots able has bare feets in game? Stock shoes coverings up bad feets? Mao also nots impressed with high heel shoes. 2B boots look likes torture devices for feets. Is why Mao prefers Type 51 boots and legs. Mao thinkings feets problems is WAY more urgent than messings with limbal eye rings.

The sandals of the bare feet models I believe are to make the foot relatively consistent between "bare" feet and when you have shoes with any heel on.

When high heels like the 2B shoes get equipped, instead of offsetting the model upwards a set distance, it instead just... cuts off part of the leg. And because the rig for our characters aren't made for the feet at that angle, it deforms very, very strangely. It's why I don't use the 2B heels on my highlander. If we were to fix heels and make them work properly, we'd have to introduce a proper IK system to the animations and rigs to account for our characters having heels, which can eat a lot of resources if you have a bunch of characters on screen. IK animations tend to work better in more controlled environments compared to MMOs.

We don't have many high heels in the game anyway, and the ones that do exist aren't all that high with exceptions like the 2B boots.

That said, it would be neat if Square could think of improving on the animation system as a whole with the graphics update; better blending between animations, IK systems to properly plant our feet on the ground (with a possible heel fix), and transitions between certain animations. We don't need the actual motion physics from 1.0, but having our characters use a starting and stopping animation that blends seamlessly when we move around helps a lot for making movement feel fluid.

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Originally Posted by SigmaOZ

That clearly shows how much better the models were in 1.X, I wish they brought them back.


Modern GPUs should be more than enough to handle the high polygon count.

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There were obviously systems then that could handle it. They could have had graphic options that allowed players to choose higher or lower quality models instead of throwing all that out. It's funny that the difference between highest and lowest quality in the game now is so narrow. Must be the console mentality.

The main reason for the graphics downgrade going from 1.0 to 2.0 was because of accessibility; 1.0 at the time required a powerhouse of a PC to get going and that ultimately cuts into how many people can actually play your game. Of course, the fact that the original 1.0 team also wanted it on PS3 was.... I have no idea how they would've done that, but the visual 2.0 downgrade was the only real way to have a PS3 version that seemed viable. But still, the main reason wasn't just consoles, but also weaker PCs at the time.

It's also worth noting that 1.0, while it had higher polygon characters and objects, also didn't have proper lighting and shadows. There's a video from the Speakers Network youtube channel that goes over the major graphical differences in 1.0, and it shows just how poor the lighting actually was then; light sources weren't proper light sources, night-time amounted to a "blue tint" on the screen, shadows weren't really cast from those light sources, bloom was overused in places, etc. 1.0 was a buggy, unoptimized mess and even the supposed better graphics were a victim of that mess. The main thing it had over 2.0 was texture and polygon count, maybe a shader or two. I'll see if I can find the video at some point and edit the post with it.

Edit: found the video https://youtu.be/CJ9CmxaQ3q8?si=MhVQ9Msas5yrPVcl&t=464

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

But still, the main reason wasn't just consoles, but also weaker PCs at the time.

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You may find this hard to believe but you can have a single game that takes advantage the latest bleeding edge technologies and still runs smoothly on much older systems. They are applying a console mentality to the PC world.

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Originally Posted by MsQi

You may find this hard to believe but you can have a single game that takes advantage the latest bleeding edge technologies and still runs smoothly on much older systems. They are applying a console mentality to the PC world.

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Yep, it's called... graphics settings! Wow!

You can only do so much however, if you want to include high poly and high res texture assets alongside the weaker systems, that also means having to have the storage space for both to swap between and making both assets with each patch. This effectively doubles workload to appease people who have high end PCs and still affects storage space for PCs that have less storage to take advantage of.

As for bleeding edge tech, while I don't disagree, we're still talking about a game that was rushed out after only 2 years of development (MMOs typically need 5). And a choice between having bleeding edge tech that only a small amount of players will be able to use that we can't properly QA with this short development period that won't even be used on one of our major platforms, and simply having uniform assets amongst the playerbase, yeah there's a reason that Square chose what they chose.

That's not to say we didn't get improvements however, HW I believe made the 64 bit version a thing, and DX11 with it, and that had a handful of extra graphical tweaks and additions. And of course the graphical update is about bringing in that tech after all this time. But that 32 bit version still had to exist, and as long as it existed, they were constrained by that version. The fact we could take advantage of 64 bit didn't fully give them extra advantages. It was only after we got rid of those low end PCs that we could move past that limitation, you can only go so far between high and low end PCs.

I just find it hard to take workload / storage space arguments seriously when every other modern game can have high / low graphics settings with no issues. Usually by having one set of textures/models that is upscaled/downscaled as needed based on your settings.

Edit: I also know of a mod that adds higher resolution fingers/toes for hundreds of items, so I went and checked the file size on that. It is a whopping 26.5 MB, so no it's not a storage space issue.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Yep, it's called... graphics settings! Wow!

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Exactly like I said! :D but if you look at the max vs min on this game it's not a huge difference, vs. a game like RIFT which allows you to really make it look like crap. This game could use some much lower settings. There was no reason to throw out all those beautiful models they had in the original game. Let those with high end machines see those, while others would have to use lower settings.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

I just find it hard to take workload / storage space arguments seriously when every other modern game can have high / low graphics settings with no issues. Usually by having one set of textures/models that is upscaled/downscaled as needed based on your settings.

Edit: I also know of a mod that adds higher resolution fingers/toes for hundreds of items, so I went and checked the file size on that. It is a whopping 26.5 MB, so no it's not a storage space issue.

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Agreed, a lot of other companies do the work. And it's also possible to have improved textures/models be an optional download. Maybe even for specific areas. Fingers and toes aren't much but an improved texture set for the whole game could be quite hefty. Maybe some player just care about characters and not the rest of the world?

I'm also speaking in the context of 2013 when ARR was launched. 50GB was annoying for a single game back then, at least for me, so deciding that FFXIV should somehow exceed that limit by having textures quadruple of what the base game offered, same with 3D models, was a big ask at that time. Storage is a non-issue nowadays for most of us, but it was still a consideration back in 2013.

Square still has to develop the game and subsequent patches around the minimum spec whether we like it or not. Any new feature, asset, etc. has to be QA'd for that reason, and so whether we like it or not, we're limited by that. Just because we can put in a bunch of objects in a zone for high end PCs doesn't mean a low end PC will handle it, and while we could just hide those objects in the zone, that now creates discrepancies; what happens when a player jumps on a barrel that exists on their screen, but not on yours? Does that character float on the low end PC? Does that barrel just not have collision on the high end PC for player position parity? How does this affect gameplay in any way? Does it offer an advantage to hide in the barrels so people choose the competitive advantage of low graphics? Well that sucks for those that want better graphics. Do we just make the barrels into cubes because of the low end PC? Well that still has an impact on the memory more than not having it, as an object in memory is an object in memory, so that now affects whether or not that player may even be able to play unless he adds more memory to his system.

Graphics options only go so far before we decide that it's better to just up the requirements before making the assets higher quality. Which is what the graphics update is doing.

(Yes I know hiding in barrels won't be a thing, but my point is how you handle discrepancies between different graphic options that may have other problems associated with them.)

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Edit: I also know of a mod that adds higher resolution fingers/toes for hundreds of items, so I went and checked the file size on that. It is a whopping 26.5 MB, so no it's not a storage space issue.

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Models themselves are usually pretty small, even with hundreds of thousands of polygons, it's textures that you have to be more concerned over. I know one of the body mods goes into about 3GB purely because of the texture sizes.

Things that have physical presence are the same dimensionally for everyone. That does not stop it from having more or less details on different screens. Things that are considered “ground clutter” have no substance. They may be there or not depending on settings. This is not some gotcha scenario. These have been par for the course as long as there has been 3D gaming.

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Originally Posted by MsQi

They may be there or not depending on settings.

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That's what I mean though, their presence can have some impact on gameplay, but they're superfluous enough that someone could legitimately ask to not have them rendered to help with their performance. How do you reconcile that?

Again, I'm not against the addition of these things, the amount of people running the game on potatos at 15fps on the lowest settings are... practically non-existent, I'm just saying that it does affect the minimum specs, and Square can only ever really design around that minimum they've decided on. Some scalability is needed of course, and the more options the better, I'm just saying that to take advantage of all the latest bleeding edge tech requires leaving behind people who haven't upgraded in a while, and there's still concerns around workflow when it comes to asset creation if we decide on having both high and low quality assets.


Anyway, I'll bow out of this debate. It isn't that I believe you guys wrong, you are right in the extra options, I'm in favour of extra options as you guys, my initial response was moreso playing devils advocate in regards to Squares situation in 2013. They wanted a game that was more accessible than 1.0, and in a much tighter schedule, lower quality assets was one of those compromises. We're now in a situation 10 years later where those limitations can be lifted and we can have higher quality assets than the ones from 2010.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

That's what I mean though, their presence can have some impact on gameplay, but they're superfluous enough that someone could legitimately ask to not have them rendered to help with their performance. How do you reconcile that?

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uummmmm. You give them the option to not render them, like you currently can. Like you can in tons of other games. I was talking about ground clutter there. That is usually just grass and flowers. I was making the point that it is different from things like barrels that people can jump on, which will be there for everyone, unless it is far in the distance where it wouldn't matter.

Your only argument seems to be that the devs don't want to work on things that everyone else in the industry does.

Sorry, I'll do one last reply, I can't help myself.

But still, if it's for gameplay that it has to be there (remember that the graphics update is including new clutter to areas, Thavnair was shown ages ago to have new boxes and barrels strewn about the place, they wouldn't make those without any collision on them), then that inherently means they can't not render it, which requires raising the minimum specs needed to load that area.

We could decide to have the option for the old low res assets if we want, but that's still a raising of the minimum requirements, because we're still rendering extra clutter that wasn't there before. That's my point here, scalability for assets didn't necessarily mean that the lower end player could play, that asset has to load now on his end regardless of his opinion on the matter. The scalability is still good, it means there's more of a spectrum between the really high end and the minimum, but it doesn't change the fact there's now a new minimum from before. Whatever minimum spec Square decides is what they design around.

It isn't that I don't want them to make things scalable, but that I also don't expect a game that's supposed to pump out assets every 4 months to suddenly increase the amount of assets needed in those 4 months. Besides, my initial point was to explain why Square chose what they chose back in 2013, not that I agreed with it or thought it good, just that it involved a large amount of compromise that we're only now getting past.

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Originally Posted by MsQi

Agreed, a lot of other companies do the work. And it's also possible to have improved textures/models be an optional download. Maybe even for specific areas. Fingers and toes aren't much but an improved texture set for the whole game could be quite hefty. Maybe some player just care about characters and not the rest of the world?

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I was limiting my thoughts to hands and feet cause that was the original topic of the thread

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Just a reminder on top the hands posted above this is a current foot in the game. Some Ps2 level stuff right here:

https://i.imgur.com/R05znK4.png

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Yeah this is bad. Though I wouldn't insult the PS2 by comparing it to that level of detail. Looks more like an N64 game. Plus having permanent sandals on that you can never take off is a bit strange.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Look at it this way:

8 races, 14 unique heads once we factor in genders (sorry Hrothgars!), 4 base variants of each head, that gives us a worst case of 56 head models to update if we assume the worst case of them not being able to use morphs to transfer the updates across all variants at once in their development tools.

Now compare that to the hand and foot models alone. How many sandals, open toed shoes and glove models does this game have? Now multiply that for racial and gender variants. It's going to be in the 1000s. It'll be way more than an entire expansion's worth of new gear.

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It is a lot. But once you make the "base" hand/feet for each race the hard part is done. All you do from that point on is just copy/paste it into the gloves/shoe models and click and drag to move any armor that clips so it fits the new form. In reality you're going to keep the overall shape of things the same, the only thing that really needs changing are adding toes and rounding out the fingertips and giving them nails. Any armor that exposes these parts conveniently don't have anything covering them up either. Probably takes 2 minutes at most per item. One person could do this tedious but simple workload in a week. Its already been done... for free by some random person on the internet if your google fu wants to verify this supposedly "tremendous" task that a AAA studio can't accomplish on their own.

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Originally Posted by Lusarae

Plus having permanent sandals on that you can never take off is a bit strange.

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The joke is there are barefoot npc... not too many but there are lol

More detailed hands and feet would increase the polygon count. I guess, they try to avoid it because higher polygon count means higher minimum requirements for the game, especially the CPU.


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

More detailed hands and feet would increase the polygon count. I guess, they try to avoid it because higher polygon count means higher minimum requirements for the game, especially the CPU.


Cheers

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They could be greatly improved with textures alone. This game is about 15 years behind at this point. Not saying it looks bad, but many players have moved on. Retaining lower poly models for older systems is a possibility.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

More detailed hands and feet would increase the polygon count. I guess, they try to avoid it because higher polygon count means higher minimum requirements for the game, especially the CPU.


Cheers

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Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

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Originally Posted by Lusarae

Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

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Mao would like go barefoots.

Isn't this still a work-in-progress? I'm sure the whole entire model is set to be redone over time, that's what they've implied is that eventually everything is intended to have this treatment.

The hands and the fingers will absolutely require an increased polygon count to match up to the standards they are aiming for, unless they have some type of different method in mind to give the fingers this treatment. They are probably starting with stuff that would be immediately noticeable in a MSQ cutscene, so eventually i'm sure hands will be treated, my thinking though leans towards that they are probably assuming most players will be wearing gloves or gear that covers the fingers.

My own thoughts on it aside, did they ever actually talk about hands/fingers during the london developer panels? (i couldn't stay awake long enough to watch it past the opening keynote)

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Originally Posted by Lusarae

Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

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It's not going to be an issue period. Increasing the polygon count on the feet from like 60 to even 500 will be barely noticeable, you're more likely to notice the performance impact of increased texture resolutions in the terrain...if there are any.

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Originally Posted by Lusarae

Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

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Ahhh, that is the reason why the framerate is so low when you enter a night club in FF14. xD


And i do not know how the character model processing exactly works in FF14. But it can be, that the feet are still processed by the engine even if your character has clothes on. AFAIR the clothes do not modify the character model like in other games. So the GPU can propably spare some processing time if the engine has a good Z occlusion. But it will still hit the CPU.



Cheers

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Originally Posted by Lusarae

Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

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Half gloves and tons of shoes that show the feet. But it's still not an excuse, imo.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

And i do not know how the character model processing exactly works in FF14. But it can be, that the feet are still processed by the engine even if your character has clothes on. AFAIR the clothes do not modify the character model like in other games. So the GPU can propably spare some processing time if the engine has a good Z occlusion. But it will still hit the CPU.

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Our characters in-game are separated into several segments. When we put on say, a pair of boots, it replaces the foot model with those boots, and depending on the size of the boots, may also replace parts of the leg model. Because of this, the game never has to render anything "underneath" the clothing, the model is just outright replaced and Square never has to worry about our characters clipping through our clothes or calculating model data underneath. Some gear does have priority over others if they're fighting for the same character segment, so bulky gloves and bulky sleeves that make use of the same wrist segment on our character are determined mostly by whether or not the chest piece "allows" the glove to overwrite the sleeve.

As for the topic at hand (heh), it takes very little now to render a few extra polygons on hands and feet, so while it may've been a concern in the PS3 and 32 bit days, we're long past that and I think we can handle having toes and rounded fingers, I'm sure a dedicated 3D artist or 2 can handle the necessary glove/shoe models over the next 8 or so months.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Our characters in-game are separated into several segments. When we put on say, a pair of boots, it replaces the foot model with those boots, and depending on the size of the boots, may also replace parts of the leg model. Because of this, the game never has to render anything "underneath" the clothing, the model is just outright replaced and Square never has to worry about our characters clipping through our clothes or calculating model data underneath. Some gear does have priority over others if they're fighting for the same character segment, so bulky gloves and bulky sleeves that make use of the same wrist segment on our character are determined mostly by whether or not the chest piece "allows" the glove to overwrite the sleeve.

As for the topic at hand (heh), it takes very little now to render a few extra polygons on hands and feet, so while it may've been a concern in the PS3 and 32 bit days, we're long past that and I think we can handle having toes and rounded fingers, I'm sure a dedicated 3D artist or 2 can handle the necessary glove/shoe models over the next 8 or so months.

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I am more than convinced the game can handle this just fine, it’s just they develop a standard and stick to it for sure, so if now is the time when that standard is called into question I want the devs to know this is important to the players and most if not all us are in agreement faces aren’t the only part of the body that need a lot of improvements on detail.

The more we can make them understand this the more chances we get that it doesn’t get overlooked by a company trying to cut a corner somewhere.

They just need to drop PS4 support, it is holding us back.

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Originally Posted by Lusarae

They just need to drop PS4 support, it is holding us back.

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I guess, the FF14 assets are still made for the PS3. :) The PS4-GPU is roughly equivalent to a RTX 1060 or Radeon RX 590. And those GPUs have no problems with highres textures.


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

I guess, the FF14 assets are still made for the PS3. :)

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This is the key thing.

For people saying that the PS4 needs to be dropped, remember that these assets come from a time when the game was on a platform that was so extremely resource constrained that they had to remove UI elements just to be able to fit blank unlabelled TP bars into memory.

Moving beyond what the PS4 (Which is mainly expensive shader/effect/post processing workloads that stretch it's memory bandwidth) can offer is a bad long term decision IMO as it rules out the potential for an eventual Switch/Switch 2 port (The current Switch is likely too bandwidth constrained to ever be a viable platform, but the Switch 2 should hopefully address that).

The entire body of our characters should be upgraded. It would be very strange for them to work so hard on the environment and then keep character bodies the way they are now. If there has to be some kind of priority, it should always start with the latter.

While I hope it's not the case, I have a feeling that they won't touch body/gear meshes so that there's less discrepancy between upgraded and non-upgraded gear. There's also much less work to do on existing models as well. After all, there's a full hand mesh for each glove gear (same goes for every gear part except head gear).

A Hyur Midlander's body mesh (torso, hands, legs, feet, without the head or hair) is about 2000 triangles, which is quite low complexity compared to other games (please don't ask how I know this, just assume I'm a magician or something ok?)

A good chunk of this polygon budget goes into the hands and torso as it should, but it's still not enough for big closeups, especially for hands. The feet however... Saying PS2 level graphics is appropriate. It's a good thing that we don't get to see them really often.

More recent gearsets have clearly increased polygon budgets, though. For example, the Far Northern Felted Gloves (obtainable from the Mog Station since Endwalker) has a nicer-looking polycount of 1096 triangles. A Hyur's bare hands is 600 triangles. That's a 80% increase in polycount for the hands since ARR.

what you all don't like having sausages for fingers and blocks for feet?

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Originally Posted by MsMisato

what you all don't like having sausages for fingers and blocks for feet?

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For some reason, I'm fine with sausage fingers on Lalafells lol. I find that it fits them.

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Originally Posted by MsMisato

what you all don't like having sausages for fingers and blocks for feet?

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xD no, and the graphics for XI is what ultimately led me to hang up the game. You know things get to a point where they're just too retro to play as a main game, maybe revisit from time to time as a novelty of a bygone era. I love XI but it just felt like everything was too outdated at some point and I stopped playing it. It also made sense with XIV coming out. Hopefully by taking a holistic approach to XIV it can always be relevant. Even if a new FF MMO launches.

Bumping this.

Mr. Yoshida, PLEASE this is the perfect opportunity, let us dye our finger and toe nails without an item. This is the first picture I've seen and at least the feet look better. I still want some more detail on both the hands and feet here, but they do look better. If you could add a few more polygons to make them rounder that would be great but, the biggest thing, please.... please let us dye the nails in the aesthetician. If you do this I will stay subbed all of Dawntrail. I will happily fund this feature. Onegai Shimasu. For all races that is, clearly we can actually see the nails in the female hrothgar, but I think players would definitely use this feature A LOT across all races.

Also, please showcase your support by keeping these threads relevant and liking for a few days so they can see them. I don't know we'll get another chance so this is it. Let them know we care about this.

https://i.imgur.com/1x1u49F.png