You complain about FFXIV grass? Skyrim has better! :(

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Originally Posted by Naraku_Diabolos

http://kotaku.com/5961994/what-skyri...0-mods-at-once

Honestly, I think that when and if the development team gets around to a DirectX 11 (11.1) patch in the future, ARR will possibly look just as good. I believe so, but jeebus, look at the grass on that Skyrim with 100 mods. Could ARR look like that in the future? O_O

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You have shown me the light, that grass is so awesome that it has given me a totally new perspective on life. Perhaps other grasses will now have something to strive for.

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...b1a8b7fe4g.gif

well skyrim will still play the same with or without the grass.

Grass is grass right? O.o I hope so or we been walking on some form of....plant being that likes to be walked on? O.o
Btw water effects now a days make some games look great while shity water effects like still water make other well you know >.>

Skyrim grass: so good you can smoke it.

Geforce 690 with quad SLI only...can I even fit all those cards in?

It looks so good I want to roll in it.

On the other hand, meh grass. . . . . I enjoyed my FF even when the grass was just pixel art, as in pre-FFVII

Even if FFXIV was designed to run on a system like that (and every FFXIV player had one as well) it wouldn't look that good due to the fact that it's an MMO and they have to be able to display 300+ characters at once on screen.


Now FFXV on the other hand.....

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Even if FFXIV was designed to run on a system like that (and every FFXIV player had one as well) it wouldn't look that good due to the fact that it's an MMO and they have to be able to display 300+ characters at once on screen.


Now FFXV on the other hand.....

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I don't think you have to display 300+ I hardly see more then 20 in FFXIV 1.0. Maybe 50 in FFXI.


I really dont care seeing the true cluster fcuk lol, it does happen to be representative of the real servers but seeing characters body parts cross into other body parts in a sea of who knows how many legs to arms to taru heads in crotches I dont mind limited numbers lol.

Besides people set really high graphic settings but do things like turn off shadows - its not uncommon to bolster one side and lower another. Obviously there has to be a minimum display number of say a raid party size but otherwise w.e Id turn down my character count to blast smokeable grass and life like mithra skin.. :P lol

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I don't think you have to display 300+ I hardly see more then 20 in FFXIV 1.0. Maybe 50 in FFXI.

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Mobs are part of that number as well.

The ARR team wants to display 300+ players/mobs (IIRC). From the gameplay in the live letter, is looks as though they are moving towards that goal pretty nicely.

But that's the nature of MMO games, they exchange some landscape detail for a higher volume of player and mob models.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

I know the ARR team wants to display 300+ players/mobs (IIRC). From the gameplay in the live letter, is looks as though they are moving towards that goal pretty nicely.

But that's the nature of MMO games, they exchange some landscape detail for a higher volume of player and mob models.

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So long as they didnt recycle bin the hd textures (which almost every company has sitting around lol) give them to me as a optional download piece (usually the file size is pretty big.. waste giving to everyone when only half can use it). I'm going to set number of players visual to like 30 and then everything else to max and roll in pixels.

Eh..

The reason that number is so high, is because they likely have content planned that will require it.

Think Beseiged (FFXI), but without dying to 'invisible' mobs, and actually being able to see/target things more than 10 feet away.

Graphic quality is very important, but it should always take a back seat to gameplay.

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...v/datgrass.png

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Eh..

The reason that number is so high, is because they likely have content planned that will require it.

Think Beseiged (FFXI), but without dying to 'invisible' mobs, and actually being able to see/target things more than 10 feet away.

Graphic quality is very important, but it should always take a back seat to gameplay.

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Would be cool if there is a little setting section to modify count in-depth. Like draw distance and priorities (I would imagine the code already has variables in place all they need is a UI to change the vars - if not of course not suggesting they waste time rewriting code).

Yeah and gameplay is priority however graphic quality shouldn't be forgot - even if it requires a patch at a later date. Sometimes it seems companies are like "well we released a shitty asset, but we already released it so yeah its going to stay there". Like Garius bad face graphic (it rendered in really low quality) in ME1 yet a player fix is available... Dont tell me Bioware that you cant fix a problem players fixed for you with a simple patch >.> lol (SE has a graphic milestone with DX11 so it looks like they wont, but who knows lol)

300 man content that I actually need to see all 300.

That sounds pretty crazy lol - should be very interesting. Would love to see large scale land, sea, and air battles where you feel puny in the scale of things.

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Originally Posted by Naraku_Diabolos

http://kotaku.com/5961994/what-skyri...0-mods-at-once

Honestly, I think that when and if the development team gets around to a DirectX 11 (11.1) patch in the future, ARR will possibly look just as good. I believe so, but jeebus, look at the grass on that Skyrim with 100 mods. Could ARR look like that in the future? O_O

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This is a Mod even Skyrim after DLC looks like this! The PS3 version doesn't look anywhere like this either.
To compare a 3rd party mod to Skyrim is not a fair comparison to FFXIV. For starters you can't mod FFXIV and secondly the developers at Bethesda knew not to release Skyrim like this because it would not run on enough PC systems to be profitable. Lastly it's a single player game vs, a MMO.

FFXIV is on PC and PS3 and is designed to run with 100 characters on the screen, 800 characters in a each zone. Foliage at this detail is not practical for an MMO. If Foliage was this dense the amount of ppl on the server at once in a given area would not be able to reach these player densities without causing tons of lag.
Also with grass density this thick you wouldn't be able to see AoE effects on the ground because the grass would be covering it. Yay for realism but terrible for gameplay and in a game, GAMEPLAY RULEZ!

Nobody wants to have realism get in the way with them progressing in a game or having fun. Synthesis is a victim of this, while crafting is more realistic and provides a more interactive way to get better items. Nobody wants to do it and complains because it takes to long or is to hard.

What good ol' Totilo doesn't tell you (because he has no idea, it's a tradition of Kotaku to write on what you know nothing about) is that the overall smooth effect has really nothing to do with the grass itself, but with the fact that the person in question is using an extremely powerful (and resource-hogging) ENB filter that smooths out everything at the price of performance and detail.

Mind you, that kind of filter can be applied to basically every game that runs on directx, so if you want something like that on ARR, you'll probably be able to run it, if someone gets around making it. Otherwise there are some generic ones that might work.

I truly love press articles on Skyrim mods, mostly because people that write them in 99% of cases never modded skyrim (or even applied mods over the most basic ones) themselves. The amount of ignorance they drop in their writing is enormous :D

Oh, and by the way, if you don't have a GTX 680 (or two), forget running skyrim like that with more than 5 fps. The game has horrible stutter problems even without this kind of detail when you start modding it heavily.

Mind you, if you want great grass in a MMO, SWTOR has you covered.
http://www.dualshockers.com/2012/10/...in-update-1-5/

Of course the balancing factor is that the graphics are overally very cartoonish and the polycount and texture resolution is a TON lower across the board. Resources are finite and what you put somewhere, you have to take somewhere else.

The only thing Square Enix should REALLY take from this is the translucency shader, as it has basically no impact on performance.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

What good ol' Totilo doesn't tell you (because he has no idea, it's a tradition of Kotaku to write on what you know nothing about) is that the overall smooth effect has really nothing to do with the grass itself, but with the fact that the person in question is using an extremely powerful (and resource-hogging) ENB filter that smooths out everything at the price of performance and detail.

Mind you, that kind of filter can be applied to basically every game that runs on directx, so if you want something like that on ARR, you'll probably be able to run it, if someone gets around making it. Otherwise there are some generic ones that might work.

I truly love press articles on Skyrim mods, mostly because people that write them in 99% of cases never modded skyrim (or even applied mods over the most basic ones) themselves. The amount of ignorance they drop in their writing is enormous :D

Oh, and by the way, if you don't have a GTX 680 (or two), forget running skyrim like that with more than 5 fps. The game has horrible stutter problems even without this kind of detail when you start modding it heavily.

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The game is doing pretty good now. Minus the insane grass distance I've got similar (I use a different ENB) on my singular 670 (~50 mods) running healthy over 30 fps. (Though every 1 or 2 hours there is a CTD hahaha)

(Also that grass amount with shadows off would run pretty smooth as well - I prefer moderate amount of grass so I can find bodies though.. lol)

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Originally Posted by Shougun

The game is doing pretty good now. Minus the insane grass distance I've got similar (I use a different ENB) on my singular 670 (~50 mods) running healthy over 30 fps. (Though every 1 or 2 there is a CTD hahaha)

(Also that grass amount with shadows off would run pretty smooth as well - I prefer moderate amount of grass so I can find bodies though.. lol)

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Yep, but that grass does have shadows applied (that kill fps even just with the lush grass mod, i can't even imagine what it'd do with that density).

It would look fugly if you turned off shadows, because trees would effectively not cast any visible shadow, considering that the grass covers the whole terrain.

Also, the ENB filter he's running is a monster. It's definitely a screenshot friendly one, and it makes things look extremely pretty all right, but it's nothing I'd ever play in.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

Yep, but that grass does have shadows applied (that kill fps even just with the lush grass mod, i can't even imagine what it'd do with that density).

It would look fugly if you turned off shadows, because trees would effectively not cast any visible shadow, considering that the grass covers the whole terrain.

Also, the ENB filter he's running is a monster. It's definitely a screenshot friendly one, and it makes things look extremely pretty all right, but it's nothing I'd ever play in.

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Oh I meant grass shadow option.

Grass in skyrim can cast its own shadow - in lush grass and dense grass mod it can be pretty bad with moderate grass distance I had like 15 fps lol.

(Gotta have tree and other shadows, totally agree.. cant play without them - I have mods dedicated to those shadows XD)

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Originally Posted by KiriA500

Parts left out of those screens:

FPS: 1

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I rofl'd!!

Put your grass away children.

As a developer myself this post makes me cringe, but for someone who doesn't know how the design process goes this may provide a cue:

Recreating anything organic in 3D is a nightmare to balance between visual quality and performance. As all 3D objects are built up using 'Polygons' keeping this poly-count low is essential to maintain a good level of performance.

Foliage such as plants, flower, trees and grass can all eat through an enormous amount of polygons quite easily if each individual leaf, branch, flower was modeled to scale. For something so small this is unnecessary so instead we use methods such as this:

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...lacement_Grass

Where something such as leafs, grass, flowers can all be reduced down to a very low poly count allowing a greater amount of foliage to be rendered at once, whilst not impacting performance too heavily.

There are many methods to do this, however if you watch the 'Limit Break' trailer, you can see the grass uses a very similar method to the one I posted.

I hope this is of some help make things clearer.

EDIT: As a side-note to the original post, DirectX 11 & 11.1 these new 'libraries' won't really provide any help in making better grass ...

I can't resist anymore

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Patrick Stewart: But Ive seen everything. And I get on my bike and ride off.......on the grass

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Originally Posted by Angelas

who cares? skyrim isnt an MMO

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This.........

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Originally Posted by Naraku_Diabolos

http://kotaku.com/5961994/what-skyri...0-mods-at-once

Honestly, I think that when and if the development team gets around to a DirectX 11 (11.1) patch in the future, ARR will possibly look just as good. I believe so, but jeebus, look at the grass on that Skyrim with 100 mods. Could ARR look like that in the future? O_O

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This would be worth burning out my computer for. XD

If you read the page that article is talking about, that guy goes form 38 fps to 8 fps from switching to that grass. Square Enix has some VERY capable artists. The issue is not being able to create really nice looking grass, it's getting it to work well in game. Ofcourse adding options to players can help, it can also be redundant.

But hopefully by now it is recognized how stupid this thread is.

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Originally Posted by Roaran

But hopefully by now it is recognized how stupid this thread is.

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I'd say most have. The funniest part is that the OP invokes DirectX 11 when Skyrim is strictly a directX 9 game.

But hey, what do you expect from a thread born from quoting Kotaku?

I don't get why people are making such a huge deal out of XIV's grass with games out there that look like WoW.

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Originally Posted by Majidah

I don't get why people are making such a huge deal out of XIV's grass with games out there that look like WoW.

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lol!

Blizz is working on a next gen MMO though (been a few years.. so probably another 10 knowing blizzard XD)

Anyway no ones realistic computer will be able to play exactly like those screens. Mostly as Abriael pointed out there is a retarded (super intensive) ENB going on and the grass density and distance is insane. (Though everyone should know change the ENB and reduce grass draw distance or density slightly and it is completely playable - also there are similar ENBs that are "less" intensive).

Of course I noticed the grass but I also noticed some of the awesome textures going on - which is why somewhere in here I said "I hope when DX11 comes out they can also pump out an HD pack". Pixels in mah textures.. "Ah hell no".. lol

let's compare with other successful multiplayer online games.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ekNjutfkAzg/0.jpg

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Originally Posted by Phe

let's compare with other successful multiplayer online games.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ekNjutfkAzg/0.jpg

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this post is made of win.

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Originally Posted by Phe

let's compare with other successful MMO's.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ekNjutfkAzg/0.jpg

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That is what FFXIV 1.0's grass looks like lol .

for fun (not photoshopped - in game)
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...-05_203620.png
http://youtu.be/XDZA1Js1zqs?hd=1&t=56s
http://youtu.be/PF5RCyJv6Ok

(Minecraft graphic style is pixels, FFXIV is much more similar to skyrim then minecraft lol. Though I'm glad they smoothed their flora in 2.0 (both in color and in shape)).

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Originally Posted by Shougun

The whole screenshot looked great, albeit a shit ton of grass was in the screen and it looked awesome as well lol.

Also, I care how my environments look - dont want to delay the game but I would like to see the quicker modifications taken care of in a graphic update. The extreme patch or something lol w/ relase of dx updates, could try and see if Microsoft would pay for some of the dev. if SE made a DX9 vs DX11 video.. Microsoft loves crazy changes .. lol

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Those screenshots we're of Skyrim, which only uses DX9 on Windows. Not DX11. And suppose SE did include an "extreme patch" and you got your fancy looking grass. Will you start saying how the ugly the rocks are; how pale the dirt is, how flat the water looks? Will it EVER be good enough? Of course not. Which is why adding "grass" to an already completed game is not going to happen.

It's content that keeps players interested in a game. Not dumb mindless eye-candy.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

Those screenshots we're of Skyrim, which only uses DX9 on Windows. Not DX11. And suppose SE did include an "extreme patch" and you got your fancy looking grass. Will you start saying how the ugly the rocks are; how pale the dirt is, how flat the water looks? Will it EVER be good enough? Of course not. Which is why adding "grass" to an already completed game is not going to happen.

It's content that keeps players interested in a game. Not dumb mindless eye-candy.

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I never said that skyrim uses DX10 or 11. I didnt even say that DX will make it look better.

I hope those DX talks arent directed at me -I only said that when they release their graphic milestone (DX10/11) it would be great to have other extreme tweaks as well.

The water is flat lol. But I can see your attempts to try and make it look like "never satisfied is bad". That is a failed stance however. If you become complacent with what you have you will never strive for more - why do you think we get better graphics every year? That just graphics. The concept applies to all things (not just video games).

All that philosophy being said I think Skyrim with the --player-- made HD textures and a few other mods put together makes Skyrim freaking amazingly sexy and playable (minus the hilarious CTD every hour or so with or without mods.. lol).


Also I'm annoyed at the "It's content that keeps players interested in a game. Not dumb mindless eye-candy." Certaintly the game wont be fun if there is no game - its beyond obvious. However games that have or attempt to have good graphics do so for a reason as well - its not one or the other, as a consumer I have the right to ask for both (how far you expect your return is a different story).

If you read what I was saying I said "when possible" - I understand FFXIV is under unique tense as they are under the "crunch" a second time over and dont have time to blow on sexy 3d water - when they do have time its on my list of wants.

don't get it why so obsessed with just mere grasses... ;D

I finished Skyrim with almost all campaign, except evil ones like Assassins or that taking sides war. Finished this game and then picked up FFXIV, and I immediatedly fall in love with it. Always believed that FF series has it's charms like previous ones.

True, Skyrim is so gorgeous even without mods, and I do feel enjoys the comfortable. But I felt like a loner playing that, staring into distance. But with FF14, I feel more alive.

Besides... I don't even look into much details because grass is one of elements that makes the world enjoyable, but not necessarily means I have to peer into each details. ;D