So... What Exactly ARE the PS3 Limitations

All too often, people throw out the excuse of "PS3 limitations" when asked why certain features don't exist in the game or why changes can't be made. Examples include:

- We can't have more inventory because of PS3 limitations
- We can't wear two hats because of PS3 limitations

So, has the developer given a list of any actual PS3 limitations? Has anything been confirmed to be missing/unchangeable due to PS3 limitation that aren't heresay?

EDIT: Rephrasing to clarify. What I'm asking is what total game additions/changes cannot be made due to the PS3 being the limiting factor. In other words, what are PC/PS4 players missing out on because the PS3 flat-out couldn't handle it?

The PS3 has a total of 512MB of RAM. This limits how much information can be loaded when zoning into a zone or while navigating through a zone, limiting the number of player characters, enemies, terrain objects, etc. that the game can display at one time as all of this information has to be stored in the systems RAM. So while a PC user with plenty of RAM can see all player characters,mobs, terrain objects, effects of attacks/spells, etc. a PS3 user can only see as much as the RAM will allow to be loaded at one time.

That's pretty much the main factor holding back the game's potential on the PS3.

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Originally Posted by MugenMugetsu

The PS3 has a total of 512MB of RAM. This limits how much information can be loaded when zoning into a zone or while navigating through a zone, limiting the number of player characters, enemies, terrain objects, etc. that the game can display at one time as all of this information has to be stored in the systems RAM. So while a PC user with plenty of RAM can see all player characters,mobs, terrain objects, effects of attacks/spells, etc. a PS3 user can only see as much as the RAM will allow to be loaded at one time.

That's pretty much the main factor holding back the game's potential on the PS3.

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I updated the question. How you answered the question was due to my lack of clarity - sorry about that. I was referring to what changes/additions cannot be made to any version (e.g. PS4/PC) because of PS3 being the limiting factor.

Hmmm. Well first and foremost we can start with High Definition textures. These will take up more RAM for the game to process visually along with character models etc. The amount of objects (player characters, NPC, terrain objects, decorations, etc.) in any given area could be limited by the low amount of RAM available in the PS3 as SE wants everyone to have an equal experience when playing the game. The amount of items available to be visible on a character model would be limited by the small amount of RAM, character creation options which if more options were added would cause each character to take up more RAM, just anything that you can think of that's going to take memory for the game to display is going to be limited by the 512MB of RAM available in the PS3.

Again, with SE wanting everyone to have the same, or nearly the same, experience while playing the game, SE will not add things that people with more RAM can benefit from to the point that it gives a PC or PS4 player an advantage or a much better gameplay experience compared to a PS3 player.

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Originally Posted by Greydor

All too often, people throw out the excuse of "PS3 limitations" when asked why certain features don't exist in the game or why changes can't be made. Examples include:

- We can't have more inventory because of PS3 limitations
- We can't wear two hats because of PS3 limitations
- Balmung exists because of PS3 limitations
- PS3 limitations are the reason we can't seperate Balmung into it's own server away from everyone else

So, has the developer given a list of any actual PS3 limitations? Has anything been confirmed to be missing/unchangeable due to PS3 limitation that aren't heresay?

EDIT: Rephrasing to clarify. What I'm asking is what total game additions/changes cannot be made due to the PS3 being the limiting factor. In other words, what are PC/PS4 players missing out on because the PS3 flat-out couldn't handle it?

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Very large zones might be an issue due to memory limitations. Solo PS3 games resolve this by streaming data overlays as players move around to give the impression of a larger field. In an MMORPG there are many external data factors due to the online interactive nature of the game that make that more difficult.

Large scale battles are a problem on PS3 because it cannot render the same number of players, NPCs and monsters, as well as other objects as PCs/Mac or PS4. This would be the largest limitation I can think of in fact. The game is client server after all, so the client can scale to the platform.

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Originally Posted by MugenMugetsu

Hmmm. Well first and foremost we can start with High Definition textures. These will take up more RAM for the game to process visually along with character models etc. .

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That is not a PS3 limitation, that is an SE decision. they could easily create a high definition texture pack for high end PCs and even have the textures scale depending on platform, and have the PS3 continue to use the existing textures as the default base resolution. It's pretty well false to call this a PS3 limitation.

While I am sure there are some limitations for the game due to the aging of the PS3's hardware 90% of the limitations people are claiming are simply due to poor optimization or coding, or a lack of willingness on SE's part to actually impliment something. Those clamoring for high resolution textures but say they wont make them because of ps3 for example I would like to question how you think they make them to begin with. Most every artist starts with an ultra high resolution creation then it is downscaled to be put in engine. The reason the PC doesnt get these is because SE has not and probably will not release them. A lot of the "PS3 limitations" for features that people like to blame are often back end coding implimentations that run server side so blame poor server hardware and coding for most issues. There are some limitations the PS3 cant overcome, it does indeed have limited RAM that is shared between video and system memory but that is where things like draw distance low poly models view fogging and the like can be implimented. Most people want to blame the console but really they should be blaming the programmers lazy spaghetti code and poorly optimized server architecture.

UI - as SE wants the UI across PC and PS3/4 to show the same informations, they had to hide party bonus (INT/STR/etc.) in order to show TP bars, TP bars even don´t show numbers. PS3 is the reason.

Cities are divided into separate zones, it is the same for all locations and dungeons while you can see that the zones are clearly modeled even behind the transition wall.
The game could easily be one huge open world + dungeons could be 1 zone with no loading screens (I had a friend back in 2.X who used to bug behind the transition balls and wander around for hours and make screenshots. With a bit of adding some details the game is imo ready for open world, I mean world design wide).

RAM basically influences how much stuff you can have in inventory, in each UI window etc.

Most probably dyes? It is really weird that we can only put one dye into each gear piece while it could handle even 4 different colours.

EDIT: And yeah.. size of locations.

We as a players can only guess what are the real reasons behind devs decisions. Plenty of stuff was probably done because they only wanted to save some time, resources etc., but there definitely is plenty of other stuff that is plain impossible without ditching the PS3 too (UI, open world for example).

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

That is not a PS3 limitation, that is an SE decision. they could easily create a high definition texture pack for high end PCs and even have the textures scale depending on platform, and have the PS3 continue to use the existing textures as the default base resolution. It's pretty well false to call this a PS3 limitation.

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Ok. My bad. I was implying that the HD textures would be provided for all platforms, and because the PS3 would not be able to handle the addition of an HD texture pack, the PS3 is limiting/holding back the game because like I stated, SE wants all players to have a similar experience, and this could very well be the reason why SE has decided to not provide us with an HD texture pack. Therefore, PS3 limitation.

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Originally Posted by StrejdaTom

Cities are divided into separate zones, it is the same for all locations and dungeons while you can see that the zones are clearly modeled even behind the transition wall.

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Not entirely, only what can be viewed from anywhere in your current zone is modeled, everything else is left blank.

as a person who went PS3 to PS4, I can state there are a few things that are diff between both versions: Resolution detail (Texture & draw distance), number of players visable at once (good luck making to a Zerged hunt & seeing it on PS3), speed of information loading (also affecting previous example with Hunts), Effects & slight animations (the shine from gather nodes is dimmer on PS3, also "Jiggle-physics" aren't used on PS3 but are on PS4 then there the shine effect they added to floors in 3.3 that PS3 can't have)

I doubt the PS3 is acutually "Holding us back" like said (as the game is only slightly diferent between PS3 & PS4 but its still playable on PS3 (u just miss out on "Fluff" effects is all) I thinks its more SE & Dev's atempts to keep the only diff being these "fluff" effects (look at the diff between DA: Inquision, PS4 just has more background NPC's & stuff when it ant a cutscene both are playable just 1 "looks" cooler due to having more "Fluff" is all))

Nothing more needs to be added after "it takes 5 mins for ps3 players to load." Wish I was joking but many instances can't even be started unless all players load, so one can already see how inconvenient that is for a whole group.

I admit I haven't read everyone's comments because I'm on my phone so I apologise if they've already been mentioned. These are what I've seen on the forums that have either received a Dev response or many players giving the PS3 limitation reason.

Au Ra horn separation, allowing us to dye multiple parts of our gear, zone separation (stairs being a loading screen and not just being able to walk up them for example), more character customisation (individual feature separation and not just face types), longer hairstyles, inventory and retainer space.

I will edit and add more if I can think of any from the top of my head. Also please don't quote me on this, as I said this is just what I've seen mentioned on the forums, some have had an official response and some haven't.

I just want my muscle sliders..

I think the RAM issue is the root of it.... but I'm also convinced SE doesn't churn out a massive graphical update has less to do with laziness and more to do with the moral obligation that the 3 versions need to offer as similar an experience as possible.

2.0 was built with the idea that it HAD to scale down, way down, to run on the already very out-dated PS3 hardware, as was promised to Sony. 1.0 was such an optimization disaster that this was impossible.

But now that it's been hinted again and again that 4.0 may drop the PS3 (shoot, Sony themselves could reasonably do so soon, as well) we may not have such limitation.

Or maybe they will. Why fix what isn't broke?

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Originally Posted by Greydor

All too often, people throw out the excuse of "PS3 limitations" when asked why certain features don't exist in the game or why changes can't be made. Examples include:

length

So, has the developer given a list of any actual PS3 limitations? Has anything been confirmed to be missing/unchangeable due to PS3 limitation that aren't heresay?

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I also think "PS3 limitations" is based off the "PS2 limitations" gag we FFXI players used. A lot of times the FFXI devs would say they couldn't implement something due to PS2 limitations, only for it to be added later. I know that doesn't address your question, but I feel that's why some of us throw it around "PS3 limitations."

Another rubbish treat...

PS3 holds nothing back for PS4/PC players!

...wearing 2 hats? lol... sure... thats a 'normal' thing, right?

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Originally Posted by AsahinaMyLove

Another rubbish treat...

PS3 holds nothing back for PS4/PC players!

...wearing 2 hats? lol... sure... thats a 'normal' thing, right?

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Being able to wear glasses or any other type of eyewear isn't odd with some type of headwear.. its actually quite normal.

I was also waiting for you to show up when the ps3 was mentioned :)

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Originally Posted by AsahinaMyLove

Another rubbish treat...

PS3 holds nothing back for PS4/PC players!

...wearing 2 hats? lol... sure... thats a 'normal' thing, right?

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Well you know, except for the fact that it does. If you have to design your game around your weakest client's limitations, that client is effectively holding back the other more capable clients. As already mentioned in this thread, the PS3's biggest issue is its horrendous lack of memory. SE has to cut a lot of corners and make many sacrifices to the client in order to keep the game playable on the PS3 and since they can't or wont make three completely different clients, everyone on PS4 and PC loses out too.

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Originally Posted by Greydor

All too often, people throw out the excuse of "PS3 limitations" when asked why certain features don't exist in the game or why changes can't be made. Examples include:

- We can't have more inventory because of PS3 limitations
- We can't wear two hats because of PS3 limitations
- Balmung exists because of PS3 limitations
- PS3 limitations are the reason we can't seperate Balmung into it's own server away from everyone else

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Silly Gilgamesh. Why can't you just accept that PS3 limitations are a thing?
#Blamung has spoken

Nothing is going to change even if they drop the PS3 support. Today it's PS3 limitations, tomorrow it's PS4 limitations. The cycle will never end. As long as this game is on consoles, the glorious PC master race will never get the fluff they want.

Is it RAM or VRAM the problem? Would textures pressure the Graphics Card insted of the memory?

Aside from the horribly low RAM, the processor inside the PS3 is really old and long out of date now; the 2 go hand in hand to limit what can be done currently. And don't forget it's a custom CPU inside the PS3, so every new patch has to be constantly re-coded and made compatible, which takes up extra dev time and resources.

If you want to know how limiting 512MB worth of RAM is, your phone is able to handle more than that these days.

Like watching HD on a standard Tv in 480i you'll get a picture with boarders but not the picture quality. While a current UltraHD 4k FLat screent wont make standard broadcast any better.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

I think the RAM issue is the root of it.... but I'm also convinced SE doesn't churn out a massive graphical update has less to do with laziness and more to do with the moral obligation that the 3 versions need to offer as similar an experience as possible.

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Currently the PS4 has a stronger 8 core 2.7Ghz AMD+800 MHz radion GPU, 8GB main ram , I/o: USB 3.0, B/G/N network, BT 2.1, and the camera is a better resolution. The PS3 has a custom in house 3.2 GHz single core + 550Mhz GPU, 256MB XDR + 256MB GGDR VRam, I/o: USB 2.0, B/G network, a 640x480 camera.

The only thing I know about the PS4.5 is full 4k and Sony VR support.

I heard 2.0 was made to be scaled for graphics. I don't know if that means it can be played in lower resolution for weaker hardware or turned up for better hardware on the client side. However, the same issues were brought up for years on FFXI. They only decided to drop support when Sony turned off the PS2 servers. That was years after they stopped making the system. From what I'm hearing of XI mobile, if the sample screen shots are real then it's a huge difference in hardware limitations. Like night and day. However, when FFXI was sent to Xbox360 it had the same ps2 graphics. Nine years later after it came out. the PC/360 had the same PS2 graphics. The PS4 was announced and FFXIV was also made for it. Meanwhile FFXI: Adoulin had the same Ps2 graphics and textures. Looking at that shot of FFXI mobile (Unreal 4) and comparing it to any current shot of the game (same Ps2 graphics). You can't get any clearer than that when they say "Hardware Limitations".

Also they say the in house Cell Architecture they used on the PS2 and PS3 are harder to develop for than what they are using in the PS4. Hence why you can't run PS3 disks on the PS4.

People who blame the PS3 for the way the game it is are probably the same type of people who support Donald Trump for President. Maybe they should ask Trump to ban the PS3 along with all the Muslums or convince Mexico to use them as material to build that wall...

This is a gross exaggeration of course. The anti-PS3 crowd has shown no more favoritism of Donald Trump than anyone else. But, blaming the PS3 just sounds like something that Trump would do. PS3 players are a minority in the game and make an easy target to vent.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

People who blame the PS3 for the way the game it is are probably the same type of people who support Donald Trump for President. Maybe they should ask Trump to ban the PS3 along with all the Muslums or convince Mexico to use them as the materials to build that wall...

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Being edgy stopped being cute ages ago. Tell us how you really feel.

Well you can take this however you want as far as how it relates to the topic, but Bungie said legacy consoles held them back with developing content which was the main reason they were dropped and there will be a clear difference that will be noticed when the next DLC in destiny is released.

Bungie had the same mindset of developing to the lowest common denominator in order to give all players a similar experience so...

The best way to answer this is with Yoshi P's official answer to your question:

Question: How long until you drop support for PS3?

Yoshi P: "That will depend on how long people continue to play on the PS3, I've mentioned in the presentation this morning that I want to make sure that "FFXIV continues to innovate", and there's certainly the possibility that whatever innovation we seek will come with certain technical requirements. For example in EQN, which I mentioned earlier, it would not be possible to realize certain things like physic-based gameplay without meeting the hardware prerequisites. So if this becomes something that players want and we start to see people leave for rival products, then we can not just sit around twiddling our thumbs either. After all, we too need to ensure we have the necessary weapons to take on other MMORPGs in the future.
For example, if we were to have a large-scale FATE where players can ride on a flying mount and freely fly around and swoop down at a dragon that is 200 meters long, players would probably be impressed and entertained. However, it would also require us to raise the minimum requirement when it comes to hardware specs.
Our aim has always been to develop the game so that players can have the same experience no matter which hardware they play on. However, if we were to become too fixated on this and become unable to innovate, then this will cease to be a FF game. So I do not plan to say that we will support the PS3 version forever. At the same time, I'm not saying that we'll be ending support by next year or anything like that either, so do not worry."

Now granted this is from an old interview (2014), but it does describe the kinds of areas that the devs are limited in, and have always been limited in since the game launched.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...p_features_of/

As has been pointed out, PS3 can only display a certain amount of things on screen at a time, and Yoshi P references spectacle and open world events as something that is not possible due to the limitations, but there are many more things that it gets in the way of (I believe UI is a big one)

While it's likely true that some design decisions are made because SE wants to set PS3 on as even a playing field as possible with other platforms, please understand the Poe's Law is in full effect here. A lot of people will call "PS3 Limitations" simply because they know that it will piss people off, not because they actually believe that PS3 limitations actually apply to whatever discussion is going on. However, just as often folks will invoke "PS3 Limitations" and be dead serious about it - but don't have the technical background to have any idea of what they're talking about. They're regurgitating something they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, or simply assume that any limitation MUST be PS3 limitations.

Among this mess is the very small handful of individuals who actually DO know what they're talking about - but it's often pretty difficult to tell them apart from the trolls and the fools.

The game looks pretty old with horrible cheap textures but we are still playing it, I believe Square Enix should allocate more resources for this game and make it all the better, FFXIV is a money maker after all!...

PS3 limitations is just an old excuse now and even then SE could add "options" to make the game look better, like the new PS4 version which will allow for 4K texture packs compared to the original console and why!?... Well, because we are moving towards Ultra HD games and any serious player would have gotten rid of a poor PS3 by now!...

Not that I would be limited by that since I won't play on consoles anymore, PC is much better!... :cool:

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Originally Posted by Laraul

People who blame the PS3 for the way the game it is are probably the same type of people who support Donald Trump for President. Maybe they should ask Trump to ban the PS3 along with all the Muslums or convince Mexico to use them as material to build that wall...

This is a gross exaggeration of course. The anti-PS3 crowd has shown no more favoritism of Donald Trump than anyone else. But, blaming the PS3 just sounds like something that Trump would do. PS3 players are a minority in the game and make an easy target to vent.

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i have played FF14 on the PS3 and it was HORRIBLE. i wished they had never released it for that plattform. couldn't wait to get my hands on a PS4. this game is clearly designed with the PS4 in mind and it is not really working on the old PS3. endless waiting for summoning retainers and NPCs, you can't see most of the people in crowded areas, HUNTS, i had an hardware delay and it was impossible for me to dodge some AOEs (on the day i got my PS4 i was suddenly a way better player xP)...
if the game was working in the PS3 but holding the other plattforms back i would say: nope, don't drop PS3 support - but it isn't working. the game is horrible on PS3, so they should drop the support to get rid of the mess xD

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Originally Posted by Ash_

Aside from the horribly low RAM, the processor inside the PS3 is really old and long out of date now; the 2 go hand in hand to limit what can be done currently. And don't forget it's a custom CPU inside the PS3, so every new patch has to be constantly re-coded and made compatible, which takes up extra dev time and resources.

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ROTFLMAO.

Throw popcorn kernels at the nVidia GPU (RSX) in the PS3 all you like, but the Cell BE CPU is/was a tremendous piece of work. It's taken many years for X86 architectures to catch up on pure performance terms, so please, let's not make any ill-educated absolute statements about it. Cell BE uses PowerPC architecture for it's main processing element, it's hardly custom. The SPEs are the only thing that's 'non-standard' and they're non standard only if you are stuck on X86 architecture being the only way to go in computing, labeling everything else non standard or custom.

Oh, BTW, how old is the x86 architecture? Before you claim Cell BE is 'really old and long out of date' (that's just a priceless statement in and of itself) Maybe you should take a quick look at the 40+ history of the x86, which is surely a bit long in the tooth by now....

The SPEs were a bank of really fast processing units that would work individually or in groups, could process data streams in series or parallel, and had tremendously high single precision Floating Point capability. It was an architecture designed around the needs of media processing, video and gaming. I'm honestly sick of the uneducated assertions people make about the Cell BE. The CPU in the Xbox 360 for example used an almost identical PowerPC core, although it was a tri-core unit with no SPEs.

People seem to be hung up on extra dev time to learn an architecture, guys, that's what developers do for a living, they learn architectures and learn to exploit them as best they can. Cell BE was a different architecture to x86, but so was Xbox 360's Xenon. For that matter every new generation of GPU that comes out represents a new architecture that must be learned to take the most advantage of it.

All the whining about a custom architecture and it's so hard to use comes from people's inherent bias against Sony more so than any technical issues. The fact is, when Cell BE hit it was the first time many developers had to start thinking about how to parallelize their code to make good use of the SPEs. Initially most Devs simply used them as extra cores and didn't get creative, until they learned to. If there was never any innovation in microprocessor design, out technology would stagnate. Just as there has been innovation, evolution and new development in software engineering, new languages and so forth, so the same is true for processor architectures. I honestly hope I never work with a developer who displays the kind of attitude towards new architecture that your post contains.

P.S. consider that the PS2 had vastly less computational power and a tiny amount of memory compared even to the PS3 and yet it was perfectly capable of running the FFXI client. In a lot of ways, it's not how big your tool is, it's how well you use it. PS2 and PS3 are great illustrations of that truism in the world of technology and gaming.

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Originally Posted by Kotemon

Also they say the in house Cell Architecture they used on the PS2 and PS3 are harder to develop for than what they are using in the PS4. Hence why you can't run PS3 disks on the PS4.

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This is in fact completely wrong. the PS2 architecture uses a MIPS 3/4 design and features two special vector processing units, that were completely custom. PS2 also used the GS GPU which was very powerful considering it's age, but that's a different discussion. PS2 did not use Cell BE, nor did it use anything that developed into Cell BE. PS3 used the CellBE which was a joint design effort by IBM, Toshiba and Sony. The main CPU element was a standard PowerPC core, the SPEs and on chip data bus (extremely high performance) were new to the party. The GPU was RSX which was a reworking of an existing nVidia design, the GPU core elements were the same as existing products shipped by nVidia. PS3 did not use anything from the PS2 architecture (except for those early systems that included a PS2 chipset for backwards compatibility).

PS4 can't run PS3 games because a) it's an x86 system not Power PC, and b) emulating the SPEs and the interconnect bus is beyond the capability of the APUs in current consoles. Emulating the SPEs is hard because of the extremely high bandwidth of the interconnect bus that connects them on-chip. Few if any CPUs around can match the speed needed, and that's only the raw speed, not under emulation. So, PS3 games will not run under emulation any time soon.

"Harder to develop for" if you're not familiar with either architecture. If you were a developer working on iPad or Android products and switched up to working on PS4 or PC games, you'd be in the same boat. It's a new architecture to learn, and new GPUs too. "Harder to develop for" is a lazy excuse.

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Originally Posted by Tint

i have played FF14 on the PS3 and it was HORRIBLE.

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I played on PS3 from beta 3 until PS4 landed with the PS4 version of FFXIV. It wasn't horrible. It fairs poorly in a side by side comparison with PS4, but on it's own merits it's actually pretty good.

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Originally Posted by Tint

this game is clearly designed with the PS4 in mind and it is not really working on the old PS3.

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This game ws designed to run on PS3, low end PCs, high end gaming rigs, Macs and PS4. It was not clearly designed with PS4 in mind since the PS4 runs a modified version of the PC code base, and not the PS3 client.

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Originally Posted by Tint

endless waiting for summoning retainers and NPCs, you can't see most of the people in crowded areas, HUNTS, i had an hardware delay and it was impossible for me to dodge some AOEs (on the day i got my PS4 i was suddenly a way better player xP)...
if the game was working in the PS3 but holding the other plattforms back i would say: nope, don't drop PS3 support - but it isn't working. the game is horrible on PS3, so they should drop the support to get rid of the mess xD

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Honestly, delays summoning retainers only occur when there is a server side issue. Dodging was a latency issue that affected everyone, latency was improved at about the same time as people started moving to PS4. PS3 can't render as many characters in crowded areas as a PS4 can, but then a PS4 and most low-medium range PCs can't match the number of characters that a high end gaming rig can show. It's all relative.

The PS3 client is far from being a mess.

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Originally Posted by KitingGenbu

Nothing more needs to be added after "it takes 5 mins for ps3 players to load." Wish I was joking but many instances can't even be started unless all players load, so one can already see how inconvenient that is for a whole group.

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This.

Of the listed limitations, this one hits home the most because it's aggravating to have to see that black screen carry on for five minutes while a duty loads in. I don't mind having to wait. I'm used to it. But I feel terrible when I know that I'm keeping other people, so much so that I have to pre-emptively apologise every time. It's like the most Canadian thing ever, except for the fact that I'm a Brit. xD

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Honestly, delays summoning retainers only occur when there is a server side issue. Dodging was a latency issue that affected everyone, latency was improved at about the same time as people started moving to PS4.

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nope, it was clearly a hardware problem of the PS3. on PS3 i had the slow retainer summoning and npcs, and i was unable to move out of some aoes. one day later, on the PS4, same internet, same servers, same everything else, i had zero problems, retainers were there in the instant i hit the bell, npcs too, and i could dodge all the aoe markers easily.

and yeah, i thought it was horrible - especially the aoe-dodging part. that's why i got my PS4 asap.

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Originally Posted by Tint

nope, it was clearly a hardware problem of the PS3. on PS3 i had the slow retainer summoning and npcs, and i was unable to move out of some aoes. one day later, on the PS4, same internet, same servers, same everything else, i had zero problems, retainers were there in the instant i hit the bell, npcs too, and i could dodge all the aoe markers easily.

and yeah, i thought it was horrible - especially the aoe-dodging part. that's why i got my PS4 asap.

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I've never seen the kind of slow retainer summoning or NPC reaction you're talking about when playing on PS3. When I had the PS3 version there were some fights where the polling latency of the game made dodging AoEs tricky, any marginal delays on PS3 will have made that a little worse, but switching to PS4 did not alter the delays for me. Even the notorious titan HM was not really any more of an issue on PS3 as it was on PS4. I got my PS4 and upgraded to the PS4 client as soon as SE had it available, even running the Beta for a while as a comparison with the two side by side.

Clearly some people's experience may vary, my PS3 has no SSD, we're on wired network connections and cable Internet. The biggest issue I've seen anyone encountering with AoE dodging is playing over wifi because of the inherent additional network lag induced by the use of wireless networking. Plugging the console into the router fixed that at a stroke.

I think you're indulging in a case of inverse rose tinted glasses here.

One thought that occurs is that when you interact with NPCs or open interfaces such as the retainer, the game is loading local files, if your HDD was getting towards the full end of the spectrum you may have had file fragmentation issues. That happened to me on a number of PS3 games until I got a newer, much larger HDD and re-loaded every game from scratch, resulting in much cleaner installs and almost no fragmentation. Just like on a PC, fragmentation is a problem, and don't let anyone tell you that consoles are unaffected by that.

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Originally Posted by Greydor

- We can't have more inventory because of PS3 limitations
- We can't wear two hats because of PS3 limitations

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The inventory limitation is due to server limitations, not PS3 limitations. The servers need to keep track of everyone's inventory in real time, including passing it between them. And for non-real-time inventory (like retainers) it's just a database issue. Both are a matter of convincing SE that this game that's bringing in so much money is worth actually spending a bit of that money on. (I can understand them having minimal servers when ARR first launched and they weren't sure if a relaunched game would be successful, but by this point they know it is. It's worth investing the time and money needed for some major upgrades. I expect that's why we're getting more inventory in the next expansion: that that's when the upgrades they're working on are supposed to be complete.)

The two headgear slot idea would be hard for PS3s to handle, but would also be harder to design for, so we wouldn't be likely to get it anyway. The reason the belt is no longer a visibly displayed gear item, for instance, is because it made it too hard for the designers trying to ensure that each belt fit with each piece of leg gear or long chest gear. Having separate head and face slots could have similar issues in matching up which ones could be displayed together.



The PS3's problem is memory. In particular, anything that increases the amount of memory needed in order to display a character on-screen is particularly limited because you not only need it for your own character, but multiplied by the number of characters around you. It's the reason really crowded areas are hard for PS3. (They're also hard for low-end PCs, but that's more often about graphics processing. The PS3 is actually better than a lot of PCs at graphics processing, but it's quicker to choke on the memory requirements.)

So adding an additional selection in character configuration (for instance separating the face and horns for Au Ra into two different options you can mix and match) would mean an additional data field your system would need in order to display a nearby character. That was ruled out specifically because SE doesn't want to increase the size of that character configuration data that every client in the area needs. But even there, there are two reasons for limiting that data size. One is that increases to it are hard on low memory clients like PS3. The other (and perhaps more significant one) is that it can become an issue with the server to client communication as the servers have to send everybody's description to everybody else. It's the second of those issues that leads to lag in crowded areas.

Adding things like an extra visible gear slot would also add to the amount of data on how to display a character, multiplied by the number of characters around you. And it all has to be first communicated to every client, then held in memory by the client which displays them.

Multiple dye colors per gear piece would add to the data, but besides the added memory needed, SE mentioned something about multiple passes in rendering it. I don't quite understand the details, but from the sound of it, it seems it's low-end PCs with limited graphics capabilities rather than low memory clients like PS3 that that limitation is geared towards.


So most of the things that PS3s memory limits are also limited by other factors anyway, whether that's server communications, development effort, or graphics processing. It doesn't seem like there's much that dropping PS3 support would actually buy us.

PS3 doesn't have 512 of RAM.
Has 2 sources of Memory, which together would equal 512, but you don't *add* them up.

Memory 256 MB XDR DRAM system and 256 MB GDDR3 video

Honestly i dont know how anyone can put themselves through the suffering thats playing this game on PS3

once this dropped on PS4 i never looked back

Good old memories of missing hunts because 5 minute load times and killing half my raid group because the adds would kill them before even becoming visible to me (:

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

ROTFLMAO.

The PS2 architecture ..<snip>.. backwards compatibility).

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Thanks for clearing that up. My understanding of the detailed difference between the PS3 and PS2 was always a bit murky. Especially when talk of dropping backwards compatibility would make it cheaper. As it began sounding like it had referred more to hardware than changes to the OS. So my assumption was they were using the same in house design initially that allowed backwards compatibility. As I never had a PS2 or bothered with the Ps3 when it dropped backwards support with the price..

As to PS3s long load times, a solid state drive takes care of that part (or it's possible, as someone mentioned earlier, that a larger and defragmented drive would do the same even if it weren't solid state). I've played on both PS3 and PS4 and the load times are about the same, but that's a PS3 with SSD and a PS4 with its standard hard drive.

The one place I do really see a difference between them is in crowded areas where the PS3 is slow to load all other characters / mobs. In the worst cases it doesn't display some of them at all. (From what I've heard, that can also an issue with low-end PCs, so it's not exclusively a PS3 problem, but I'm really glad it doesn't happen on my PS4.)