Is most of FFXIV's failings due to their choice of engine?

[Randis]

Its way to late to change FFXIV from scratch but some fixes to the scenery will do good.

The Blade & Soul vid... the graphics are stunning, can't argue that, i also love the gear a lot and the weapons. It looks like the artists had a lot of fun.

[Evangelus]

everything would be so simple if the developer replies to all these questions and debates .... without giving vague answers

who to believe now?

copy/paste is not a means of creating zones quickly?

[Abriael]

Self shadowing is a separate process and yes UE3 can do it, you are comparing a few videos that may not even have the game maxed out, for all we know self shadowing may be turned off in the players settings or maybe perhaps the game doesn't support it.

The fact that the unreal engine can do it doesn't matter it will be put in Blade and Soul, simply because self shadowing is *very* hardware intensive, especially when it has to work on a LOT of characters at once (situation that is very common in MMORPGs)
The crystal tools can do self shadowing as well, as much as dynamic lightning and shading. They simply didn't put it in this game because they preferred to focus hardware resources in other areas of the rendering, like characters, textures and texture effects, to which Blade and Soul (or any other MMORPG built with the UE3) doesn't hold a candle.
It's that simple.

An engine supporting a feature doesn't mean that that feature will be included in all the games created with it.

But your grasping at straws when all you have to go on is a few videos, when you actually have hands on experience let me know

So it's ok to use the same videos to bash FFXIV, but it's not ok to critically look at their actual flaws? LOL.
Talk about biased.

copy/paste is not a means of creating zones quickly?

Of course it is, some people just like to speculate on things they don't really know without having a single clue.

Mind you, if the devs had to reply to all the threads generated by ignorance that pop up on the forums, they wouldn't work on the game.


By the way, Se actually experimented with the UE3 (on The Last Remnant). Quite obviously the expriment has been discarded. With good reason.

[Jinko]

TSo it's ok to use the same videos to bash FFXIV, but it's not ok to critically look at their actual flaws? LOL.
Talk about biased.

Who's bashing anything, I'm simply stating what I see and you are the one aggressively defending FFXIV.

Fact is we both play FFXIV we know what the game is capable of, looking at a video and saying oh "that's it, whats the fuss about?" is very short sighted because as far as I know neither of us have access to mess around with Blade and Souls settings.

Sure I can look at that video and say environments look better, lighting looks better, shadows look better, because I have actual hands on experience with FFXIV.

I'm not the one being bias here lol.

By the way, Se actually experimented with the UE3 (on The Last Remnant). Quite obviously the expriment has been discarded. With good reason.

Indeed they didn't know how to take advantage of it, Lost Odyssey also used UE3 and did much better job at it, although granted it did have a few issues. (but MistWalker has a fraction of the employs and resources SE have)

You can't blame the engine for a lack of development knowledge.

[Allcars]

Bull.
The PS3 version has been delayed quite a lot earlier than launch, and they explained quite clearly that it was due to them having to work around memory issues without influencing the PC version.



*BOOM*
Too bad that "art style" has absolutely nothing to do with the engine, character detail and texture resolution.

FFXIV has much "richer" models than any MMORPG ever made on the UE3, and it has nothing to do with "art style" (which is just a matter of art direction, not of hardware and engine), but with the fact that they have a much higher polycount, higher resolution textures and extensive use of normal mapping.

At the very least, please, get your fact straight. Polycount, texture resolution and mapping effects aren't a matter of opinion, and most definitely not of "style".

You have no idea what you are talking about, lets take a look at team fortress 2 and Half life 2 episode 2. Both use the same engine, one has much lower poly count and less detailed textures, both were released at the same time. If you bothered reading what I had to say about the player market base you would understand why mmo developers use the low detailed mesh's for their games using unreal engine 3, let me explain it to you again, this is because the largest market doesn't have high end machines, the main limitation of the graphics for games today is the market base, look at most games these days made for the 360/ps3 over the pc, why you ask? because of the market base on the consoles compared to the smaller base on the pc.

If you are right about the ps3 version of FFXIV due to the limitation of the hardware, I really don't see this game going anywhere. lets look at it like this if FFXIV were released on both console and pc, at the same time. Both were rated 4.0 I believe Square Enix would have canceled the game. The pc release was a market test/beta test to see if Square Enix could get away with releasing the game in the current state. The test showed that the game couldn't float on its name alone and thus the ps3 version delayed for a 2nd release so they can get a new review of the game when the ps3 version launches and get better scores. This will lead to not only a large ps3 player serge but also old and new pc players coming back to see what really has changed over the course of the year or however long it takes to make this game to change from a rushed rated 4.0 of a game, to a polished 8 or 9 rated game. So before you tell me to get my facts straight, you better get yours first.

[Abriael]

Who's bashing anything, I'm simply stating what I see and you are the one aggressively defending FFXIV.

Fact is we both play FFXIV we know what the game is capable of, looking at a video and saying oh "that's it, whats the fuss about?" is very short sighted because as far as I know neither of us have access to mess around with the games settings.

Sure I can look at that video and say environments look better, lighting looks better, shadows look better, because I have actual hands on experience with FFXIV.

I'm not the one being bias here lol.

You have actual hands on experience with one side of the comparison but not with the other, exactly like me. And please, let's not play dumb. You're most definitely using the videos to bash FFXIV. It's hilarious that you get all defensive when someone takes those videos and critically assesses their graphical quality and flaws.

Lightning doesn't really look better (especially considering that you still didn't see any lightning outher than full sunshine, while FFXIV's lightning has some of the best dawn/sunset/night effects in the market), the environments don't look any better, especially considering how flat and lacking definition the texture are, not to mention the limited texture mapping.
Shading indeed looks better (with it's flaws and limitations, like the lack of self shading, which is seriously bad looking), but that's ONE element in the whole rendering.

One element doesn't make an engine better than the other by itself, while every other part of the rendering is more detailed on the other engine, including characters, which are the most graphically intensive and the focal point of any MMORPG. It's that simple.

[Jinko]

And please, let's not play dumb. You're most definitely using the videos to bash FFXIV. It's hilarious that you get all defensive when someone takes those videos and critically assesses their graphical quality and flaws.

Oh really, I can tell you now that I have no intention of playing Blade and Soul, Tera on the other hand which tramples this game into the ground both visually and mechanically I will be.

Don't try to make me out to be a hater, that's not to say I'm a fanboy either, I'm just being realistic.

[Abriael]

You have no idea what you are talking about, lets take a look at team fortress 2 and Half life 2 episode 2. Both use the same engine, one has much lower poly count and less detailed textures, both were released at the same time. If you bothered reading what I had to say about the player market base you would understand why mmo developers use the low detailed mesh's for their games using unreal engine 3, let me explain it to you again, this is because the largest market doesn't have high end machines, the main limitation of the graphics for games today is the market base, look at most games these days made for the 360/ps3 over the pc, why you ask? because of the market base on the consoles compared to the smaller base on the pc.

LOL. You're comparing two games that are part of two different *genres*, with extremely different requirements for gameplay, character display and environments.
I'm comparing two MMORPGs. Same genre -> comparison works. Different genre -> Apple to oranges.

But again, if you don't even know the difference between "art style" and graphical detail, there's very little to discuss. As of graphics quality (polycount, texture resolution, texture mapping effects and so forth), FXIV obliterates any MMORPG ever built with the UE3.
You can speculate as much as you want about how much the developers limited themselves, but that's just speculation.

When we'll see another engine producing a game as detailed as FFXIV, the we'll talk, at the moment there's none even on the horizon.

Mind you, you're so off base in talking about "art style" that it isn't even funny. The "art style" is exactly the reason for which i'll play Blade & Soul when it'll be released, as I absolutely adore Hyung Tae Kim's art.
But again, that has nothing to do with the engine.

If you are right about the ps3 version of FFXIV due to the limitation of the hardware, I really don't see this game going anywhere. lets look at it like this if FFXIV were released on both console and pc, at the same time. Both were rated 4.0 I believe Square Enix would have canceled the game. The pc release was a market test/beta test to see if Square Enix could get away with releasing the game in the current state. The test showed that the game couldn't float on its name alone and thus the ps3 version delayed for a 2nd release so they can get a new review of the game when the ps3 version launches and get better scores. This will lead to not only a large ps3 player serge but also old and new pc players coming back to see what really has changed over the course of the year or however long it takes to make this game to change from a rushed rated 4.0 of a game, to a polished 8 or 9 rated game. So before you tell me to get my facts straight, you better get yours first.

Lol. I don't need to get any fact straight. What you just wrote is total baseless personal speculation. What I stated is fact. The PS3 version was delayed way before the PC release, and they said clearly that they did so to solve memory issues it had. That's all there's to it. Fact > Speculation.

Oh really, I can tell you now that I have no intention of playing Blade and Soul, Tera on the other hand which tramples this game into the ground both visually and mechanically I will be.

Don't try to make me out to be a hater, that's not to say I'm a fanboy either, I'm just being realistic.

Bolded the obvious contradiction.

Tera has exactly the same flaws Blade and Soul has, it's easily surpassed by FFXIV in every aspect of character definition, texture effects and texture resolution.
It doesn't even get near FFXIV in overall graphics detail, and shading is the only area where it's better. Again, a single aspect doesn't make a whole engine better (especially considering that both engines include that feature, it's just a matter of implementation).

Tera looks nice, but it's nowhere near a miracle graphics-wise. It's usual korean MMO fare.

By the way, I'm such a "fanboy" that I'm going to play *both* Tera and Blade and Soul (and guild Wars 2, and SWTOR, and a couple others on my radar), lol

[Ava]

I didn't read the whole thread but I don't think the engine is entirely the issue. Using DX9 is a major issue when it comes to performance, but I honestly think that one of the bigger reasons for the blasnd environments, boring animations, etc, is because of PS3 limitations. PS3 has very low memory, it can't load half as much as an average PC. When you see beautiful console games it's because the worlds are fairly closed off and the console doesn't have to load as much, but in a MMO where worlds are completely open, that's a bit of a problem.

I think they intentionally made the environment copy/paste and the environments pretty boring because they were trying to keep the game portable to the PS3. I don't know if this will ever be fixed, I kind of want to say it wont, but who knows. PS3 is powerful for a console but it still can't even compete with just an average $300 PC.

[Allcars]

Having tried to explain all my reasons to you, You seem to not be able to understand the basic understanding of art style and how it ties in with texture detail, poly counts, shading, and all around graphical direction. Crystal tools is a great engine, but it isn't the best choice to use, that was the only point was I making and from what I can tell many others were making. Your head seems to be so high in the clouds you can't see past something so easy for everyone else to see, right now you look moronic and most people will have given up hope on arguing with you. I may have based the ps3 delay on speculation, but that isn't what I was pointing at for fact.

Here is some food for thought, the ps3 was due to be release in march correct? by then the ps3 limitations would have been figured out, if they have been figured out why isn't it release right away instead of waiting for an expansion to release. Much like they did with XI and the ps2.