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

[Elexia]

Actually, majority of KMMOs tend to use the same engine or very early versions of "3rd party" engines, e.g not Unreal, engines like Gamebryo etc.

[indira]

Just because a game come from a certain area of the world doesn't mean it has inferior game engine, it all depends on the developer and the market they are trying to reach

for one is you have 10-20 character/npc on the same screen realtime lighting will crash your pc. you cant tell the difference between the two anyways the tools for baking are impressive now. when you use a engine you use what you need not one just cuz it have everything knowned to man and you going to use only 10% of it.

Second time I see a dumb post by you within one minute. Struggling with a rough/unfinished/buggy/problematic engine means less time for actual game implementation.

dont know what your talking about. a game engine is not ->"means less time for actual game implementation" every game has one its nothing new and it is the it is the game.
game engine = programing that does -> draw engine(anything you see), sound, animation, AI, networking, physics engine, collision and whatever else they want to add or not use one of the above

game design = killing stuff, the way the level is made, raid, party system, classes, streaming level, static level, npc's, monsters, characters.

Actually, majority of KMMOs tend to use the same engine or very early versions of "3rd party" engines, e.g not Unreal, engines like Gamebryo etc.

anything you buy a licence to is 3rd party unless your company makes it.

[gifthorse]

Ahem, there are plenty sandbox games with large open environments on consoles, PS3 included. GTA4, Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption and so forth.

None of those games were made with Crystal Tools.

And while I appreciate that Crystal Tools can render high resolution textures, has dynamic lighting to reflect time of day, intricate character models and extensive normal mapping, the engine itself still has a lot of shortcomings, many of which are responsible for making a less than satisfactory MMO. So even though FFXIV surpasses other MMOs in those respects, sadly that isn't enough to make an overall good MMO.

It just isn't enough.

The biggest problem is data-streaming. FFXIV cannot load the world around the player. And it's no wonder we have a world starved of interactivity and burdened with loading screens and copy-paste.

Anyway, I'd like to see another MMO with system requirements as steep as FFXIV made with the UE3 or CryEngine3.

[Rentahamster]

Should have just licensed Unreal Engine 3. Then they could have gotten to work on the actual content 3 years ago instead of waiting for Crystal Tools to get finished.

[gifthorse]

Should have just licensed Unreal Engine 3. Then they could have gotten to work on the actual content 3 years ago instead of waiting for Crystal Tools to get finished.

CryEngine3 is better, in my opinion. But yeah, same dif.

[Cairdeas]

Hell no to UR3. I'm tired of the UR3 Engine. Every game that runs on it has this weird silverish scratched metal effect on all edges and it hurts my eyes after a while.

[Ilean]

Hell no to UR3. I'm tired of the UR3 Engine. Every game that runs on it has this weird silverish scratched metal effect on all edges and it hurts my eyes after a while.

Doubt that's an engine trait. Care to post an image?

[Seif]

Doubt that's an engine trait. Care to post an image?

Maybe not the scratched metal thing. But U3 games ALWAYS look horribly blurry on bloomy like hell. It makes all the games look alike. I swear to god after playing Batman I felt like I needed a bath after moving in a world that looks like goo. I've been talking about this effect at work and we've come to the conclusion that U3 mip maps everything x10 and that's why they need the blurry dof as otherwise textures would pop all over the place. You can tell this is the case by just looking at Mass Effect 1's inventory screen as things don't have enough time to load and you're looking at low res versions of everything.

[Ilean]

Again, not engine traits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqnZfqjTiM

I don't see scratched silver edges, gooey surfaces or textures popping. Same goes for the mass effect inventory thing, the developers simply decided to let the inventory screen open up and show low-res textures instead of waiting until hi-res ones are fully loaded. My guess is they rather not waste RAM by keeping the hi-res textures loaded at all times, but whatever reasons they had, it doesn't mean the engine couldn't do it.

Maybe not the scratched metal thing. But U3 games ALWAYS look horribly blurry on bloomy like hell. It makes all the games look alike. I swear to god after playing Batman I felt like I needed a bath after moving in a world that looks like goo. I've been talking about this effect at work and we've come to the conclusion that U3 mip maps everything x10 and that's why they need the blurry dof as otherwise textures would pop all over the place. You can tell this is the case by just looking at Mass Effect 1's inventory screen as things don't have enough time to load and you're looking at low res versions of everything.

[gifthorse]

Examples of Korean Indie company MMO with CryEngine 3:

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...1477515112.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...2017402816.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...1197020013.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...2093017008.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...1482785063.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...1528227617.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/full/news/ezna/1.jpg

There is a closed beta for the above game with no NDA in two weeks, so I guess we will expect to see more examples of what an MMO made on an actual engine can do... *shrug*