Shocker

[Teraluna]

Well, i am not saying it was better. Just that from videos on youtube, it appears to look better graphically, and its cutscenes - and ive played through the entire 1-50 storyline in ARR - appear to have more charm, more soul and more 'feels' to them than what is in this iteration.

I did play it. Bought the original even after submitting my multi-page beta review outlining all the issues. It was quite simply, the worst UI I have ever experienced on a pc. User unfriendly doesn't come near it. It was correctly voted worst mmo of the year. [Shudder]

[rabbitzero]

graphics were dumbed down to let people with old computers play.
combat was changed to be more WoW like.

I had a pretty powerful computer at launch, couple months old, but top of the line graphics card. I couldn't get over 15 fps most of the time, and that's with lowered settings. Every other game i played i could max out and get smooth fps. Don't even get me started on not having a hardware mouse for a while. :P

The textures seem better back then if my memory serves, could be wrong though. I did like how you got a combat bit right away, instead of how it is now where it's talk, walk, talk, walk, etc for so long.

There is a reason they scrapped it and now have ARR though, for the good that there was, the bad far outweighed it.

[BlazeChronic]

1.0 wasn't even that bad, I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Yes, at first, there were no chocobos. There was no real story. There were no NMs, and no end-game...

But the game was deep and gratifying, like FFXI. Things took effort, and when you leveled up, people actually congratulated you, because it was an accomplishment. (again, like in XI). The UI was terrible, sure. But I play a game for playing the game, not screwing around in the menus and complaining about it. The fatigue system was 'meh' ... I prefer a rested exp reward system over one that hurts the hardcores, I guess... I stayed up until the first patch that had NMs, and really I'm kicking myself in the arse that I didn't stay for 1.23.

I really like ARR, and I disagree with OP, as I think ARR really looks beautiful, and OP may just have an underperforming PC/GPU. But I do think 1.0 was more aesthetically pleasing. 1.0 and ARR are both leaps and bounds prettier than GW2 and SWToR, those are the only 2 MMOs I've played in the past few years. Better than Aion too, and WoW I've only seen videos but that game looks like a cartoon.

I have the highest possible graphics settings. The settings do NOT GO ANY HIGHER.

Buuut, you said it yourself, you didn't play 1.0. So you have no way of knowing. You just watched videos on the internet. Sorry I bruised your little internet ego.



EDIT @ Kiri: you can meme-laugh all you want. 1.0 took time and dedication, leves were useful, exp party grinding was a thing. This game is a joke for casuals, you can go 1-50 by pressing one button. Not deep. Not gratifying. And I'm not talking about getting pleveled in 1.0.

[mouseno4]

I had a pretty powerful computer at launch, couple months old, but top of the line graphics card. I couldn't get over 15 fps most of the time, and that's with lowered settings. Every other game i played i could max out and get smooth fps. Don't even get me started on not having a hardware mouse for a while. :P

The textures seem better back then if my memory serves, could be wrong though. I did like how you got a combat bit right away, instead of how it is now where it's talk, walk, talk, walk, etc for so long.

There is a reason they scrapped it and now have ARR though, for the good that there was, the bad far outweighed it.

I understand and fully appreciate that. On one hand i would like to have known what it was really like, but on the other hand... i would rather not have to slog through that.

1.0 wasn't even that bad, I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Yes, at first, there were no chocobos. There was no real story. There were no NMs, and no end-game...

But the game was deep and gratifying, like FFXI. Things took effort, and when you leveled up, people actually congratulated you, because it was an accomplishment. (again, like in XI). The UI was terrible, sure. But I play a game for playing the game, not screwing around in the menus and complaining about it. The fatigue system was 'meh' ... I prefer a rested exp reward system over one that hurts the hardcores, I guess... I stayed up until the first patch that had NMs, and really I'm kicking myself in the arse that I didn't stay for 1.23.

I really like ARR, and I disagree with OP, as I think ARR really looks beautiful, and OP may just have an underperforming PC/GPU. But I do think 1.0 was more aesthetically pleasing. 1.0 and ARR are both leaps and bounds prettier than GW2 and SWToR, those are the only 2 MMOs I've played in the past few years. Better than Aion too, and WoW I've only seen videos but that game looks like a cartoon.

I have the highest possible graphics settings. The settings do NOT GO ANY HIGHER.

[Psion]

People put way too much importance on graphics. The truth is, graphics mean diddly-squat. What matters isn't graphics, it's aesthetics. The latter is far more important to immersion. If the game has clashing styles, then no matter how detailed the models are, it won't look like anything but a very detailed pile of dung. This was in fact, 1.0's biggest failing with, as others have already pointed out, landscapes that were pretty much copy-pasted terrain everywhere. I remember finding a mesa in thanalan 1.0, finding you could go inside it, and going "oh, wow, this is neat". Then I saw another mesa 500 yalms away... that was exactly the same. and another. and another.


2.0 rectified this, BIG TIME. I remember Yoshi-p saying there would be around 3 major "points of interest" in each zone, but in reality, each zone i've gone through has had dozons, from the sylphlands, to urths font, to the wanderer's palace entrance, to the various hamlets, to the burning wall.... the list goes on and on. Honestly, even ffxi's zones don't hold a candle to ffxiv as far as diversity goes, although I doubt even 1.0's black shroud can hold a candle to the convolted pathways of the yuhtunga/yhoatar jungles.

Graphics only need to be sharp enough in a game for information to be conveyed in a clear manner, and considering we did just fine playing games like ffvi without issues, it doesn't take much to do so. Aesthetics are the true soul of a game, conveying it's story using art styles, and you can do so regardless of whether your game is ffxiv, or something low key graphics wise, such as Patapon.

[PSxpert2011]

Yup, the graphic was way better but at what price?

Tanaka was tough as nails when designing XIV(primarily for anti-RMT measures) and after heavy-critique and complaining, the system had gone through revisions and modifications but the graphics... damn! Even my PC (less than $1K worth) was having issues staying connected and crashing...

I adapted to alot of changes for the better but there wasn't any graphical tuning, you ether sucked it up of spend more on moding your PC. Then, there was the server instability, my gawds! Crash after crash will trying to learn the system... (sigh)

[Conradus]

Animation lock?

You know how moving while casting cancels your spell? In 1.x you just couldn't move while you were casting. AoEs you have to dodge weren't as omnipresent as they are in 2.0, but there were still a lot of boss fights you had to be very careful when you cast or else you'd be locked in place while an AoE came in to bash your brains out. In the hard Ifrit fight after the first stage, you had to wait until Ifrit had just done a special move to cast, and then you'd only cast one spell, because that's how long the safety window was. He spammed those special moves, so you had a lot of opportunities to cast, but you had to do it at the right point.

[Pseudopsia]

Animation lock?

This was the thing I hated most about 1.0. It was brutal because you couldn't move your character till the full animation is complete. I got sick of watching the combat log to time my attacks. I wouldn't be playing 2.0 if that was still here.

[Andrien]

1.0 and everything about it was a big pile of stinky copy pasted garbage.

[Lisotte]

The game undoubtedly did look pretty... but only if you had a supercomputer developed by NASA.

I do miss the font in 1.0 though; this new sci-fi stuff isn't as good, and detracts from the high fantasy atmosphere.