Why did they changed this from version 1.0 ?

[Naraku_Diabolos]

I didn't even play 1.0, but from what I've seen in screenshots and videos, I want those areas. ARR areas are NOT well crafted. They're miserable, boring, lifeless, and bland. There's no sense of adventure. Hop on your chocobo and get to ANYWHERE you want in a zone in 2 minutes or less. That's not an adventure.

Going back to FFXI. Some of my fondest memories of FFXI was just getting lost in Xarcabard for hours. That can never happen in ARR, and I hate it. I want it to be possible to get lost. I want there to be a snowstorm so intense that it's hard to see where I'm going.

NO, the areas in 1.0 were absolutely horrible. It took 9 minutes running from Gridania (the city itself) to the first Camp to the west of the city...ON FOOT, 9 minutes! With Chocobo, it was 5. The areas were VERY bland; everything looked the same, and I hated it. ARR is well crafted and a lot of the people who did work on FFXI helped with ARR's development, such as the outdoor area zones. Seriously, La Noscea is just as well-crafted as Rolanberry Fields with the scenery. ARR has more life than 1.0 ever had in the field zones, I'm serious. 1.0 looked like a lunar landscape with some foliage here and there, ARR is not like that.

At the time with FFXI, they had the assets to make big areas because the graphics were not cutting edge at that time. Plus they could reuse some assets (such as the towers in Sarutabaruta, the rivers there, etc.) to save some time.

[Saziel]

NO, the areas in 1.0 were absolutely horrible. It took 9 minutes running from Gridania (the city itself) to the first Camp to the west of the city...ON FOOT, 9 minutes! With Chocobo, it was 5. The areas were VERY bland; everything looked the same, and I hated it. ARR is well crafted and a lot of the people who did work on FFXI helped with ARR's development, such as the outdoor area zones. Seriously, La Noscea is just as well-crafted as Rolanberry Fields with the scenery. ARR has more life than 1.0 ever had in the field zones, I'm serious. 1.0 looked like a lunar landscape with some foliage here and there, ARR is not like that.

At the time with FFXI, they had the assets to make big areas because the graphics were not cutting edge at that time. Plus they could reuse some assets (such as the towers in Sarutabaruta, the rivers there, etc.) to save some time.

Are you suggesting ARR's graphics are cutting edge? The game looks like plastic.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Are you suggesting ARR's graphics are cutting edge? The game looks like plastic.

It has more life and is more believable than 1.0 ever was. Go to Coerthas and look at the snowdrifts there. Trees shed heavy snowfall just like in real life. I did not see any form of realism in 1.0's landscapes. 1.0 was almost like a lunar landscape with foliage (especially La Noscea). I survived 1.0's launch and stuck to it because I believed FFXIV could do better in it's re-launch. The landscape in ARR has as much magic as FFXI's. 1.0's landscape lacked soul and life. Period.

[Xerich]

Are you suggesting ARR's graphics are cutting edge? The game looks like plastic.

The graphics may not be cutting edge, but the tech that is in the game is pretty impressive for an MMO.

The world looks beautiful with it's art style.

Then again, you're probably the type that likes to stare at a wall texture and zoom in 200% to complain there aren't enough bump maps.

[Saziel]

The graphics may not be cutting edge, but the tech that is in the game is pretty impressive for an MMO.

The world looks beautiful with it's art style.

Then again, you're probably the type that likes to stare at a wall texture and zoom in 200% to complain there aren't enough bump maps.

No idea what bump maps are.

[Magis]

No idea what bump maps are.

Bump maps, or normal maps are special textures that hold normal vectors. Instead of each pixel being RGB being a color, each pixel holds a XYZ coordinate for the normal. An example:

http://cdn.wolfire.com/blog/normalma...mapcompare.jpg

or from someones glitched FFXIV (not suppose to happen, but here is an example)

http://i.imgur.com/yrUJGd0.jpg

So what does this help you with? Well "diffuse lighting" (light from a light source onto a surface, that get's bounced off) is the dot product between a normal vector and the light vector, times whatever color was sampled from your actual texture (to lighten/darken it). Basically... the larger the angle between the two vectors, the darker it becomes (it's not facing the light), and the smaller, the brighter. Normally the normal vector is perpendicular to the surface, BUT you can fake that normal, and save it into a texture; the bump/normal map. So now when it is fed into a light shader, the texture begins shading itself even though you didn't add any polygons! An example is the stitching on our armor or belt buckles. The most common use is brick and stone walls.