The fact of the matter is

[Starlord]

That only works for so long :P

Hmmm.. *Deep voice* Your not ready yet Grasshopper! I'm Disappointed in you! *walks away slowly*

[Tsukino]

Unreal 3.

Sure is awesome having everything in a game look like a pile of feces for several seconds before the game decides to load a good texture.

More seriously though, while Crystal Tools might not be the most advanced engine out there in terms of technical specifications, the results SE has produced both times they've used it feature artistry miles ahead of anything that uses Source or Cry3 or whatever. FFXIII may not be a good game, but the graphics blow almost every other console game out of the water, all without the noticeable texture popping or severe clipping issues most games made with third-party engines do. FFXIV may be behind PC games in general, but no other MMO out or soon to be out looks as good, and that's an important distinction.

Just because it doesn't have as many modern features does not mean it isn't the tool best suited to the people who are using it. So far they've shown that it works for them, and it's not a commercial engine so that's all it needs to do.

This all has very little to do with what the OP is saying though. The server dependency is unrelated to the graphics or the engine they were designed with.

[Coldfire]

FFXIII may not be a good game, but the graphics blow almost every other console game out of the water, all without the noticeable texture popping or severe clipping issues most games made with third-party engines do.

Instead we have a ugly border between near and far and models just pop out of nowhere :P

The engine was just not made for MMOs or PC. The lighting is a bad joke as well as the LoD. The high detail of the characters has nothing to do with the engine(which is the only nice graphical feature this game has). The models were obviously done by designers and they did a very nice job. The coders however... oh well <.<

[Aistaraina]

link is busted

Haha. My bad. Accidentally put it in a new album, not my public XIV album.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

Instead we have a ugly border between near and far and models just pop out of nowhere :P

Above pic as proof! This should not happen when running the game at max settings...

[Delsus]

While I do agree what was said in the OP, please tell me i misunderstood you when you said the engine is

the already dated and dying old geezer of an engine

When the engine produces some of the best graphics there are, and only 2 games have been released using crystal tools. The engine is still new which is the problem, while it works flawlessly for the ps3 (see ffxiii) it still needs adaptations to PC, which has been said too many times to count and SE knows about the problem, the issue for them is isolating the few pieces of code that need changing in over 1 million lines of code, you need to work through it all testing absolutly everything. Changes to make the engine more stable isnt like changing a piece of code in a text file it takes time, which is what we need to wait on.

[Aistaraina]

Sure is awesome having everything in a game look like a pile of feces for several seconds before the game decides to load a good texture.

Never had that issue on any modern PC. Unreal3 suffers on consoles, yes.

More seriously though, while Crystal Tools might not be the most advanced engine out there in terms of technical specifications, the results SE has produced both times they've used it feature artistry miles ahead of anything that uses Source or Cry3 or whatever.

Portal 2 and Crysis 2 seriously beg to differ.

FFXIII may not be a good game, but the graphics blow almost every other console game out of the water, all without the noticeable texture popping or severe clipping issues most games made with third-party engines do.

Did you fail to notice how linear, and enclosed the FFXIII environments are? Of course you can render tiny little areas with no texture popping. For god sake, Unity3D can do what that game does.

So far they've shown that it works for them, and it's not a commercial engine so that's all it needs to do.

It does? All I hear is engine limitations and server issues as excuses left and right.

Stop being so narrow minded and bowing down to everything SE does. The engine fails. Period. From a technical, and graphical standpoint.

[Starlord]

Never had that issue on any modern PC. Unreal3 suffers on consoles, yes.



Portal 2 and Crysis 2 seriously beg to differ.



Did you fail to notice how linear, and enclosed the FFXIII environments are? Of course you can render tiny little areas with no texture popping. For god sake, Unity3D can do what that game does.



It does? All I hear is engine limitations and server issues as excuses left and right.

Stop being so narrow minded and bowing down to everything SE does. The engine fails. Period. From a technical, and graphical standpoint.

Someones being a Grouch today O.o Sit back and relax and Enjoy SE's Ride or you can jump off and land on the Trampoline below =)

[Delsus]

Never had that issue on any modern PC. Unreal3 suffers on consoles, yes.



Portal 2 and Crysis 2 seriously beg to differ.



Did you fail to notice how linear, and enclosed the FFXIII environments are? Of course you can render tiny little areas with no texture popping. For god sake, Unity3D can do what that game does.



It does? All I hear is engine limitations and server issues as excuses left and right.

Stop being so narrow minded and bowing down to everything SE does. The engine fails. Period. From a technical, and graphical standpoint.

The linear story and areas werent because of the engine in ffxiii, they were because loads had to be cut out because 360 uses dvds and they would have been looking at about 6 disks, to play ffxiii, did you see any of the problems we are having in ffxiv, on gran pulse? because that was a large open area, if not everything you say about crystal tools failing period holds no merit.

[Kyant]

Source.
Unreal 3.
CryEngine 3.
Avalanche 2.0.
Frostbite 2.0.

There are enough engines out there that make Crystal Tools look like a kids toy.

And your above statement is seriously flawed. Take a look at this screenshot.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink
Notice the difference in the rocks just in front of me, and the sidewalk on the right. It's pretty clear to me it cannot render large sections with high resolution textures. It has a serious pop in effect due to an apparent lack of mipmap support.

In a later post the link was changed to this... which works: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink


Let me get out my magnifying glass... wait... is that it? hmm... no. I still don't see anything. I seriously have know idea what you are talking about. The picture looks fine to me. When were graphics the deciding factor for a game? If you think that they are then get out. Also, if you were standing (in real life, mind you) on top of a bridge, and you looked down at something 300 or 400 feet away, then of course you wouldn't see it as clear as something right in front of you. You people seem to think that no matter where something is, you should be able to see every detail there is, and you can't. Not in life and not in FFXIV.

Graphics are second to gameplay and story. The only reason you people are upset is because you hyped up the game to be something that it wasn't. You let your imagination get away from you.

A lot of you are citing other games that have better graphics and things, but to the best of my knowledge those were not MMOs. Graphics are easier on games that are single player or multiplayer with max of what? 32 people? In an MMO with hundreds of people, it is more difficult to do graphics and I think SE did a great job. No one complained about FFXI or WoW's lack in graphics before...

As for the delay problem, btw, I have noticable delay while on my laptop, but not while on my desktop. My desktop is much more powerful than my laptop, so I want to say that the hardware on your computer might be causing lag in addition to the normal lag. Probably because there is a lot of information going through the CPU and slower computers can't handle it as well... or something... but if you are maxing out your graphics and have lag, I suggest putting them down a notch and I think it will help reduce the lag, it did for me.

[Davorok]

FFXI 0n PS2 = Gimped PC graphics & gameplay experience.

FFXIV on PS3 = Gimped PC graphics & gameplay experience.

PC's will always outpace Consoles and so any Cross-Platform games will always be gimped for PC.