Hair texture quality, among other texture qualities.

[basketofseals]

Yup. If the PS3 is ever left behind I imagine there'll be a decent increase in visual quality, but until then we're kind of stuck.

The dream is that, eventually, max settings will be back to 1.0 quality.

People like to drum up the 1.0 quality, but it was honestly in a lot of really unnecessary and unnoticeable places. There was the particularly notable instance of potted plants having more polygons than player characters.

[Lanceton]

to me, ridding of these 'unnecessary' stuff made the game feels like wow-level graphics, taking the plants you mentioned about for example, they're now just 'cards' stacked together
FF's always about graphic fidelity, and 2.0 got a downgrade on that.
the only graphic 'flaw' I could remember in 1.0 was the 2 tiered texture for distant terrain.. it switched instantly to lower rez texture at like I dunno 1000 yard or so distance
if they made that switch a blend-in transition it'd be flawless

[basketofseals]

to me, ridding of these 'unnecessary' stuff made the game feels like wow-level graphics, taking the plants you mentioned about for example, they're now just 'cards' stacked together
FF's always about graphic fidelity, and 2.0 got a downgrade on that.
the only graphic 'flaw' I could remember in 1.0 was the 2 tiered texture for distant terrain.. it switched instantly to lower rez texture at like I dunno 1000 yard or so distance
if they made that switch a blend-in transition it'd be flawless

It's "unnecessary" because those resources that were spent fine-detailing those plants could have been better spent elsewhere. Most notably it was needed in map details because 1.0 maps were about 12 set pieces per country that were simply copy pasted ad nauseum. Rather than fancy plants, I'd rather see more clothes/armor/hair.

[Gramul]

People like to drum up the 1.0 quality, but it was honestly in a lot of really unnecessary and unnoticeable places. There was the particularly notable instance of potted plants having more polygons than player characters.

Is that level of detail not something to strive for? Especially in our own characters?
And it's not like they'd have to remove the lower quality assets. That should still be available for lower end computers.

[raelgun]

Is that level of detail not something to strive for? Especially in our own characters?
And it's not like they'd have to remove the lower quality assets. That should still be available for lower end computers.

As much as I like fidelity, I have a system that allows me to crank up the settings to 11 here, most people do not have strong machines, it is fine to have settings for them so their systems can handle it, this is where the problem lies, many people that play FF14 are obsessed with graphics and will crank up the settings beyond acceptable performance and they will take these settings into group content and will be 'lagging' all over the place, I for one find this unacceptable as people who play FF14 don't seem to play within reason.

[Gramul]

As much as I like fidelity, I have a system that allows me to crank up the settings to 11 here, most people do not have strong machines, it is fine to have settings for them so their systems can handle it, this is where the problem lies, many people that play FF14 are obsessed with graphics and will crank up the settings beyond acceptable performance and they will take these settings into group content and will be 'lagging' all over the place, I for one find this unacceptable as people who play FF14 don't seem to play within reason.

People can do that now.
It's called the PS3.

Restricting better textures because some people might ruin their frame rate with it and bring their poor performance into groups seems like a really watery counterargument to me. If they're foolish enough to play in conditions where it hurts their ability to play, they probably aren't very good players anyway.