Limitations

[Colorful]

That's the thing, though: The devs DON'T blame these things on PS3. The PLAYERS do.

I challenge you to find a dev announcement that we won't be getting such-and-such feature because of PS3 limitations. Oh, you MIGHT find one or two (such as the promised "add on" capability - but PS4 is limiting us just as much on that count) - but not the torrent of features that players assume (such as the ones in the first post).

Players have been jumping to conclusions about PS3 limitations for a long, long time - and, in almost every case, these assumptions are wrong, and PS3 limitations were NOT what was holding us back from getting them. Instead, it's things like server latency, player demand vs cost to implement, so on and so forth.

The PS4 isn't limiting the availability of an official parser, the community is. I still don't see why people are against it in extreme party finder content, as a flag the leader can set.

Yoshi-P did mention that they wanted to implement large scale FATEs where you'd fly onto the back of a beast and fight it with a huge amount of players but couldn't do so due to the PS3, very different from a parser as a large scale FATE like that would create new and exciting gameplay that's limited by the PS3. There's also armour textures, does anyone believe those are restricted by the PS4 when it can run the Witcher 3 and FFXV? Anyone remember the scene with Estinien and they zoomed into his shoulder only to reveal the PS2 era texture work on the "attachment" (trying not to spoil anything)? They could make separate texture packs for all armour sets depending on your platform, but that's a lot of work to consider especially with for a onetime close in scene. I do recall the PS3 limiting a glamour log as Yoshi-P stated that the PS3 couldn't load so much items in a listing, but that was most likely an excuse as is the multi-dye system being restricted by the PS4.

There's the cities being split in two zones, loading screens in some raids and dungeons, the lack of a number on the TP bar, lack of small detail in the over world (crates, grass, little objects, etc.) because those can't be disabled on a per system basis without a lot of work. A great example of the difference between platforms would be the difference between Dark Souls 2 and 3, Dark Souls 2 is quite bare on all platforms while 3 is filled to the brim with an immense amount of detail. All the flooring is visibly modeled and not a flat texture or an illusion with parallax occlusion mapping, there's breakable objects everywhere, highly detailed cloth physics and blood splatter and so on. You're definitely right about those small things being restricted by cost of implementation, but PS3 limitations and costs aren't exclusive.

Will it turn FFXIV into FFXV? No, but small changes would be appreciated. While I didn't play FFXI, I'd rather FFXIV not fall into the same trap and end up stagnating while slowly bleeding subscribers. WoW wouldn't be where it is today without constant updating of mechanics and visual fidelity and hopefully with the PS3 support being dropped we can get those eventual improvements.

It's very easy to do open world content...all yoshida has to do is turn away from his WoW monitor and look at XI...talk to XI's devs if he's unsure how to proceed... believe me...after 14yrs I know they have a clue.

Funnily enough, WoW: Legion has great open world content that's similar to FATEs but fun and interesting. I see people in the open world constantly and you can do the "FATEs" together without grouping up even. Unfortunately, Yoshi-P seems to take WoW's terrible and cheap ideas (time filler content such as garrisons) and ignore the good ones as they're too costly to implement. As for the FFXI team, I believe a lot of them do work for Yoshi-P now.

[LineageRazor]

The PS4 isn't limiting the availability of an official parser, the community is. I still don't see why people are against it in extreme party finder content, as a flag the leader can set.

I wasn't speaking of parsers, but of add-ons in general, of which parsers are just one example. And it was my understanding that SE won't implement this because there is no support for it on Playstation Network, which would be required to ensure that add-on capability were equal between the PC and Console versions. This is why I listed it as an example of "console limitations"

Yoshi-P did mention that they wanted to implement large scale FATEs where you'd fly onto the back of a beast and fight it with a huge amount of players but couldn't do so due to the PS3, very different from a parser as a large scale FATE like that would create new and exciting gameplay that's limited by the PS3. There's also armour textures, does anyone believe those are restricted by the PS4 when it can run the Witcher 3 and FFXV? Anyone remember the scene with Estinien and they zoomed into his shoulder only to reveal the PS2 era texture work on the "attachment" (trying not to spoil anything)? They could make separate texture packs for all armour sets depending on your platform, but that's a lot of work to consider especially with for a onetime close in scene. I do recall the PS3 limiting a glamour log as Yoshi-P stated that the PS3 couldn't load so much items in a listing, but that was most likely an excuse as is the multi-dye system being restricted by the PS4.

The FATE thing, I haven't heard - that could be an example of the "one or two" exceptions I mentioned (and which the community latched onto as an excuse to blame EVERYTHING on PS3). Bear in mind, though, that Yoshi-P has promised a lot of things that he was not able to follow through on, not because of console limitations, but development limitations. Housing being the most infamous example. He's not always the best at keeping what he'd LIKE to see happen within the limitations of what's actually feasible to develop.

The textures thing, I don't buy one bit. DOWNgrading a texture is beyond easy; if SE wanted HQ textures for PS4 and PC, we'd have them, and PS3 would have a lesser version. And, in this case, this is purely player speculation (you being the player speculating, in this case). No dev or Yoshi-P has stepped forward claiming PS3 limitations for this. The same goes for all of the other examples you listed - none of them are more than player speculation as to why we don't have these things, and for many, it is natural to blame PS3, when it is not actually responsible in the least.

[Colorful]

I wasn't speaking of parsers, but of add-ons in general, of which parsers are just one example.

As far as I know addons are still in the works, but planned to only be used for extensive UI customisation rather than addons you'd find in WoW such as DBM or Recount. There's no advantages on PC players so console limitations haven't been used as an excuse, not yet anyway.

The FATE thing, I haven't heard - that could be an example of the "one or two" exceptions I mentioned (and which the community latched onto as an excuse to blame EVERYTHING on PS3). Bear in mind, though, that Yoshi-P has promised a lot of things that he was not able to follow through on, not because of console limitations, but development limitations. Housing being the most infamous example. He's not always the best at keeping what he'd LIKE to see happen within the limitations of what's actually feasible to develop.

Yoshida does tend to promise a lot and not follow through with some things, but I don't think a large scale FATE would be as difficult to implement as a glamour log, addon API, hair physics or multiple dyes on the same piece of gear. Seems more likely that it's limited by the PS3's lack of RAM or CPU limitations in handling a large amount of players in one zone along with massive creature.

I think people need to remember how dated the PS3 is, all the limitations I threw out there are speculation yes, but they're not baseless speculation. Saying it's speculation doesn't mean it doesn't hold some merit. The PS3 has 256MB of RAM and then another 256MB of VRAM, it's a miracle that they managed to get FFXIV running on it to begin with, and it's clear that they've utilised 100% of its resources. It runs at sub 30 FPS in towns, while some would argue that splitting the cities in two sections is design choice its clear that's not the case. Running a major city with many people running around on its CPU and limited RAM would be like attempting to run Star Citizen PU Alpha on a system with less than 4GB of VRAM. It's not a design choice that they scrapped FFXV on the PS3 and moved onto the PS4, nor is it a cost cutting measure. it's because the console is dated and would limit the game severely and that's not speculation.

The textures thing, I don't buy one bit. DOWNgrading a texture is beyond easy; if SE wanted HQ textures for PS4 and PC, we'd have them, and PS3 would have a lesser version.

Downgrading a texture is easy, but we have no idea how easy managing 2-3 versions is and from what SE has said the engine they're using is especially difficult to work with (which is why KH3 and FFVII HD aren't going to be using it). Whether that applies to the cut down engine FFXIV is using, well it's as you said, speculation. Now that the PS3 has been dropped, they no longer need to cater to the lowest tier of system. If they do implement poor quality textures we'll know something is up, but really there's no excuse for it anymore.

Yoshi-P could do absolutely nothing and let the game rot like they did with FFXI, or they could continually improve it by upgrading the requirements every expansion pack, including new modern features to compete with up and coming MMORPGs and do the occasional overhaul where needed as WoW does. All that matters is that wouldn't of been possible with the PS3 attached, just as current raids in WoW or areas like Suramar wouldn't run low end systems that could run Vanilla WoW.