[Request]: Foliage Reaction

[Deithwen]

An Armchair Developer. The best kind.

First point, yes. Almost all art for any game is created at a far higher resolution than what ever makes it into the game. And then you ruin your previous true statement with a false one.
Creating textures is a lot more involved than firing up Paint and adding more pixels. You're asking them to retexture every single visible surface in the game. That's a tremendous amount of work. Only someone who has never created textures for a game could possibly assume that the work is "zero effort". Are you even aware of how much a line like that is a slap in the face to the artists responsible for creating them? Jeez.

And you're correct. A minor tweak to improved textures wont suddenly destroy the game.

Once again, You're spewing opinion like its fact. Everything the game renders on your screen impacts your fps. Everything. That's why there are so many options to turn down all of those graphical options.

You want to know what else wasn't up to FFXIV 1.0s standards? Computers. Yessir, If you take off those rose tinted goggles and did some basic research you would know that while yes, XIV 1.0 looked amazing, It had this awful tendency to run like complete garbage and/or melt your PC in the attempt. Kind of like another MMO that pushed its visuals too far.. I'm sensing a pattern here.

Going forward into Shadowbringers and beyond will see zones and gear looking better than previous versions content, older hardware will no longer be supported which allows the devs to build those improved visuals from the start. This is to be expected, but demanding they retexture the entirety of the game because you're overly sensitive about texture resolutions is simply asking too much.

Also, some homework for you. Go do some proper research into why 'Minimum System Specs' exist in games.

Armchair developer, sure.

I'm not asking them to retexture everything, as I clearly said : " It wouldn't cost anything to the dev team to make all new textures at high quality", by that I mean the new content, not the existing one. They could just retexture the important characters, like Hien or Raubahn on whom the lower quality is clearly visible. Read more carefully.

Also for your information, textures are loaded in the Ram of your GPU. Increased resolution for textures only won't result in FPS drops, unless your card is out of Vram, then the textures are loaded in the RAM directly, which is slower and will impact (greatly) your FPS.

Computers now are much more powerfull than when 1.0 was realeased, and the bad performances at the time where not due to textures quality, but the crazy amount of polygons on certain assets (the famous flower pot) among other things, and the bad choice of the cristal tool engine (originally used for FF13) for a MMO which needs to display many more assets and characters (+open world, hence the long corridors to hide the loadings).

Texture quality is not expected to be improved in shadowbringers, as Yoshiad said during the Fanfest.

Minimum specs exist and I don't see how a "enable high res textures" option would impact that. This would affect the recommended settings.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Armchair developer, sure.

I'm not asking them to retexture everything, as I clearly said : " It wouldn't cost anything to the dev team to make all new textures at high quality", by that I mean the new content, not the existing one. They could just retexture the important characters, like Hien or Raubahn on whom the lower quality is clearly visible. Read more carefully.

Also for your information, textures are loaded in the Ram of your GPU. Increased resolution for textures only won't result in FPS drops, unless your card is out of Vram, then the textures are loaded in the RAM directly, which is slower and will impact (greatly) your FPS.

Computers now are much more powerfull than when 1.0 was realeased, and the bad performances at the time where not due to textures quality, but the crazy amount of polygons on certain assets (the famous flower pot), and the bad choice of the cristal tool engine (originally used for FF13) for a MMO which needs to display many more assets and characters (+open world, hence the long corridors to hide the loadings).

Texture quality is not expected to be improved in shadowbringers, as Yoshiad said during the Fanfest.

Minimum specs exist and I don't see how a "enable high res textures" option would impact that. This would affect the recommended settings.

I believe they stated at one point they did not have higher res textures sitting on their systems anywhere, what we have is what they have. I don't remember if it was in a live letter or interview tho, and I can't seem to find the source, so take this with a grain of salt.

[Deithwen]

I believe they stated at one point they did not have higher res textures sitting on their systems anywhere, what we have is what they have. I don't remember if it was in a live letter or interview tho, and I can't seem to find the source, so take this with a grain of salt.

I also think they said something like this, but I'm not sure either. This is why I said they should work on higher res textures for the upcoming content, and downgrade them to offer more choice to the lower end computers instead of creating lower res textures from the start.

[Berethos]

Exactly. It's not a lack of ability, it's a lack of willingness, but that doesn't sound as good.

Or a lack of it being high enough as a priority (if it's even on the list of things players want that they know about and look into - Husain here might be the first I've seen actually make an official request for it).

So if it to be done, it has to be fit into a development timeline, which means it competes with other potential additions for finite dev time.

[Berethos]

by that I mean the new content, not the existing one.

It needs to be an all or nothing thing.

Consider how jarring it is to have some of the newest higher resolution gear/mounts/items in WoW paired with earlier zones and such - it honestly looks terrible.

[Deithwen]

It needs to be an all or nothing thing.

Consider how jarring it is to have some of the newest higher resolution gear/mounts/items in WoW paired with earlier zones and such - it honestly looks terrible.

But then it would take too much time to do so, because I think the Dev team doesn't have high res textures for the existing stuff at the moment. This would take too much time to redo them all. So I'd rather have at least the newer content with a high res option than nothing at all.

[kikix12]

In gaming, textures are usually created at high resolution (top quality) then downgraded (which is an automated process).

Too bad, they already said that the game textures are made in low quality. It was a choice they specifically made to save money and most likely will continue to do so, as that's where their priorities lie.

It wouldn't cost anything to the dev team to make all new textures at high quality, and offer a preset in the options. It's almost a zero effort improvement.

And the above gives you the idea as to why you are wrong on this part. I don't know where you get the idea that creating something in higher quality is "free", but it's simply wrong.

At BEST, creating something in a higher resolution is low-effort. It's just a matter of changing the setting for resolution in whatever program you use and voila. That line you drew?! Instead of being made from 8 pixels it's made from 32.

However, you are gravely mistaken if you think that have no actual costs associated with it. Textures need to actually be rendered in the studio as part of their making process. The higher the resolution the longer it takes. The longer it takes the more electricity is used and the less OTHER textures you can render in the same time frame. The less textures you can make in a given time frame, the later you can sell the product.

And this is just for resolution, it's not even "quality", just a small part of it. So small, in fact, that most people won't see the difference between Ultra HD and 4K, many people won't see the difference between HD and 4K and some people won't even see the difference between older standards of resolution and 4K (but yes, those people have very poor eyesight).

Resolution is just part of the equation. Details, shading, lighting, coloring...these are just few parts far more important where "quality" is concerned. A lower resolution image with superior details, better colored, shaded etc will look way better than a higher resolution with other aspects being mediocre. No matter how good of an eyesight you have. Don't believe me?! Go and look for whatever fan art you're interested in. You'll find tons of low quality images with ~1920X1080 resolution that look meh, with tons of high quality images with, let's say, ~1366X768 resolution. But that quality came at the cost of work (and skills). Making higher quality images is very much costly. Otherwise EVERYONE would make highest quality textures possible and give automatically down-scaled textures as an option for lower-end computers.

[Deithwen]

Yup if you read my posts properly instead of nitpicking a few sentences here and there you might have avoided missing my point.

I won't bother citing myself, just a hint for you : read the post just above yours.

Also about textures :





Dont tell me this can not be improved easily.

I'm not talking about ultra HD vs 4k difference. You're clearly off topic here.
I'm not talking about shaders, not coloring etc.
I was talking strictly about resolution.


Is it that hard to understand what I'm talking about ?

[Sylve]

Armchair developer, sure.

I'm not asking them to retexture everything, as I clearly said : " It wouldn't cost anything to the dev team to make all new textures at high quality", by that I mean the new content, not the existing one. They could just retexture the important characters, like Hien or Raubahn on whom the lower quality is clearly visible. Read more carefully.

Also for your information, textures are loaded in the Ram of your GPU. Increased resolution for textures only won't result in FPS drops, unless your card is out of Vram, then the textures are loaded in the RAM directly, which is slower and will impact (greatly) your FPS.

Computers now are much more powerfull than when 1.0 was realeased, and the bad performances at the time where not due to textures quality, but the crazy amount of polygons on certain assets (the famous flower pot) among other things, and the bad choice of the cristal tool engine (originally used for FF13) for a MMO which needs to display many more assets and characters (+open world, hence the long corridors to hide the loadings).

Texture quality is not expected to be improved in shadowbringers, as Yoshiad said during the Fanfest.

Minimum specs exist and I don't see how a "enable high res textures" option would impact that. This would affect the recommended settings.

I called you an armchair developer because you are demonstrating a clear lack of knowledge about how development works.
When they create zones, they use previously created assets unless they need something they did not already have. The rocks, trees and even the NPCs and monsters. Everything is reused when making new zones and content. You are actually asking them to create brand new textures for those older assets that they're using to create the new zones.
During the story when we get the revamped appearances for the Scions, that wasn't merely a story element, That was the developers creating new assets for existing characters at higher quality than their originals. This is most clearly seen with the Twins.
This is what I mean when I said you were asking them to retexture the whole game.

And I take particular umbrage at this line:

" It wouldn't cost anything to the dev team to make all new textures at high quality"

As I have friends who are graphics designers and you are essentially flipping off the work they and others with their artwork related roles do as being zero effort and 'free'. You seem to be forgetting that textures and models are created by real people who put real hours into those pieces. That work takes them away from creating new things.

Also, Sure. Textures get loaded into the vRAM to be used. But it kinda has to be loaded from the vRAM so you can see it. Higher resolutions are larger sizes, requiring not just RAM capacity but speed. So yes, using higher resolution textures does impact FPS. The speed at which textures are loaded from memory and displayed to you is part of the engines optimization, but the RAM speed plays a role too. When the resolutions are too high, you get issues like walls and characters having no textures for a second or two as the RAM desperately tries to load what you need for that scene. Ironically, BDO once again is the best example. Even when using their lowest presets possible, it still takes a second for faces to load when talking to quest givers. Often appearing as a shapeless mass until the game catches up.

I never said it shouldn't or couldn't be done. I'm irritated at your complete lack of understanding regarding textures and how they're made and used.

[SturmChurro]

It needs to be an all or nothing thing.

Consider how jarring it is to have some of the newest higher resolution gear/mounts/items in WoW paired with earlier zones and such - it honestly looks terrible.

Yeah, I never got too much into WoW, but when I did play that was for sure really jarring. Moreso zones and stuff, it's really weird.