Why do so many textures look like they are from a ps2 game?

[Tanro]

Textures aside, sure this isn't just a resolution issue or perhaps you need to make your dialog boxes bigger.

Guess you are unfamiliar with braille.

[Tanro]

Never had a problem with this honestly. It's expected for ARR content to have much more pixalated issues when compared to the more recent SB, but still doesn't bother me. To each their own though.

Hien's Jacket is one of the worst offenders. The texture looks like it was made in the late 90s.

[KageTokage]

I feel like XIV mostly has reached a good compromise with its graphics, because textures are easily the most taxing thing for a GPU to deal with. They toned it back a ton from 1.0 specifically to make the game more accessible.

But yeah, there are some textures that look pretty bad even from a distance. Most of them look pretty nice as long as you aren't at max zoom.

[Berethos]

Its a joke on how everything is hilariously pixelated especially when they take the time to make cutscenes were you zoom into things to be “awe’d” by them. Earliest example of this would be one of the first GLA quests.

I think you've mistaken why they zoom in on something in scenes.

It's not to impress you, not by any stretch of the imagination. It's because whatever they are focusing on is meant to be exactly that - the visual focus for a narrative reason. They aren't saying "this looks awesome, look closely at all 5 pixels it has" they are saying "this stuff is 'important' to what is going on in this scene right now" (relative levels of importance, obviously - early important stuff won't be all that important, but in the context of the scene in which it appears they are generally the focus of the narrative, at least briefly).

[LalaRu]

Yet another thread braggin' about playing 4K.

The graphic details "issues" were extremely pointed up by Yoshida himself at least a couple times, when he were asked about "tune up" the game for newer hardware (pc and console too). The answer is simple: the graphics quality is decided at start, then the game follows it for all its life. Right now, there are so much graphic assets in the game, that tuning up them will be a huge cost, so huge that this possibility has been definitely dismissed by the team.

Scaling a graphic asset down, you can do that easily, but scaling up, you need a lot of work. Worse, you need redo it completely.

A "better" graphic maybe can come with Final Fantasy XX online.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

XIV graphics have aged terrible. And that PS3 optimizations are to blame, we will forever feel the drag of that console, and the PS4.
Is that simple: FFXIV will always screw PC gamers in favor of keeping the experience the "same" through all platforms. And they are not even releasing mod tools so we can do the work they didn't.

The textures have no higher res models, which is the usual way of texturing games, instead, to cut expenses and probably make a declaration of the new design philosophy, these textures ARE the high res ones, they are fully unpacked... And yes, is absolutely terrible. People who say, the graphics are fine, are either reading 2013 reviews of the game still, or are just console players and they know no better. And no, i'm not talking about 4k (4k is not that great honestly). Im talking about actual graphics, like shadow shimmering EVERYWHERE, like, the whole game is broken at shadows, the thread is still up there after like 3 years since HW basically destroyed the shadows.
As an advice, don't use parallax, the resolution of textures is just too mediocre for it.

Also, no ultrawide support cutscenes. 2019. They really need a graphic suit overhaul, badly. I hope shadowbringer zones have better assets.

[Riardon]

The game looks pretty dated. Even at its launch it wasn't the most visually stunning game. Now the years passed and it aged pretty fast.
The texture quality is very bad.
What's even worse is how some textures look better than others like some people already pointed out.
I wouldn't bother too much about the graphics but this is a premium sub based game that's story heavy with loads of cut scenes where characters and environments looks absolutely terrible.
It's bad to the point of ridiculousness on some cut scenes.
The game will need a major graphic update sooner or later.
Yoshi already hinted at this on some interviews. I believe it will happen with 6.0 from what he hinted when the game will need to support PS5.
Not that they can't do it now if they wanted to but they either don't have the time or they simply want to wait the PS5 launch and support to do it.

[Caitlinzulu]

XIV graphics have aged terrible. And that PS3 optimizations are to blame, we will forever feel the drag of that console, and the PS4.
Is that simple: FFXIV will always screw PC gamers in favor of keeping the experience the "same" through all platforms. And they are not even releasing mod tools so we can do the work they didn't.

The textures have no higher res models, which is the usual way of texturing games, instead, to cut expenses and probably make a declaration of the new design philosophy, these textures ARE the high res ones, they are fully unpacked... And yes, is absolutely terrible. People who say, the graphics are fine, are either reading 2013 reviews of the game still, or are just console players and they know no better. And no, i'm not talking about 4k (4k is not that great honestly). Im talking about actual graphics, like shadow shimmering EVERYWHERE, like, the whole game is broken at shadows, the thread is still up there after like 3 years since HW basically destroyed the shadows.
As an advice, don't use parallax, the resolution of textures is just too mediocre for it.

Also, no ultrawide support cutscenes. 2019. They really need a graphic suit overhaul, badly. I hope shadowbringer zones have better assets.

And another "consoles are bad, holding pc players back" post.
You seem to forget that not everyone is playing the latest pc, so lower end pc's hold the game "back" too.
Also just no i paid attention to graphics today and i had no complaint about graphic quality and this is judged on a pc.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

And another "consoles are bad, holding pc players back" post.
You seem to forget that not everyone is playing the latest pc, so lower end pc's hold the game "back" too.
Also just no i paid attention to graphics today and i had no complaint about graphic quality and this is judged on a pc.

Im not saying consoles are bad. Im saying that keeping consoles and PC at the same level is bad. PC is obviously the superior platform for gaming -all consoles have slowly moved into AiO-plug and play PCs basically- and that both clients play by the same rules and graphics qualities is simply a bad decision.
About older PCs: thats why we have graphical options (dx9 client... really), if players are using hardware from +5 years ago, they have bigger issues than gaming.

Finally, if you don't see the many graphical issues with this game, then you are either blind, ignorant on how computer graphics are supposed to work or look or finally, just a SE apologists. Pick one. Cause this game clearly has graphical issues and graphics have aged not so well since 2.0. Point in case, textures being the worse offenders. World of Warcraft has better textures than FFXIV, and that is saying a LOT.

Art direction can only get you so far, is obvious that the game needs a graphic overhaul to better represent what the art department is making, cause at a such low resolution, many things that are supposed to be appreciated become muddy, ugly to look at, to points where it breaks immersion and "suspension of disbelief". Like every cutscene with main characters where their terrible modeling, low res textures, awful clipping and terrible shadowcasting just ruins what should a beautiful scene. Graphics of this game are literally holding back its conveyed themes through graphical representation, that is, art and scenery.

Is the equivalent as if the game music was recorded and implemented in low quality muddied sound files.

[Edax]

The game looks pretty dated. Even at its launch it wasn't the most visually stunning game. Now the years passed and it aged pretty fast.
The texture quality is very bad.
What's even worse is how some textures look better than others like some people already pointed out.
I wouldn't bother too much about the graphics but this is a premium sub based game that's story heavy with loads of cut scenes where characters and environments looks absolutely terrible.
It's bad to the point of ridiculousness on some cut scenes.
The game will need a major graphic update sooner or later.
Yoshi already hinted at this on some interviews. I believe it will happen with 6.0 from what he hinted when the game will need to support PS5.
Not that they can't do it now if they wanted to but they either don't have the time or they simply want to wait the PS5 launch and support to do it.

In context through, this game looks far better then WoW or SWTOR. It may just be the price of the MMORPG to sacrifice graphics. So many AAA games come out now with stunning graphics and practically no story and fairly poor gameplay. In the end, I stop caring about really good graphics long ago because the "game" needed to come first in my eyes. Otherwise I might as well be watching an anime or movie.