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

[Berethos]

I’ll preface this by saying I have never designed textures for a video game so I’m just guessing, but with that said—It can’t be that hard. I’d compare it to games like Skyrim where modders who work for free and on their own time have made high definition texture packs to replace every texture in the game. Usually these are made by one person and they come in a million shapes and sizes. If hobbiest can do it, why can’t a AAA company working on what is probably their most profitable game?

I’m sure FFXIV has significantly more textures than Skyrim, but they also have significantly more resources than an amateur on his home computer toying around with his hobby on the weekends.

Ask that hobbiest - the one that does an HD overhaul of a significant amount of textures, and not the crappy "HD" versions that are just a filter run over the original (which can be achieved with things like ReShade anyway) - how much time they spent working on that.

The ones that are just toying around on the weekends, by the way, are rarely (if ever) the ones putting out the good large-scale HD overhauls in a game like Skyrim.