Would you trade new ingame content for an engine upgrade?

[SeverianLyonesse]

The question to ask is "are you all right running an expansion-worth of content for 3-4 years, rather than 2?", not "would you give up content for an engine upgrade?".

Yes I am. I would just find other things to do while I wait. There's more to life than FFXIV.

[Lihtleita]

Pretty sure he also said that they could do a texture update but if they do we lose a whole expansion.
No thank you!

the only reason this would be the case is if they deleted or lost the big textures

[Moonlite]

No and No again. This game is a mess. I would much rather see a new FF online. What makes people think this team and game could get an engine upgrade done right. Some hope, I hear SE finally has committed to UE (poorly though), which means a new base game would be better and staff should be easier to find.

[Shougun]

the only reason this would be the case is if they deleted or lost the big textures

IIRC they said they don't have big textures, what you see is what you get sort of deal here. Making texture updates significantly larger partaking. I've wondered if they can use AI to help with some of it.

IMO not even most textures need updated but some -really- do. Simply offering updates on very specific items would, imo, greatly improve the situation. Of course huge textures on everything, for machines that can handle it, would be even prettier but I feel the value to result is really high on some items and fairly low on others. I would not say no to everything being 4k (for those that can use it), but I'd not be excited to lose a lot of content so the thing that already looked pretty good looks only 5% better. Meanwhile they've certain textures that are quite pixelated in game, which they could narrow down on and cut opportunity costs (especially if they are going to make another MMO to live along side this one, not saying now- speaking in the future, but these things take, and should take, many years to make too which means they might be in talks about it now or even some base level stuff).

[Kelg]

I would, but the chance of this happening is not very likely.

Look at how they did FFXI, at one point it was the most profitable entry in the franchise and they essentially ran it on fumes, slowly lowering the amount of content created for the game until it died.

I would be honestly shocked if they did not do the same thing with this game, and it seems they are doing this with how we are getting less unique mobs, armor models, and mechanics in favor of reskins and less content in general. With all the money this game makes, they are 100% capable of redoing the entire texture set of this game, and upgrading the engine to be more modern, but It not likely to happen because of the massive amount of resources it would cost to hire that many artists/coders for a questionable return. Why invest all this money back into a game with such a dated engine, when it may not even boost the player count in a positive way, when they could use that cash to fund new projects?

Not trying to sound pessimistic, but I think they will just let the game slowly burn out until it's not profitable anymore and end up making a new MMO sometime far down the line.

[Lihtleita]

IIRC they said they don't have big textures, what you see is what you get sort of deal here. Making texture updates significantly larger partaking. I've wondered if they can use AI to help with some of it.

IMO not even most textures need updated but some -really- do. Simply offering updates on very specific items would, imo, greatly improve the situation. Of course huge textures on everything, for machines that can handle it, would be even prettier but I feel the value to result is really high on some items and fairly low on others. I would not say no to everything being 4k (for those that can use it), but I'd not be excited to lose a lot of content so the thing that already looked pretty good looks only 5% better. Meanwhile they've certain textures that are quite pixelated in game, which they could narrow down on and cut opportunity costs (especially if they are going to make another MMO to live along side this one, not saying now- speaking in the future, but these things take, and should take, many years to make too which means they might be in talks about it now or even some base level stuff).

....its common practice to make textures big to begin with then downscale them for implementation. you know, in case this happens. its actually harder to work on small pixel canvases.

[Shougun]

....its common practice to make textures big to begin with then downscale them for implementation. you know, in case this happens. its actually harder to work on small pixel canvases.

I know, but I was saying what I believe they said- a long time ago when "just release the originals" was brought up. Yoshida said that it isn't that simple because what we have IS the highest quality that they have (or pretty much). I'll try to find the quote if I can but I remember it being quite old.

edit: here is one, not sure it was the one I was remembering though... I think the one I remember was much older.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._and_soken_at/

Q: Nvidia just announced their new "RTX" GPU series. As PC graphical processing power improves, game graphics will become richer as well. Is there a chance of FFXIV getting higher graphics settings?

Yoshida: I get asked this a lot lately. The other day it was in China, so I guess it might be a worldwide topic of interest. If you're asking me if there's a possibility in the future, then the answer is probably yes, there is. But if you're asking if we have it planned right now, the answer is no. We don't have anything planned and it's not in any of our milestones.

The reason is very clear. Of course, BD5 is researching and working on new graphics. We can't distance ourselves from the latest game development techniques, so we're doing our own tests as well. But FFXIV already has 20,000 assets for equipment alone, and I don't even want to think about how much it would cost to convert all of them to the new graphics pipeline.

Since FFXIV had PS3 support, its graphics technology is 2 generations behind. If we had high poly models/hi-res textures ((unclear)) then we could just swap them out, but we don't. A lot of things were created low poly/low-res from the start for cost-saving, so we would have to recreate all of them in order for the improved graphics to look good.

Some people say that if we don't spend those costs now then we won't be competitive with other games, but right now, we're still plenty competitive within the MMO genre, so there's no need to rush yet. Plus, we have to measure what percentage of players are actually using these new GPUs. And so long as FFXIV continues to support the PS4, I absolutely want to avoid mixing the graphics pipelines. If that's the case, then we can't focus solely on the PC, and it's hard to consider it until, say, the PS4 is replaced by the next generation. Right now, I think our priority should be figuring out how to more efficiently create lots of assets.

[technole]

They do need to do some texture uplift work for a graphics upgrade especially for older assets, if I recall YoshiP said there was a certain point they started to raise the standard for any new textures created.

Like I mentioned before they would have to do a project of this caliber through several development cycles, basically behind the scenes work over a year or more. Artists can just check-in upgraded assets over patches kind of thing. As for graphics engine, they obviously prepared for 4k with the UI and job icon uplifts. Minimal work that didn't take that long, nonetheless the game is overdue for a minimal requirements update to take advantage of even what moderate standards are today.

I do hope we hear some mention of graphics process in the upcoming 10+ years plan of the live letter.

[Reinha]

No. I'd prefer new content. If they make a new engine it should be for a new ff mmo.

[Arkdra]

Maybe? If all it meant was that we don't get new areas but we still get 40 hours of story in zones that already exist and a few new dungeons, sure.