1.0 vs ARR Areas - A Visual Comparison

[Merrnryn]

I had a potato of a pc, and I never had an issue with 1.0. I found it fun and playable.

[HollowedDoll]

It seems to boil down to lighting changes due to the different engine, which should get an overhaul in 7.0, and ARR cities being separated for performance reasons, I think at this point in time stitching the ARR cities (+Ishgard) back together wouldn't be much different in performance than Crystarium or Sharlayan, but I doubt they'll do it.

[Tlamila]

I seem to be the crazy one, cause to me 1.0 graphcis look much worse and way too dark. And current graphics are already way too dark (apart from white-blinding places) and even with my monitor's brightness super high I can barely see anything without shaders.

[Mikita]

Limsa's Aetheryte Plaza (Limsa Lominsa) - You used to be able to see players from up here.

Hm. I recall the Limsa Lominsa aetheryte being in a hall near the Drowing Wench... not out in the open on the lower level where it is now. I probably have a screenshot of it somewhere. I'll post it later if I can find one.

[SieyaM]

Some stuff looks better now, some stuff better then ... meme at this point but those 1.0 walk and run animations were pretty sweet. The animation lock not so much lol.

Wish when they added animation blending / canceling that it was to facilitate personal high quality animations (though I can imagine it melting most PCs if everyone had it). Certainly the game runs way better on more machines now though, so that's a win.

I'm hoping the future graphics update will be an opportunity to fine tune some aspects without losing much performance for the general audience and then at the same time adding a few enthusiast settings.
Few examples:




Wasn't shown or discussed, afaik, but I would love to see things like weather, water, and other additional concepts like environmental / spell shaders or physics discussed. Weather effects are not bad, but some recent games or crazy older games, have made me go 'hot damn that weather is fine'.. and with such a diverse weather setting in this game that could be pretty fun. Although not graphics I'd love to see a movement / collision update, as we're seeing WoW do such in Dragonflight (and already had fairly smooth movement systems), and I've been goofing off with GW2 per recommendation and have been extremely impressed with their mount movement system (which I had recommended SE do before GW2 had.. and saw videos of GW2 and thought it was cool, but having played it- damn it's really cool to feel so fluid).

There is a lot of different weather in FFXIV but it seems to be very localized. For instance it only seems to storm in the black shroud, I don't remember seeing actual lightning or hearing thunder in any other zones.

[Lunalepsy]

Camp Riversmeet (Coerthas Western Highlands) - Completely redesigned area. New area still retains old Aetheryte design, frozen.




Ul'Dah From Central Thanalan




Immortal Flames HQ (Ul'Dah) - The old Market Wards used to be this way.




Entrance - There was no entrance.




The Gate of Nald (Ul'Dah) - It used to be closed.




The Chamber of Rule (Ul'Dah)




The Keeper of the Lake (Mor Dhona)




Have a nice day!

Ah, the good old days. I miss the texture quality of 1.0, even if 2.0 seems less taxing and manageable.

[Packetdancer]

Hm. I recall the Limsa Lominsa aetheryte being in a hall near the Drowing Wench... not out in the open on the lower level where it is now. I probably have a screenshot of it somewhere. I'll post it later if I can find one.

Yeah, I swear the structure in that screenshot was a stone statue that resembled an aetheryte, not an actual aetheryte. But I also admit it's been a veeeeery long time since 1.x, and I did not care for Limsa's layout, so I spent as little time there as I feasibly could; I may be misremembering.

EDIT: Hey! I found the old Speaker's Network videos comparing the 1.x and ARR versions of Limsa. We were not in fact misremembering. The stone monument in the Octagon (the modern aetheryte plaza) was in fact a stone monument; the aetheryte itself was in a really stupid location on the upper decks. But as the video points out ("To address the elephant in the room..."), literally everyone first thought the stone monument was an aetheryte, because it made a lot more sense to have put the aetheryte there. (Which is, presumably, why it is there now.)

Videos for the Lower Decks and Upper Decks provide a nice walkthrough. And also some fun trauma at remembering the absolutely terrible naming scheme for Limsa's market wards:

[Mikita]

Yeah, I swear the structure in that screenshot was a stone statue that resembled an aetheryte, not an actual aetheryte. But I also admit it's been a veeeeery long time since 1.x, and I did not care for Limsa's layout, so I spent as little time there as I feasibly could; I may be misremembering.

EDIT: Hey! I found the old Speaker's Network videos comparing the 1.x and ARR versions of Limsa. We were not in fact misremembering. The stone monument in the Octagon (the modern aetheryte plaza) was in fact a stone monument; the aetheryte itself was in a really stupid location on the upper decks. But as the video points out ("To address the elephant in the room..."), literally everyone first thought the stone monument was an aetheryte, because it made a lot more sense to have put the aetheryte there. (Which is, presumably, why it is there now.)

Videos for the Lower Decks and Upper Decks provide a nice walkthrough. And also some fun trauma at remembering the absolutely terrible naming scheme for Limsa's market wards:

Thank you for finding and posting that.
I had forgotten the old Lower Decks since I didn't go to Limsa Lominsa very often back then. Ironically, it's where I spend most of my time now.

[Ransu]

1.0 map designs were outright awful and were copy/pasted literally everywhere....With that said, I definitely miss the insanely higher resolution textures from 1.0. Here's hoping with the push to ps5 that 7.0 can further leave the ps3 legacy stuff in the trash bin with their graphical updates.

[ReynTime]

There was a lot of empty and copy-pasting in 1.0 but one thing I still prefer about the maps is the sense of scale. The sense of scale and distance was perfect.

Well, except the shroud. That has always sucked and I prefer ARR shroud.