A Respectful Request For Improved Cloth & Hair Physics

[PEANUT]

Apologies for not being able to point to a direct quote, but I believe in a prior interview (when they first started talking about the engine upgrades) YoshiP had specifically called out the idea that there would be an improvement in the amount of "bones" things like cloth and hair XIV would have going forward.

This was in an interview before FFXVI was released, and he was discussing how its development had opened his eyes to how much more detail you can include as the baseline specs of your game increase.

So they were at least planning some improvement in those areas back then. Still hoping they'll make it in.

Thanks for the input! I really hope they drop support for the PS4 along with the ancient hardware that lies within it come 8.0. I have a VERY strong feeling they will since Dawntrail is being shown to run on PS4/5 and XSX/S, they are not allowing it on XOne, why? Because that would mean they would need to have plans to continue to support that console and they are not, which means come 8.0 they will most likely drop support for PS4. They only kept it because it's still a little too soon to drop support for it since most people are not moved over to a PS5 YET and they still have a lot of players that would be alienated on PS4 if they did. But 8.0 will most likely come out in late 2026 which will be 6 whole years since the PS5 LAUNCHED, so by then it's more of a "you really need to upgrade" kind of thing. Reason I am saying all of this is because if they drop PS4 support, they should be able to increase things like physics(hair, cloth, foliage, etc), weather, maybe a dynamic skybox(instead of flat 2-d cloud pictures), open maps(maybe can break down the instances since SSD's will IMMENSILY help with this and would be very common/baseline required) and even ray-tracing for all lighting(since 7.0 they are moving to a physical based rendering system which would definitely allow this for people who want to enable ray-tracing). ALL of these improvements would really help lift the graphical update they are doing even more and would improve the overall quality of the game for the next 10 years imo...

[hynaku]

They really need to fix them. Other day I noticed when character arm bends it clips thru sleeve of my armor.

[LioJen]

Downgrading the graphics and physics to work on a sub-par console that was already out of date by the time of release was a poor choice for long term viability. 1.0's performance was not the fault of the "polygons" (of which Yoshida lied about the numbers to exaggerate and make his decision look more reasonable) but rather the underlying coding and the way they set up communication between user and server. But I guess rewriting the foundational code was going to be harder than simply downgrading all the assets to force it to work as-is. Now that move is coming back to bite them in the ass, as they have to spend time and money to go backwards and try to "upgrade" those assets back into the 21st century. Even still, I doubt they will ever add more bones to any of the older assets aside from maybe hair, so those will be stuck looking like they do, but newer pieces made in 7.0+ will likely be made with more points of articulation from the start.

It will be like the PSO2 change to NGS, where you can still use the old PSO2 gear but the quality difference next to the new NGS gear is absolutely jarring.

[PEANUT]

Downgrading the graphics and physics to work on a sub-par console that was already out of date by the time of release was a poor choice for long term viability. 1.0's performance was not the fault of the "polygons" (of which Yoshida lied about the numbers to exaggerate and make his decision look more reasonable) but rather the underlying coding and the way they set up communication between user and server. But I guess rewriting the foundational code was going to be harder than simply downgrading all the assets to force it to work as-is. Now that move is coming back to bite them in the ass, as they have to spend time and money to go backwards and try to "upgrade" those assets back into the 21st century. Even still, I doubt they will ever add more bones to any of the older assets aside from maybe hair, so those will be stuck looking like they do, but newer pieces made in 7.0+ will likely be made with more points of articulation from the start.

It will be like the PSO2 change to NGS, where you can still use the old PSO2 gear but the quality difference next to the new NGS gear is absolutely jarring.

I don't know if I agree with you stating Yoshi straight up lied to back up his point, but I do agree that it's getting old supporting consoles like the PS4. I COMPLETELY understand why they are doing it for 7.0 because it would at this point alienate a lot of players which I would feel bad for and would not want them to do, HOWEVER come 8.0 they absolutely must stop support for PS4. At the time 8.0 comes out, we are looking at late 2026, that's 6 years since the PS5/XSX came out and there's no excuse at that point to continue supporting the PS4 and people have to work out making the switch. I am glad to see though with support for Xbox coming that the XOne is not on the list, meaning they must not be planning to support PS4 for very long if they aren't even doing it for XOne, so I think 8.0 we'll finally see the drop of PS4 and get better upgrades for launch of 8.0, which I'm SUPER excited to think about the possibilities!

Hopefully they will add an option for full ray-tracing, a dynamic sky box(no more 2-d cloud pictures), improvements in weather, overall improvements in animations and physics(foliage, clothe, etc.) and maybe some solutions to opening up zones due to the power in the SSD capabilities. Even if it's just smaller improvements in these aspects, I would absolutely LOVE to see them implement to keep this game fresh for the next 8-10 years (or 6-8 years come 8.0 lol)...

[DiaDeem]

You know what? Yes. I'm bumping this up. It's about time. Anyone remembers the OG Odin cape before PS3 killed it?

[Kacho_Nacho]

You know what? Yes. I'm bumping this up. It's about time. Anyone remembers the OG Odin cape before PS3 killed it?

Thank you for the bump! Like some of the other commenters, I feel continuing support for PS4 is a poor decision by Square Enix. It's ten years old! I can't imagine a large number of people are still using them, and to keep the MMO in stasis to accommodate that market, at the expense of the rest of the player base's desire for an improved game, is not good business.

[SigmaOZ]

TL;DR


Times change and the game needs to change accordingly, if we are going to have prettier faces we will also need better bodies with round elbows, thighs, knees and toes.


The hair clipping will look really shabby with better graphics so they should seriously take the need to work on a solution, hair weight would be ideal and it could also be used in clothing, everything is stiff in this game, skirts look like iron sheets when sitting.

[Junepi93]

What happens to ps4 players? Can they use their account on PC if they wanted, or the ps5?

I'm a ps5 user now I'm getting nervous I'm just wasting my time if inevitably drop ps5 support one day.

[Immut]

Something I noticed in gpose, the hair doesn't stop moving when you stop all movement. Kind of annoying with larger hairstyles.

[LioJen]

What happens to ps4 players? Can they use their account on PC if they wanted, or the ps5?

I'm a ps5 user now I'm getting nervous I'm just wasting my time if inevitably drop ps5 support one day.

If I'm in charge of SE, I'd give them a discount for the PC version or whatever the next console out is. But as it is, even Steam users don't get a free transfer to SE's own launcher even though it's the same platform. You should have intuited that a console was a bad choice for a long-term online game since even if SE wanted to support that console indefinitely, the manufacturer would not, as every online service shuts down eventually. Console versions are just a quick cash injection at the expense of the longevity of the game. One of the reasons XI never got a real upgrade is likely because it is stuck on PS2 architecture even after dropping the console.