You complain about FFXIV grass? Skyrim has better! :(

[Zantetsuken]

Eh..

The reason that number is so high, is because they likely have content planned that will require it.

Think Beseiged (FFXI), but without dying to 'invisible' mobs, and actually being able to see/target things more than 10 feet away.

Graphic quality is very important, but it should always take a back seat to gameplay.

[Hanemakikaze]

[Shougun]

Eh..

The reason that number is so high, is because they likely have content planned that will require it.

Think Beseiged (FFXI), but without dying to 'invisible' mobs, and actually being able to see/target things more than 10 feet away.

Graphic quality is very important, but it should always take a back seat to gameplay.

Would be cool if there is a little setting section to modify count in-depth. Like draw distance and priorities (I would imagine the code already has variables in place all they need is a UI to change the vars - if not of course not suggesting they waste time rewriting code).

Yeah and gameplay is priority however graphic quality shouldn't be forgot - even if it requires a patch at a later date. Sometimes it seems companies are like "well we released a shitty asset, but we already released it so yeah its going to stay there". Like Garius bad face graphic (it rendered in really low quality) in ME1 yet a player fix is available... Dont tell me Bioware that you cant fix a problem players fixed for you with a simple patch >.> lol (SE has a graphic milestone with DX11 so it looks like they wont, but who knows lol)

300 man content that I actually need to see all 300.

That sounds pretty crazy lol - should be very interesting. Would love to see large scale land, sea, and air battles where you feel puny in the scale of things.

[Linkurrra]

http://kotaku.com/5961994/what-skyri...0-mods-at-once

Honestly, I think that when and if the development team gets around to a DirectX 11 (11.1) patch in the future, ARR will possibly look just as good. I believe so, but jeebus, look at the grass on that Skyrim with 100 mods. Could ARR look like that in the future? O_O

This is a Mod even Skyrim after DLC looks like this! The PS3 version doesn't look anywhere like this either.
To compare a 3rd party mod to Skyrim is not a fair comparison to FFXIV. For starters you can't mod FFXIV and secondly the developers at Bethesda knew not to release Skyrim like this because it would not run on enough PC systems to be profitable. Lastly it's a single player game vs, a MMO.

FFXIV is on PC and PS3 and is designed to run with 100 characters on the screen, 800 characters in a each zone. Foliage at this detail is not practical for an MMO. If Foliage was this dense the amount of ppl on the server at once in a given area would not be able to reach these player densities without causing tons of lag.
Also with grass density this thick you wouldn't be able to see AoE effects on the ground because the grass would be covering it. Yay for realism but terrible for gameplay and in a game, GAMEPLAY RULEZ!

Nobody wants to have realism get in the way with them progressing in a game or having fun. Synthesis is a victim of this, while crafting is more realistic and provides a more interactive way to get better items. Nobody wants to do it and complains because it takes to long or is to hard.

[Abriael]

What good ol' Totilo doesn't tell you (because he has no idea, it's a tradition of Kotaku to write on what you know nothing about) is that the overall smooth effect has really nothing to do with the grass itself, but with the fact that the person in question is using an extremely powerful (and resource-hogging) ENB filter that smooths out everything at the price of performance and detail.

Mind you, that kind of filter can be applied to basically every game that runs on directx, so if you want something like that on ARR, you'll probably be able to run it, if someone gets around making it. Otherwise there are some generic ones that might work.

I truly love press articles on Skyrim mods, mostly because people that write them in 99% of cases never modded skyrim (or even applied mods over the most basic ones) themselves. The amount of ignorance they drop in their writing is enormous

Oh, and by the way, if you don't have a GTX 680 (or two), forget running skyrim like that with more than 5 fps. The game has horrible stutter problems even without this kind of detail when you start modding it heavily.

Mind you, if you want great grass in a MMO, SWTOR has you covered.
http://www.dualshockers.com/2012/10/...in-update-1-5/

Of course the balancing factor is that the graphics are overally very cartoonish and the polycount and texture resolution is a TON lower across the board. Resources are finite and what you put somewhere, you have to take somewhere else.

The only thing Square Enix should REALLY take from this is the translucency shader, as it has basically no impact on performance.

[Shougun]

What good ol' Totilo doesn't tell you (because he has no idea, it's a tradition of Kotaku to write on what you know nothing about) is that the overall smooth effect has really nothing to do with the grass itself, but with the fact that the person in question is using an extremely powerful (and resource-hogging) ENB filter that smooths out everything at the price of performance and detail.

Mind you, that kind of filter can be applied to basically every game that runs on directx, so if you want something like that on ARR, you'll probably be able to run it, if someone gets around making it. Otherwise there are some generic ones that might work.

I truly love press articles on Skyrim mods, mostly because people that write them in 99% of cases never modded skyrim (or even applied mods over the most basic ones) themselves. The amount of ignorance they drop in their writing is enormous

Oh, and by the way, if you don't have a GTX 680 (or two), forget running skyrim like that with more than 5 fps. The game has horrible stutter problems even without this kind of detail when you start modding it heavily.

The game is doing pretty good now. Minus the insane grass distance I've got similar (I use a different ENB) on my singular 670 (~50 mods) running healthy over 30 fps. (Though every 1 or 2 hours there is a CTD hahaha)

(Also that grass amount with shadows off would run pretty smooth as well - I prefer moderate amount of grass so I can find bodies though.. lol)

[Abriael]

The game is doing pretty good now. Minus the insane grass distance I've got similar (I use a different ENB) on my singular 670 (~50 mods) running healthy over 30 fps. (Though every 1 or 2 there is a CTD hahaha)

(Also that grass amount with shadows off would run pretty smooth as well - I prefer moderate amount of grass so I can find bodies though.. lol)

Yep, but that grass does have shadows applied (that kill fps even just with the lush grass mod, i can't even imagine what it'd do with that density).

It would look fugly if you turned off shadows, because trees would effectively not cast any visible shadow, considering that the grass covers the whole terrain.

Also, the ENB filter he's running is a monster. It's definitely a screenshot friendly one, and it makes things look extremely pretty all right, but it's nothing I'd ever play in.

[Shougun]

Yep, but that grass does have shadows applied (that kill fps even just with the lush grass mod, i can't even imagine what it'd do with that density).

It would look fugly if you turned off shadows, because trees would effectively not cast any visible shadow, considering that the grass covers the whole terrain.

Also, the ENB filter he's running is a monster. It's definitely a screenshot friendly one, and it makes things look extremely pretty all right, but it's nothing I'd ever play in.

Oh I meant grass shadow option.

Grass in skyrim can cast its own shadow - in lush grass and dense grass mod it can be pretty bad with moderate grass distance I had like 15 fps lol.

(Gotta have tree and other shadows, totally agree.. cant play without them - I have mods dedicated to those shadows XD)

[YuriSan]

Parts left out of those screens:

FPS: 1

I rofl'd!!

[Thebard]

Put your grass away children.