They should scrap the PS3 version.

[Alerith]

Too late now or they would have downgraded everything for nothing. Probably half the reason they even redesigned the graphical engine from scratch was for ps3 purposes, so scrapping it would be tantamount to throwing their money away.

What was downgraded?

[bobbygunz]

What was downgraded?

Namely zone sizes, textures, shaders. It's a little hard to tell if polycount was reduced too, but certainly seems that way on some of the buildings in gridania at least. Zone size is probably the most quantifiable of these since you can measure it, and also noticeable since, for example, Gridania the town is now two separate zones,which is obviously a pretty significant shrinkage from what used to be the entirety of the blackshroud and Gridania together in a single area. Some of this was to promote diversity of environments, but also, I imagine that much of it was due to PS3 memory limitations (i.e., Gridania the city now being split into two separate zones whereas 1.0 could handle it fine in one zone). Graphically, these things were changed to accommodate the lower specs of PS3, so if they threw out the ps3 version, it would make their efforts somewhat futile and downgrades hard to justify, except to say that now the game can be handled fine on low-end machines which could potentially attract a bigger playerbase.

[Abriael]

But we could have better grass if they scrapped it.

In all seriousness, I'd prefer if they cut PS3 development because it means more work for the superior PC users.

PS2 limitations.

This is pretty short sighted. The PS3 version has a MASSIVE potential to make the game more successful and profitable, as it opens it to a very large audience that's sensitive to the Final Fantasy brand already.

Opening the game to a wider audience and making it more profitable is an advantage for PC users as well, for obvious reasons.

the "PS2 limitations" part I guess refers to Final Fantasy XI, which is an entirely different animal. The PS2 limited the PC in FFXI because the game was created for the PS2 and then ported to the PC. There was little upgrading that could be done without redesigning the assets completely, so the PC version didn't look too stellar.

On the other hand FFXIV is developed with PC as the lead platform, which means the PS3 version doesn't limit the PC version at all.

They could run on a completely different graphics engnine and still work together seamlessly online as the only necessary common denominator is the data flow. All the graphical assets are client side. As long as the assets that offer a level of interaction with the players are in the same position, the PC version could have gorgeous green grass made of 212232 polygons per blade and the PS3 version could have purple grass made of cubes and it'd change absolutely nothing functionality-wise.

Again, the PS3 version doesn't "limit" the PC version in any way.

Namely zone sizes, textures, shaders. It's a little hard to tell if polycount was reduced too, but certainly seems that way on some of the buildings in gridania at least. Zone size is probably the most quantifiable of these since you can measure it, and also noticeable since, for example, Gridania the town is now two separate zones,which is obviously a pretty significant shrinkage from what used to be the entirety of the blackshroud and Gridania together in a single area. Some of this was to promote diversity of environments, but also, I imagine that much of it was due to PS3 memory limitations (i.e., Gridania the city now being split into two separate zones whereas 1.0 could handle it fine in one zone). Graphically, these things were changed to accommodate the lower specs of PS3, so if they threw out the ps3 version, it would make their efforts somewhat futile and downgrades hard to justify, except to say that now the game can be handled fine on low-end machines which could potentially attract a bigger playerbase.

I'm sorry, but you're completely off mark. Those elements were not changed for the PS3 at all.

The split maps are to reduce server load and latency as every map is a server in the cluster. They're there to avoid having servers bogged down too often by maximum traffic. having zoning instead of a seamless transition between one server and the other (areas were still divided in different servers before, but the transition was partially invisible and you'd notice it only when zoning with someone else and they briefly became invisible) helps them optimize and reduce server load, and keep lag low.

The slight graphical downgrade in some areas was done in order to optimize the engine, let it visualize more than 40 players at once and introduce effects that previously were lacking, like dynamic shadows and lighting for instance, andthat's a BIG graphical improvement that eats a lot of resources.

Again, it has nothing to do with the PS3 version. For what would matter, characters could be photorealistic on one platform and and made of sticks on the other, and they could still be seamlessly paired.

[Alkimi]

Namely zone sizes, textures, shaders. It's a little hard to tell if polycount was reduced too, but certainly seems that way on some of the buildings in gridania at least. Zone size is probably the most quantifiable of these since you can measure it, and also noticeable since, for example, Gridania the town is now two separate zones,which is obviously a pretty significant shrinkage from what used to be the entirety of the blackshroud and Gridania together in a single area. Some of this was to promote diversity of environments, but also, I imagine that much of it was due to PS3 memory limitations (i.e., Gridania the city now being split into two separate zones whereas 1.0 could handle it fine in one zone). Graphically, these things were changed to accommodate the lower specs of PS3, so if they threw out the ps3 version, it would make their efforts somewhat futile and downgrades hard to justify, except to say that now the game can be handled fine on low-end machines which could potentially attract a bigger playerbase.

Maybe for the 10 people who could actually run 1.0 on max settings. I had to turn down so much to run 1.0 at a decent framerate but I could run the benchmark with no issues at max. For the vast vast majority of us ARR will look better.