Graphics vs Aesthetics

[Vesperia]

Seriously?
It look pretty nice.

I just recently a watched high-def fly-through of one of the villages/cities in Guild Wars2. It looked like an amusement park. I realise some people like that style, but to say something is better, let alone more "aesthetic" just because it is more gaudy, flamboyant, and just generally offensive to all five senses, is a bit of a stretch.

[Augury]

Isn't TheEscapist run by a bunch of people openly despise Final Fantasy and automatically claim any game with it in its name is a failure before its even released?

Negatory- Russ Pitts (the editor-in-chief) dislikes jRPGs (if I remember correctly), but he has no say in how people throw their opinions around in their articles (just how well supported or thought out their article may or may not be). But The Escapist is actually pretty well rounded and the community's opinion on Final Fantasy is actually in good esteem (usually).

[Duelle]

The thing I miss most about XI, and the thing I was looking forward to when playing XIV, was the chance to progress through various challenges and roadblocks. Things like getting my chocobo and airship license, getting AF armor (though to be honest, I never got that far), and raising fame to open up other features in the game. It's hard to get a sense of advancement and accomplishment when the game is almost completely open to you from the beginning.

I would not want an exact repeat of the chocobo license quest (mostly because I'm no longer playing games for 6 hours straight). I can agree with a quest to get a chocobo license, but a little bit more reasonable.

I'm more partial to character advancement being part of the leveling process (rather than being separate to create a double grind the way it was in FFXI). SE pushed that button with me too much in XI, to the point where I started measuring my play time in hours wasted instead of hours played.

The game lacks a sense of adventure. In XI, going from town to town for the fist time was kind of a big deal. Sneaking past monsters far more powerful than you, going through several areas with varied terrain and design. It was all very engaging. In this, all I have to do is take the slow boat from the town to the desert and it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to the next city.

In all fairness, most of FFXI's zones had no beaten paths as ways to getting around. The problem with that was the fact that due to the world being so treacherous to move around in, the world felt less tamed. This clashed with the fact the three nations have been around for a while, and was much more fitting for a "new discovered world that is being settled into as we speak" type of game. This was further compounded by the lack of presence of NPCs outside of the outpost NPCs, which detracted from the cohesiveness of the world.

We should also keep in mind the setting of XIV. Prior to this looming Umbral Era, we had a world so peaceful that the governments had to fund things like leves to give the guys with weapon and magic training things to do to keep them from the less-attractive alternative (a life of crime, as best exemplified at the beginning of FF Tactics).

Also in XI, there was a crossroads for the towns, the Dunes, in XIV, the crossroads is basically Ul'Dah, another city, that automatically makes Ul'Dah the most populous city regardless of its importance to the storyline.

The arrival of a "hub" city was inevitable. Part of me thinks everyone will move to Ishgarde once that's opened up to everyone (provided it is used as an actual city).

Moving from Ul'Dah to Gridania is also very jarring. Going from a Western American style desert to a deep, lush and twisted jungle is not good for aesthetics.

This is not much different from zoning out of Valkurm Dunes into La Thiene Plateau, though.

The jungle itself, is far too grid like. It may have been easier for design, but it takes us out of the game.

I agree on the lacking design of the black shroud. I hope they get around to changing that as the game continues to see major changes.

[Anty]

ArenaNet is an American company. The game is not being made/produced by a Korean company. NCSoft is not making this game. I know you've already been told this before...

As for the discussion at hand, they are taking less powerful graphics designed to run on lower-end machines and making it look inviting. Some aspects may seem dated after looking at a Miqo'te running around, but they manage to make it look great.

Creativity/art direction > OMG THIS GRASS LOOKS SO MUCH NICER but there's nothing else to look at beyond vast plains of nothingness sprinkled with Nutbiters.

Speaking of the grass, it actually sways when you run through it in GW2. B|

Grass... i think the grass/bushes implemented in ffxiv look incredibliy bad and even with 32X antialising they look like shit.
The fact that they made the HUGE mistake of using so many alpha textures (retarded) that only are ok when 4X supersampled says it all... the game is only HD and next gen on the character models. Its AWESOME what they did there.. but the rest... is really not good. No bumbmapping, no proper lighthing, nothing in the world casts shadows (only the npcs and pcs) ... and even WRONG shadows a lot, so it happens that facint a lightsource the shadows actually points directly towards it.. *sigh*

An an HD game has grass moving and even some grass physics reacting .. but not static ugly looking grass pixle thingy....
I don't need HD textures if they get "destroyed" by bad looking other items/textures/vegetation.

IF... then everything has to look awesome. not just some parts... I rather have good lighting and shadows (usually makes a much better all over appearence then HD textures vs ok textures)

[Vesperia]

Okay, let's face facts.

• GW2 looks like crap.
  
• FFXIV looks okay at a cursory glance until you realise the grass is a pixelated mess and only 10% of the plants actually sway in the wind, the water is a flat tile, the world is a fancy background rather than something you can interact with, shadows are all wrong if they exist at all, etc etc.
  
• ArcheAge and Blade&Soul, on the other hand, look awesome in almost every way.

People who use FFXIV and GW2 as bastions of MMO graphics are obviously ignorant. Only Koreans know how to design games. People say "GW2 Isn't made by Koreans!" like it's a good thing. LOL. You serious?

In ArcheAge and B&S, grass actually moves, zones are seamless, character models look reasonable. Nothing is so excessive to the point of tackiness (unlike everything in GW2 for example).

http://www.archeage.com/pds/media/show/432

[Sykora727]

I think the detail in FFXIV is really amazing in places, particularly with certain creatures (floating eyes, drakes etc), but the the world (cities, clothes,) look bland and lacking in fantasy like other final fantasy games.

The designs are great, but they belong in another game, not the FF franchise imo.

[Vesperia]

I think the detail in FFXIV is really amazing in places, particularly with certain creatures (floating eyes, drakes etc), but the the world (cities, clothes,) look bland and lacking in fantasy like other final fantasy games.

The designs are great, but they belong in another game, not the FF franchise imo.

That's personal opinion. I think the clothes are amazing.

[Vesperia]

Also, more and more games are coming onto the market with rivalling graphcis.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-I...s640/dnl13.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12xsh4DP4h0

A rerelease of an old MMO with similar concepts to ArcheAge.

[Teknoman]

I think the detail in FFXIV is really amazing in places, particularly with certain creatures (floating eyes, drakes etc), but the the world (cities, clothes,) look bland and lacking in fantasy like other final fantasy games.

The designs are great, but they belong in another game, not the FF franchise imo.

Akihiko Yoshida usually does things this way. Check out FF tactics series, XII, and 4 heroes of light. Usually slightly muted colors but very intricate designs. Those designs should be making their way here soon enough (go look at the February letter from producer with the Black mage and Dark Knight looking armor).

Either way, every player/npc/enemy model is highly detailed, and they just need to add more structures among other things to the zones to flesh them out.

[Kirith]

Aesthetics isn't something you can make an exact quantification of. It's all a matter of artistic sensibility and cultural focus. The only way to evaluate it is to ask many people how much they feel touched by a certain piece of art or, in this case, by the game's environments and overall design. Evidently, many FFXIV users are criticizing exactly the world's environments and their design, meaning the game has poor aesthetics. There's really not much that can be added. A few good looking armor sets and items won't affect the game's aesthetics, like adding two pretty flowers to a boring green field won't make a painting interesting. It's a much more general matter and i can't see a clear way to solve it.