Update on DirectX 11 client?

[Shioban]

As it currently stands, A Realm Reborn indisputably looks much worse than 1.0.

February-March 2014 is the rough release window.

And it is VERY disputable. 1.0 did have some nice areas, and some really nice graphical features, but features can't compare to design.
The textures and anti-aliasing and over-sampling options made the game look much better than ARR.

Please note that anti-aliasing makes a HUGE difference in games aswell as texture resolution. ARR can't use hardware anti-aliasing like 1.0 used inside a DirectX 9 client simply because you can't hardware anti-alias Deffered Rendering in DX9, with the DirectX 11 client there will be hardware anti-aliasing options and most likely a nice pack of high resolution textures which will bring back some of the feel you had in 1.0.

However we won't get the nice animaitons we had in 1.0, but for the sake of the combat system that as a necessary sacrifice.

In comparison (I can't show many) for the most part, 2.0's environments are interesting and carefully designed EVEN with the limitation of the PS3 zoneing it into blocks we have large sprawling areas packed with detail that we simply didn't get in 1.0.

[Jynx]

However we won't get the nice animaitons we had in 1.0, but for the sake of the combat system that as a necessary sacrifice.

Lies and slander.

They could have always allowed us to interupt animations instead of just cutting them hole hog like they did with alot of other systems.

[Shioban]

Lies and slander.

They could have always allowed us to interupt animations instead of just cutting them hole hog like they did with alot of other systems.

Actually it's not lies i'll have you find. (And slander is an attack on a person, not applicable to this context)

Simply 'Interrupting' the old animations would be pointless for a number of reasons, mainly that it would look horrid.

The major difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is the speed of battle, in 1.0 abilities had a longer cool-down and abilities took longer to cast, we even had an animation lock for that to ensure the realistic look of the animations, so we weren't sliding across the floor whilst casting a spell or firing an arrow. So essentially these older animation would never have worked in 2.0 without simply speeding the frames up which would have looked horrendous.

The animations in 1.0 were considerably slower and suited that battle system, you may have noticed almost all the animations were adjusted or re-done for 2.0 based on this fact that the speed didn't suit them anymore, hence why almost everything was re-done.

The animations in 2.0 aren't by any means awful, but the casting animations from 1.0 were removed not just in favour of the battle system but also for thematic reasons.

Black Mage for example has a different animation set for casting Fire versus Blizzard, which looks much nicer than the old 'tap my forehead and cast' that 1.0 had.

[Tupsi]

Black Mage for example has a different animation set for casting Fire versus Blizzard, which looks much nicer than the old 'tap my forehead and cast' that 1.0 had.

And yet no variation for races and genders. I still think the point is they managed it for a 2000 PS2 MMORPG but seemingly can't for a 2013 MMORPG. The animation in 1.0 had more weight to them where this one has even more clipping than 1.0 did, normally you don't want a game of any kind to have insane clipping.

[Shioban]

And yet no variation for races and genders. I still think the point is they managed it for a 2000 PS2 MMORPG but seemingly can't for a 2013 MMORPG. The animation in 1.0 had more weight to them where this one has even more clipping than 1.0 did, normally you don't want a game of any kind to have insane clipping.

The reasoning for that is simple, think about how many animations there are, now think how many races/genders there are, not think how many animations it would require to match one for every-single-race/gender combination.

The fact we get race/gender emotes, walks and runs, asking for battle animations too is a little bit too much.

1.0 had inertia steps which added more weight to the character along with a mesh deformer.
A lot of work went into trying to avoid clipping in 1.0, far far far too much development time was wasted on little details like this.

The inertia steps for movement was removed in favour of combat as your characters actual speed slowed down as a result of the inertia steps for starting and stopping movement, so that we could move quicker.

Image doing Titan with inertia steps where you're slower to start and stop moving.


Anything that was removed, was removed for a reason. I'm not trying to defend it based on a 'YOU'RE ALL WRONG' point of view.
The development team really did remove certain things and ignored certain details simply because it was a waste of development time to adjust things to suit.

[Zezlar]

A lot of work went into trying to avoid clipping in 1.0, far far far too much development time was wasted on little details like this.

I remember the days when the Final Fantasy devs went that extra mile for those minor minor details.

[Tupsi]

I remember the days when the Final Fantasy devs went that extra mile for those minor minor details.

This.

The reasoning for that is simple, think about how many animations there are, now think how many races/genders there are, not think how many animations it would require to match one for every-single-race/gender combination

I did think about it - I then thought about how many animations are in FFXI and how they mostly mimicked the same "base" animation and added flair ontop of it which is how they managed to do varied animations.

Anything that was removed, was removed for a reason

Not always true and definitely not true for FFXIV ARR in a lot of areas - I understand what you mean especially if you consider "because we want to" as a reason, honestly, as I've said before while it feels they took steps forward they took many steps backwards.

[Shioban]

This.



I did think about it - I then thought about how many animations are in FFXI and how they mostly mimicked the same "base" animation and added flair ontop of it which is how they managed to do varied animations.



Not always true and definitely not true for FFXIV ARR in a lot of areas - I understand what you mean especially if you consider "because we want to" as a reason, honestly, as I've said before while it feels they took steps forward they took many steps backwards.

It is a shame, but they were given the chance to do it with a longer development time to focus on tiny details and they buggered it up. So we ended up with a two year remake (amazing they did this in two years still). I really really hope in future they focus more on tiny details now that the base game is finished, only time will tell.

As with the progression of games, development costs and time required to get the most simple thing done increases, FFXI was significantly easier to develop in that respect compared to FFXIV in terms of assets.

Most of the 2.0 changes i'm happy with now, its just a nice trade-off in the long-run.

It depends on your eyes kind of. I always have antialiasing turned off becuase for me, it simply drops performance without signficiantly improving visuals for me. at high resolutions,

Well aliasing is prevalent even at a high resolution, I noticed it during the Alpha/Beta more than I do now, I've sort of grown used to it.

Hardware Anti-Aliasing absolutely makes a huge difference though, especially in; foliage and thin 3D objects (rope/string/hair) and edges in general.

(FFXIV won't have this, but it's a very dramatic example of hardware based AA)
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/tech...xaa/technology

Its the high resolution textures which will make the difference here and the better shadow casting, I can't wait it'll look awesome.

[Sheer]

I understand what you mean especially if you consider "because we want to" as a reason, honestly, as I've said before while it feels they took steps forward they took many steps backwards.

Assuming that the development team took away good features "because they wanted to" is rather inconsiderate. We don't know how long those little features actually take. We don't know how taxing those little features were on the game's optimization unless they tell us - for example, like Yoshi-P mentioned in his seventh letter from the producer LIVE:

A: The running animations are already different. As for the fighting animations, if we think about the future classes/jobs that we will be adding, there's a chance that we won’t have enough memory to include all the animations. Therefore, we would like to first focus on stuff like adding new classes/jobs and making preparations to increase the level cap.

Instead of fighting animations, we are thinking about showing each race's individuality via emotes and such. Starting from Beta phase 3, facial expressions will be implemented. Unlike the standard emotes, these new emotes will only change the expression of the character's face. Please note that these new emotes can be used in conjunction with the standard emotes.

In other words, we're constantly thinking about ways to update the game in the most efficient manner so we want to pick the best way to show off each race’s individuality.

[See the question at 1:42:30 for source.]

We don't know how assets from FFXI differ from ARR; how these assets affect performance and push hardware limitations. We could assume that FFXI is better optimized than ARR simply because it's been around longer, but even then, I wouldn't be surprised if they used different programming designs. So how would we then judge "optimization"? Simply by better FPS on weaker machines? Or the relativity between the features and the performance on lower-end machines?

My point is, as players, we're incredibly blind and short-sighted as to what happens from a technical standpoint. FFXIV: ARR is the reason the team working on it gets paid; not only are they employed because of ARR, but a number of the staff also play the game. Why wouldn't they want to make a game they play the best they can?

[Felis]

The inertia steps for movement was removed in favour of combat as your characters actual speed slowed down as a result of the inertia steps for starting and stopping movement, so that we could move quicker.

Image doing Titan with inertia steps where you're slower to start and stop moving.

I only wish that they would have keep the old animations for CS, where the character don't need to move fast out of a AoE.
Because CS are for the eyes, not for gameplay.