Update on DirectX 11 client?

[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.

[Alhanelem]

As it currently stands, A Realm Reborn indisputably looks much worse than 1.0. 1.0 looked gorgeous, one of the best looking games by far when it came out in 2010. A Realm Reborn looks terrible by today's MMORPG standards.

Can we please receive an update on the DirectX 11 client? What is the development team doing to make the game look better? Will it perform any better than the current client? What is the release window for the DirectX 11 client (I see some articles saying as long as June 2014, another one says "early 2014"?

I really would love to know about this.. Don't keep your customers in the dark.

Sorry. While it certainly can look better, I absoloutlely would dispute the statement "looks much worse." In most ways it looks better. The only way in which it really looks worse right now is texture resolution.

Please note that anti-aliasing makes a HUGE difference in games aswell as texture resolution.

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, "jaggies" just aren't very visible to me. I suppose if I had dual titans I could have max antialiasing and still get max perofrmance in almost every game, but that's a little out of my price league and just not worth it in my view because of how I feel about AA anyway.

movement inertia sucked. I found it nothing but annoying, not worth the tiny amount of prettiness it added. It destroys gameplay and makes it feel clumsy.

[Doki]

Everyone is complaining about animations and I'm just sitting here blind in a screen full of lighting effects and blue snowglobes.

[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.

[Felis]

What is the release window for the DirectX 11 client (I see some articles saying as long as June 2014, another one says "early 2014"?

It come after the PS4 client

[TrystWildkey]

Don't keep your customers in the dark.

Really? To be perfectly honest, we've been spoiled by SE with regard to news, updates, status reports and feedback regarding this game. If they communicated any more to us, we'd be honorary members of the dev team, or unpaid interns.

I'm not sure what company you guys are using as a model/reference when it comes to 'acceptable levels of communication' but really, they tell us SO MUCH information already.