Thread: Question for Devs: why v1.0 looked so nice...

We'll probably not get the weighted physics and nice animations back to the same extent as 1.2X though. 1.XX was an extremely pretty game, which had graphics that could probably stand for up to a decade after release. It was unfortunate that it was a rushed game, as everything else that affect the play-ability and not the graphics, was not optimized, designed, re-thought or otherwise refined enough to make a good game at release. The graphics were also a bit too much for the main share of user computers at release, and definitely too much for the console of choice, so the game couldn't even boast a large userbase of awed-by-pretty people.

I think I sort of understand why that happened; Final Fantasy as a franchise has always been on the frontier of visuals in gaming, and when you present teasers and such to future customers and investors while the game is in development, it is an advantage to have something they can see and understand, so graphics got a lot of the early development and the engine seemed to be more coded for them than for it being an MMO at times. Then there was a rush to finish and release, and the rest just wasn't given the proper time to be refined and finished.

It's a bit unfortunate, IMO, that ARR went in the opposite direction rather than finding a middle-ground in this case, with toggle-able stuff ("Real Physics on/off" "Low/Medium/High Resolution Textures" "Detailed Animations off/player/party/all" "Depth of Field on/off" "Advanced Lighting Effects on/off"), perhaps with a hover-tip that says "Try to lower or turn off this setting if your FPS is below [30/60]FPS, as displayed in the upper-right corner of this window" and everything is always on medium upon installation. At least with Dx11 we'll be able to force a few things through our graphics cards, hopefully. *crosses fingers and toes*

Originally Posted by Bigtotoro

I was NOT saying that 1.0 was a better game than 2.0. 2.0 is FAR superior in 98% of things.

I was asking a technical question. What the actual difference was in model design between the two.

Of course 1.0 was very resource intense. But not as much as people make it out to be. I built a custom machine for the 1.0 launch with hardware that by now is quite old (AMD PhenomII x6 and AMD 6870) and it ran at about 40fps on max. More than playable.

But that resource hunger was because as a few have stated, and i agree, that the graphics were prioritized over play-ability. But with todays hardware on high-end systems the original graphics quality could probably be ran just fine. My 8-core 4.7GHz, AMD7970 machine doesn't even max out usage at 60fps.

I was merely curious if it was simply a higher degree of detail that the current engine could scale up to, or if it was accomplished by some other means.

Sure by that logic if everyone kept buying high end parts but there was also a good chunk of people who also played 11 on much older hardware only to be greeted with "please buy a new pc"
Why do you think a game like WoW has been successfulfor all these years? They scale their game so that people with pretty old hardware can play so they don't NEED to upgrade to the latest and greatest

Originally Posted by Fiever

scale their game so that people with pretty old hardware can play so they don't NEED to upgrade to the latest and greatest

1.0 wanted the look and feel of a Final Fantasy game that;

"Oh my god this looks absolutley amazing" reaction. Which in some ways they got, but couldn't sustain itself as there were very very large gaps in the game which I don't even need to mention.

Their intention on what they wanted was good on paper, in reality it didn't work.
The lack of development timing/planning and collaboration between teams, a failure to understand their market or any clear target market for that matter and a rushed release all lead to failure.


Had they been more careful and had more time, a game very similar to 1.23 could've been extremely successfully even with its lofty system requirements.


World of Warcraft had no such name to live up to in terms of stunning visuals, unique elements with every game whilst retaining familiarity (bar the previous few RTS games).
The pressure was on and it proved too much for such an inexperienced team to develop a AAA - MMORPG.