PS3 a real problem or not

[Anarchyz11]

The PS3 has a GPU with 256MB of GRAM. My dad's old computer I played 10 years ago with a white, discolored case and a tube monitor has a GPU with 512MB of GRAM.

Anyone can spend $35 on a secondhand 6770 and plop it into their mother's dual-core computer and get better performance than a PS3 will have. But while people play on a PS3, square can't just treat it like a low-end PC, because there's a large group of users playing at those exact specifications on that system, they have to optimize for it.

It's fair to say you like playing with a controller or a console, but a PC can use a controller, and there's a better option for console. Treating your 8 year old console as still modern and trying to say it doesn't need an upgrade is like saying your flip phone from 2006 can do everything your smartphone from 2014 can do. Technology evolves, it gets expensive, but we can't keep acting like forcing games to run on less than 1GB of RAM to save a small amount on hardware is ideal.

[Magis]

The PS3 has a GPU with 256MB of GRAM. My dad's old computer I played 10 years ago with a white, discolored case and a tube monitor has a GPU with 512MB of GRAM.

Due to the low VRAM is also why we have such low resolution textures. Can really notice it when you zoom in on clothes.

[Ailish_Chibi]

To all the people whining on ps3 and ff14.Try to change the hard drive to a ssd.All the problems will be gone i swear

[abzoluut]

To all the people whining on ps3 and ff14.Try to change the hard drive to a ssd.All the problems will be gone i swear

Upgrading a HDD will only make it (slightly) better for that particular user. Will it be of influence for devs' working field? Not quite.

This whole discussion is about if PS3 support holds back the game. An SSD will not change that

[Elazu]

I love all these people saying, "Switch off PS3, you will love it!" I played 1.#, no PS3 to be had. I played the 2.0 beta, again no PS3 till the last beta phase. 2.0 rolled out, I was on the PS3 like white on rice and have never looked back. Don't get me wrong, while my computer had problems running 1.# (who didn't), it thoroughly handles 2.0 like a boss. I just don't care. I'd been waiting for the PS3 version since the promise of a PS3 beta back after the launch of XIII (you know, when there were codes for the PS3 beta included). Only reason I started playing 1.# when I did was the Legacy promotion. I've seen this game at it's prettiest and, yes, it's pretty. And the Highlander boobs are very out of control. But for me, that's all superfluous. It's all about the story and playability and the PS3 handles that just fine.

I wouldn't call a game that drops to 20 fps or lower when the slightest bit of action happens on screen "playable".

[Gilraen]

I wouldn't call a game that drops to 20 fps or lower when the slightest bit of action happens on screen "playable".

I've been playing on the PS3 for... a year now? Obviously having 30~ FPS doesn't mean a thing to me. Though, what I consider playable is clearly not in the same category as what you're referencing. I tried the whole mouse and keyboard thing in the 2.0 beta and made heavy use of the controller in 1.# and late 2.0 beta. I hate playing with mouse and keyboard, give me a controller any day. Yes, I get that I lose alot in the massive collections of hotbars not available with controllers. So what. Sometimes less is more. The only way I'll stop playing on the PS3 is when they stop supporting it, period.

[Kaisha]

To all the people whining on ps3 and ff14.Try to change the hard drive to a ssd.All the problems will be gone i swear

Doesn't fix the blatant LoD pop-in, the terrible framerate, the lack of any good HUD functionality, the blurry resolution., and the model display limit.

[Ferocious]

It just seems like the same old thing just like back in FF11
PC players hating on PS2. thing is FF11 is still supporting PS2

just change out PS2 for PS3, and in a few years PC Elitist players will say the same thing about PS4

PS2 Launch - 2000
FFXI Launch - 2003

PS3 Launch - 2006
FFXIV Launch - 2013

See the problem? PS2 hardware was far more advanced for its time to handle a game like FFXI. FFXIV should have never released on PS3 to begin with. It's outdated junk that most developers have ditched by now. It's time for SE to do the same thing.

[Tupsi]

The PS3's hardware limitations are most certainly holding things back.

They're not holding things back as much as:

Yoshida: "I don't want to do this."
Other Devs: "We don't want to do this."
Yoshida: "I want to develop this game with people who never touched MMORPGs before in mind."

PS3 limitations hold far less back than flatout direct design decisions not relating to hardware. Also, anyone that says Area Size is due to PS3 limitations are making things up - Not only did Yoshida say he scaled areas back in order to give them proper themes, but that the expansion will have rather huge zones.

By the way, did you know? The XIV expansion will be released while the PS3 and PS4 is still supported?

Look at that open window and the logic flying out of it. Anyway, the only constraint the consoles will ever have is things relating to memory that's largely fluff that no one cares for after a week anyway. They drop console support, you still have:

"We don't want to do this."

To deal with.

[Gralna]

Doesn't fix the blatant LoD pop-in, the terrible framerate, the lack of any good HUD functionality, the blurry resolution., and the model display limit.

Aside from HUD and Maximum characters displayed, rest of those fall under graphics settings and even at at lowest settings, game is still playable and has no negative impact on servers or other players. As far as frame rate making game unplayable, I had no issue beating titan ex on ps3 with a mnk and I'm no where near considered a hardcore raider, sounds more like a latency issue to me when I hear this issue come up, most likely attributed to level3.

How does a person having blurry resolution on their end, hold back game on your end? I think many of you are incorrectly attributing poor graphics on client end, to restrictions on server end. A little bit of game design info for you, when you're designing content, you initially design it for the highest possible settings, then you start to reduce quality till you reach a performance level that is acceptable. You can always tone down graphics to increase performance, just a matter of how much quality your willing to sacrifice.


Areas where PS3 memory limits are most obvious are raid sizes since each character model has to have data retrieved from servers, translated by client, then rendered onto your screen. That data will include information such as character stats, collisions detection, X/Y/Z location, etc. That data is constantly being retrieved by your client, and your character data is constantly being sent to SE servers, that is where the main Memory issues lay. PS3 can only handle juggling about 30 data sets of combined players+npc before it has to start restricting data flow and stop retrieving data on excess characters. This is also why UI/HUD elements are restricted since settings for every window is part of those data packets constantly being sent.

I'll reiterate though, any limitations that are strictly limited to client end, have no impact in regards to holding back the game.