PS3 a real problem or not

[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.

[Tiggy]

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.

A) That's a very different discussion that what the op was getting into.

B) The areas where scaled back to give a distinct theme yes in part, but they aren't bigger than are because of memory issues as well. All those thematic pieces take up memory and that directly limits the size of the map. Just because a thematic reason was listed doesn't for a second change the 512mb limit of the system that directly limits area sizes. Did you ever wonder why Coerthas was the biggest map? Have you ever noticed it has less overall detail than the other maps since it's mostly white snow and rocks? There is a trade off.

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

So? Yoshi also said they have plans to drop it sometime after the first expansion pack based upon current usage and upgrade statistics.

They've repeatedly said the UI can't be expanded anymore on the ps3 due to memory issues.
Every new feature that is big they've mentioned ps3 issues.

It's not just design decisions holding the game back. You need to remember that those design decisions are made in part due to the memory limitations. You can't separate them into two different things because they are intrinsically connected.

Incorrect. You can't have beards because they'd have to go back and redo quite a bit of graphical assets - Nothing to do with limitations.

Those graphical assets take up memory. Which the ps3 is very low on. Add too many beards and now the average character requires more polys and therefore more memory. Graphical assets must take up ram to be used so any assets that add to memory directly contribute to the problem. Try to remember that they shrunk miq'ote butts for two reason. One was so that making new gear was easier across races, but if I remember correctly it was also mentioned that it helped put more on screen at once. That would be due to fewer poly's being used. Beards would be like bringing those butts back.

By the way, FFXI currently has 320 inventory slots that's actively on your character - It's a PS2 MMORPG.

Doesn't matter what FFXI did here since inventory is a server memory issue. The only way it's limited on the system is how many inventory slots can be displayed at once. Even FFXI had to split inventory into multiple different types of inventory in order to manage all that inventory on the limited system memory of the ps2.


You are very severely underestimating memory issues across the board when it comes to the ps3 and how those limits affect nearly everything about this game.