Did squenix make a mistake by investing too much in graphics and not enough in

[yuyata]

awesome Graphics and awesome Contents, it's the best way.
I believe SE can do it now on.

[zoekwon]

anyone see dragon quest 10 video? i was shocked by graphic. it looks like korean game 7 years ago.

[AsterBarnivere]

anyone see dragon quest 10 video? i was shocked by graphic. it looks like korean game 7 years ago.

It's on the wii, what did you expect? lol

[Dreadnought]

The graphics are "available", but you can easily play the game on low settings with an 8800gts 320mb. These cards go for $25 on craigslist, not much more elsewhere. And the game still looks pretty good on lower settings. Personally, I love eye candy, so I upgraded my 8800gts 320mb to a gtx280, still far from the top, they go for $100-150, not much either. And quad core computers with 6+gb of ram are coming way down in price. Dell sold a brand new inspirion quadcore with 4gb of ram for $400 that included a 17" monitor and 1tb hd. I slammed my 8800gts in there and bam, i have 2 computers that run ffxiv.

So you can do it for $400-500 on low settings, or if you want the ooh and ah, spent a few hundred more and get the goodies.

ive always been saying this in FFXIV forums. i have a cheapy comp which i only upgraded its GPU to a $125 dollar GPU and i can run the game on near max. i had to save up for two months to get that cash and its lasted me about 2 years now flawlessly.

the thing i dont understand is why we cant have top notch graphics as well as tons of content and great gameplay. is this planets technology so archaic and sloppy that this is impossible to achieve? i have yet to see ONE SINGLE MMO even come close to this.
just once it would be awesome to hear of two massive game companies join to make such an MMO. or a super billionaire willing to invest his own cash to achieve this.

[RedAffinity]

Development of Crystal Tools was inevitable, it was designed ground up to support SE's development of multiple titles so you can't really blame them for investing so much time and money into it.

As for what we see in FFXIV, it's really not that impressive in terms of content. Repeat enemies, environments and textures aren't impressive in variety. They look absolutely stunning, but I can't imagine enough resources were invested in visuals that tipped the game out of balance. I think they screwed things up in design altogether with certain features and ideas in order to be different.

That coupled with the fact that the game was released prematurely created the mess that was XIV at launch.

You guys should check out the development story behind Tomb Raider: Angel of darkness. Kind of interesting and in its own way a similar story where SE pushed this product out in the interest of early profit and disruption before it was ready for the consumer.

[Louisville15]

Off the top of my head I can list quite a few games that require very hefty systems to run adequately....

Metro 2033, Witcher 2, Crysis 2, Shogun 2... Metro 2033 is even worse than FFXIV... Running it on 2560x1600 with Max AA, tessellation, max textures, shadows... have fun with that.
Try needing multiple cards to run it max

I get much better frames in Metro maxed than I do in FFXIV not maxed, and the former looks much better.

i7 930 @ 3.6ghz
3x GTX 470 SC in Tri-SLI
6GB G.Skill Ripjaws
Windows 7 Professional
OCZ ZX1250 PSU

[Rydin]

I get much better frames in Metro maxed than I do in FFXIV not maxed, and the former looks much better.

i7 930 @ 3.6ghz
3x GTX 470 SC in Tri-SLI
6GB G.Skill Ripjaws
Windows 7 Professional
OCZ ZX1250 PSU

I think that is more of an SLI thing... rather FFXIV's lack of proper support for it

[Coldfire]

Well the SLI support is pretty bad in ffxiv. Crossfire seems to work better but not at all in windowed mode. I would stick to 1 highend GPU and be happy without uber micro stuttering xD

[AreeyaJaidee]

Wasting money on ridiculous System Upgrades is so Archaic. The game needs to be "playable" on even lower end performance machines within reason.

If a PS3 player can: 1) Insert Disc 2) Install 3) Update 4) Play with gfx/UI/client optimized for native support. Then why should the PC demographic be so drastically different?

"Crystal Tools" was a smart business move, but honestly I think a lot of our heartaches is due to the system just now being adjusted for use in MMO development. I also believe that Crystal Tools lack of MMO optimization is exactly why SE was so behind in development. They have been having nothing but issues trying to make the Engine compatible with the complex needs of nextgen MMOs.

[Pyrix]

They didn't invest enough in graphics apparently, I really hate the ugly jagged shadows that display on my character.