Anyone else underwhelmed by the new DX 11 graphics?

[Jeykama]

Here (open it in it's own window, it's 1080p)



I believe this is a fairly normal position to stand at and that water doesn't look natural.

Sadly that's just a result of the low resolution bump textures. That "line" you see there is the result of a poor job of downsizing the texture - kind of like when you simply shrink a picture in photoshop you may end up with a slightly darker pixel on the edge. Then it got exacerbated as a result of the displacements used in tesselation.

Mostly though, the changes look good.

[Kelg]

Just take a look at some of the textures. They are nearing ps2 levels of bad... That's what you should be complaining about imo. lol

[Warlyx]

Archeage water please

AA example:

http://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/...al/2636606.jpg


plenty of mmorpgs with cool water effects ....

[SovereignAegis]

Blows my mind people can complain about this games graphics.

They are beautiful. Like really beautiful. Going into heavensward for the first time was a bit mind blowing because it was all new content to me and I realized this game is fantastic graphics wise.

But more critically ontop of their graphics they have a wonderful art team that brings diverse and rich environments to us as well.

So while I confess I understand this doesn't have the same level of graphics as a single player game I need to say that there is no way ff14 is NOT above average by a huge margin in its market. It is undeniably one of the most gorgeous MMORPGs out there and that is far from me being biased.

Is its graphics the same as recent triple A titles? No. But it is FARRRRRR from an eyesore.

[CGMidlander]

I don't really care about the fine details, honestly.
I've always turned down settings in my games for gameplay reasons. (e.g. Removing HDR, blur, and shadows for higher framerate and better visibility)
The only things I don't usually compromise on are resolution and texture settings. (This game does not have texture settings)

[TThibi]

You expected perfection right off? well guess what mr Snowflake OP, it's tech that is constantly in development not everything is going to look crystal clear right off it will be years but now the framework is in place and SE can develop better graphics in the future with it in place.

[BreathlessTao]

Eh, not really. Those subtle changes really added up to overall better visuals, which hadn't been bad at all, to begin with. One thing I don't like is that we still don't have more AA options (FXAA is admittedly not exactly among the good ones).

What I'm more underwhelmed by, is the fact that we still can't have higher resolution textures. For example, there's [censored]'s gravestone, with quite a few lines of text, and we can't even read it. Other places, the terrain is even more smudgy than before. Close-up on clothes makes certain details look like this was an 8-bit game (or worse).

[Gunspec]

You are comparing the water physics in FFXIV, a game in which we can neither swim nor sail, to water physics in games like AC:4 and Archeage that have major water-based gameplay components.

Now, if you were complaining about the skybox, clouds, and other aerial effects in 3.0, you would have a good argument. But it kind of makes sense that the FFXIV team hasn't put much work into the water effects as of yet.

If 4.0 involves the oceans, like a lot of rumors are suggesting, THEN I imagine a major update to water physics will be required. I can recall a few mmos that updated water effects when new water based content was created, and I think FFXIV will be no different.

[Bishop81]

You are comparing the water physics in FFXIV, a game in which we can neither swim nor sail, to water physics in games like AC:4 and Archeage that have major water-based gameplay components.

Not really asking for it to look major impressive.

I figured that tessellation will bring you the "impressive" automatically if implemented correctly - and tessellation is what SE implemented.

The current implementation is kind of sloppy given the artifacts.

Might as well just use a loop animated mash, e.g. Uncharted 3. Low tech but pretty simple.

That reminds me,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i63NKuhLlcg

GTA V's water is pretty good too and it's a game that is mostly on land.

PS: I can understand Parallax Occlusion bugging out; it's a limitation of the (base) technique (it can be worked around with more advanced algorithms; which might be too expensive.)

[Gunspec]

GTA V's water is pretty good too and it's a game that is mostly on land.

Again, that is a game where you ride boats and jet skis. Obviously the devs worked on making the water look nice because you could interact with it, and such graphics were a major selling point.

There are only a few zones in 3.0 that have sizable bodies of water, and they clearly aren't the focus right now for the devs. I can almost promise you that there will be a major overhaul to water effects in the future, but not until they make new zones where water is a central feature.

And I'm saying this as someone who is currently leveling fishing on a 2nd monitor. Water effects just aren't a concern right now for the devs.