The new concept screenshot is a real-time in-game render!

[Tsukino]

I'm really surprised so many people care strongly one way or the other about the game graphics in one picture. Saying a still image is being rendered in real time by the new engine doesn't mean much at all, especially when they've also said most of the optimization is in rendering a large number of people and effects and such. Every game made to this date can produce screenshots where a shadow is out of place or you see jagged edges or something else that's slightly off, not to mention the question of how fast it's running while delivering that, or what settings are currently being used and what the range of options actually is. Who even can say what all those effects in the picture actually look like?

The test of a game engine will come from seeing it in motion, not from whether or not you think you'll be able to make wallpapers out of it.

[Teth]

The reason we are examining this screenshot tho is that to date it is all we have. Some of us know how rendering engines work, we know that you cannot get something for nothing. Making the engine scale to lower hardware and the PS3 while allowing more models on screen will require a combination of clever optimisation and sacrifices in top end quality.

The question is where those sacrifices will be made? How big they will be? As a player with a mid to high end PC and a 24" 1920x1200 monitor I don't want to lose the high resolution textures and high poly count models which I love in FFXIV.

[Zenaku]

The reason we are examining this screenshot tho is that to date it is all we have. Some of us know how rendering engines work, we know that you cannot get something for nothing. Making the engine scale to lower hardware and the PS3 while allowing more models on screen will require a combination of clever optimisation and sacrifices in top end quality.

The question is where those sacrifices will be made? How big they will be? As a player with a mid to high end PC and a 24" 1920x1200 monitor I don't want to lose the high resolution textures and high poly count models which I love in FFXIV.

i agree that what i'm worry about but i guess we wait and see.

[Payadopa]

I like the screen shot. The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is UI customisation.
While I think it's great, I hope SE doesn't allow too much freedom (as in, say, WoW), as I have the fear that some might become a standard that must be used (and we all know how elitists can be).

Extreme example ahead.



*shudders*

Oh, and I also found a nice article that sums up my thoughts

Instead of just taking the stance of anti-UI mod, I’ve grown more in the direction if wanting a revolution in UI design and functionality as it pertains to the fundamentals of the game. I would rather our understanding of how a UI factors into gameplay change. We need something new, something fresh, and something that will allow us to move away from the, albeit functional, rudimentary hotbar.

Until there is a UI revolution, new games being developed should integrate all of the functionality players want into the stock UI and continue to develop it by working closely with players to find out what is missing. The UI should be patched with as aggressively as any balancing changes — it’s clearly important to a great many. Can the UI ever be perfect? No, but if it can’t be patched to improve then it is a failure on the devs part from the get-go.

UI mods, in general, simply do too much. They may not automate the game but providing all of this information at peoples fingertips actually ruins the spirit of the game. Part of what makes playing a DPS class a challenge is managing aggro levels. If a UI mod can practically tell you everything about aggro, what’s the point of being skilled or attempting to learn? I think I can understand now why my teachers in high school did not allow us to use calculators. If you do not understand how or why something works the way it does then you’re just going through the motions and will never improve.

There is absolutely -nothing- wrong with a ‘pure’ UI that plays the game the way it was meant to be played. The problem? It’s starting to be turned upside down so that the games are designed with UI mods in mind. That’s the wrong direction that will certainly never lead to a UI revolution.

Source: http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=h...:0&tx=80&ty=66

[ellohwell]

[COLOR="green"]
Oh, and I also found a nice article that sums up my thoughts

Source: http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=h...:0&tx=80&ty=66

Wow. I said, like, the exact same thing as the part you highlighted.

They need to be careful about how much information they give players and also how much skill-related stuff they decide to automate. Automating the entire combat system might be more convenient, but there is clearly a point at which the player behind the user interface is no longer even relevant.

[Molly_Millions]

I like the screen shot. The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is UI customisation.
While I think it's great, I hope SE doesn't allow too much freedom (as in, say, WoW), as I have the fear that some might become a standard that must be used (and we all know how elitists can be).

Extreme example ahead.



*shudders*

Oh, and I also found a nice article that sums up my thoughts



Source: http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=h...:0&tx=80&ty=66

While that screenshot is disgusting, I actually have enough desktop space to make a set up like that actually work. I love SLi. :P

[Shipp]

I like the screen shot. The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is UI customisation.
While I think it's great, I hope SE doesn't allow too much freedom (as in, say, WoW), as I have the fear that some might become a standard that must be used (and we all know how elitists can be).

Extreme example ahead.



*shudders*

It's not even an extreme example, it's a stupid example. People are pulling the absolute worst UI setups that they can to try to prove a point. It's not working. Healers (as the person in the picture is) do not need recount. They can check the healing done if they want to, but it's definitely not needed. I close my recount when I'm healing. Those party frames are absolutely atrocious. Get Grid+Clique, Healbot, or Vuhdo and all those raid frames will be in one nice consolidated box with nothing but health bars in it. Dot timer has a fully customizable scaling option, so the "Debuff" and the "Buffs" sitting in the middle and right portion of the screen are outrageously large. Omen threat meter as a healer is just stupid, imo. A healer is not going to pull aggro from a tank. Very few people actually pull threat from the tank in a raid, healers are like last on that list, so again, useless addon for a healing druid to have on their screen. Even if someone else pulled hate, they don't need the addon to warn them before it happens, because if they actually had a -good- UI setup with a proper healing addon that's not all over the screen, they would simply have to watch the green health bars and heal the one that moved in under 1 second.

There's also a ton of ridiculous crap on their toolbars that they don't even need to put on there, plus they have the UI scaled as large as possible. My bottom toolbar doesn't even reach all the way across the bottom of the screen on my standard monitor, never mind my HD widescreen that the vast majority of XIV's playerbase is probably playing the game on.



Simple UI with minimal addons. The left boxes are healthbars for all 40 people in the BG. More than any raid would have, yet they're not all over the screen like some people here would have you believe they have to be.

[Jynx]

Simple UI with minimal addons. The left boxes are healthbars for all 40 people in the BG. More than any raid would have, yet they're not all over the screen like some people here would have you believe they have to be.

Even that "Simple" UI is hella cluttered...I want to play a game not play with spreadsheets of information.

I guess when UI addons come out I'll be "That guy" who doesn't have the boss mods. Oh well good for the people who can't learn to play a game. Seriously I got nothing against most UI mods, automating stuff like healing though...I think thats just cheating the game and gives a massive advantage over other players.

[Shipp]

Even that "Simple" UI is hella cluttered...I want to play a game not play with spreadsheets of information.

I guess when UI addons come out I'll be "That guy" who doesn't have the boss mods. Oh well good for the people who can't learn to play a game. Seriously I got nothing against most UI mods, automating stuff like healing though...I think thats just cheating the game and gives a massive advantage over other players.

How is it cluttered? I could have moved a few addons more, but I queued as I logged on and didn't tweak anything, nor did I close recount in the lower right corner while I was healing. All you see is the complete 40 health bars I need to heal above the chat box and the timers on towers for the BG on the right side of the screen. There isn't a spreadsheet of information at all. You need to know tower timers if you're defending them. You can see all of the screen fine.

There's no "clutter" about that UI besides recount not being moved all the way to the right besides the right tool bars and the decursive boxes (that I doubt many people even noticed) being moved over to the right as well. There's far more clutter on my XIV screen since I can't resize half of the crap. The only time XIV looks decent is when I hook up my HDTV. That WoW SS was on my regular monitor that isn't WS.

[Jynx]

How is it cluttered?

Pretty much any information that invades the edges and center of my screen is intrusive to me. Perhaps it's just me though, I don't want my party member screen to take up a massive chunk of the left side of my screen.

While I admit re-aranging the screen would make it look 10x better it's still far too much information for my tastes. If I need to "Know" tower timers and need a UI addon just to know them then something is wrong. A developer shouldn't be adding content that requires the community to add a UI addon just to be bearable.

Then again I'm sure it would be possible to do with a normal UI isn't it? Or has WoW become so dependant on custom UI's that anyone who doesn't want to use them is left in the cold because they are playing the game the way it was intended to be played...

PS3 players are going to be shunned as if they were all loldrgs back in the early days of FFXI if UI mods turn to be a "Required" staple of the PC atmosphere. I'm sure I'll do fine without UI additions I'll learn the timers without a popup box to remind me, I'll use the normal party interface to view my party stats, I don't need a parser when I'm playing I can parse and check the stats AFTER the fight, I pray I don't need 600 random icons scattered around my screen (Probably all bound to some inane hotkeys).

It's good that we will have the option, but I think I'll opt out unless people can make some UI elements that I find are less intrusive than current ones, or perhaps just aesthetic changes.

What I'm worried about is PC players gaining a immesnly huge advantage over the console and vanila UI players, stuff like "Healbots" and whatnot don't really ring as "Fun" to me.