So... What Exactly ARE the PS3 Limitations

[CUTS3R]

Please pass this along to Bethesda, seriously, lol

Oh and i also played this game on PS3, played the PS4 beta and then switched to PS4.
While it was slow it's not nearly as bad as some of you made it out to be

It was enough to occasionally warrant you to be kicked from farm parties. It happened to me quite a few times when i was still on PS3. The reason was always because i was "wasting" people time with my long loading times in between runs.

[DragonSlayer45]

If you want to know how limiting 512MB worth of RAM is, your phone is able to handle more than that these days.

[Laraul]

People who blame the PS3 for the way the game it is are probably the same type of people who support Donald Trump for President. Maybe they should ask Trump to ban the PS3 along with all the Muslums or convince Mexico to use them as material to build that wall...

This is a gross exaggeration of course. The anti-PS3 crowd has shown no more favoritism of Donald Trump than anyone else. But, blaming the PS3 just sounds like something that Trump would do. PS3 players are a minority in the game and make an easy target to vent.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

People who blame the PS3 for the way the game it is are probably the same type of people who support Donald Trump for President. Maybe they should ask Trump to ban the PS3 along with all the Muslums or convince Mexico to use them as the materials to build that wall...

Being edgy stopped being cute ages ago. Tell us how you really feel.

[Tint]

People who blame the PS3 for the way the game it is are probably the same type of people who support Donald Trump for President. Maybe they should ask Trump to ban the PS3 along with all the Muslums or convince Mexico to use them as material to build that wall...

This is a gross exaggeration of course. The anti-PS3 crowd has shown no more favoritism of Donald Trump than anyone else. But, blaming the PS3 just sounds like something that Trump would do. PS3 players are a minority in the game and make an easy target to vent.

i have played FF14 on the PS3 and it was HORRIBLE. i wished they had never released it for that plattform. couldn't wait to get my hands on a PS4. this game is clearly designed with the PS4 in mind and it is not really working on the old PS3. endless waiting for summoning retainers and NPCs, you can't see most of the people in crowded areas, HUNTS, i had an hardware delay and it was impossible for me to dodge some AOEs (on the day i got my PS4 i was suddenly a way better player xP)...
if the game was working in the PS3 but holding the other plattforms back i would say: nope, don't drop PS3 support - but it isn't working. the game is horrible on PS3, so they should drop the support to get rid of the mess xD

[Slam01]

Well you can take this however you want as far as how it relates to the topic, but Bungie said legacy consoles held them back with developing content which was the main reason they were dropped and there will be a clear difference that will be noticed when the next DLC in destiny is released.

Bungie had the same mindset of developing to the lowest common denominator in order to give all players a similar experience so...

[Lambdafish]

The best way to answer this is with Yoshi P's official answer to your question:

Question: How long until you drop support for PS3?

Yoshi P: "That will depend on how long people continue to play on the PS3, I've mentioned in the presentation this morning that I want to make sure that "FFXIV continues to innovate", and there's certainly the possibility that whatever innovation we seek will come with certain technical requirements. For example in EQN, which I mentioned earlier, it would not be possible to realize certain things like physic-based gameplay without meeting the hardware prerequisites. So if this becomes something that players want and we start to see people leave for rival products, then we can not just sit around twiddling our thumbs either. After all, we too need to ensure we have the necessary weapons to take on other MMORPGs in the future.
For example, if we were to have a large-scale FATE where players can ride on a flying mount and freely fly around and swoop down at a dragon that is 200 meters long, players would probably be impressed and entertained. However, it would also require us to raise the minimum requirement when it comes to hardware specs.
Our aim has always been to develop the game so that players can have the same experience no matter which hardware they play on. However, if we were to become too fixated on this and become unable to innovate, then this will cease to be a FF game. So I do not plan to say that we will support the PS3 version forever. At the same time, I'm not saying that we'll be ending support by next year or anything like that either, so do not worry."

Now granted this is from an old interview (2014), but it does describe the kinds of areas that the devs are limited in, and have always been limited in since the game launched.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...p_features_of/

As has been pointed out, PS3 can only display a certain amount of things on screen at a time, and Yoshi P references spectacle and open world events as something that is not possible due to the limitations, but there are many more things that it gets in the way of (I believe UI is a big one)

[LineageRazor]

While it's likely true that some design decisions are made because SE wants to set PS3 on as even a playing field as possible with other platforms, please understand the Poe's Law is in full effect here. A lot of people will call "PS3 Limitations" simply because they know that it will piss people off, not because they actually believe that PS3 limitations actually apply to whatever discussion is going on. However, just as often folks will invoke "PS3 Limitations" and be dead serious about it - but don't have the technical background to have any idea of what they're talking about. They're regurgitating something they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, or simply assume that any limitation MUST be PS3 limitations.

Among this mess is the very small handful of individuals who actually DO know what they're talking about - but it's often pretty difficult to tell them apart from the trolls and the fools.

[SigmaOZ]

The game looks pretty old with horrible cheap textures but we are still playing it, I believe Square Enix should allocate more resources for this game and make it all the better, FFXIV is a money maker after all!...

PS3 limitations is just an old excuse now and even then SE could add "options" to make the game look better, like the new PS4 version which will allow for 4K texture packs compared to the original console and why!?... Well, because we are moving towards Ultra HD games and any serious player would have gotten rid of a poor PS3 by now!...

Not that I would be limited by that since I won't play on consoles anymore, PC is much better!...

[Niwashi]

- We can't have more inventory because of PS3 limitations
- We can't wear two hats because of PS3 limitations

The inventory limitation is due to server limitations, not PS3 limitations. The servers need to keep track of everyone's inventory in real time, including passing it between them. And for non-real-time inventory (like retainers) it's just a database issue. Both are a matter of convincing SE that this game that's bringing in so much money is worth actually spending a bit of that money on. (I can understand them having minimal servers when ARR first launched and they weren't sure if a relaunched game would be successful, but by this point they know it is. It's worth investing the time and money needed for some major upgrades. I expect that's why we're getting more inventory in the next expansion: that that's when the upgrades they're working on are supposed to be complete.)

The two headgear slot idea would be hard for PS3s to handle, but would also be harder to design for, so we wouldn't be likely to get it anyway. The reason the belt is no longer a visibly displayed gear item, for instance, is because it made it too hard for the designers trying to ensure that each belt fit with each piece of leg gear or long chest gear. Having separate head and face slots could have similar issues in matching up which ones could be displayed together.



The PS3's problem is memory. In particular, anything that increases the amount of memory needed in order to display a character on-screen is particularly limited because you not only need it for your own character, but multiplied by the number of characters around you. It's the reason really crowded areas are hard for PS3. (They're also hard for low-end PCs, but that's more often about graphics processing. The PS3 is actually better than a lot of PCs at graphics processing, but it's quicker to choke on the memory requirements.)

So adding an additional selection in character configuration (for instance separating the face and horns for Au Ra into two different options you can mix and match) would mean an additional data field your system would need in order to display a nearby character. That was ruled out specifically because SE doesn't want to increase the size of that character configuration data that every client in the area needs. But even there, there are two reasons for limiting that data size. One is that increases to it are hard on low memory clients like PS3. The other (and perhaps more significant one) is that it can become an issue with the server to client communication as the servers have to send everybody's description to everybody else. It's the second of those issues that leads to lag in crowded areas.

Adding things like an extra visible gear slot would also add to the amount of data on how to display a character, multiplied by the number of characters around you. And it all has to be first communicated to every client, then held in memory by the client which displays them.

Multiple dye colors per gear piece would add to the data, but besides the added memory needed, SE mentioned something about multiple passes in rendering it. I don't quite understand the details, but from the sound of it, it seems it's low-end PCs with limited graphics capabilities rather than low memory clients like PS3 that that limitation is geared towards.


So most of the things that PS3s memory limits are also limited by other factors anyway, whether that's server communications, development effort, or graphics processing. It doesn't seem like there's much that dropping PS3 support would actually buy us.