Limitations

[Colorful]

I wasn't speaking of parsers, but of add-ons in general, of which parsers are just one example.

As far as I know addons are still in the works, but planned to only be used for extensive UI customisation rather than addons you'd find in WoW such as DBM or Recount. There's no advantages on PC players so console limitations haven't been used as an excuse, not yet anyway.

The FATE thing, I haven't heard - that could be an example of the "one or two" exceptions I mentioned (and which the community latched onto as an excuse to blame EVERYTHING on PS3). Bear in mind, though, that Yoshi-P has promised a lot of things that he was not able to follow through on, not because of console limitations, but development limitations. Housing being the most infamous example. He's not always the best at keeping what he'd LIKE to see happen within the limitations of what's actually feasible to develop.

Yoshida does tend to promise a lot and not follow through with some things, but I don't think a large scale FATE would be as difficult to implement as a glamour log, addon API, hair physics or multiple dyes on the same piece of gear. Seems more likely that it's limited by the PS3's lack of RAM or CPU limitations in handling a large amount of players in one zone along with massive creature.

I think people need to remember how dated the PS3 is, all the limitations I threw out there are speculation yes, but they're not baseless speculation. Saying it's speculation doesn't mean it doesn't hold some merit. The PS3 has 256MB of RAM and then another 256MB of VRAM, it's a miracle that they managed to get FFXIV running on it to begin with, and it's clear that they've utilised 100% of its resources. It runs at sub 30 FPS in towns, while some would argue that splitting the cities in two sections is design choice its clear that's not the case. Running a major city with many people running around on its CPU and limited RAM would be like attempting to run Star Citizen PU Alpha on a system with less than 4GB of VRAM. It's not a design choice that they scrapped FFXV on the PS3 and moved onto the PS4, nor is it a cost cutting measure. it's because the console is dated and would limit the game severely and that's not speculation.

The textures thing, I don't buy one bit. DOWNgrading a texture is beyond easy; if SE wanted HQ textures for PS4 and PC, we'd have them, and PS3 would have a lesser version.

Downgrading a texture is easy, but we have no idea how easy managing 2-3 versions is and from what SE has said the engine they're using is especially difficult to work with (which is why KH3 and FFVII HD aren't going to be using it). Whether that applies to the cut down engine FFXIV is using, well it's as you said, speculation. Now that the PS3 has been dropped, they no longer need to cater to the lowest tier of system. If they do implement poor quality textures we'll know something is up, but really there's no excuse for it anymore.

Yoshi-P could do absolutely nothing and let the game rot like they did with FFXI, or they could continually improve it by upgrading the requirements every expansion pack, including new modern features to compete with up and coming MMORPGs and do the occasional overhaul where needed as WoW does. All that matters is that wouldn't of been possible with the PS3 attached, just as current raids in WoW or areas like Suramar wouldn't run low end systems that could run Vanilla WoW.