Lackluster Graphics in FFXIV

[Abriael]

Your point was that SE is unable to add reflections to water because there are a lot of characters on-screen. #1, water doesn't have to reflect characters. Reflect world is fine. #2, adding an option to correct shading in the game will simply allow people who have a rich-man's graphics card the ability to look at a game that doesn't look like it was made 10 years ago. #3, adding reflections and adding real shading will not tax the system as much as ambient occlusion does, and it will make the game look much better and lifelike.

Reflecting the world still takes a toll on the hardware. The engine needs to have resources free in order to display the enormous level of detail in comparison to other games, so they simply let some effects that have a very high hardware impact out.

They already said that ambient occlusion has been implemented simply as a futureproof option.

You can scream "there's no excuse!" as much as you want, but you'd still not know anything about what you're talking about. Your argument is based on nothing.
or better, You don't have an argument. The game overally looks much better than any other in the market. Calling the graphics "lackluster" is nonsensical at best.

Character animations [excluding Lalafell] in this game are great. most games nowadays use motion capture. It's a very commonly used tech that saves boatloads of development time.

It's not as common as you think. While it's common for game developers to use mocap, mocap goes from extremely advanced all-purpose studios to home-friendly setups that cost a few hundred dollars.

It's not common at all for developers to use a dedicated studio equipped with a 44-camera Vicon MX40 system, capable of body, facial and hands tracking, which is one of the best (and most costly) in the industry and that most game developers simply cannot afford. That's why FFXIV's animations (and the anims of other SE games) are so much better than most of the competition.

In some ways Crystal Tools seems better given the fact that FFXIV is a very beautiful MMO in 90% of cases, but I would like to have seen what SE was capable of doing with another engine just for comparison.

Unfortunately we already saw it. It's called "The Last Remnant", one of the technically worst games ever released by SE, made with the Unreal Engine.
It's available on steam if you have an iron stomach and are so curious to see what SE will do with the UE. The story and gameplay aren't even that bad, but the technical implementation is utterly sub-par.

Which isn't surprising. It's fairly obvious that the staff of a company will perform better with an engine created in-house, to which they have been specifically trained and with which their professionality is most likely to have grown.

This is the same reason why Epic Games gets a lot more out of the Unreal Engine than any third party using it. Same with Crytech with the Cryengine.

As I said earlier, SE isn't able to render water or fire properly with the Crystal Tools engine

Water and Fire in FFXIII look VERY proper. Water in FFXIV looks rather good as well, and as many already stated in this thread, yours is more a matter of taste. And after meeting a certain fire-based summon in game, I can say that fire looks awesome too.

nor are they able to create a seamless world. Some of these factors have contributed to the copy-and-paste situation everyone is so fond of. For example, in order to create such a large world, SE had to employ the cheat of using repeated blocks of land which are loaded in as you zone into the area. If they had used an engine capable of loading in the geography around a player as he moves, then they wouldn't have needed to make this compromise.

Every single MMORPG uses asset recycling to adress memory shortages. Whatever their engine is and no matter if they use streaming tricks.
Also, the FFXIV world is more seamless than most, as there are no loading times between open and closed spaces.

Also, there is no blurring between low-res and high-res textures in the distance. So as you move, you see a definite line between the two qualities of textures. Up close, everything looks good, but far away, you realise something is wrong.

That's what depth of field is for, and texture "rezzing" is a common issue in every game. Other games simply limit it by limiting the available depth of vision, putting obstacles to obstruct it or using the same depth of field trick.