Lackluster Graphics in FFXIV

[gifthorse]

Indeed. And i see your points as well.


Instead, speaking about graphics (technically) only, here are some bad points i noticed more:

- Water seems really not 'consistent' when you walk in it. Splash effect is very bad in the actual state and the whirls are too subtle.
- Trees (and brushes) are too much low-res, with too much 'tiny' leaves, so the upper part (with leaves) seems a sheet of paper, especially when they moved by the wind. It creates a strange effect of 'trasparency' between the leaves sometimes.
- Lack of building/trees/other shadows. It would increase the atmosphere MUCH.

Also, whenever you move around, in the distance the low res textures come into view as an approaching wavefront. There is no gradual progression between high and low resolution textures. It's crazyyy.

[DAOWAce]

I created this in beta, but the flaws are still relevant in present time: http://forum.daow.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23

[BelgianRofl]

I created this in beta, but the flaws are still relevant in present time: http://forum.daow.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23

Yes, the game is running a horribly optimized engine, and the lighting is just atrocious. The characters look ok (except for the lighting), but the world just looks horrible - especially limsa.

FFXI looks better because the graphical technologies all fit together - like a toyota camry with stock rims. here it's like putting doughnuts on a ferrari - and that just ruins the whole image.

[Ilean]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9anRoYGko

Tessellation based water

[OJtheLIONKing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9anRoYGko

Tessellation based water

I thought this was a troll post for sure, since this is still the best looking MMO I've seen by a large margin, but I didn't notice how distractingly bad the water looked in Limsa or that the LoD was distracting even on high settings until I recently got a new computer. To say that the graphics are lackluster is a bit much, but certainly the water has room for improvement, and it seems the engine in general could potentially run better. The water in WoW is actually a fairly good example of the scalability that could be used--I run it on ultra now and it looks noticeably better than FFXIV water even though the rest of the game doesn't even touch FFXIV as far as graphic fidelity. Just some proper DX10/11 support would probably improve the water noticeably without demanding too much more in resources.

Although I'm sure there's be a lot of work involved in optimizing the engine (and we know that they're aware of the issues and are working on them), it would pay off if it properly supported DX11 while being a bit more forgiving in the lower range to allow more players. Most FFXI players I knew wanted to try this game out at launch but simply didn't have PCs that could run it. Really, I didn't either--until last week I could only run it on my laptop with all the settings turned down as low as possible, and had lots of loading lag as a result. The game runs tons better now that I upgraded, but not everyone has that option, and when the game is in better shape it'd be great if more could play it.

Still, aside from the water, some pop-in issues with LoD, weird normal mapping in Limsa, and the somewhat unrelated issue that they're working on of kinda boring spell graphics, the game looks pretty awesome. I hope in the future the zone design philosophy allows for a little more variety inside zones, though. The actual regions are pretty diverse graphically, but inside them everything looks pretty similar and there aren't many distinguishing landmarks to make the world feel unique or real.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

*necroposting*

[Seif]

I don't give a damn about the graphics quality. It's the boring visual design of every area that's the real problem.

Gameboy Color has games with more visual brilliance than this bland landscape of generic nothingness.

[Elexia]

I don't give a damn about the graphics quality. It's the boring visual design of every area that's the real problem.

Gameboy Color has games with more visual brilliance than this bland landscape of generic nothingness.

Indeed, since sprite based games weren't naturally more 'eye catching'.

[Verecund]

Seeing the tech demo and then comparing it to the current game makes my eyes brim with tears. :/

[DedeKorkut]

I have no issue with the graphics in the game , yet I feel an emptiness within the environment especially while running from one place to the next, I can run for 5-8 mins with nothing but empty landscape. I'm not complaining I'm new to the whole Final Fantasy experience so I would have nothing to compare it with, but I can say that (through personal experience) good graphics don't always equal good game play. This is just my point of view I'm not aiming this at anyone. Some posts claim they have not yet seen a MMORPG with graphics equal to or better than FF14, might I suggest you take a quick look at Mortal Online. http://www.mortalonline.com/videos (I am by no means advertising or claiming that this is a far better game) Just check it out graphics wise.