Lackluster Graphics in FFXIV

[Scape]

Idk, I don't think the water looks as bad as some are saying. I have seen better but really have not noticed any of it looking bad at all;

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...sfishing-2.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...1305415651.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...01343540-1.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...02462830-2.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...04999937-1.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...1306550644.jpg

[dream]

you know what?

P S 3 Limitation

[LuxLex]

yeah this water sure looks terrible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAH1T...layer_embedded

[Shipp]

yeah this water sure looks terrible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAH1T...layer_embedded

That's not how it normally looks. That also looks to be how WoW's fountains are, a 2-d overlay of cascading water, though I could be wrong about that part. We're talking about standing water which accounts for the majority of the water in game, not a fancy little waterfall that was specifically created for that area. It's like comparing the streams in XI to the waterfall in the jungle. Looks nothing alike.

[Linkurrra]

You know you guys are asking for a very resource intensive object that would require the hardware specifications to be raised if it gets added. Reflections of character and environment, transparency to see the water bed, distortion from refraction all take significant video card resources to accomplish. I loved in EQ2 how you could really had a large amount of tools to adjust graphics settings. But hated that what worked well in one place, would make the game unplayable in another!

Example, you can have all the fancy graphics in the world especially on water. You will still have great FPS in Thanalan, but when you go to La Nosca your FPS will tank and become nearly unplayable (for lower end systems) once you look at the water!

Thats great fun right? So SE really needs to give us better control over the graphics quality.

And While I liked the insane control over the graphics quality in EQ2. I hated that it still needed to be adjusted based on the environment or in densly populated areas like dungeons or raids.

What works well when playing solo never works well when in a party. There is much more going on, all with high detail characters like yourself.

So I think it would be nice if there was in game controls that would adjust the graphics to suit the environment. Such as, indoors, outdoors, cities and parties. All of these have unique graphics settings to be adjusted to give the player the best play experience. This is needed for PC's with lower system settings. It would allow more ppl to play and not be excluded because their PC is not up to snuff.

but I suppose PS3 is a valid alternative. Still I like to tinker on my PC and this would be a very good tool to have!

[Eekiki]

yeah this water sure looks terrible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAH1T...layer_embedded

Yeah, that's fine, but the water flowing through streams and in the seas do not look that good.

But yeah, the fountains look great. I'm also of the opinion that rain looks pretty awesome in this game, but I know there are many that do not share my opinion on that, either.

[Capita]

I think the game looks incredible for a game that has to be able to run well on a PS3.

It's not Crysis, but it's up there.

[MattyWS]

Graphics are fine, people need to stop nitpicking at things that don't matter. Shadows can't even be baked in like most games would have, because of the day/night time, the light source moves. There's just no real way of doing it. without upping the recommended specs on the box, which BTW are already on shelves, so deal with it. >.>

[AugustHereux]

I will stick with my previous statement, that giving objects the property to cast shadows would improve the all around visual quality, and even though this might be founded in nothing, wouldnt superimposing shadows on everything be quite easy from a developer perspective?

Might be naiv to think so i suppose, on another note, alot of people are mentioning the "bad" texture filtering, anyone tried to force AF through the Nvidia controlpanel/Equivalent? That should theoreticly get rid of the issue.

[Trocien]

This is an important discussion which needs to be addressed.