Will 2.0 heave better physics in the new areas?

[ArnoMorley]

Speaking of physics, does anybody else think they have the lamest graphics for movement speed increases? It's the same animation just ridiculously fast, it's as bad as watching video footage from WW1 or something.

In XI you got used to it but this is the next gen game. How about the characters going into a sprinting stance, maybe add a camera wobble for effect. (If anybody's played with the goal kicking thing in FIFA soccer's main menu that's what i'm talking about)

[Elexia]

Because honestly it's not that big of a deal lol, movement speed merely just means you're moving faster, not going Captain Falcon on bitches.

[Mireille]

While I am sure I will get flamed for this by the FF12 haters, the cities in FF12 felt more alive than both those in XI and in XIV. Add more npc's throughout each of the cities, and for god sakes, have them do more than just stand there and look strait ahead.

I agree. I hadn't really thought about it, but those cities did feel alive. I'd say than in X the populated areas felt alive too even when it was just a bench adjacent to the shoepuff port. In XII the cities were alive, but also had a unique character to them.

[Soukyuu]

While I am sure I will get flamed for this by the FF12 haters, the cities in FF12 felt more alive than both those in XI and in XIV. Add more npc's throughout each of the cities, and for god sakes, have them do more than just stand there and look strait ahead.

They can't. It worked in FFXII cause there was only one player. Most of their problems with cities being lifeless come from the fact the engine is limited to display 20 character models at the same time.

[Chrees]

They can't. It worked in FFXII cause there was only one player. Most of their problems with cities being lifeless come from the fact the engine is limited to display 20 character models at the same time.

Then it's a good thing the new engine in 2.0 will, among other things, help alleviate problems like this.

[Majidah]

I hope they will give routines to npcs. I'd like for an npc to wake up at its house, go to work at certain hour, close shop at another, maybe go to the pub or something. And some quests could only be available when he's at a certain place at a certain time. Ya know? Not just sit there in a shop chained to the desk.

[Soukyuu]

Then it's a good thing the new engine in 2.0 will, among other things, help alleviate problems like this.

I certainly hope so. Maybe they thought the players will make the cities look alive, but that's just not cutting it with everyone being concentrated around the aetheryte plaza/AG

[Chrees]

I certainly hope so. Maybe they thought the players will make the cities look alive, but that's just not cutting it with everyone being concentrated around the aetheryte plaza/AG

From the Blue Gartr interviews (Part 1/Part 2) back in October:

Sonomaa (BG): Will the graphics engine support Direct X10/11 and additional features, such as a full screen windowed mode without the limitations of ALT-TAB killing your game. DirectX 9.0c was a great API for Windows XP, but we're not on that anymore. We have very powerful graphics cards. We want the game to play like we know it should. Will the new engine will be a DirectX 10/11 engine or will it be an older, legacy engine.

Square-Enix: First thing, we're going to make sure ALT-TAB does not kill your game! [laughs] We're sorry it still happens!

The first thing, with this current graphics engine, is that you can't do things such as display more than 40 characters at the same time. That, to him (Yoshida), was nonsense. First, we wanted to start off by having an engine that covers that, and get rid old problems like that. We're making the new graphics engine such that if you have a high-end PC, we want you to be able to display tons of different characters and not have it tax your CPU. But we're also making it to where low-end PCs can also play it and have a similar experience without losing too much, without having to have that high-end PC. We hope to have that by 2.0. After the release of 2.0, getting it ready for DirectX 11 is the next step. We had the option of having DirectX 11 ready at release, but it would have made release later. So we wanted to get the new engine out and have this type of high quality for high-end/low-end. Then our next step is DirectX 11. And again, it was a priority thing. We had this schedule of how we wanted to remake the game in an unprecedented time of 2 years and to make that, we chose to do that first and then go to DirectX 11. But we do promise that we will do it. It's not one of those things where, "But well, yeah, 11, yeah, whatever blah blah..."

BG: That's important for a lot of our community. They don't want to play an old game. They want to play a new game, and if they upgrade, they don't want their new hardware to not have compatibility. That's the problem our FFXI users are running into. They buy a new graphics card - Oh, we have a list of graphics cards not to buy because they cannot play FFXI on those graphics cards!

SE: That's one of the main things we have in our head when we're planning for our new engine. We want those high-end users to take advantage of their high-end platform and get the best out of it as they can. To make sure we have an engine that can support that.

6. Will you implement walking/active/talking NPCs, by way of adding some life to the cities/world?

Yes, in 2.0, NPCs will be more involved in conversations and there will be increased animations all around. Our new engine will allow all NPCs to be active, but it may get irritating if NPCs move around too much, so only certain NPCs will be updated. We plan on adding more life to the world through these changes.

[Coldfire]

Making a DX11 version after making it DX9 and keeping both is a really bad idea. The whole point of DX11 is the compatibility and the performance. When you have to care for both DX9 and 11 the game will still run on XP but it's alot of wasted resources. With DX11 having 100 characters on screen should be no problem though :P

[OJtheLIONKing]

Making a DX11 version after making it DX9 and keeping both is a really bad idea. The whole point of DX11 is the compatibility and the performance. When you have to care for both DX9 and 11 the game will still run on XP but it's alot of wasted resources. With DX11 having 100 characters on screen should be no problem though :P

I don't know, I can't think of a single game that's completely abandoned DX9 except Battlefield 3. Most games, including the one I can't name because it'll cause some flames to be sure, that have DX11 also support DX9 and work fine. It may be extra work, but it's justified because even though it's already 2 generations old, a large proportion of potential players are still on Windows XP right now. There's no reason to think that will suddenly change in 10 months. Devs have to think in terms of what will be the best and most inclusive for players, not what's easiest for them.

On topic, I'd love to have something like FFXII, which had about the most lively cities I can think of in any game. If the new engine can support it, I'd like to see random incidental NPCs running around doing tasks. Or better, an option to turn off NPCs that aren't there for anything in case people don't like/can't run them that well.