How good is the game engine of FFXIV?

[TheVigilant]

Keep in mind that art style DOES matter. WoW's art style is more cartoony, lower polygon, and less realistic which is easier to render than the FFXIV's more realistic and higher polygon graphics. FFXIV's graphics blow WoW's out of the water in my opinion but that's not to say that WoW's graphics are bad because they aren't, just that their art styles are different and that difference affects how much rendering power is needed for them.

Once again, I'm not convinced with the excuse being the art style when Kingdom Hearts uses the same art style but gives us the same hair but much better rendered and clearer from up-close and this goes for rest of the body as well.
Before judging please open both images in their full sizes to see what it looks like on my 4K+ resolution 28" UHD monitor:

KINGDOM HEARTS:



FINAL FANTASY XIV: STORMBLOOD:



Now have a look at how players are able to fix the hair issue with a mod:



Remember to right click and view the images in their REAL SIZE (not the minimized forum version here) to see what I mean, open the SB screenshot and click on it to zoom in, I play in 4K resolution on a 28" UHD monitor, that's why I can see it.
The KH character looks like something that can be found in FFXIV and viewed zoomed in for a cutscene yet is almost CRYSTAL CLEAR when in the FFXIV cutscenes, all characters look as if they were made to be viewed in lower resolution than mine or to be viewed from far, when I see them in the game from far they look great but when the cutscenes happen I have to notice them over and over again and while I just live with it anyway, I have to notice and be distracted by it over and over again, keeping in mind that FFXIV is a very story oriented game filled with cut-scenes and dialogue scenes every now and then.
This issue I can also see with the fonts on the loading screens when entering zones, they look like they were logos done in a lower resolution than mine and then expanded to fit the screen size.

It's even more apparent on some characters armor in situations in cutscenes such as this:



The issue remains in my opinion, possibly either that it is in the modeling or textures, and for the animations it may be that the models require more bones in general, as I saw some of the characters can express things through their faces and bodies harder than other characters, and that hopefully there can be much more tweaking done to the game's engine, for the sake of the game in the long-term, which is what this thread is about in the first place.