Why do so many textures look like they are from a ps2 game?

[Edax]

The issue is while it's technically playing it safe by using a cartoon art style to make graphics and textures that much easier at the very least they have taken advantage of what they have to make sure their textures pop. FFXIV has gone for the realism route to an extent but haven't put in the effort to make it consistent in the long run. The biggest offender is the fact that Yoshida himself admitted to making low res textures when by now its known that the industry standard is to make the source files at a higher resolution and scale them down accordingly for level of system and its limitation. If you're gonna go for a "Realistic" style then you can not make compromises with such things with base textures as that can run your overall aesthetic. Art Style can take you far but if you're not willing to put in the work to make it work and instead go for the fastest possible route you'll eventually pay for it. The textures were fine at launch because it was launch. Now that game is running freely with a decently sized playerbase and one of its original consoles discontinued it would have only made sense for Stormblood to have introduce that texture bump for PC and PS4 players alike.

I'm more than certain that if we had actual high-res source files for the textures PC and even the PS4 would have been able to get a bigger bump in graphical fidelity that would slowly get bogged down by the Low-Poly models a few more expansions which by then would probably mean an overhaul overall given the standard would be significantly higher than it is now.

I agree that SE is not reinvesting enough effort into FFXIV. Hien is a major character and his outfit should never have been that pixilated for more than a single patch cycle. Doubly so since his outfit ended up in the Mogstation. Even my beloved Samurai class gear has parts that are strangely low res, while others are not.