Would you like to see a texture update?

[kaynide]

I would also like an option to cull others appearances. As in, when too many people get on screen they just turn into a generic adventurer representing their job. So literally 1 model for each job. Especially when doing PvP or the Hunt, I couldn’t care less if someone is rocking that Excalibur.

Same for mounts, just make em chocobos.

Basically, I would rather be using my pc’s resources to make the game’s mobs and environment look as good as possible for me than see someone’s Mario cosplay mid battle. Town?, all good. Can’t see the Hunt mob? Screams of FFXI’s Aht Urgan siege...

[Amnmaat]

This is the kind of stuff I expect them to do if they don't add the missing genders. I understand that adding "new races" takes a lot of work but ok, then how about updating a lot of textures if you decided not to add the missing genders? It doesn't have to be all of the game's textures, start with a good number for 6.0, then more for 7.0. It's funny how for Blue mage they have this mentality of patching it up as it goes but that's an impossibility for stuff like upgraded textures.

[Shurrikhan]

No, but I think WoW had a major graphical overhaul and update during one of its expansions.

It's been getting increasingly better in bits and pieces since WotLK or more noticeably since Cataclysm, around the original XIV's release, rather than having any single "major overhaul".

Wrath greatly improved the bounds of texture quality, though it didn't go ham with the added capacity at first despite doubling the minimum RAM requirements at the time to 1 gig. Cataclysm, which featured an underwater zone, most noticeably entirely redid how water was rendered; it also added Dx11 support, most noticeably through sun-shafts and dynamic lighting, and improved character models. Mists greatly improved shadows and lighting, without which the expansion's Sha enemies likely would have seriously lacked visual punch, and further improved on character models and animations, especially for key NPCs. Legion provided further optimization and some more nuanced forms of glow, and just generally spent a bit more time on the floor textures and doodads to really bring out the gritty pseudo-realism of the "viking" lands' slopes, the glow and glint of snow in High Mountain, the magical-but-none-too-gaudy appearance of the plants in Suramar, etc, and further graphical features support. Battle for Azeroth then polished characters even further, while Shadowlands will be providing a plethora more character customization options alongside revised UI and deeper Dx12 support to really nail the feel of its zones without bogging frames, it would seem.

Honestly, at this point, WoW's graphics generally leave fewer obvious points of disappointment or anything obviously jarring than do XIV's.

Outside of certain areas of vanilla zones, the terrain is less sharply cut, patchy, or pixelated than a typical XIV zones, and forgoes any obvious repeating textures across wide spans of the same terrain. Modern WoW armor generally looks fine from afar and fine from up close, rather than looking realistic at a distance and then horribly pixelated when zoomed in tight. Heck, if I judge the two experiences holistically, XIV today (as expanded July 2019) feels to me much like Mists did then (Sep 2012), but somehow less... artistically-cohesive.

You can say much of that is because of WoW's more "cartoony" art style from the offset, but honestly it just seems to be due to a lot more attention to what will matter for what they next want to produce, what improvements can be steadily made without getting in the way of content creation, and a general interest in making the experience look more polished and artistically striking and cohesive whenever they can. Both games have struggled with engine limitations and old spaghetti code. But while XIV uses those excuses like an unsurmountable limitation, WoW has been consistently working to overcome each and has actually made progress with no content droughts owed specifically to doing so (each has been due, instead, to "preemptive salvaging").

[wereotter]

Well I disagree. The characters are looking dated at this point and the options are limited. So I do see a need for it. Moreover, I don't see why gameplay - a very broad rubric - and quality of story are mutually exclusive with that.

I tend to hear a lot more criticism in games about not being good enough visually whether it's too pixelated or not having enough frames per second, yet when there are issues regarding gameplay, you rarely hear it brought up if the game is pretty.

Sure the models are old, but they accomplish what is needed to make an enjoyable game. Having more polished graphics won't make the fights more enjoyable or the story more dynamic/interesting. The game doesn't have the most amazing graphics, but they're fine for what we need, and I would be disappointed if rather than spend graphical resources on new items, they bow to people who think that they need something shiny else "thing bad"

[Theodric]

I do think both games have their merits in terms of art style. It's odd, since I'm not actually invested in WoW itself any longer these days but I do miss the 'atmosphere' of many zones. FFXIV doesn't really tap into many of the aesthetics that I'd like to see within the game itself or at least as often as I'd like it to. In some ways, even compared to what can be found in various JRPG's it can be a tad...subdued?

I recently played through Xenoblade Chronicles for the first time and the zone design utterly blew me away. Even now, ARR stands out to me as a lot more detailed than anything that has been added since if we're talking about the number of buildings that can be entered and how 'lively' various settlements feel. I can't be the only one who thinks Aleport is one of the best settlements in the game, right?

That aside, polished graphics do make the game much more enjoyable for a lot of players. That some people don't care about graphics is hardly a secret, though it's not unreasonable for players to desire a strong focus on every aspect of the game - including the core game features, the sound direction, the story and the way it looks.

I'd also argue that some of the core models have some rather jarring flaws. Highlander men can't have actual eyebrows, Hien and G'raha suffer from pixel related issues in regards to their character models...and so on.

[Shurrikhan]

FFXIV doesn't really tap into many of the aesthetics that I'd like to see within the game itself or at least as often as I'd like it to. In some ways, even compared to what can be found in various JRPG's it can be a tad...subdued?

I recently played through Xenoblade Chronicles for the first time and the zone design utterly blew me away.

I remember the first time I climbed up First-Shard's Bismarck, I really loved the aesthetic: the smaller winding paths and the use of color all resonated really well and made me want way, way more. A friend accordingly recommended Xenogears and I couldn't help but think we needed more of that -- not the combination of tech and nature, of or colors, or even of zone design, but just some of that less subdued artistic vision. "Yes! This! I need this in XIV!"

WoW has had moments, likewise, that have made me fall in love with a zone or area within. Heck, most of its zones have several, even if a lot of BfA's fell flat for me (I was only blown away by Zuldazar, Vul'dun, and small parts of the Sound). XIV, though? The eastern side of the Dravidian Forelands almost struck a chord, but the constantly shivering textures at the edges of shadows and all the hugely pixelated rock textures made it just that bit too... "off". I should have loved the Hinterlands, but the way objects at a distance were drawn, disappearing, reappearing, and shivering all the while due to incredibly poor filtering and LoD procedures, atop the poor ambient lighting making it seem unpolished or almost... not quite fully rendered just kind of ruined it for me save for along the back-hills along the west edge. Much of those same graphical "issues" made Azys Lla gritty, but in a way that was entirely fine for that zone in particular because of its theme. In the end, although Azys Lla and Western Coerthas least resonated with me, they, parts of the Forelands (following the river into the large western expanse), and the Sea of Clouds were the only Heavensward zones I enjoyed as much as, say, most of the Mists of Pandaria zones (of which none felt "off" and only one seemed dull to me). And it's sad that it was just these irritating "half-done" or "half-assed" textures or lighting, or the engine's graphical procedures themselves, that often made them unable to click for me.

[JisKing98]

I dream where they put ff16 as a mmo on UE5. Let the graphics destroy my pc.
As for a texture pack, i know pc players wouldnt mind although i can also see ps4 players complaining about it. Im more on the side of might as well update everything engine, character models, textures, etc.

[Morningstar1337]

I dream where they put ff16 as a mmo on UE5. Let the graphics destroy my pc.

Wasn't that part of the issue with 1.0? graphics destroying PCs?

[Shougun]

Wasn't that part of the issue with 1.0? graphics destroying PCs?

Well they had flower pots with the polygon count equal to players. They had beautiful animations but no smooth animation canceling in many situations, physics that ate PCs, etc, etc. Some of it was not, I think, due to quality but both weird decisions and optimization wasn't ready (weird decision being something like a flower pot being equal to a player character lol), as I've seen a lot of this stuff in other games and my PC (at the same time that game was released) was like "..Zzzzz, give me moar" (of course those were single player games, where certain optimizations were far more reliable to make).

With the amount of players FFXIV 2.0+ shows on screen at once the high quality characters with physics would probably still cause a lot of issues even with good optimization given the number of characters on screen lol. Although perhaps selfishly I'd prefer lower view count but higher quality visuals. I also turn off the special effects of players not in my group so I can actually see the monster I'm attacking . I might even consider some sort of shadowy 'shade' figure for players after a certain number, if it meant allowing the game to render everything else at a better quality. I'll hardly be able to see anything at 100 players anyways, just a blob of chaos, might as well simplify some of the visuals and improve the ones I'll still notice (or at least that's my thought).

I always enjoy the funny nature of people prefer FFXIV for it's graphics over WoW, as it's a major point I see people like FFXIV for, and then at the same time seeing people say graphics don't matter. Now to be fair sometimes that isn't the same person, some people don't care and just don't care, period. But I think graphics do matter, they just aren't the only thing that matters. There is a thing of aesthetic outside of just quality, to make sure to note that, so something can be technically detailed but still not that pretty. You'd want amazing graphical aesthetic and design over just pure high quality in most situations, but like many things having it all would be the preference . So one might think of Journey and how things aren't hyper realistic detailed but the game is still very very pretty.

Beautiful game with awful gameplay is just a wallpaper maker that isn't that fun to play. Ugly game with amazing gameplay can be fun but leave a lot of desire and missed a lot of potential hook value. Beautiful game with amazing gameplay is going to steal your soul and hold you hostage. That's the sweet spot.

If you had to sell yourself short on one then yeah I guess you'd do graphics, but actively selling yourself short is like.. 'but y tho?'. Now I'm not accusing SE of that, but I do sometimes feel people will do that for SE and act like graphics have no importance. Like the recent pixels people are talking about with the crystal effect part of 5.3, count-able pixels, not pretty nostalgic pixels either like a pixel game, nah these just be pixels waving madly at the screen lol. Like how FFXIV could benefit greatly from some good AA (which it doesn't have since it's engine is differed rendering). To be clear I'm not calling FFXIV ugly, just clearly has some technical anchors that can pull one out of the experience and the game 'could' be prettier (well could as in visually, in terms of code I've no idea how hard it would be to fix and so I won't pretend that party is easy to fix). Especially 'could' as we move forward and more and more MMOs are looking better and better, or like WoW where they continue to slowly update old systems. If you take a look at recent WoW, and even some old parts of WoW, that pixels can be hard to find, and they do have a few quite stunning sets, and models get fixed up over time. Now WoW is ancient and they've no intention, it seems, of replacing it so that makes sense, and if FFXIV is going to do a WoW then I think it can use some of that thought of reconstructing old parts occasionally (and if it's heading towards a slumber then I guess, new MMO can be shiny and purty).

[Enla]

-snip-

All of this. Back during the 2019 Japanese Fanfest they had an art panel that brought in animators and the concept artists, and they broke down the decrease in fidelity between 1.0 and 2.0, and even between the concept demo for 1.0 and 1.0 itself. As well as why we never saw the original progenitor of the Crystarium that was teased in concept for FF14 before the MMO even launched. It wasn't just the flowerpots, but even models you'd never see due to lighting and particle affects had insane polygon counts like the lightbulbs inside the lanterns. It's the main reason why so many things look blocky in the 2.0 areas because they were desperately trying to scale back from that error in design.

Note: The stream is in Japanese, but there are English restreams out there if you look for them. Reddit also did a live reaction for the entire fanfest that summarized what happened here.