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  1. #1
    Player
    Greydor's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Posts
    304
    Character
    Greydor Hylian
    World
    Gilgamesh
    Main Class
    Warrior Lv 100
    The "native" Mac client is terrible today - it's literally unplayable for content outside of crafting, gold saucer, selling things on the MB, etc., due to the dramatic microstuttering. I've just assumed the client had been abandoned outside of a Catalina update to literally just get it to start. I'm blindly assuming the M1 is the official end to the Mac project, where like Logitech, they may simply state that it's only available for play/purchase on Intel machines with Big Sur being the last Intel supported OS.

    I think I'll always be sad that a true native client could not be created for this game.
    (0)

  2. #2
    Player
    Packetdancer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2019
    Location
    Gridania
    Posts
    1,948
    Character
    Khit Amariyo
    World
    Leviathan
    Main Class
    Sage Lv 100
    Quote Originally Posted by Greydor View Post
    The "native" Mac client is terrible today - it's literally unplayable for content outside of crafting, gold saucer, selling things on the MB, etc., due to the dramatic microstuttering.
    Out of morbid curiosity, I did fine-tune it to be playable on a MacBook Pro, but it requires a reasonably hefty Thunderbolt 3 eGPU to really benefit. So, it can be playable... but it costs. And while it plays acceptably, I certainly wouldn't swap to Mac as my primary platform for the game.

    That said, I strongly suspect WINE—and more specifically Crossover, the WINE variant that FFXIV is wrapped in—is going to be making a serious effort to tune WINE to work properly and efficiently with Rosetta 2 in the short term. And I suspect CodeWeavers will probably try to turn Crossover into an emulator atop the M1 (as opposed to an API translation layer); Crossover is a paid-for product and if they don't have it working on the M1 chips long-term then CodeWeavers has a Problem with a capital p.

    Though I don't have a lot of faith that'll work out well for gaming, to be fair. ARM is a lovely modern, efficient architecture that, when you make high-end silicon, can blow x86 out of the water... but it is a different architecture. Layering an API translation layer (like WINE) atop an emulator (like Rosetta 2) is just adding even more overhead to every single thing you do. The same way the DirectX -> DXVK -> Vulkan 1.1 -> MoltenVK -> Metal rendering pipeline for the Mac version of the game imposes a performance hit due to that many layers of translation and abstraction.

    However, I also suspect that if they were ever going to do a native port for Mac, the time to do it would actually be right now, when it's already been suggested they're probably doing a PS5-native client (rather than relying on the—admittedly very effective—PS4 backwards compatibility). Because if they're already going to rework the client for PS5 anyway, it's the perfect time to make the client more cross-platform portable in the process.

    I don't have faith that they're going to do that, mind you, but if they were, the timing's actually about as advantageous as you could get for something as unfortunate for the Mac subscribers as this.
    (1)
    Quote Originally Posted by Packetdancer
    The healer main's struggle for pants is both real, and unending. Be strong, sister. #GiveUsMorePants2k20 #HealersNotRevealers #RandomOtherSleepDeprivedHashtagsHere
    I aim to make my posts engaging and entertaining, even when you might not agree with me. And failing that, I'll just be very, VERY wordy.

  3. #3
    Player
    MsQi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2018
    Location
    Gridania
    Posts
    2,120
    Character
    X'lota Qi
    World
    Lamia
    Main Class
    Bard Lv 100
    Quote Originally Posted by Greydor View Post
    The "native" Mac client is terrible today - it's literally unplayable for content outside of crafting, gold saucer, selling things on the MB, etc., due to the dramatic microstuttering. I've just assumed the client had been abandoned outside of a Catalina update to literally just get it to start. I'm blindly assuming the M1 is the official end to the Mac project, where like Logitech, they may simply state that it's only available for play/purchase on Intel machines with Big Sur being the last Intel supported OS.

    I think I'll always be sad that a true native client could not be created for this game.
    I don't know what you are playing on but I get about 50 fps on my 5 year old Macbook. Not ideal, but more than playable. I agree it would be nice if they made a true native version though.
    (0)
    "A good RPG needs a healthy dose of imbalance."
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuC365vjzBFmvbu6M7dB80A