Would you trade new ingame content for an engine upgrade?

[Beytran70]

Why would it have to be one or the other? The people that are responsible for making quests aren't the same team that makes dungeons or raids.

And those people aren't responsible for the overall world map.

And none of those people are likely to be involved in an engine upgrade. Separate people for separate jobs.

And I doubt money to hire more people is an issue at this point with the massive popularity spike recently. What with the sub increase plus the incredibly successful expansion launch, they definitely have the funds to fund a new team.

I don't know why people buy into this kind of thing when a company sais it'll be one or the other. All they're doing is penny pinching and trying to convince you to settle with what you have so they can get away with doing less work.

Because if we want it to happen quickly then it would need to be an all-hands-on-deck situation. For a substantial overhaul to in-game systems it would be of great benefit to have devs from all areas of the game working together to combine their knowledge and ideas. It can't all just be back end coders and the like, they'd need real knowledge of how the game functions on the player side as well as how it works in development as well.

[Lihtleita]

during the yoshida era of 1.x the dev team was split in two. one section worked on 2.x while the other gave regular updates to 1.x until its end.
I wouldn't be opposed to that.

[Krotoan]

Why would it have to be one or the other? The people that are responsible for making quests aren't the same team that makes dungeons or raids.

And those people aren't responsible for the overall world map.

And none of those people are likely to be involved in an engine upgrade. Separate people for separate jobs.

There would be no point coding anything for the old engine. Sure art and map layout along with conceptual designers and writers could continue as usual, but anything that had to do with actually implementing those things would have to be done once the upgrade was finalized since there'd either be double work to make it work for the old AND the new which would basically double the workload, or the content would have to be "temporary" , only present in the old version and possible ported to the new at a later date.

Technically you COULD ask them to bloat up the labor or half the content release.. but that's not really what they're asking in the OP. They're asking who'd be willing to full stop pause new content so we could get the upgrade faster. This isn't something SE proposed or even has mentioned, it's a whatif.

And I doubt money to hire more people is an issue at this point with the massive popularity spike recently. What with the sub increase plus the incredibly successful expansion launch, they definitely have the funds to fund a new team.

I don't know why people buy into this kind of thing when a company sais it'll be one or the other. All they're doing is penny pinching and trying to convince you to settle with what you have so they can get away with doing less work.

The company didn't say any of this, this is player speculation. SE, AFAIK, has only said that they're unable to grow the team to make things go faster because of a lack of skilled and compatible talent available. Take that as you may. However I also know that throwing more people on a project doesn't always make it go faster, in fact a lot of times it bogs down workflow and makes it worse.
See brooks law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law

during the yoshida era of 1.x the dev team was split in two. one section worked on 2.x while the other gave regular updates to 1.x until its end.
I wouldn't be opposed to that.

This was because it was understood nearly everything done for 1.0 would be outright trashed and didn't need to be ported (with the exception of some titles and achievements). You can't expect the same solution when things that are made for the old engine would be required to be later ported to the new. Basically any content released would exponentially increase workload.

[Avidria]

If it meant better character customization, properly complete Hrothgar and Viera, and a less clunky and obnoxious menu and inventory system... then yes absolutely

I don't actually know if it'd allow for that though lol

[Ath192]

Upgrading the engine is the most meaningful thing they can do for this game. It shouldn’t even be a question. The graphics are outdated and it would fix all the technical issues the game has.

Unreal engine 5 looks jaw dropping. In fact, if I had two MMORPGs and it was this one or one that used unreal 5 and the gameplay or story wasn’t terrible I would switch.

And I’m sure they are coming, so from that perspective it would behoove SE to upgrade the engine to at least something where people wouldn’t feel tempted to leave for more modern better looking games.

The only thing keeping XIV alive is the story. If it goes south that’s it for the game. So they should invest in graphics and other things beside the MSQ to make it feel like a vibrant world with great gameplay so if the MSQ turns meh later on there will still be plenty of reasons for subscribers to stay on.

[Lihtleita]

Upgrading the engine is the most meaningful thing they can do for this game. It shouldn’t even be a question. The graphics are outdated and it would fix all the technical issues the game has.

Unreal engine 5 looks jaw dropping. In fact, if I had two MMORPGs and it was this one or one that used unreal 5 and the gameplay or story wasn’t terrible I would switch.

And I’m sure they are coming, so from that perspective it would behoove SE to upgrade the engine to at least something where people wouldn’t feel tempted to leave for more modern better looking games.

The only thing keeping XIV alive is the story. If it goes south that’s it for the game. So they should invest in graphics and other things beside the MSQ to make it feel like a vibrant world with great gameplay so if the MSQ turns meh later on there will still be plenty of reasons for subscribers to stay on.

While I do agree that we are due an upgraded engine, I think we're more likely to get the full Luminous (FFXV) engine rather than Unreal. We already run on a tiny version of it, so wouldn't it be an easier transition for devs accustomed to weird SE engines? I could be wrong tho.

[Ath192]

While I do agree that we are due an upgraded engine, I think we're more likely to get the full Luminous (FFXV) engine rather than Unreal. We already run on a tiny version of it, so wouldn't it be an easier transition for devs accustomed to weird SE engines? I could be wrong tho.

Yeah I don’t mind. Unreal 5 is just an example of upcoming engines that make our current graphics look completely obsolete. And seeing as they will surely be making lots of games with it it’s just a warning of the competition that’s heading this way. So if Luminous can be close to it in it’s capabilities it will be a welcome addition.

Here is what modern engines are capable of, and while it’s more dark and gritty, a similar engine applied to the more anime aesthetic of XIV or FF engines would yield impressive results as well.

https://youtu.be/nOMIwsupy9k

[Xaphire]

I, personally, don't care if the art direction and visual fidelity stays exactly where it is. The big thing needed is updating how the game stores data. While belts did not display on characters, you realize another reason they were removed is for additional armory slots for the remaining gear slots, yeah? That's a problem. The way item appearance data is stored and not being able to have something like log in the UI that just stores every appearance of gear you've acquired for later glamour use - that not being possible is a problem. We're going to get back into the number too big territory eventually as well, provided the game maintains a healthy user base.

The game will need an overhaul eventually, but it probably won't be for graphics.

[Shougun]

I, personally, don't care if the art direction and visual fidelity stays exactly where it is. The big thing needed is updating how the game stores data. While belts did not display on characters, you realize another reason they were removed is for additional armory slots for the remaining gear slots, yeah? That's a problem. The way item appearance data is stored and not being able to have something like log in the UI that just stores every appearance of gear you've acquired for later glamour use - that not being possible is a problem. We're going to get back into the number too big territory eventually as well, provided the game maintains a healthy user base.

The game will need an overhaul eventually, but it probably won't be for graphics.

I don't think it's wise to change an art direction mid game, but if we were just talking in general- I kind of hope they can make their next one look more 'art-like' akin to the concept art they use themselves. We've seen recently a lot of anime like visuals done very well in other games, and I'm not saying that exactly, but I think it could be interesting to have a sort of style similar in concept art they've shared (more stylized art style- which can also help it age a lot easier, a nice feature given MMOs tend to last a while). Also helps further reason it's a different game rather than 'new game higher resolution but that's it' sort of deal.

Definitely how memory is handled in this game is the main engine issue I thought of first when reading the thread though (hence I referenced glamour, our housing ward limits also relate to this where some servers have too many houses and others have not nearly enough). Collision / movement could be another nice one, though that depending could be an insane task (depending on how the system was done.. could be unreasonable).

For graphics, of course higher textures and all that would be nice, but generally I think most textures are fine it's just specific ones that are very egregious and if they could fix those it would automatically be better (some of which players have made mods for to fix lol). Personally I'd love to see improvements to the light, water, weather, and flora engines. They're not awful, game isn't ugly, but I can imagine them (in my mind sort of thing) as being fairly meaningful changes to my moment to moment wandering. Such changes also potentially not requiring the update of thousands of textures but more of a system that might be more moldable than memory (so they're more 'do-able' lol).

For terrain I'd love to see them be able to use better LOD assets- like thinking of that very pretty zone in EW that is Zeal (chrono trigger) like... I imagine it would look even better if they had some better distant objects. My GPU should be able to load the entire zone, but I still have pop in and stuff for those grand vista views that I feel a better engine could greatly improve. I'm sure there are other cool tools and expanded features that could also be used to help, not that I'm knocking the team- I quite like FFXIV's environments but to me in general a /major/ reason why I like FF games is the environments and so investing in the power and use of that power for environmental design is always a boon to me. Like it was absolutely great they were experimenting with verticality for the Khoulsia zone, but it was a little sad to hear they tried to get the last bit of the zone 'actually' in the water but the engine was like NO, STOP!!! lol (still cool they were pushing the engine though). I'd prefer when the concept art team and the environment department get together they can just do whatever fills their dreams (which is much easier said than done of course).

[Jin-]

Nay sayers can't really complain about character creation limitations and other issues like the limited glamour space and such ^^