Thread: 1.0 vs ARR Areas - A Visual Comparison

Originally Posted by Jagick

I never had the opportunity to play 1.0 but wow. Taste is subjective, so take my opinion for what it is: an opinion.

How do things look THIS much worse all these years later? Everything is so washed out and faded. Textures have so much less detail. The areas seem so much less open and more linear even by other theme park MMO standards. I don't know if 1.0 was on console as well but my immediate suspicion is to wonder of the downgrade was so this game could run on the PS3.

I also want to say during one of the live letters last year, during the gfx update announcement, Yoshi did stay they removed alot of shaders from the game (2.0 and onwards) and will slowly be readding some back to the game over time. not sure on the time frame.

Originally Posted by DiaDeem

About that...


I'm grateful that the game came to PS3, as it was the only way for me to play for almost two years. I'm just sad that we're still paying the technical debt it left us with.

Totally understandable why they did that, but at the time during 1.0, i had a computer that was able to run it, and it was awesome despite the server to client side lag. I really enjoy the cities states from 1.0, them being open like they were as one zone was super cool especially in limsa. I remember hanging out on the deck next to the steps that ran from lower to upper watching people go up and down them xD

Thanks for sharing your photos its always nice to have a bit of trip back to 1.0 from time to time.

I've watched videos of Yoshi-P saying 1.0 graphics were so highly defined that it drained a lot of resources just to keep the world running. He said he downgraded the graphics significantly to make sure the game would run without significant lag, so the faded-out / downgraded look was definitely intentional.

Originally Posted by DiaDeem

It wasn't on consoles, and it was a struggle to run on PCs of the time. The game ran on Crystal Tools (FFXIII) and now runs on a modified version of the Luminous Engine (FFXV) and among other issues had trouble displaying large amounts of players on screen at the same time, but there were some really beautiful areas.

If you ask me, I'm a bit in the middle. The Gate of Nald area looks way too dark and poorly lit in 1.0 if you ask me. Camp Riversmeet looks beautiful in 1.0 but Central Thanalan looks kinda flat, and could be because nothing is casting real shadows there. What 1.0 had was a rather amazing sense of scale, though that came with very repetitive looking areas and don't get me started with the copy-pasted corridors of the Black Shroud.

I'm tempted to find a better place in Toto-Rak from 6.1 because it's clearly way prettier than what you normally see in the game right now, and more in line with what I expect for the 7.0 visual update.

That makes sense. I guess I'm just more partial to darker areas and more saturated colors as a personal preference. I actually like how dark the Gate of Nald is but the Chamber of Rule is too dark to me.

Originally Posted by Ghost_of_Ebina

I've watched videos of Yoshi-P saying 1.0 graphics were so highly defined that it drained a lot of resources just to keep the world running. He said he downgraded the graphics significantly to make sure the game would run without significant lag, so the faded-out / downgraded look was definitely intentional.

I thought the issue with 1.0's poor performance had to do with small items having way too many polygons than they actually needed? That and just poor coding and optimization in general. But I remember frequently seeing some meme about flower pots.

I'M NOT CRAZY!! They really did suck the color out of the world...

I dig for this sort of comparisons Are there more?