Thread: 1.0 vs ARR Areas - A Visual Comparison

The Footfalls (Western Thanalan) - Accessible only by flight now. There used to be a path to walk up there.




Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre (Gridania) - Used to be in different location. Design was a little different.




Bentbranch Camp (Central Shroud)




Limsa's Aetheryte Plaza (Limsa Lominsa) - You used to be able to see players from up here.




The Thousand Maws of Toto-rak (Dungeon) - This place still exists in the dungeon. More debris seems to have fallen overtime.
1.0




2.0




6.1

Camp Riversmeet (Coerthas Western Highlands) - Completely redesigned area. New area still retains old Aetheryte design, frozen.




Ul'Dah From Central Thanalan




Immortal Flames HQ (Ul'Dah) - The old Market Wards used to be this way.




Entrance - There was no entrance.




The Gate of Nald (Ul'Dah) - It used to be closed.




The Chamber of Rule (Ul'Dah)




The Keeper of the Lake (Mor Dhona)




Have a nice day!

Originally Posted by Jagick

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.

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.

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.

Crystal Tools was never meant for an MMO. As well as XIII holds up today, it just wasn't the right engine for XIV.

And it had to run on the PS3...

Yeah the max that would load player wise for 1.0 was around 40 players and I believe that included the NPCs. I remember once the LS I was in made a circle in Ul'dah around the area next to where the stairs to the Aetheryte is and stood circle facing each other. We literally couldn't see the player across from us in the circle (it was probably about 10 of us) and the circle wasn't even that big.

There were some gorgeous views from it as well but there also were a lot of copy and pasted areas as well. All in all I do prefer the 2.0 and later graphics to the over too pretty and hardware abusive 1.0.

Originally Posted by DiaDeem

Camp Riversmeet (Coerthas Western Highlands) - Completely redesigned area. New area still retains old Aetheryte design, frozen.

The first time I came across the frozen remains of Camp Riversmeet and saw the 1.x aetheryte there, tipped over and frozen, I admit that despite not all of my 1.x memories being good ones... I was still hit by a wave of feels, and just stood there for a moment.

Originally Posted by Jagick

How do things look THIS much worse all these years later? Everything is so washed out and faded.

The new engine uses reflective lighting. Like in real life, the colors change depending on the lighting and that's why people think they are washed out.

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.

1.0 had extremely high detail in some areas and extremely low detail in others. It was uneven, so some things looked amazing and other things looked terrible. A balance was required, so a new rule was made that everything must be equally as detailed, so they are not as detailed as the best models in 1.0, but they are not as low detail as at the worst models in 1.0. An overall limit on detail of all the assets was required to work on the majority of people's hardware.

If you have an extremely detailed plant pot beside a pixelated tree it doesn't look very good.