Was This Graphical Update Necessary?

[4clubbedace]

yes it was. It looks like a 10 year old game.

sometimes older, many assets are from ff11,

[Rudje]

Honestly while it was needed—the cube hands in emotional cutscenes are a Problem, and Minecraft Exarch is only a particularly vivid example of how pixely NPC bodies could get due to texture limitations—the way they went about it on the character model end looks like a sidegrade at best compared to the new minimum requirements, especially considering that several faces were totally redesigned for no clear reason (don't "more facial bones" me, you can rework to fit new technical requirements and maintain old facial features, there was no reason for them to totally rework the faces the way they did). Environments are handsome, at least.

[T-Vo]

Smaller elezen, better run animation for them and the humans. Bigger butt/hip options. More beard options for dudes, tattoo options not related to make up in general. Just a few ideas

[Malthir]

Maybe I'm entirely ignorant and I've been living in a cave - but was the update a big ask in the community?

Realistically no, it's not been a huge ask or outcry from the community, it's been a small contingent of glamour focused players who cared, which is completely valid to want done not trying to insult anyone, but by in large the vast majority of players only see their characters faces in cutscenes and are zoomed out 90% of the time.
I agree with you, movement and gameplay in the game would have been a far more important fix, since that is what drives away alot of new players ( 3 core things that puts of new people. Longer GCD than most games, this is only fixed at high level when you get your mechanics and OGCD's which ties into having a poor early game exp, Movement using a ground plane makes you slide about and looks bad, UI is very un customisable in particular things like font type and colour.) . They are not even slightly competitive with the movement of nearly any MMO that's still going, with the exception of runescape.

The issue they have though, is tackling movement is going to be a beast of a job. If they attempted collision based movement, like all other MMO's do, they will have to re animate every attack action in the game. If you look at games like, New World, WoW, ESO, you see that none of their attack animations for moves are particularly long and generally only involve upper body movement, this is because you're movement is collision based so you have to allow the legs of a character to move independently to the animation triggered. It's difficult to do well and when you have an animation like say bloodspiller on the Drk, the animation is about 2-3 seconds long, or soul-eater where you character jumps as part of the attack animation so they would be left in a weird spot where they would have to either lock you in place while the animation complete, or rework every animation in the game. Option 1 while not hard is worse than what we have with the plane sliding along the ground as you can move while the animations fire, you just slide, option 2 is hard and time consuming.

[xxmiamorecadenza]

I’m thankful I posted this. Because it just validities that my brain does not register minor details in FFXiV.
I opened up the game this morning and spent ages staring at the ground or plants to understand if there was any kind of difference present or if it was still all mostly the same . It genuinely just looks like the same game to me.

[Neoyoshi]

It was, and it still is; they've only updated portions of materials and textures so far, so not everything in the game has been touched by the update yet- that will take time and they are doing the update in phases; so consider this 'phase 1' of the graphics update.

[xxmiamorecadenza]

It was, and it still is; they've only updated portions of materials and textures so far, so not everything in the game has been touched by the update yet- that will take time and they are doing the update in phases; so consider this 'phase 1' of the graphics update.

I honestly have no idea what they even did update. Is it suppose to be a super subtle change? I have no idea what I’m looking for here.

[TheRealQuah]

Anyone complaining about the graphics update hasn't seen Ketenramm yet. Oh boy that man is hunky.

Bonus points for the giants teeth.

[BeoCat]

Admittedly the new AA options are the most disappointing part of the update for me, considering its just FXAA on steroids', but at least now with DLSS you can hack your way into DLAA and have the game looking good. Obviously implementing proper MSAA would require them to re-write the entire render engine so that was never an option.
New lighting and character models though look great.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Very pleased with the update and happy they did it. I don't think it was "necessary" but it is very nice to stay more current for an aging game.