Was This Graphical Update Necessary?

[Granyala]

Yes. Yes it was.

Definitely. The new materials look absolutely fantastic.
It's just a royal shame that they use crappy DX1 skin textures, riddled with green compression artifacts.
Also, face paints are still blurry as fudge and clearly not updated... looks so out of place on the new faces LMAO. Easily seen on Mr. Promise 2.

Was THAT really necessary just so XIV does not go beyond a pathetic 4GB VRAM in 2024?!

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.

Especially metals are a night and day difference between EW and DT.
Look at Wuk Lamat's head ornament or at The blue Promise Nr 1 guy's headdress.

Yes it IS supposed to look mostly the same. They didn't want to change the personality of the game entirely.
So this isn't a Tomb Raider 1 vs Crysis 3 levels of update. :'D

But the improvements are definitely there, if you pay actual attention.