Was This Graphical Update Necessary?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It would have made sense if a butt adjustment aka butt-slider had been introduced.
Apart from that, no.

Now that's an unnecessary addition.

[Schwarzwind]

The game really started to look dated in places. Shadows and ground and wall textures were especially in need of an update for example. In my opinion SE did an amazing job in updating the textures of clothes and armor. The world, as seen in the benchmark, looks way better as well. Therefore I am really glad they went through the trouble and gave the game a Graphical Update.

My only concerns are regarding the player characters. I am hopeful that SE will work out and correct the remaining texture errors until the release of Dawntrail. I doubt, however, that they will be able to please all current players because some characters do look completely different than before.

[twobear]

Necessary? No. But welcome.

[KonaMochi]

As someone who's been with xiv long enough to still have screenshots from the ps3 version- yea, it really needed the update.

Somethings like newer races and newer hairstyles got updates overtime. But ALOT of things still use ps3 era textures. which is why ALOT of gear still looks crustier than a sandy beach
towel in June....

[cutestfox]

Antialiasing: Extremely necessary
Higher resolution textures: Very necessary
Improved lighting: Highly necessary

Outright changing face sculpts: no

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

It was never going to be a matter of "only" improving textures and lighting, because better textures and lighting make primitive models and rigging look even more obvious.

A really extreme example is, say, that time during the PS1/N64 era where developers decided to make a whole face a single texture on like, two triangles, so you get these monstrosities:



A less extreme example is how you can always tell it's Minecraft no matter how many shaders you throw on, because it's all pixelated blocks by the end of the day. :laugh: And slapping on "realistic" textures in Minecraft makes everything horrifying because it's still squares all the way down!

Most compelling reason I heard [but I am now paranoid I dreamt it!] is Yoshi P said that aside from aesthetics or appearances, it wasn't fair for him to gimp his developers progress/professional development by forcing them to stick to antiquated systems with no prospects to learn new technology.

actually now that you mention it, rigging bare-bones 2011 models ad-nauseum and handing those off to animators who then struggle really hard to get them to look good with bespoke animations and facial expressions in their old system is not very appealing for hiring graphics artists either... and on top of that, wasn't it A Thing that the hildebrand cutscenes were in large part for their animators to experiment with how hard they could push the game's current tech for use in later cutscenes? why even do that if they weren't severely limited by their current technology?

[cutestfox]

It was never going to be a matter of "only" improving textures and lighting, because better textures and lighting make primitive models and rigging look even more obvious.

I don't agree.
There are thousands of screenshots out there where people have used methods to upscale the current textures on their characters without *any* other change and they look beautiful
That's all that had to be done

[Tengi]

I don't agree.
There are thousands of screenshots out there where people have used methods to upscale the current textures on their characters without *any* other change and they look beautiful
That's all that had to be done

Maybe not necessary for looks but with updating the facial animations it is, they can make our characters much more expressive in cutscenes now, we've seen that a bit in the benchmark, and they're probably still work on iron out how the new rigging is affecting character appearance like how the mouth sits when idle and things like that.

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

I don't agree.
There are thousands of screenshots out there where people have used methods to upscale the current textures on their characters without *any* other change and they look beautiful
That's all that had to be done

so you haven't noticed that we have three facial expressions and four animations in cutscenes? people around EW's release were memeing about how our WoL can only express anger by clenching their fist ad-nauseum.

How about yoshida saying in a live letter that the bespoke animation of Estinien in an optional cutscene cost them a ton of money to do? In what way is that even remotely sustainable for anyone?

What about the numerous face and body sculpt mods out there? The demand is there among the playerbase too for more than just "pretty lights" and "nicer textures", it's like 75% of the screenshots you see in most social media.

[cutestfox]

Maybe not necessary for looks but with updating the facial animations it is, they can make our characters much more expressive in cutscenes now, we've seen that a bit in the benchmark, and they're probably still work on iron out how the new rigging is affecting character appearance like how the mouth sits when idle and things like that.

Was that really necessary?
There are so many great expressions in this game already, and even *more* when you've seen what people have been able to achieve with the current rigs
I don't know anyone who thought "60 bones" needed to be added to a resculpted face