Thread: Is it just me, or does 2.0 look like it was a LOWER graphical quality than 1.0?

Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

Why would they rebuild the graphics engine to get lower quality?

So people can make threads about it.

Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

So that more people can afford to play the game. Sub fees plus the cost of building a top of the line pc kept a lot of people from even trying 1.0.

I fail to see how lowering graphical quality has anything to do with making the game more accessible. After all, you can set the current game to "Low" and still not be able to play it on the low-end of PCs. And everyone knows that the "low" setting on this game is some pretty horrendous quality.

2.0 is not going to go lower than 1.0 "low" which is what the OP seems to suggest. That would be illogical.

This is what Yoshi is ACTUALLY doing:

Yoshida: It’s the opposite, if current version is high quality then we wouldn’t of recreated the graphics engine. Current versions graphic engine has too much waste and makes it heavy. Specially the ground shader. Right now we have too much shaders and due to collision it makes it really heavy. We can make it much more lighter and in 2.0 not only shaders but we want to include technology such as Ambient Occlusion or Sky Visibility in it.

Making the engine more efficient and easier on lower end PCs does not mean lowering quality at all.

Originally Posted by Meta

2.0 makes 1.0 look like a high-def FFXI, an artifact of last-generation console graphics. The fact that they can get the game to look this good on low-end hardware is astounding.

Reiny just posted Yoshi's explanation of how he does it.

Originally Posted by Reinheart

------
Mr. Yoshida in the end started playing with the Core i5 laptop.
Y: This is low rendering settings. The frame rate is lower but the texture remains. It's something like this. In the further tree's shadow, there is actually a secret where, when you approach, you can see detailed features, when further away, it displays with lower resolution. Can say this for Playstation3 version as well, but when looking at a still state you won’t be able to tell the difference between the High and Low quality. When you concentrate while moving, you may say “Oh the LOD (The polygon changes depending on distance) is different” but that’s about it. We are also making adjustments so the LOD naturally changes. Textures resolution may drop but is most likely equal.

Wouldn’t be hard when lots of players gather for stuff like popular content?
Y: For me I have it set to High Quality at all times but it’s possible to turn off other players shadow to make it lighter or or for myself keep the high model but setup for everything else to LOW or nearby settings to middle or low to make it lighter. We made it so you don’t have to go out to title screen to do this and can make adjustments on that spot. Also lots of contents are instanced in FFXIV 2.0 so when encountering contents such as large scale PVP there might be times where it gets heavy for a bit but not to a point where you get fed up with. Right now the the settings are made so even if you drop the quality or frame rate of nearby characters to preserve your graphics at same time to show as much players possible, so you don’t need to replace your PC.

Mr. Yoshida playing with the PC. Per Mr. Yoshida this PC is actually the one project manager is using in reality.
Will it run with onboard graphics card?
Y: It will depend on the onboard card. However the requirement for graphics chip isn’t that high, if you can turn off different settings it will run, that is the concept. But lots of players will take screenshot of them as Final Fantasy so I don’t want the quality of the images to be lower than what Final Fantasy should be so I’m keeping that in mind.

So the environment doesn’t require Core 2 QUAD or GTS 250 like current?
Y: I will announce the lowest operating environment before the alpha test so please wait until then. We will also prepare a new benchmark software where you can feel the game. We will show more drastic images so please look forward to the updates.

Response - Tag so this post shows up on Sumlimen tracker

TL;DR -- Lower end PCs will be able to calibrate their clients to preserve a higher quality on all the things that the player feels they want higher quality on.

cause not all people got a awesome system to run 1.0, most of them are still on medium in wow lolololol