Thread: Thoughts and observations from a 1.0 player about the current state of FFXIV

Originally Posted by MAJRIS

I don't understand who approved to spend so much resources into multiple releases of benchmark tool, and then multiple attempts to fix visual update that felt like ignored half of player feedback, instead of adding the equivalent of new faces e.g. face 5,6,7,8, and let players pick the new or old. it would create much less bad taste and perhaps would save developer time and energy wasted to redo their work.

I can at least answer that for you, because the old faces are literally incompatible with the new additions they made with the graphics update.

The new faces have roughly 50% more polygons than the old ones but more importantly they have 50 new bones for facial animation, different mesh topology and different UV mapping (to make the texture layout uniform across all races and easier to work with I assume).
To make the old faces work they would have to increase the polygon count so they don't deform in weird ways when animated by the new bones, update all the old textures with their incredibly inefficient layout (because every race had a slightly different one), weight the old mesh to the new bones with completely different topology and hope it comes out perfectly because you bet someone is still going to complain if their Viera's corner of the mouth is 5° off on the smile expression or something.

Because that would be something only an insane person would do they instead opted to create entirely new head meshes that made the workflow easier and make those look as close as possible to the old faces, which obviously resulted in an approximation that is never going to be 100% the same.

In theory this should make it easier to add new faces later down the line, but who knows what other limitations they baked into the character customization menu when they made ARR.

Opening a can of worms here. WoW clone lmao!

[quote]Yoshida san has openly stated that his team studied WoW's mechanics as the dominant MMORPG at the time, implementing what they learned to rebuild the game. However, he also emphasized adding unique elements and not simply copying it, as he wanted to create a unique and successful game in its own right[/unquote]

Frankly I don't like WoW, I did play for the free month and quit. Left FF11 and hideous 14 1.0 for Aion, back to ARR. Still loving this game.

Originally Posted by FudoMyoo

Opening a can of worms here. WoW clone lmao!

Yoshida san has openly stated that his team studied WoW's mechanics as the dominant MMORPG at the time, implementing what they learned to rebuild the game. However, he also emphasized adding unique elements and not simply copying it, as he wanted to create a unique and successful game in its own right

Frankly I don't like WoW, I did play for the free month and quit. Left FF11 and hideous 14 1.0 for Aion, back to ARR. Still loving this game.

To be fair SE has openly admitted that FFXI was an EQ clone too. They just put a lot more care and thought into their decisions when they put it together than the FFXIV crew does. XI is not for everyone, it takes actual patience, skill and the ability to play well with others to do practically anything in XI, where as XIV is more like a loot conveyer for those who prefer small shots of dopamine over an actually rewarding system. So each game caters to different audiences.

Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

To be fair SE has openly admitted that FFXI was an EQ clone too. They just put a lot more care and thought into their decisions when they put it together than the FFXIV crew does. XI is not for everyone, it takes actual patience, skill and the ability to play well with others to do practically anything in XI, where as XIV is more like a loot conveyer for those who prefer small shots of dopamine over an actually rewarding system. So each game caters to different audiences.

Frankly I didn't play EQ at all but dwell in Asheron's Call for a few years. XI UI is clunky as ****, (& their hideous macro). Luckily their anime style gfx caught my attention for a few years. We lost almost everyone to WoW in 2004/2005.

ARR was a commitment to regain SE reputation in the FF series. 1.0 players were invited and many took part in the reforming of 2.0. (which are all used to WoW formula).

I disagree the goal was to recoup the money loss. I (we) had so much fun in 2.0 and 3.0 when they implement flying zones and 5.0 was epic closure to the Ascian story. (IMO, some may argue 6.0).