Is most of FFXIV's failings due to their choice of engine?

[Rentahamster]

Should have just licensed Unreal Engine 3. Then they could have gotten to work on the actual content 3 years ago instead of waiting for Crystal Tools to get finished.

[gifthorse]

Should have just licensed Unreal Engine 3. Then they could have gotten to work on the actual content 3 years ago instead of waiting for Crystal Tools to get finished.

CryEngine3 is better, in my opinion. But yeah, same dif.

[Cairdeas]

Hell no to UR3. I'm tired of the UR3 Engine. Every game that runs on it has this weird silverish scratched metal effect on all edges and it hurts my eyes after a while.

[Ilean]

Hell no to UR3. I'm tired of the UR3 Engine. Every game that runs on it has this weird silverish scratched metal effect on all edges and it hurts my eyes after a while.

Doubt that's an engine trait. Care to post an image?

[Seif]

Doubt that's an engine trait. Care to post an image?

Maybe not the scratched metal thing. But U3 games ALWAYS look horribly blurry on bloomy like hell. It makes all the games look alike. I swear to god after playing Batman I felt like I needed a bath after moving in a world that looks like goo. I've been talking about this effect at work and we've come to the conclusion that U3 mip maps everything x10 and that's why they need the blurry dof as otherwise textures would pop all over the place. You can tell this is the case by just looking at Mass Effect 1's inventory screen as things don't have enough time to load and you're looking at low res versions of everything.

[Ilean]

Again, not engine traits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqnZfqjTiM

I don't see scratched silver edges, gooey surfaces or textures popping. Same goes for the mass effect inventory thing, the developers simply decided to let the inventory screen open up and show low-res textures instead of waiting until hi-res ones are fully loaded. My guess is they rather not waste RAM by keeping the hi-res textures loaded at all times, but whatever reasons they had, it doesn't mean the engine couldn't do it.

Maybe not the scratched metal thing. But U3 games ALWAYS look horribly blurry on bloomy like hell. It makes all the games look alike. I swear to god after playing Batman I felt like I needed a bath after moving in a world that looks like goo. I've been talking about this effect at work and we've come to the conclusion that U3 mip maps everything x10 and that's why they need the blurry dof as otherwise textures would pop all over the place. You can tell this is the case by just looking at Mass Effect 1's inventory screen as things don't have enough time to load and you're looking at low res versions of everything.

[Seif]

Again, not engine traits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqnZfqjTiM

I don't see scratched silver edges, gooey surfaces or textures popping. Same goes for the mass effect inventory thing, the developers simply decided to let the inventory screen open up and show low-res textures instead of waiting until hi-res ones are fully loaded. My guess is they rather not waste RAM by keeping the hi-res textures loaded at all times, but whatever reasons they had, it doesn't mean the engine couldn't do it.

Look at it closely. Every scene is sharp only in a very limited area of view. Everyhting else is blurry the foreground and even more so in the background. The bloom makes every bright surface look blurry no matter where they are in relation to the camera.

[Seif]

Honestly I don't know why people are talking about this. It's the visual blandness where XIV graphics fail the most and that has nothing to do with technology. Even if it did game engine isn't something that can be switched EVER in a game like this.

More realistic would be to request SE to make the landscapes look less boring. That has nothing to do with reflections or normal maps. Mossy fields just aren't and never will be that interesting when compared to the environments in ANY other FF title.

[gifthorse]

Examples of Korean Indie company MMO with CryEngine 3:

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...1477515112.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...2017402816.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...1197020013.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...2093017008.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...1482785063.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/Cut/arti...1528227617.jpg

http://www.aaportal.net/PIC/full/news/ezna/1.jpg

There is a closed beta for the above game with no NDA in two weeks, so I guess we will expect to see more examples of what an MMO made on an actual engine can do... *shrug*

[Abriael]

Examples of Korean Indie company MMO with CryEngine 3:


There is a closed beta for the above game with no NDA in two weeks, so I guess we will expect to see more examples of what an MMO made on an actual engine can do... *shrug*

And then you see the characters (not to mention the actual landscapes in motion, instead of some static cherry picked pics, that already show one of the flattest low-rez grounds ever), and laugh your rear off

It's always funny to see how you're *very* selective with your choices of materials to present, gifthorse.

Sorry to burst a bubble, but the only real reason why so many devs use the UE3 and the cryengine is because they can't afford to create and test an engine in-house and have to resort to third party *generic* engines, that limit what they can do (and the way they can evolve their games) by quite a lot.