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

[Sonic_the_Hedgehog]

him and quite a few others. i don't like the direction this game seems to be going, but i am holding off bashing the direction until i see the direction it is actually going not where it seems to be going. looks can be deceiving so i will wait until i see more of a full landscape of the final direction.

That's perfectly fine darkstarpoet1, that's more reasonable than most of the people that post on here. Instead of actually waiting and seeing this stuff in action they rather criticize what they think it's going to be.

[Jennestia]

him and quite a few others. i don't like the direction this game seems to be going, but i am holding off bashing the direction until i see the direction it is actually going not where it seems to be going. looks can be deceiving so i will wait until i see more of a full landscape of the final direction.

Yep, which is a very good outlook and seems to be rare among gamers these days.

[Jinko]

The sad part about that is I bet B&S will hit the same wall all mmo's hit with Xbox, Microsoft whats their cut, so it would be expensive for x360 players to play it. It's why all those MMO's initially said for X360 release never occured...

It's really not as simple as wanting a cut, MS like to control their network and by linking to two other systems, PC and PS3 they have no control, ie abuse and such.

Most devs get along with MS just fine, its just SE are stuck in their ways as are MS, so their is an impasse.

It's very unlikely that B&S will have international servers like FFXIV does, so there is no worries.

[Augury]

Two things...
-No, the engine is fine, it's the content of the game, not the engine that is the problem. Crystal Tools can obviously do the job- it's just been poorly applied (see XIII)
-Blade and Soul is a kMMO that has been in the works for YEARS to beat out all of the cheaper kMMOs and replace Conquer as the "kung-fu MMO". It could be amazing, it could be another crappy Unreal game (or Blizzreal knock-off)

[Ilean]

[Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XIV FORUM Guidelines.]

Watch out, the sun is dynamically lighting real life! That's how the world ends in 2012!

[Frebaut]

After looking at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgaAJ...eature=related

I can't help but wonder why a game by SQUARE ENIX of all companies doesn't really even compare to the environmental visuals of a Korean Grinder.



It seems small, but individual shadows really adds a lot of detail to the environments, not to mention wandering NPCs, voice-overs, swaying grass and trees, and the ability to jump!

Really.. i mean the game failed because its boring and all you do is grind. Hell even the producers said the game isn't FUN!
YA like shadows, grass and jumping is going to make the game better. These threads are F-ing pointless. Game is boring, its just boring.

[Preypacer]

I never played XI, but lets take a look at what the Devs envisioned for FFXIV, Look at the lighting, the shading the architecture, the real time water reflections. What happened, sure don't get me wrong FFXIV looks amazing, I max the game out, but should the cost of resources it requires to run at the highest quality be justified for what we have currently? I think not, a game like blade and soul has better shading and lighting, sure it may have lower texture quality, but look at how nice it looks blade and soul looks as is. When you are using Unreal Engine 3 you also get fantastic lighting realtime water effects amazing shading detail rich character detail, no load zones so you can steam content. All at very low resources on your hardware. Crystal tool may have potential, but currently the only potential I have seen is the character detail, and sometimes with the clipping errors, and lack of more realistic cloth physics that is bogged down.

Don't get me wrong I love playing FFXIV, I just think they could have optimized more visually for currently high level hardware than what we currently have. Low detailed water, lighting that reminds me of more unreal 2.x, load zones, shadows that eat up any high end hardware.

I remember it was announced at some point that SE were going to be licensing the Unreal Engine 3 for a project. Clearly FFXIV wasn't it... but I'm wondering what it was, or if they ever carried through with it.

I do think that, given its "from-the-ground-up" programming to handle massive streaming environments (a la MMOs), that it would have been a better choice for them. Unreal tech is excellent in the right hands. You can also look at TERA Online and see another game that's similarly amazing looking, also using UE3 tech. There's also Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3 and several others using Epic's tech.

For one thing, they wouldn't have had to deal with the limitations of entirely tile-based "poly-soup" environments as they are with XIV now. That would have given them far more flexibility in how large the world could be, and it could have been streaming. This would have allowed massive environments that were also non-repetitive on the scale they are in XIV.

Also, UE3 works with PS3, so they wouldn't have to worry about cross-platform compatibility.

Really does make me wonder why they opted for the more restrictive approach they took.

[Malakhim]

That project that they were using Unreal Engine 3 for was The Last Remnant, and it was plagued with all the issues that Unreal 3 was known for back then.

[Jennestia]

Most devs get along with MS just fine, its just SE are stuck in their ways as are MS, so their is an impasse.

Hmm...when did we all get along with MS? My company still has issues with the way MS works especially towards Japanese studios.

[Jinko]

Really.. i mean the game failed because its boring and all you do is grind. Hell even the producers said the game isn't FUN!
YA like shadows, grass and jumping is going to make the game better. These threads are F-ing pointless. Game is boring, its just boring.

That's hardly the point there is some correlation between their ability to pull those things off in game (whether that is engine related is besides the point) and their ability to add content both interesting and fun, it all seem to be lacking and it all points to bad development.

My company still has issues with the way MS works especially towards Japanese studios.

What company do you work at ? and yea after their efforts with Mistwalker failed they pretty much pulled their focus away from Japan.