Thread: FFXIV 3.0 : Heavensward - Expansion Information and Discussion    

Originally Posted by Destinye

Yep, which people misinterpret - For example despite PS2 limitations with XI's design, it still manages to do more than ARR does in certain areas. So while ARR has better graphics and such..it skimps on some basic features that even the most generic of korean MMOs can do, and something even XI does.

The main problem is:

"I don't want to increase the load time on the backend."

Get a better backend if increasing load time to a barely noticeable rate is that bad of a thing you'd avoid doing what a 17 year old game (by design) does. I think the only time "memory issues" really stopped something was when he mentioned battle arena design and certain hairstyles (aside the native massive clipping.)

I'm not talking functionality though, I'm talking... graphic quality and how its ported. Its not assassin creed crap port quality, but its probably close. I blame the evil 512x512ish res texture quality on gear, and the zone size limitations.

PC MMO game zones tend to be like, 1-2 cities, 3-4 area's not 1 area and loading screen to go anywhere else. Only way their probably getting away with it in HW is probably because it'll just be floating islands instead of constant land so there is less loading, but feels larger because of large expanses of nothingless between islands (and you can easier copy paste jagged rock formations under a floating island, not like anyone really pays attention to that). *ahem* anyway!

Got my preorder everything done, waiting for early access... also hoping for personal airships via mount we can fly around >.>

Did you mean to say outer twice?

Outer La Noscea is a small zone anyway compared to Coerthas or Southern Thanalan.

Originally Posted by Niiro

The zones being as small as they are doesn't even make sense when you go exploring outside the bounds of Outer Lanos, the map is so many times bigger than the actual explorable areas it's ridiculous.

You could fit Upper, Outer, and probably Western LN inside the Outer LN map.

I don't think it's the scale of zones, but rather the amount of assets they have to keep in memory at any given time since they always have to maintain collision boundaries and a low-LOD version of the zone......which I got to witness multiple times on PS3 when zoning after a large FATE train. Everything is budgeted. It's why there's paper stills of stuff in the far, far distance instead of simple geometrical models.

Soundtrack shits on 2.0

Soken blows. Hail Uematsu. Need some Mizuta in this bish too.

Originally Posted by Adajer

Soundtrack shits on 2.0

Soken blows. Hail Uematsu. Need some Mizuta in this bish too.

rofl, uematsu composed the Dragonsong, but there's absolutely nothing whatsoever than says Soken didn't compose the 3.0 music, in fact considering Soken has talked about all the tracks he's had to compose for 3.0 it's all but confirmed that video you're praising is 100% soken

like uematsu is good man, but you're literally dissing soken and praising his work wtf

Originally Posted by Adajer

Soundtrack shits on 2.0

Soken blows. Hail Uematsu. Need some Mizuta in this bish too.

Disses Soken, doesn't realize Soken did all of the tracks minus one.

Uematsu doesn't do full compositions for games anymore bro, hasn't done so in quite some time.

Ill just stand over here.



2.0 ost still blows

Originally Posted by Adajer

Ill just stand over here.



2.0 ost still blows

Is all good, lol.

I agreed with you earlier, though -- at least so far from what I've heard, 3.0 > 2.0 tracks.

You can tell they've allowed Soken to improv more with some of these tracks (Ravana, Library). I'm guessing that Yoshida gave him some pretty basic orders on what he wanted flavor of sound he wanted to see for each specific atmosphere, and just let Soken go to town.

Originally Posted by Destinye

Yep, which people misinterpret - For example despite PS2 limitations with XI's design, it still manages to do more than ARR does in certain areas.

I'm curious as to what you think XI does more of than XIV.

XI has a UI that essentially can't have more than 1 window open at a time (not counting chat and party list). It takes 5+ seconds just to load your character after you've zoned, not to mention all of your inventory (even though it's split into various smaller lists). XI has fewer NPCs per zone and displays fewer PCs at a time. UI delay and server lag is significantly longer even when accounting for the servers being in Japan. There are fewer events and activities per zone. Each zone has fewer buildings, landmarks and other assets. There isn't a duty finder, a ready check, markers, recommendations, a detailed quest log or mini map, or hotbars. Despite the lack of all of these things the loading times are orders of magnitude greater than XIV.

The only time they have explicitly referenced local memory as an issue was when the lead UI designer spoke about having multiple windows open at the same time in a forum post. But he didn't point out PS3 as a problem in particular, he said that it was an issue for lower end machines in general including PCs.

Arena design has nothing to do with memory, it has to do with the time it takes to balance an encounter. They don't have the time to design and test new arenas for every boss they pump out given the sheer amount of bosses they create (they produce unique bosses at a rate the same as WoW during BC). A circular arena eliminates a variable from the encounter design and lowers the risk of exploits, etc. Also, it sounds like you're implying that all arenas in the game are circular, which is simply not true. Look at T1 (both ADS and Caduceus), T5, Chimera, virtually every Guildhest, etc. Then you have Hunt marks that can spawn almost anywhere within a zone.

The writing to the server issue is a major one and it has to do mainly with the fact that FFXIV has the armory system. Given all of the systems layered on top of each other they write a lot of data to the server each time - more than most other MMOs including FFXI. It's easy to sit here and say they should "get a better backend" but it's really not that simple.

When it comes down to it, the vast majority of issues with the game have to do with development time and resources. Why didn't 2.0 have bigger zones? Yoshi-P wanted to avoid the mistakes of 1.0 and had the team create smaller, densely populated areas full of FATEs, quests, landmarks, etc. And the team only had 2.5 years to do it while maintaining 1.0 in parallel for a significant portion of that time. Now along comes 3.0 and we have much larger zones while still supporting the PS3. Why are most endgame boss arenas circular? Because the devs release 28 unique bosses per 12 months they need to streamline the process. They've chosen to focus more on interesting and challenging boss mechanics over arena design in most cases. Why is x feature missing after all this time? The number of quality of life changes that are added with each patch is pretty significant, so the devs have a laundry list of things they want to add to the game but it all requires development time and prioritization.

While you guys worry about how the PS3 is supposedly holding the game back I'll sit back and enjoy all the major improvements that are being worked on in spite of PS3 support: UI options that are only available on the PC, like displaying 100 inventory slots at once, for example; hunts, large-scale FATEs, and 72-man frontlines; 'massive' new zones; flying mounts with 3x the current speed even though Yoshi-P has said there will be graphical pop-in on the PS3; DX11 for PC; UI mods and FC airships in patch 3.1, etc. The PS3 is holding back the PS3 version, but the game itself is growing anyway.

Originally Posted by Adajer

2.0 ost still blows

Originally Posted by Elcura

You'd love it if it were done by Uematsu.

Much of it still was. As much of 1.0 as I played I was kinda shocked how little of its music I remembered. Tracks I thought were fantastic in 2.0 were actually from 1.0.

I had something similar happen with the FFX soundtrack. It turned out that all the tracks I really liked were actually Hamauzu's tracks.

I'd be really interested to see what tracks Adajer is holding up as being amazing (aside from Unspoken, we all know that's the best track in all of 1.0).

I love the 2.0 OST. Personally I think Uematsu is pretty overrated but Dragonsong was really nice. I also dislike most of 1.0's OST.

Different strokes I guess.