Well, those in-game screenshots def look nice. Would like to see some gameplay of this revamped engine.
Whatchu talkin 'bout willis? You can already tell when people have 1k+ TP. Their name changes color in the pt list.
Hey do you know if I hold down a skill on the action bar, if they will do that little wiggle and I can group them into folders like on the iphone?
Cannot unsee. . .
OK, as someone who was almost ready to think about giving up on XIV, this gives me soooooo much hope.
For a game with a flatter, more realistic art style, I'm impressed. A part of me is always going to want the pure fantasy and neon lights of something like Tera, but this will keep me happy.
(Edit: having the flashier neon UI over the the flatter world is a pretty nifty look.)
While I fully agree with others that I need to remain cautious (against the saliva that wants to form in my mouth), I would never ever regret the term "ffxiv-clone" if every mmo would start making their games look more like this:
Spoiler: show
Seriously, that right there should be what every fucking game should strive to look like.
The sad part is, until we get 2.0 in our hands, we won't be able to see how it actually plays and just how much they've done to alleviate the server issues. Not to mention their drop rate philosophy. Till then, it's a Porsche with no gas. Great looking.
On another note, I might actually have to keyboard/mouse it up now unless the gamepad UI is on par.
It's not so much about the graphics (though that's a huge part of it), it's the size. I mean I honestly think the only other game where I actually felt I was in a forest was Aion (and somewhat but not completely Darkshore in WoW). Every other game you zoom out far above the trees which are often few and far between and it feels a lot more like playing on a flat map than a world environment.
I hope that makes sense.
Feralas :3
probably a better example than darkshore lol, been awhile since I played.
[edit] I would say the design of wow though hinders that sense of being inside the world instead of looking down on it (before anyone jumps on my throat I have zero beef with WoW's design, it flows really well and works with the system really well. I've always enjoyed it, but it is not immersive to me.)
Yeah and I agree with the sentiment. I never get a sense of wonder from something over the top, it is always about the sense of scale that makes me feel like I am truly in a different place. Even FFXI got this right, Tu'Lia was absolutely gigantic from a players perspective yet the geometry of the place wasn't even that over the top, it was all the little things next to the huge geometry that gave you an awe-inspiring sense of scale. Hell with WoW as an example I felt there was a couple places that LOST their sense of scale when Cataclysm launched because they had to get rid of the dynamic visual 'tricks' that made things seem bigger then they actually were from the ground level just so you could have flight.
I'm just not understanding the hype behind these screenshots. The shots showcasing the game world featured a very generic looking forest and canyon-like area. We got to see more of the UI which we already saw in the pdfs last year. No new jobs or armor shown. And yet the overwhelming response is OMFG 2.0 IS SO BEAUTIFUL I HAVE COMPLETE FAITH IT WON'T SUCK NOW DESPITE NOT SEEING ANYTHING OF SUBSTANCE. XIV IS GONNA KILL THE MMO MARKET COME 2.0!!!
Shun the non-believer. (>.>) This is the cult of Yoshi P.
Besides, surely there is more coming. ('-' ) Patience, grasshopper. Patience...
Edit: I concur with the above posts in that the forests actually look like forests, and I hope that they follow through with that all the way.
Plenty of folks want to dampen expectations, or not get themselves overly psyched, and that's all well and fine, really - but what fun is that? (o.O)
I'm like Mulder. I want to believe.
Its about the lighting engine mostly, but also because the geometry of the terrain (outside of the copy-pasted cactus in that one Thanalan shot but every MMO, hell every game under the sun uses copy pasted assets, just usually not full blown height mapped terrain like FFXIV v1.0 did) doesn't seem to be endlessly repeated. The UI looks clean and usuable, and there is a certain dream like quality to some of the terrain, but I imagine a lot of that is due to the subtle shadowing and lower resolution and aliasing giving it abstract feel. This is completely different then the current game and was one of the BIGGEST complaints of the original game, to see that its changed so drastically, (And it has, don't kid yourself) is reason enough for a lot of us to get excited. Of course we will need to see and PLAY the game to alleviate all our complaints, but what we can actually get from screens has a lot of us very excited.
Also we did see new armor, just in concept form only right now. We do know the botanist gear is partially in game already, the harvester hat drops in Hamlets.
I agree 100%, but until I can see the game in motion, and not an off angled screenshot that is not even the camera placement that one would be usually playing at. No excitement will be had. Capturing an awesome looking moment is one thing but keeping awesome during actual gameplay is another. Its just amazing how much we want to forget the failure 14 is, a couple screen shots isn't gonna change anything, as it stands "right now" 14 is still one of the best looking mmos to date, but it's still a piece of shit game.