The art is miles above the competition (in MMO's), the graphics/animations/characters are very well done, I run at max settings with a pretty run of the mill gaming computer (i7, GTX 275, 6gb ram, windows 7 64-bit) and I don't lag anywhere.
I have seen Arkham Assylum I think the graphics in this game are better. Ambient Occlusion is very well done, cloth armor gets visbly wet in the rain, metal weapons glint in the sun, animations are very well done (exciting but not arcade-ish like Aion's), and everything fits in the world.
I'd also like to address the copy+paste thing, I'm sorry but the landscape is the number one thing that I like about this game. Vanguard had good landscapes, but the vistas and varied elevations in FFXIV make it feel much more impressive when you are in game and overlooking the region. All games re-use textures, and I absolutely disagree that this game makes it more obvious that those games who landscapes already look like ****, now in those games when they reuse their crappy textures everywhere it is painfully obvious. Square Enix however knows how to make beautiful games, even FFXI tweaked today looks better than most MMO's on the market obviously not because of its graphics (as they are PS2 quality) but because the art employed is just that much better.
Really? I'm not trying to be an ass but Aion's graphics look about the same to me. Ok maybe FFXIV has a bit more polish to their textures but really? That much of a jump in specs?
A lot of people might not noticed, but armor pieces have cloth simulation and physic model applied to them. This means that for higher level armor in animation, especially when performing complex combat animation, it will look really nice.
You can see this by change a big armor piece with a movable parts like a robe or belt. You can see right after you switch the armor, the physic model kick in and you can see the movable parts falled down.
I wasn't impresed at all by Aion's graphics so I guess we just have different taste.
I love the textures in Vanguard, the first time I saw my cloth armor wet by the rain, or the detail of the reflection of light in water/on metal I was impressed with the graphics technology that went into the game. Also going out from a dark place into a light area is very cool with the way the brightness adjusts as it does in real life.
Little touches like this, as well as big touches like the overall design make this MMO the most impressive visually I have ever seen.
The art is miles above the competition (in MMO's), the graphics/animations/characters are very well done, I run at max settings with a pretty run of the mill gaming computer (i7, GTX 275, 6gb ram, windows 7 64-bit) and I don't lag anywhere.
I have seen Arkham Assylum I think the graphics in this game are better. Ambient Occlusion is very well done, cloth armor gets visbly wet in the rain, metal weapons glint in the sun, animations are very well done (exciting but not arcade-ish like Aion's), and everything fits in the world.
I'd also like to address the copy+paste thing, I'm sorry but the landscape is the number one thing that I like about this game. Vanguard had good landscapes, but the vistas and varied elevations in FFXIV make it feel much more impressive when you are in game and overlooking the region. All games re-use textures, and I absolutely disagree that this game makes it more obvious that those games who landscapes already look like ****, now in those games when they reuse their crappy textures everywhere it is painfully obvious. Square Enix however knows how to make beautiful games, even FFXI tweaked today looks better than most MMO's on the market obviously not because of its graphics (as they are PS2 quality) but because the art employed is just that much better.
Really? I'm not trying to be an ass but Aion's graphics look about the same to me. Ok maybe FFXIV has a bit more polish to their textures but really? That much of a jump in specs?
A lot of people might not noticed, but armor pieces have cloth simulation and physic model applied to them. This means that for higher level armor in animation, especially when performing complex combat animation, it will look really nice.
You can see this by change a big armor piece with a movable parts like a robe or belt. You can see right after you switch the armor, the physic model kick in and you can see the movable parts falled down.
I wasn't impresed at all by Aion's graphics so I guess we just have different taste.
I love the textures in Vanguard, the first time I saw my cloth armor wet by the rain, or the detail of the reflection of light in water/on metal I was impressed with the graphics technology that went into the game. Also going out from a dark place into a light area is very cool with the way the brightness adjusts as it does in real life.
Little touches like this, as well as big touches like the overall design make this MMO the most impressive visually I have ever seen.
Actually, I meant, FFXIV armor pieces have physic model applied. AION's do not. That's the different.
Personally, while I find the style pretty and the graphics nice, I'm not really impressed with them. Though I work in the 3d art sector of films, and at one point, games, so the magic is gone for me in terms of that and I look at things differently.
Some people will find these graphics gorgeous and amazing, others will find them bland and boring. It comes down to different tastes, really. And tbh, the same will go for the system requirements. >20 FPS is perfectly playable for me, 10-20 is tolerable in short bursts. This lets me play this game on a 2.6 quad core with only an 8800gt at max sans AO and DOF. While my gf runs this game slightly smoother on an old 2.6 dual core with a pretty cheap 5750 with the same maxed settings. Others demand and have a hardon for a minimum of 60 fps before they call it playable.
To each his own.
I hear you on the FPS issue. I don't know if it's epeen or it's really that much of a difference. Maybe I'm just used to running good games at lower FPS on a shitty rig but the graphics really don't mean that much to me. If the game is fun I'll have no problem dealing with a lower FPS. I've played EQ2 and couldn't get it to run at max settings without having lower than 60 FPS and it played fine for me. That's another one of those games though that seems to me like it is just not delivering on the system requirements. I realize SE has mostly done consoles and this game itself is probably just prep for the PS3 but I don't see asking PC users to upgrade CPUs, etc. for what I've seen so far.
Personally, while I find the style pretty and the graphics nice, I'm not really impressed with them. Though I work in the 3d art sector of films, and at one point, games, so the magic is gone for me in terms of that and I look at things differently.
Some people will find these graphics gorgeous and amazing, others will find them bland and boring. It comes down to different tastes, really. And tbh, the same will go for the system requirements. >20 FPS is perfectly playable for me, 10-20 is tolerable in short bursts. This lets me play this game on a 2.6 quad core with only an 8800gt at max sans AO and DOF. While my gf runs this game slightly smoother on an old 2.6 dual core with a pretty cheap 5750 with the same maxed settings. Others demand and have a hardon for a minimum of 60 fps before they call it playable.
To each his own.
I hear you on the FPS issue. I don't know if it's epeen or it's really that much of a difference. Maybe I'm just used to running good games at lower FPS on a shitty rig but the graphics really don't mean that much to me. If the game is fun I'll have no problem dealing with a lower FPS. I've played EQ2 and couldn't get it to run at max settings without having lower than 60 FPS and it played fine for me. That's another one of those games though that seems to me like it is just not delivering on the system requirements. I realize SE has mostly done consoles and this game itself is probably just prep for the PS3 but I don't see asking PC users to upgrade CPUs, etc. for what I've seen so far.
Well for all of you real graphics afficianado's you can go play _______ the non-existent MMO that does all of these things much better!
I think they look great, I don't work in 3D technology, I've only watched one thing in 3D since the last time you all tried to hawk it to us in the 80's, and honestly I wasn't impressed. I do play MMO's and PC games, and I do build rather nice computers to do so and I'm extremely happy with the graphics in this game as is my friend who is a professional computer technician and always has a superb setup.
Also this is a PC game, not a port. But keep throwing out that old tired line out there as bait.
Cutscenes are near the top of the list for many people who play Final Fantasy or Square Enix games in general.
Cutscenes are near the top of the list for many people who played FFXI, cutscenes are near the top of the list for everyone who is playing FFXIV. Maybe your statement should be "I don't care about cutscenes, most other MMO's cutscenes are horribly done and are better skipped over".
FFXIV's graphics are better than any MMO on the market, and anything I've seen from other MMO's coming out.
It sounds to me like you want to be in a really long list of cutscenes your whole entire experience. lol
I played FFXI for a few years myself and I recall many people always trying to skip through the cutscenes to get back to the action in our party, what is usually the most important part to individuals who played FFXI.
And just like FFXI, I think that not everyone who will be playing FFXIV are going to spend most of their time in amazement over hours on end in cutscenes rather than over gameplay itself.
And just to state, I actually enjoy cutscenes myself, though I think the content of any MMORPG should focus more on gameplay and actually interacting with the game.
But that is just my opinion just as you saying "Cutscenes are near the top of the list for many people who played FFXI, cutscenes are near the top of the list for everyone who is playing FFXIV. FFXIV's graphics are better than any MMO on the market." is your opinion. Remember that my friend,
Cutscenes are near the top of the list for many people who play Final Fantasy or Square Enix games in general.
Cutscenes are near the top of the list for many people who played FFXI, cutscenes are near the top of the list for everyone who is playing FFXIV. Maybe your statement should be "I don't care about cutscenes, most other MMO's cutscenes are horribly done and are better skipped over".
FFXIV's graphics are better than any MMO on the market, and anything I've seen from other MMO's coming out.
And just to state, I actually enjoy cutscenes myself, though I think the content of any MMORPG should focus more on gameplay and actually interacting with the game.
Like I said in my earlier post Kaku, wait for launch if your trying to decide if the requirements vs. graphics are equal, because beta's are known for stressing out the servers, optimizing them, and also internet lag/fps problems as well. Everyone can tell right now if they like or dislike the graphics but your question was, are the graphics worth the amount of power or performance it takes to run them, and honestly even those with the best pc's cant answer that completely until played at launch no one here has played the full version installed on thier drive without any debugger running on the servers.
Personally, while I find the style pretty and the graphics nice, I'm not really impressed with them. Though I work in the 3d art sector of films, and at one point, games, so the magic is gone for me in terms of that and I look at things differently.
Some people will find these graphics gorgeous and amazing, others will find them bland and boring. It comes down to different tastes, really. And tbh, the same will go for the system requirements. >20 FPS is perfectly playable for me, 10-20 is tolerable in short bursts. This lets me play this game on a 2.6 quad core with only an 8800gt at max sans AO and DOF. While my gf runs this game slightly smoother on an old 2.6 dual core with a pretty cheap 5750 with the same maxed settings. Others demand and have a hardon for a minimum of 60 fps before they call it playable.
To each his own.
I hear you on the FPS issue. I don't know if it's epeen or it's really that much of a difference. Maybe I'm just used to running good games at lower FPS on a shitty rig but the graphics really don't mean that much to me. If the game is fun I'll have no problem dealing with a lower FPS. I've played EQ2 and couldn't get it to run at max settings without having lower than 60 FPS and it played fine for me. That's another one of those games though that seems to me like it is just not delivering on the system requirements. I realize SE has mostly done consoles and this game itself is probably just prep for the PS3 but I don't see asking PC users to upgrade CPUs, etc. for what I've seen so far.
Well for all of you real graphics afficianado's you can go play _______ the non-existent MMO that does all of these things much better!
I think they look great, I don't work in 3D technology, I've only watched one thing in 3D since the last time you all tried to hawk it to us in the 80's, and honestly I wasn't impressed. I do play MMO's and PC games, and I do build rather nice computers to do so and I'm extremely happy with the graphics in this game as is my friend who is a professional computer technician and always has a superb setup.
Also this is a PC game, not a port. But keep throwing out that old tired line out there as bait.
Simple terms please I'm sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Like my PC.
The realization I've come to is that 99.9% of the people who claim the game "ran well" or "runs well" played the game at 10-15 FPS, which is standard. However, that's not running well, that's running piss poor for a game in 2010 on hardware developed in the past 2 years. The game does look pretty sure, but technically it doesn't use a lot of resources when playing. The way the game is designed to use RAM, your CPU, and GPU is impractical and bottlenecks constantly. It maxes out at half the resources it needs, regardless of system. It's the EXACT same problem Age of Conan had at their launch. When AoC eventually changed Dev. teams, the new guys went in and optimized the engine and even stated how very poorly it was originally coded. When they finished, the game gained 20 FPS per PC.
The thing people need to understand about FFXIV is that it looks pretty using tricks. In reality your hardware is only working hard to generate things in a bubble around you, the rest is left alone mostly and covered up using bloom and depth of field. It's a beautiful game, but it shouldn't require a high-end PC. The reason the requirements are so high are not because the graphics are so good, it's that the engine is so piss poorly optimized.
I can promise you that the work needed to fix the engine will not be done by release. If the demo is not running to your liking, you should probably wait for a later patch, because I also promise you that there will be one within the first year.
The realization I've come to is that 99.9% of the people who claim the game "ran well" or "runs well" played the game at 10-15 FPS, which is standard. However, that's not running well, that's running piss poor for a game in 2010 on hardware developed in the past 2 years. The game does look pretty sure, but technically it doesn't use a lot of resources when playing. The way the game is designed to use RAM, your CPU, and GPU is impractical and bottlenecks constantly. It maxes out at half the resources it needs, regardless of system. It's the EXACT same problem Age of Conan had at their launch. When AoC eventually changed Dev. teams, the new guys went in and optimized the engine and even stated how very poorly it was originally coded. When they finished, the game gained 20 FPS per PC.
The thing people need to understand about FFXIV is that it looks pretty using tricks. In reality your hardware is only working hard to generate things in a bubble around you, the rest is left alone mostly and covered up using bloom and depth of field. It's a beautiful game, but it shouldn't require a high-end PC. The reason the requirements are so high are not because the graphics are so good, it's that the engine is so piss poorly optimized.
I can promise you that the work needed to fix the engine will not be done by release. If the demo is not running to your liking, you should probably wait for a later patch, because I also promise you that there will be one within the first year.
My game looked like this and ran at 40 FPS, I clocked it.
Sure, it probably ran 20-30 FPS out in the open with 0 AA ( you clearly have no AA on ) and all the settings set to low. Half of the stuff you see there in the back aren't even actual objects, they're backdrops covered with bloom and Depth of Field. Now go into a forest and fight some stuff, you'll be playing at 10-15 the second your CPU/GPU/RAM need to use more than the max allowed resources.
Now put yourself in an instance vs a boss with 10+ other people around you.
For an mmorpg the graphics are pretty nice, compared to other non mmo games? not really...
But in all honesty if you're playing an mmo for graphics you are playing for the wrong reasons.
I don't play MMORPGs for graphics. When they require higher system specs I expect more from them. Just seems logical to me. I'm not saying SE won't maybe optimize the game in the future, I'm just saying from what I've seen of the system specs and the graphics I don't see where they needed to taunt this game as being so graphically impressive. Sometimes less is more...
yes what you have to consider is that as well as the pretty graphics your PC has to cope with lots of different characters on screen at one time. I believe that this is what put's the most strain on your PC. This is why non mmo's perhaps have lower specs but the graphical quality is greater.
Like I said in my earlier post Kaku, wait for launch if your trying to decide if the requirements vs. graphics are equal, because beta's are known for stressing out the servers, optimizing them, and also internet lag/fps problems as well. Everyone can tell right now if they like or dislike the graphics but your question was, are the graphics worth the amount of power or performance it takes to run them, and honestly even those with the best pc's cant answer that completely until played at launch no one here has played the full version installed on thier drive without any debugger running on the servers.
It's cool man. I've had a few beers so by now I've probably become a bit belligerent in my posts. I've been waiting for this game for months upon months. I just keep reading the same sh*t over and over. One of the main things I hear is how amazing the graphics are. So to help kill time until I can pick up my CE pre-order I figured I'd ask if people though the graphics were worth the system requirements. I realize MMORPGS have a lot more to render at the same time, but I just was not that impressed compared to all the hype I've been hearing about them. I was curious what people honestly thought.. so I guess in other words... I was looking for more people like me that were not that impressed. Yes, impressed for an MMORPG but just not impressed graphically as a game. I thought (hope) I made that clear in my original post.
None of this really matters as I don't care much about graphics. Some of my favorite games to date are still way outdated graphically. Disgaea 3, River City Ransom, the list goes on. I was just curious whether or not I was the only one not that amazed as many others by the graphics. I played Aion and although I wasn't that impressed with the graphics, I did think it was one of the better looking MMORPGs I've played, excluding no doubt, Age of Conan.
I have bought every MMORPG post-WoW's BC expansion. I do enjoy this genre and hope I can find another game that can keep my interest as long as WoW. I can't say what game fits the mold perfectly because I am continually surprised. Take Vindictus for instance, I really thought that game would be utter crap and had no interest in it but someone sent me a free beta key and I had nothing else to do so I tried it out. I was blown away by it. Not a game I'm going to want to play every time I have free time but fun enough to consume a fair amount of it. I think FFXIV will be the same. I don't mind the low FPS I will no doubt get. I've dealt with worse believe me. AoC for instance lol. Played for a week in Black and White before deciding maybe my puter was out of date a little lol.
My pre-order may as well be carved in stone. I'm getting it as soon as GameStop opens tomorrow. I need a good PVE game even if it's slow. But as I said originally, I am curious whether people that are not biased think it's really that graphically impressive. The main thing I hear about this game is how graphically impressive it is. Yeah the character models do look great but I keep seeing things like copy and pasted landscapes and I just really start to question it graphically. Especially when I hear people on way more higher end rigs than me saying the game runs like shit. If I knew games for the PC would be more along the lines of FFXIV I'd upgrade in a second. Unfortunately, besides Crysis, this is the only game I've heard so much complaining about, and of course it is going to make me question whether it's worth all the stories I hear of people buying new computers for it. Granted that new computer if it can run this at max should be good for a few years but I don't like to piss money away. I have the money to blow, I just don't like to throw it down the crapper.
Well for all of you real graphics afficianado's you can go play _______ the non-existent MMO that does all of these things much better!
I think they look great, I don't work in 3D technology, I've only watched one thing in 3D since the last time you all tried to hawk it to us in the 80's, and honestly I wasn't impressed. I do play MMO's and PC games, and I do build rather nice computers to do so and I'm extremely happy with the graphics in this game as is my friend who is a professional computer technician and always has a superb setup.
Also this is a PC game, not a port. But keep throwing out that old tired line out there as bait.
I hate that damn 3d bull effect. I can no longer state that I'm a 3d artist or environment artist without people talking and asking me about that damn effect. FYi, I don't like it and hate that the higher ups are shoving that thing down people's throats. What I meant is the CG art? The models? You know, texture work, shader work, modeling, and etc?
Anyways, knowing how it's all constructed takes some of the magic away from me. I can still appreciate (and find amazing) really great looking things, such as pixar's renderings and so forth, and really well put together scenes and effects in other games such as some CoD4's single player moments.
It's not an insult or a condescending tone anyways. I'm just saying this answer changes on whoever you're talking to. Again, I find my FPS to be perfectly fine for the system I'm running and the graphics quality I get, Klizzi above me does not. Hell, I personally find EQ2's graphic's bang-for-buck absolutely atrocious, others found it fine. To each his own.
Sure, it probably ran 20-30 FPS out in the open with 0 AA ( you clearly have no AA on ) and all the settings set to low. Half of the stuff you see there in the back aren't even actual objects, they're backdrops covered with bloom and Depth of Field. Now go into a forest and fight some stuff, you'll be playing at 10-15 the second your CPU/GPU/RAM need to use more than the max allowed resources.
Now put yourself in an instance vs a boss with 10+ other people around you.
AA was on 16x, thanks. My settings were on high with ambient occlusion off, all the objects in the background are real. That's Ishgard, a city. I ran at 40-50 FPS, in a raid situation I would run about 35 FPS. I played in gridania, my FPS was higher than in Coerthas. The black shroud isn't as taxing as you would think.
To me the question of whether the graphics are worth the hardware requirements is a very personal thing. Technically the answer is clearly yes. But the subjective answer depends on what a person likes. I think one of the problems with a question like that is that the topic has at least two distinct parts. One is graphic rendering. It, to me, is the element that makes what's on the computer screen look real. The feeling when you look at the screen that makes you feel like you are looking out the window. That's the part that makes you say "that's incredible they can make that look so real". The other part is the graphic design, the true art work. The part that makes you say "that's incredibly beautiful". This is the really subjective part and that will be different for each person.
I know for me, there is no better graphic design than WoW as far as the artistic creativity in the different zones and the characters. But the graphic rendering is really starting to bother me. Especially as I've gotten better equipment over the years. When I look at WoW screens now, after seeing things like the hi-res ship designs in STO and everything in FFXIV, the rendering in WoW is making me feel more and more that I am in a cartoon. In FFXIV, as I was running around there were several times when I really forgot I wasn't looking at a real world picture when looking at the screen.
So for me, the improvements in graphic rendering are like the improvements in monsters from the 1950s (the guy in the rubber suit) compared to ET (movie of the same name) which in turn compared to improvements in the 'people' in the movie Avatar. I'm seeing that kind of improvement in the graphic rendering in FFXIV. As far as the artistry of graphic design, that's a personal thing and I can't say too much even for myself at this point because I haven't seen too many zones in FFXIV. The graphic design part is like comparing the world environment in ET to that in Avatar. ET lacked the artistic magic of Avatar but it was not intended to have it since it was meant to show everyday life. For me so far, FFXIV is like ET. I haven't seen the great artistic scope of Avatar or the imaginative variations shown by the graphic artists in WoW. But the visual realism in FFXIV is the best I've experienced and is an incredible asset for immersion, imo. So for me, the answer is the requirements are worth it.
Sure, it probably ran 20-30 FPS out in the open with 0 AA ( you clearly have no AA on ) and all the settings set to low. Half of the stuff you see there in the back aren't even actual objects, they're backdrops covered with bloom and Depth of Field. Now go into a forest and fight some stuff, you'll be playing at 10-15 the second your CPU/GPU/RAM need to use more than the max allowed resources.
Now put yourself in an instance vs a boss with 10+ other people around you.
AA was on 16x, thanks. My settings were on high with ambient occlusion off, all the objects in the background are real. That's Ishgard, a city. I ran at 40-50 FPS, in a raid situation I would run about 35 FPS. I played in gridania, my FPS was higher than in Coerthas. The black shroud isn't as taxing as you would think.
I wish I could say the same, my FPS was pretty poor and defintely took even more of a nose dive in city's or crowded areas with my settings on medium, and I'm running a GTX260 Core 216 with a 3ghz CPU on Win 7 64bit.
I think too many PC owners are obsessed with running all games at max settings. The system requirements for running FFXIV at low settings with acceptable performance are lower than for running e.g. EQ2 or Vanguard with acceptable performance on high settings (personal experience with performance. I haven't compared the actual listed requirements). In my opinion, FFXIV on low settings looks better than older MMOs on high settings, so I'd say the requirements are justified. You can easily run FFXIV on lower settings with decent performance on an average 2-3 year old computer.
Of course, as others have mentioned, FFXIV does not look all that great compared to single player games with similar requirements, but that's due to technical limitations of MMOs in general, not FFXIV in particular.
I wont be upgrading anything on my pc to run this game, it runs fine at low-med settings and looks great to me, I can go to high settings but I suffer fps it drops down between 20-30 in fields and 0-15 in cities, but at my lower settings i stay at 60 in fields and about 30 in cities. I will eventually get a new video card for my pc but it wont be for this game it will be for my pc and any game that I choose to play, I have never and will never buy a pc or upgrade a pc just to play one game, its way to coslty for my budget.
Have not really noticed the graphics , too immersed in having fun and playing along. I guess that says it all .
Standing back though the game has a nice feel so they must be decent in the context of an MMO as I have played most, and the ones in FFXIV do not irritate.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
The art is miles above the competition (in MMO's), the graphics/animations/characters are very well done, I run at max settings with a pretty run of the mill gaming computer (i7, GTX 275, 6gb ram, windows 7 64-bit) and I don't lag anywhere.
I have seen Arkham Assylum I think the graphics in this game are better. Ambient Occlusion is very well done, cloth armor gets visbly wet in the rain, metal weapons glint in the sun, animations are very well done (exciting but not arcade-ish like Aion's), and everything fits in the world.
I'd also like to address the copy+paste thing, I'm sorry but the landscape is the number one thing that I like about this game. Vanguard had good landscapes, but the vistas and varied elevations in FFXIV make it feel much more impressive when you are in game and overlooking the region. All games re-use textures, and I absolutely disagree that this game makes it more obvious that those games who landscapes already look like ****, now in those games when they reuse their crappy textures everywhere it is painfully obvious. Square Enix however knows how to make beautiful games, even FFXI tweaked today looks better than most MMO's on the market obviously not because of its graphics (as they are PS2 quality) but because the art employed is just that much better.
Nail on the head. imo
And like Geld says, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Although yes the game is generally considered astoundingly beautiful. You might not think so, and obviously other might not either. I have a friend who thinks Tera looks better. And gave me a graphical comparison play by play to convince me. I said I thought Tera was pretty and slightly more cartoonish, but that my preference is FF14.
There is no objective truth or good, everything is relative. But you will see a majority of people, unless they are pseudo-trolling, saying that the game is very aesthetically pleasing. I love the people who say, im buying this game, but I don't think the graphics are that amazing.... lol YOU AINT BUYING THIS GAME if you dont think the graphics are amazing. lmao these trolls think they are mighty tricksy.
I love snails. I love every kinda snail. I just want to hug them all, but I cant. Cant hug every snail.
The art is miles above the competition (in MMO's), the graphics/animations/characters are very well done, I run at max settings with a pretty run of the mill gaming computer (i7, GTX 275, 6gb ram, windows 7 64-bit) and I don't lag anywhere.
I have seen Arkham Assylum I think the graphics in this game are better. Ambient Occlusion is very well done, cloth armor gets visbly wet in the rain, metal weapons glint in the sun, animations are very well done (exciting but not arcade-ish like Aion's), and everything fits in the world.
I'd also like to address the copy+paste thing, I'm sorry but the landscape is the number one thing that I like about this game. Vanguard had good landscapes, but the vistas and varied elevations in FFXIV make it feel much more impressive when you are in game and overlooking the region. All games re-use textures, and I absolutely disagree that this game makes it more obvious that those games who landscapes already look like ****, now in those games when they reuse their crappy textures everywhere it is painfully obvious. Square Enix however knows how to make beautiful games, even FFXI tweaked today looks better than most MMO's on the market obviously not because of its graphics (as they are PS2 quality) but because the art employed is just that much better.
Really? I'm not trying to be an ass but Aion's graphics look about the same to me. Ok maybe FFXIV has a bit more polish to their textures but really? That much of a jump in specs?
I'm known to be a bit of an Aion fangirl on these boards, so I'll throw in my opinion of the matter. Aion has FFXIV beat hands down when it comes to how well you can design your character and character graphics. However, with textures and landscapes are amazing and in this area FFXIV beats Aion easily. Actually, I would say that the landscapes are the best in any MMO I've played, even LotRO (and LotRO's landscapes, especially in the Shire and Moria, are amazing).
Comments
Compared to other MMO's, yes, the graphics are some of the best. Compared to PC games in general, not so much.
I wasn't impresed at all by Aion's graphics so I guess we just have different taste.
I love the textures in Vanguard, the first time I saw my cloth armor wet by the rain, or the detail of the reflection of light in water/on metal I was impressed with the graphics technology that went into the game. Also going out from a dark place into a light area is very cool with the way the brightness adjusts as it does in real life.
Little touches like this, as well as big touches like the overall design make this MMO the most impressive visually I have ever seen.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
I guess we'll just have to have a competition.
Here's FFXIV's first entries.
Whatcha got? Do you call or fold?
Actually, I meant, FFXIV armor pieces have physic model applied. AION's do not. That's the different.
I hear you on the FPS issue. I don't know if it's epeen or it's really that much of a difference. Maybe I'm just used to running good games at lower FPS on a shitty rig but the graphics really don't mean that much to me. If the game is fun I'll have no problem dealing with a lower FPS. I've played EQ2 and couldn't get it to run at max settings without having lower than 60 FPS and it played fine for me. That's another one of those games though that seems to me like it is just not delivering on the system requirements. I realize SE has mostly done consoles and this game itself is probably just prep for the PS3 but I don't see asking PC users to upgrade CPUs, etc. for what I've seen so far.
Well for all of you real graphics afficianado's you can go play _______ the non-existent MMO that does all of these things much better!
I think they look great, I don't work in 3D technology, I've only watched one thing in 3D since the last time you all tried to hawk it to us in the 80's, and honestly I wasn't impressed. I do play MMO's and PC games, and I do build rather nice computers to do so and I'm extremely happy with the graphics in this game as is my friend who is a professional computer technician and always has a superb setup.
Also this is a PC game, not a port. But keep throwing out that old tired line out there as bait.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
I'm thinking you may have played FFXIII
Like I said in my earlier post Kaku, wait for launch if your trying to decide if the requirements vs. graphics are equal, because beta's are known for stressing out the servers, optimizing them, and also internet lag/fps problems as well. Everyone can tell right now if they like or dislike the graphics but your question was, are the graphics worth the amount of power or performance it takes to run them, and honestly even those with the best pc's cant answer that completely until played at launch no one here has played the full version installed on thier drive without any debugger running on the servers.
Simple terms please I'm sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Like my PC.
The realization I've come to is that 99.9% of the people who claim the game "ran well" or "runs well" played the game at 10-15 FPS, which is standard. However, that's not running well, that's running piss poor for a game in 2010 on hardware developed in the past 2 years. The game does look pretty sure, but technically it doesn't use a lot of resources when playing. The way the game is designed to use RAM, your CPU, and GPU is impractical and bottlenecks constantly. It maxes out at half the resources it needs, regardless of system. It's the EXACT same problem Age of Conan had at their launch. When AoC eventually changed Dev. teams, the new guys went in and optimized the engine and even stated how very poorly it was originally coded. When they finished, the game gained 20 FPS per PC.
The thing people need to understand about FFXIV is that it looks pretty using tricks. In reality your hardware is only working hard to generate things in a bubble around you, the rest is left alone mostly and covered up using bloom and depth of field. It's a beautiful game, but it shouldn't require a high-end PC. The reason the requirements are so high are not because the graphics are so good, it's that the engine is so piss poorly optimized.
I can promise you that the work needed to fix the engine will not be done by release. If the demo is not running to your liking, you should probably wait for a later patch, because I also promise you that there will be one within the first year.
My game looked like this and ran at 40 FPS, I clocked it.
My system specs:
Nvidia GTS 250
CPU 22 GHz
Windows Vista 32 bit
Sure, it probably ran 20-30 FPS out in the open with 0 AA ( you clearly have no AA on ) and all the settings set to low. Half of the stuff you see there in the back aren't even actual objects, they're backdrops covered with bloom and Depth of Field. Now go into a forest and fight some stuff, you'll be playing at 10-15 the second your CPU/GPU/RAM need to use more than the max allowed resources.
Now put yourself in an instance vs a boss with 10+ other people around you.
yes what you have to consider is that as well as the pretty graphics your PC has to cope with lots of different characters on screen at one time. I believe that this is what put's the most strain on your PC. This is why non mmo's perhaps have lower specs but the graphical quality is greater.
It's cool man. I've had a few beers so by now I've probably become a bit belligerent in my posts. I've been waiting for this game for months upon months. I just keep reading the same sh*t over and over. One of the main things I hear is how amazing the graphics are. So to help kill time until I can pick up my CE pre-order I figured I'd ask if people though the graphics were worth the system requirements. I realize MMORPGS have a lot more to render at the same time, but I just was not that impressed compared to all the hype I've been hearing about them. I was curious what people honestly thought.. so I guess in other words... I was looking for more people like me that were not that impressed. Yes, impressed for an MMORPG but just not impressed graphically as a game. I thought (hope) I made that clear in my original post.
None of this really matters as I don't care much about graphics. Some of my favorite games to date are still way outdated graphically. Disgaea 3, River City Ransom, the list goes on. I was just curious whether or not I was the only one not that amazed as many others by the graphics. I played Aion and although I wasn't that impressed with the graphics, I did think it was one of the better looking MMORPGs I've played, excluding no doubt, Age of Conan.
I have bought every MMORPG post-WoW's BC expansion. I do enjoy this genre and hope I can find another game that can keep my interest as long as WoW. I can't say what game fits the mold perfectly because I am continually surprised. Take Vindictus for instance, I really thought that game would be utter crap and had no interest in it but someone sent me a free beta key and I had nothing else to do so I tried it out. I was blown away by it. Not a game I'm going to want to play every time I have free time but fun enough to consume a fair amount of it. I think FFXIV will be the same. I don't mind the low FPS I will no doubt get. I've dealt with worse believe me. AoC for instance lol. Played for a week in Black and White before deciding maybe my puter was out of date a little lol.
My pre-order may as well be carved in stone. I'm getting it as soon as GameStop opens tomorrow. I need a good PVE game even if it's slow. But as I said originally, I am curious whether people that are not biased think it's really that graphically impressive. The main thing I hear about this game is how graphically impressive it is. Yeah the character models do look great but I keep seeing things like copy and pasted landscapes and I just really start to question it graphically. Especially when I hear people on way more higher end rigs than me saying the game runs like shit. If I knew games for the PC would be more along the lines of FFXIV I'd upgrade in a second. Unfortunately, besides Crysis, this is the only game I've heard so much complaining about, and of course it is going to make me question whether it's worth all the stories I hear of people buying new computers for it. Granted that new computer if it can run this at max should be good for a few years but I don't like to piss money away. I have the money to blow, I just don't like to throw it down the crapper.
I hate that damn 3d bull effect. I can no longer state that I'm a 3d artist or environment artist without people talking and asking me about that damn effect. FYi, I don't like it and hate that the higher ups are shoving that thing down people's throats. What I meant is the CG art? The models? You know, texture work, shader work, modeling, and etc?
Anyways, knowing how it's all constructed takes some of the magic away from me. I can still appreciate (and find amazing) really great looking things, such as pixar's renderings and so forth, and really well put together scenes and effects in other games such as some CoD4's single player moments.
It's not an insult or a condescending tone anyways. I'm just saying this answer changes on whoever you're talking to. Again, I find my FPS to be perfectly fine for the system I'm running and the graphics quality I get, Klizzi above me does not. Hell, I personally find EQ2's graphic's bang-for-buck absolutely atrocious, others found it fine. To each his own.
AA was on 16x, thanks. My settings were on high with ambient occlusion off, all the objects in the background are real. That's Ishgard, a city. I ran at 40-50 FPS, in a raid situation I would run about 35 FPS. I played in gridania, my FPS was higher than in Coerthas. The black shroud isn't as taxing as you would think.
To me the question of whether the graphics are worth the hardware requirements is a very personal thing. Technically the answer is clearly yes. But the subjective answer depends on what a person likes. I think one of the problems with a question like that is that the topic has at least two distinct parts. One is graphic rendering. It, to me, is the element that makes what's on the computer screen look real. The feeling when you look at the screen that makes you feel like you are looking out the window. That's the part that makes you say "that's incredible they can make that look so real". The other part is the graphic design, the true art work. The part that makes you say "that's incredibly beautiful". This is the really subjective part and that will be different for each person.
I know for me, there is no better graphic design than WoW as far as the artistic creativity in the different zones and the characters. But the graphic rendering is really starting to bother me. Especially as I've gotten better equipment over the years. When I look at WoW screens now, after seeing things like the hi-res ship designs in STO and everything in FFXIV, the rendering in WoW is making me feel more and more that I am in a cartoon. In FFXIV, as I was running around there were several times when I really forgot I wasn't looking at a real world picture when looking at the screen.
So for me, the improvements in graphic rendering are like the improvements in monsters from the 1950s (the guy in the rubber suit) compared to ET (movie of the same name) which in turn compared to improvements in the 'people' in the movie Avatar. I'm seeing that kind of improvement in the graphic rendering in FFXIV. As far as the artistry of graphic design, that's a personal thing and I can't say too much even for myself at this point because I haven't seen too many zones in FFXIV. The graphic design part is like comparing the world environment in ET to that in Avatar. ET lacked the artistic magic of Avatar but it was not intended to have it since it was meant to show everyday life. For me so far, FFXIV is like ET. I haven't seen the great artistic scope of Avatar or the imaginative variations shown by the graphic artists in WoW. But the visual realism in FFXIV is the best I've experienced and is an incredible asset for immersion, imo. So for me, the answer is the requirements are worth it.
I wish I could say the same, my FPS was pretty poor and defintely took even more of a nose dive in city's or crowded areas with my settings on medium, and I'm running a GTX260 Core 216 with a 3ghz CPU on Win 7 64bit.
I think too many PC owners are obsessed with running all games at max settings. The system requirements for running FFXIV at low settings with acceptable performance are lower than for running e.g. EQ2 or Vanguard with acceptable performance on high settings (personal experience with performance. I haven't compared the actual listed requirements). In my opinion, FFXIV on low settings looks better than older MMOs on high settings, so I'd say the requirements are justified. You can easily run FFXIV on lower settings with decent performance on an average 2-3 year old computer.
Of course, as others have mentioned, FFXIV does not look all that great compared to single player games with similar requirements, but that's due to technical limitations of MMOs in general, not FFXIV in particular.
I wont be upgrading anything on my pc to run this game, it runs fine at low-med settings and looks great to me, I can go to high settings but I suffer fps it drops down between 20-30 in fields and 0-15 in cities, but at my lower settings i stay at 60 in fields and about 30 in cities. I will eventually get a new video card for my pc but it wont be for this game it will be for my pc and any game that I choose to play, I have never and will never buy a pc or upgrade a pc just to play one game, its way to coslty for my budget.
Have not really noticed the graphics , too immersed in having fun and playing along. I guess that says it all .
Standing back though the game has a nice feel so they must be decent in the context of an MMO as I have played most, and the ones in FFXIV do not irritate.
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Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
I love the graphics in the game.. and even better in the graphic options on the retail version they now have..
Nail on the head. imo
And like Geld says, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Although yes the game is generally considered astoundingly beautiful. You might not think so, and obviously other might not either. I have a friend who thinks Tera looks better. And gave me a graphical comparison play by play to convince me. I said I thought Tera was pretty and slightly more cartoonish, but that my preference is FF14.
There is no objective truth or good, everything is relative. But you will see a majority of people, unless they are pseudo-trolling, saying that the game is very aesthetically pleasing. I love the people who say, im buying this game, but I don't think the graphics are that amazing.... lol YOU AINT BUYING THIS GAME if you dont think the graphics are amazing. lmao these trolls think they are mighty tricksy.
I love snails.
I love every kinda snail.
I just want to hug them all, but I cant.
Cant hug every snail.
I'm known to be a bit of an Aion fangirl on these boards, so I'll throw in my opinion of the matter. Aion has FFXIV beat hands down when it comes to how well you can design your character and character graphics. However, with textures and landscapes are amazing and in this area FFXIV beats Aion easily. Actually, I would say that the landscapes are the best in any MMO I've played, even LotRO (and LotRO's landscapes, especially in the Shire and Moria, are amazing).