Something I don't understand with ARR. If the issues with FF XIV were mostly gameplay and UI, why so much effort into a graphics upgrade?
It's not really a graphics upgrade; it's more about changes to the engine.
Visual fidelity arguably DECREASED across the board; most notably the shadowing and evironmental lighting. Texture and animation quality shifted as well. The only increase in quality is the UI.. which isn't a graphical quality element.
The new engine has drastically different AND overblown lighting effects, which changes the overall image, for the worse IMO. Shadows appear to be worse and have flickering issues. (But hey, at least the game actually has environmental shadows now, the original version didn't.) Texture quality is lower. Animations might be as well (but it's hard to tell when the camera is moving around so wildly, judging this based on the alpha).
Basically, it's an engine designed to run on lower spec machines, which it does now. Unforunately, that comes at the cost of the fidelity the game previously had. They try to hide that with the overblown lighting effects, like most console games are doing nowadays because the hardware is SEVEN YEARS OLD.
Why are they still releasing this game for the PS3 is beyond me.
FWIW, my score is 7716. i7-3770K, GTX 670. 1080p at max settings.
Rerunning with occlusion culling ON, because that is NOT a graphical option, that is a rendering option which should be enabled AT ALL TIMES unless there is a specific reason for it to be off. Rendering objects behind objects when they are not visible is a COMPLETE waste of processing power; it boggles my mind why it turns off when increasing the preset quality.
Edit: Re-ran:
Score:7987 Average Framerate:68.052
Going again with FRAPS to see just how low it dips with people on screen, but it feels around 30. Still suffers heavily when more than 10 people are on screen; could've worked around that with DX11 features, but nope, have to support an extremely old platform so it's stuck with DX9.
All incorrect. Game looks better, runs smoother, plays smoother and feels smoother. You good sir must be a lot of fun to be around.
Played: Shadowbane, UO, PlanetSide, SWG, EQ 2, City of Heros, AO, AoC, Daoc, WOW, lotro, Eve, GW, Tabula, Pirates of the burning sea (yup), Vanguard, Warhammer, Lineage 2
Out of all those I loved Shadow Bane, SWG (it had its issues but those first few months were great) and AO after about 5 months I was in love) RIP..not since then have I loved a MMO...
All incorrect. Game looks better, runs smoother, plays smoother and feels smoother. You good sir must be a lot of fun to be around.
No need to quote my entire post.
Have you even played the game?
It looks worse, it runs better, it plays smoother. It also feels like WoW instead of FFXIV, which made me stop playing the alpha.
While it's most likely improved since then, it's still using auto-attack combat, meaning I won't be wasting my time with it despite wanting to love FFXIV since its release.
Have to disagree with you on the WOW thing but hey hope you find the game your lookin for.
We can now pointlessly jump and rotate our character exactly like WoW which offers zero benefit to combat (or even moving around the evironment, unlike WoW). The fact that combat was changed to auto attack (in patch 1.19 IIRC) and still exists in AAR makes the combat feel -exactly- like WoW; minus the fact that we require TP for skills instead of mana/rage/energy (hell, it's basicaly like rage actually).
Again, this is all from alpha experience, so they most certainly could've refined things since then, but considering the experience we had with FFXIV's beta, I'm not holding my breath.
Once I got the missing XInput1_3.dll file replaced the benchmark ran. I wish I didn't have a defective GPU, so I could run this on 1920x1080 high or max, but my current 7970 oced shut off when it gets around 70 degreesC.. As it is I got a 11987 score on 1920x1080 medium.
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Exploration) Tested on:2/25/2013 8:18:48 PM Score:4425 Average Framerate:35.761 Performance:High -Easily capable of running the game. Should perform well, even at higher resolutions.
System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333) AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor 16282.957MB AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series(VRAM 696 MB) 8.17.0010.1172
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
Comments
All incorrect. Game looks better, runs smoother, plays smoother and feels smoother. You good sir must be a lot of fun to be around.
Played: Shadowbane, UO, PlanetSide, SWG, EQ 2, City of Heros, AO, AoC, Daoc, WOW, lotro, Eve, GW, Tabula, Pirates of the burning sea (yup), Vanguard, Warhammer, Lineage 2
Out of all those I loved Shadow Bane, SWG (it had its issues but those first few months were great) and AO after about 5 months I was in love) RIP..not since then have I loved a MMO...
No need to quote my entire post.
Have you even played the game?
It looks worse, it runs better, it plays smoother. It also feels like WoW instead of FFXIV, which made me stop playing the alpha.
While it's most likely improved since then, it's still using auto-attack combat, meaning I won't be wasting my time with it despite wanting to love FFXIV since its release.
We can now pointlessly jump and rotate our character exactly like WoW which offers zero benefit to combat (or even moving around the evironment, unlike WoW). The fact that combat was changed to auto attack (in patch 1.19 IIRC) and still exists in AAR makes the combat feel -exactly- like WoW; minus the fact that we require TP for skills instead of mana/rage/energy (hell, it's basicaly like rage actually).
Again, this is all from alpha experience, so they most certainly could've refined things since then, but considering the experience we had with FFXIV's beta, I'm not holding my breath.
I need to include this in every post I make about FFXIV: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5104801/thread/354531#5104801
Bob
Not bad I guess...
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Exploration)
Tested on:2/24/2013 1:01:52 PM
Score:3726
Average Framerate:30.754
Performance:High
-Easily capable of running the game. Should perform well, even at higher resolutions.
Screen Size: 1920x1080
Graphics Presets: Maximum
General
I was going to say that. PC will always beat PS3... it can be upgradable, not like consoles!
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Exploration)
Tested on:2/25/2013 8:18:48 PM
Score:4425
Average Framerate:35.761
Performance:High
-Easily capable of running the game. Should perform well, even at higher resolutions.
System:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333)
AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor
16282.957MB
AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series(VRAM 696 MB) 8.17.0010.1172
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Exploration)
Tested on:2/26/2013 3:45:45 AM
Score:6230
Average Framerate:53.625
Performance:Very High
-Easily capable of running the game. Should perform exceptionally well, even at higher resolutions.
Screen Size: 1680x1050
Graphics Presets: Maximum
System:
Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (9200.win8_gdr.130108-1504)
AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor
16360.738MB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (VRAM 4034 MB) 9.18.0013.1407
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Exploration)
Tested on:25/02/2013 19:37:09
Score:6391
Average Framerate:53.363
Performance:Very High
-Easily capable of running the game. Should perform exceptionally well, even at higher resolutions.
Screen Size: 1920x1200
Graphics Presets: Maximum
System:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130104-1431)
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
16345.957MB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti(VRAM 4042 MB) 9.18.0013.1407
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
Score:7398 on Max Settng
System:
Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (9200.win8_gdr.130108-1504)
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
8152.395MB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670(VRAM 4042 MB) 9.18.0013.1070
Screen Size: 1920x1080
Graphics Presets: Maximum
Average Framerate:63.361
Performance:Extremely High
-Easily capable of running the game on the highest settings.