Letter from the Producer XXVIII

[neenja_jenkins]

Re: Letter from the Producer XXVIII

I'd settle for an engine that will not compromise quality in order for someone's POS PC to run the game. Seriously, I don't get why some people who "want" to game on their PCs don't bother upgrading their damn PC? If it costs so much, maybe they should rethink their hobbies and get on board something that's much more in their range of possibility, say, console gaming, where they don't need to worry about "hardware upgrades" for 5-7 years at a time.

Well, on one hand I agree with you completely. I game on PC for a reason. I spent a lot of money on my PC for said reason. And I want maximum levels of eye candy, ridiculous resolutions, and tons of AA.

However, not everyone is as fortunate as I. Not everyone can afford a 2-3k PC. In fact, my best friend, my friend who wants to play all these PC games that I play can't afford to upgrade things all the time, and he's a console guy for that very reason. The fact is, that consoles lose when it comes to certain games. Diablo3, Guild Wars 2, and as of yet, FFXIV. He really wants to jump in, but can't afford a full blown gaming rig, and given his needs, might end up grabbing a gaming laptop of some sort (I'm trying to convince him that we can build a much better desktop for cheap, but alas).

I don't want to compromise anything so people with crap PCs can play, I just think the game should be able to run on a wider gamut of hardware. I want a engine capable of running on a wider range of machines. I have two gaming machines, a desktop that is a monster, and a laptop that is, for all intents and purposes, pretty bad ass as far as laptops go. That same laptop can and has run every other game I've played no problem. Sure I have had to dial down settings, but I can at least play if I really wanted to. I imagine most "gamers" have a machine roughly comparable to my laptop. That same laptop can barely make it through the benchmark for XIV, which I find ridiculous, and certainly can not run XIV at playable settings. Unfortunately, the game in its current state, really can't run at all on lower-end machines. I'm not saying cater to those low-end machines, but at least give people in the middle-end PC range the ability to play with us.

I mean, who really loses if we can't play with our friends? Who wins if only high-end machines can run it decently? IMO everyone does. That's who.

[Malacite]

Re: Letter from the Producer XXVIII

Well they've already said that the new engine will be a lot easier for current specs to work with (and honestly, XIV just like XI is coded very poorly and uses up too many resources - Crysis 2 and BF3 among others are proof of this) while allowing more high-end PCs to actually benefit from the more expensive hardware with stuff like 40+ characters on screen etc.

Really the only compromise going on is with making the game PC & Console cross-over which ultimately hamstrung XI. To Yoshi's credit, he doesn't seem to be repeating that mistake - yes they're making them fairly similar but he doesn't seem to be shying away (at least so far) from making the game better on PC.

[Aeni]

Re: Letter from the Producer XXVIII

However, not everyone is as fortunate as I. Not everyone can afford a 2-3k PC.

But that's my point. If people don't want to upgrade their PC, then why do they want to game on it? It is probably the least economical way to enjoy gaming. There are myriads of platforms for people to "get their game on" and they don't *need* a PC for it. You can pickup iPad for internet browsing and save yourself $$$$ by spending the rest of it on an Xbox 360/PS3/Wii and the games for it. Or even a PSP. Or a DS. And the list goes on.

You don't need to spend more than $1,000 to run FFXIV with "gorgeous" graphics. But I don't think this is even the case with some people. If they cannot afford to scrape up $500 to upgrade an existing PC, let alone $1,000 to purchase a brand new one, then they shouldn't bother playing games on it. Let's take it one step further. If they can't afford to upgrade their PC in order to play a game they went ahead and shelled out money for and the monthly subscription that go together with it, then they have no business complaining about it. This is why they have these things called "system recommendation" on the back of these games. It does not say, "optional system requirements but you can try to play this game on your Pentium III PC".

BTW, this is more of a rant and not directed to anyone in this thread. The game is two years old already, so the same people who didn't want to upgrade their PC two years ago to run this game smoothly are in no position to demand that the game have system requirements dialed down and quality scaled away. If SE had wanted to, they should've done this 2 years ago, so it makes no sense for them to start bending backwards to accommodate what at the time would be considered "3 year old systems" that are now "5 year old systems".

---------- Post added at 10:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:58 PM ----------

Well they've already said that the new engine will be a lot easier for current specs to work with (and honestly, XIV just like XI is coded very poorly and uses up too many resources - Crysis 2 and BF3 among others are proof of this) while allowing more high-end PCs to actually benefit from the more expensive hardware with stuff like 40+ characters on screen etc.

Really the only compromise going on is with making the game PC & Console cross-over which ultimately hamstrung XI. To Yoshi's credit, he doesn't seem to be repeating that mistake - yes they're making them fairly similar but he doesn't seem to be shying away (at least so far) from making the game better on PC.

The problem with their coding is not with the graphics. There are no bottlenecks on their recommended system which would exist on the PS3. Because you can provide a different level of graphics for the PS3 while maintaining the same level in which the player can interact in the game world, this is a non-issue. The coding problem lies with the interface and the environment (e.g., quest, combat, actions) Unfortunately, this is the bulk of the game, which I feel that their Crystal Tools was not adequate enough to handle.

I've never had the game crash on me that was a result of a bad graphics processing. The one time I've had issues with graphical slowdowns, I forgot to check my nVidia settings. Making sure the application handles majority of the settings made FFXIV run hella smooth for me and I'm running a processor family that is already pushing 7 years in age.

And this goes back to my argument with regards to people who don't want to take the time to (a) invest in maintaining and upgrading their PC (b) understand how PC works, how their OS works and how to manage and use the various peripherals, services and tools that their PC provide. For those that cannot be bothered with "fighting" with their PC to get it to work the way they want it to (or expect it to) and want to play games, there is a whole industry devoted for them. It's called the Video Game Industry. Now with internet browsing, on-demand multimedia content, and social networking.