The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

[Feba]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

FFXI on DX10 would be a horrible move. That would only serve to cut them off from most of their players. Much better would be to push DX9 to the brink, or use OpenGL Evans when it's released so that high end XP users (most of the people wanting an upgrade) can still enjoy the graphics upgrade.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

That said, I still don't see how it could be all that costly to them when they're raking in over $60 Million a month.

Out of curiosity, what is that figure? S-E's worldwide revenue? And, where did you get it from? (I can't seem to find the revenue, but S-E's online division apparently brought in ¥6.8 billion ($55.8 million) operating profit in the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2007.)

FFXI on DirectX 10.... I can only dream.

It'd look about identical to its current DirectX 8 incarnation. Unless tons (more) money and is dumped into making all the features in DirectX 10 accessible from the engine(s), that is. But, that alone won't do it. You'd have have some people reprogram the effects and lightning and whatnot to take advantage of these new features now enabled in the revised engine(s).

Even then, most of what you'd get would be lighting and special effects. Want the game to look less polygon like? You'd have to hire (and train) artists to upgrade the models with the new features in mind. Then, you get to revise the textures for every object whose geometry you've altered.

That's much, much more time, money, and people.

[Feba]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

Out of curiosity, what is that figure?

I believe he added a zero accidentally, and forgot that gross profit means next to nothing.

And yes, people want to see an overhaul MADE for a better graphics engine, completely redone, not just ported to it, of course we don't care about minor minor minor improvements.

We know what it was take, and like I've said before, it's really not too much to ask.

[Raydeus]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

I just hope this upgrade to DX9 is a step towards an emulation engine upgrade that would use already existing models in a better way; to improve both performance and graphics (although I say the same thing every single time this topic appears ).

But then again SE has been setting a trend of too little too late in the past years, so I doubt I'll be still playing when and if such upgrade ever occurs.


Edit > And they also said that thing about not using hardware aceleration to keep all platforms at a close lvl from each other, but nothing is written in stone.

[Feba]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

well, presumably, with shifting to DX9, they intend to make the PC and 360 branches the main one, and the PS2 the offshoot, instead of PC and 360 being derived from PS2 code.

[Malacite]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

Not if the population continues to hover at ~500k...

There are over 1,700,000 characters spread over 500,000 accounts; you calculate how much money that is a year from subscriptions. S-E would have to be crazy to abandon a large revenue stream like FFXI.

Nothing makes players as excited as expansion packs. Not even sobbing programmers in fetal position muttering "But there is no more memory! No more!" over and over can stop S-E from releasing more expansion packs.

* * *

I'll be nice and do the calculation--not guaranteeing if it's right, but they come out to be a minimum of $7,675,000 a month, or $92,100,000 a year using The 6th Vana'diel Census figures.

Using The 5th Vana'diel Census figures, it's $7,525,000 a month, or $90,300,000 a year. Yes, FFXI is apparently a (slowly) growing revenue srouce for S-E--well, at least it's keeping up with inflation.

That's where the $6M comes from.*


* Yeah I added an extra 0 by mistake.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

... Upgrading graphics won't be cheap, you know.... Plus, big risk of alienating ... low-end PC users.

Ding ding ding! Proponents of upgrading the graphics because PC technology continually advances tend to forget this little nugget, that not all PC users are necessarily playing this game on a cutting edge, top-of-line PC.

It is not "BS stance"--it's a matter of weighing the risks properly.

I'm beginning to realize this is simply Malacite-speak. It's not uncommon to see stuff like "SE must be smoking crack" whenever he posts about SE.

[Feba]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

Proponents of upgrading the graphics because PC technology continually advances tend to forget this little nugget, that not all PC users are necessarily playing this game on a cutting edge, top-of-line PC.

Can you show me one person that didn't realize that...?

Nobody is saying "Chuck the old users!" just "Give us something better!". They aren't the same thing. Again, EVE online, a game from a developer with less experience, less cash (presumably), a very similar userbase is upgrading to DX10, keeping their DX8/9 client, AND porting to Mac AND Linux. If CCP can do that, do you honestly think SE can't at least overhaul the graphics engine ONCE?

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

Can you show me one person that didn't realize that...?

Everyone who says something to the effect of "The graphics engine should move with the times!"

Again, EVE online, a game from a developer with less experience, less cash (presumably), a very similar userbase is upgrading to DX10, keeping their DX8/9 client, AND porting to Mac AND Linux. If CCP can do that, do you honestly think SE can't at least overhaul the graphics engine ONCE?

That depends. How many other projects does CCP have, compared to the number of projects that SE has to split their time and resources between? What platform was EVE online originally developed for? Architecture decisions made early on have a huge impact on the difficulty of such projects. If it was originally designed for PC, it may lend itself better to upgrading to DX10 than a game that was originally designed for PS2 and then ported to PC.

[Feba]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

Everyone who says something to the effect of "The graphics engine should move with the times!"

Wow, so you just assume you know everything about everyone, huh?

I don't think there's a single person in this thread that doesn't realize that an upgraded graphics engine wouldn't run on old computers, you'd have to be a total farking dumbass to think that.

How many other projects does CCP have, compared to the number of projects that SE has to split their time and resources between?

You do realize that SE has separate teams for FFXI, right? This is a matter of expanding that team, not 'splitting resources'.

Now yes, FFXI is screwed up because it's a crappy PS2 port, and it might even be harder to upgrade, but I doubt very much that it would be harder for a large company like SE to upgrade a graphics engine ONCE and maintain it than it would for a smaller company like CCP to upgrade the graphics engine AND port it to other systems.

Really, if a fairly new company can maintain four different versions, why can't SE?

[Malacite]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

Okay, admittedly I worded my arguments rather poorly and take full blame for that.


/em slaps his own face.

It's just that deep down I really want to see this game tweaked for next gen graphics and I have a pretty good imagination of what it'd be like. Sadly I lack the resources to make the necessary .dat mods for my own software. Oh well...


I've seen some people touch up screen shots of the game with Photoshop ... and some of them are absolutely stunning.

Really, if a fairly new company can maintain four different versions, why can't SE?

Personally I blame Enix. If it was just Square like in the old days, chances are they'd do it. Look at all the damn hype over FF 7. SE still says they won't be remaking FF7 for PS3. They really must be on crack, to leave such a potential cash cow (not to mention a major system seller for PS3) in the "maybe" pile.


Also, didn't UO recently announce/perform a major graphics update? And that game has been around for how long now?

SE has the time and money to do this, but last I heard Enix controls something like 86% of the company (Spirits Within nearly destroyed Square financially last I checked) so the FF projects take a slight back seat to the Enix ones like Dragon Quest.


Would it be a crap load of work? You bet your ass it would. But it would *so* be worth it IMO. Maybe not at first, but with a little more ease in soloing (or some kind of encouragement for people to go back to the lower levels) and a major graphics update I'm willing to bet it'd put a nice dent in WoW.

Some good PVP wouldn't hurt either. Ballista is a complete _______ joke.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

One more thing to note about comparing SE to CCP. From what I understand, CCP is privately owned, while SE is a publicly traded company. When you have to report earnings to share holders and media analysis of your company's performance has a big impact on share prices, you have to take a far different approach to risk taking.

[Feba]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

Also, didn't UO recently announce/perform a major graphics update? And that game has been around for how long now?

Yes they did, and it's a decade old. That shouldn't be a point though, as it is that old, we should use a game with a similar age and playerbase to FFXI, which again would be EVE.

And still, upgrading the graphics wouldn't be much of a risk. It's a cost, yes, but if it's done well (hype it some, and advertise) it could easily draw in far more money than it would lose, not to mention keeping your playerbase happy is good.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

Really off topic now, but I'm not familiar with EVE Online: What are the reasonings and strategy behind CCP's decision to revise the its rendering engine? I'm particularly interested in (reasonable!) analysis on the financial impact expected.

BTW, I didn't find any info on art asset upgrade for EVE Online; is this primarily an engine upgrade? If so, that's far short what people want form S-E, as any "major graphic update" for FFXI would pretty much involve model/texture as well, if there's to be higher polygon count.

[Hyrist]

Re: The OFFICIAL "Wings of the Goddess" @ E3 2007 Thread!

We know what it was take, and like I've said before, it's really not too much to ask.

Have you done .dat editing? Making one set of armor for one race is a good amount of work, doing that for thousands of armors, and also keeping in mind each headpiece would have to be redone several times over to compensate for each hairstyle. Let alone any 'new' one you would want added.

And all of this is just with the graphics system the are currently using. Now you want them to upgrade it? Do you have any idea the complications concerning changing a system standards from one style to another? That's like taking a bitmap in paint, exporting it to photoshop, and editing it from a single layer to a multiple-layer work. It's the equivalent from restarting every graphic in the game from scratch. From Basic > CoP, and then some.

For that amount of effort and money you're better off making a new MMO, from company standards.

And still, upgrading the graphics wouldn't be much of a risk. It's a cost, yes, but if it's done well (hype it some, and advertise) it could easily draw in far more money than it would lose, not to mention keeping your playerbase happy is good.

Most of the current player base is happy with what they have. A graphics upgrade unfortunately does have a risk involved that you're not really paying much attention to: The PS2 roof. If they upgrade the graphics too far they run across the risk of blowing what little memory the PS2 has. It's amazing how far they've managed to push it so far with the new content, let's not push our luck too far.

Now, what I would be interested in, is seeing of SE would allow more of it's techno-savvy fans of doing the work for them, at least in a 're-design' sense for some of the older armors. It would be great for some graphic artists to get a shoe-in the door. And SE in and of itself saves money and time for something the graphic-heads really really want. The idea was floating around here back in 04 but no one's ever gotten the balls to bring the question direct to SE in an interview. (Mainly because the reverse engineering is a violation of the ToS)

The issue with Advertisement has always been a fatal Flaw for SE's player base, but I think that might have been intentional. This is their first MMO after all, and I'm guessing they don't want the astronomically huge numbers that WoW has. Perhaps they just simply can't handle it with the severs we currently have. (Consider the lag issue in Besieged.)

But as far as SE retouching the graphics themselves go, that's a definite no. It's been asked and a solid answer was returned. It's pointless to complain about it further to make them do it. Honestly though, I do see an opportunity for a little community - developer interaction (via previously stated proposal)