New Lore Drops! - Au Ra edition

[Kage]

I do wonder if the lack of popularity of certain playable races is due in large part to a perceived lack of customisation.

 

I am forever dismayed by the lack of facial hair options on Dunesfolk.

 

This. My Dunnie is supposed to be 40 years old and I can't even give him a beard. I don't want no stupid soul patch.

All we get is Papashan's beard or the little chin thing Kage has. @_@;

[allgivenover]

I just hope that if Au Ra do have a whole lot of customisation options then we'll see another pass made at the original races. Miqo'te and Elezen are in need of a muscle definition slider and all of the current races could do with some additional unique facial options.

 

I do wonder if the lack of popularity of certain playable races is due in large part to a perceived lack of customisation.

 

I think Au Ra will have the same amount of customization. What the wording means is that more of the difference will be focused on the horns and tail.

 

The PS3 limitations just won't allow any more than we already have. Heavensward on PS3 is going to run like shit, which is I believe why they have not shown it in action yet. 

 

In fact I suspect the male Au Ra is a modified elezen body and the female one a modified Miqo'te body, to add a new race and still be as memory efficient as possible. That would also mean that the dimorphism is a technical choice as well.

[Gaspard]

New races shouldn't be very memory taxing. View it this way. your game limits the amount of visible models each given moment. a new race doesn't raise this number, nor does it weigh on the processing memory. Also, if the mesh of a model is modified / adjusted, it 'is' saved as a new file. Therein your 'memory efficiency' theory in regards to Au Ra' playermodels doesn't hold up because; 

 

LAST EDIT: there, fixed images

 

 

The reason why we don't have 10-20 individual races isn't as much a memory efficiency issue as it is a HD space issue. Each new model would require armors to be refitted to said models / rigged accordingly, which is an individual process for every single piece of equipment out there. With each class introduced, this process has to be repeated. So a new player race probably raises the GB amount by 1-2 GB in itself

If you click the image and zoom in you can clearly see that the face meshes, aswell body meshes are in no way the same as that of other races. Similar perhaps, but not same. therein they're new meshes as such. So the choice wasn't technical in regards to dimoprhism, it was an aesthetic/conscious design choice. Atleast going on what I know about 3d modeling and how games tend to work. Take it with a grain of salt, I is no professional.

 

As for the PS3 version of heavensward. Technically there's no 'bigger' amount of memory processed simply because the expansion is present. Games have hard limits on the amount of what is rendered at a given time, and I suspect this number is kept lower on PS3 to accomodate with the consoles limitations.

[Uninstalldotexe]

LAST EDIT: there, fixed images

 

 

Do they not have ears? Are their horns replacing them?

[Gaspard]

It seems so apparently, yeah. We'll have to wait for the full release, but I presume it's a racial thing.

[Uninstalldotexe]

It seems so apparently, yeah. We'll have to wait for the full release, but I presume it's a racial thing.

That's interesting.  Maybe, the horns will resonate or pick up tonal vibrations to hear.

[allgivenover]

New races shouldn't be very memory taxing. View it this way. your game limits the amount of visible models each given moment. a new race doesn't raise this number...

 

The reason why we don't have 10-20 individual races isn't as much a memory efficiency issue as it is a HD space issue...

 

 

Unless you do what Star Wars the Old Republic did and what I suspect FFXIV is doing with the Au Ra (that is reusing bodies and switching out heads) this is absolutely wrong, a race with 100% truly unique assets will be very demanding on working memory. But if you reuse assets from existing races (in this case the body) it won't be that much more demanding.

 

You're not entirely off though, it's for both reasons; HDD space and memory, with the latter being a much larger factor. The PS3 has 256mb of memory for the GPU that's ridiculously low for modern architecture. It is the sole reason that racial customization choices are so limited to begin with. Although the Au Ra heads are unique I strongly suspect that the body pieces are just re-textured Elezen male and Miqo'te female models.

 

However I do understand that this is just a theory and I might be wrong, we can't possibly know for sure until the data-mining settles things, but my idea about it being a technical consideration as well do in fact hold water and a few screenshots showing unique head models do not disprove it.

 

As for the PS3 version of heavensward. Technically there's no 'bigger' amount of memory processed simply because the expansion is present. Games have hard limits on the amount of what is rendered at a given time, and I suspect this number is kept lower on PS3 to accomodate with the consoles limitations.

 

They have circumvented PS3 limitations so far by severely limiting the draw distance, using smaller zones, dropping the PC display limit, and gutting all the graphical effects that make the PS4/PC version look so good.

 

Heavensward is a different story. The areas are huge. It will be alright when you are not moving through the zone quickly as the limits to the draw distance will make it "playable" on the PS3, but when moving quickly through these huge zones with a flying mount like we saw in the Heavensward tour video the PS3's performance is going to suffer greatly with severe FPS loss and worse of all, graphical popup.

[Gaspard]

New races shouldn't be very memory taxing. View it this way. your game limits the amount of visible models each given moment. a new race doesn't raise this number...

 

The reason why we don't have 10-20 individual races isn't as much a memory efficiency issue as it is a HD space issue...

 

 

Unless you do what Star Wars the Old Republic did and what I suspect FFXIV is doing with the Au Ra (that is reusing bodies and switching out heads) this is absolutely wrong, a race with 100% truly unique assets will be very demanding on working memory. But if you reuse assets from existing races (in this case the body) it won't be that much more demanding.

 

You're not entirely off though, it's for both reasons; HDD space and memory, with the latter being a much larger factor. The PS3 has 256mb of memory for the GPU that's ridiculously low for modern architecture. It is the sole reason that racial customization choices are so limited to begin with. Although the Au Ra heads are unique I strongly suspect that the body pieces are just re-textured Elezen male and Miqo'te female models.

 

However I do understand that this is just a theory and I might be wrong, we can't possibly know for sure until the data-mining settles things, but my idea about it being a technical consideration as well do in fact hold water and a few screenshots showing unique head models do not disprove it.

 

What I don't see is how the inclusion of a new meshes for a race, (As in player models) raises the tax on memory in the fashion you mentioned. pretty much for the following reasons;

 

A: Usually, player models are 'very' slim in size. as in, the 3d meshes. 

 

B: If adding new models would add such 'load' onto the memory, they would've technically hit said threshold a long time ago with the constant addition of new armors / weapons. A model is a model after all. Polygons and textures in play all over.

 

C: I don't see how the load is bigger through an additional race with unique body mesh. Whether they add a new mesh or not, the amount of polygons/textures loaded remains roughly the same. The only difference is how these meshes/polygons/textures are alligned. Your memory will be simply drawing from different files for this then from your other files.

 

View it this way;

 

If player A is Roe, B is Hyur and C is Elezen, there's 3 different model/texture sets being loaded (Therein, same memory load)

 

If player A is Roe, B is Hyur, and C is Au Ra, there's also just 3 different model/texture sets being loaded (Therein, same memory load).

 

 

I'm not saying that a fourth unique mesh wouldn't add to the overall load, but i personall think (Looking at the screenshots, the way that they exactly differentiate from the Elezen etc) that they're actually unique enough to be  called a new model/mesh of their own.

 

Aso for that last point about Heavenswards area size and so on;

 

I'm quite sure they will rather cut down drawing distance and such rather then risk FPS loss. A game that can't run at least 30 FPS more or less steady ( I'm gonna make an exception here for such scenarios as Odin etc), is more or less broken.

Side note ; SWTOR's engine sucked incredibly, especially under load. Some truly well built machines 'still' struggle to run that game at a decent FPS number in a 16 man Ops

[allgivenover]

XIV already runs sub 30 fps most of the time on the PS3. I bought the CE and played it a few times for novelty sake and it is so terrible compared to the PC/PS4 version that I never bothered with it again.

 

It's also possible that only the female model reuses assets or that the limit of acceptable performance has been hit and that they'll be dropping the amount of displayable PC models again come Heavensward. I can't discount that I could just be flat out wrong too. My point is that technical limitations could very well have played a factor in the design of the Au Ra.

[Kismet]

Do they not have ears? Are their horns replacing them?

 

I've been wondering this as well... It would be very interesting if they didn't.

[BumblingSeaBiscuit]

You can see from the video below that they do not appear to have ears. Gogo more speculation. 

 

 

4u7nPE6O40Y

 

[Yssen]

XIV already runs sub 30 fps most of the time on the PS3. I bought the CE and played it a few times for novelty sake and it is so terrible compared to the PC/PS4 version that I never bothered with it again.

 

It's also possible that only the female model reuses assets or that the limit of acceptable performance has been hit and that they'll be dropping the amount of displayable PC models again come Heavensward. I can't discount that I could just be flat out wrong too. My point is that technical limitations could very well have played a factor in the design of the Au Ra.

You are probably correct that the limitations already in place effected design, to what degree would be hard to say exactly. Recycling seperate race models for genders and tweaking them a bit would be a fairly easy solution. Personally, I am liking that there is a pretty big disparity between the males and the females. It is a nifty way to go in terms of design, makes the new race stand out more.

 

Also, am I mistaken or did they say at Fan Fest that Heavensward was the last piece of FFXIV that was going to have support for the PS3? Or maybe it was not Fan Fest. I recall them saying this around that time. I am wondering/hoping that they will go back and play around with some options that being limited by the PS3 currently puts the kibosh on.

[Tali]

It seems so apparently, yeah. We'll have to wait for the full release, but I presume it's a racial thing.

That's interesting.  Maybe, the horns will resonate or pick up tonal vibrations to hear.

It works for female Twi'lek's, so it's a definite possibility.  Kinda cool, if so.  Fingers shall remain crossed until more lore is drip-fed to us.

[Kellach Woods]

Why do I get the feeling we're going to go full Russian for Au Ra naming conventions?

[Naunet]

To reiterate though, there is the option to make her more demon- or succubus-like.

 

Maybe I'm cynical, but to me this reads as:

"We totally give you a lot of customization options for your female Au Ra! She doesn't have to be cute and pretty! She can be hot and sexy instead!"

 

Hah, you're not the only one who read it like that.