Final Fantasy XV - General News Thread

[SerjAngelo]

Open worlds with good gamedesign, towns, story etc. take not only budget, but also skill and passion.
It's too obvious that BD2 didn't have much experience with this type of games and were mainly prioritizing to put FFXV together in a working state, omitting everything else. Tabata also stated that rather than having a big team of 1k+ people working on the game like western studios do, he opted for a smaller team to "utilize each member's strengths more", and I believe it hit them hard.

Take Witcher 3, for example. The game's budget was comparetively low: $81 million (including the marketing costs; source - https://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-is-how-much-the-witcher-3-cost-to-make/1100-6430409/ )
And we all know how much better designed its open world system is, while the game had similiar situation XV had - its engine being developed at the same time and the game having to come out in 3-4 years of development. But it had a larger, more experienced team and it shows.

It really seems to me that the XV devs were just trying to "play it by ear" and come up with stuff along the way, with XV being their testing ground for the open world, engine and re-inventing the wheel for basic stuff such as driving (I still remember them saying pre-release that they are looking at driving racing games to give a great sensation of driving, lol), rather than having a set plan of features to implement, interesting quest ideas, stories to tell in the world etc.
Honestly, I'd be so down to have a full documentary of the project's development and hurdles starting from Versus XIII and up to its release. Cause even from the bits we know alone, this game's dev.history is fascinating.

 

[SonOfEtro]

Honestly, I'd be so down to have a full documentary of the project's development and hurdles starting from Versus XIII and up to its release. Cause even from the bits we know alone, this game's dev.history is facinating.

As long as people stick to the FACTS!

 

[Bazztek]

You don't like pez? Damn, I think he's brilliant.

I don't like how he constantly refers to his own "theories", headcanon and misinterpretations of what's in XV as a basis for the games story and lore, and he makes huge leaps in logic just to try and connect some dots. Even to this day he still insists that "Eos" is a goddess in the game. He's also not very informed regarding how game development works or how engines and tech works, but still makes a bunch of videos about it.

I can see why people like him because of his passion and I used to not have a problem with him, it was only really after the game released that he started really annoying me, I also don't like how he refers to FF as "our game". The FF Youtube community is really not that big but the only ones I even find respectable are FF Union.

I'm start to think it that they should have make a classic world map with massive cities and towns in FFXV and not what it is now. Of course you can not change it anymore, but it would have been nice. Ni no Kuni is like this and works pretty well.

I hope, or at least I would like, that FFVII Remake take this route.

By the way, in the early stages of development of FF Versus XIII, it had this kind of world map.

Yeah originally Versus was gonna have an SD world map with a giant Noctis running around, I guess like how NNK does it or more specifically how FF Type-0 does and the PS1 FFs do it, it was sometime around 2010 when Nomura said they changed it from that to it then having an "open world" with it being as "seamless as possible" with the only loads being on really big areas, which honestly sounds exactly like how it's currently structured, both Nomura and Tabata refer to it as "open world but not fully open world".

People often cite Tabata as changing it to open world but that isn't the case, it was already transitioning to that since 2010, in fact Nomura even mentioned in 2013 that one of the reasons they decided to move to 8th gen platforms was to achieve their goal of being as seamless as possible even more so, because he mentioned that when doing tests on PS3 in 2012 the map couldn't keep up when driving the car. Tabata mentioned that when Versus became XV they went through a period of reevalution where they basically re-decided on everything in the game on what to keep and what to change, and despite the wording of Tabata's statements making it sound like he came up with the open world direction, it's actually more that he just kept it going in that direction it was going since 2010, and people weren't sure if they should because they weren't experienced in making it, but Tabata insisted they do. Tabata even has statements where it sounds like he came up with the roadtrip aspect, even though that was something in the game during Versus which Nomura had mentioned before.

 

[Bazztek]

re-inventing the wheel for basic stuff such as driving (I still remember them saying pre-release that they are looking at driving racing games to give a great sensation of driving, lol),

Offroad driving was something that was in prerelease version of the game, Gameinformer even specified that they did drive offroad when they played it, but it wasn't in the launch version because they hadn't finished doing it because of too many bugs or whatever reason so they had to leave it out, which is why the offroad Regalia was a free update in 2017. They already had normal driving mechanics in the game engine which you can see in Plat demo when transforming into a car and even the Regalia in ch13 has different more normal car driving mechanics compared to the default ch1-8 Regalia.

while the game had similiar situation XV had - its engine being developed at the same time and the game having to come out in 3-4 years of development. But it had a larger, more experienced team and it shows.

W3 was actually in development on its engine far longer than XV was on Luminous, also RED Engine 3 was an iteration of the engine from RED Engine and RED Engine 2 which they already had years of experience with, they developed RED Engine 3 with the intention of it being for open worlds but it was still RED Engine their own internal engine.

XV only moved to Luminous in July 2013, whatever knowhow and workflow on the engine they required would have been gained by the team from that point on. In comparison Witcher 3 had already been on its engine since it started which had just gained extra features for open world game development. According to the Development section of the wiki for Witcher 3 it says it had 250 people working on it internally and 1500 people in total working on Witcher 3, in comparison FFXV had only 200 people working on it internally by 2014, even less prior to that, and they added an extra 100 outsourced devs from XPEC in 2015 and another 100 added by 2016 which also included Hexadrive, with a total of 400 working on it in 2016.

Not only that but Witcher 3 devs went from Witcher 2 which was a PC/PS3/360 game to Witcher 3 on PC/PS4/XB1, most of the FFXV core devs came straight from PS2 and PSP games to now working on a PS4/XB1/PC game, on top of that the Witcher 3 already had the novels that they were gaining the games story and lore from and adapting them, in XV's case everything was to be created from scratch with only some vague concepts, character designs and enemy designs created a few years prior. The Witcher devs had more knowhow on console/PC game development than what the FFXV devs did, yet I'd say that XV graphically and technically is superior to what Witcher 3 showcased, especially regarding character and enemy animation, AI, combat, dungeon design, lighting and other more technical aspects of game system.

The only area Witcher 3 really has XV beat imo is in sidequest design and town integration.

 

[LogicalFal'cie]

After playing Type-0 I don't ever want to go back to a world map again.

The Witcher 3 being used as a good example of development is hilarious btw. I'm sure the devs at Luminous would love to have the bad pay, work conditions and the endless crunch that Cdprojeckt doles out to its endless conveyor belt of employees being sent to the meat grinder.

 

[Nova]

Crunch time sucks ass, after Red Dead Redemption 2 I'm hoping Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't do the same thing to it's staff. :/

Also:

https://twitter.com/statuses/1066943011647619072

 

[SerjAngelo]

The only area Witcher 3 really has XV beat imo is in sidequest design and town integration.

I'd also add the navigation in the world itself in W3 was easier and more interesting to with less restrictions and more player freedom applied, while also often substantially rewarding the players for going out of their way to explore and find interesting stuff.
Whereas XV's reward system was tied only to sidequests and hunts.

But yeah, even if flawed, XV beats W3 in enemies variety, combat and dungeons.

.

The Witcher 3 being used as a good example of development is hilarious btw. .

If you look into practically every big hit AAA game development, almost every major studio hits crunches and massive overworking (be it because of the management, internal struggles, etc.). Remember how Tabata slept only 3 hours a day to get the game out?
Still, as a consumer for me what matters most is the end product and I'm sure that even after all the struggles those people go through, they feel proud of being a part of something great, that's still being praised as a timeless classics.

 

[T.O.T]

As long as people stick to the FACTS!

Ha you wish.

 

[Lulcielid]

Also Witcher 3 open world is...well, the third iteration of the series, whethereas XV is the first one.

 

[Ikkin]

Not only that but Witcher 3 devs went from Witcher 2 which was a PC/PS3/360 game to Witcher 3 on PC/PS4/XB1, most of the FFXV core devs came straight from PS2 and PSP games to now working on a PS4/XB1/PC game, on top of that the Witcher 3 already had the novels that they were gaining the games story and lore from and adapting them, in XV's case everything was to be created from scratch with only some vague concepts, character designs and enemy designs created a few years prior. The Witcher devs had more knowhow on console/PC game development than what the FFXV devs did, yet I'd say that XV graphically and technically is superior to what Witcher 3 showcased, especially regarding character and enemy animation, AI, combat, dungeon design, lighting and other more technical aspects of game system.

The only area Witcher 3 really has XV beat imo is in sidequest design and town integration.

Yeah, W3 makes for a weird comparison because it not only had a lot more people working on it, but also was a lot less ambitious about everything other than the open world and related sidequests.

Just to give one example, here are the polycounts for the Chocobros, taken from a Beyond3D thread:

Noct (97,814):

Ignis (117,058):

Gladio (117,419):

Prompto (126,446):

Since all four of the Chocobros are present throughout the game, FFXV has to account for almost 460,000 polygons worth of protagonists at all times.

Meanwhile, RED Engine 3 (at least as used in W3) has a hard limit of 40,000 polygons per character, which means that FFXV is pushing eleven times the number of triangles for protagonists that W3 could. Then, you consider that FFXV reserves the right to drop as many enemies on you at any time as W3 seems to use in its biggest scripted battles, and FFXV also has to account for Chocobos, the Regalia, and summons at most times, and the difference starts to seem practically generational. Luminous is a poly-pushing monster.

And that's not mentioning even more ambitious stuff like TPS-style action setpieces and reasonably accurate global illumination. FFXV's team wasn't just smaller -- because FFXV had to push its tech so much farther, it had to be more focused on the technical aspects, too. CDPR, in contrast, probably had a bunch of people who already had a lot of practice making open world sidequests and very little need to worry themselves with modifications to the engine. It's a completely different ball of wax.

 

[CloudBuster]

Guys it's almost 29th of November, it would be nice if we get any anniversary surprise patch update for the game..

Yeah, it would be nice. Which is precisely why I'm not expecting it lol.

Also maybe this has been asked before but anyone wondering what the point was of adding that menu where you can view all upcoming updates? Seems kinda pointless with only 2 actual updates left in the game and only one paid for DLC.

 

[Dorothy95]

Giant Noctis looking at a map...that sounds awful...glad they changed it, but I'm still pretty sure ff xv with ps3 graphic would be cool (just the map thing oh god). Since I never had any previous generation console (ps3/xbox 360...I had Wii and Wii U tho, but that's ekhmn....not really a point here) did games there really suck when it came to open world? Was it seriously impossible to have open world like in current ff xv?

 

[Nova]

Giant Noctis looking at a map...that sounds awful...glad they changed it, but I'm still pretty sure ff xv with ps3 graphic would be cool (just the map thing oh god). Since I never had any previous generation console (ps3/xbox 360...I had Wii and Wii U tho, but that's ekhmn....not really a point here) did games there really suck when it came to open world? Was it seriously impossible to have open world like in current ff xv?

Nomura talked about running into issues with ps3 gen hardware like the map not keeping up with the car and how shifting to current gen consoles helped elevate such greatly.

 

[Storm]

Yeah, it would be nice. Which is precisely why I'm not expecting it lol.

Also maybe this has been asked before but anyone wondering what the point was of adding that menu where you can view all upcoming updates? Seems kinda pointless with only 2 actual updates left in the game and only one paid for DLC.

at this point they will announce ep ardyns cancellation as a surprise lol

 

[Lord_Ham_Mork]

at this point they will announce ep ardyns cancellation as a surprise lol

The question is: Did LS put the billboars in the menu before or after the cancelation of content? If they chose to have it knowing the episodes are cancelled, then there may be things to announce.

 

[IwakuraLain]

Guys it's almost 29th of November, it would be nice if we get any anniversary surprise patch update for the game..

I don't think it'll ready in time for the 29th, but a new update went into QA on the PC version. My guess is this is the build that will be released on December 12th.

 

[Nova]

Interesting, is it possible there could be something new added or will this be akin to bugfixes?

 

[IwakuraLain]

Interesting, is it possible there could be something new added or will this be akin to bugfixes?

They haven't released any stand alone bug fix builds in a while (since spring I think?) so I think it's more likely to be the FFXIV collab/Comrades update. The last time the Master branch (QA) was updated was roughly two weeks before the Terra Wars update dropped.

"nvday" (which I'm assuming is the branch for developing the new NVidia features) hasn't updated in a number of days, so perhaps that will be released as well, or shortly after. "redday" stopped updating as of August 11th, and I've always assumed that ended up being the Terra Wars update.

Spoiler

But hey, what do I know, maybe I've got it all wrong

 

[stolas]

I was thinking about this, one of the things they might add in the next possible patches might pertain to Comrades. Since it's becoming a standalone, they might throw in a small update where the exclusive meals from Gentiana, Aranea, Cor, Iris, Cid, and Cindy will be able to be bought in game just because I don't think the standalone will transfer that unlocked data for you (which makes me wonder about the Chapter 14 custom Comrades Glaive situation). Other than the FFXIV collab and the Ep. Ardyn I can't image anything else really being added to that patch listing they put up. Well, other than announcing the end of the TERRA Wars collab. But who knows, they might throw in something major at the end as a farewell.

 

[Ikkin]

I was thinking about this, one of the things they might add in the next possible patches might pertain to Comrades. Since it's becoming a standalone, they might throw in a small update where the exclusive meals from Gentiana, Aranea, Cor, Iris, Cid, and Cindy will be able to be bought in game just because I don't think the standalone will transfer that unlocked data for you (which makes me wonder about the Chapter 14 custom Comrades Glaive situation). Other than the FFXIV collab and the Ep. Ardyn I can't image anything else really being added to that patch listing they put up. Well, other than announcing the end of the TERRA Wars collab. But who knows, they might throw in something major at the end as a farewell.

Unlocking exclusive meals would be relatively simple, no? The game was already capable of sufficient communication with outside executables to transfer Carbuncle's name from the Platinum Demo, and I can't imagine that the recipes require much more data transfer than that. The custom Glaive would be the tricky bit, because the main game on console presumably would have no further use for the character creator.