/lsmes2 Can we have it?

[MilkMansKid]

Ok. equiping 2 linkshells at once is great; problem is a lot of linkshells put weekly information into the /lsmes. ATM there is no way to see what linkshell2 /lsmes is without swapping linkshell pearls into slot 1. Can we get a /lsmes2 added?

[Grekumah]

Currently the development team has no plans to display the linkshell message for the secondary linkshell.

[Catmato]

Ok. equiping 2 linkshells at once is great; problem is a lot of linkshells put weekly information into the /lsmes. ATM there is no way to see what linkshell2 /lsmes is without swapping linkshell pearls into slot 1. Can we get a /lsmes2 added?

There is no reason this shouldn't be done.

[Camiie]

Currently the development team has no plans to display the linkshell message for the secondary linkshell.

Tell the dev team that I said to make plans then. Thanks.

[Grekumah]

We checked to see if allowing the secondary linkshell message to appear would be possible, but it seems we will not be able to address this.

FFXI was created with the concept that only one linkshell would be able to be equipped. With the January version update, while it appears that you are able to equip two linkshells, internally you are still actually only equipping a single linkshell.

As for a suggestion made on the Japanese side of the forums, to make it so you can switch the controls between LS1 and LS2, we determined that this would take a lot more resources to overcome hurdles that are higher and more complex than making it possible to check the LS message.

In order to check the LS message or make it so it’s possible to use the same features as LS1 with LS2, we would have to dig deep into the core of the FFXI system and totally revamp it so multiple linkshells could actually be equipped. However, this is essentially the amount of work required to totally build a new chat system from the ground up, so it’s not a realistic option at this point.

[Malthar]

Wow... just how bad is FFXI coded?!

[Catmato]

we would have to dig deep into the core of the FFXI system and totally revamp it so multiple linkshells could actually be equipped. However, this is essentially the amount of work required to totally build a new chat system from the ground up, so it’s not a realistic option at this point.This isn't the first time we've heard something like this. Maybe it's time to start thinking of making a new game client from scratch, as well as significant back-end work. After 13 years, these problems aren't going to get better, only worse.

[Alhanelem]

I'm just a little puzzled at how this wasn't simply a matter of duplicating the system and inputting/outputting on its own channel.

Why not make it so that an LS message doesn't require the pearl to be equipped to view the message with /lsmes ? This would have hte added bonus of being able to view the message for any LS in your posession.

e.g. /lsmes Linkshellname would fetch the LS message for any LS, regardless of equip status, as long as you posess the pearl/sack/shell and it's not broken.

[MilkMansKid]

This isn't the first time we've heard something like this. Maybe it's time to start thinking of making a new game client from scratch, as well as significant back-end work. After 13 years, these problems aren't going to get better, only worse.
They would never do this; look at the updated GUI it pretty much has been canned even if they haven't officially said it(maybe they have, I could of missed the post). The preview of it that was put on the test server was like 2 years ago and never updated once. That is less work then this would be.

I call total BS on the whole /lsmes2 though should not be much work to code that in but I won't go into details. Maybe what the Japanese were asking for would be but to display the message no.

[bungiefanNA]

Wow... just how bad is FFXI coded?!

It's a PS2 program, ported to Windows, ported to Xbox 360. The development team that made it is no longer the development team we have. People have left the company or moved on to other games. It was coded for a version of DirectX that could run on Windows 98-XP, and XP was new when this game came out. Who knows what they did with the code to make it work on that many platforms, and still have it work on Win7/8. The current team doesn't want to work inside the core system unless they have to, because they could break something and not have a resource to explain why the original code worked. I would wager the commenting inside the code is not that great, and that they used some workarounds that aren't seen much today, so they'd be obscure.

[Ris]

It's a PS2 program, ported to Windows, ported to Xbox 360. The development team that made it is no longer the development team we have. People have left the company or moved on to other games. It was coded for a version of DirectX that could run on Windows 98-XP, and XP was new when this game came out. Who knows what they did with the code to make it work on that many platforms, and still have it work on Win7/8. The current team doesn't want to work inside the core system unless they have to, because they could break something and not have a resource to explain why the original code worked. I would wager the commenting inside the code is not that great, and that they used some workarounds that aren't seen much today, so they'd be obscure.

I haven't been able to actually confirm this but aside from being written for the PS2 originally, I heard the engine was designed for single-player console games? It's pretty impressive that they've built FFXI on top of all this...

(I'd also like to see a modern client overhaul but... I doubt the game brings in enough to warrant that kind of reinvestment.)

[Catmato]

(I'd also like to see a modern client overhaul but... I doubt the game brings in enough to warrant that kind of reinvestment.)I'm sure it doesn't at the moment, but I think modernizing the client would bring a lot of people back.