The biggest upgrade XI can get is to raise the 56k data cap

[radar]

Almost everything in this game is hindered by the connection cap being so low, lifting this cap is probably the single upgrade that could happen to XI.

Considering XI makes many millions of dollars a year and has a very high profit margin, is guaranteed to last a long time to come (players aren't going anywhere if they stuck around this long) and that it is run by a large company it's wild there is so little interest in fixing this.

I understand the game was "coded poorly" originally, before there were a lot of standards and so they attached many game systems to the 56k connection (cause they didn't think it mattered, since the game wasn't going to be around more than a few years) but surely Square Enix can put a coder to work on the game for 5-6 months to do this job?

The game makes around 7-8m a year and most of that is profit due to the staff numbers being so low, they can pay a coder to work exclusively on lifting the data cap. A game with 40k+ subscribers from a major company, still having a 56k data cap is embarrassing.

Even if the cap is only raised in instanced areas it could be a huge improvement.

[Alhanelem]

The devs have been asked about this many, many times, and the response has been the same- it would require a total rewrite of the networking code and just isn't in the cards.

[radar]

I covered that in the post, I know why they said they didn't want to do it. That's unacceptable, the game makes a lot of money and has a lot of players. One coder could fix it, in 4-5 months.

You can't just make an excuse to leave something so fundamentally broken, on a game that is going to last at least another 10 years in active service as a p2p game. We pay full price for the game, it makes around 6-7million + a year.

A lot of players don't understand how broken it is to have a game with a 56k data cap, no matter how good your connection is you're locked to 56k because that's the cap of the server. This means alliance content is nearly impossible today (cause they have added more data being transfred since the early days, and not moved past dialup connection), many instances are laggy, the developers have to limit many things when making content cause it may use too much data (Ody was a good example, where the entire thing stopped working at the start till they removed some server checking)

[Alhanelem]

I covered that in the post, I know why they said they didn't want to do it. That's unacceptable, the game makes a lot of money and has a lot of players.It's not "unacceptable." The game works, it's not keeping anyone from playing or enjoying it, they have no reason to spend way, way more than they're currently spending to completely re-engineer a major game engine component.

To be clear, i'm not saying they shouldn't do it (because it would absolutely improve the game), but they have plenty of people who are able to enjoy the game in its present state, so it's only "unacceptable" to you. But also clearly not, because you haven't unsubbed.

And as far as making tons of money, it's a small fraction of what any other decently popular MMORPG makes today, so you're really overestimating this.

[Tehant]

How are we doing this? Running sortie with an alliance. I just think your country underdeveloped and lack the consideration.

[Alhanelem]

How are we doing this? Running sortie with an alliance. I just think your country underdeveloped and lack the consideration.
Uh... man, what are you smoking lol?

This isn't about bad internet. The game is hard locked to a data transmission rate that can be handled by a 56k modem. It doesn't matter how amazing your internet is, the game does not send information to your client faster than that speed.

This made sense in the era this game was made in, as broadband internet was not common at that time, but now, very few people still use dial-up internet.

[radar]

It's not "unacceptable." The game works, it's not keeping anyone from playing or enjoying it, they have no reason to spend way, way more than they're currently spending to completely re-engineer a major game engine component.


This is one of the biggest problems with the company and they really need to stop being this way, they refuse to invest in success and effectively just do the bare minimum. Then keep fishing (throwing money into new projects) for new success, that they also then lose interest in if they get it. They treat XIV in a similar way, XIV should also get far more investment than it does.

Blizzard, for all their faults as a game company do fully invest in success in a way this company does not.

If any other company was running XI and XIV they would get far more money invested back into them.

[Alhanelem]

This is one of the biggest problems with the company and they really need to stop being this way, they refuse to invest in success and effectively just do the bare minimum. Then keep fishing (throwing money into new projects) for new success, that they also then lose interest in if they get it. They treat XIV in a similar way, XIV should also get far more investment than it does.

Blizzard, for all their faults as a game company do fully invest in success in a way this company does not.

If any other company was running XI and XIV they would get far more money invested back into them.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but something like this is going to require way more investment than I get the impression you think is needed. The netcode was a major part of the initial development costs of the game. Completely re-engineering it is not a small task. And yes, it would need to be completely redone. All kinds of in-game systems are also based on an assumption of how the server transmits and recieves information. Back when it was based on a 56k modem, the game could count on recieving and sending certain size packets and knows when it's going to get certain information. When you go from an established, fixed standard to one that's much more variable, a lot of stuff has to be redesigned to both accomodate and take advantage of it. Then there's other systems like the display that shows the loading status, that would probably be removed or reworked.... TLDR, they'd need a team of people to do this, and currently, their arrangement with CBU3 is they leverage individual people at the division on an as-needed basis. If they need a whole team, they're going to need to hire them as they can't leverage this arrangement without impacting the development of CBU3's other projects (which is not just FFXIV, contrary to what a few people on this forum seem to think) And hiring means expensive.

Basically, something like this is big enough that if they're going to do it, they may as well do a full-blown remaster at that point.

[radar]

FFXI is a fairly simple game, it's massive but it's pretty simple compared to other games.

If you hire a full time coder to work on, upgrade and fix the foundational issues it would be improved massively (even if slowly). You can see this by them adding things when they get a coder to come over from XIV now and then (race change, recycle bin, wardrobes etc)

They just don't want to do it, because the company has a "if it's working why spend more money on it" mentality.

They don't even want to hire 1-2 new younger people so that when the current management retires they can take over, it's very much a run it till the wheels fall off mentality with no future thinking at all.

[Alhanelem]

FFXI is a fairly simple game, it's massive but it's pretty simple compared to other games.

If you hire a full time coder to work on, upgrade and fix the foundational issues it would be improved massively (even if slowly). You can see this by them adding things when they get a coder to come over from XIV now and then (race change, recycle bin, wardrobes etc)This is something someone who has no knowledge of game development would say.

If we know anything about FFXI, it's that its codebase is NOT simple at all, and with people who do have knowledge of its inner workings (through reverse engineering, etc), the code is likened to sphagetti- it's not easy to understand.

You cannot hire an engineer who has never worked on this project and has no prior knowledge of it and magic a new networking engine for it in place.

Literally all of the new features we've recieved came from adapting existing systems. And the race change feature itself, even though it again also leverages existing systems, took much longer to do from the time they first established they were working on it because it required entirely new stuff on the account and server side.

Please don't just say "oh, they did this quick therefore they can do this quick, they just have to want to do it," it just shows everyone you have no idea what you're talking about.

I have worked in game development myself, and seperately, studied many aspects of networking in my college career. None of this is as simple as you seem to think it is.

It would take a team of egineers (i.e. not just one) many months, possibly years, to rebuild the the game's entire network systems from scratch, and during that time, they wouldn't be working on game content- this would be if the task was their sole priority.

No matter how much you want to think it is, it's not a small project. You can't just call it "simple" because the game relaesed 20+ years ago.

[radar]

You are not a game developer, stop pretending you are.

You're making out this is like rebuilding the titanic, it's not at all. Just because you don't know how to do these things does not mean a professional coder can't do it. This is not trying to re-write ff14 from the ground up, this is a ps2 game and they are remaking or improving modules within the code.

They problem isn't that they can't (they know they can), it's that they don't have the desire to do it. Which is partly because of JP labor laws not letting them lay people off.

[Alhanelem]

You are not a game developer, stop pretending you are.I actually have worked in game development, I'm not pretending anything. I've seen entire games built from nothing to release from the inside. And every video game community is full of keyboard warriors who think they know how the game dev industry works but really don't.



You're making out this is like rebuilding the titanic, it's not at all.It quite literally is rebuilding the titanic. You're asking them to rebuild the netcode from the ground up- because that's what it would take. Maybe you're hte one who needs to stop pretending like they're a game developer.



They problem isn't that they can't (they know they can), it's that they don't have the desire to do it. Which is partly because of JP labor laws not letting them lay people off. This is utter nonsense with no basis in fact, especially the last part, it has absolutely nothing to do with firing people or whatever such nonsense you come up with. But let's just pretend they simply don't feel like doing it. Why? If it's like you say, they have idle workers apparently just sitting around doing nothing and getting paid for it, it would be irrational, and entirely against the Japanese work ethic to do stuff like that. Japanese are some of the most committed to work of any people in the world. What would be the motivation to not do something that would benefit one of their projects that they supposedly already have all the resources and personnel needed to carry it out, if they supposedly have people getting paid to do nothing who could actually do the work because they "can't lay them off?" in this situation, you've already spent the money, so it makes no sense to not have anything to show for it.

Your post is nonsensical. You've concocted a conspiracy theory yourself and bought into it.

[radar]

WOW does all the things I and others want SE to do with ff11 and ff14, because they continually improve it to keep it current. It's as old as ff11 and feels more modern than ff14.

The thing I'm saying is, there is no reason they cannot assign someone to improve the connection cap, the direct x issues etc Foundational issues due to age, are not acceptable on a game that has a sub and is going to be around for 10+ years (and more if they took on a few younger staff)


I actually have worked in game development.

Me too bro, me too. It's impossible to upgrade games, the code is written in stone! it's crazy talk, it would take a trillion dollars and 10 mega mind turbo mutants from xmen to move away from 56k connection cap.

Thank you for your input, very cool.

[Alhanelem]

Then go play WoW, since clearly Blizzard knows everything and can't possibly screw anything up. Except Warcraft III, and Starcraft, and Overwatch and Diablo IV, and....



Me too bro, me too. It's impossible to upgrade games, the code is written in stone!That's not at all what I'm saying and you know it.

You keep talking about how trivial it is, and maybe it's meant as hyperbole, but my comments are not. It's not something that SE can just snap their fingers and do, much as you want it to be, but that also isn't meant to imply that it's an impossible task. But rather it requires more time and effort to do than their cost-benefit analyses say is worth doing.

WoW is and always was a much larger game and brings in way more money than FFXI ever did, thus there is usually clear potential for return on investment that doesn't exist with FFXI. FFXI is not popular enough for the investment required to be worth it. Sure, they could totally revamp not just the netcode but everything else and just do the remaster we've been begging for. But good luck trying to put enough spin on your cost benefit analysis to convince the corporate bigwigs to greenlight it.

And that's the key- to make some big amazing thing happen for FFXI, you need to convince someone who counts money for a living that spending money on this game is going to give them more money to count than what they put in.

And I'll be blunt. modernizing FFXI"s netcode is not likely to do that. I've played games with 10 times more concurrent players than FFXI which some people would consider "dead" games (personally, I don't consider a game dead until the last person stops playing, but that's just me apparently). No one is going to rush over to sign up for FFXI because they buffed the netcode to transfer data at higher rates, even though that does do good things like make the game more responsive and improve transfer times for things like inventory loading.

Now, there could be things that might do that, but I wouldn't want to be the guy who has to pitch it to Mr. Corporate Bigwig.

Ultimately they could give the FFXI producer unlimited money and staff support and that still wouldn't be assured of making the game a sudden magical success again- That kind of "do whatever you want' power would be better dumped into a new project than FFXI, much as we all love the game, as the chances of success would be far greater.

And yes, I really do have game dev experience, much as you enjoy mocking my comments. It's not like its some magical mythical industry that's impossible to get into.

[radar]

They just need to hire one programmer to work full time on XI, this is all they need to do.

This is how simple it is, they just don't want to do it because they don't think they need to do it to keep making money.

They could even just commission someone to try work on this aspect of the game for 6-12 months, if they don't want to hire someone on.

You keep massively exaggerating how hard this is to change things, it's not. The only problem is the spaghetti code (code not written to accepted standards, making it hard for a new person to decipher), but if you have someone working full time on a project they will become one with the spaghetti and make things work.

FFXI has been running for 23 years, it will run for at least another 10. It's not acceptable for it to be still stuck at 56k.

These things can be improved and there is plenty of money to do so, it's a will issue.

[Darkshade]

SE could just hire some people on fiverr, maybe they could fix all the "small indie company, please understand" problems in XIV while they're at it.

[Alhanelem]

FFXI has been running for 23 years, it will run for at least another 10. It's not acceptable for it to be still stuck at 56k. That's no guarantee. There was consideration given to shutting it down last year, and they decided against it, in part to keep a mainline final fantasy game playable.




These things can be improved and there is plenty of money to do so, it's a will issue. It's not about will. I definitely get the sense that Matsui wants to do more, since he had the desire to keep it going. It's about convincing corporate money heads at SE that spending money to upgrade FFXI will produce a return on that investment.

Having enough money to do something is not the same as it being a good financial decision.

[radar]

The problem with never updating the core foundation of the game, is that it can never take off in a proper way out of nowhere.

OSRS is seeing a resurgence for instance, because wow is alienating its players so much currently.

The way ff11 looks, the kind of grindy content is offers are positives that players want and can pop off. However if you leave the foundational code archaic (56k cap, directx8, ui issues etc) you can't capitalize on it as a game like OSRS can.

Chronic under-investment is a core failing with this company, not only with 11 but also 14. Bare minimum funding philosophy.

[Alhanelem]

XIV's problems are not funding related, they're content direction.

[Voidstorm]

That's no guarantee. There was consideration given to shutting it down last year, and they decided against it, in part to keep a mainline final fantasy game playable.


It's not about will. I definitely get the sense that Matsui wants to do more, since he had the desire to keep it going. It's about convincing corporate money heads at SE that spending money to upgrade FFXI will produce a return on that investment.

Having enough money to do something is not the same as it being a good financial decision.
How to get SE execs to loosen their purse strings? going to have to convince them XIV players will double up their subs to play XI too.
Want FFXIV players to actually give FFXI a try?
You're going to have to modernize a lot of the game so the learning curve isn't a damn cliff. the menu's will have to be made less onerous. and chances are even with all the modernization only a scant few people from XIV will stick around.
Budget to rebuild the entire game and make it so future content releases are less costly 7~8 figures US and will take something like 3~5 years?
now try to get that to pass while also watching existing players cancel their subs since there's no current development of the game while they focus on rebuilding it from scratch...
we're screwed unless the company REALLY wants it to happen.

[Alhanelem]

How to get SE execs to loosen their purse strings? going to have to convince them XIV players will double up their subs to play XI too.
Want FFXIV players to actually give FFXI a try?I mean, to be fair, some people already are. The recent closure of character creation on Asura was tied in part to an influx of players, probably tied to the sub discounts associated with the FFXI x FFXIV raid.

[radar]

How to get SE execs to loosen their purse strings? going to have to convince them XIV players will double up their subs to play XI too.

If they owned Minecraft, OSRS or even WoW they could have run them into the ground with under investment. They fundamentally do not understand the appeal of older, lower tech games and investing in them to gain more customers.

They understand they need to update and add content, but they do not understand the appeal of upgrading the base games that are successful.

It's wild that Nintendo fully understand where their audience is, but SE do not.