Kill the PS2 limitations end of the Dark Ages Era

They could.

Release PC / xbox / ps3 only expansions from this point on ;o

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Originally Posted by rog

They could.

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Then they should. I don't want to drop PS2 support unless it is the only way to get more continents into the game.

No one here actually knows the percentage of players who use the PS2 therefore no one can make a statement about whether or not this would be a financially reasonable choice.

Even if they don't drop PS2 support there's a lot they could do to improve the PC version without too much difficulty. I made a thread about it here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...isticly-happen.

The problem is, from a development standpoint, they've opted to keep as much as they can consistent across the platforms. The core assets of the game are essentially the same--PS2 DAT files and such. This way, the only thing they have to worry about being platform specific is more in dealing with the wrapper that runs the PS2 portion of it. IDK just where the line is drawn, but it will be a limiting factor on just how much they would be willing to tweak things for one platform further then they already have.

And thus, we have the good old patent answer of "PS2 limitations...can't do that for the PS2, so no one gets it".

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Originally Posted by hordecore

Transfer all their accounts into PC accounts come on people go buy new PCs and stop draggin us down

Imagine FFXI with FFXIV graphics it will become EPIC GAME with PS2 we cant have better graphics

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It is not that simple

I find it funny that when this arguement is brought up, it always comes up that we're not moving over due to the mass amount of japanese players on the PS2. If you look on the jp boards there has been a thread titled PS2 -> PS3 on the 1st page of their general discussion for quite a while now with a lot of people in favor of the jump over.

I think it's more about the amount of work it would take to swap to a higher quality version over alienating people.

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Originally Posted by CrystalWeapon

I find it funny that when this arguement is brought up, it always comes up that we're not moving over due to the mass amount of japanese players on the PS2. If you look on the jp boards there has been a thread titled PS2 -> PS3 on the 1st page of their general discussion for quite a while now with a lot of people in favor of the jump over.

I think it's more about the amount of work it would take to swap to a higher quality version over alienating people.

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Exactly. It's not JUST that the PS2 is supported, it's that the game was designed for the PS2--PC support was more like a tweak where they integrated a wrapper to play the PS2 content on a PC. The 360 got more of a makeover, so it's a bit of a different animal--but it still has a lot of the legacy PS2 crap in it. They would have to FIRST get people off the PS2, and then remake the wrappers for PC and 360.

This infact is why we didn't get the full DirectX upgrade we were promised what... 2 years ago? Forget when they proposed it--but they found it entailed too much and wasn't worth the resources to complete it. More or less all we got was a little restructuring that allowed windowed mode and some shader/texture tweaking. That eventually allowed people with nextgen cards to force FSAA in hardware (but it bogs worse than the old supersampling trick)--so it was an improvement, but a half-assed one at that.

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Originally Posted by Flunklesnarkin

Release PC / xbox / ps3 only expansions from this point on ;o

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You do realize the PS3 just emulates the PS2 version so all the PS2 limitations are in place on that version. SE would actually have to recode the game to be an actual PS3 game for it to not have the PS2 limitations. They said many times they didn't want to do that because they thought it would cost them too much.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

You do realize the PS3 just emulates the PS2 version so all the PS2 limitations are in place on that version. SE would actually have to recode the game to be an actual PS3 game for it to not have the PS2 limitations. They said many times they didn't want to do that because they thought it would cost them too much.

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I thought the PS2 Limitation was because of the amount of memory allocated to FFXI From the PS2-Hardrive(something like that?), not the Game/Disk itself?

and since PS3 Doesn't have the PS2 HD... PS2 Limitations doesn't apply.

I could be wrong...(hurf lookie there)

Uh, no. The hdd has nothing to do with it. The ps2 has 32 mb ram.

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Originally Posted by rog

Uh, no. The hdd has nothing to do with it. The ps2 has 32 mb ram.

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Then does that problem persist when you switch to the PS3?

The PS3 only emulates PS2 software, that is planned around 32mb so yeah it does.

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Originally Posted by sruon

The PS3 only emulates PS2 software, that is planned around 32mb so yeah it does.

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afaik, the rest of the ram is not disabled when playing a ps2 game.

Mixed Responses :X Crap.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

Then does that problem persist when you switch to the PS3?

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It would because the emulator and game software would be fixed to utilizing the PS2's specs. All emulation does is mimic the settings of the console it's trying to replicate, now if you were to tweak the limit of the emulator software to utilize the expanded ram capacity of the PS3 it might improve performance pending how the drivers for FFXI are utilized and setup. The drawback to emulation however is the emulator itself is a program and can take considerable resources to run, so you may or may not experience worse gameplay than if you were to just play on the PS2 itself.

I See. Interesting.

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Originally Posted by Swords

It would because the emulator and game software would be fixed to utilizing the PS2's specs. All emulation does is mimic the settings of the console it's trying to replicate, now if you were to tweak the limit of the emulator software to utilize the expanded ram capacity of the PS3 it might improve performance pending how the drivers for FFXI are utilized and setup. The drawback to emulation however is the emulator itself is a program and can take considerable resources to run, so you may or may not experience worse gameplay than if you were to just play on the PS2 itself.

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Yes, it mimics the settings, however it is not exactly the same. It still has access to all the ps3's hardware, including the extra ram. Some of those resources are used in the emulation, but there is still plenty left over.

Early PS3's actually had a PS2 daughterboard in them. Later models that had them removed relied on software emulation. Emulation typically relies on the console's BIOS/FW, so the games are run sort of in a Virtual machine--with all the restrictions native to that emulated console's environment. That's why component video sometimes tanks on a PS game in a PS2. If you want to run a Saturn, PSX, Nintendo, etc emulator on your PC--that program HAS to have the console's BIOS/FW to function. There are ways to hook into the OS of the actual platform you are on (like creating files on your hard drive to simulate memory cards and custom API's that hook the PSx/PS2 drivers into the Windows CDROM and DirectX API's)--but it is still subject to the limitations of the original console. Just like the PS2 homebrew community had to create a hook to a 48bit LBA extension to access the full capacity of their hard drives. Their developement tools were on a PC, but could not access the resources of that PC without the hooks.

Yes, but ram is still available, regardless of what type of game is being played, unless sony specifically disabled it (such as the wii, or ds does when playing gamecube/gba games)

Additional RAM is NOT available when you're emulating. The program expects a very specific environment (in the case of consoles) and attempting to change that will result in either 1) the program simply not utilizing it (because it doesn't know it's there) or 2) unpredictable errors/crashing.

It definitely would not result in crashing. The first problem is easily solved.

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Originally Posted by rog

Yes, but ram is still available, regardless of what type of game is being played, unless sony specifically disabled it (such as the wii, or ds does when playing gamecube/gba games)

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Even the earliest consoles and computers like the Sega Genesis and Comodore 64 had a small amount of ram incorporated in it's system, so it cannot be fully disabled. But games and hardware are specifcally modeled to the specifications they were built with and designed on. The only way to truely utilize the specs from a more powerful system when emulating, is to go in and adjust FFXI's drivers and the emulating software itself to use them.

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Originally Posted by RAIST

This infact is why we didn't get the full DirectX upgrade we were promised what... 2 years ago? Forget when they proposed it--but they found it entailed too much and wasn't worth the resources to complete it.

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Yeah, I didn't believe that excuse then and I still don't. The real reason was they just didn't want to bother or were thinking about FFXIV at the time (remember they started working on FFXIV around COP) and didn't want to "waste" development time on a game which at that time they thought would last 5 years at the most. DirectX 9 isn't that much different than DirectX 8, it's really just a refinement and extension of it. They are close enough that you can pretty much just convert the D3D calls in your code and make a few minor adjustments. It's not nearly as different as DirectX 9 vs DirectX 10.

Converting an application from DirectX 8 to DirectX 9 is not some incredibly difficult programming task. If you know anything about D3D you know this is not true.

Even if they don't do a full graphics update there are things they could do to modernize the existing client and make it work better on modern PC's without affecting PS2 support. I'll just copy past from the other thread because apparently not many people actually looked at it.

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First of all, change how the resolution select works in the config. We already know that FFXI supports any resolution your graphics card is capable of so restricting the "background" setting to a maximum of 1024x1024 in the config utility doesn't make sense.

Furthermore, the whole "background/overlay" system they use is confusing to new players. They should change the "background" to be a fraction of the overlay and change the name to "Rendering resolution" with a help text that explains what it actually is. So you can select the resolution you want and then choose 1/4 1/2 2/3 and "full resolution" for rendering (this is the way FFXIV does it).

Update FFXI to DirexctX 9 already, DirectX 8 is dying and Nvidia and ATI hardly care about it. This would solve 95% of the problems FFXI has on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

60fps support. FFXI's graphics engine *does* support 60fps, there is a cutscene in COP that runs at 60 fps (the one with the demons) and the FFXI benchmark also runs at 60fps in places. So we know this is possible without having to change any of the animations for the models.

MSAA support, or rather, MSAA support that isn't really slow. At least on ATI cards if you match the overlay and background resolutions (e.g. 1280x720 for both) then forced MSAA actually works with FFXI. The problem though is that it is very slow with shadows enabled. MSAA already works with FFXI, so it's just a matter of fixing FFXI to work better with it.

Adjustable menu size. Add an option to draw the menus larger so that everything doesn't become unreadable at very high resolutions. Even if it's just "draw all menus at 2x size"

An option to restrict the width of the UI. So say if you were running the game at 1920x1080 you could restrict the width at which the UI is drawn to 1440.

Related to the above, user defined aspect ratio, or alternatively just have FFXI assume square pixels. Almost all displays these days use discrete pixels anyway. Combined with the above they would allow FFXI to work with eyefinity three monitor setups. FFXI can already run on three monitors because they simply look like a single very wide display to applications. The only problem is that FFXI is limited to 16:9 and the UI spans all three displays, so while it works it's not very useful.

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None of these things would be too hard to implement. Only converting to DirectX 9 and MSAA optimization would be much work and even that might take one person a month or two.

Oh and to the above list I'd like to add "support the shoulder buttons on Xbox 360 controllers on the PC" so we can use the official drivers from Microsoft and not have to hammer the F8 key every time our computer boots.

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Originally Posted by rog

Yes, but ram is still available, regardless of what type of game is being played, unless sony specifically disabled it (such as the wii, or ds does when playing gamecube/gba games)

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It's not available to PS2 games because it's emulation. The PS2 software runs inside a virtual PS2, it does not run directly on the PS3 hardware. It doesn't "know" that it's running on a software emulation of the PS2 hardware and not an actual PS2.They could change the emulation to make more RAM available (basically the PS3 would be emulating an "enhanced" PS2), but that would require Sony's cooperation and they aren't likely to do this. It would also require FFXI to support the extra RAM. It also could introduce bugs if other PS2 software tried to write into memory addresses that don't actually exist on a real PS2 but which do on the emulation.

And yes it's very possible that some PS2 games could do that. Either because it's involved in some weird hardware trick or because it doesn't actually do anything on a PS2 and was just overlooked.

I find it interesting how so many people actually expect ps2 users to automatically transfer to pc. Until the HD on my ps2 died the instant SE got rid of ps2 support I would have quit the game despite the fact that I had a computer with ffxi on it.
Do you guys really think the general reaction of people on a ps2 wouldnt be "screw you" and that the 360 userbase wouldn't find something else to do as they could easily be next on the hitlist within a few more years?
Cutting off and alienating a bunch of steady customers is not a good business practice in a company.

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Originally Posted by Khajit

I find it interesting how so many people actually expect ps2 users to automatically transfer to pc. Until the HD on my ps2 died the instant SE got rid of ps2 support I would have quit the game despite the fact that I had a computer with ffxi on it.
Do you guys really think the general reaction of people on a ps2 wouldnt be "screw you" and that the 360 userbase wouldn't find something else to do as they could easily be next on the hitlist within a few more years?
Cutting off and alienating a bunch of steady customers is not a good business practice in a company.

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Neither is letting a game slowly die due to an outdated system completely. With a Dead game due to frozen content because of the PS2, The profit is completely gone, Where as Dropping the PS2 would only cut part of their base.

Really look at it this way, You're arm is infected, Its going to spread to your heart and kill you, But you can remove it through surgery. You'll lose your arm, But you save your life. Are you going to lay back and die? or learn to live without your arm.

PS2 Is a diseased arm, Sooner or later it has to come off, or it'll kill the game. Maybe not now, But some day soon a decision will have to be made. It doesn't need to happen right but eventually the best "business choice" will be to lop off that arm, rather than let them die.

Its not that i don't respect your situation, I really do, because i too once played only on the PS2.

But its just a reality its holding the game back, and has been, since day one. Its not the ENTIRE reason, I never implied that, But it is a driving excuse/Reason behind a lot of past issues, and present, and will be in the future.

And yet here we are in an "age" where nearly everything people hated when playing FFXI is gone. If anything your argument is a reasoning for converting FF14 into FFXI 2.0. We've been hearing screams about how the end is nigh due to limitations for at least half a decade and I'm still hearing that same old BS spouted as if anyone on ps2 or 360 honestly gives much of a crap anymore about apocalyptic prophecies. PSO has been officially dead since forever and there are servers everywhere.
Even with that doom and gloom arm infection analogy you're skipping the part where you're going to have a perfectly functioning arm for months until you reach any sort of critical mass, the idea that one can create a new body for a nominal fee( v2.0) and that SE as a company has been doing very poorly lately financially speaking so you're asking the doctor(SE) to send you to surgery(while expecting future advanced upgrades to your body that the doctor never cared about giving before) for free when the hospital is nearly bankrupt, and the fact that for an unknown( to me , I'm sure there are people employed by SE that can calculate this) amount of time you're going to actually be worse off.


You want ps2 support gone? Then convince SE to make an upgraded version of the game and let the former ps2/xbox players( use the original codes to figure out who started on ps2) have a discount on the box price(or give some sort of incentive/consolation prize to the ps2 users being left out) because the current tack in the argument just sounds like the crazy hobo's ranting about the incoming rapture whom keeps pushing back the expected date for it to happen.

IT's not to say the day wont come, however you're overestimating how many people have, may, and will quit because of ps2 limitations. If they were going to quit because of those they would have done so back when SE's excuse for everything was ps2limitations (which turned out to be lies but back then many people took it at face value). It's safer to think that if people left the game it's because they had that travesty of an expansion ACP(I only bought it because I couldn't believe that it was really as big a waste of money as I'd heard), because of the previous boxed expansion having almost every zone a 99% recycled zone while proclaiming that we had new and exciting areas to discover, stretching it out over several years to the point that people just plain got sick of even bothering to remember where they were mission wise while those that did care probably forgot several months before(and yet we dont see people petitioning to delete wotg zones and replace it with a better expansion), SE blaming the initial RMT account hackings on the players while simultaneously charging them money to get back on their own original server, the endgame linkshells ls that openly paid over $2000 for bots without repercussion, and that nonsense with the PW/AV fiasco.
If ffxi is slowly dying as claimed due to the ps2 factor is negligible and mostly ran its course out long ago.(Until around next year if SE truly hasn't found a way around anything and assuming the content we do get is good)

I'm Don't think i underestimate anything. My Comparison was between "No players" and "No PS2" Players. They are purposefully Vague numbers.

Secondly, I never said the Only Excuse was PS2 Limitations. Which is also why i used the word "Excuse" right here:

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But it is a driving excuse/Reason behind a lot of past issues, and present, and will be in the future.

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Implying it might not always be the legitimate problem (as with a lot of things the old dev team said, which are now fixed), hence the word, "Excuse" and reason being used. in which case Erasing this "Excuse" might give us more progress. who can say for sure what "Excuse" they would have used if the PS2 was never an issue though? I can't. Right now their excuses are "Limited Development Resources". Which i think in itself is because of FFXIV being a flop, and most of their resources being diverted to making it not suck.

Thirdly, i did say "Eventually" the PS2 Would cause the Decline of Updates. It will. There is a actual, Factual limitation on how much the PS2 can handle, and we're getting dangerously close to it. I never said "Right now".

Fourthly, I don't understand your whole FFXIV Comparison it makes no sense based on my Current argument. Can you please explain that a bit better for me?

Fifthly, Making an "upgraded" Version as shown by you yourself Right here

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Until the HD on my ps2 died the instant SE got rid of ps2 support I would have quit the game despite the fact that I had a computer with ffxi on it.

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Wouldn't matter, Cause you appear to be saying "If they drop PS2 I'll quit no matter what". Hypocrisy? Or Did you forget to mention in your first post "Unless they give me half-off a new Game" Even though you appear to already have a PC with FFXI?

No one wants to just "pack up and move to FFXIV", they want FFXI to live on a few more years, They want to play and enjoy FFXI, and sooner or later the only way to do this will be to cut your loses and remove the PS2 Support, Or just let the game die and go stagnant. I'm not implying we should just be like "Hey PS2, F*ck you". I would think they would be like "in 1 year We're ending PS2 Support, PS2 Players will have the option to Download it Free on Steam" or something to the matter to move players on.

And truthfully, No one really wants it to ever come to the point where its "No more content for PS2" or "drop PS2 for content". because I'm sure a lot of people even in this thread have friends who play PS2. I know I don't want it to stop right now, But i can also see that some day in the near future its either going to be drop the PS2 (With warning!) or We'll cease any meaningful content.

I don't know which brings me to point six.

SIXTHLY, I don't wanna continue to this much Further, Last time some Ranter went deep-end with me over some quasi-offensive post Both of us got our posts deleted by GM's, Repeat {No Thanks}. I like my Account Un-banned. So respond to this, I'll quote it and make a big Smiley face for you, and we can both move on. Or someone can come and take my place and you can continue to argue with him.

Eh agree to disagree and ill go skim over the grammar in my post later because it sounds like you're misinterpreting several things i said.

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Originally Posted by Khajit

Eh agree to disagree and ill go skim over the grammar in my post later because it sounds like you're misinterpreting several things i said.

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Very Well Could be. If you explain it better I'll be happy to respond more.

Edit: also in my last post I promised i'd reply with a Giant Smiley face, So here you go :)

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Thought just hit me....wonder if the 360 puts games on the drive like a PS2 does (an image file and not the actual files). If so...it could run into a similar space issue there too.

At this point, their only option may very well be a whole new game that is only on PC, maybe PS3 (Blu-Ray support, it should be able to handle up to 25GB partitions). Guess that's what they were hoping 14 was going to be as they made the effort to tie in the familiar faces and such. What they should have done though is just a continuation of Vanadiel, incorporating new story lines exploring more of the left out lore like the Mithra and Galka's and such. Allow you to import your toons somehow--maybe a lot of the gear wouldn't translate, maybe just specific sets (AF's, Relics, etc.--RE stuff) and your gil. That would have been a good way to take us past 75 instead of the abyssea route they took.

But anyway... what's done is done.

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Originally Posted by Khajit

And yet here we are in an "age" where nearly everything people hated when playing FFXI is gone. If anything your argument is a reasoning for converting FF14 into FFXI 2.0.

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Even if FFXIV became FFXI 2.0 Eorzea is still a bland soulless copy of Vana'diel populated by bland less interesting versions of FFXI's races.

Miqo'te are simply human women with cat ears and are less visually interesting than Mithra. Same with Galka vs Roegadyn. Elzen are generic tolkien elves.

The world is boring and nothing about it makes me want to live there.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

But its just a reality its holding the game back, and has been, since day one. Its not the ENTIRE reason, I never implied that, But it is a driving excuse/Reason behind a lot of past issues, and present, and will be in the future.

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The only significant harm to the game came on day one, when they decided to make the game for the ps2, then port it to the pc, instead of having real pc support. Only very minimal things are impossible because of the ps2.

Beginning to feel this argument is getting incredibly redundant. So I think I'll just agree with the keep the PS2 side.

The PS2 is fine, It won't limit or Stop updates now or ever in the future. "PS2 Limitations" was never used as an excuse by the Dev team to not add something in the past, and it won't cause any problems in the future.

I understand this now.

Stopping support for PS2 won't happen because it would give them no real reason to not upgrade the eingine of FFXI "ps2 limiations" is an amazing excuse to not do things, they never even upgraded to a newer version of DirectX when they said they were going to because "it was too much work". Notice how very many things can't be added because "they are too much work"?

Won't ever happen, better to just accept it. Will be funny to hear PS3 limitations excuse and for this whole thing to be played out again in a few years on their new MMO.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

The PS2 is fine, It won't limit or Stop updates now or ever in the future. "PS2 Limitations" was never used as an excuse by the Dev team to not add something in the past, and it won't cause any problems in the future.

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Not for things that actually matter it was not.

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Originally Posted by rog

Not for things that actually matter it was not.

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I know! I'm agreeing with you no.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

I know! I'm agreeing with you no.

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Sure sounded like sarcasm to me. If not, then you are wrong, because of the statement "'PS2 Limitations' was never used as an excuse by the Dev team to not add something in the past".