Faster access to FFXI?

Hi,

This has probably been asked many times before.

I was wondering if there is a way to almost by-pass POL and go straight in to the character selection screen (once passwords, if any, have been entered)?

Currently it takes numerous steps in order to get in to the game.

Thank you.

Yes, indeed, it has been asked a few times. ^^

Here's the latest(?) response from 2022:

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

We’d like to consider decoupling it if possible, but it would be no easy feat since FFXI is an application built to run on the PlayOnline framework.

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I'm sure they could, if they had the time and/or money/people to do it.

If something like that were to ever happen, I, for one, do hope the PlayOnline Viewer would still stick around so that one can use it if one wants to, because the PlayOnline messages and the friend system in general are very useful to me.

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Originally Posted by Sirmarki

Hi,

This has probably been asked many times before.

I was wondering if there is a way to almost by-pass POL and go straight in to the character selection screen (once passwords, if any, have been entered)?

Currently it takes numerous steps in order to get in to the game.

Thank you.

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The only thing you can do to speed it up is use the FFXI shortcut whith takes you to the play button without waiting for the POL menu to load in. The game is heavily intertwined with POL and uses its systems for the friends list, online status and account related stuff- content IDS for characters and so on. The FFXI program file is actually a DLL file which has to be called by another application and can't be run on its own.

This is never happening. Just log in, it's only a chore because you are used to everything else being instant.

Eh. I mean, FFXIV still has an external launch process, it just doesn't have any unnecessary fluff in it. The fluff belongs in the game, not the launcher.

Playonline made sense when it was still trying to be a fully featured online service for many games. But that should have changed back when it became apparent that FFXI was the only reason anyone cared about it.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

The only thing you can do to speed it up is use the FFXI shortcut whith takes you to the play button without waiting for the POL menu to load in.

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It does exactly the same thing with the same steps as POL.

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Originally Posted by Sp1cyryan

This is never happening. Just log in, it's only a chore because you are used to everything else being instant.

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The PC I play FFXI on is 10yrs old - nothing is instant :P

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Originally Posted by Sirmarki

It does exactly the same thing with the same steps as POL.

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The shortcut button used to do something, many many years ago. I think that it would take you straight to FFXI, bypassing the "Select Handle" screen. Or it might have bypassed the screen where you select whether you want to play Tetra Master or FFXI. Remember Tetra Master? How long has it been since they got rid of that?

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Originally Posted by Sirmarki

It does exactly the same thing with the same steps as POL.

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I didn't say it was less steps. It's less time. That button appears before the menu loads in, so its like 5 seconds faster than if that feature didn't exist.

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The shortcut button used to do something, many many years ago. I think that it would take you straight to FFXI, bypassing the "Select Handle" screen.

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What "select handle screen?" I don't have to select a handle every time I start the game up. As far as I know you only need to have more than one handle if you have a lot of characters, which most people don't.

The shortcut button just saves you from waiting for the main menu to load in. That's it. it's the same number of button presses, yes. It is, however, less time spent.

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Originally Posted by Sirmarki

The PC I play FFXI on is 10yrs old - nothing is instant :P

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Only 10? Mine is from 2007 and uses Windows Vista as the OS with a dial-up DSL! And waiting literally 48 seconds for me (not including typing in both passwords) is not bad at all. If you're too impatient to wait less than a minute for getting into the game, the black-outs when changing areas and reloading access to MH/satchels must also drive you nuts!

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Originally Posted by Dzspdref

Only 10? Mine is from 2007 and uses Windows Vista as the OS with a dial-up DSL! And waiting literally 48 seconds for me (not including typing in both passwords) is not bad at all. If you're too impatient to wait less than a minute for getting into the game, the black-outs when changing areas and reloading access to MH/satchels must also drive you nuts!

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We were all lucky if Vista even started up in 48 seconds.

It takes 50 seconds to login all the way, what's the big deal?

The friend list is linked to playonline, the firewall is playonline (stops people hacking the servers), the only reason XI is still running is because the company that owns playonilne keeps the servers running exclusively for FFXI.

We all know why FFXI can't be fully seperated from playonline, it doesn't mean that the process couldn't be streamlined.

I don't mind companies breathing down my neck. If they want to close my account for doing something they should have done years ago then so be it.

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Originally Posted by Dzspdref

Soooooo..... it cuts off about 8, MAYBE 10 seconds, from what it took you before? Gosh darn let me slow-blink about 10 times to .... oh wait casting Blink and Stoneskin take longer than that! Doesn't seem like a time saving thing. If you had hit the [Connect] button at 0:02 and then "POOF!" you were in MH 2 seconds later, I'd've been impressed.

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You'd need to bypass a lot more than playonline to do that. Which isn't realistic or reasonable.

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Originally Posted by jaku

I don't mind companies breathing down my neck. If they want to close my account for doing something they should have done years ago then so be it.

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Well you seemed to imply you were actuallly cutting POL out of the picture, but you're just triggering the game launch without going through the menus. I don't really think that's much of a problem, but it's still third party tool use.

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Originally Posted by Dzspdref

Soooooo..... it cuts off about 8, MAYBE 10 seconds, from what it took you before? Gosh darn let me slow-blink about 10 times to .... oh wait casting Blink and Stoneskin take longer than that! Doesn't seem like a time saving thing. If you had hit the [Connect] button at 0:02 and then "POOF!" you were in MH 2 seconds later, I'd've been impressed.

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I'm not trying to impress people with this, I use it to allow me to login quicker and not babysit POL. We all wish we could just bypass POL but that's a lot more work than it's worth. This took very little time to put together but helps me, and it may help others.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Well you seemed to imply you were actuallly cutting POL out of the picture, but you're just triggering the game launch without going through the menus. I don't really think that's much of a problem, but it's still third party tool use.

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Where did I say anything about cutting out POL? The video is pretty clear and my post says nothing about bypassing anything. So if you thought that based on my message that's on you, but I never claimed to say that in anyway.

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Where did I say anything about cutting out POL? The video is pretty clear and my post says nothing about bypassing anything. So if you thought that based on my message that's on you, but I never claimed to say that in anyway.

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I posted about how we can't do that and then you replied with a post that basically says "look what I can do!" Before looking at the video, in that context it certainly does look like you're suggesting you can do that. I don't think it's just me that could have come to that conclusion. Regardless, the way you responded made it seem like something a lot more illicit (not that it isn't already)