Developers, SquareEnix: What are the REAL chances of us seeing NEW areas?

[Retsujo]

You can't afford a PC that costs less than 300 dollars and you're running on 5-7 year hardware... you need to stop playing this game and save up. If you're that broke, that you can't come up with a couple hundred dolllars, you need to stop playing FFXI because if you're computer dies, and you can't afford to replace it, or your car has a failure, and you can't afford to replace the parts, then you're screwed. Just a tire blow out alone is 1/6 or so of the cost of getting a PC or netbook that can run FFXI.

You're pretty ignorant if you don't know how many people in this world actually only scrape by in life without the ability to afford anything, or have anyone in their lives to help support them when times get tough. I don't mean to derail this thread, but holy crap you need to open your damn eyes and realize that some people just can't afford to do anything. At least s/he's spending $15/month on a video game, and not $200/month on crack or some other type of drug.

[saevel]

The problem with this is, the dev team has to keep track of 2 versions of the game, not one. Even though the code base for the PS2 version will remain relatively the same as long as they would maintain it, Any job addition updates, etc would have to be applied to both versions. This leads to even more time making sure any job updates, any new Battlefields (like Voidwatch) don't cause problems and would actually slow down the amount of updates / adjustments we would get.

Not how that works. The server is the same for whatever client your running on, thus they only need to maintain one set of code. Server is also by far the most complicated part, its a set of massive databases that process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. Clients just maintain a set of local resources and display them based on what the server tells them. All calculations happen on the server, only thing that happens locally is movement.

SE is currently maintaining three different client code bases, PS2 / XBOX and x86 code are not interchangeable. The closest are the 360 and PC's code bases as MS has tools to try to make 360 code semi-x86 compliant. The code is only game engine specific, it has nothing to do with the models / zones / textures / animations / special effects or other "data".

The only thing keeping the devs from adding more zones or adding additional features is their desire to keep the "play experience" the same across all three platforms. Thus if they want to add a feature to the PC client they also want to add the same feature to the PS2 / 360 client, and if the PS2 is making that feature difficult to add then their reluctant to add it. Heck only recently did they move to add additional fonts / icons to the PC world.

Also when they talk about "PS2 space limitations" their not talking HDD, their talking system memory. PS2 has 32MB of RDRAM (4Mb eDRAM for video unit) which the entire game client and all loaded data needs to fit inside. That is an incredibly small space to fit something the scale of a MMO.

[Juri_Licious]

You're pretty ignorant if you don't know how many people in this world actually only scrape by in life without the ability to afford anything, or have anyone in their lives to help support them when times get tough. I don't mean to derail this thread, but holy crap you need to open your damn eyes and realize that some people just can't afford to do anything. At least s/he's spending $15/month on a video game, and not $200/month on crack or some other type of drug.

The community shouldn't have to suffer due to people who can barely afford to pay their bills and keep up with time.
It's not our fault they can't. Our priorities shouldn't be limited by theirs.

[Retsujo]

How are your priorities, or the community as a whole, suffering because some people don't have the means to upgrade their systems? Square-Enix is aware of the hindrances FFXI is having on the modern world, and have openly been showing things they've been trying to do to improve upon that and keep the game afloat. Continuing to support older hardware is their own decision, and I'm sure that's based on a good chunk of the player base.

You may not give a shit about the middle and lower classes, but Square-Enix is trying to be the most fair to everyone, and I think they're doing a pretty good job of it. If it bothers you and Neph so much, maybe you two should stop playing FFXI and find a game that better suits your higher standards.

[geekgirl101]

It's not all about people not being able to afford a proper PC etc, there's a lot of players with PS2 accounts who would have to terminate their PS2 accounts in order to get a PC or Xbox version and start all over again with a brand new account or shell out for an account transfer. For a lot of people this is perhaps too much hassle and expensive if they have multiple mules. It would be nice if SE could do away with PS2 support and tailor the game for PC and Xbox players, but that can't and never will happen unless they come up with a means to provide a free download or CD for people who want to ditch the PS2 and free transfer of all their characters from PS2 to whatever model they'll be using instead. I doubt SE would be up for doing something like that, so the game will continue to suffer and players will either have to suck it up or go play something else. It's been nearly a decade now, the game has reached its limits with level 99. There's nothing more SE can add after this.

[Arcon]

It's not all about people not being able to afford a proper PC etc, there's a lot of players with PS2 accounts who would have to terminate their PS2 accounts in order to get a PC or Xbox version and start all over again with a brand new account or shell out for an account transfer. For a lot of people this is perhaps too much hassle and expensive if they have multiple mules. It would be nice if SE could do away with PS2 support and tailor the game for PC and Xbox players, but that can't and never will happen unless they come up with a means to provide a free download or CD for people who want to ditch the PS2 and free transfer of all their characters from PS2 to whatever model they'll be using instead. I doubt SE would be up for doing something like that, so the game will continue to suffer and players will either have to suck it up or go play something else. It's been nearly a decade now, the game has reached its limits with level 99. There's nothing more SE can add after this.

There are no "PS2 accounts" and "PC accounts". Every account can be played on every platform. There is nothing to transfer. This isn't an argument.

[Nephilipitou]

How are your priorities, or the community as a whole, suffering because some people don't have the means to upgrade their systems? Square-Enix is aware of the hindrances FFXI is having on the modern world, and have openly been showing things they've been trying to do to improve upon that and keep the game afloat. Continuing to support older hardware is their own decision, and I'm sure that's based on a good chunk of the player base.

You may not give a shit about the middle and lower classes, but Square-Enix is trying to be the most fair to everyone, and I think they're doing a pretty good job of it. If it bothers you and Neph so much, maybe you two should stop playing FFXI and find a game that better suits your higher standards.

If I remember right the last poll that came out about how many people play on PS2... is not a good chunk of the player base. At least not compared to the amount of people who are getting fed up with, have gotten fed up with, or have left because they want new story content. The PS2, and the 360 versions have way more issues and lock ups than the PC versions. Plus you can use controllers on the PC version.

I'm more concerned about this game dying off just because it continually grows stale. Some of the new UI enhancements are great, I like them. Being able to fully expand the chat log to look for weakness' that have been triggered, while being able to see what's going on with the combat is a massive improvement.

This whole argument though shouldn't have anything to do with poor people. I'm one of them. My whole argument is that if someone can't afford to get a 200 something dollar netbook, then they shouldn't paying 150+ a year for an MMO just so they can run it poorly on a PS2 in lowest quality because if their car gets a flat tire, or their starter goes out, they're going to need money to fix it, and they are going to be screwed if they can't save up, and it's quite obvious they can't save up any money if they can't afford to get a 200 dollar computer. My Netbook cost me 200 dollars. I've seen some on clearance lately for 180. ANY PC in stores right now shouldnt' have an issue running the game. There's no excuse. They are bad with their money, therefor they should stop playing this game and start saving up money for emergencies and I'm not backing down from that position. I don't understand how you can have an alternative position. They're going to need more than a PS2 eventually. I'm not cold, or heartless, I'm being realistic. Learn to manage money better if you can't pay 200 or less. Get a used PC for crying out loud for like 100 or something. This game is NOT expensive to run.

[Shadowshear]

Interesting concept I play the same account on my PS2 as my PC and XBox ther is no need to transfer anything just access the account number of one system by the other.

[Effilil]

after reading much of this thread, I think a few points can be made

1) the introduction of new zones/battlefields/areas would indeed take up more HDD space on the users part. there are actually several ways to solve this, the first being drop ps2 support as suggested, the 2nd that comes to mind is what SE has done in reskinning old areas, and the 3rd that I can think of is to find a new data compression method for the older hardware
to keep everyone happy, the 3rd method would be best, but it would also still take a while to create and implement. if they chose to do it

2) unless you are single, don't have any other vices, live in your parents house, have no children, don't own a car, and don't have any other bills whatsoever, you have priorities other than upgrading gaming equipment, including, but not limited to, insurance, rent or mortgage payments, health and dental needs (though I question why those are separated by the medical community), food, clothes, college funds for the kids, utilities, and other bills....$12.99 a month for a game to relax and enjoy isn't a lot...and giving it up for a year to upgrade to a cheap computer? what if the game is gone by then?

3) for each update, SE has to keep track of not 1, but 3 types of code...PS2, PC and x-box..yes the OS is similar between PC and X-box, but it is different in many fundamental ways...after all, you can't play a pc game on x-box, and I've never gotten an x-box game to work on my pc (an emulator is a program to simulate the game system and in this example, would be cheating) each system has to have it's own update package ready at the time of the update, and while SE has streamlined this process, it still requires much work

[Concerned4FFxi]

The story is one of the major draws to this series and the stories in this game have been amazing. I hope those stories aren't over.

Stories have been replaced by magian trial bs, see adventuring fellow cap 71-95 and our limit breaks 76-95, another horrible disappointment.