Kill the PS2 limitations end of the Dark Ages Era

[Rambus]

It's not just PS2. It's mostly the fact that this thing was coded ages ago. I don't know if anyone else has noticed but there's been alot of "we've asked the dev, but due to the coding..." In short, FFXI would need to be completely remade from the ground up to be able to do a massive upgrade. That would require alot more people than they have and alot more money.

I think they would of been a head if they cut the support very early on FFXIV and recode ffxi.

[CrystalWeapon]

It wouldn't really take more money to recode ffxi, it would take time and lots of it. It's not like their staff would increase or they would work more time than they do now. They would however have to devote a large portion of the dev team to reworking the engine over new content. The only real cost to it would be the players who would quit due to the game being stale. Since we'd probably see half a year to a year's worth of gameplay with a lack of major updates.

[Luso]

It's not just PS2. It's mostly the fact that this thing was coded ages ago. I don't know if anyone else has noticed but there's been alot of "we've asked the dev, but due to the coding..." In short, FFXI would need to be completely remade from the ground up to be able to do a massive upgrade. That would require alot more people than they have and alot more money.

They moved most of the people on XI's dev. team to XIV, which made me really upset that they did so. I was thinking that they instead should've hired more hands and scouted for more people experienced in next-gen technology, but it seems as though SE is reusing personnel within the company all of the time. I'm pretty sure this was true in XIII and Versus XIII, as well, though someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, when you're running an online MMO, I don't know about anyone else, but "dev system resources" should never be an issue, anywhere, anytime. People pay the company that hosts the game to play it and for newer advanced features. To pay for a game and ask the developers on a forum dedicated for SUGGESTIONS for future content and fixes and such and have the dev. team say it's not possible really makes me wonder why I continue to play XI and XIV, even. IMO, there's not much to expand on XI other than reusing old existing areas and equipment, because, as along as the dev. team is as restricted and apparently small as it is, XI won't ever evolve past what it is, currently.

In the end, I think that XIV failed where XI succeeded, and they want to save their precious numbered title in the series and not have it go to waste. They rely on XI's staff that made the game what it is and leave XI with a minimal amount of manpower.

[bungiefan]

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.

PS2 doesn't put games on as a disc image, they are actually files. It's just that the file system wasn't readable by homebrew until last year. It's the home brew hard drive loaders that copy games as images, and even then it's still the files from the discs.

Problems with the PS2 file system are that partitions must be a multiple of 128 MB in size, and don't seem to be able to be larger than 8 GB or so per partition (the hard drive loaders can install dual-layer 8.5 GB DVDs to a partition, so the limit is likely a little higher), and the system can't see more than 137 GB of drive space (the rest just goes to waste on a larger drive) without homebrew modification. They don't make hard drives that small anymore, and IDE drives are now rare and only in 320, 500, and 750 GB sizes that I can find.

Games on PS2 with official HDD support for installation installed at least partial files to the drive to reduce load times. PSBBN has a bunch of directories, and can store music and picture files for playback in the interface. It even had an option to change the interface language, though the Japanese language pack was all that was ever released for it.

One of the reasons FFXI was developed for PS2 first, it was the first true MMORPG to ever be released for a console (it beat out EQOA's release date when you look at the JP release date of May 16th 2002). The PC version was created to handle the large number of Americans that play such games on PC, Japanese gamers tend to game more on consoles than PC, and thier PC games tend to be visual novels or such. They were actually attempting to have a simultaneous NA and JP release on PS2 before releasing a PC version, but SCEA withheld the HDD required for the release, so they just went on with the JP version. We got a delayed PC version because they wanted PS2 to be the primary platform in both countries, and so they held out for an NA PS2 release until financial incentives required an NA PC release.

There were other console-only MMORPGs, one of which I can think of is Nobunaga's Ambition Online, which is still running last I checked. I wonder if they're running into PS2 limitations. SE also has to account for JP PS2 users playing both, and how much hard drive space each game must take has to leave room for offline HDD-capable games too. Japan had more than 40 GB worth of HDD support, while NA didn't hit that much. PSBBN also takes up 2-3 GB if that is what is running on the system.

[Rambus]

It wouldn't really take more money to recode ffxi, it would take time and lots of it. It's not like their staff would increase or they would work more time than they do now. They would however have to devote a large portion of the dev team to reworking the engine over new content. The only real cost to it would be the players who would quit due to the game being stale. Since we'd probably see half a year to a year's worth of gameplay with a lack of major updates.

sorry for cliche quote ( and made it self to wow at that)

time is money, friend.

[hordecore]

cant they make the game work on PS3 wont that remove the limitations?

[CrystalWeapon]

sorry for cliche quote ( and made it self to wow at that)

time is money, friend.

I said it wouldn't take more money than what they're already paying their staff on a daily basis. It wouldn't be a matter of hiring more workers or paying overtime to recode XI. It would be, as I said in my post, a matter of not pissing off current players. To recode XI would mean they would have to halt a majority of their work on developing new content for XI.

[Luso]

They stated that they cannot move the game to the PS3 because of the architecture of the PS3. Simply porting over the game from the Xbox 360 will not do either, as most games that do so require more work that developers simply do not have the time nor patience for, hence the PS3 version of certain games lacking features/quality when compared to the 360 version.

[Alhanelem]

cant they make the game work on PS3 wont that remove the limitations?

No, it won't, because it would be emulated PS2 code. There is zero chance of totally rebuilding the game to utilize the PS3's capabilities. That's what FFXIV was supposed to be for.

[rog]

No, it won't, because it would be emulated PS2 code. There is zero chance of totally rebuilding the game to utilize the PS3's capabilities. That's what FFXIV was supposed to be for.

They do not need to totally rebuild it, a quick port would work.