Quick Launch?

[Zarchery]

Ever notice how no matter what change is requested, the same few people always chime in and say it is bad? Just sayin.

Name one person who said it was bad.

The criticisms were reiterations of things the game designer's statements that a quickened login time would be impossible from a technical standpoint. But hey, don't take their word for it. They're just the programmers behind the creation and maintenance of this game. Casual fans with no exposure to the game's source code or the SE development environment definitely know much more about what is and isn't technically possible.

[bazookatooth]

Ever notice how its simply people posting a lot and thus you always notice them whenever you want to notice something? I've chimed in to say things are good plenty of times, so please stop Just Sayin' your implication that my/other's only pruporse here is to call things bad. I'd really appriciate it.

Also, I'm not sure where anyone said reducing the time it takes to log in is 'bad.' Restating that they CANT do it, plus a statement of not understanding someone's reasoning != "THIS IS BAD!"

You notice critical comments more because, especially for the users that don't post much, if they see something they like, they'll just click the "Like!" button, rather than making a post to say they like it. I've "Liked" thousands of posts over the years. But since it doesn't show you anywhere who did it, you wouldn't know that.

I actually didn't say any names. And for what it's worth, I don't think that you are always negative. In your case, I just think that you try too hard. I actually agree with a lot of what you say and "like" a lot of your posts. Even when I've disagreed with you, I've at least respected you for attempting to back up your cause with sound logic.

You have to admit though, There are a few people on this forum that pop into almost every thread and automatically say that any change whatsoever is "bad for the game", "impossible" or "A waste of time". Sorry if you felt I was singling you out. That was not my intention.

Name one person who said it was bad.

The criticisms were reiterations of things the game designer's statements that a quickened login time would be impossible from a technical standpoint. But hey, don't take their word for it. They're just the programmers behind the creation and maintenance of this game. Casual fans with no exposure to the game's source code or the SE development environment definitely know much more about what is and isn't technically possible.

At no point did I confirm or refute any opinions in this thread. I simply made an observation.

[dasva]

Maybe there are a lot of threads with changes that would be bad, impossible or a waste of time? It's a free to join forum so there will be a lot of bad along with the good. And generally the people who don't care will rarely to never comment on it and the people that do will often chime in again with the bad and good some might even do more of one than the other. And similarly some people watching might pay attention more to one than the other

[Jerbob]

This is a great idea. My connection isn't all that reliable and having to trudge through POL when I'm disconnected doing something really important is unnecessarily panic-inducing. There really is no reason why we can't open POL, choose an account, put in the password, and zoom straight over to the character select screen. It would make my XI experience a good deal less stressful when my connection is going through an idiot phase.

[machini]

This is a great idea. My connection isn't all that reliable and having to trudge through POL when I'm disconnected doing something really important is unnecessarily panic-inducing. There really is no reason why we can't open POL, choose an account, put in the password, and zoom straight over to the character select screen. It would make my XI experience a good deal less stressful when my connection is going through an idiot phase.

I'm gonna go ahead and say there actually is a reason they can't do that, and the reason is PS2 limitations.

[Zarchery]

This is a great idea. My connection isn't all that reliable and having to trudge through POL when I'm disconnected doing something really important is unnecessarily panic-inducing. There really is no reason why we can't open POL, choose an account, put in the password, and zoom straight over to the character select screen. It would make my XI experience a good deal less stressful when my connection is going through an idiot phase.

There is a reason. Didn't we mention this?

(0:49:36～)
Q: With service ending for the PlayStation 2 / Xbox 360 versions, what will happen to PlayOnline?

A: The question is a bit unclear, but PlayOnline will continue to operate while the PC version remains. This is because PlayOnline is intertwined with the key systems of FFXI, so FFXI would not be able to run by itself. However, the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 versions of PlayOnline will end with the end of service.

[Jerbob]

There is a reason. Didn't we mention this?

There really is no reason why we can't open POL, choose an account...

I don't think anyone is suggesting that POL be abandoned. Yes, people mentioned it not being possible to remove POL, but I'm not sure why, because no-one actually asked for POL to be removed - only for the process to be streamlined. Which it can be, without removing POL.

[dasva]

But here's the thing the only steps you are skipping is the one that you hit to go to the game and then the step for choosing what specifically about the game (and maybe the one about paying attention to your real life but they probably wont take that out just for PR reasons). I mean you save what 5 seconds?

You also have to remember that when you dc the game is still logging you out at normal speed or sometimes even slower making it so you can't log into that character. So getting to the character select screen slightly faster does not necessarily equate to faster character log in. For concerns with getting back on quick after DC I'd think a bigger priority would be fixing how fast the game logs you out on dc or at least standardize it to be the normal 30 seconds it would take you because I've literally had my character "logged in" 10 minutes after disconnecting before to the point where I could log in with a different character and do a search for them that would show up

[bungiefanNA]

Yeah, disconnecting forces a 1 minute interval where you cannot log back into the same character. If you don't log out properly, which takes 30 seconds, you are forced to wait 60 seconds for the server to log the character out. This was to prevent people from disconnecting manually during fights, to allow them to force a logout in 30 seconds, when a monster would kill them after 40-50 seconds, and would interrupt their logout attempt. It used to be a 30 second wait in the first year or two of the game before they extended it to 60 seconds on disconnect.

It actually takes less time to launch PlayOnline Viewer and navigate the menus than it does for the server to disconnect you. I've disconnected because my ISP had trouble, relaunched FFXI, made it to the character select, and been told my character is still logged in and that I have to wait until it finishes logging out.

Being disconnected by your account being logged in on another system forces a disconnect and 1 minute wait as well, to give you a chance to react before someone can dump your items, which was the intent back when account hijackings were more common.

[Alhanelem]

I don't think anyone is suggesting that POL be abandoned. Yes, people mentioned it not being possible to remove POL, but I'm not sure why, because no-one actually asked for POL to be removed - only for the process to be streamlined. Which it can be, without removing POL.

It was insinuated they wanted POL to go away, because there's not a lot they can do to streamline the process otherwise. About the only thing they can really do is make the FFXI shortcut skip to the FFXI top page automatically instead of having to click it on the POL main menu. That would save like ~5-10 seconds and a mouse click. We'd love to see other slowdowns like the remember your family and ESRB rating go away (especially since the latter was added after the fact) but you know those things are never going away.

So they could improve it a little, but short of removing POL (which we've established isn't possible), we're not going to see any dramatic improvements in the time it takes to log in.