[Gratitude] PS2 Limitations

[Dihlyte]

I just want to say I am grateful for the PS2 limitations restricting FFXI.

I am so glad Square-Enix is not able to make massive and constant changes to FFXI.

FFXI is a clean proper RPG with a lot of currencies and key items, that make the game unique and interesting, and the UI is clean and neat.

The more I see them changing their more modern games in games that are horribly over produced, and deleted all the things that make a Role-playing game, a role playing game.





For example, FFXIV is a huge mess.

Square-Enix wastes so much time constantly adjusting "potencies" and "reworking" jobs, doing things like 'stat squishes" and all kinds of "features" to the UI, minions, and all sorts of "aspects" that make that game such an absolute horrible mess.

FFXI has a clean UI with only the absolutely needed info on the screen, the jobs are designed properly, and work right in the way they perform in fights.

I love how there are so many key items to collect, instead of useless "minions" to fill the screen with a sloppy mess of complete randomness.

FFXI zone's and lockstyle make sense within its world. We don't have an excessive amount of "outfits" from Western Cowboy, to robots, Gundam, Clowns. The gear and equipment make sense within the world, and create a consistent and logical believable world.

We have battle fields and create a "Final Fantasy" atmosphere, instead of WWE, Gundam, Fortnite, WoW mashup-mess of nonsense.


So I just want to say I am glad Square-Enix is literally restricted from creating too much new content to ruin this game like they have FFXIV, FFVII-Remake.

So thank you Square-Enix from being unable to ruin this game, and Sony for creating a system that limits SE from making bad choices.

I also absolutely love that FFXI has a "damage cap" because its far more fun to try to reach that damage cap, than having my numbers constantly changing and looking horrible on the screen with its "flying text" because I absolutely love "Pop-up" damage numbers. I also love how FFXI is sensible in their numbers as well, and remain a constant within its systems.

So just thank you for not being able to ruin this game, and make it worse and worse the longer its online.

[Dragoy]

Can not disagree on any of the points mentioned, really, but it would be nice to not have /some/ of those restrictions fer sure.

Things like network speed, draw distance (pretty sure they could change that if they felt like it), and PC/NPC display limitations (like in Besieged, probably also something they could change) just to mention a few that come to mind right now.

Just making the things we already have a bit better-like, you know... not too much changing of things. :]

[Alhanelem]

I know people are going to scream "CONTRARIAN!" at me for this, but I could not disagree more with the OP. However, I fully endorse the wishes of the poster above. Dial-up internet basically doesn't even exist anymore in the US or Japan, and yet we're stuck with a network system that was designed with dial-up in mind as a baseline.

Now, don't get me wrong, How things actually played out is as much a part of FFXI's identity as anything, and it's fine that it resulted in them being conservative with making changes to the game. But I think far too often, "PS2 limitations" was more of an excuse than anything else, when they could have made much better justification for their plans than that. I consider it a good thing that it led to them considering updates very, very carefully. But this also meant that things that really needed to happen ended up taking much, much longer than they should have.

But the whole "ps2 limitations" thing essentially ended up meaning they couldn't do anything that would help attract more players to the game and instead leave us with the game dying a very very slow death. There are many ways they could have improved the game that wouldn't have changed its flavor or essence, which they could have done if they had acted sooner in the game's life instead of waiting for the PS2 to roll over in its grave before discontinuing it.

There are also some things which have little to do with PS2 limitations that they haven't acted on either. For instance, Monstrosity. They had grand plans for it, with plans for every monster family to be represented, special content just for the mode, etc. etc. But when the lead designer of the content left Square Enix, instead of assigning someone to finish it, they just left it to rot instead. So now we have this menu listing all the monster families and only a small handful of them are selectable. The rest will probably remain grayed out for the rest of FFXI's existence. (Yes, I had a ton of fun with Monstrosity so yes, I'm salty about this).

Then there's the test server, and the new UI that was never completed after the guy who worked on that ALSO left SE. There's no reason they couldn't simply have turned off the test server and turn it on when they're working on new content. It really could have avoided the early issues with sortie if the playerbase was involved in its testing.

And don't get me started on Ballista. While there's a small group out there that still gets some fun out of playing with it, their decision to completely ignore and abandon it has left it more broken than it needed to be, since there are no modifiers, adjustments, or even new level cap options for lv76~99 or item levels, job points, or the extra subjob levels granted by master levels. I myself used to use the Player Event Support system to run Ballista events every once in a while. But even the people I know who enjoyed it the most aren't interested largely because SE hasn't done even the most basic things about this.

None of this content deserved to be abandoned, whether it was because of PS2 limitations or something else. And as far as making other changes, there are still a lot of outstanding balance issues that could be improved, especially with jobs like BST and SMN and a few other underutilized jobs. But I have doubts anything will happen on that front.

FFXI has a clean UI with only the absolutely needed info on the screen, the jobs are designed properly, and work right in the way they perform in fights.

I'm sorry but, I simply can't ignore this specific comment. The only sense in which FFXI"s UI could be considered "clean" is that it doesn't take up much space on the screen if you're using a high resolution monitor and have amazing enough vision to be able to read it without upscaling it. The UI on the whole is my least favorite part of the game. I love it inspite of the UI, not because of it. I was really looking forward to the New UI (as an option mind you, I realize that different people feel differently about the UI), and was very disappointed when it stalled out. I myself have not the greatest vision, and many elements of the UI are just too small. It would not be that big of a problem if we could simply move UI elements around on the screen, so I could, for example, move the target window closer to the middle of the screen so I can see it easily without turning my head towards the corner of my screen. This seems like just a basic feature in MMOs today, being able to re-arrange or adjust UI elements, and FFXI's UI is 100% rigid and more or less can't be changed unless you're willing to break the TOS just to make things easier to read.

There are numerous job balance issues that remain (although most were trending in the right direction up to the point we seemed to stop getting balance updates). And sure, I guess the jobs "work right," but that doesn't mean that everything is perfect and there are no issues.


I still have a passion for this game and enjoy the time I spend in the world of Vana'diel greatly. But it frustrates me that "ps2 limitations" has kept us from nice improvements the game legitimately needed. Inventory space anyone? Was it really a good thing it took us close to 20 years to get more space for gear?

[Jordache]

Yes! Also Monstrosity

[Jordache]

Can not disagree on any of the points mentioned, really, but it would be nice to not have /some/ of those restrictions fer sure.

Things like network speed, draw distance (pretty sure they could change that if they felt like it), and PC/NPC display limitations (like in Besieged, probably also something they could change) just to mention a few that come to mind right now.

Just making the things we already have a bit better-like, you know... not too much changing of things. :]

See that's the problem: you start by making things better but it always inevitably turns to an amorphous cancerous blob.

[Jordache]

FUNNY you should mention it: The deal with monstrosity is that is was originally envisioned that SE employee would be playing as the monster in some type of popped arena to alleviate teh pressure of the 24 spawn NMs, this was extremely early in the life cycle, but monstrosity didn't arrive until infinitely later.

Monstrosity is still hilarious and a blast but it either needs to be worked into pankration and or have WAY better player sided rewards to liven it up a bit - but it really is its own reward, like sinister reign meta.

[Alhanelem]

See that's the problem: you start by making things better but it always inevitably turns to an amorphous cancerous blob.

Not as long as you take a measured approach and carefully analyze the implications of what you're doing, to avoid "feature creep." Mostly the game only needs QOL improvements to existing things, more than more features.

[Alhanelem]

FUNNY you should mention it: The deal with monstrosity is that is was originally envisioned that SE employee would be playing as the monster in some type of popped arena to alleviate teh pressure of the 24 spawn NMs, this was extremely early in the life cycle, but monstrosity didn't arrive until infinitely later.

Monstrosity is still hilarious and a blast but it either needs to be worked into pankration and or have WAY better player sided rewards to liven it up a bit - but it really is its own reward, like sinister reign meta.

Give something for people to grind, and they will grind it. People who simply enjoyed grinding out job levels etc had a field day with Monstrosity. It's only a pity that the "pvp" side of it got no love. There exist item rewards but nothing anyone found remotely interesting. I tried to find a group of people to challenge me as a kaiser behemoth and simply could not persuade anyone to take on that challenge.

[Stompa]

I completely agree with the OP, in the sense that I would hate to see FFXI get the 2024 AAA shiny-but-hollow makeover.

However, PS2 Limitations means PS2 DevKit Limitations, and PS2 DevKits are basically obsolete, and the number of engineers capable of working with PS2 DevKits shrinks every month that goes by.

It was possible, in say 2007 two-thousand-seven, for SE to say ; "Hey, this is a successful game, and it is a Long-Term game, it takes like seven 7 years to build a single Mythic, even if you work on it every night after getting back from your day-job. Obviously any game that requires seven 7 years to build a single weapon, is a game that requires Long-Term planning for the game's future. And we realise that PS2 are not the future, so we need to migrate from PS2 DevKits now in 2007 two-thousand-seven, while it is still relatively easy to do."

Here's what they could have done, which would protect the things the OP spoke about, and also expanded the game, and protected it for future generations.

> Around 2007 two-thousand-seven, start migrating from PS2 DevKits to a more sustainable system.
> Keep the level at 75 seventy-five.
> Add new areas, jobs, gear, NMs, events etc.
> Create an Offline Solo Version of FFXI, so that if FFXI is no longer supported by SE, fans can play the Offline Version.
> Promote FFXI on the SE Youtube channel. Use Gameplay videos of actual players battling actual mobs, instead of just using Mission Cutscene clips.
> Promote FFXI to new players on Social Media.
> Sell the Offline Version as a new stand-alone Release, with fancy box and big Ad Campaign.

We didn't get any of that, we got a Pub-Mirror instead.

[Alhanelem]

not sure what its likelyhood of happening is, but I recall seeing something about a proposed law in the EU that would make it illegal to terminate a live service game, companies would either have to transfer ownership to someone willing to manage it or release the server so they can be operated by members of the public, or modify it to no longer be live service dependent.