The biggest upgrade XI can get is to raise the 56k data cap

[radar]

Almost everything in this game is hindered by the connection cap being so low, lifting this cap is probably the single upgrade that could happen to XI.

Considering XI makes many millions of dollars a year and has a very high profit margin, is guaranteed to last a long time to come (players aren't going anywhere if they stuck around this long) and that it is run by a large company it's wild there is so little interest in fixing this.

I understand the game was "coded poorly" originally, before there were a lot of standards and so they attached many game systems to the 56k connection (cause they didn't think it mattered, since the game wasn't going to be around more than a few years) but surely Square Enix can put a coder to work on the game for 5-6 months to do this job?

The game makes around 7-8m a year and most of that is profit due to the staff numbers being so low, they can pay a coder to work exclusively on lifting the data cap. A game with 40k+ subscribers from a major company, still having a 56k data cap is embarrassing.

Even if the cap is only raised in instanced areas it could be a huge improvement.

[Alhanelem]

The devs have been asked about this many, many times, and the response has been the same- it would require a total rewrite of the networking code and just isn't in the cards.

[radar]

I covered that in the post, I know why they said they didn't want to do it. That's unacceptable, the game makes a lot of money and has a lot of players. One coder could fix it, in 4-5 months.

You can't just make an excuse to leave something so fundamentally broken, on a game that is going to last at least another 10 years in active service as a p2p game. We pay full price for the game, it makes around 6-7million + a year.

A lot of players don't understand how broken it is to have a game with a 56k data cap, no matter how good your connection is you're locked to 56k because that's the cap of the server. This means alliance content is nearly impossible today (cause they have added more data being transfred since the early days, and not moved past dialup connection), many instances are laggy, the developers have to limit many things when making content cause it may use too much data (Ody was a good example, where the entire thing stopped working at the start till they removed some server checking)

[Alhanelem]

I covered that in the post, I know why they said they didn't want to do it. That's unacceptable, the game makes a lot of money and has a lot of players.

It's not "unacceptable." The game works, it's not keeping anyone from playing or enjoying it, they have no reason to spend way, way more than they're currently spending to completely re-engineer a major game engine component.

To be clear, i'm not saying they shouldn't do it (because it would absolutely improve the game), but they have plenty of people who are able to enjoy the game in its present state, so it's only "unacceptable" to you. But also clearly not, because you haven't unsubbed.

And as far as making tons of money, it's a small fraction of what any other decently popular MMORPG makes today, so you're really overestimating this.

[Tehant]

How are we doing this? Running sortie with an alliance. I just think your country underdeveloped and lack the consideration.

[Alhanelem]

How are we doing this? Running sortie with an alliance. I just think your country underdeveloped and lack the consideration.

Uh... man, what are you smoking lol?

This isn't about bad internet. The game is hard locked to a data transmission rate that can be handled by a 56k modem. It doesn't matter how amazing your internet is, the game does not send information to your client faster than that speed.

This made sense in the era this game was made in, as broadband internet was not common at that time, but now, very few people still use dial-up internet.

[radar]

It's not "unacceptable." The game works, it's not keeping anyone from playing or enjoying it, they have no reason to spend way, way more than they're currently spending to completely re-engineer a major game engine component.

This is one of the biggest problems with the company and they really need to stop being this way, they refuse to invest in success and effectively just do the bare minimum. Then keep fishing (throwing money into new projects) for new success, that they also then lose interest in if they get it. They treat XIV in a similar way, XIV should also get far more investment than it does.

Blizzard, for all their faults as a game company do fully invest in success in a way this company does not.

If any other company was running XI and XIV they would get far more money invested back into them.

[Alhanelem]

This is one of the biggest problems with the company and they really need to stop being this way, they refuse to invest in success and effectively just do the bare minimum. Then keep fishing (throwing money into new projects) for new success, that they also then lose interest in if they get it. They treat XIV in a similar way, XIV should also get far more investment than it does.

Blizzard, for all their faults as a game company do fully invest in success in a way this company does not.

If any other company was running XI and XIV they would get far more money invested back into them.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but something like this is going to require way more investment than I get the impression you think is needed. The netcode was a major part of the initial development costs of the game. Completely re-engineering it is not a small task. And yes, it would need to be completely redone. All kinds of in-game systems are also based on an assumption of how the server transmits and recieves information. Back when it was based on a 56k modem, the game could count on recieving and sending certain size packets and knows when it's going to get certain information. When you go from an established, fixed standard to one that's much more variable, a lot of stuff has to be redesigned to both accomodate and take advantage of it. Then there's other systems like the display that shows the loading status, that would probably be removed or reworked.... TLDR, they'd need a team of people to do this, and currently, their arrangement with CBU3 is they leverage individual people at the division on an as-needed basis. If they need a whole team, they're going to need to hire them as they can't leverage this arrangement without impacting the development of CBU3's other projects (which is not just FFXIV, contrary to what a few people on this forum seem to think) And hiring means expensive.

Basically, something like this is big enough that if they're going to do it, they may as well do a full-blown remaster at that point.