Random Gripe About the Firmament

I know this is random, but why is the Firmament the only place (as far as I know) that didn't get the aetherite map upgrade? The aetherites there still have the older aetherite interface (that doesn't bring up a map when trying to move to another aetherite within the Firmament).

I know it isn't crawling with new content, but if you do fetes, custom deliveries, or anything involving the diadem, then the Firmament is still very much useful.

Can this be fixed please?

Excellent point, and I agree that it's annoying not having the map to choose where to teleport to. I also appreciate that you seem to have used an old-fashioned typewriter to hammer out this post. I hope it was not too taxing on your ink ribbon! :p

Who knows why Firmament is still like that, it doesn't make much sense. Like so many other silly things, I wonder if it's something ridiculous like "spaghetti code" or "in order to allow FATE system to check you were on a DoH job, we had to either take away aetheryte map or chocobo saddlebag, or else the game would crash."

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

I also appreciate that you seem to have used an old-fashioned typewriter to hammer out this post.

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At least it's not comic sans.

Constant FATE churning is probably a reason. From a development standpoint to me this basically feels low priority, along the lines of, 'we could do it, but it likely requires more changes that we rather spend more time elsewhere on'.

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

Who knows why Firmament is still like that, it doesn't make much sense. Like so many other silly things, I wonder if it's something ridiculous like "spaghetti code" or "in order to allow FATE system to check you were on a DoH job, we had to either take away aetheryte map or chocobo saddlebag, or else the game would crash."

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You know, for once, I actually got nothing.

With something like 98% of all their "this would be technically infeasible" answers, I can draw on past experience as a game dev and easily envision what happened on the back-end infrastructure to make it a nightmare scenario to try to implement a thing now, and usually am happy to try to break it down for others as to what might've gone wrong. But this? This one's the 2% where I'm genuinely like... yeah, I have no clue what on earth would restrict them from doing that.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've been asking myself the same question. Did they like forget to update the Firmament's aetheryte system or something?

They probably just forgot.

Do Bozja or the Doman Enclave use the new system? I haven't had a reason to check.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

They probably just forgot.

Do Bozja or the Doman Enclave use the new system? I haven't had a reason to check.

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Yes they do actually. It's really just Firmament that failed to get the update memo

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Yes they do actually. It's really just Firmament that failed to get the update memo

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Maps will not be displayed when accessing the Aethernet in the following areas:

The Forbidden Land, Eureka Anemos
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Pagos
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Pyros
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Hydatos
The Bozjan Southern Front
Zadnor
The Firmament

Doman Enclave always used the new system. I just checked Bozja and it uses the old system.

Those maps don't actually use the normal aethernet system to begin with, so they never got the update. It has got nothing to do with spaghetti code and fates.

That makes sense. All of those are special instances. I think Firmament even boots you if you log out from there.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

Those maps don't actually use the normal aethernet system to begin with, so they never got the update. It has got nothing to do with spaghetti code and fates.

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Huh. If they treat the Firmament under the hood as a dynamically allocated field zone (as opposed to a static instance, a'la housing wards), it would actually explain that.

I wouldn't have thought they did, because I remember when the Firmament launched we had problems where people could not get into the Firmament -- if I recall right, it's why they blocked folks from participating in the Firmament FATEs on servers other than their own, because people were server-hopping and flooding whatever server would have a FATE up next. Whereas Eureka/Bozja zones, if one is too full (or if an instance has gone 'stale' -- e.g., all the various NMs/Skirmishes/CEs have been expended and everything's on cooldown) it stops funneling people into that one and creates a new one.

But that change note does certainly imply that the Firmament acts that way under the hood. I wonder if that was a later change -- if they retrofitted it quickly into a dynamic field zone to make it potentially spawn new Firmament instances -- to address those overloading/crowding issues. If so, that'd definitely explain why it uses the older aethernet system still.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

Maps will not be displayed when accessing the Aethernet in the following areas:

The Forbidden Land, Eureka Anemos
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Pagos
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Pyros
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Hydatos
The Bozjan Southern Front
Zadnor
The Firmament

Doman Enclave always used the new system. I just checked Bozja and it uses the old system.

Those maps don't actually use the normal aethernet system to begin with, so they never got the update. It has got nothing to do with spaghetti code and fates.

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ah I see my mistake.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

Huh. If they treat the Firmament under the hood as a dynamically allocated field zone (as opposed to a static instance, a'la housing wards), it would actually explain that.

I wouldn't have thought they did, because I remember when the Firmament launched we had problems where people could not get into the Firmament -- if I recall right, it's why they blocked folks from participating in the Firmament FATEs on servers other than their own, because people were server-hopping and flooding whatever server would have a FATE up next. Whereas Eureka/Bozja zones, if one is too full (or if an instance has gone 'stale' -- e.g., all the various NMs/Skirmishes/CEs have been expended and everything's on cooldown) it stops funneling people into that one and creates a new one.

But that change note does certainly imply that the Firmament acts that way under the hood. I wonder if that was a later change -- if they retrofitted it quickly into a dynamic field zone to make it potentially spawn new Firmament instances -- to address those overloading/crowding issues. If so, that'd definitely explain why it uses the older aethernet system still.

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It might have more to do with the fact that firmament has the whole restoration stuff and dynamic map system, so SE gave it a custom aethernet system to ensure there are no compatibility issues.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

It might have more to do with the fact that firmament has the whole restoration stuff and dynamic map system, so SE gave it a custom aethernet system to ensure there are no compatibility issues.

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I don't think it would be a compatibility issue... but looking back, I can't remember if the older sanctuary/hub aethernet listed all the aethernet points and just had those you hadn't attuned grayed out; wracking my brain, I seem to recall it actually did. In which case, I can see them using the dynamic field zone stuff (and more to the point, its aethernet system) just to avoid spoilers, because Eureka and Bozja just don't list the aetherytes you haven't attuned yet. So by using that system for the Firmament, you wouldn't see aethernet points for places that hadn't been rebuilt yet, as you would not be able to get to that spot to attune to the aethernet point... thus it wouldn't be in the list. And so you wouldn't get 'spoilers' as to what was going to be rebuilt in future stages.

And that -- reusing an existing system to avoid having to special-case the normal hub aethernet system so that it would hide unattuned aethernet points -- absolutely has the ring of "yep, that is 100% a decision I can see a production team making."