Why is the Post-MSQ Content so Passive in Endwalker?

I'm catching up on the post-MSQ Endwalker content and am struck at how it encapsulates the worst element of Square's MMO design: a lack of interactivity for the player. Outside of the token dungeons and trials, questing generally centers around traveling and watching endless written exposition dumps and reaction shots. It feels more like a disjointed YouTube video than a game.

As a simple example from my recent content, there is a part where we are told about rampaging monsters being a threat to supply convoys, and how a faction does not want us to deal with the monsters. (I'm being vague here to not spoil the "content.") Now we could find this out by hearing that supplies are being lost en route with casualties and investigating the disappearances. Then with our hunch we could start escorting convoys to see the monster issue ourselves. Finally the other faction could show up during our combat and complain in real time or even challenge us while we dispatch the threat. This is good storytelling. Instead, the concepts are dumped on us in a shot->reverse shot->reaction->repeat dialog cinematic. If my character's gameplay is simply traveling from point to point without interacting with the environment, just make them half hour long cutscenes with the travel baked in.

And let's talk about these cinematics. Some are dynamic action setpieces with cinematography. But most are a character walking into the shot and then endless shot-reverse shot dialog, with ample reaction shots thrown in. It's like the Star Wars prequels with reaction shot filler. If nothing is happening and the dialog is mundane, have it occur while the character is doing something else. Share thoughts with an NPC while you move supply crates together or track down the magical part or whatever, instead of taking the characters control away for "He said this and then she said this and then he said this and then..." Think of how much more interesting it could be watching us patrol or experiment with magitek or whatever while the NPC tells us "Bob might disagree with our approach" instead of showing a Scion standing there and querying the NPC, the NPC telling us about Bob, and then multiple characters standing for reaction shots. Before jumping to more shot-reverse shot dialog This is what movies do to keep the player engaged during the transfer of mundane information.

I laughed out loud at one point when my character was tasked with activating magical devices during a ritual and...it was a cutscene. I couldn't even control my character walking over and triggering the devices.

Moving forward, let's give the player more to do as we move through the primary questline!

Unfortunately the games been like that since... well, it's entire existence really. And people endlessly shower them with praise for it so I don't see their methods changing any time soon.

Having the characters do an activity while talking would probably take control away from us even further, since any conversation needs to proceed at the rate of the action.

More text boxes would need to be force-timed and automatically proceeding, and you would get more instances like your complained-about "character does a thing automatically in a cutscene instead of the player piloting it".

people hate to walk forth and back only to click on something... now the game does it for them. the result is even less a game as it was before.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Having the characters do an activity while talking would probably take control away from us even further, since any conversation needs to proceed at the rate of the action.

More text boxes would need to be force-timed and automatically proceeding, and you would get more instances like your complained-about "character does a thing automatically in a cutscene instead of the player piloting it".

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But right now we're not doing anything either. Adding the appearance of action is better than standing around and talking. And indeed you could have the character perform tasks in real time (say by taking a stroll with a character or completing a task, where each step executed triggers more dialog) while the dialog appears in our chat box.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

lack of interactivity for the player

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Doubt that's going to change much to be like SWTOR or something.

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Outside of the token dungeons and trials, questing generally centers around traveling and watching endless written exposition dumps and reaction shots.

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It's always been this way. Final Fantasy games have always been story/cutscene/text heavy, followed by bosses that you have to tackle with a small team. The developers have discussed this. I remember Yoshi-P and the creator of the final fantasy series discussing this as well. They seem fine with the fact it is mostly like watching a film/series and commented how it was like that from the start.

For quite some time we've had a few people try to come up with ridiculous ideas like "interactive films" and "the metaverse", but the reality is that already exists in the form of games. So maybe this could just be thought of as an "interactive film" if you want.

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It feels more like a disjointed YouTube video than a game.

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I wouldn't say disjointed (maybe you are skipping some of it).

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Now we could find this out by hearing that supplies are being lost en route with casualties and investigating the disappearances. Then with our hunch we could start escorting convoys to see the monster issue ourselves. Finally the other faction could show up during our combat and complain in real time or even challenge us while we dispatch the threat.

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It could, because there are a lot of single player games that tell a story while mostly moving around and fighting stuff still, with the voice actors still talking while you fight things. Just difficult to see how it would make a difference at this point, because they likely won't redo the old stuff and new players will still have to go through to Endwalker seeing the old style.

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the concepts are dumped on us in a shot->reverse shot->reaction->repeat dialog cinematic.

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I think they seem to do it for emphasis. Otherwise you could be not paying as much attention to important conversations. Also in games where there isn't a cutscene, the audio can vary depending on your proximity to them.

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I laughed out loud at one point when my character was tasked with activating magical devices during a ritual and...it was a cutscene. I couldn't even control my character walking over and triggering the devices.

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I don't know about things like that. But the way you would press stuff in this game is really boring, like click, menu comes up, click Confirm. They would need to make a proper animation for pressing things. Maybe adding interaction animations like that is something they could look at with the graphics update.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

But right now we're not doing anything either. Adding the appearance of action is better than standing around and talking. And indeed you could have the character perform tasks in real time (say by taking a stroll with a character or completing a task, where each step executed triggers more dialog) while the dialog appears in our chat box.

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I don't think it would be better for storytelling, necessarily.

It would be potentially distracting, especially if people are trying to read textboxes, doubly if the animatedness means the conversation gets rushed along.

Also, we effectively have a few of these "cutscenes" already in the game where we get on a mount and someone chatters alongside us giving exposition to the location we're riding through – and they're really not that exciting.

Don't forget the head tilt! The only reaction my WoL can do.

Honestly, I think a lot of it is limitations of their engine, which I feel is really bad. I think this is why we haven't gotten entirely new activities. It can only do a few things and those have been since the beginning:

* watch a cutscene
* kill an enemy
* FATEs
* click on a thing to increase a counter or trigger next stage
* the camera zoom thing
* talk to NPCs at specific points
* use a special action
* act as a character with a special move set (usually once per patch at most)

That's a really short list and some of those were the only new kind of activity in an entire expansion. It's partly why I think Island Sanctuary was so poor -- their engine didn't really let them do anything interesting.

The idea that you would get a game where you chase someone, or bombing runs, or taking over a super powerful vehicle or entity and laying waste to things seems impossible. Or even just mini games in the overworld or hunting for treasure chests that randomly spawn. Honestly, I find the overworld painfully dull, even visually most of the time. It's partly why everyone's in the cities. Why on earth would you do anything in the overworld unless forced.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

Honestly, I think a lot of it is limitations of their engine, which I feel is really bad.

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It's philosophical because look at what they did with FF16 and look at what they did in the FF16 event and look at what they did with the Nier raids.

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That's a really short list and some of those were the only new kind of activity in an entire expansion.

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They said they've slowly increased what cutscenes can do and we did get the NPCs follow you around thing in Endwalker, as well as riding mounts with them.

I don't think it's that the engine isn't capable of stuff, they just didn't code it in the gameplay code. I think that's because they designed it as a "traditional MMO" where you click things always, unlike recent ones where chopping trees is more realistic than "target and click and wave your hand around while a bar loads".

I think to change it they would have to look at games like New World and really aim to change the whole way that you do things in the game, so that for example you press Overpower and it collides with nearby objects and pushes them away or chops them into pieces.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's philosophical because look at what they did with FF16 and look at what they did in the FF16 event and look at what they did with the Nier raids.

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What are you referring to in those?

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They said they've slowly increased what cutscenes can do and we did get the NPCs follow you around thing in Endwalker, as well as riding mounts with them.

I don't think it's that the engine isn't capable of stuff, they just didn't code it in the gameplay code. I think that's because they designed it as a "traditional MMO" where you click things always, unlike recent ones where chopping trees is more realistic than "target and click and wave your hand around while a bar loads".

I think to change it they would have to look at games like New World and really aim to change the whole way that you do things in the game, so that for example you press Overpower and it collides with nearby objects and pushes them away or chops them into pieces.

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I'm not sure what distinction you're making between engine and gameplay code here.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I don't think it's that the engine isn't capable of stuff, they just didn't code it in the gameplay code. I think that's because they designed it as a "traditional MMO" where you click things always, unlike recent ones where chopping trees is more realistic than "target and click and wave your hand around while a bar loads".

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The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests. So you might have to fight your way to an objective in the open world to proceed, giving the player something to do. Whereas FFXIV tends to have a sparse world and prefers to instance combat or spawn a token mob during quests. Some of the fun of other MMOs is fighting your way into a temple to grab the object or scouting a jungle and beating back beasts to find the lost princess or whatever.

Whereas FFXIV loves its "standing around and endlessly talking" cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

What are you referring to in those?

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Better animations instead of just clicking and getting a loading bar, such as pulling down a lever to make a lift work, climbing a ladder properly, pushing a door open with your hands. Characters talking with you while you fight and walk. In the FF16 event, they made use of the dodging system from FF16. In the nier raids, we hang onto something and slide down. Even in the FF15 event, we used the thing that pulls you to different objects.

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I'm not sure what distinction you're making between engine and gameplay code here.

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Engine being what it is capable of. Gameplay being what they decided to do with the engine.

FF16, as far as we know is based on the FF14 engine. So what does that tell you? They could be doing anything you see in FF16, in the FF14 engine, but they decide not to.

They have also shown, in unique fights and crossovers, that they can do all sorts of things, and have really cool animations like E4S giant titan, different styles of fight like Rathalos, yet continually revert back to the old style of game after it which involves clicking and loading.

So the point is that if they wanted to make this better, they absolutely could go to FF16 and copy and paste some things. And maybe even to a degree, they might do so with the graphics update. But it's all self-imposed limitations, where they worry about how people's PCs will handle it due to other players, rather than engine limitations, otherwise we wouldn't have FF16.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests.

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Even the single-player Final Fantasy games that I'm familiar with feature unavoidable, random encounters when you're walking about the over world. So, FFXIV seems somewhat odd in that regard.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests. So you might have to fight your way to an objective in the open world to proceed, giving the player something to do. Whereas FFXIV tends to have a sparse world and prefers to instance combat or spawn a token mob during quests. Some of the fun of other MMOs is fighting your way into a temple to grab the object or scouting a jungle and beating back beasts to find the lost princess or whatever.

Whereas FFXIV loves its "standing around and endlessly talking" cutscenes.

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I do miss zone story telling. It's not entirely absent from FFXIV, but it's close enough to being that way that I really don't find the zones compelling.

As a result I never really get attached to a zone or end up having a love/hate relationship with one. Even the fantastical zones like the Tempest still managed to be boring for 90% of your time there.

Most zones seem to have one or two interesting features and then a lot of patchy grass. A lot of them are also color desaturated moreso than actual reality. Seems crazy that my own outdoors is more interesting for me to look at than some of these zones.

I think the other thing that I really miss from zones is verticality. Most of the zones are pretty flat. They certainly don't have multiple levels, cave systems, etc. When I first got to Faerieville I was really excited at the idea of doing the whole zone in fog. I thought that would have been really cool. I've had a few letdowns between hopes and reality when it comes to zone design.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Better animations instead of just clicking and getting a loading bar, such as pulling down a lever to make a lift work, climbing a ladder properly, pushing a door open with your hands. Characters talking with you while you fight and walk. In the FF16 event, they made use of the dodging system from FF16. In the nier raids, we hang onto something and slide down. Even in the FF15 event, we used the thing that pulls you to different objects.

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Those all seemed to be variations on things we can already do. We already have jumps and hidden buffs (dodge = teleport move + hidden invuln buff on a short timer)

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Engine being what it is capable of. Gameplay being what they decided to do with the engine.

FF16, as far as we know is based on the FF14 engine. So what does that tell you? They could be doing anything you see in FF16, in the FF14 engine, but they decide not to.

They have also shown, in unique fights and crossovers, that they can do all sorts of things, and have really cool animations like E4S giant titan, different styles of fight like Rathalos, yet continually revert back to the old style of game after it which involves clicking and loading.

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Based on and forked years ago doesn't mean that it's the same. Also, could be doing anything that they were doing in FFXVI ignores a lot of differences between how FFXIV and FFXVI work. Certainly, they don't need to load 50 customizable outfits dynamically based on anything. And with respect to the engine, we're probably also only talking about pieces of it -- certainly not inventory management or any of the networking stuff. Rathalos was interesting, and he did introduce a couple of new ideas, but ones that don't seem too outside what is already possible in their combat system -- ignoring enmity and blocking healing.
m

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

So the point is that if they wanted to make this better, they absolutely could go to FF16 and copy and paste some things. And maybe even to a degree, they might do so with the graphics update. But it's all self-imposed limitations, where they worry about how people's PCs will handle it due to other players, rather than engine limitations, otherwise we wouldn't have FF16.

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Visual fidelity requires GPU, but I've seen some neat ideas on older games with much lower processing requirements. I'm not looking for amazing graphics. Graphics aren't gameplay. Mostly, I think the problem is they have is around AI, including pathing (where are my wandering monsters), and secondary systems like inventory management and asset management.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

Those all seemed to be variations on things we can already do. We already have jumps and hidden buffs (dodge = teleport move + hidden invuln buff on a short timer)

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You could even break down FF16 to be using a lot of things that FF14 can do. The FF16 event even shows the contrast well. They just overtelegraph everything in FF14 and give you a lot of time to react compared to a single player game. It's clearly a deliberate decision, rather than an engine thing.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

Based on and forked years ago doesn't mean that it's the same.

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Similar enough that if they did make changes, they could go to their team members in the FF16 office next door and ask to copy some of their code over or make a work based upon it... it also feels like they did do this for the burger eating stuff.

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Also, could be doing anything that they were doing in FFXVI ignores a lot of differences between how FFXIV and FFXVI work. Certainly, they don't need to load 50 customizable outfits dynamically based on anything.

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That's their reasoning for a lot of the reduced quality.

But I think some of it is just that they were trying to copy the "target, click, loading bar" concept MMORPGs at the time had, and now find themselves with competition that is far more realistic than that.

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And with respect to the engine, we're probably also only talking about pieces of it -- certainly not inventory management or any of the networking stuff.

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Well networking isn't relevant and the inventory in FF14 involves networking as a core part of it, so they would have to be different.

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Rathalos was interesting, and he did introduce a couple of new ideas, but ones that don't seem too outside what is already possible in their combat system -- ignoring enmity and blocking healing.

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That's sort of my point. A fight like Rathalos has always been possible in the current engine (and even gets done in Stone Vigil HM), they just decide to do it differently most of the time. These are decisions, rather than engine limitations tbh.

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Mostly, I think the problem is they have is around AI, including pathing (where are my wandering monsters)

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They actually use the standard "walk in a random direction every few seconds" system that many games have used. I always hated it and felt, as someone who can code this sort of stuff, that it could be done in a more ambitious and realistic way. And even if automating it runs into issues there can be pre-determined pathing like there is for NPCs in the city states.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You could even break down FF16 to be using a lot of things that FF14 can do.

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I guess I'm wondering why they would want the two systems to be the same. MMO engine design and Action-oriented RPG design are very different. I can understand that they share a lot of commonalities, and it seems that based on interviews they started with XIV for at least the preproduction stuff.

I certainly wouldn't want to use the gameplay processing from my MMO for my action RPG or vice versa. Rendering pipeline, sure. Asset sharing, sure -- your comment about the eat animation. But there are so many things where those systems wouldn't well align as I alluded to. How you would implement glam systems in XIV and XVI would vary greatly. In XVI you could cache the specific choices the character had made and load them quickly. In XIV you can cache your own, but you can't cache everyone else's. You don't know who's going to pop onto your screen until they do. And when they do, they can also quick change. Which means you need to have all the assets for all their potential equipment swaps as well. It's just a different set of needs. FFXIV assets are probably a lot more memory intensive than a lot of MMOs, especially for when it came out. XVI doesn't need to be able to randomly fetch assets because another networked player popped into view.

Responsiveness is another big change. The gameplay loop in XIV has to account for a lot of network latency and has netcode. XVI doesn't. XVI processes locally on a fast CPU and GPU meaning you can tune the engine for low-latency responses. Why would they do that for XIV? Why tune it for low latency when the floor for XIV in terms of latency is orders of magnitude higher than for a locally processed PS4?

I'm not saying XIV is bad, though it is older and still needs to support bad hardware. But the devs have repeated said that they can't do certain things because of technical debt / spaghetti code from 1.0. I choose to believe them, and I do not judge them for it. I just have an understanding that there are likely some things that are difficult to pull off with their current codebase and execution engine -- half which lives on our machine and half on their servers.

They've likely done their best trying to build on top of sometimes shaky foundations all the while living under extremely tight deadlines. I do not envy them.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

the devs have repeated said that they can't do certain things because of technical debt / spaghetti code from 1.0.

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Untrue. See my signature for proof where Yoshi-P himself debunks this.

However, while there isn't technical debt from 1.0, there is likely technical debt from 2.0, since like a stack of cards the entire game (4-5 expansions) are now built upon the foundation that is ARR.

Still, this doesn't seem to faze them. Reworking the physics, adding a world visit system and DC travel, overhauling the loading code so it's faster, overhauling ARR MSQ, overhauling old dungeons, adding flight and diving to ARR, overhauling the graphics and most recently announcing they will overhaul the character creator. These things would have likely been a can of worms to change, but they did it anyway.

I think people just mistake issues that stem from using physical servers instead of cloud servers as "spaghetti code". They also mistake "console considerations" and "average PC considerations" for "spaghetti code". They also mistake things like the distinction between hunts and FATEs as spaghetti code, but I don't think that's really the case, they are just separate. Separate things are valid in a code context, even if the difference is hard to see for a lot of players.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Untrue. See my signature for proof where Yoshi-P himself debunks this.

...snip for length...

I think people just mistake issues that stem from using physical servers instead of cloud servers as "spaghetti code". They also mistake "console considerations" and "average PC considerations" for "spaghetti code". They also mistake things like the distinction between hunts and FATEs as spaghetti code, but I don't think that's really the case, they are just separate. Separate things are valid in a code context, even if the difference is hard to see for a lot of players.

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With no disrespect to Yoshi P., he's not a code developer and isn't omniscient when it come to the state of his own codebase. No one could be with something that big. I'm sure there's some technical debt in the engine they ported over. Also, technical debt is a constant in any codebase. You will have some amount of it no matter how diligent you are. And with tight deadlines, people are going to take shortcuts in order to get cool thing out the door before the release window. Technical debt can also be not just code, but ideas engrained in the design of the data.

Other people may confuse "average PC considerations" for "spaghetti code". I'm not one of them. I'm also aware that cloud servers aren't a magic bullet that would save the game. A lot of cloud services aren't designed for that kind of compute, more B2B and some B2C scenarios. It's more likely that the design that they've built on top of that worked when they started and was designed under the constraints of the time is extremely difficult to unravel. In my development world, that difficulty is technical debt. Tech debt is the thing you need to pay off before you can do the cool new thing you really want to do.

I would bet money that retainer and character inventories are modeled identically, probably in the same database storage which is why they are the way they are in game. We can't have a unified inventory because they don't want to load all the various character records into memory at the same time. Being able to buy additional ones just makes it that much more difficult to change. Crafting from inventory probably naturally fails due to the same limitation.

I would also bet money that the limitations around accessing and transferring inventories on so many screens is because their system doesn't have the server-side guardrails to prevent accidental or intentional data corruption (e.g., duping). So, instead the UI locks a lot of screens to prevent you from consuming an item and transferring an item at the same time. Note how the Use button is disabled in item transfer scenarios (e.g., chocobo bags or retainer inventories open). There's a lot you can figure out about the design of a mature system by observing its behaviors and limitations.

Is it any different from any other post expansion msq, or even vanilla msq segments?

They have shown they can do bigger production value on cutscenes for example as witnessed in the 5.3 end cutscenes (scions in Mor Dhona and Fandy in the Throne Room, probably a lot of mocap involved). It's not gonna address the lack of interactive gameplay, but at least it makes the "movie" side of msquesting a lot more immersive and gripping imo. Too bad they only did it once or twice, it's kinda night and day when compared against most of the rest.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Is it any different from any other post expansion msq, or even vanilla msq segments?

They have shown they can do bigger production value on cutscenes for example as witnessed in the 5.3 end cutscenes (scions in Mor Dhona and Fandy in the Throne Room, probably a lot of mocap involved). It's not gonna address the lack of interactive gameplay, but at least it makes the "movie" side of msquesting a lot more immersive and gripping imo. Too bad they only did it once or twice, it's kinda night and day when compared against most of the rest.

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the Big Production Values I've found tend to happen near the end of patch cycles too. Think about as well the ebb and flow between back and forth unvoiced cutscenes and Big Moments in expansions as well. It wouldn't surprise me if they end up having to meticulously plan which scenes get The Money and which scenes get the stock stuff. That said, there were otherwise normal scenes that had some bespoke things in them (estinien's face right before all the alchemists dogpile him, anything post ShB that had food physics in it, Estinien getting ready to jump off your balcony) that imply that someone out there found little workarounds for that, even if they turned out to be expensive.

This might be something the graphics update is intended to help with. If cutscenes are difficult to make because their internal tooling is a pain, that's how you get the constant back and forth talk cutscenes (they probably have a template even), with only bigger moments getting the better stuff because they have to devote nearly all their time to it. If they're redoing how animations and rendering works, it wouldn't surprise me if they're also having to completely change their kit to go with it, given that older systems have a tendency to just scream any time you make even the slightest change.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

With no disrespect to Yoshi P., he's not a code developer

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He has stated that he understands code. He believes anyone getting into the game industry should have at least had a go at coding something, even if it's something really basic, so that they have a better understanding of how code works. It would be strange to say that if he himself did not have that understanding. Without a little experience of using it, they can have all sorts of wild and vague ideas about how coding actually works.

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I'm sure there's some technical debt in the engine they ported over.

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There was. The full interview that I have linked clarifies that there was a problem with the collision (fixed now), a problem with chocobos not being regarded as pets and being a party member (fixed now) and I think there was one other thing. But they addressed all of it they said.

They also explained it pretty well. "We rebuilt it from the engine". That means getting a brand new engine and adapting it for an MMORPG. Brand new classes and objects. They most likely ported things over, but for the most part it wouldn't make sense to do it in a sloppy way when the goal should be to make it tidy and object-oriented.

Now there might have been a few odd situations where they had to do it in a sloppy way due to time constraints and these are the situations they told us about but say were addressed.

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Also, technical debt is a constant in any codebase. You will have some amount of it no matter how diligent you are.

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I agree and that's why I tend to think it's more realistic to call it "2.0 spaghetti code" than 1.0 spaghetti code, because the game has evolved beyond a lot of the original 2.0 principles the game is built upon and that has got to make it challenging to adjust.

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And with tight deadlines, people are going to take shortcuts in order to get cool thing out the door before the release window.

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I've definitely seen that happen by game developers, but ultimately, if it's such a big issue that it is preventing work on new features or changing existing ones, you would think the programmers would have told their boss. If they haven't told their boss, then what excuse are they making instead for not be able to do things?

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Technical debt can also be not just code, but ideas engrained in the design of the data.

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I think it's more that, honestly. They have all sorts of ideas and misconceptions. Take the lodestone for example - a website that looks like it's from the early 2000s with blogs and other concepts like it and features that should be in the game.

One of the biggest ones is the "you can't do x, y or z" because "you have to carry the data with you" and "you can't retrieve x item" because "you aren't on y physical server". It immediately makes you think it's a style of thinking or an entrenched idea of how to setup their server structure, because many games don't have those sort of problems and there are all sorts of ambitious ideas I can come up with to solve those problems regardless of how entangled their code is.

Another example is how they said with confidence it's not possible to show on the tooltip that you obtained an item already. I was engulfed with doubt over that and they proved it by doing it shortly after. So mindset seems to be playing a part in it.

Of course, these ideas have shaped how it's all structured and that can be difficult to change, but it doesn't make it impossible to change with data transfers, migrations or bridges.

They could even just let players do the migration by saying "here's a brand new inventory system that is much better, old players can still access their retainers to remove items but they can't add them back in".

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Originally Posted by Ancalagon_Blacktalon

It wouldn't surprise me if they end up having to meticulously plan which scenes get The Money and which scenes get the stock stuff.

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They do. When designing an ultimate they have limited development resources at their disposal, but they want it to be cinematic so you can enjoy it on twitch (since they expect more people will watch it than actually clear it), so they invest some of their resources into making it look good to a viewer.

In general, they have said they slowly improved the cutscene system to do more than just discuss things like it did in ARR and that they will continue with interesting ideas (like the one where Tesleen becomes a sin eater which they explained in detail at a development panel).

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There was. But they addressed all of it they said.

.snip.

They also explained it pretty well. "We rebuilt it from the engine". That means getting a brand new engine and adapting it for an MMORPG.

.snip.

I agree and that's why I tend to think it's more realistic to call it "2.0 spaghetti code" than 1.0 spaghetti code.

.snip.

I think it's more that, honestly. They have all sorts of ideas and misconceptions.

.snip.

Of course, these ideas have shaped how it's all structured and that can be difficult to change, but it doesn't make it impossible to change with data transfers, migrations or bridges.

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In my experience brand new engine doesn't mean starting from scratch. It's mostly a marketing thing and it means you've made sufficient changes to how the engine works you feel comfortable slapping a 2.0 or a new name on it. Engines are tens of millions of lines of code sometimes and starting from scratch would be irresponsible.

If it is code written in 1.0, 2.0, or later I don't think it matters to their overall situation. Tech debt is tech debt.

The issue is that there's all these systems built on top of those base data structures. "Bank" inventory mapped to character records and retainer interactions done as trades behind the scenes (I don't know this for sure but I very, very strongly suspect it).
This design, which is now tech debt prevents them from doing unified inventory, craft from inventory, and dedicated crafting storage. I don't know if that system came from 1.0 or 2.0 as I wasn't around, and I don't feel like doing that particular research right now (bad on me). Nor does it matter to me if it's from 1.0 or 2.0. It's the system they have.

They also built the market on top of the retainer system, and they created a financial reliance on them as well. That could be solved by creating a unified storage system that expands as you buy retainers.

The problem with adding the extra storage while keeping the retainers in read-only mode is that they still just doubled their storage costs. Even if the problem would eventually be partially self-correcting -- unsubbed players still expect to be able to come back to their stuff -- there's no end date where they would be able to fully transition as long as it was in players hands.

The alternative to waiting on the players is to do the migration themselves, but they've shown poor bulk update performance. It takes a lot of time to migrate trillions of rows in your various databases, so you'd be looking at multi-day downtimes probably presuming everything went well and a cluster-f@$% if it didn't.

It's not to say I don't think they couldn't do it eventually. I just think the thought probably rightfully terrifies them.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

He has stated that he understands code. He believes anyone getting into the game industry should have at least had a go at coding something, even if it's something really basic, so that they have a better understanding of how code works. It would be strange to say that if he himself did not have that understanding. Without a little experience of using it, they can have all sorts of wild and vague ideas about how coding actually works.

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My point was less that he could code and more that he wasn't a developer actively working on the FFXIV codebase. Even if he was, there's no one developer who has a good grasp on what must be millions or tens-of-millions of lines of code and dozens upon dozens of systems. It's impossible for a human being to keep that much detail in their head, even extraordinary ones.

It's also possible you and I have different definitions of tech debt, but I've literally never seen a large system that didn't have it in non-trivial quantities. Smaller open-source projects can sometimes effectively excise all their tech debt, but they're on their own timetable and have the luxury to fix it.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

In my experience brand new engine doesn't mean starting from scratch. It's mostly a marketing thing and it means you've made sufficient changes to how the engine works you feel comfortable slapping a 2.0 or a new name on it.

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The engine they used for 2.0 wasn't new, but it was not the 1.0 engine. They heavily adapted it from a single player engine to work for an MMORPG.

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If it is code written in 1.0, 2.0, or later I don't think it matters to their overall situation. Tech debt is tech debt.

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I'd agree more in the context that it's 2.0 and later tech debt since they denied there was any significantly still around from prior to that (or tech debt from adapting a single player engine).

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I don't know if that system came from 1.0 or 2.0 as I wasn't around, and I don't feel like doing that particular research right now

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From what I recall, they went to the Calamity Salvager to re-obtain items from 1.0. They also had to re-hire any retainers they had in 1.0. They have proven themselves able to do this again (for example when they removed belts or when your house gets demo).

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The problem with adding the extra storage while keeping the retainers in read-only mode is that they still just doubled their storage costs.

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With a big enough operation, they could probably just move it all over if they can do it in 48 hours. Or they could only unlock the "extra storage" upon login so that it doesn't increase storage considerations for inactive characters. I think in Stormblood an inventory increase they did was gated behind story progression.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

there's no one developer who has a good grasp on what must be millions or tens-of-millions of lines of code

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Just because a company has millions of customers doesn't mean that their code is very complicated. In a big way, this is why object-oriented programming is pushed hard by people. It's infinitely more difficult to grasp when it's not done that way.

It's also why scripts are used. Scripts were a major problem in 1.0 because they relied on them to such a point that both the server and players were taking ages to do basic operations. But they definitely still use lots of scripts, tables and shaders.

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It's impossible for a human being to keep that much detail in their head, even extraordinary ones.

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One game I worked with wasn't object oriented. It took me months to grasp the different functions illogically put in different files and map them in my head. But eventually, I did. If they've been working on this game for years, they should have it mapped out and know their way around it by now.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

With a big enough operation, they could probably just move it all over if they can do it in 48 hours. Or they could only unlock the "extra storage" upon login so that it doesn't increase storage considerations for inactive characters.

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Good idea. They could also run conversations behind the scenes.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Just because a company has millions of customers doesn't mean that their code is very complicated. In a big way, this is why object-oriented programming is pushed hard by people. It's infinitely more difficult to grasp when it's not done that way.

It's also why scripts are used. Scripts were a major problem in 1.0 because they relied on them to such a point that both the server and players were taking ages to do basic operations. But they definitely still use lots of scripts, tables and shaders.
One game I worked with wasn't object oriented. It took me months to grasp the different functions illogically put in different files and map them in my head. But eventually, I did. If they've been working on this game for years, they should have it mapped out and know their way around it by now.

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Ironically my person preference is for heavy functional programming over OO, but experiences vary.

My back is the envelope math was what put the number of lines of code at the millions or tens of millions.

265 employees in CB3, maybe 30% developers, devops, and QA automation, producing about 50 lines of code a day working for 10 years at 5 days a week for 45 weeks a year.... * calculator sounds*

About 9 million lines of code.

There's really no relationship between lines of code and users using it, but I think I'm in the ballpark with my estimate.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

265 employees in CB3, maybe 30% developers, devops, and QA automation, producing about 50 lines of code a day working for 10 years at 5 days a week for 45 weeks a year.... * calculator sounds*

About 9 million lines of code.

There's really no relationship between lines of code and users using it, but I think I'm in the ballpark with my estimate.

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They list about 40 programmers on their "main staff" in the EW credits (not including the website and companion app, designers, QA, engineers or other roles). This is split up between the server, client, UI and automation. Which would be about 15% of 265

From the 6.55 credits, they list about 54 (I decided to include the 10 engineers and a supervisor this time). The slight extra is due to the graphics they're working on. This would be about 20% of 265.

But it would be a bit higher to include the website and companion app. They also just outsource a lot (or like to include the entire staff of companies whose software they used).

In any case, code gets deleted and changed as well, and I'd expect a lot of it to be scripts for cutscenes or other decentralized functions, or the infrastructure for such.

Maybe they're one of those companies who don't put everybody on their credits who knows (it's actually very a well spread disease in the industry, way more than you'd assume, i've literally lived through it). But 265 sounds about right at a glance.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Just because a company has millions of customers doesn't mean that their code is very complicated. In a big way, this is why object-oriented programming is pushed hard by people. It's infinitely more difficult to grasp when it's not done that way.

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oh I would bet it is currently very complicated due to two aspects of their particular tech debt burden:

- Them having to rush all the changes to get ARR out and working at all, which is an environment that tends to lead to less-elegant solutions for complex systems. On top of this, technology was a bit different a decade ago than it was today, so they could've also been having to write stuff around technical limitations that aren't in effect any more, which makes it harder to read/parse/change.

- Time. The issue with all the time passes is that now you not only have spaghetti code originally written at the time, but now they have 10 years of fixes and changes layered on top of it which makes it even harder to change things without breaking other things. On top of this, it is pretty likely that they lack the knowledge base of the game's original coders due to time passing (and as you stated, it is also impossible for a single person to have that all in their head too). If their documentation is bad, it means that anyone that needs to make changes or fixes has to guess and pray.

I had stated in another topic at some point that this kind of thing hits home for me because professionally I am currently mired in this kind of hell! :thumbsup: except in my case it's 30-year-old code running on a programming language no one teaches anymore LMAO

All this discussion on technical debt is odd, as developers aren't using the tools that we've seen in action. Instanced combat, phasing NPCs in the open world, dynamic cutscenes, and other techniques are clearly in the game, and the game has a gigantic budget to work with.

I finally finished the post-EW MSQ slog and it was really tough. How many times did I return to that spot on Radz to click on a NPC and be ushered into a cutscene? Why couldn't I enter the area in the open world to see my allies standing there and discuss the quest with them instead? Why was so much time put into shot-reverse shit discussion on friendship and trust instead of sending me into the world to collect regeants or fight off incursions or whatever?

Just looking at other MMOs, there are many ways to engage players even with an old engine, if your devs are willing to shift time to active play instead of endless dialog.

If these post-release MSaq chains are so hit and miss, why not make them optional? Guild Wars 2 for example had optional episodic content, where the player could choose to engage with a continuation of last expansion or jump directly into the current expansion. Sure you might be a bit behind on plot, but FFXIV doesn't see much development there either. The Zero storyline was almost completely self-contained, as we met someone knew, watched them move through their obvious-at-first-sight character arc, and then banished them from the cast. No one in the remaining cast was developed or changed. Much of the conflict is immediately resolved right after it is introduced. It just feels like checking the box on something that is technically a plot.

The “talk to x person to get teleported into the location you need to be for this quest/cutscene” is getting really old at this point, eden and werlyt also overused it to a hilarious degree and it just makes the overworld feel completely useless

I really hope they move away from this and starting putting the cutscenes in locations that are actually in the overworld that we can access prior to the cutscene and discuss with people

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

All this discussion on technical debt is odd, as developers aren't using the tools that we've seen in action. Instanced combat, phasing NPCs in the open world, dynamic cutscenes, and other techniques are clearly in the game, and the game has a gigantic budget to work with.

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Technical Debt doesn't just affect what's possible, it affects what's easy or hard, too. It's possible that they can put together some things, but that they're extremely time-consuming to do and so they don't do them as often.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

people hate to walk forth and back only to click on something... now the game does it for them. the result is even less a game as it was before.

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Unfortunate that control keeps being taken away from us in favor of the fornite type crowd who always cry loudest about having to teleport or walk/run anywhere. I believe this is part of the reason xvi ended up being a game of thrones movie with corridors and little to no exploration.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I really hope they move away from this and starting putting the cutscenes in locations that are actually in the overworld that we can access prior to the cutscene and discuss with people

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Hell, I want this just as a person who loves using gpose. I hate it when I talk to an NPC and get teleported away to Cutscene Land and them dumped back out in the previous zone with no way to access and explore the area my WoL was JUST in. I'm the kind of person that loves to run around new areas and talk to every NPC collect little lore crumbs about the people and the area.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests. So you might have to fight your way to an objective in the open world to proceed, giving the player something to do. Whereas FFXIV tends to have a sparse world and prefers to instance combat or spawn a token mob during quests. Some of the fun of other MMOs is fighting your way into a temple to grab the object or scouting a jungle and beating back beasts to find the lost princess or whatever.

Whereas FFXIV loves its "standing around and endlessly talking" cutscenes.

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Be the change you want to see in the world and just do some random fates while progressing the patch msq. Like, I am broadly with you in the sense that I think if you just burn MSQ, the game's pacing flies out the window and it sucks. But much to my chagrin, the majority of players treat this game like a visual novel and want to engage with the systems to the absolute minimum they possibly can.

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

Be the change you want to see in the world and just do some random fates while progressing the patch msq. Like, I am broadly with you in the sense that I think if you just burn MSQ, the game's pacing flies out the window and it sucks. But much to my chagrin, the majority of players treat this game like a visual novel and want to engage with the systems to the absolute minimum they possibly can.

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I think other games handle this by having more reasons to be our and about without telling you exactly where stuff is. Gathering can happen while in a combat job, Rare monsters, chests, events can happen. There are more hiding places for things. Mob density is higher allowing you to fight a bunch of stuff at once.

FFXIV areas are also very open with few large structures for you to explore. Where are the caves? The insides of caves and pyramids? Large buildings and structures? Dense canopies where you can't see the sky?

I think the large areas with low density of creatures and structures makes the world feel less interesting. Between that and nothing to surprise why go to the over world?

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Originally Posted by Sjol

FFXIV areas are also very open with few large structures for you to explore. Where are the caves? The insides of caves and pyramids? Large buildings and structures? Dense canopies where you can't see the sky?

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hah I have an idea as to why this isn't here. I've been in the Outer La Noscea mines a lot as of late and the camera in those tunnels is absolute agony......buuuut the caves in The Tempest are manageable so they did seem to learn something. That said, yeah, areas with a density similar to say the hub areas in detail (think of how detailed and vertical the Crystarium is) would be pretty great. It does seem that the more interesting locales are saved for dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

Be the change you want to see in the world and just do some random fates while progressing the patch msq. Like, I am broadly with you in the sense that I think if you just burn MSQ, the game's pacing flies out the window and it sucks. But much to my chagrin, the majority of players treat this game like a visual novel and want to engage with the systems to the absolute minimum they possibly can.

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FFXIV doesn't give us an engaging world compared to something like GW2 or Classic WoW. No meaningful secrets to find; no challenging world mobs; low mob density; very straightjacketed FATEs. I do play FATEs during the MSQ just to add combat between endless cutscenes, but that doesn't give us an interactive experience.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

FFXIV doesn't give us an engaging world compared to something like GW2 or Classic WoW. No meaningful secrets to find; no challenging world mobs; low mob density; very straightjacketed FATEs. I do play FATEs during the MSQ just to add combat between endless cutscenes, but that doesn't give us an interactive experience.

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Eureka and Bozja is how all open world locations should be desined. this way all they have to do for relics is use the open world and some lore/relic story. Or at least start out with bland story-based open world and then update them with Bozja-like encounters in future patches. It's less work for them than having to create brand new zones like with Eureka