We always hear about spaghetti code but how much of it is true? I'm a game programmer and my impression of FFXIV based on how it feels to play, is that they have been mostly unable to truly add new mechanics to the game or to polish the gameplay and UX. Most of the content that gets made reuses the exact same systems that have existed since ARR. There are improvements to those systems, but very few actual new systems that enable meaningfully new or different gameplay.
Let me give some examples:
- UI/UX: The UI is incredibly clunky. It seems that most actions lock you in certain modes that are rigid and not compatible with each other, so you can only browse one UI at a time and can't easily access a lot of things. This applies to things like glamour dressers being a usability mess due to vague "server constraints"
- Retainers: Same applies to the retainer system, which is needlessly obtuse and an obstacle to selling your items. It feels like 1.0 legacy.
- Inventory: Speaking of items, let's talk about how bad inventory management is. Everything gives all sorts of tokens that have to take inventory space and for some reason can't be stored as currencies. I had an entire retainer of just raid tokens of all sorts. That combined with the convoluted armory chest system means everyone has to inevitably spend an hour doing inventory management every now and then
- Market: Pricing and selling items on the market requires so many steps to see prices, probably because of server constraints that often get mentioned
- World Content: The world content hasn't innovated since FATEs. Everything is just FATEs. Even field exploration zones are just a map with fates.
- New systems are just old systems in disguise: Cosmic exploration is fun conceptually, but in truth it's also nothing meaningfully new. It's just fates where you sit and craft in a loop. Deep dungeons have better bosses now but they're just the same series of corridors behind the scenes. Field explorations already mentioned. Island sanctuary mostly failed due to it relying on interacting with clunky UIs. I can't think of anything else that's "new"
- Endgame progression unchanged: The routine of tomestones, raid tokens etc has been unchanged for probably a decade now. I assume this is more a design issue than a technical issue, as the team is maybe scared of bothering players with change. The thing is, the current system, as was designed back then, is incredibly convoluted for new players. The way players have to obtain various tokens to go to various merchants to get gear is incredibly obtuse and really not communicated well to players. It makes the system feel very old and boring.
- Tutorialisation and discovery of content: There has been 0 innovation in this category. The vast majority of features of this game are obtuse to get into and not explained well to players. Everything is gated behind "+" quests that give no indication of what they unlock. Someone who doesn't have friends explaining them things can very easily miss entire chunks of the game without realising they exist.
- Information QOL: Finding what any item does is a chore. Item tooltips are not very useful. A ton of information is locked behind hard to navigate UIs, and some of the information is just not there. This extends to so many details that it's hard to point at a specific thing but just the entire experience of interacting this game feels like a lot of it was made in pre-wow times, despite this game being much more recent than wow. Even navigating the map is a weirdly clunky mess.
How much is the game held back by technical constraints?
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12-04-2025, 11:22 PMBublineHow much is the game held back by technical constraints?
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12-04-2025, 11:29 PMBubline
- Combat feel and responsiveness: The combat feels floaty and unresponsive to anyone who has played other MMOs. This is partly a design problem but combat just doesn't feel great. Encounters are only interesting based on the dance you have to do with bosses, but your actual character moment to moment gameplay is incredibly basic. The GCD is slow, a lot of spells have long animation lock and feel like their impact happens ages after you press the button. Most jobs are incredibly boring at lower levels, and they're pretty repetitive. Compare this to how impactful attacks feel in wow, and how instant and physical the feedback is when pressing a button, or how varied the toolkits and abilities are.
- Actions delay: How is there so much delay in combat actions? Like how you can't weave multiple OGCD buttons because they seem to take 500ms to execute but in a way that's not clearly communicated to the player. It seems to also be due to animation lock and prioritising spectacle over gameplay... and yet, wow managed to have every button press feel like it gives impact instantly while also having perfectly fine animations. FFXIV just feels like you're barely controlling your character and you're sending server commands that get executed 2 seconds later sometimes.
- PVP Responsiveness: This is why very few people play PVP by the way. It's impossible to play this game reactively because nothing feels responsive, and PVP inherently needs reactivity. The way the combat works on a technical level is only compatible with slow, repetitive, mostly memorised rotations.
- Lack of truly new systems: There has been no piece of content using any new system in any recent time, really. It's just so stagnant. Look at how much other MMOs can innovate with their gameplay over time, and compare it to FFXIV. The game is more polished now, but fundamentally we're having the same experiences that realm reborn had.
- Lack of innovation in quest mechanics: The MSQ, and other quests in general, also have had no innovations mechanically. I understand that FFXIV MSQ is mostly a visual novel, but our characters are fighters and explorers, it would be nice to have more variety of quests and content to do in the world. Again look at any other MMO for this. Meanwhile FFXIV quests can do "go talk to X", "go walk into purple zone where an enemy will spawn", "kill a few marked mobs", and a few other things but there have been very few meaningful additions to make questing feel fun
- Duties for everything: Everything has to be implemented as a duty, and as a result there's almost no content that you can do while queuing in the duty finder. Once you've done the MSQ, there's almost nothing to do in the game that isn't behind the duty menu, or something that's contained in a duty. Duties also strangely lock you out of a bunch of social features for no clear reason, other than what I assume to be more legacy from very outdated server code infrastructure
- The competition: Compared to this I look at games like wow, and how much it's very obvious that they have continuously been investing in making big changes and refactors to their code and infrastructure to keep their game feeling responsive, modern, with good QOL, good UI, fresh ways of interacting with the world, new types of quests/activities to keep you engaged, varieties of content for different players, etc. Meanwhile FFXIV doesn't really feel like it's meaningfully changed since ARR.
The story is what carries this game. As a mostly single player story it's great. As an MMO it feels like interacting with an incredibly dated clunky stagnant MMO
To me, this feels like what would happen if your dev team only had a skeleton crew of programmers and everyone else just making content within the existing tools, or a codebase so incredibly old and bad (I'm guessing 1.0 leftovers and maybe even code inherited from FFXI) that programmers simply can't even start getting their teeth into modernising the game. -
12-04-2025, 11:53 PMLarirawiel
The technical constraints are propably very noticeable. The game still uses DirectX 11. DirectX 11 was discontinued in January 2013. It means, the game runs on a 12 years old technology. And this is the reason why i do not wonder, that they have difficulties to hire more developers for the game. Because almost nobody learns such an ancient technology.
Cheers -
12-05-2025, 12:18 AMBubline
Well, DirectX isn't the biggest problem as that's only the graphics API, and on that front they did a pretty good job with the graphics update recently. I'm more worried about the legacy codebase inherited from 1.0 and maybe even from FFXI. The amount of things that feel clunky or old and have been basically untouched for years just feels like they must mostly be held back by technical issues. Because surely design-wise, they're aware of what needs to be improved (I dare hope).
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12-05-2025, 12:52 AMJeeqbit
It is constrained far more by specification limits (Playstation, Xbox and Recommend PC spec limits). By this I mean they announced the specifications the game is for, and cannot exceed them, even if some PCs or the game engine itself could do so.
To give an example of this, FF16 was clearly adapted using the FF14 engine. So I suppose make your judgement on what it's capable of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRAcPMTNqsc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdoKnM29qrA
It's also constrained by infrastructure decisions. For example, they decided not to use cloud servers, which means they have to link up lots of completely separated physical machines and can't add hardware on the fly in a virtual way. They often struggle with the fact that data is on another machine elsewhere - which is why when you visit another world or data center, you can't access certain things such as mail, and is why you can't access the chocobo saddlebag on the duty servers.
All of these things overcomplicate things that aren't a problem for companies that don't limit themselves by such specifications, consoles or infrastructure decisions.
This is purely because they only work on the next patch (7.4, 7.5 and 8.0). This means any old things get ignored unless specifically approved by Yoshi-P, such as side dungeon revamps and the graphics update. Obviously, a UI revamp has not been approved so they are not allowed to work on it.Quote:
they have been mostly unable to truly add new mechanics to the game or to polish the gameplay and UX.
Why do they only focus development on the "next patch" and ignore old things? The answer is because that's where the money is. People return to the game (hence subscribe) when a new patch releases. Those bursts of returners help retain players and give them subscription revenue. They don't believe they will return due to a revamp of old systems such as the user interface; it's not a particularly enticing offer compared to a new chapter in the MSQ or a new savage raid tier.
To a certain extent, it's easier to create a brand new system than build on an old one that is difficult to adapt in the way players want. But not merging the different similar, but clunky systems, is likely as I said, because Yoshi-P won't approve them working on old things and quality of life very often, since the money is in new things.Quote:
The UI is incredibly clunky. It seems that most actions lock you in certain modes that are rigid and not compatible with each other, so you can only browse one UI at a time and can't easily access a lot of things. This applies to things like glamour dressers being a usability mess due to vague "server constraints"
The issue with this, of course, is it has gradually made players believe the developers have run out of passion for the game. I know that this is not true, that they remain very passionate, but we are at a point where most players don't believe the passion is there are at all because a key way to show that passion is to improve old systems.
Something about network capacity, but it doesn't add up because they keep adding new tribe currencies, new achievements, all of which add to the data you are "carrying with you". They told us they aren't attached to things like old currencies and suggest just deleting them. They don't understand the concept of keeping them as trophies of our accomplishments.Quote:
Everything gives all sorts of tokens that have to take inventory space and for some reason can't be stored as currencies.
They see the innovation as in the mechanics of those fights or the roleplay and animated sequences before and after those FATEs. As irrelevant as that may be to us as players, you see a long list of credits for FATE development at the end of each expansion MSQ and it makes me feel bad that they put so much work into them just for players to see them as something that puts them to sleep.Quote:
The world content hasn't innovated since FATEs. Everything is just FATEs. Even field exploration zones are just a map with fates.
What we learned from Cosmic Exploration is they have an internal problem where they just do things based on precedent. By this I mean they are so comfortable in their formula and so pressured by time that they just repeat what they did the previous time because it worked, with no consideration about whether it is too repetitive or whether it even works well.
I believe they don't want the open world to be that threatening in case of new and returning players doing MSQ only and seem to want most things to be in instances where the amount of players can be guaranteed.
We have tried to tell them this for years. They just tell us it is our ping. It is crazy that if I don't interrupt the add in Necron ex half way through the cast then sometimes it kills me. Yes, I said halfway. It's a pretty slow cast, and there is a long time for the information to reach the server, so it is just the extremely slow server processing that causes it to fail. I would normally interrupt late in the cast to delay the subsequent attacks as much as possible, but it's too risky due to the game's code.Quote:
The combat feels floaty and unresponsive to anyone who has played other MMOs.
I understand why this is. They want the animation to happen and to be seen. They want the impact of the effect to happen in line with the animation. For example, it makes no sense to animate a leap to a target but to leap to them instantly before the actual leap animation occurs. This is why they revamp Dragoon and Dark Knight leaps to have different animations, so that the faster leap made sense.Quote:
a lot of spells have long animation lock and feel like their impact happens ages after you press the button
They have defended this in an interview before as well, saying how they value the animations. However, they have made changes to the animation delays on certain abilities with long delays over the years, particularly on Dark Knight. They also made changes to invulns to make them act faster. Then they made changes in PvP to adjust when the effect vs animation happens on a case by case basis, but didn't seem to extend this to PvE beyond the invulns.
You can see how this is a thing. On a Bard, Sidewinder's effect is instant, whereas Bloodletter or Refulgent Arrow take ages to produce their respective damage snapshots in order to line up with the slow bow-arrow animations. I use this knowledge for some purposes where I need something to hit a target faster. They could absolutely adjust this, and it's a choice to delay it as much as they do.
I do believe animations should not be tied to effect in most cases, especially for damage. Function is more important than aesthetics. They can change this, they just won't take our feedback usually, despite their recent, bold claims to the contrary.
I elaborated on this earlier, but it's because they just do things based on precedent without discussing if it's a good idea, due to time pressures. However, I believe a big part of it is that they lack mechanical creativity. They have aesthetic creativity and story creativity and fight creativity, but when it comes any other form of mechanical creativity, there is none. I gave an example recently about how a field operation could introduce boat riding, boat cannon fights, underwater combat, racing, things like that and it could even be achieved with minimal changes to systems they already have in the game, but they never think that deeply about things. They leave the creativity purely to the environment and music teams.Quote:
There has been no piece of content using any new system in any recent time, really. It's just so stagnant. Look at how much other MMOs can innovate with their gameplay over time, and compare it to FFXIV. The game is more polished now, but fundamentally we're having the same experiences that realm reborn had.
Disagree with this on the basis they added "follow NPCs", "follow NPCs without them seeing you", "NPCs follow you", "ride mounts with an ally cutscenes", the Thancred stealth mission, In From the Cold in Garlemald, and the recent find clues mini-game. These are some recent efforts they have been making to quests mechanically, but I do think they could make it less of a visual novel by having cutscenes happen while you control your character - which happens in many single player games including FF16 where there is some dialogue as you fight.Quote:
The MSQ, and other quests in general, also have had no innovations mechanically.
They were asked that directly and denied there is any spaghetti code from 1.0 whatsoever because they "rebuilt it from the engine". However, that doesn't mean there isn't spaghetti code from 2.0, since the game is built upon the back of 2.0 and changing the 2.0 pillars of the game could make the stack of cards fall. My understanding is that there are people who coded for 2.0 that no longer work on the game as well, which leads to never touching that person's code.Quote:
a codebase so incredibly old and bad (I'm guessing 1.0 leftovers and maybe even code inherited from FFXI) that programmers simply can't even start getting their teeth into modernising the game.
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12-05-2025, 01:46 AMFeyFavillaWould like to add to this. So this is a personal gripe but I know for a fact that there is a massive community online for completionist collections. There is just something that tickles the brain just right to see a list all filled out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubline
FFXIV truly is handles like a SP game with hidden, super hard to get achievements. Let me (sorry for bringing it up so much but it just is the best point of reference) compare to WoW:
- Mounts, pets and glam pieces have each their own library IN THE GAME with exact location of drop/vendor.
- complete library that shows you not only the items you own but also all other available ones.
- literal inbuilt glam planning menu. even if you do not own pieces you can play dress-up and plan farming gear around that. you even get to save the preset for later. This was originally a fan driven project as an add-on that blizz incorporated into the game due to its insane popularity.
This is on top of the way they handle glamour. You can only glam at the specific NPCs for it like at the dresser here in FFXIV, but the planning and access to your library of stuff is always accessible via a menu. Not only that, you no longer even need to keep the items. Once obtained and bound to your character it is available to all characters you have on your entire account. No trying to manage dresser space. Found it once, have it forever. Across all armor types, similar to how we will have in 7.4.
I do admittedly really like the glam plate system but WoW has kind of copied that as well now, so that really leaves to question what exactly is holding SE back from taking the positives from their competition.
Other than that yeah, there are probably a ton of technical issues, but I would wager they have also been lying about a lot in the past to shut people up. Who is going to stop them? If they go back on their word and give us something we have been asking regardless of it being 'impossible' people will not look a gift horse in the mouth and just cheer. -
12-05-2025, 02:02 AMRyoXander
I've played many modern MMOs that both run and look beautifully on the PS5 Pro. I remember they said they created this game with the PS3 in mind so it is likely that that's a huge part of the reason, at least back then. However there is no way in hell that any current gen console would have an issue running a beefier, updated FFXIV; including even the Switch 2.
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12-05-2025, 02:22 AMLarirawielIt is a problem when you use such an ancient API. FSR3 and FSR4 and XeSS are already ruled out because AMD and Intel do not support DirectX 11. And FSR1 is ugly as hell. DirectX 12 and Vulkan are also way more efficent. So you could have better graphics without raising the minimum requirements. And the second thing is, it is very likely, that the rest of the FF14 infrastructure is also as old as DirectX 11. It can be very difficult to mix old APIs with newer APIs. The development tools and the middleware have to support it etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubline
Cheers -
12-05-2025, 02:33 AMBublineI haven't had time to read the rest yet so I'll edit my post with more replies later maybe, but just at a glance from this, I really don't think it's relevant to the majority of my points.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeeqbit
I think the majority of the issues I've brought up have more to do with the architecture of the client and how it communicates with the server, and more widely how gameplay is implemented in their engine, from a logic point of view.
If we're talking graphics, or having bigger maps or an open world, then yes platforms can be an issue. But none of what I've been talking about is limited by platforms. Remember, wow ran with much better QOL and snappy gameplay a long time ago on old computers with much worse specs than current FFXIV specs.
The vast majority of what I've talked about could be implemented regardless of client-side hardware
In the short term yes. In the longer term this is killing the game. I'm sure Yoshi P is aware of it. In fact a lot of his recent interviews sound like he's particularly worried about it. I don't think he's stupid, I think he's pushed for improvements for a while. This leaves me with the only explanation being that it's unreasonably difficult to do, which would mean they haven't done a good job of maintaining a good codebase that could stay modern, or, that Squenix has been refusing to give them the budget.Quote:
Why do they only focus development on the "next patch" and ignore old things? The answer is because that's where the money is. People return to the game (hence subscribe) when a new patch releases. Those bursts of returners help retain players and give them subscription revenue.
And that's kind of what my thread is about really. I want to know, like, why is the game in this state? There are lots of glaring quality issues (for like of a better word) that are just not addressed at all.
It's going to be really hard for this game to acquire new players with how dated it is, and existing players will eventually run out.
Yeah I agree. I mean, I know enough about game development to know that the people working on it care. It's a priority and ressourcing problem. But there may also be a technical leadership problem where on a technical level, the bad decisions and lack of planning for the future compound into a game that somehow despite being live for more than a decade, feels like it's had barely any development from a features/mechanics/quality point of view.Quote:
The issue with this, of course, is it has gradually made players believe the developers have run out of passion for the game. I know that this is not true, that they remain very passionate, but we are at a point where most players don't believe the passion is there are at all because a key way to show that passion is to improve old systems.
The content team makes great content with what they're given (mostly), but they're not given much to work with.
Actually glad you said that because I sometimes feel like I'm being gaslighted by this game and its combat system. A lot of people on XIV haven't played other MMOs for comparison and so they don't realise the huge gap in combat feel between FFXIV and other MMOs.Quote:
We have tried to tell them this for years. They just tell us it is our ping. It is crazy that if I don't interrupt the add in Necron ex half way through the cast then sometimes it kills me.
Even LOTRO which is an older and almost abandoned MMO maintained by a small team with no budget has recently migrated their servers to new 64 bit servers and improved lag to the point that they have super snappy spell activation times.
Yep. It's pretty bad. The gameplay in this game feels so floaty to me because of it. I never know exactly when my attacks will hit. For example when tanking, I'm never quite sure when to trigger my AOEs to grab all the mobs, as I don't know exactly when it will get resolved (if you get what I mean).Quote:
I do believe animations should not be tied to effect in most cases, especially for damage. Function is more important than aesthetics. They can change this, they just won't take our feedback usually, despite their recent, bold claims to the contrary.
I don't think I know any other MMO that has such a delay for actions to take effect. It feels completely wrong. Other games manage to have nice animations without adding delays. And really, the delay is often just immersion breaking. I'm sure there's a middle ground here, and it's definitely gotten better (helped by the fact that we have less server delay than we used to), but right now I don't think it's right.
Yeah... The cosmic exploration mech-ops being just a vacuuming minigame was kind of embarassing. They have the tech to at least do some rudimentary "vehicle gameplay" like wow does (if a bit clunky). Maybe not great, but they can do something. What they end up doing is always just so little.Quote:
However, I believe a big part of it is that they lack mechanical creativity. They have aesthetic creativity and story creativity and fight creativity, but when it comes any other form of mechanical creativity, there is none.
Sure, it liimts the graphics, but I'm fine with the graphics as they are.Quote:
Originally Posted by Larirawiel
Middleware wise, I see your point and that can definitely affect some things, but an MMO is going to have a lot of custom tooling (which they control), and a lot of what I'm talking about I would suspect is more related to how their engine implemented server-client communication, character actions, things like that.
And sure to some extent you're always locked into past technical choices but also, the company can make a choice to invest into modernising that. Wow used to run on even older tech, and the cloud was not even an idea yet. They have kept their infrastructure modern, enabling new things as they did it over time.
I get that FFXIV isn't as big as wow, but we players do spend a lot of money on this game. I have heard rumors that a lot of FFXIV revenue gets funnelled into other Squenix projects and thus doesn't get reinvested into the game. If that is true, it makes me sad, because having a bunch of extra programmer time and a team dedicated to improving game feel, improving QOL, etc, could have a massive impact on this game. -
12-05-2025, 02:49 AMRedLolly
From my understanding, FFXIV is one of the few remaining projects running on Crystal Tools, the inhouse game engine SE built in the late 2010s. FFXIII runs on it and 1.0 ran on it, and it was heavily slanted for graphical fidelity than literally anything else. It's really good at working with high polygon models and particle effects! And that's about it. FFXIV uses a heavily modified version of the engine that was built during the 2.0 development period.
SE was determined to invest into it's own engine in that era, but was such a failure that SE gave up on it. Apparently this is a factor in why the XIII trilogy is so comparatively buggy on it's PC ports than any other FF port. Crystal Tools!
I always assumed this was also a massive factor in why getting talented devs on FFXIV is so damn difficult. They have to learn to work on a very weird, bespoke game engine and can't take that experience elsewhere, even within SE. -
12-05-2025, 02:58 AMCatwho
Sometimes it's easier to build your new stuff from scratch and figure out how to migrate all the old data to the new system than it is to gradually update the system piecemeal.
The technical debt - the engine, the net code, the table structure, etc. is enormous, and its rapidly becoming an insurmountable problem. I suspect this is what Yoshi P is referring to with a new ARR.
Blow the whole thing up, start over from scratch, and figure out how to port the old data after you rebuild it properly a third time. -
12-05-2025, 03:03 AMBublineIt definitely won't help, although any long running MMO will have weird archaic and often bespoke tools. Back then MMOs were bespoke codebases and it's only a relatively recent thing that could consider using Unreal for an MMO or whatever.Quote:
I always assumed this was also a massive factor in why getting talented devs on FFXIV is so damn difficult. They have to learn to work on a very weird, bespoke game engine and can't take that experience elsewhere, even within SE.
All that to say: Yes, those are issues, but those are very common issues to have in the industry, and other companies have managed to keep improving their own tools, engines and pipelines as their games grew.
I really hope some of what Yoshi P has been hinting at for 8.0 involves having actually invested in seriously working in that area to help their team make more interesting stuff and get rid of whatever issues are hindering them -
12-05-2025, 03:06 AMBublineDefinitely possible (and it doesn't have to be a binary thing, there's a whole range of middle grounds between "remake the whole thing" and "keep the old thing"). but remaking things from scratch is a huge investment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catwho
I've recently been involved in discussions and investigations on a live service with similar questions of whether we're better off migrating or rebuilding from scratch, with views of 10+ years in the future of live service... and even then, you are often better off slowly chipping away at it than rebuilding (not only for technical reasons but often because it's hard to convince people to do such monumental work, and it's hard to keep aateam motivated if they have to restart from scratch. It's also really hard to reimplement every single tiny detail etc) -
12-05-2025, 03:12 AMRedLolly
I think that's why the mobile remake exists.
It's ARR fully remade from the ground up in UE4. And the great majority of the complaints we have with the main version (especially UI and netcode) and the suggested changes from the recent interviews are accounted for and/or already implemented in the mobile version. I really, genuinely, think they're going to start pushing it more once its localizations completed and let retail fade off as Mobile catches up. The KR and CN retail versions are going to have patch parity with us very soon, too. -
12-05-2025, 03:58 AMBubline
Maybe, but I would expect the mobile version will inevitably turn into a microtransaction infested, dumbed down version of the game that will barely be recognisable.
It's cool that mobile players will get to experience FFXIV, but I hope we'll get to keep our PC/Console traditional MMO isolated from all the predatory things happening in the mobile space -
12-05-2025, 04:05 AMRedLollyhttps://youtu.be/JZK_2E8uMms?si=tcnzm7ne-0Ae-nWDQuote:
Originally Posted by Bubline
https://youtu.be/nqaTzfhl1Hg?si=Jszzcho70_iiTUko
A lot of the glam prices have parity with what we pay in our Mogstation but they have so many exclusives already. It's all the mobile quirks. -
12-05-2025, 04:09 AMBublineCosmetics are one thing, but sooner or later, with a mobile game, and if it does pick up, you'll start to see the more sinister parts of F2P games show up. Roadblocks added to your progression to make you pay for some currency or some item that relieves it.Quote:
Originally Posted by RedLolly
On a traditional MMO they can't do that because the playerbase wouldn't accept it, but on a mobile game it would be completely normal. Pay to uncap your tomestones, pay for the daily roulette battle pass... Who knows, they could even invent a new feature just to add gacha mechanics to the game -
12-05-2025, 04:16 AMSyferU
I also think that XIV mobile will replace the retail version at some point. The global release will probably be less aggressive with the micro transaction than the Chinese version.
But I think it's gonna be at least a few more years until that happens. -
12-05-2025, 04:34 AMDPZ2
Question: Why didn't SE utilize a Cloud Computing infrastructure?!? [based on this quote: "For example, they decided not to use cloud servers"]
Answer: It was pretty much untested on a global scale when the game came out. Core cloud-native MMOs didn't start coming out until the late 2010s. (One reference mentions Fortnite in 2017, but not for the core game, and New World, running fully on Amazon's cloud, in 2021). A number of current MMOs rely on dedicated servers supplemented by cloud infrastructure. An expanding number of current MMOs appear to be utilizing a hybrid model. NCSoft, for example, still uses the traditional MMO server infrastructure for Blade & Soul, but has integrated cloud computing in the 'rerelease' called Blade & Soul NEO earlier this year.
Fully cloud-native MMOs is a more recent thing. It's been 4 years since New World released on AWS.
NOTE: be aware that if you consult an AI such as CoPilot, it will lie to you. Or, as it "confessed" when called out after presenting a purported quote attributed to Naoki Yoshida during a PAX West Interview as recorded on a specific web site source: "I should not have presented it that way. What I was trying to convey is consistent with what Naoki Yoshida has said in multiple interviews, but the phrasing I gave was my own synthesis rather than a direct citation." -
12-05-2025, 05:31 AMJeeqbitHe doesn't need to "push for improvements". He's the leader. He can direct those improvements.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubline
You're a programmer. So am I (used almost all languages over 25 years). A lot of the things that need improving I could do in minutes, hours, or 1 day in any codebase. And for larger undertakings, AI can shorten those timeframes by reducing the time it takes to go from what's in my mind to the output. Certainly, I could do a lot in a month, given I recently overhauled some bad python code really fast. So, yes, my initial assumptions are that maybe they aren't very good at programming.
But a longer distance view of this leads me to a different conclusion:- They only ever work on the next patch.
- The only exceptions seem to be specifically approved projects such as revamping 1 old sidequest dungeon, or the Graphics Update.
- Adding flying to ARR and Viera/Hrothgar headware was done without Yoshi-P's approval, according to Yoshi-P. That is the sort of thing that displays passion, and ever since this happened we've not anything like it since. It seems as if he shut it down and asked them not to do things without approval like that.
They have often said things like "we would pay double the market price for this" and Yoshi-P has said "even if we doubled the size of the team, we wouldn't necessarily double the output". He's said that he tries to recruit (have often seen a lot of jobs going until recently), but that the recruitment process doesn't keep pace with the growth/needs of the game and people retiring, due to recruitment taking time. He's also mentioned something about a lack of leaders - that if he recruits lots of people, who will be able to lead them?Quote:
or, that Squenix has been refusing to give them the budget.
One of Yoshi-P's main criticisms of the previous 1.0 leadership was that they did not play other MMORPGs like WoW and modernise the game and he often boasts how their team play other games and this is even required. Yet, as you point out, it is incredibly obvious that they don't, and when confronted with WoW's introduction of housing in an interview, Yoshi-P was unaware and said they'll have to check it out. He was that unaware of it despite the community talking about it for the last year or so and how the WoW team had taken numerous public digs at FFXIV.Quote:
A lot of people on XIV haven't played other MMOs for comparison and so they don't realise the huge gap in combat feel between FFXIV and other MMOs.
Yes, I've played more polished MMORPGs that are maintained by much smaller teams. It's 100% a leadership and mindset issue.Quote:
Even LOTRO which is an older and almost abandoned MMO maintained by a small team with no budget has recently migrated their servers to new 64 bit servers and improved lag to the point that they have super snappy spell activation times.
GCDs tend to be instant (see, they can do it, but they only design GCDs properly and not abilities). So I use my AoEs to align with when the enemies pass through me and it tends to catch them successfully regardless of ping and even when sprinting. Only time this fails is if the party pull first from behind me.Quote:
I'm never quite sure when to trigger my AOEs to grab all the mobs, as I don't know exactly when it will get resolved (if you get what I mean).
That understanding is incorrect. 1.0 used Crystal Tools, so they abandoned that engine and created a brand new one which is similar in structure to the Luminous Engine except adapted for multiplayer.Quote:
Originally Posted by RedLolly
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12-05-2025, 06:02 AMDPZ2
I was under the impression that SE used an extremely modified (to the point where it is no longer Crystal Tools) version as the basis for the ARR engine.
The Luminous Engine, as far as I can tell, was used for Final Fantasy XV and ... Forspoken?
No confirmations about Final Fantasy XVI's engine, but it is definitely not the FFXIV engine, nor Luminous. According to the title of an article on cgworld.jp in 2023, 独自エンジンによる、アートとリアルの中間をねらった画づくり〜『FINAL FANTASY XVI』（1） 開発環境・画づくり篇 ... (key words being "proprietary engine" and "development environment).
Autotranslate in Edge provides: In addition, this game is developed with a newly designed in-house engine. Mr. Honda explains, "Considering the man-hours required for support when using a general-purpose game engine or an in-house engine, it was more suitable to develop and manage it ourselves from scratch."
[Source: https://cgworld.jp/article/202309-cgw301-ff16-01.html ] -
12-05-2025, 06:08 AMCatwhoWe already saw it - completing some shiny weapon in the mobile version costs around $250 if you want to pay for all the currency instead of earning it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubline
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12-05-2025, 06:15 AMJeeqbitThe entire point of getting rid of 1.0 and remaking the game was to not use Crystal Tools. It uses a different engine than Luminous, but it's similar in structure. Some of the people working on FFXIV at the time had worked on Luminous.Quote:
Originally Posted by DPZ2
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12-07-2025, 02:38 AMMayuAmakura
It's not just technical limitation but also the way code was implemented into the game. Bad implementation, bad storage management and runtime all caused issues that we see today. Either devs just didn't think about it at that moment and wanted to deliver product as best as they can "brute force" or just didn't care. Now we see these consequences when they cannot save simple info on their servers so you can access them from anywhere. Wow did this way before in 2004. Now even for simple housing changes, they say "servers would crash".
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12-07-2025, 09:35 AMKelg
The game is not held back much at all from a technical standpoint(as in it actually can't be done). It's more of a manpower, budget and tech debt(aka spaghetti code) standpoint.
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12-07-2025, 11:21 AMJeeqbitManpower yes, because they refuse to assign more developers. Budget, I don't think is the issue, but rather the actual assignment of manpower, because you can see how certain teams never grow in the credits.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelg
Tech debt I don't think is particularly the issue either, because that can be fixed, there is just a lack of ability or a lack of task assignment to actually improve it. They've had 12 years to fix various "tech debt" after all. -
12-07-2025, 11:46 AMKelgThe manpower is an issue because they refuse to hire anyone outside of Japan and potential employees are short because of this. The budget is an issue because square takes the game's profits and doesn't put it back into the game, not because the game doesn't make money (it does). The deadlines they have to meet are super strict, they have to put out x amount of content so they can't just divert their coders to dig through old systems and remake them, that's why you keep seeing them make questionable decisions when it comes to glamour and other things that seem like a bandaid solutions that are just slapped ontop of current systems (the outfit system in the glam chest for example) instead of just remaking the systems in a smarter way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeeqbit
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12-07-2025, 08:54 PMKaurhz
Probably quite a bit.
But they could resolve a lot of the noticeable 'technical constraint' if they wanted to.
As for the why they don't, I think it's a combination of resourcing, and 'sweeping things under the rug' salad dressed as 'technical constraint'.
When technical constraint is an issue, they've often times tried to address it using untenable methods that just results in a ridiculous amount of work going forward. -
12-08-2025, 04:32 AMDPZ2It's a practical limitation, not a refusal. Even Blizzard Entertainment requires English proficiency for core development roles. Or are you suggesting that a developer who can neither read nor speak English proficiently would be totally welcome as a core developer?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelg
It certainly limits the pool of developers, but it is a requirement because the company is Japanese. Square Enix still hires non-developers extensively in other countries without that requirement (and has hired developers through support of other game studios as necessary)
This is applicable to most every MMORPG run by a company with multiple areas of corporate investment. WoW revenues, as an example, supported other Blizzard titles over the years.Quote:
The budget is an issue because square takes the game's profits and doesn't put it back into the game, not because the game doesn't make money (it does).
"Remaking systems in a smarter way" may seem appealing but the time and cost for recreating the current game using what would essentially be a new game engine are impractical at best. Incremental changes, such as the current graphic changes to the game, alongside regularly scheduled patch cycles, are simpler than creating what would essentially be another game entirely.Quote:
The deadlines they have to meet are super strict, they have to put out x amount of content so they can't just divert their coders to dig through old systems and remake them.
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12-08-2025, 07:07 AMKelgNo, it's reasonable to expect someone to speak Japanese to be hired by onto their team, but they do not hire people who can speak Japanese as a secondary language from other countries. They literally only hire Japanese employees, and would not hire bilingual NA developers and artists who can also speak Japanese. There is a massive difference there. You can see this because on they constantly put out hiring x and y over in Japan, but never put it here. The only people over here they hire are localizers and support staff, and there are plenty of programmers and artists who love video games, and Japanese rpgs who have learned Japanese and would love to work for square.Quote:
Originally Posted by DPZ2
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12-08-2025, 12:34 PMAbsurdityMy guess is the former.Quote:
Originally Posted by MayuAmakura
1.0 shut down on November 2012 and ARR released in August 2013.
Even if we assume they had the idea to completely rebuild the game very early and were already working on it while 1.0 was still actively being developed, that is an incredibly short time to make an MMO, even less time to cobble a functional MMO version of the Luminous engine together.
I think it's highly likely that they just made sure the engine "somehow" worked and that absolutely came back to bite them as far back as Stormblood. -
12-08-2025, 12:46 PMEnkidoh
Except that is blatantly incorrect, as proven by statements Yoshi himself made years ago where he stated that ARR's engine is a new custom engine that used elements of, (or at least has similarities to) the Luminous Engine (such as here), and thus has nothing to do with Crystal Tools.
There is also no technical or remnants of 1.0 code used in the engine, technical limitations are entirelly the new engine's limitations itself. Crystal Tools was dumped out on the kerb for rubbish collection long ago. It's just a stupid meme now, and is as mistaken as 'spaghetti code'. -
12-08-2025, 01:50 PMHyperia
Before the near catastrophic drop in subscriptions due to the very poor reception of the Dawntrail MSQ, it was an all but certainty that PS4 support along with lower end PCs were going to be dropped. While they can still do this, it is in serious doubt as they want to keep as many subs as possible in the hope that 8.0 turns things around.
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12-09-2025, 12:25 AMRedLolly
They've made no indication that PS4 was going to be dropped yet, anyway. I've not seen any official channel make that push, it's just player speculation on player speculation here.
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12-09-2025, 04:19 AMAmarandeI mean WoW also still supports the option of DirectX 11. In fact it can be almost necessary to do so because of driver issues: in particular, e.g. WoW has been known to have graphics driver glitches with AMD on DirectX 12, and the general mood from the corporate space has been "afford nvidia or deal with it, we don't get enough business from AMD users" lol ...Quote:
Originally Posted by Larirawiel
Hoping for not another case of mobile-ification, but also kinda nervous in light of present tech politics if that's a hedge bet they can't afford not to make ...Quote:
Originally Posted by SyferU
Most particularly, how rapidly everyone is warming up to age verification laws for the Internet, after decades of "that would be a terrible idea due to identity theft and a whole lot of the internet disappearing due to it being uneconomical or impractical to implement support" - when you consider how often the suggested verification procedures kind of forget about desktop PCs altogether it starts to become at least a little worrisome for the future of PC online gaming platforms, especially ones as necessarily social as an MMO. Especially when you add in that we already have security providers that have decided that PC is not a large enough market to bother supporting authentication from e.g. Authy discontinuing its desktop 2FA (and with how often the suggested methodology for age verification is going to be "you have to verify ON THAT DEVICE") ... -
12-09-2025, 10:30 AMHyperia
I will not play a mobile game, while I have the tech to do so. I do not like the interfaces and I pay for XIV so I do not have to do a gatcha game.
They are too often setup that if you fall behind, it’s time to quit or spend way too much money to catch up. That’s why I gave up on Genshin, I got too far behind, didn’t have the meta characters and it got too hard to play. -
12-09-2025, 06:38 PMLarirawielThe DirectX 11 mode in WoW is a fallback for older Intel IGPUs because the DirectX 12 and Vulkan part of these drivers is very bad. And WoW had some issues with the DirectX 12 mode. But these issues also existed on Nvidia GPUs and now they are fixed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amarande
Cheers