Riding Chocobos in town?

[Delsus]

Sorry, meant engine-based issue, not server-side issue, as FFXI was also due to the engine not being optimized for PC.

Here is the stuttering that a lot of people are complaining about, and not one bit of this was from Fraps. Also, notice the galka running through a wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGi3GIR3dsY

Out in the field, no stuttering at all and a constant 60fps, the only time it dips is during Behest, which is understandable. It never completely stutters though, just an FPS drop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzkddEfXinM

Loading screen when first logging into the game, outside of a city.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th7MuHIC-VM

The cities have alot more to load than towns, I stutter when I first log in in cities, but after about 2-5 mins the stuttering stops because the data has loaded into RAM, with me its because there is so much data to load a city in to RAM and a standard HDD doesnt have the transfer rates to load it all in time

[Aveline]

Addressing your last paragraph first, I'm not getting angry. I'm simply challenging you on something you're stating, and asking you to back it up. Please keep your psycho-analysis out of this, and stick to the discussion at hand, okay? Thank you.

Second, your statement about videos not being enough to convince me they're there is completely dishonest. A pure strawman argument. I never said "there are no chocobos in Ul'dah". If anything I've confirmed their existence by acknowledging that they're there pulling parade floats or a transport wagon. What I *did* say is that there are no un-tethered chocobos being freely ridden around Ul'dah, as mounts, by its citizens. If you're going to debate me on something, please be honest and respond to statements I do make. Don't ignore what I have said and conveniently replace it with things I haven't. Thank you.

Now, for your first paragraph, you can "wager" all you want. Your statements are based on what you *think* *might* be the case *in the future*. It's unsupported conjecture based on something you would *like* to see happen, nothing more.

And you so smugly accused me of jumping the gun? Pot, meet kettle.

You are basing your entire premise on 2 or maybe 3 isolated cut-scenes that *still* don't support what you're claiming they do. I'm basing mine on what those same cut-scenes actually *do* show, as well as the state of the game we are playing, right now. Might it change down the road? Sure. It could. Regardless, you cannot build an argument on something that's completely unsupported right now, because you think it "might happen" down the road.

For your second paragraph, you see Chocobos and Chocobo-drawn carriages strolling past. So, in other words, once again, the chocobos were tethered and behaving as beasts of burden, not common mounts. You have not seen cut-scenes of numerous normal city citizens going about their daily routines, freely riding or standing around on untethered chocobos. In other words, my point still stands.

I have no problem with more lively city streets with more vendors or NPCs. I'd welcome a bit more of that as well, in fact. NPCs and such have coded behavior and tend to either move on a pre-set track, or stand in one spot. They're not cluttering doorways, stairways, narrow paths, etc. on giant birds.

I'm now going to duck out of this particular exchange because my point has been made and there's no need to rehash it further.

OMG you're so right, you win everything, ever, in the history of anything to do with chocobos! Vae victus! Three cutscenes are not enough! Obviously, the only way this whole thing could be ever disputed is if chocobos existed IRL, for us to ride upon, in our grand city of--oh wait, I really don't care about your self-inflated ego lol

Back on topic? Chocobos in cities, yes please! Also, more reading literacy in our schools. We seem to desperately need it. <_<;

[Shipp]

The cities have alot more to load than towns, I stutter when I first log in in cities, but after about 2-5 mins the stuttering stops because the data has loaded into RAM, with me its because there is so much data to load a city in to RAM and a standard HDD doesnt have the transfer rates to load it all in time

I understand this. I know the towns are not going to have the problems cities do. However this is a problem even in cities that aren't populated, so this isn't strictly a population (at least of PCs) issue. Limsa gives me more problems than Gridania, but I'm guessing that's because more stuff is cluttered together in Limsa so it all has to load at once.

The stuttering DOES get better once everything in the city has loaded, but there is some very poor optimization problems with Crystal Tools in this case. Sure, we can all get SSDs to go along with our expensive PCs just to run this horribly optimized game, but my point is that this is going to turn even more people off to the game that either do not have a PS3 to play on or they don't have tons of money to spend on even more stuff beyond the recommended specs.

Let's think about this. If PCs are having problems with not being able to load data fast enough, how in the world is the PS3 going to be able to play this game? PCs exceed what the PS3 can do, and while Crystal Tools is better optimized for the PS3, I'm a bit worried that we are seeing this much stuttering on hardware which far surpasses a PS3. To stay on topic, adding even more models to load, Chocobos, is really going to just make the issue worse. Sure, PC players can keep sinking money into new hardware, but PS3 users cannot. Insert the obligatory "lol PS3 limitations" here.

If I recall correctly, chocobos had different models in XI based on what race was riding them. For example, a Galka's choco was larger than a Taru's. I can't remember 100%, but I believe that was the case. Factor in this and then the possibility of adding different colors of chocobos, or different mounts all together, and I just don't see how allowing mounts in cities in this resource-hog of a game is going to go over well.

[Tiraelina]

That's not just Fraps making it stutter, because it would constantly be doing that. That looks just like the stuttering that a lot of people are suffering from in cities, albeit not as bad. You've got stuttering while you're walking down the main street, and that is a problem when it's like that for a lot of people who exceed the recommended specs and are playing on low.

I'd also like to know what your specs are, because they, quite obviously, far exceed the normal player's since it cuts down stuttering by that much. I'm also not new to MMOs. Been playing them for 10 years. Guess what happens on PC MMOs that don't use a console's engine. You update your hardware and things get better. Guess what happens on an FF MMO. You update your hardware and you see little to no difference. Go Fraps yourself running through Whitegate or Jeuno. An FPS drop is normal. Stuttering like XI and XIV do is a server-side issue.

Yeah none of this could be caused by FRAPS trying to push XIV off the CPU which is already using 70-80% of it.

I'm going to go with not being very familiar with FRAPS if you think that stuttering isn't caused by it at 1920x1200 full size on a C2D E8400, it's choking on my dual core. Once again you are telling me that stuttering in the video is the game's unoptimized nature yet Aion, WoW and many others do the exact same thing without FRAPS recording.

Aion will actually stall briefly when a player gets close enough to be loaded, it's using the CryEngine. What you are pointing out in my video happens in 90% of the games out there that are not using the UE3 engines streaming, in fact its almost always far worse.

After XIV is finished loading new *anything* which takes under 5 seconds, any of the minor slowdowns stop existing. I just ran through the Battlecraft ward and disk activity wasn't going above 2 MB/s without any stuttering during that. If there is any stalls they only happen during my initial load after which there isn't anything. Once again, happens in far more than XIV.

You might also be unaware that HDD's suck at random reads.

[Eekiki]

Do you think people should be able to ride mounts (specifically Chocobos at this stage) within the city limits, or should they be barred access?

Both options seem logical, but one is obviously more restrictive than the other.

No mounts in towns.

[Shipp]

Yeah none of this could be caused by FRAPS trying to push XIV off the CPU which is already using 70-80% of it.

I'm going to go with not being very familiar with FRAPS if you think that stuttering isn't caused by it at 1920x1200 full size on a C2D E8400, it's choking on my dual core. Once again you are telling me that stuttering in the video is the game's unoptimized nature yet Aion, WoW and many others do the exact same thing without FRAPS recording.
[/quote]

Let's break this down. You have a problem with FRAPS bogging down your game. I do not. By the way, I posted 3 separate videos from using FRAPS, so your first sentence in the second paragraph makes you look foolish. Back to the point though. My PC is apparently stronger than yours since I can run FRAPS while playing a game and it doesn't make a bit of difference. Not one iota. Yet somehow, on your dual cores, you're not getting city stuttering except from FRAPS taking your video, while I get major city stuttering and FRAPS doesn't affect it at all.

Your argument makes no logical sense.

Also, there is a big difference between FPS drops and STUTTERING. FPS drops are common place in high population areas. Complete stuttering where nothing on the screen moves at all and then everything is sped up as if you keep R0'ing and going back up constantly is not normal. THIS is the issue I, along with others, am talking about. Obviously, it is not just me noticing this. As you can see from other people responding, other people are having this issue as well. Outside of getting a SSD to smooth out the RAM problems, the only other thing that will help is SE tweaking the game engine and optimizing it.

Aion will actually stall briefly when a player gets close enough to be loaded, it's using the CryEngine. What you are pointing out in my video happens in 90% of the games out there that are not using the UE3 engines streaming, in fact its almost always far worse.

I don't know about Aion since I have never played it. However your claim that it's almost worse in other games is far from the truth. I don't think you realize the difference between an FPS drop and game stuttering. They are not the same thing.

After XIV is finished loading new *anything* which takes under 5 seconds, any of the minor slowdowns stop existing. I just ran through the Battlecraft ward and disk activity wasn't going above 2 MB/s without any stuttering during that. If there is any stalls they only happen during my initial load after which there isn't anything. Once again, happens in far more than XIV.

Again, FPS drops are common place, the stuttering where your whole screen freezes for a couple hundred milliseconds and resumes, then freezes and resumes is what the issue is. Maybe you don't notice it, maybe it doesn't bother you, or maybe you're just being willfully ignorant for the sake of arguing, I really don't know. However, that doesn't change the fact that the engine needs to be optimized, and adding even MORE models to load in the city is only going to make this even more noticeable.

You might also be unaware that HDD's suck at random reads.

Considering the previous assumptions you've made about me not being experienced with MMOs or that I'm not experienced with FRAPS, I think it's safe for me to make the assumption that most of yours are wrong.

[Tiraelina]

I've explained it, you don't want to listen to it. FRAPS is going to amplify the time it takes to load assets, when it's not recording that time is non-existent. I can record just fine otherwise.

• CPU: Intel C2D E8400 @ 3.60GHz
• Memory: 8GB DDR2 1066 5/5/5/15
• Motherboard: ASUS Rampage Formula X48
• HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB, Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB x2
• Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 5870 1GB
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64

I know what the difference is between frame lag and stuttering. XIV has frame lag issues, something that AA/VSync/AO makes far worse that was particularly bad in beta. Yet your supposedly superior system that you haven't posted any details about is the one having the problems with almost hard locking when it loads anything. Your system must be flawless.

I get zero stuttering wandering around all of Ul'dah like I've been doing for the past 10 minutes even just after logging in. I can see FRAPS' FPS graph on my G15 and it is a smooth line without any spikes that happen with stuttering.

So you are also telling me that HDD's are good at random reads now? One of many areas SSD's excel at? and that SSD's have anything at all to do with RAM? HDD's are the biggest bottleneck in any system out there. Why do you think everything comes to a screeching halt when the pagefile has to get used over RAM?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/25

In case you didn't notice theres already chocobos in every city, they aren't being loaded extra. I hope I don't need to elaborate on why that might be. If you actually think there is different models each race rides you've got another thing coming.

[Vanguard319]

considering that cities transition into thier surrounding regions, I doun't think it would be unreasonable to assume that yes, you will be able to ride into and around a city to at least some degree. (ride your chicken down to the docks in limsa, but the pub is off-limits.)

[Shipp]

In case you didn't notice theres already chocobos in every city, they aren't being loaded extra. I hope I don't need to elaborate on why that might be. If you actually think there is different models each race rides you've got another thing coming.

Just responding to this since I've tired of your condescending attitude.

Look at the chocobos in XI. Didn't Galkas ride larger chocos than Tarus? That has to load a separate model of a separate size, from what I recall from that game. If it's done in XIV, it'll be the same thing.

[Tiraelina]

Scaling has nothing to do with a separate model, it's entirely handled internally by the engine.