XIV on Switch and Xbox

[KarstenS]

The Team wanted smaller more detailed zones while maintaining stable server loads VS Mass over usage of texture instancing in Large zones.

You are mixing stuff that doesn't belong together.

Serverside a zone is nothing else than a table of coordinates where players, mobs, fates and so on are located.

The other stuff you tell is client side only. The server has absolutely nothing to do with objects or textures that get drawn or other visuals.

[ReplicaX]

You are mixing stuff that doesn't belong together.

Serverside a zone is nothing else than a table of coordinates where players, mobs, fates and so on are located.

The other stuff you tell is client side only. The server has absolutely nothing to do with objects or textures that get drawn or other visuals.

The point of my statement if you read the conversation is simple. The PS3 was not the major reason for ARR's zones being smaller than 1.0, it was several major reasons, which I pointed out 2 critical ones. The user I was responding to clearly did not follow the development of ARR regarding zone redesign.

You are mixing 2 of my points together when they are separate.

- Server side checks were considered in the Zone redesign as players actively engage in them which does put loads on the servers and the addition stress of the new FATE System.

- My visuals statement wasn't regarding the server at all. It specifically talked about more detailed zones and less use of texture instancing. Compared to 1.0s large zones, with few details and a massive overuse of texture instancing.

[KarstenS]

The PS3 was not the major reason for ARR's zones being smaller than 1.0

It was not the PS3 alone. It was also the way the engine of FF14 do work.

The main issue is the low amount of memory the PS3 has.

Why is this a problem with our graphics engine?

I'm starting this with our good old WoW.

When you are in WoW, you are in very huge areas. But how does this work?

In WoW, when you are in a zone, there is a definied range (which can changed in the configuration menu) around your character that I call field of view. Everything within this range will get load into memory and then the enginge works with this. Whey you move, everything that leaves this range will get freed out of the memory and what get into range will get loaded into memory. This is called dynamic loading and it is easy to scale this to different client hardware.

When you enter FF14, the entire zone get loaded into the memory and stays in the memory until you change the zone. We have also a field of view, but only for NPCs and PCs (except S-Ranks). But in overall, its a static loading.

You see the difference?

The PS3 has build in 256 MB of RAM and this was not enough for loading the old zones completely into memory.

- Server side checks were considered in the Zone redesign as players actively engage in them which does put loads on the servers and the addition stress of the new FATE System.

Every game has alot of stuff happening. And during development you have to decide, what should be handled by the server, what you can do client side and which actions has to be confirmed by the server before the client can continue.

The last point are server checks.

The most noticeable change in the last time was around the mudras of the Ninja job.

Before the change: Every step hat do be confirmed by the server.

After the change: You can do every action without waiting for confirmation. They get transmitted to the server and the server handles the result. But you have not to wait for it while pressing buttons.

This is meant when talking about "server checks".

In 1.0 there was a very huge load of it and everything that has to get confirmed by the server belongs to network bandwith and latency. In 1.0 were so much of them, that it caused many issues because of huge network load in the datacenter, which also caused an increase of the latency. This got reduced alot during the redesign of the game.

But the zone redesign or the PS3 were no issues that belong to server checks.

- My visuals statement wasn't regarding the server at all. It specifically talked about more detailed zones and less use of texture instancing. Compared to 1.0s large zones, with few details and a massive overuse of texture instancing.

This is still an client side only thing.

[Kosmos992k]

The point of my statement if you read the conversation is simple. The PS3 was not the major reason for ARR's zones being smaller than 1.0, it was several major reasons, which I pointed out 2 critical ones. The user I was responding to clearly did not follow the development of ARR regarding zone redesign.

You are mixing 2 of my points together when they are separate.

- Server side checks were considered in the Zone redesign as players actively engage in them which does put loads on the servers and the addition stress of the new FATE System.

- My visuals statement wasn't regarding the server at all. It specifically talked about more detailed zones and less use of texture instancing. Compared to 1.0s large zones, with few details and a massive overuse of texture instancing.

Please explain how it is then, that the much, much larger zones of HW work with PS3, since you categorically say that the smaller, and more lively, zones of ARR are the 'fault' of PS3.