Yoshi Interview at PGS

[SpardaMoonslayer]

Its Not PS3 Limitations its Server Limitations PS3 is gone adding more Character Options would crash the Server most likely thats why certain things are not Implemented i would rather have more Inventory space then more options to my Character.

[Alleo]

So if we would get more scars and stuff like that the servers would explode from the stress? How in the world will this game last for a long time if we cant even get some more customizations? Are they at least working on changing that over time or will we hear "server limitation" as a reason forever? Come on you are one of the most successful P2P MMOs out there and one of the big cash cows for your company...you should be able to do so much more.

Also why would FF lose its appeal if we get more faces? That does not make any sense? (And lets not talk about a lot of glamour stuff that destroyed the fantasy feel anyway...like those Yokai things..)

[But at least they put their time and money in making an app..I just feel my salt rising]

[LaylaTsarra]

I'm guessing the new wards will be released sometime after the servers have already been up. So that way everyone has a chance to be logged in and at the aetheryte.

Well they better have many instances of Kugane up and running because that instance will be full and no one will be able to get in after that.

[Niraves]

Well they better have many instances of Kugane up and running because that instance will be full and no one will be able to get in after that.

I think they are releasing wards for each of the districts this time, not just Shirogane. But I do agree that Kugane will likely need to be instanced since I feel like the majority of players will want to purchase homes there.

I wouldn't mind upgrading my FC house from a medium to a large, but I have no intention of leaving Lavender Beds, so maybe there will be less competition. :3

[Arrius]

From the sound of it, I think he took it to mean people wanted more things they could customize rather than more options for things we can already change. And if that's the case, he's absolutely right, every single such thing you add is across all players in the game, the increase in data volume is absurd. And yes that would include the detachment of the horns from the face type.

Though I wonder if that was a question that got 'lost in translation' again, similar to the question about better body forms/'do you want bigger butts?' thing.
Because I think when we talk about 'new customization options', we talk about adding more things to existing ones, aka haircuts or tattoos, instead of having something completetly new.
As the former usually comes anyway every now and then with via patch, promotion and/or at the mog station.

[reiichi]

Based on stories provided from people I've talked to who worked at Japanese companies doing server development, SE's toolset for the server is probably from the 90s (ok, c++98 and c99 are 90s still). Or at least the programming standards are. Even the software company I work for is built on a database software that hasn't exactly changed in the last 30 years and the primary language used to interact with it is BASIC and an outdated proprietary customized c library.

Based on assumptions about SE's server architecture (how the servers are run, not just how they're programmed), we're looking at a messy database with little sharding and likely nobody with a good background in server infrastructure engineering, because that's a senior position, and they'd rather give it to a senior developer. So we get a server that's programmed with limitations in mind which is then strained on an unoptimized architecture passing our character data back and forth between temporary servers (think instances). And all that traffic adds up.

It's not that it's particularly horrible to send that data to a single character, but when it has to do so for hundreds in a map or thousands on a server, things get pretty sloppy, which is where all these server limitations come from. A lot of the current character data is basically stored in about 1-4 bytes per field. This is why it's probably easy for them to add hairstyle after hairstyle, but for something in a smaller container (say, faces) a single byte is likely used, and then packed/compressed. To give more customization, they'd need to first increase the current minimum amount of character data transfered for our current options, followed by adding in whatever additional fields would be needed for said customization. Like to split the Au Ra face and horns, they'd need twice the data. To add more faces, they'd need to increase the size of the variable holding that information, and so on. ...and someone probably ran some numbers, saw the increased bandwidth cost, multiplied it by the number of active characters and they said "no, our server cannot handle that additional load." Which kinda sucks, but we can't see their source code.

[bass9020]

lol what a joke.

Thank god Bless is coming out soon, its a mix of xiv and bdo. Luckily they have a decent CC and an open world like bdo. Ill put my money into that game when I can.

[Sekkei]

Well the good thing that actually is on the realm of possibility is apartment size options...maybe. More character optimization options is, again, shot down by limitations of whatever origin. Guess I'm forever stuck with Sharpie chin beard.

[Arrius]

lol what a joke.

Thank god Bless is coming out soon, its a mix of xiv and bdo. Luckily they have a decent CC and an open world like bdo. Ill put my money into that game when I can.

Of course they will have better options regarding character details, and most likely have a diverse selection of outfits you can get because otherwise they won't keep the playerbase around, as many eastern mmo's tend to lack on every other front in the game asides perhaps being somewhat different in their combat system.

[reiichi]

KMMOs don't typically last that long. Especially their global markets now that everything is focused on pretty graphics and netcafe bonuses. I remember when a large portion of the people I knew playing FFXIV got all hyped for BDO and B&S's character creators. ...and then were back to playing FFXIV maybe a month later because while FFXIV may not be the "best" in a particular field, it's on average much higher quality than the other MMOs it competes with. And when the average is on whole, better, people will stay. We can find a game that does any particular feature better than FFXIV. It's not hard. But then look at that game's weak points and FFXIV will basically wipe the floor with it.