Can we finally please have a proper game client launcher in 2019?

[KisaiTenshi]

So you instead approve of the FFXIV companion app being improved and interconnected with the in-game's chat.
I would prefer that still over the current situation myself, it was what I was expecting of the companion app until I found out that the companion app's messaging is only between a companion app user to a companion app user.

I'd rather the "mobile app" already designed, not overlap with the game client functionality in a way that would cause the developers to have to maintain two or more things.

What Kurando is mentioning is that the "launcher" is part of the game for Diablo, which it's likely not. There is a simple reason for this that goes all the way back to pre-Windows time called "File Sharing" in the original context, which means that if one file is open for reading, another program can not write to it, no matter what. So in order to patch a game, two steps are required, one a launcher to do the patching, and another that is the actual game client.

What JP/KR/US/EU games do is they put the launcher and patcher into the same program, which wraps the web browser (everything inside the window is actually HTML) all the "program" part does connect to that address so that it does the user authentication. The backwards part that SE does is not downloading the patch BEFORE connecting. But they might just do that to prevent people from trying to download patches before the servers are online, because that's exactly what people do with new content. With games/expansions not yet purchased, you don't want people finding a way to exploit that either.

In V1.0, and still now, there is the FFXIV Boot program. This is actually the "launcher/patcher" for the Launcher itself. This program simply contacts SE and goes "What is the latest version" and if if the version mismatches, it downloads the current version of the launcher. It did it this way at V1.0 which the V1.0 launcher contained some level of P2P patch downloading in it. At least that's what I recall. The current patcher's use a CDN to download as far as I know. So largely there is no reason for "boot" anymore since the launcher could simply use the same mechanism existing programs use to self-update (eg download new version, launch installer in "unattended-wait" mode, exit old version, new version overwrites old version, re-opens. You might see this when you launch Steam.

Which leads me to the other point, the Launcher is necessary because of Steam or any other "service" needs an authentication program to actually launch, and a Steam version requires linkage to the Steam API. However if you've played any MMO on Steam, you'd also notice that every game with multiplayer functionality has this second-launching mechanic as well. A player may obtain the game from SE directly or from Steam, or for MacOSX, the launcher launches the same program no matter what way it was purchased. Otherwise Steam would need to integrate every publisher's authentication system, and that's just not reasonable at all. Even the oldest MMO game I've played that put a version into Steam, all Steam does is "patch" the base game. The launcher still does the authentication, it just doesn't need to do a second round of patching.

Blizzard-Activision doesn't play nice with Steam (You'll notice that zero Blizzard titles are on Steam, or anywhere else for that matter) their battle.net App is designed to launch only their games, so it really just copies functionality that Steam already had.

One very minor thing I want to point out, that isn't obvious unless you've been playing MMO's since before Windows Vista, the one thing the launcher serves as in Vista and later is to reduce the number of privilege escalation requests. When you run something like Steam or Filezilla, when it self-updates, you typically get a escalation request. Where as the launcher is already whitelisted, and thus has the write privileges it needs to patch the game and launch it without a multiple escalation requests popping up. Which can be bad if a patch is really really screwed up.

[Kurando]

What Kurando is mentioning is that the "launcher" is part of the game for Diablo, which it's likely not. .

To clarify, that wasn't exactly what I meant but more Diablo (and other Blizzard titles) on console don't require a launcher. Now whether it's built in or not I don't know at all, but definitely one isn't required to act as a medium like what you get with the Battle.net app on PC (or PlayOnline for FFXI). The console system itself does the update/patch checks etc on trying to start games but it's not like a specific app catered for a number of titles.

[RitsukoSonoda]

They had something like that before back in FFXI. It was a Playonline launcher Which had FFXI, Tetra Master, Front Mission Online, and possibly a few other things I don't recall. However they scrapped it some years back. Though it is still needed specifically for FFXI.

Currently I don't expect anything from them like the Blizzard launcher until they produce more games that require online access.

[Penthea]

It's 2019 and you're complaining about the tremendous amount of battery power drained simply by starting up a 5 year old game?

That aside there's no denying that FFXIV's launcher is clunky and very out of date. Even launchers for f2p games from much smaller studios are better. I feel like the launcher is suffering in a similar manner to the mog station. It works, but damn it's old school.

[Penthea]

Exactly how I feel, but now that you've honestly expressed your criticism by calling the launcher of their 'favorite game' very out of date, worse than f2p games from much smaller studios, and included the site with it, prepare for the lash back by the fanatics, 90% of your post will probably be ignored no matter how detailed it is due to the words you used. According to them, either censor your thoughts and honest descriptions and say it their way or you are to be criticized instead and have the entire thread derailed from the topic. Just the fanboys we have here these days.

Uh...I think you're over reacting a bit. The mog station has gotten a tremendous amount of criticism from players in these forums. The launcher has also been criticised but to a far smaller degree.

Likely because while both are very out of date, the mog station is a much larger inconvenience because it directly deals with real money. Up until very recently it didn't even have a shopping cart. You had to buy everything one by one. Because of this some player's credit cards flagged the purchase of two of the same item as a double purchase, which then revoked the payment, and then SE blocked those player's accounts for not paying. You could avoid that issue by using crysta instead but that made it no less ridiculous. Though the shopping cart was a good and much needed update, it needs more.

As you can see the launcher by comparison is little more than an inconvenience, so people complain about it a lot less. But I don't think this excuses it being clunky and out of date.

[TheVigilant]

Uh...I think you're over reacting a bit. The mog station has gotten a tremendous amount of criticism from players in these forums. The launcher has also been criticised but to a far smaller degree.

Likely because while both are very out of date, the mog station is a much larger inconvenience because it directly deals with real money. Up until very recently it didn't even have a shopping cart. You had to buy everything one by one. Because of this some player's credit cards flagged the purchase of two of the same item as a double purchase, which then revoked the payment, and then SE blocked those player's accounts for not paying. You could avoid that issue by using crysta instead but that made it no less ridiculous. Though the shopping cart was a good and much needed update, it needs more.

As you can see the launcher by comparison is little more than an inconvenience, so people complain about it a lot less. But I don't think this excuses it being clunky and out of date.

I was pointing at the continuous attempts to derail the subject of the thread when it was started, simply because someone didn't have it their way.
But yes, I agree that the mogstation also requires improvement, but after seeing the revamp WoW's site had in Legion and BDO's site had after the Remastered version, I wished for some improvements to happen to FFXIV website, lodestone and forum as well as the mogstation.

As far as I can understand though, it's hard to fix the launcher's situation but regardless I'm sure there is much improvement that can happen to it than the, sorry for the honest words to the fans we have with sensitive hearts, sad state it is in.

[Penthea]

I was pointing at the continuous attempts to derail the subject of the thread when it was started, simply because someone didn't have it their way.

Oh fair enough. Well get used to it. That's how it goes in the forums. You could start a thread about minions and people will end up debating patch cycles.

[TheVigilant]

It would be really nice for someone to ask Yoshi regarding this matter in the next Q&A, will be very much appreciated.

When is the next Q&A?

[LauraAdalena]

So, I was going to leave a long comment about how I'm contempt with the FFXIV launcher and the "WoW Launcher" (battle.net) is actually just a little bloated, advertises games outside of the one I play on it, and loads slowly for me/doesn't start downloading right away as I launch it. But instead, I'll summarize it and get to the point you are focusing on:

FFXIV's launcher only really needs customization on what the little slideshow on the left shows imo. Battle.net has a lot of features I don't use and all of my friends who play Overwatch/FFXIV use Discord so most of the features you list are not even useful to me, if they are useful to you cool. Like it. But it doesn't mean the FFXIV launcher is bad because of features you use that, from the looks of it, very few people who are replying here seem to actually have a use for.

Alright, to the point.

You seem to be focused on contacting people outside of the game and not having to boot it up on your laptop and a few people have mentioned it already, but I'm going to go one step further and say what I did to combat that problem personally. I have a personal server for all of my friends who play with me and have tags for the games they play so I can tell who is playing what when, and if they hide it I can always @ (game's name) them or just... chat in the server with all of them at once. Not only that, but I have an FCs discord and several discords of people who don't play on my server almost as though it is an entire mini FC thing. And before that I used Skype. If you are really having that much of a problem outside of the battle.net launcher, then FFXIV shouldn't fix that problem for you. They've got other issues they need to fix before the launcher. If anything, the launcher is probably the least of their issues with things they need to fix/update/add to. I'd rather they fix more bugs and glitches or content, or even give us more content than put any manpower into the launcher unless it really gets that bad.

(also, I agree with the guy saying that you are completely phrasing your argument wrong. With text arguments, phrasing is everything.)

Edit: If the FFXIV team was working on more games and/or had more games to work with, I'd totally say that the Battle.net treatment is worth it. But for now, it's the bare minimum and that's all i really need personally.

[Dzian]

I'd be happy if the launcher had an auto login option. save my password and even register it as a trusted device so i dont need the otp everytime.