Portable Orchestrion

[Brightamethyst]

It is not that simple. I'm sure it's possible, the devs could rewrite and rearrange the entire game if they wanted to, but how much time and resources would it take to do so? This is one of those things that's probably just not worth the time and effort it would take to accomplish.

[Callinon]

It is not that simple. I'm sure it's possible, the devs could rewrite and rearrange the entire game if they wanted to, but how much time and resources would it take to do so? This is one of those things that's probably just not worth the time and effort it would take to accomplish.

Sigh

The request wasn't "turn FFXIV into a first-person shooter" it was "let me pick my music track in the open world" which, I will again remind, is ALREADY A THING YOU CAN DO. The request here is for that system to be slightly expanded to include more tracks and an interface to manipulate them.

The constant appeal to hyperbole is not compelling. No one is asking for the entire game to be rewritten. This is a logical expansion on an existing system. It should be well within the scope of possibility to accomplish.

[MilkieTea]

Sigh

The request wasn't "turn FFXIV into a first-person shooter" it was "let me pick my music track in the open world" which, I will again remind, is ALREADY A THING YOU CAN DO. The request here is for that system to be slightly expanded to include more tracks and an interface to manipulate them.

The constant appeal to hyperbole is not compelling. No one is asking for the entire game to be rewritten. This is a logical expansion on an existing system. It should be well within the scope of possibility to accomplish.

except, it isn't. think of it like painting in oils and watercolor. the painting is originally in oils - layers, and layers, and layers of oils, with not a space in between for watercolor to seep into the canvas. they thought that painting it this way would accomplish what they want - and it did! (sort of). But now in order to paint with watercolor, the canvas that would've been there and available is, well, gone. the person painting now needs to either switch canvases or shovel off the layers of oil paint that are already there. as a stop gap, they've painted the canvas white and added a layer of finish to it so that they can "mimic" a fresh canvas - but all the oil is underneath, and it's messing with some of the stuff they'd like to do but cant.

alternatively, think of it like a house with popcorn ceilings: anything you want to do, you have to do carefully, slowly, and the unconventional way, unless you want to bring in the guys with hazmat suits because popcorn ceilings contain asbestos and you don't want to mess with that.

[Seleni]

Codes for music subsystem doesn’t sound like something that’d be updated/maintained often, so it’s possible it could be very old. (Worst case it could be carried over from 1.0 and just padded with workarounds every time a fix needs to be made)

Adding the ability to play user-selected playlist in the open world + cities would be a sweeping change to the existing music subsystem. Even if the coding itself end up being simple to do (which may or may not be the case), they’d still have to test it for every place in game where they use music. In other words, every field, city, duty, and in-game cinematics.

Obviously no one outside of FFXIV development team would know how easy/difficult it’d be to rewrite/refactor their music subsystem. But at a time when they are expected to be focused on developing new contents, changes to something that is already considered working, like the music system, is likely not going to get priority.

[Brightamethyst]

The request wasn't "turn FFXIV into a first-person shooter" it was "let me pick my music track in the open world" which, I will again remind, is ALREADY A THING YOU CAN DO. The request here is for that system to be slightly expanded to include more tracks and an interface to manipulate them.

This is why developers hate users. They think they know everything when they usually know literally nothing.

"It already does y and z. Just go back and add x. Easy." But it was never designed to do x. The user looks at the front end and imagines how easy it must be, while the devs are look at the back end and know that to add x they'd first have to completely redesign r, s, t, u, v, and w for it to work.

Now in this particular case I don't know the game's code any more than you do, but I guarantee it's not nearly as easy as it looks. It never is.

[ItMe]

Codes for music subsystem doesn’t sound like something that’d be updated/maintained often, so it’s possible it could be very old. (Worst case it could be carried over from 1.0 and just padded with workarounds every time a fix needs to be made)

Oh god, or what if it's still leftover coding from FF11.
We all know 14 was built using its bones...

[Enkidoh]

I can honestly say that is not the case - FFXIV ARR (and 1.0 before it) used entirelly different engines to FFXI, and that includes sound coding.

It's just how Soken has implemented the use of sound and music in the game is restrictive and doesn't allow additions outside "the box" so to speak, which is why a portable orchestrion simply isn't possible sadly.

[ItMe]

I can honestly say that is not the case - FFXIV ARR (and 1.0 before it) used entirelly different engines to FFXI,

No they have said there is FF11 code in there.
14 wasn't 100% made from scratch, especially since it was supposed to link to FF11.

[Callinon]

This is why developers hate users.

Only jaded (or super arrogant) developers hate users. I've been a developer working on large user-facing projects. This is why I'm completely certain that code can be modified and is not, in fact, carved in stone (or oil on canvas or whatever that was about up there).

I didn't say it'd be easy. I said it was within the scope of possibility because the system already does some of what it would need to do. There'd be no need to create brand new tech here, just some modification to what's already in place.

But it was never designed to do x

The game wasn't designed with flying in mind, we can do that now. Believe me that was a MUCH larger change than is being proposed here.
The game wasn't designed to have collectables, but somehow that's now a thing.
The game didn't ship with duty roulettes. Remember having to spam Castrum Meridianum to cap tomestones? I do.
The game didn't ship with a glamour system. Letting one piece of gear look like another piece of gear? Blasphemy!
The game didn't ship with GPose. Changing outdoor visual effects so that they'd only be visible to the player was a big deal. But changing outdoor audio that only changes for the player is a bridge too far apparently?

I could go on and on.... and on.

[Brightamethyst]

The game wasn't designed with flying in mind, we can do that now. Believe me that was a MUCH larger change than is being proposed here.

Yeah, but it also affects every single player in a huge way. The time vs effort tradeoff was apparently worth it. Personal orchestrion is a cool idea, but not a game changing one the way flying is. Not even close.

But changing outdoor audio that only changes for the player is a bridge too far apparently?

Apparently. Obviously it's not literally impossible to implement, but if it was that easy they probably would have just done it already rather than giving us the same answer year after year