Do we want another 10 years of FF14 on this engine?

[Atelier-Bagur]

People complaining about engines in MMOs really cement how little they know of the genre. That as well as outing themselves of lacking any experience outside FFXIV. Look at Everquest, FFXI, OSRS, LotRO, WoW, GW2, those games have old engines yet theyre still kicking. People dont come to MMOs because of shiny engines, they come for enjoying what the game already offers.

The most FFXIV can feasibly do majorly is updating their graphics and textures which is something thats already in the works.

[Denji]

They say they have a 10 year plan for this game.

But the server ticks, housing limitations, animation limitations, spaghetti code, etc etc etc.

Devs will often say they can't do xyz because of limitations of the engine. They acknowledge that they can't make the game better because of it.

Do we really want another 10 years in this? Or would we rather get FFXIV-2?

before i start i need to prefix that i am normally very critical of square; you can easily view my post history to see this.


but wow had theirs for how long?

it isn't uncommon for MMOs to utilize the same engine for a long time. besides, the devs have never said that the spaghetti code specifically prevents them from implementing things, just that it would be difficult/take a while and other things have higher priority.

much like how people get rid of physical technology (hardware) that's only a few years old simply because something newer rolls around, people are way too quick to abandon virtual technology (software) despite having hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars (and person-hours) sunk into it. this is especially strange when you look at how much software people use that has fundamentally not changed (beyond some updates/rewriting of portions) in literal decades. most the operating systems people use on both their computers and phones for example are essentially the same thing but with updates rather than complete replacements. programs like photoshop, ms office, etc are more or less the same engine.

for game examples, half-life: alyx is made in Source 2 which is essentially the original source engine with a lot of rewrites.

additionally things like "server ticks" you mention are typically backend, server-side issues which have nothing to do with the engine itself.

is the engine dated? yes. could it use some updates? yes. but another aspect you need to consider is that MMOs are made to reach as wide of an audience as possible and in order to do that you need to make sure that it can run even on very dated machines. one of the many things 1.0 (and yes, i know it was another engine entirely) proved that you can't really design an MMO around expecting users to fulfill absurd and extremely specific requirements.

if you're going to set up a game that forces your players to pay a subscription you need to make sure that it will run on everything, including a literal toaster.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Most of the limitations are from the game being on the ps4, not the engine itself. You can modify and improve an engine, but you can't overcome fixed hardware limitations.

Oh, this one again.

PS4 has nothing to do with it. Whether there are still PS3 limitations built in is arguable (I don't know nearly enough about programming or game design to say), but the game is well below the PS4's capabilities (to say nothing of PS4 Pro or PS5). The game can run on a potato. The real limitation is that extensive upgrades and reworks take time and money, and SE doesn't want to give the FFXIV team enough of either.

[caffe_macchiato]

People complaining about engines in MMOs really cement how little they know of the genre. That as well as outing themselves of lacking any experience outside FFXIV. Look at Everquest, FFXI, OSRS, LotRO, WoW, GW2, those games have old engines yet theyre still kicking.

Correct! FFXIV was built standing on the shoulder of giants.

Except, one small problem…most those games came out in a small span of time (1999-2003) long ago when the MMO genre was as new as the World Wide Web. People became entranced with the novel concept of being in a virtual world with others. Now it is 2022. Children learn how to use social media as soon as they can read and write. The MMO genre is older than most gamers these days, and some say it’s obsolete. Your argument, that we must respect the old ways, falls flat for anyone who’s younger than you are—most of whom can smoke, drink, and vote just like you can.

Are you SURE you want FFXIV to be a retirement home for those too old to learn something new? I don’t think it should be a pre-requisite for someone to have played EQ and WoW in the old days, and by extension be a “boomer”—to enjoy this game.

Someday they will replace you. Should the MMO genre be replaced as well? Or can SE make the game run better for everyone?

[Ransu]

Oh, this one again.

PS4 has nothing to do with it. Whether there are still PS3 limitations built in is arguable (I don't know nearly enough about programming or game design to say), but the game is well below the PS4's capabilities (to say nothing of PS4 Pro or PS5). The game can run on a potato. The real limitation is that extensive upgrades and reworks take time and money, and SE doesn't want to give the FFXIV team enough of either.

PS4 hardware when new was already outdated garbage...To say that the systems memory limitations is not a factor is ignorance at best. The engine will continue to have improvements and the support for the ps4 will continue to be a wall they have to deal with and with 7.0 making some overhauls I'd be shocked if ps4 support makes it to 8.0.

Its literally the same reason FFXI ended console support entirely. There were QoL things they just straight up couldn't do with the game because of the PS2.

[Poporito_Popoto]

Yes........

[TheMightyMollusk]

PS4 hardware when new was already outdated garbage...To say that the systems memory limitations is not a factor is ignorance at best. The engine will continue to have improvements and the support for the ps4 will continue to be a wall they have to deal with and with 7.0 making some overhauls I'd be shocked if ps4 support makes it to 8.0.

By the time we get to 8.0, we'll probably be up to PS6, so yeah, of course they'd drop a by-then-outdated console to move up to the new one, just like 4.0 dropped PS3. (And hey, maybe by then we'll actually be able to find new consoles at retail again! One can dream, right?) But, y'know, that's at least another five or six years out, so it's not really relevant right now.

Its literally the same reason FFXI ended console support entirely. There were QoL things they just straight up couldn't do with the game because of the PS2.

You mean when the PS2 online service as a whole was shut down and FFXI was the last game on it so they had to drop console support anyway?

[Atelier-Bagur]

Correct! FFXIV was built standing on the shoulder of giants.

Except, one small problem…most those games came out in a small span of time (1999-2003) long ago when the MMO genre was as new as the World Wide Web. People became entranced with the novel concept of being in a virtual world with others. Now it is 2022. Children learn how to use social media as soon as they can read and write. The MMO genre is older than most gamers these days, and some say it’s obsolete. Your argument, that we must respect the old ways, falls flat for anyone who’s younger than you are—most of whom can smoke, drink, and vote just like you can.

Are you SURE you want FFXIV to be a retirement home for those too old to learn something new? I don’t think it should be a pre-requisite for someone to have played EQ and WoW in the old days, and by extension be a “boomer”—to enjoy this game.

Someday they will replace you. Should the MMO genre be replaced as well? Or can SE make the game run better for everyone?

No, basically what I'm implying is that we dont want nor should the game need to attempt to modernize itself in terms of engines in a feeble attempt to keep up with the new kids on the block. At least not fully in that way. People play FFXIV, because they play FFXIV. Its why games still have big audiences for those older MMOs, they enjoy going back because they like what those games have. Im not ever expecting FFXIV to suddenly be at the same level of quality as an MMO made in 2022. All I care about is them adding into what already works, not to constantly re-invent the wheel like WoW attempted to do for the past 4 expansions on their end.

[Espon]

I am not really talking about the graphics. I am talking about the mechanics. The time it takes from push button to in game response. How animations for skills can go off but the skill does not trigger. The ability to place objects in a 3d space of housing. The animation limitations they are constantly experimenting with via Hildebrand.
They are trying to make this engine do things they never intended for it to do when they first made/adjusted it.

It can only bend so far. They will hit a wall eventually and the game will not be able to evolve any more. And old problems will be tolerated less and less as new games come out that dont have those problems.

You're mixing up engine limitations with game design. Just because something works a certain way, doesn't mean they're incapable of changing it, they just choose not to.

For example with housing, they could easily put in a coordinates window for fine-tuning and floating objects, they just choose not to... likely because they do not think objects should be suspended in the air or moved out of bounds.

There isn't really an animation lock anymore compared to how it was in ARR, there is simply a short delay after using a skill to prevent you from weaving in all your oGCDs at once. Abilities trigger their effect at a certain part of the animation so that it looks coherent. For example, Rage of Halone has an extremely long animation but it does not prevent you from hitting an oGCD during it. I would love it if I didn't die after hitting Hallowed Ground and have the skill go on cooldown, but they decided its effect triggers at the end of its long animation, not because there's some engine limitation that forces an invulnerability to wait a couple seconds before working.

I'm not saying there is no problems with the engine, because there obviously is, but you can't blame the way everything works on it without factoring in the way developers made the game.

[Raven2014]

We HAVE been getting upgraded though?

I think we already had one major graphic upgrade, and 7.0 is supposed to have another one that will improve character customization.

If you are here since 2.0, you know the net code have become A LOT better over time.


First, a game engine is not really just one monolith entity, it's usually made up of 4-5 separate engines that handle different aspect, and like I said we have been receiving incremental upgrade overtime, and no doubt will continue in the future.


Second, "spaghetti code or lazy dev" seem to be these days just a beating stick for people to use whenever they want to complain, especially the former. But anyone work with software developing will know that no way in hell you can maintain a game this big if the base code is truly just a mess. Forget about expanding, the majority of your resource would be spent on making sure the thing don't catch fire itself. At some point in the past it may have been true, but I feel these days it's just a meme that people heard at one time in distant past and never bother to verify or update themselves on it.

Third, it's also a matter of expectation. I can find an example where another game do a few particular things far better than FF14. But I dare anyone to cite me an example of a MMO that are more well-rounded than FF14. I've always said the type of players what will get the most mileage out of this game is the type who can enjoy a wide spread of different content type. I think a subset of players are only interested in a few particular things, and instead of understand those aspect only a part of the offering, they mistakenly believe the dev is being lazy/stingy because SE don't pool every iota of resource and main hour in only the aspect that they want to play. Just like anyone else, I do have a few particular area that I prefer will be a bit more in depth, but at the same time I don't think a truely lazy dev would be able to delivery a variety of content at this scale.