Quote Originally Posted by Sjol View Post
In my experience brand new engine doesn't mean starting from scratch. It's mostly a marketing thing and it means you've made sufficient changes to how the engine works you feel comfortable slapping a 2.0 or a new name on it.
The engine they used for 2.0 wasn't new, but it was not the 1.0 engine. They heavily adapted it from a single player engine to work for an MMORPG.
If it is code written in 1.0, 2.0, or later I don't think it matters to their overall situation. Tech debt is tech debt.
I'd agree more in the context that it's 2.0 and later tech debt since they denied there was any significantly still around from prior to that (or tech debt from adapting a single player engine).
I don't know if that system came from 1.0 or 2.0 as I wasn't around, and I don't feel like doing that particular research right now
From what I recall, they went to the Calamity Salvager to re-obtain items from 1.0. They also had to re-hire any retainers they had in 1.0. They have proven themselves able to do this again (for example when they removed belts or when your house gets demo).
The problem with adding the extra storage while keeping the retainers in read-only mode is that they still just doubled their storage costs.
With a big enough operation, they could probably just move it all over if they can do it in 48 hours. Or they could only unlock the "extra storage" upon login so that it doesn't increase storage considerations for inactive characters. I think in Stormblood an inventory increase they did was gated behind story progression.
Quote Originally Posted by Sjol View Post
there's no one developer who has a good grasp on what must be millions or tens-of-millions of lines of code
Just because a company has millions of customers doesn't mean that their code is very complicated. In a big way, this is why object-oriented programming is pushed hard by people. It's infinitely more difficult to grasp when it's not done that way.

It's also why scripts are used. Scripts were a major problem in 1.0 because they relied on them to such a point that both the server and players were taking ages to do basic operations. But they definitely still use lots of scripts, tables and shaders.
It's impossible for a human being to keep that much detail in their head, even extraordinary ones.
One game I worked with wasn't object oriented. It took me months to grasp the different functions illogically put in different files and map them in my head. But eventually, I did. If they've been working on this game for years, they should have it mapped out and know their way around it by now.