Chocobo during Queue - "Difficult"

[Hulan]

Except that programming does allow for going back and tweaking previous work to facilitate the new concepts. While not impossible, it's a little harder to do changes like that for physical items without making previous work wasted. That said, I'm going to repeat this: I doubt this is a problem the programmers caused, the issue was created during the design phase for chocobo companions and should have been considered/planned for then.

It was a metaphor. One that I thought at the time was quite clever, but clearly not. I am - in fact - a professional developer (though I will grant those who claim as much are a dime a dozen around here); and while I do not claim to be perfect at my job, I am very good at it. You can, of course, go back and change old code, but doing so carries its fair share of risks. What you say has merit, but you cannot plan for everything, and what is done is done. Saying that they should have seen the need for companions to not conflict with the duty finder system is all well and good, but they did not, and I find it quite believable that it is now in a state where changing it would take fundamental reconstruction of at least one subsystem to accomplish.

Making something "right" the first time requires a complete understanding of the final product. Unfortunately, MMOs do not have a final product; they continue to evolve and change. One lack of foresight early on can have rippling effects for years. I am not so quick to forgive people for slipshod code, but I also understand the magnitude of the undertaking an MMO represents. Getting everything right is nigh on impossible, and even a seemingly good design decision can have unexpected consequences. Does that exempt them from the culpability of not foreseeing this issue? Maybe, probably not. But that wasn't the question. The question was, "Is it really that hard?". And the answer to that is: almost certainly. This issue involves a lot more than just "Is the chocobo in the party?" It touches on fundamental server architecture questions that we don't even know the question to find the answer to.

[Kuroyasha]

if someone qued with a chocobo i would leave and not care about the penalty lol.

[HakuroDK]

Here's my understanding of things.

Chocobos take up space in a party, but they are not necessarily considered "Party Members". They're almost like Guest NPCs, in a sense. If you form three players and a chocobo together, you don't get access to Limit Breaks whatsoever, because a Chocobo does not count as a party member, and thus, the party is not considered a "Light Party", which is required for four-man dungeons. This also has complications in the duty finder because, if a party is not a "Light Party", then it would allow players to recruit. However, if there are already four in the party (three and a Chocobo), then you can't have any more characters in the party in the first place.

Chocobo companions, at least when it comes to party makeup, is kinda paradoxical like that. And I'm sure, the way the system was developed, it would require some serious retweaking of the companion system for it to work to accommodate Chocobos (and maybe Magitek Armor later on) in parties for duty finder.

I know it's not impossible because SWTOR did it, but the difference there is that SWTOR built their party system with companions in mind. FFXIV did not. So... yeah. Definitely gonna need some serious code tweaking to fix companions in parties.

[Gesser]

@Rjain, I don't appreciate the sarcastic remark.

I didn't say it would be easy, I'm curious how legitimately difficult it is.

@ArashiDaigon, under my suggestion the system wouldn't have to differentiate between PC & Companion as party makeup (and changes to) would have no effect on the 'solo queue' check/flag.

Under my proposal, you could freely move to & from parties, companions included, it would still retain your solo-queue status.

[ArashiDaigon]

@ArashiDaigon, under my suggestion the system wouldn't have to differentiate between PC & Companion as party makeup (and changes to) would have no effect on the 'solo queue' check/flag.

Under my proposal, you could freely move to & from parties, companions included, it would still retain your solo-queue status.

In theory. However, let's say you input said code like you suggested. The program would then have to say ok, disband/reform for what? It would look and see PC(Chocobo). So it would disband the chocobo, then when you have "completed" dungeon, you'd be back at the spot and chocobo reform. Now... when it reforms, will it use a gysal green again, cause with the coding to "reform" party it may.

Now, let's take same code. You are no longer soloing but in an actual party. You wanted to form with say a friend, so you are duo partnered. If you use said coding, this may cause you to go in solo, and cause your duo partner to go into another queue instead of you being in the same system. As your duo partner is registered under (PC).

So then you'd have to input a different strand to differentiate between said sources and such, while also tying in the structure you have now. In other words, something that seems soooo simple and very easy can be longer than anticipated, not to mention could potentially cause another code strand to break, or not do it's intended effect.

[Alacor]

It really all depends on how they have it set up. I have really basic knowledge of programming. I do find myself wondering why they cannot add an if statement for the queue that checks to see if the second party member(provided there are two people in the party) is a chocobo, and if it is then it ignores the fact that you're in a party and allows you to queue.

But then again it could conflict with adding you to another party once the queue pops. So again, it really all depends on how they have it set up.

[WingsofWar]

Someone with coding knowledge tell me...
Is it really that hard to keep your Companion flagged as a party member & simply cause an automated disband/reform when you accept a queue?

What we fail to understand is not the coding, but how the system was built. It seems like its not just a simple flag in the header needs to be altered, rather an entire object class or model that needs to be changed or redone to accept the que, and if that is the case we don't know how large this object is and how much it affects the system entirely.

The object model for party and the object model for queing into instances may have strict checks, and if the companion model is embedded into the party object you are going to run into a wide range of issues trying to que into instances.

What issues? I can only guess that the instance server will have a tough time holding onto your companion model in your party while your in another party. Essentially you are trying to run 2 party objects one with you and chocobo, and 1 with you and the instance dungeon.

That's my guess from my basic knowledge in coding C++/C#/Python/Ruby/ObjectC.

[Hulan]

Keep in mind also that when you go into an instance, the responsibility for processing on your character is transferred to a physically completely different machine (don't ask me why, but this was confirmed in their response to the /tell in dungeon question). This means that a lot of the information about your character's state has to be correctly maintained and curated by two machines simultaneously. Such situations practically beg for synchronization dilemmas such as race conditions, resource starvation, or deadlock. Yes, "putting a flag on it" is a correct and simple enough answer. But things get infinitely more complicated and dangerous when you inject data moving between physical machines. It also bares mentioning that, as mentioned above, they have backed themselves into a corner with the party mechanics. Chocobos are treated special. They count as being in a party for the sake of things like party invites, but have special rules associated with them, such as the inability to enter instances. Without seeing the code, it's impossible to tell, but they could easily have coded themselves into a corner.

To be clear, this does not make them bad programmers, it's something that happens all the time especially on evolving projects like MMOs. Imagine you are building a Car, and you build a Ferarri sports car, then someone comes in and says "Ok, now make it seat 5 people." It's impossible. Yes you can make a car seat 5 people, but you can't make that car seat 5 people.

[DefendPopPunk]

I took intro to programming where we used C# to make a calculator. It was buggy as hell and frankly it never worked. Even still, how complicated could this be? I bet I could do it. Just toss in an if statement and a do-while and we're home in time for lunch or whatev

[melflomil]

Yes let's do this and Game breaking bugs gets introduced me.