Is it maybe time for a full infrastructure rebuild? (Re: Database and netcode issues)

[silverlunarfox]

It's not...optional, unless they start actually removing entire expansions worth of items from the game or something to that effect.

If the database is THIS limiting to what they can and cannot do with the game, it's literally only a matter of time before they can go no further with it and need to do a full revamp anyway.

Better sooner than later.

In which there would be a new numbered FF MMO. It would be far easier to just focus on a new game during the other's end of life than rebuild it at this point. Since it's not at its end of life yet, why would they divert the resources to it?

Also you can't compare this to wow. Blizzard works on a select few games. They have larger budgets and resources because of this. Square Enix is not just FFXIV. Square Enix has multiple teams working on multiple games. I feel they move alot of time, resources and cash inbetween all of their projects for better and for worse.

Remember they revamped this game, but had little to no expectations of it succeeding. I think that's where a lot of the old coding and database issues stem from. Why pour money into something that could still largely fail like 1.0 did? Yes that decision is biting them in the butt now, but in the end, they did a good job with what they had for it to get this far.

[Tridus]

Well I'm no programmer but maybe the reason why wow can store glamour appearances and FFXIV can't is because wow has an ancient engine that retains some assets from the freakin WarCraft III engine. All that gear might not ammount to that many data,

The server doesn't care what the glamour looks like. If you've unlocked it or not is a boolean value: true or false (1 or 0 to the processor & database). That's true no matter what it is. Set aside a 1KB chunk of space for every character, use a bitmask, and you can store if they've unlocked 8192 glamour items. That's how the crafting and gathering logs know every item you've made/gathered at least once to give you an unlock bonus.

(I am a programmer.)

[Enla]

Honestly given the monumental issues that have come up that are always blamed on the coding or server issues, and by the creators no less, I'd be entirely fine skipping a patch cycle or two for them to revamp the system. Though ideally I'd prefer they hire a temporary team alongside the main one to handle it and push the whole thing out with the next expansion instead.

[Lord_Zlatan]

snip

I dont really know anything about data and coding, but I am pretty sure that a list that shows the stuff thats been made or worn has to be less intense on the system than having to actually carry the item, or have it stored on a retainer... I agree. It doesnt need to be overcomplicated at all

[Lord_Zlatan]

Honestly given the monumental issues that have come up that are always blamed on the coding or server issues, and by the creators no less, I'd be entirely fine skipping a patch cycle or two for them to revamp the system. Though ideally I'd prefer they hire a temporary team alongside the main one to handle it and push the whole thing out with the next expansion instead.

"You agree wholeheartedly withe Odile Delacroix"

[RukiaFae]

snip

I’m sorry I didn play during 1.0 so I\\'m not sure of the exact time line and details but I'm pretty 1.0 was down for a few months prior 2.0. They could have did a complete overhaul during this time but the choose not for some reason. This was the best time in the cycle to do it.

They are going to have to cut resources and stop the patches we are getting now to focus on this one issue, then the game will have to be down for some time to implement and test everything. People complain about 24 hr main. It is not worth it to start over this late in the game when the game is this successful. They would rather work on the issues slowly, fixing what they can, while pumping out content to keep people subbed and attract new players.

Major overhauls take time, money, and lots of planning that they would rather invest in new expansions. When the system cant handle the game they will create a new MMO.

[Callinon]

I dont really know anything about data and coding, but I am pretty sure that a list that shows the stuff thats been made or worn has to be less intense on the system than having to actually carry the item, or have it stored on a retainer... I agree. It doesnt need to be overcomplicated at all

Not really. Items in FFXIV really have the following volatile (changable) values:
Spiritbond level
Condition
Dye

It gets a little trickier when we start talking about pink-quality items and relics that allow for dynamic stat assignments, but for the purposes of glamour none of that matters. In fact none of what I mentioned there matters either (maybe dye, but I'd handle that differently). You simply stipulate that an item must be at 100% condition or above before it can be relegated to glamour duty, and warn that spiritbond level will go to 0. Just like the armoire actually. All you're really storing is the item's numeric ID value OR a big boolean list tied to the item database. The actual space any of this takes up is pretty small.

This is basically how WoW's glamour system works too. It just unlocks the glamour state for any item you've collected. It doesn't matter what happens to the physical item after that, you've got it and so do all the other characters on your account.

The OP's post really hits the nail on the head. SE rushed the hell out of their database and netcoding design process when they were making 2.0. And if they don't spend some time getting their act together, the whole thing is just going to collapse in on itself someday.

[Vstarstruck]

In which there would be a new numbered FF MMO. It would be far easier to just focuson a new game during the other's end of life than rebuild it at this point. Since it's not at its end of life yet, why would they divert the resources to it?

Also you can't compare this to wow. Blizzard works on a select few games. They have larger budgets and resources because of this. Square Enix is not just FFXIV. Square Enix has multiple teams working on multiple games. I feel they move alot of time, resources and cash inbetween all of their projects for better and for worse.

Remember they revamped this game, but had little to no expectations of it succeeding. I think that's where a lot of the old coding and database issues stem from. Why pour money into something that could still largely fail like 1.0 did? Yes that decision is biting them in the butt now, but in the end, they did a good job with what they had for it to get this far.

My guess they did 1.0 to 2.0 as more as a salvage operation since they did not know how well or bad the new version would do, so a limited budget is justified, and that brings in trying shortcuts.

But now that it is well funded, and people are spending money on the game, still running on those shortcuts is not justified.

Honestly given the monumental issues that have come up that are always blamed on the coding or server issues, and by the creators no less, I'd be entirely fine skipping a patch cycle or two for them to revamp the system. Though ideally I'd prefer they hire a temporary team alongside the main one to handle it and push the whole thing out with the next expansion instead.

Just as long as they do it, i mean it seems really needed this point, esp to make full use of a 5.0+

The OP's post really hits the nail on the head. SE rushed the hell out of their database and netcoding design process when they were making 2.0. And if they don't spend some time getting their act together, the whole thing is just going to collapse in on itself someday.

Main worry, def^

[Shouko]

The issue is they won't even fix the basic stuff like QOL changes, what makes you think they will overhaul the major part of the game? SE got burned on XIV, they're too busy funding other projects and the likes and give this game the scraps left over from the cash shop and stuff.

[Tridus]

I dont really know anything about data and coding, but I am pretty sure that a list that shows the stuff thats been made or worn has to be less intense on the system than having to actually carry the item, or have it stored on a retainer... I agree. It doesnt need to be overcomplicated at all

Yeah. The WoW system knows if you've unlocked it, which means "had it in your possession at some point". When you do that with a lot of items, you can track that with 1 bit. So you can track unlocks on a huge number of items in a small amount of storage space. That doesn't let you track dye or anything like that, but for unlock purposes it doesn't matter (you'd need to dye it as part of the glamour process instead, in that case). AFAIK the armoire works like that right now, which is why only certain items can go in it.

The glamour closet is working more like inventory, in which case you have to store which items are in it. That require at a minimum some kind of item key to indicate what item is in that slot, and possibly also a slot number if it's not a fixed data structure like an array. In this case you don't need a quantity because you can't have more than one of a given item in the slot. But an item key is a bigger value to store, so you need more storage space to do it if you want to store a large number of things in there.

Without knowing what their backend looks like it's hard to know why they chose to go that way considering the limitations it creates. Perhaps they didn't have the budget to sort out how to do a dye on a glamour of an item without doing it on the item itself, which would be a problem in a WoW system and likely doesn't exist in this one (assuming it works the old way where you'd dye the item itself and then cast the glamour).

I bet it'd be really fascinating if we could ever get a technical talk from someone on the team about why this stuff works the way it does.