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  1. #1
    Player
    Lord_Zlatan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2013
    Location
    Ul' Dah
    Posts
    1,188
    Character
    Zlatan Tarrant
    World
    Famfrit
    Main Class
    Red Mage Lv 70
    Quote Originally Posted by Tridus View Post
    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
    (2)

  2. #2
    Player
    Callinon's Avatar
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    May 2014
    Location
    ???
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    1,557
    Character
    Callinon Soulforge
    World
    Ultros
    Main Class
    Dancer Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan View Post
    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.
    (10)

  3. #3
    Player
    RichardButte's Avatar
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    Mar 2011
    Posts
    1,107
    Character
    Richard Butte
    World
    Hyperion
    Main Class
    Machinist Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Callinon View Post
    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.
    This.

    It's not going to be an option, and we're going to hit the point where they'll need to start deleting expansion items from the game to make room for new ones.

    Remember that chest piece appearance you're so fond of? Better not get too attached to it...

    Quote Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor View Post
    They are better off creating a brand new FF MMO at that point.
    Even if, logistics-wise, that's what they'd be doing, the story, setting, and content of this game are still very much loved by the community.

    We're not talking about rebuilding the ENTIRE game from scratch, just about updating database and netcode.

    Again, they built 2.0 WHILE maintaining and updating 1.0, and that required rebuilding nearly everything except some parts of major cities, since the old world was built from copy-pasta.
    (6)
    Last edited by RichardButte; 01-12-2018 at 04:46 AM.

  4. #4
    Player
    Tridus's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2017
    Location
    The Goblet
    Posts
    1,510
    Character
    Cecelia Stormfeather
    World
    Cactuar
    Main Class
    White Mage Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by RichardButte View Post
    This.

    It's not going to be an option, and we're going to hit the point where they'll need to start deleting expansion items from the game to make room for new ones.

    Remember that chest piece appearance you're so fond of? Better not get too attached to it...
    No they won't. On the server end, the database requirements for that chest are a primary key and a few bits of data. Anyone who has it will have more data tied to their specific copy of it, but that applies to every item. If you can store 200 clothes, it doesn't matter in the slightest to the server which 200 clothes they are or which expansion they're from.

    They'd only have to delete it if the client couldn't handle the data requirements to have all the models, and with the PS3 gone that doesn't seem like any kind of urgent issue.
    (6)
    Survivor of Housing Savage 2018.
    Discord: Tridus#2642

  5. #5
    Player
    Tridus's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2017
    Location
    The Goblet
    Posts
    1,510
    Character
    Cecelia Stormfeather
    World
    Cactuar
    Main Class
    White Mage Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan View Post
    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.
    (8)
    Survivor of Housing Savage 2018.
    Discord: Tridus#2642

  6. #6
    Player
    Minako_Nightsong's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2017
    Location
    Gridania
    Posts
    111
    Character
    Minako Nightsong
    World
    Excalibur
    Main Class
    Bard Lv 70
    I agree with the statements of the OP but there is another option they might consider. They could age out the game. When that day comes that they can no longer make patches or expansions they simply do not make more. At that time the game has concluded it's natural life cycle and the cost of rebuilding the engine is more than the profits to be made by continuing for a few more years.

    I think they do need to go through their main story questline and revamp it for new or returning players. It's a huge turn off at level 50 and cost them money on lost business. An mmo should be prepared to streamline old content as it ages. Things like a housing revamp so that everyone can get an apartment and maybe fix that animation where people appear to run in place sometimes and other times seem to slide across the screen would help attract and retain customers.
    (0)
    Last edited by Minako_Nightsong; 01-12-2018 at 01:42 PM.