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

[RichardButte]

Before you get mad, I agree there are problems from the things you listed, I don’t see them redoing it again. Even if we complain.

The game is eventually going to succumb to its own database limitations, and long before its life as an MMO has run its course.

XIV could go on for well over another 10 years thematically, but it's not going to survive that long technically.

Not only is the database going to continue to present a problem, but more and more features (like glamour logs) that become standard and even expected in MMOs are going to feel notably missing from XIV.

For example, how long have they been promising some type of mobile device companion, now...? Even Destiny 2 has one of those, and it's more of a janky skinner box simulator than an MMO.

I didn't make this post with the intention of saying, "YOU BETTER FIX YOUR STUFF!". I made it to establish that I, as a player, fully understand that a revamp like this will be necessary and I wouldn't fault them for doing it and to see who else would feel the same way.

WoW's "glamour log" is, frankly, amazing (it actually makes collecting glamour in old content fun and enjoyable), and it makes the one they're rolling out now in XIV look awful by comparison. If it would mean no longer having to deal with half measures like the dresser that are also going to become outdated, I'd rather they just go ahead and do the revamp work they clearly need to.

FFXI is still adding new content and items with every patch (monthly). Also a lot of FFXI's "technical limitations" turned out to not really be limitations once the dev team stopped making excuses and started finding solutions.

Maybe the OP is being a little dramatic, but their point is 100% on target. The number of times Yoshi P has come out and said they can't do some basic expansion of a particular in-game system after only 2 expansions is, frankly, alarming. Do you remember back in 2.0 when SE said your entire character data including all your retainers is sent to the server every 15 seconds and that's why they couldn't expand retainer storage? The number of cut corners and band-aids revealed in that statement alone made alarm bells go off in my programmer brain. And that was in 2.0. What happens in 7.0?

The point is this needs to be addressed now while it's a manageable problem and not later when it's a behemoth of a problem.

Exactly.

It's like leaving a pile of dirty dishes in the sink: sure, SE may not have to deal with it right now, but letting it sit for too long means those dishes are going to attract bugs and mold.

The issues with the database that we're seeing now are the flies circling the pile of SE's unwashed dishes. The longer they wait, the more awful it's going to be when they finally DO decide to clean them.

[Sebazy]

IMHO, both of these backend issues stem from the same core issue:

SE have historically shown that they are hugely adverse to anything that could potentially inflate server costs beyond the bare minimum.

This extends to both CPU power (which defines the slow tick rate, it's also visible in the sluggish manner in which aoe effects appear to radiate outwards) as well as storage (FFXI's efforts to skimp on every last MB were legendary, even going so far as to prune inactive characters from the live servers after a certain amount of time, a move which likely actually cost them a considerable amount of return custom before they implemented a come back campaign of sorts).

IMHO the only way SE will truly get FFXIV's back end performance on a par with WoW would be to go poach some of Blizzard's talent whilst also investing in much more capable server hardware. That is never happening for a multitude of reasons.

Don't buy into the nonsense that this game is hitting the limits of how scalable it's back end is because that just isn't the case, whilst I raised my doubts about the performance and reliability of this game's infrastructure at ARR's release, no one could argue with how well it scaled once SE managed to fish the chequebook out of the piranha pool. You'd think that someone at SE loses their life every time they add another spindle to the server rack, that's how adverse they are to it.

[Belisaire]

You can build a better platform/database structure while maintaining an existing product on an old platform. It would not require some sort of massive pause on playability. It definitely would not be a trivial amount of work. I work in tech though and we have a product running on an old platform that isn't scaling right because it was made when our business prospects were much lower. But we've been crushing it and now we're building a new platform, set to go live in a couple months, and at no point are we taking our platform down for months (and we collect infinitely more data than XIV does).

They closed down 1.0 when they did because frankly, they needed their entire staff operation on 2.0 to make sure it was launched on time and to create content. 2.0 was not a database/platform switch. It was a completely new game, and at some point due to staff resources they needed to abandon 1.0 and go all into 2.0 with every person they had.

[Vstarstruck]

You can build a better platform/database structure while maintaining an existing product on an old platform. It would not require some sort of massive pause on playability. It definitely would not be a trivial amount of work. I work in tech though and we have a product running on an old platform that isn't scaling right because it was made when our business prospects were much lower. But we've been crushing it and now we'rebuilding a new platform, set to go live in a couple months, and at no point are we taking our platform down for months (and we collect infinitely more data than XIV does).

They closed down 1.0 when they did because frankly, they needed their entire staff operation on 2.0 to make sure it was launched on time and to create content. 2.0 was not a database/platform switch. It was a completely new game, and at some point due to staff resources they needed to abandon 1.0 and go all into 2.0 with every person they had.

thanks for this post, maybe this can be realistically done if they hire a few more hands sort of speak. FFXIV makes money, can we see some of that put back in the game please? bigger budget please.

[RichardButte]

Pretty much!

The bean counters are pretty much everyone's worst enemy, be you a creator or consumer

Heh, funny story: I actually saw an accountant post on a game forum and ask that people stop blaming them. He was all "We just tell them how much money we made. We don't tell anyone how they should go about making it. Please stop blaming us and blame the executives who actually make these decisions!"

[Callinon]

Heh, funny story: I actually saw an accountant post on a game forum and ask that people stop blaming them. He was all "We just tell them how much money we made. We don't tell anyone how they should go about making it. Please stop blaming us and blame the executives who actually make these decisions!"

That's funny, but they're right. The accountants are not making decisions, they're just doing math.

[KageTokage]

The game really does seem limited in ways that other MMOs aren't, the strange way it handles AoE damage/heals being the one I tend to notice the most often.

The fact that there's a hard cap on how many players can even be struck by a single AoE kind of takes some of the fun out of the SB S ranks when they can only damage a small portion of the players present.

[Krotoan]

I enjoy XIV, especially because it's the only themepark MMO I've ever seen that feels like they truly put some love and care into the storyline, characters, and setting.

But there's a worrisome trend when itcomes to developer comments: technical issues tend to be the #1 reason for rejecting requests from the playerbase (even QoL suggestions that have been requested for years), citing the inadequate database as the reason these suggestions either cannot work or would be difficult to implement.

The most recent glamour log changes are sadly a good example of this. They're an improvement, but we can only store up to 200 items in the dresser, meaning this is only ever going to be a bandaid fix, especially as the game continues to expand and more and more items are added. There will still come a day when players will need to empty that dresser out to make room for new items, something they are NOT going to want to do.

This change only delays the inevitable.

I don't see 200 as being their final number though. This looks like an initial foray into their glamour idea with possible expansion as they see its impact. Yes it still has a limitation, but we aren't aware of what the "final cap" is. I remain optimistic about this particular feature and see it as a good start. I would LOVE a GW2 type solution for dyes and wardrobe with items being unlocked account wide and forever as long as you've touched something that used that model once, but that's a whole other system and would have to be coded in as such.. which you did touch on and I'll continue on that point later..

If they wanted to take an expansion to rebuild all of this and get everything up to speed, making the game "future proof" for later expansions and all of their database needs, as well as refactoring the netcode to be more responsive and workable, I wouldn't begrudge them one bit for doing so.

Now, before the "SE Defense Force" chimes in with "YOU CAN WORK AROUND THESE ISSUES!!", please stop missing the point entirely.

There's no reason WoW should have better database servers than XIV, and when you say "You can work around it", you're acknowledging that there is indeed a problem to work around in the first place, one that modern AAA MMOs don't have and one that XIV certainly shouldn't have either.

So I'd say take the time to fix the issues you need to fix, devs, even if it means rebuilding most of the game. The game is more than prosperous enough to do so at this point and, after all, any "fixes" implemented without doing a full revamp are just going to be bandaids in the long run.

XIV is a wonderful game and absolutely worth putting this kind of love and care into.

PS. This is not going to be an OPTIONAL change for the game, FYI. If they're struggling this hard to make due with their current database servers, they're eventually going to find themselves up against a wall where they either cannot add new expansions or need to start deleting expansions from the game to make room for new ones.

PPS. They've also made a change like this once already, back before the game was profitable, where they were building 2.0 while keeping 1.0 running AND were adding content to it.

You can learn all about it in this awesome documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0yQKI7Yw4

This whole game is a workaround. They took the poorly cobbled together mess that was outsourced code and resources and made the game we know and love today. How they convinced someone at the top that "hey, this was a promise to our fans and we failed them, please let us try and give them what we presented and save the face of our company and the world we envisioned" is a miracle in and of itself, let alone creating the experience we enjoy today out of the sludgepile they were given to work with.

Don't get me wrong, I am not arguing against you. I am one of those that would patiently stand by for a year ("one or two patch cycles".. is not enough time) with NOTHING added. No gear, no dungeons, no patches beyond fixing game breaking bugs (like locking players out of actually playing) , no new events, no NOTHING. Just fix it.. please!... but I don't see that happening.

The effort and money involved , from the point of view of someone who does cost/risk analysis as part of their job, is not something you could convince a company bigwig of. At that point I'm pretty sure , as has been pointed out several times in this thread, we would just get FFXIV 2 (.. I dunno.. I mean.. FFXIV II looks weird.. then again the 2 does too.. ). I'm reasonably sure that they would rather as a company spend the money on the continuation of this world in a new engine/framework and game before they reworked the entire thing. Especially since they'd be able to sell the new game and make that initial gob of money instead of handing out a years worth of work for free. .. maybe not totally free if SE gave them more budget from the subs.. but I don't know the actual financials on sub to cost of server maintenance and operation ratio.

Also the majority of the playerbase would REVOLT. Outright. People cry when they don't get enough content or enough unique content already. Imagine the outcry if they announced NO content. Which is what I believe it would take. People would leave in droves and the money they had to make these changes would dry up. Investors would get scared, THAT money would stop as well, people would get fired and the project would die.

In the eyes of an investor or a business person this is optional though. Keep the goose pooping those golden eggs and keep it pooping till they stop coming. When the goose collapses it's time to go look for another one. Bummer about that old goose but there will always be more.

They turned off 1.0 for a quite a bit while it was revamped into 2.0. Just off. I imagine the crunch time was incredible for that. No money coming in, just paying for work that may have been a black hole in the end. That was insanity!




TLR: you are asking for another miracle to happen and that's very unlikely. I hope it does though.

[Minako_Nightsong]

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.

[Aomine1992]

I totally agree with this becuase these limitations are getting out of hand and hem trying to blame the PS4 like it's the PS3 is not a great excuse...

And eventually this will blow up in their face so the time is now for them to start fixing that crap now especially with relics coming out that will be time enough for people to time sync while they release minimal content or just do the with the new expansion that's plenty of time for them to dig themselves out but they need to really start hitting the games actual infrastructure...and throw the whole launcher away I'm tired of waiting almost 5-10mins to get to the character screen lol