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

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I think its time for one. FFXI came out in 2002 and 8 years later 2010 FFXIV 1.0 came out. Now its been almost another 8 years since FFXIV 1.0 came out. Hope if they do update engine they use same engine other new SE game's have. Think its unreal 4 engine that they use.

I dont think unreal 4 is that great for mmos. also, 1.0 and 2.0 use different engines for the game as is.

[Istaru]

I dont think unreal 4 is that great for mmos. also, 1.0 and 2.0 use different engines for the game as is.

I think XIV uses a modified luminous engine.

[Krotoan]

There are like 2-3 Star Trek episodes about this exact mentality: leaders of these societies that are all like "These people have lived here for thousands of years! It would be cruel to ask them to leave!"

Meanwhile a giant goddamn asteroid is a week away from killing everyone.

Maybe you need to re-read the OP, because it cites only the devs' repeated insistence on the fact that the database servers and infrastructure are woefully inadequate to implement nearly any addition to the game players request. It then continues to say that we, the players, would be fine with the devs taking the time they need to rebuild this infrastructure because it would mean smoother sailing in the long run.

Not sure how you take that and transform it into a demand that these issues be fixed...

Really, it's going to be a bigger problem for them than it is for the players. All I'm saying is I would be understanding if they needed to take a lot of time to fix it...

This is a game. Not a civilization that's going to be destroyed. Meanwhile the person I'm responding to (who wasn't the OP btw, I'm starting to think you missed that part, I already responded to the OP earlier. ) is asking for people to sacrifice possibly health and sanity to save it, working on the new implementation WHILE maintaining the current updates and content flow.

I am going to respond separately to this part. As a person with a heart, I would care.
But...
I see things like this often, and it really is misplaced.
As paying customers, this is not our responsibility. If they do not have the necessary staff to run this product, we shouldn’t accept less for our money because someone else simply wants to keep more money for themselves. I think it is accepted as either true or mostly true that SE makes money from sales and subscriptions for this product.
How much profit they realize or want to realize from it aren’t our concerns. Only what they provide in return for our money.
Even more, it may do good to not poo poo the company and simply accept less, they could do the unthinkable. Hire more people to properly support their product and do the things they need to do that the game can flourish. Again, their problems, not ours.
Asking for something may not always lead to people being abused, sometimes it does the opposite.

So it's OK because hey.. you paid for something and it only matters you get your moneys worth regardless of suffering? That's what you just said and it sounds .. kinda awful don't you think?

Requesting the SE feed money into this game we all love and enjoy and as you've said PAY FOR is different then saying the team currently working on it is lazy or just that they could be doing more because they aren't writing an entirely new game at the same time as they create new content. That's what I'm responding to there.

SE is a company and deserves very little loyalty and or compassion. The Dev team however are people with lives outside the studio who have already gone into such crunch time that they needed a couple months to recover after the first time. And then did it again for the expansion. "Ask for what you want but know what you're asking for" is what I preach.

you want to support this: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-bigger-budget

not someone who suggests (NOT SPEAKING ABOUT THE OP) squeezing more out of the workers in the same timeframe.

[Claviusnex]

I think one mistake people make is assuming that a major restructuring has to be done all at once. SE should be able to compartmentalize the areas and stage them into an Expac and dot releases. For example my understanding is one of the restrictions causing problems is that a large user data structure is passed across the network when a user is transferred across the various servers. The structure includes information that isn't needed by every function so is wasting bandwidth. Looking at this type of a problem and changing it to pass a user token that could be used to access a database for the specific information the function needs would free up network bandwidth. It would also make it easier to add new information as you wouldn't have to touch every piece of code that passes the existing structure around. Working in this fashion SE should be able to upgrade the platform and create new content with minimal impact.

[Zeonx]

Well let's be real there. A whole lot of people had problems with their Canadian ISP too back when they were in Montreal.

At this point I don't know if they've just managed to choose another ISP that can't handle their traffic (maybe it's time to look in to regional data centers) or if their netcode is really just so completely abominable that it can't handle realistic levels of latency and packetloss that might occur over a couple thousand miles of countryside. To be fair, it could easily be both.

Well either way it should be fixed, this is the only game that I see issues with its funny my cousin played FFXI for a long time he said never had internet issues he could leave that game on all night while he bazar and no drops unless they had a maintenance.

this game has had problems since beta re-made it didnt have problems after 1 single update they did a few years back that started the 90k errors.

[Istaru]

This is a game. Not a civilization that's going to be destroyed. Meanwhile the person I'm responding to (who wasn't the OP btw, I'm starting to think you missed that part, I already responded to the OP earlier. ) is asking for people to sacrifice possibly health and sanity to save it, working on the new implementation WHILE maintaining the current updates and content flow.

First off, you glossed over the part where I stated, “As a person with a heart, I would care.”. I would care if they were abused by their management. My answer would not be to apologize for requesting that they earn my money. I would demand they stop. If they didn’t, I would cease to do business with them. Clear?

So it's OK because hey.. you paid for something and it only matters you get your moneys worth regardless of suffering? That's what you just said and it sounds .. kinda awful don't you think?

Not what I’m talking about. If SE needs to do X, Y and Z to support what they sold to us, then it is their responsibility to meet that need. It is not ours to accept X, when they could take care of the other things but they won’t pay for them.

Requesting the SE feed money into this game we all love and enjoy and as you've said PAY FOR is different then saying the team currently working on it is lazy or just that they could be doing more because they aren't writing an entirely new game at the same time as they create new content. That's what I'm responding to there.

I never said anyone was lazy, anywhere, in any thread, not in the entire almost 7 years I have been on these forums. Not sure where that comes from. For the record, I don’t think they’re lazy.

SE is a company and deserves very little loyalty and or compassion. The Dev team however are people with lives outside the studio who have already gone into such crunch time that they needed a couple months to recover after the first time. And then did it again for the expansion. "Ask for what you want but know what you're asking for" is what I preach.

you want to support this: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-bigger-budget

not someone who suggests (NOT SPEAKING ABOUT THE OP) squeezing more out of the workers in the same timeframe.

We agree about this. I do not think SE should abuse their people to fix something or whatever, it is why I specifically stated hiring people as an acceptable outcome and did not list run your team into an early grave as one.

[Krotoan]

First off, you glossed over the part where I stated, “As a person with a heart, I would care.”. I would care if they were abused by their management. My answer would not be to apologize for requesting that they earn my money. I would demand they stop. If they didn’t, I would cease to do business with them. Clear?



Not what I’m talking about. If SE needs to do X, Y and Z to support what they sold to us, then it is their responsibility to meet that need. It is not ours to accept X, when they could take care of the other things but they won’t pay for them.



I never said anyone was lazy, anywhere, in any thread, not in the entire almost 7 years I have been on these forums. Not sure where that comes from. For the record, I don’t think they’re lazy.



.

Ok yes, clear now and no, I never said YOU said that.. but that is what's being implied by several other posters and it's incensing me.

[Alleo]

You're asking for the equivalent of rebuilding a house by pulling out the foundation and replacing it and expecting people to be able to live in it at the same time.

The technical side is the problem. Would you rather they lie? If you think they're lying about the technical side do you think they're just lazy? How many people who work on this game do you think look at it and go.. "eh.. it's good enough. Milk it for money and let it die when people get sick of the lies".

The big descisions are probably not done by those that are programming and writing the codes. There is a high chance that they already explained to SE that it need changes but the one in charge for the budgets and stuff like that probably just dont want to put more money into this. So no I dont fault the ones working on this but SE as a whole..Its kinda obvious that they put a lot of the money FF14 earns into other project and Yoshida himself said that he needs more people and a higher budget but does not get it. So yes the ones that are deciding about this are the ones that probably just want to milk it with the lowest amount of costs.

[Fyce]

Maybe you need to re-read the OP, because it cites only the devs' repeated insistence on the fact that the database servers and infrastructure are woefully inadequate to implement nearly any addition to the game players request.

That's completly wrong. We got more inventory space, we are getting a new glamour system, we are getting chocobo saddles (more inventory), we are getting more housing and we already got a furniture limit upgrade, they are planning to give us more retainers...

Sure, there are things they cannot do, but that doesn't mean they should throw millions revamping the whole system just for that. It doesn't add anything to the game itself and it's something invisible for players anyway.

Your request is completly unreasonable and you have absolutly no actual idea of how things will actually turn out in the future. You're just guessing while waving your "the end is nigh" carboard. Nonsense.

[rainichan]

IIRC they updated parts when SB hit. They're actively trying to get out of the crap infrastructure that they were left with on 1.0 that they couldn't toss going from 1.2x to 2.0 because it would have taken more time.


That said, I'm also wondering if it's because of the multiple OS it has to run on? While yes, at the 2016 FanFest they said "please upgrade from Win32bit to Win64bit" not everyone can afford to. I'm not a programmer though so that's a wild guess. Anyone who is a programmer around to confirm/deny that? The most I know is that they're different in how things are run, but any programming for a Win32 or Win64 is beyond me.

Lastly, I remember when we had a delay on some of the smaller in-between patches after Heavensward came out because the dev team was taking a much needed vacation after pounding out not only 2.0 and its releases, but up to 3.0 with no breaks in-between. The amount of salt and people on the OF screaming about HOW DARE THEY BE LATE FOR THESE YOU WANT TO WATCH YOUR GAME CRASH AND BURN SHUN THE NON-BELIEVERS leads me to believe that while some are totally down for no content for a bit while they fix infrastructure, there will be more people screaming about how there's no content how dare they want to fix their game they're using it as an excuse to take a long vacation etc etc.

Yeah, I'd love for them to do it all in one go, but I don't see that happening. They'll update the way they did with SB and probably some unnamed patches. My guess is that's where the saddlebags are coming from is a small update on a part of the old infrastructure.