Deeper Steam Integration

[jrmswell]

Hello there. With the recent(ish) changes to the way the game works on PS4 by removing the launcher and letting the PS4s OS take charge of downloading updates, tracking achievements etc. I was therefore wondering if anybody else would be interested in seeing the game get the same treatment for Steam?


Steam has a more advanced download manager than the launcher does, allowing for download throttling and even the ability to pause the download. Steam can also take care of the parameters that the launcher also sets such as DirectX version (although that functionality is going away, along with the 32-bit edition of the game, with Stormbringers) and for those who like that sort of thing, track the achievements too (just like the PS4 has) especially as steam has the ability to track achievements with tiers as there are a lot of those in FFXIV.


Of course I don't expect this to be done overnight, in fact I assume this would take a long time. But as someone who plays through Steam and makes use of its features, primarily the download manager when on poor connections, I would love to see the Steam version get the same love as the PS4 version to make it a nicer experience for us all. After all, the game is on there and Steamworks has a lot of titles that have integrated the service retroactively including Borderlands as well as some newer and free to play games that had proprietary launchers at one point



Thank you for reading

[Niwashi]

... and for those who like that sort of thing, track the achievements too (just like the PS4 has) especially as steam has the ability to track achievements with tiers as there are a lot of those in FFXIV.

A minor clarification: The PS4 doesn't track FFXIV's in-game achievements. It has a completely separate list of game trophies we can get, but whereas the game has over two thousand achievements, there are 39 PS4 trophies for it (well, 38 individual ones, plus the platinum for getting all 38) and they don't even match up with a subset of the in-game achievement system.

But I definitely love that they finally added the background downloading of updates. That helped tremendously, and I completely agree it should be extended to the PC, making use of Steam's download manager for Steam players and adding a background process for it to the main game launcher for non-Steam players.

[Kurando]

A minor clarification: The PS4 doesn't track FFXIV's in-game achievements. It has a completely separate list of game trophies we can get, but whereas the game has over two thousand achievements, there are 39 PS4 trophies for it (well, 38 individual ones, plus the platinum for getting all 38) and they don't even match up with a subset of the in-game achievement system.

I wanted to add to this that since Stormblood was released, any achievements earned in-game can appear in a player's PSN wall feed and profile (depending on whether the player chooses to have it public or not). So in a sense we do get tracking for achievements on PSN along with trophies, but we only had the latter before SB, now we have both.

[Raldo]

As much as I'd love the advanced features of the Steam download system, I don't really think it makes sense for them to bother with it. I'd love to see the numbers, but I doubt the number of people accessing the game through Steam is a large percentage, and unlike the PS4 stuff (affects any and all PS4 users), utilizing Steam's download system doesn't allow them to scrap their own since so many other people don't use Steam at all for FFXIV.

[jrmswell]

A minor clarification: The PS4 doesn't track FFXIV's in-game achievements. It has a completely separate list of game trophies we can get, but whereas the game has over two thousand achievements, there are 39 PS4 trophies for it (well, 38 individual ones, plus the platinum for getting all 38) and they don't even match up with a subset of the in-game achievement system.

Oh I see, that's an interesting way of doing it, but I suppose transferring that many achievements could be a hassle especially if their system of tracking them works differently

But I definitely love that they finally added the background downloading of updates. That helped tremendously, and I completely agree it should be extended to the PC, making use of Steam's download manager for Steam players and adding a background process for it to the main game launcher for non-Steam players.

Honestly, this is the main benefit of them doing this, something I know a lot of people will definitely appreciate

I wanted to add [...] we do get tracking for achievements on PSN along with trophies, but we only had the latter before SB, now we have both.

Thank you for clarifying, that's still good to hear though

As much as I'd love the advanced features of the Steam download system, I don't really think it makes sense for them to bother with it. I'd love to see the numbers, but I doubt the number of people accessing the game through Steam is a large percentage, and unlike the PS4 stuff (affects any and all PS4 users), utilizing Steam's download system doesn't allow them to scrap their own since so many other people don't use Steam at all for FFXIV.

I did consider this and after doing some looking around, according to SteamDB there are between 1 and 2 million Steam installs, and according to XIVCensus there are over 14.5 million characters in the game so worst case scenario is that Steam represents betweem 7% and 14% of total players in the game. I couldn't find any numbers for players on PS4 so I can't make it more specific. But unloading even just 10% of their total workload from their own servers to one as robust as Steams would definitely be of benefit.

Plus players will definitely feel the benefit, there's two Steam datacentres here in the UK alone, one in London and one in Manchester, so it will make it more convienient for those living in places that aren't currently being served by a datacentre, for example, someone in my FC is currently playing on Chaos from New Zealand.

Obviously it's going to be extra work on their part but the benefit of having access to that CDN at no additional cost will definitely be of benefit to us and might be of some benefit to them, and as they say, every little helps and this can certainly be applied to bandwidth too