Removal of loading screens

[OdrN]

First, 1.0 had some loading screen between areas like Shroud and Mor Dhona. Second, 1.0 had big areas but they were also empty, full of copy/past assets and very laggy.
The actual game code is way too messy to allow big open areas to become a reality again (Kholusia is already out of memory, reason why the dwarf tribe is in Lakeland).
So if I would love to have a full open area (I hate loading screen) this is definitely not happening in this current game.

Nevertheless, I could see this happening for the original city states (and the return of the aquarium of the Hyaline in Limsa Lominsa?) and I hoped for it when they announced the revamp on some 2.0 maps to allow fly but that didn't happened. As we can see the full rendered Lower Secks from the Upper Seck in Limsa and vice versa, and considering the most recents cities are composed of one area, that seems possible to me.

That being said, that would leave Ishgard on the side as this city was created from scratch and not recovered from 1.0 like the others and I don't see how this city could be remodeled into one, the two parts being totally independent (looking from the heights of the Pillars, we do not see anything resembling Foundation, same from below).

I support the idea, but I think they have more pressing issues for the moment.

[Larirawiel]

The actual game code is way too messy to allow big open areas to become a reality again

Hi, i have heard this from various people, that the code base of the game is messy. Is somewhere a reliable source for this?


Thanks


Cheers.

[Absurdity]

Hi, i have heard this from various people, that the code base of the game is messy. Is somewhere a reliable source for this?


Thanks


Cheers.

We don't have an official source on this but it is quite evident when you think about the 2.0 developement. The engine had to be cobbled together within an extremely tight timeframe, it needed to include some of the absolute disaster that was the 1.0 code because all the 1.0 characters with their 1.0 items had to be transferred to 2.0 (they did not wipe out everyone's character and made them start from scratch) and it had to run on the PS3, which had 256 MB of RAM.


Further evidence are the obvious technical limitations that we are already experiencing right now.

-They can't add more inventory space because it either breaks the game or takes way too much time investment to not break the game, so they have to redistribute our already existing inventory space in "creative ways" like the removal of belts.
-We can't have a glamour log because the engine can't handle it, we may not even get more space in the glamour dresser.
-Even expanding the Armoire seems to be a big task every time they add new event outfits and mogstation outfits can't be placed in the Armoire at all.
-Zones are quickly running out of memory space, someone already mentioned Kholusia and the fact that the Dwarf beasttribe had to be placed in another zone to not break the game.
-Damage and Health numbers are getting too big for the game to handle, hence the stat squish with Endwalker.

[Larirawiel]

We don't have an official source on this but it is quite evident when you think about the 2.0 developement. The engine had to be cobbled together within an extremely tight timeframe, it needed to include some of the absolute disaster that was the 1.0 code because all the 1.0 characters with their 1.0 items had to be transferred to 2.0 (they did not wipe out everyone's character and made them start from scratch) and it had to run on the PS3, which had 256 MB of RAM.


Further evidence are the obvious technical limitations that we are already experiencing right now.

-They can't add more inventory space because it either breaks the game or takes way too much time investment to not break the game, so they have to redistribute our already existing inventory space in "creative ways" like the removal of belts.
-We can't have a glamour log because the engine can't handle it, we may not even get more space in the glamour dresser.
-Even expanding the Armoire seems to be a big task every time they add new event outfits and mogstation outfits can't be placed in the Armoire at all.
-Zones are quickly running out of memory space, someone already mentioned Kholusia and the fact that the Dwarf beasttribe had to be placed in another zone to not break the game.
-Damage and Health numbers are getting too big for the game to handle, hence the stat squish with Endwalker.

OK, thank you. IMHO should SE fix this issues first. Such issues are called "technical debt" and it will be worse and more expensive the longer you wait. At some point a complete rewrite will be the cheaper option then writing workarounds for the issues.


Cheers

[Genz]

We don't have an official source on this but it is quite evident when you think about the 2.0 developement. The engine had to be cobbled together within an extremely tight timeframe, it needed to include some of the absolute disaster that was the 1.0 code because all the 1.0 characters with their 1.0 items had to be transferred to 2.0 (they did not wipe out everyone's character and made them start from scratch) and it had to run on the PS3, which had 256 MB of RAM.


Further evidence are the obvious technical limitations that we are already experiencing right now.

-They can't add more inventory space because it either breaks the game or takes way too much time investment to not break the game, so they have to redistribute our already existing inventory space in "creative ways" like the removal of belts.
-We can't have a glamour log because the engine can't handle it, we may not even get more space in the glamour dresser.
-Even expanding the Armoire seems to be a big task every time they add new event outfits and mogstation outfits can't be placed in the Armoire at all.
-Zones are quickly running out of memory space, someone already mentioned Kholusia and the fact that the Dwarf beasttribe had to be placed in another zone to not break the game.
-Damage and Health numbers are getting too big for the game to handle, hence the stat squish with Endwalker.

This looks like a coherent and convincing dump of info, but it's not.
2.0 didn't need to include anything from 1.0. The save of 1.0 characters doesn't impact anything, it's just a big pile of data in some format that can be converted in any other format to be used in any other game/engine.
Inventory expansion/addition of glamour log/glamour dresser expansion/Armoire expansion share the same difficulties, so it looks like there are a lot of problems but it's actually only one, and it's a most normal problem : increasing character data isn't an easy task, (every?) other MMO have had the same difficulties.
Damage/Stats squish isn't an engine/system failure, problem with big number is expected, just a lack of long-term vision.
And for all of these, the bottleneck are essentially server-side, so PS3 is off-topic. PS3 limitations are mainly for visual and UI, and the question is "how much discrepancies do we accept between platforms" (everyone got the same inventory, but PS3 didn't have the expanded view)

Probably not the most awesomely optimised mmo ever, but no need to invent problems either.

They had to import 1.0 characters, so there has to be code to make that work, at the very least.

Same thing as above : it's irrelevant.

[Larirawiel]

Inventory expansion/addition of glamour log/glamour dresser expansion/Armoire expansion share the same difficulties, so it looks like there are a lot of problems but it's actually only one, and it's a most normal problem : increasing character data isn't an easy task, (every?) other MMO have had the same difficulties.

Hi, it depends. If your data model is properly and consequently normalized and you do not use "naked" SQL statements to retrieve the data then it is not that hard to append additional data to a character. But for performance reasons often the data model ist de-normalized and there are tons of manually written SQL statements that make it difficult to make changes without breaking other parts of the software. The funny thing is, Blizzard did this with WoW classic. The old data model was mostly de-normalized and they had to convert it to a new model that was compatible with the new server- and client software. There is a video from a Blizzcon what they had to do to make it work.


Cheers