Removal of loading screens

[znushu]

The towns.. the city states, I suppose one could argue there.. as all three are in essence mostly the same maps from 1.0, I dare say you could probably return Ul'dah and Limsa to single map city states with a degree of effort that would be within reason. Gridania I'm not sure about.. Gridania had these really lengthy tunnels in between what is now Old and New Gridania.. I suppose it depends on if they're entirely intact and just inaccessible.. or simply not there at all.f.

they're all basically the same map but they're just trimmed, shrunken down, and even warped abit but it's all there even ingame today but admittedly they removed a good portion of stuff with gridania taking the hardest hit

Here take a look:

Limsa Lominsa

Gridania

Ul'dah

Ul'dah's Aetheryte location was in the same spot as it is today

[Canadane]

Back in the 1.X Version(s) of the game, the world was 1 huge area, without "real" loading screens. In later 1.X versions, the game's major cities were divided into separate areas via loading-screens. This was mainly because of the PS3.

I'm sure someone may have mentioned this already but that was done in 2.0, not a late 1.x patch.

[sauc]

They still design their game like it's on ps3 even though it was dropped before shb was even out

[SniperCT]

The Ps4 is perfectly capable of handling a full open world game like TESO or Black Desert Online.
So yes, if it was wanted it would have been done long ago.

ESO has loading screens between every zone.

1.0 was on a completely different engine most likely written in a completely different coding language, it's unlikely that any kind of 1.0 code is present in XIV

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

[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

[enthrage]

Complaining about loading times in FFXIV is like complaining about it taking too long to fill up a glass with water.

[Tint]

Complaining about loading times in FFXIV is like complaining about it taking too long to fill up a glass with water.

That's why I am drinking directly from the bottle.

[ReynTime]

Yeah I too wish they'd connect the 2.0 and 3.0 cities into one map. Kugane is super detailed and super big. So is the Crystarium, and 6.0 is coming with at least two more large highly detailed cities. The only limitation to recombine the 2 maps of the city-states is disposition of the staff to do it.

For some time I wish they'd convert some of the surrounding areas from ARR into one map as well (so for instance combining Central and Western Thanalan into one map). The "long tunnels/valleys" connecting them wouldn't bother me. Most people would fly or teleport anyway.
However, I don't trust the map designers to do it without ruining what makes ARR maps interesting. To me ARR areas still have the best overworld design, with detail and lore in almost every corner, unlike the maps from 3.0 onwards where you have an excessive amount of flat barren space with nothing of interest.