Would you trade new ingame content for an engine upgrade?

[Miiu]

I mean they've been updating the backend for FF14 constantly since 2.0. Some of the stuff we see in cutscenes now wasn't possible a few expansions ago. Hence why we get more dynamic sequences.
Additionally the crux of the problem for a complete engine update is not just porting over all the content but also all the system. Which might even mean completely rewriting them. Additionally they'd still be limited by last gen consoles.
As nice as it would be to get a general facelift for the game, overhauling the UI and give players all sorts of QoL features that a new engine would make possible. I highly doubt a complete engine change is feasible at this point.
It would almost be equal to making a new game since as far as I am aware SE is still using an inhouse engine for ff14 and SE's track record with inhouse engines hasn't been great. So first they'd have to develop a new one that would handle all their needs for an mmo and that could take a damn long while.
And using their own inhouse engine means that there is definitely no 1 to 1 translation if they'd go to something like unreal or unity. So they'd have to start from scratch. Minus modeling the assets and maybe texturing them. But that depends on how the shaders in the next engine would look and what texture maps they'd need/want.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Idk why we would have to choose, ffxiv is SE's biggest cash cow. They should be investing more into the game and do both.

[Miiu]

Idk why we would have to choose, ffxiv is SE's biggest cash cow. They should be investing more into the game and do both.

Because at the point you decide to port the game to a new engine all content you release for the old engine would basically need to be created twice.

[sharknado]

Because at the point you decide to port the game to a new engine all content you release for the old engine would basically need to be created twice.

You are thinking about a game engine as a monolith. This isn't really the case for big online games. Backend is often distributed in a cloud environment while the client does the rendering but also can be quite modular. Making "engine 2.0" would be just unusual amount of X.X.Y patches that usually don't change anything and then some more X.X.Y patches that alter existing elements of the game. The game won't look like suddenly it's rendered in Unity 5 but for example there could be a completely new glamour system, new market board or big changes to Trust and Squadron or 7.0 zone could provide never seen before features.

World of Warcraft started as a DX9 game with world limited to a physical server "blade". Nowadays there is no physical lock for a realm and realms have limited existence as everything is just a distributed instance of the world giving them absurd horizontal scaling (like for launch) and usually poor vertical scaling (mass world PvP, world bosses). The client is DX12/Apple ARM as well.... yet people still talk about WoW 2.0 and "old" engine.

[Lihtleita]

Idk why we would have to choose, ffxiv is SE's biggest cash cow. They should be investing more into the game and do both.

because the current way the game works is atop a jenga tower of weird design in an engine only SE staff are familiar with, making it a difficult thing to outsource

[Miiu]

You are thinking about a game engine as a monolith. This isn't really the case for big online games. Backend is often distributed in a cloud environment while the client does the rendering but also can be quite modular. Making "engine 2.0" would be just unusual amount of X.X.Y patches that usually don't change anything and then some more X.X.Y patches that alter existing elements of the game. The game won't look like suddenly it's rendered in Unity 5 but for example there could be a completely new glamour system, new market board or big changes to Trust and Squadron or 7.0 zone could provide never seen before features.

World of Warcraft started as a DX9 game with world limited to a physical server "blade". Nowadays there is no physical lock for a realm and realms have limited existence as everything is just a distributed instance of the world giving them absurd horizontal scaling (like for launch) and usually poor vertical scaling (mass world PvP, world bosses). The client is DX12/Apple ARM as well.... yet people still talk about WoW 2.0 and "old" engine.

My whole point wasn't to talk about updating the incrementally updating the current engine. What people in this thread were proposing was porting the game from I think they're still using luminous/crystal tools to something like unreal or unity.
If we're talking about modular updates to the current engine sure. You won't need to redo everything. But at some point and it becomes a question of: Is there any real benefit to updating the current engine core or would it be better to start new?

I am not sure I fully get your point. I do work in game dev and while it's only limited to single player games the game engine is still definitely the heart of the game and controls which features the developer has access to.(obviously including custom code as well)
And yeah I fully agree that if you port a game from an old engine to a new one you don't suddenly gave a graphic fidelity boost.
Your models still have the same triangle count and the textures you exported are still the same resolution as before. You'd need to update the textures (resolution and maybe add additional data textures if you want to make use of new shader capabilities)
In case of FF14 the game is running locally while exchanging/double checking information between what you see and what the server says you should see. But obviously not everything is being checked hence why visual mods are available like changing the weather locally etc.
But whatever runs on the backend it is still upholden to the engine everything is running on. Cause whatever modules you have running concurrent to the game the game needs to understand the input.

Sorry if I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

[Ath192]

My whole point wasn't to talk about updating the incrementally updating the current engine. What people in this thread were proposing was porting the game from I think they're still using luminous/crystal tools to something like unreal or unity.
If we're talking about modular updates to the current engine sure. You won't need to redo everything. But at some point and it becomes a question of: Is there any real benefit to updating the current engine core or would it be better to start new?

I am not sure I fully get your point. I do work in game dev and while it's only limited to single player games the game engine is still definitely the heart of the game and controls which features the developer has access to.(obviously including custom code as well)
And yeah I fully agree that if you port a game from an old engine to a new one you don't suddenly gave a graphic fidelity boost.
Your models still have the same triangle count and the textures you exported are still the same resolution as before. You'd need to update the textures (resolution and maybe add additional data textures if you want to make use of new shader capabilities)
In case of FF14 the game is running locally while exchanging/double checking information between what you see and what the server says you should see. But obviously not everything is being checked hence why visual mods are available like changing the weather locally etc.
But whatever runs on the backend it is still upholden to the engine everything is running on. Cause whatever modules you have running concurrent to the game the game needs to understand the input.

What people in this thread want is a meaningful graphics boost (visually) and the solution of longstanding technical issues mainly to do with but not limited to the glamour system in the game. It doesn't matter how they achieve this, just that it gets done, and those on the supporting side are more than willing to put aside new "quests" and content for a reasonable amount of time to see this done.

This is because we want to spend the next ten years playing this game hopefully without suffering technical limitations from whatever obsolete code it is preventing them from improving the game and also looking at horrible textures and blocky models some of which cant wear hats.

[Miiu]

I get it. And you're right. It's on them to figure out the logistics and not on the player base. Speculating is fun nonetheless.
Like I mentioned in an earlier thread I'd love to a version of this game with a higher graphic fidelity. Better facial rigs, smoother animations and more QoL features.
But even with the Yoshida's comment about having more content to run this game for another 10 years I have a feeling that we'll see another FF mmo announced before 10 years from now and that that will basically be the visual upgrade people would want.

[Jeeqbit]

What some people think are engine limitations might have more to do with the cloud not being used, so there isn't actually infinite drive space for glamour dressers. I don't know if that's why but it's jumping to conclusions to say that everything is because of the engine.

[sharknado]

But at some point and it becomes a question of: Is there any real benefit to updating the current engine core or would it be better to start new?

Look at WoW. It's not old and it's not really "new from scratch", yet it even can do basic ray traced shadows. Or how WoW Classic was made - one dev took the old database, converted the structure to current database format and it just started working on the basic level - game data from 2004 working on a 2019 game engine.

FF and WoW are old MMO games so most of their essence is in the data and systems. The graphics aren't anything groundbreaking and don't really degrade with time like systems so it's not that hard to update it piece by piece. The exception would be a MMO Reborn when you want to redo assets and then some systems and data as well.

Most requested features for FF14 are not Unity OMG Graphics reworks but feature changes like better glamour. Reworking glamour to WoW/GW2 style screws their world travel so that would have to be updated as well and then likely few other things... it's not easy, but also it's a manageable project to undertake. And the client is also way simpler than Unity so they don't need a dedicated company and years of constant work to manage it and update over time. It won't be anywhere as flashy as Unity but it will still handle FF14 gradually allowing for more fidelity or new in-game mechanics.

What some people think are engine limitations might have more to do with the cloud not being used, so there isn't actually infinite drive space for glamour dressers. I don't know if that's why but it's jumping to conclusions to say that everything is because of the engine.

Your character data is quite often passed from place to place, like when you visit a world. For it to work it has to be small and quite self contained. That's the main reason why they can't without other changes implement catalogue style glamour system. They did talk about it some time ago. So now if they want to give us new glamour system they have to make much wider changes than the feature itself.