What do you think? Spaghetti code

[Kranel_San]

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?
What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?
Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?
Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

[Larirawiel]

Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?

Never. If your program reaches a certain amount of complexity, then you will always have spaghetti code. Because your ressources are limited.

Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

Did they really use this excuse in the past?


Cheers

[Midareyukki]

Do you think the game is still heavily plagued by spaghetti code?
What are the limitations caused by spaghetti codes that still exist to this day?
Do you think the game will one day be free of spaghetti codes?
Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

1 - I don't know how much weight it actually has in the game, but in the features I care for, yeah older code and resources are a detriment.
2 - Probably some stuff regarding your retainers. And I think the glam dressers bork the game a little if implemented in housing due to the way the housing system and the glamouring system were designed, which conflict with eachother.
3 - No, but they might be able to mitigate the damage it causes by clearing some stuff up.
4 - No. Have you seen 1.0? It's a mess.

Did they really use this excuse in the past?

They have used it as a justification for why some stuff couldn't be done, or to explain away a serious glitch or two. Now if you both mean "excuse" as in "a get-out-of-having-to-do-real-work card", then I wouldn't say they have. But I'm not the most tech savy person when it comes to analyzing the extent of the damage caused by their spaghetti code.

[Espon]

Do you think spaghetti code is just an excuse made up by devs and not a real issue?

It's more of an excuse players make when they think something cannot or should not be changed or added to the game. I'm sure the old code puts some restraints on things, but the devs have shown they're capable doing quite a lot to the game.

[Enkidoh]

It's just a stupid meme at this point, which came about I believe due to comments Yoshi and the development team made over the years that players either mistranslated entirelly or just took out of context (the basic idea is that ARR "uses 1.0 code" which "prevents <insert desired/requested addition/content/improvement here> from being implemented. It doesn't use 1.0 code or 1.0's engine at all, something Yoshi actually came out and stated officially).

Many of the limitations of the game are by design and were simply done to expidiate development and get the game's client and servers running stably and efficently (by comparison with 1.0), but by doing so they had to make it a 'closed system' that is very hard to expand on it's core functions (glamour being an example of this).

And as Larirawiel said, when you get down to it, all computer code is by it's very nature 'spaghetti code' - rare is the program that is designed simply and efficently and expanding on requirements places extra strain and complexity to it, it's the nature of the beast.

[Jeeqbit]

Yes, the game has spaghetti code because they have spent 12 years adding features on top of features. This would happen to any and all MMOs without exception. This spaghetti code is not from 1.0 (see my signature), but from everything that came after 2.0.

The limitations seem to affect inventory and items that you can carry as well as housing. You can see an example of how a limitation was worked around by making cross-world linkshells separate from normal linkshells instead of trying to salvage them.

The game will never be free of spaghetti code but they will over time resolve old "spaghetti" issues as new ones form.

[TheMightyMollusk]

It's more like an increasingly precarious house of cards at this point. Changing too much at the base levels risks toppling whole chunks of the code, but it's been going so long now that the only way to actually fix all the original limitations would be to knock it all down and start over, and that would mean A: a big financial investment, B: a whole lot of time, and C: diverting work from the current game to build a new one.

[Kolsykol]

I think, that there's a lot of armchair programmers on the forums.

[StriderShinryu]

As Jeeqbit says, it's less an issue of "spaghetti code" itself as it is a situation where "spaghetti code" is just sort of a catch all for all of the technical limitations imposed by a decade of continued development. It's also important to remember that the basic structure of the game was built to run on a PS3, with all of the special issues that brought to the table. FF14 was rebuilt from the ashes of 1.0 in a rush and has had continued focused, ongoing development ever since. It also was never built to be as easily expansive and scalable as some other games.

So, no, "spaghetti code" is not an issue any more in the specific sense that some people use it in. But the concept of it is still very much a continuing drag on the game's development. If you think it's just an excuse made up by someone you clearly have no concept of how game development works... and you don't need to be a programmer or game developer to get that.

[Kes13a]

unless they rewrite the game from scratch, there will always be old code lurking around, which is generally meme'd as "spaghetti code"

I am not a dev, but I support software, and what I currently support is something that was expanded from something developed in 2010, so about the same length of time as FFxiv. A major problem is old code bits left around which are always causing issues. are the devs using it as an "excuse"? I doubt it, its reality, and rooting it all out will never happen without a complete rewrite, which I doubt they will do since for an mmo, would likely entail more resources than they can or want to spend on the game. current FFxiv may not resemble 1.0, but its built from it, so will always be with it. they can try and mitigate it, and add new systems on to it, but the unfortunate reality is, some things they may not want to touch because changing it, may break more things in game and they, or we, can imagine.

doesnt mean they cant try, and they may have, we will never know. but in some cases, implementing some new feature might be more like trying to erect a skyscraper on a mudflat. not ever an ideal plan.