Interesting Bit of Speculation Regarding Game engine

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Single player game engines don't generally tend to make great mmo engines



Different needs and the like.

[Ath192]

Single player game engines don't generally tend to make great mmo engines



Different needs and the like.

Unreal engine is being used to develop MMO's so while this can be true, it doesn't have to be.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Unreal engine is being used to develop MMO's so while this can be true, it doesn't have to be.

While not the best example but do recall that 1.0 suffered because they tried to use the Crystal Tools Engine which was used for FFXIII to accommodate for an MMO space which we all know led to a ton of problems.

I say not best example because current engines already are capable of doing MMO games with high graphical fidelity just depends on how well they're able to translate it into FFXIV.

[Ath192]

While not the best example but do recall that 1.0 suffered because they tried to use the Crystal Tools Engine which was used for FFXIII to accommodate for an MMO space which we all know led to a ton of problems.

I say not best example because current engines already are capable of doing MMO games with high graphical fidelity just depends on how well they're able to translate it into FFXIV.

Yeah but imo that wasn't the whole issue. If the people designing the game knew better than to make plants with hundreds of polygons and the like the game wouldn't have had anywhere near the performance issues they had. It was a combination of things that led to that disaster.

I'm sure someone with a lot of experience and knowledge on how MMOs work and are supposed to run could've made something decent with crystal tools. Either way though, newer engines coming out probably would be more robust and flexible for this sort of thing than the older ones for sure. So in technology, what was once true doesn't always remain the case in future iterations.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yeah but imo that wasn't the whole issue. If the people designing the game knew better than to make plants with hundreds of polygons and the like the game wouldn't have had anywhere near the performance issues they had. It was a combination of things that led to that disaster.

I'm sure someone with a lot of experience and knowledge on how MMOs work and are supposed to run could've made something decent with crystal tools. Either way though, newer engines coming out probably would be more robust and flexible for this sort of thing than the older ones for sure. So in technology, what was once true doesn't always remain the case in future iterations.

Polygons wasn't really whe whole reason for 1.0s issues.



Polygons didn't cause trading to take forever. That was archetecture.



The polygon thing gets mentioned a lot, because the game was graphically intense. But I only had a midrange system and was able to play at 1080p/60fps.



The whole game was server side. Mouse cursor, included.

[Ath192]

Polygons wasn't really whe whole reason for 1.0s issues.



Polygons didn't cause trading to take forever. That was archetecture.



The polygon thing gets mentioned a lot, because the game was graphically intense. But I only had a midrange system and was able to play at 1080p/60fps.



The whole game was server side. Mouse cursor, included.

yes, exactly, and by the time 2.0 launched the game was in a decent state even running on its original engine, but Yoshi felt the game needed a big come back. So it's always a combination of factors, and one the engine wasn't 100% to blame on.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

yes, exactly, and by the time 2.0 launched the game was in a decent state even running on its original engine, but Yoshi felt the game needed a big come back. So it's always a combination of factors, and one the engine wasn't 100% to blame on.

They fixed the content issue (as in lack of content). The engine issues were still massively prevalent.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Yeah but imo that wasn't the whole issue. If the people designing the game knew better than to make plants with hundreds of polygons and the like the game wouldn't have had anywhere near the performance issues they had. It was a combination of things that led to that disaster.

I'm sure someone with a lot of experience and knowledge on how MMOs work and are supposed to run could've made something decent with crystal tools. Either way though, newer engines coming out probably would be more robust and flexible for this sort of thing than the older ones for sure. So in technology, what was once true doesn't always remain the case in future iterations.

Actually they've already done this successfully. Its called Dragon Quest X, the Japan only MMO that uses Crystal Tools. The reason why it worked there was due to how much simpler the game's graphics and systems were compared to FFXIV.

[Vallerie]

Unreal engine is being used to develop MMO's so while this can be true, it doesn't have to be.

And pretty much all of the MMOs running on Unreal are some of the worst optimised games out there, because the engine was not built to support the sort of structure MMO needs.

[Amarande]

Single player game engines don't generally tend to make great mmo engines



Different needs and the like.

Definitely this, as most single player engines I've seen in modern times aren't really designed with, for instance, large numbers of simultaneous onscreen actors at a time (think Hunts or certain FATEs especially). There's a reason why for instance the original Doom game engine is still heavily preferred for fans of mass slaughter shooter gameplay, it's because the old school 2.5D sprite based design can actually handle the hundreds of monsters and sometimes thousands of projectiles at a time (in fact, just try playing one of the "tons and tons of monsters in a room" experimental pieces like Nuts.WAD on a GL engine like GZDoom ... you'll find that even on a computer 20+ years newer than the thing was made you still can't get a decent framerate to save your life LOL).

Given the graphical level of FFXVI, and for that matter Forspoken, I could expect a disaster if such an engine was brought over verbatim to FF14. (In particular, given the reviews of Forspoken, I could easily imagine long time players suddenly having to scramble to get a PS5 and re-purchase all their XIV licenses for it or else literally have to get a RTX 4080/4090 to get decent speed in crowded areas. Might even make the Dalaran lag from original Wrath of the Lich King look snappy on less. I'd rather not have to replace my RX 6600 this soon ...)