Why is the Post-MSQ Content so Passive in Endwalker?

[Sjol]

It's philosophical because look at what they did with FF16 and look at what they did in the FF16 event and look at what they did with the Nier raids.

What are you referring to in those?

They said they've slowly increased what cutscenes can do and we did get the NPCs follow you around thing in Endwalker, as well as riding mounts with them.

I don't think it's that the engine isn't capable of stuff, they just didn't code it in the gameplay code. I think that's because they designed it as a "traditional MMO" where you click things always, unlike recent ones where chopping trees is more realistic than "target and click and wave your hand around while a bar loads".

I think to change it they would have to look at games like New World and really aim to change the whole way that you do things in the game, so that for example you press Overpower and it collides with nearby objects and pushes them away or chops them into pieces.

I'm not sure what distinction you're making between engine and gameplay code here.

[HappyHubris]

I don't think it's that the engine isn't capable of stuff, they just didn't code it in the gameplay code. I think that's because they designed it as a "traditional MMO" where you click things always, unlike recent ones where chopping trees is more realistic than "target and click and wave your hand around while a bar loads".

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests. So you might have to fight your way to an objective in the open world to proceed, giving the player something to do. Whereas FFXIV tends to have a sparse world and prefers to instance combat or spawn a token mob during quests. Some of the fun of other MMOs is fighting your way into a temple to grab the object or scouting a jungle and beating back beasts to find the lost princess or whatever.

Whereas FFXIV loves its "standing around and endlessly talking" cutscenes.

[Jeeqbit]

What are you referring to in those?

Better animations instead of just clicking and getting a loading bar, such as pulling down a lever to make a lift work, climbing a ladder properly, pushing a door open with your hands. Characters talking with you while you fight and walk. In the FF16 event, they made use of the dodging system from FF16. In the nier raids, we hang onto something and slide down. Even in the FF15 event, we used the thing that pulls you to different objects.

I'm not sure what distinction you're making between engine and gameplay code here.

Engine being what it is capable of. Gameplay being what they decided to do with the engine.

FF16, as far as we know is based on the FF14 engine. So what does that tell you? They could be doing anything you see in FF16, in the FF14 engine, but they decide not to.

They have also shown, in unique fights and crossovers, that they can do all sorts of things, and have really cool animations like E4S giant titan, different styles of fight like Rathalos, yet continually revert back to the old style of game after it which involves clicking and loading.

So the point is that if they wanted to make this better, they absolutely could go to FF16 and copy and paste some things. And maybe even to a degree, they might do so with the graphics update. But it's all self-imposed limitations, where they worry about how people's PCs will handle it due to other players, rather than engine limitations, otherwise we wouldn't have FF16.

[AmiableApkallu]

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests.

Even the single-player Final Fantasy games that I'm familiar with feature unavoidable, random encounters when you're walking about the over world. So, FFXIV seems somewhat odd in that regard.

[Sjol]

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests. So you might have to fight your way to an objective in the open world to proceed, giving the player something to do. Whereas FFXIV tends to have a sparse world and prefers to instance combat or spawn a token mob during quests. Some of the fun of other MMOs is fighting your way into a temple to grab the object or scouting a jungle and beating back beasts to find the lost princess or whatever.

Whereas FFXIV loves its "standing around and endlessly talking" cutscenes.

I do miss zone story telling. It's not entirely absent from FFXIV, but it's close enough to being that way that I really don't find the zones compelling.

As a result I never really get attached to a zone or end up having a love/hate relationship with one. Even the fantastical zones like the Tempest still managed to be boring for 90% of your time there.

Most zones seem to have one or two interesting features and then a lot of patchy grass. A lot of them are also color desaturated moreso than actual reality. Seems crazy that my own outdoors is more interesting for me to look at than some of these zones.

I think the other thing that I really miss from zones is verticality. Most of the zones are pretty flat. They certainly don't have multiple levels, cave systems, etc. When I first got to Faerieville I was really excited at the idea of doing the whole zone in fog. I thought that would have been really cool. I've had a few letdowns between hopes and reality when it comes to zone design.

[Sjol]

Better animations instead of just clicking and getting a loading bar, such as pulling down a lever to make a lift work, climbing a ladder properly, pushing a door open with your hands. Characters talking with you while you fight and walk. In the FF16 event, they made use of the dodging system from FF16. In the nier raids, we hang onto something and slide down. Even in the FF15 event, we used the thing that pulls you to different objects.

Those all seemed to be variations on things we can already do. We already have jumps and hidden buffs (dodge = teleport move + hidden invuln buff on a short timer)

Engine being what it is capable of. Gameplay being what they decided to do with the engine.

FF16, as far as we know is based on the FF14 engine. So what does that tell you? They could be doing anything you see in FF16, in the FF14 engine, but they decide not to.

They have also shown, in unique fights and crossovers, that they can do all sorts of things, and have really cool animations like E4S giant titan, different styles of fight like Rathalos, yet continually revert back to the old style of game after it which involves clicking and loading.

Based on and forked years ago doesn't mean that it's the same. Also, could be doing anything that they were doing in FFXVI ignores a lot of differences between how FFXIV and FFXVI work. Certainly, they don't need to load 50 customizable outfits dynamically based on anything. And with respect to the engine, we're probably also only talking about pieces of it -- certainly not inventory management or any of the networking stuff. Rathalos was interesting, and he did introduce a couple of new ideas, but ones that don't seem too outside what is already possible in their combat system -- ignoring enmity and blocking healing.
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So the point is that if they wanted to make this better, they absolutely could go to FF16 and copy and paste some things. And maybe even to a degree, they might do so with the graphics update. But it's all self-imposed limitations, where they worry about how people's PCs will handle it due to other players, rather than engine limitations, otherwise we wouldn't have FF16.

Visual fidelity requires GPU, but I've seen some neat ideas on older games with much lower processing requirements. I'm not looking for amazing graphics. Graphics aren't gameplay. Mostly, I think the problem is they have is around AI, including pathing (where are my wandering monsters), and secondary systems like inventory management and asset management.

[Jeeqbit]

Those all seemed to be variations on things we can already do. We already have jumps and hidden buffs (dodge = teleport move + hidden invuln buff on a short timer)

You could even break down FF16 to be using a lot of things that FF14 can do. The FF16 event even shows the contrast well. They just overtelegraph everything in FF14 and give you a lot of time to react compared to a single player game. It's clearly a deliberate decision, rather than an engine thing.

Based on and forked years ago doesn't mean that it's the same.

Similar enough that if they did make changes, they could go to their team members in the FF16 office next door and ask to copy some of their code over or make a work based upon it... it also feels like they did do this for the burger eating stuff.

Also, could be doing anything that they were doing in FFXVI ignores a lot of differences between how FFXIV and FFXVI work. Certainly, they don't need to load 50 customizable outfits dynamically based on anything.

That's their reasoning for a lot of the reduced quality.

But I think some of it is just that they were trying to copy the "target, click, loading bar" concept MMORPGs at the time had, and now find themselves with competition that is far more realistic than that.

And with respect to the engine, we're probably also only talking about pieces of it -- certainly not inventory management or any of the networking stuff.

Well networking isn't relevant and the inventory in FF14 involves networking as a core part of it, so they would have to be different.

Rathalos was interesting, and he did introduce a couple of new ideas, but ones that don't seem too outside what is already possible in their combat system -- ignoring enmity and blocking healing.

That's sort of my point. A fight like Rathalos has always been possible in the current engine (and even gets done in Stone Vigil HM), they just decide to do it differently most of the time. These are decisions, rather than engine limitations tbh.

Mostly, I think the problem is they have is around AI, including pathing (where are my wandering monsters)

They actually use the standard "walk in a random direction every few seconds" system that many games have used. I always hated it and felt, as someone who can code this sort of stuff, that it could be done in a more ambitious and realistic way. And even if automating it runs into issues there can be pre-determined pathing like there is for NPCs in the city states.

[Sjol]

You could even break down FF16 to be using a lot of things that FF14 can do.

I guess I'm wondering why they would want the two systems to be the same. MMO engine design and Action-oriented RPG design are very different. I can understand that they share a lot of commonalities, and it seems that based on interviews they started with XIV for at least the preproduction stuff.

I certainly wouldn't want to use the gameplay processing from my MMO for my action RPG or vice versa. Rendering pipeline, sure. Asset sharing, sure -- your comment about the eat animation. But there are so many things where those systems wouldn't well align as I alluded to. How you would implement glam systems in XIV and XVI would vary greatly. In XVI you could cache the specific choices the character had made and load them quickly. In XIV you can cache your own, but you can't cache everyone else's. You don't know who's going to pop onto your screen until they do. And when they do, they can also quick change. Which means you need to have all the assets for all their potential equipment swaps as well. It's just a different set of needs. FFXIV assets are probably a lot more memory intensive than a lot of MMOs, especially for when it came out. XVI doesn't need to be able to randomly fetch assets because another networked player popped into view.

Responsiveness is another big change. The gameplay loop in XIV has to account for a lot of network latency and has netcode. XVI doesn't. XVI processes locally on a fast CPU and GPU meaning you can tune the engine for low-latency responses. Why would they do that for XIV? Why tune it for low latency when the floor for XIV in terms of latency is orders of magnitude higher than for a locally processed PS4?

I'm not saying XIV is bad, though it is older and still needs to support bad hardware. But the devs have repeated said that they can't do certain things because of technical debt / spaghetti code from 1.0. I choose to believe them, and I do not judge them for it. I just have an understanding that there are likely some things that are difficult to pull off with their current codebase and execution engine -- half which lives on our machine and half on their servers.

They've likely done their best trying to build on top of sometimes shaky foundations all the while living under extremely tight deadlines. I do not envy them.

[Jeeqbit]

the devs have repeated said that they can't do certain things because of technical debt / spaghetti code from 1.0.

Untrue. See my signature for proof where Yoshi-P himself debunks this.

However, while there isn't technical debt from 1.0, there is likely technical debt from 2.0, since like a stack of cards the entire game (4-5 expansions) are now built upon the foundation that is ARR.

Still, this doesn't seem to faze them. Reworking the physics, adding a world visit system and DC travel, overhauling the loading code so it's faster, overhauling ARR MSQ, overhauling old dungeons, adding flight and diving to ARR, overhauling the graphics and most recently announcing they will overhaul the character creator. These things would have likely been a can of worms to change, but they did it anyway.

I think people just mistake issues that stem from using physical servers instead of cloud servers as "spaghetti code". They also mistake "console considerations" and "average PC considerations" for "spaghetti code". They also mistake things like the distinction between hunts and FATEs as spaghetti code, but I don't think that's really the case, they are just separate. Separate things are valid in a code context, even if the difference is hard to see for a lot of players.

[Sjol]

Untrue. See my signature for proof where Yoshi-P himself debunks this.

...snip for length...

I think people just mistake issues that stem from using physical servers instead of cloud servers as "spaghetti code". They also mistake "console considerations" and "average PC considerations" for "spaghetti code". They also mistake things like the distinction between hunts and FATEs as spaghetti code, but I don't think that's really the case, they are just separate. Separate things are valid in a code context, even if the difference is hard to see for a lot of players.

With no disrespect to Yoshi P., he's not a code developer and isn't omniscient when it come to the state of his own codebase. No one could be with something that big. I'm sure there's some technical debt in the engine they ported over. Also, technical debt is a constant in any codebase. You will have some amount of it no matter how diligent you are. And with tight deadlines, people are going to take shortcuts in order to get cool thing out the door before the release window. Technical debt can also be not just code, but ideas engrained in the design of the data.

Other people may confuse "average PC considerations" for "spaghetti code". I'm not one of them. I'm also aware that cloud servers aren't a magic bullet that would save the game. A lot of cloud services aren't designed for that kind of compute, more B2B and some B2C scenarios. It's more likely that the design that they've built on top of that worked when they started and was designed under the constraints of the time is extremely difficult to unravel. In my development world, that difficulty is technical debt. Tech debt is the thing you need to pay off before you can do the cool new thing you really want to do.

I would bet money that retainer and character inventories are modeled identically, probably in the same database storage which is why they are the way they are in game. We can't have a unified inventory because they don't want to load all the various character records into memory at the same time. Being able to buy additional ones just makes it that much more difficult to change. Crafting from inventory probably naturally fails due to the same limitation.

I would also bet money that the limitations around accessing and transferring inventories on so many screens is because their system doesn't have the server-side guardrails to prevent accidental or intentional data corruption (e.g., duping). So, instead the UI locks a lot of screens to prevent you from consuming an item and transferring an item at the same time. Note how the Use button is disabled in item transfer scenarios (e.g., chocobo bags or retainer inventories open). There's a lot you can figure out about the design of a mature system by observing its behaviors and limitations.