Dev Tracker: Discussion

[EjinCaitsith]

I could see a subscription price drop if they thought it would make more money than the trickling subs they lose every month, though.

Is there any evidence to indicate them losing subs, though? Other than a random /sea all compared to pre-SoA. It's entirely possible that server populations seem low when using /sea all as a metric, but their actual sub numbers are just fine due to people who are still subbed just not logging in as much/at all. I think the fact they haven't done a merge, gone F2P or lowered the price yet might be an indicator of this being true.

[Sechs]

I wouldn't underestimate the marketing aspect of doing a merge, and the things I said before.
If they are considering the possibility of something that might bring new players but still haven't made up their minds on that, they would of course put a possible merge on hold.

[Spira]

i agree on the f2p thing. i dont see them going f2p simply because they dont need to. FFXI isnt dying to the extent that they need new signups. they could simply consolidate assets.. combine servers and put more support into instanced zones, etc. it doesn't have to be all or nothing.

a mixed model might also work well for XI.. ie. a lower monthly pay to play, but also a cash shop for micro transactions. i think customizable pieces like the stuff they gave us in ACP/AMK/ASA would be pretty nifty for cash shop items (because lets face it, it was essentially that + a bunch of cutscenes + battles). also we don't have mounts, but we do have Trusts.. and lotsa people take a Gotta Catch Em All approach to those things. I could see them implementing cash shop features to Monstrosity or Monster Breeding in the Mog Garden if they really wanted to do it.

i don't think high res models are even needed for XI to simply go HD (720p at minimum). the PC/360 ones are pretty HQ already no?
like.. whatever setup they're using to record these is pretty close to HD quality



(bearing in mind that it is HD relative to the PS2)



the 360 version holds up quite well on HDTV afaict. honestly they could just increase drawdistance and call it HD.

[Shenrien]

Bump in DX9 and there is a lot more they could do with adding graphical fidelity to the game that people seem to want so badly. It might also take away some of the strain that is placed entirely on your CPU while your GPU just sits there wondering what the hell it's even being used for.

[Sechs]

DX9 would just add so much to the game, and would allow you to keep 60fps constant without any sort of slowdown ever even in overcrowded zones.
Perfect support for all directinput gamepads and a whole lot more.
No clue how complicated it would be for them to switch to DX9 but I wish they could consider it.

[arus2001]

60 FPS would require an engine overhaul divorcing animation speeds from certain activities, wouldn't it? Like, how some people speedhacked by literally forcing the game to higher FPS than the 29-30 lock.

[Sechs]

I doubt that.
Game wasn't even fps locked at launch (JP launch at least)
And I was talking about Windower 60FPS not official, altough sure, they might as well offer official 60fps support if they were to release a DX9 fully compatibile game.

[Kyreth]

I'm going to say yes, because just reskinning the game isn't what it needs. What it needs is a server/engine overhaul to better facilitate more modern MMO features and eliminate things like BC congestion or no true instancing.

A system that doesn't have to function to dead console standards would likely be able to do a lot more. And heck, given FFXI's "+1" systems for higher-level reduxes of content you could likely plug in a lot.

[Isiolia]

A system that doesn't have to function to dead console standards would likely be able to do a lot more. And heck, given FFXI's "+1" systems for higher-level reduxes of content you could likely plug in a lot.

Even if they dropped PS2 support, the overall architecture would still need a major overhaul - to the point where recreating it on the XIV system or something would possibly be more comprehensive. Even just porting to DX9 wouldn't necessarily change much unless the game was rewritten to pipe relevant stuff to the GPU or whatnot. It might fix compatibility/performance issues on newer setups though. I know my Surface Pro has oddly terrible performance with it.


IMO, rather than F2P, they should unify the pricing model. Keep the base $11.95 Square Enix account fee, but then let you add content IDs for both XI and XIV (and anything else they bring out) for $1 per. I think most people playing one or the other would be willing to toss the extra dollar in to keep both games active.

[Prothescar]

And I was talking about Windower 60FPS not official

wait wat how long has this existed






anyway, one thing that would cost them probably very little in terms of additional development cost that would make the game look 600 times better on PC is allow us to use HD textures. Somehow I doubt they draw the textures to look as low res and blurry as they appear in the game, so just give us access to the original hi-res versions as an option. GPU+CPU optimizations would be nice but it's highly doubtful that they can do much about it at this point without investing a fair amount of resources that they really don't appear to have.

[Bukadan]

graphics dont really matter though, at least in my opinion.

[Trumpy]

Unlimited plugin/addon you mean Prothescar? bout 3-4 months at least I think maybe longer.

[Sechs]

Somehow I doubt they draw the textures to look as low res and blurry as they appear in the game

I'm not so sure about that D:
But someone who's been working with dats for a while might be able to answer this doubt of ours I suppose


@Trumpy
The third party external app 60fps unlocker has been around for like, what, years? Long before Arcon and the Windower folks implemented it as an addon.

[Prothescar]

I'm speaking specifically about a windower plugin/addon, I used the executable for a long time. Didn't know anyone ever got around to implementing FPS uncapper into windower.

and the hi res textures wouldn't be accessible to us in the dats, we'd already be able to switch over to them probably if they were. generally how these things work is, things are drawn at a higher resolution than is actually used, then scaled down to a smaller size. either SE has the worst artists of all time or there's some artifacting in the process they use to deliver textures to us

[Seha]

Thank jesus for raising haste priority for automatons. I hated so much how the fucker would just spam regen and never haste me <_<

[Orcai]

older .dats (pre toau, some post) use absolutely tiny texture files that are stretched to fit. the blurry-ness is due to tiny pixels being brought to sometimes 5-10x the size they were drawn at. i haven't looked at the .dats closely from abyssea on, but i would wager they are still stretched, not shrunk. some of the worse offenders i believe were 16x16. i believe they've moved up dramatically in recent years (maybe to 64x64?) but i dont think there are very many armor, weapon or characters with textures higher than 128x128 as a max. if you see big squares on a weapon or armor, i can assure you it doesn't have a "high res" texture to pull from.

(this is why fine details bleed into each other and give the blurry effects most notable on relic armor and things from that era)

[fantasticdan]

The soulsoother and stormwaker heads will now cast enhancement magic spells in the following order of priority.

Soulsoother
Haste will be cast after Protectra and Shellra.

Can the auto even cast -ra versions?

[Sechs]

From this patch they can, soul soother will cast -ra instead of the single target version

[Tidane]

The biggest problem with the FFXI engine is that it is old and poorly designed. That isn't to say that the developers were bad. Quite the opposite, initially. If you look at everything they did, there are some absolutely ingenuous tricks used.

The problem is that they were console developers who had never maintained an evolving codebase on this scale. Ask of the clever PS2 optimizations and hacks coupled with poor decisions when porting to the PC left them with a very difficult to maintain engine. Since the culture was built on these sort of hacks and PS2 parity had to be maintained, that became SOP. Instead of refactoring and implementing features correctly, they tried to force ideas into what they had with more hacks.

Now, you can tell that the remaining developers aren't as competent or are overworked (or both). There was a divide by zero crash in multiple fishing routines for months (did they fix it yet? I stopped playing). This took a few hours to recognize and fix without source access. This got by developers, the QA, and then still wasn't fixed even after the exact issue was reported to them. Perhaps that points to issues of communications, but if my developers couldn't debug an error as simple as that, they'd be off my team.

When looking at a DirectX 9 version, I imagine the reason it won't be done is a combination of the codebase they have and the developers they have access to. I haven't looked into rendering beyond what was required to draw custom information to the game, but given the general state, I can't imagine it is very good.

[Toth]

I like the PUP changes and really like the combination of the automaton HP and MP into a single JP category as the original two were rather....dumb. I look forward to seeing the improvements in automaton accuracy and attack in high level stuff as well. Still, I was hoping for some new attachment information. I am hopeful they are still coming this month but given the dearth of content, I think they may be saving those as drops from the February content.