Dev Tracker: Discussion II

[Hitou]

Pretty sure that was only per job too not universally. Like they stopped adding blu spells years ago because it was already at max long before they added gift spells for other mages. But I might be remembering.

[NynJa]

idk man, I'm sure ps2 limitations was a thing well before SoA...and low and behold two new jobs with a plethora of JA's and spells and unique gear.

[Byrthnoth]

Their packet structures are only set up to handle 23 jobs and have been since before GEO/RUN/MON (since ToAU iirc). That is not a hard limit because it is a game and they can do whatever, but it is an indication that they would have to change ffxi infrastructure to make it work.

Iirc we are approaching similar "limits" for things like sword WSs, job combinations with a lot of JAs, etc. They preallocated a fixed amount of space for structures in packets/RAM assuming it was more than they would ever need and are now nearing those limits (long after the people who made the systems left the company.) They would need to reverse engineer a lot of code to fix some problems, which makes them more expensive than adding a new zone or something even if creating one new sword WS animation and picking a few constants for the damage formula are themselves easy.

Tl;Dr: it is programming for PC and thus nothing is impossible but some things are harder than they look.

[Fwahm]

idk man, I'm sure ps2 limitations was a thing well before SoA...and low and behold two new jobs with a plethora of JA's and spells and unique gear.

And it wasn't until after all those new spells (including later SoA BLU spells) and JAs that SE said that they're completely out of room for new ones. "PS2 limitations" was mainly in reference to 80 items per bag for a long time, and it was only (relatively) recently that it started being in context of total number of spells and JAs that could be given to players, which they've never been inconsistent about.

[Isiolia]

idk man, I'm sure ps2 limitations was a thing well before SoA...and low and behold two new jobs with a plethora of JA's and spells and unique gear.

While not the data structure (or whatever) limit that it seems to be for max spells/etc, they did actually have to address a PS2 limitation prior to SoA. They increased the PS2 HDD partition size for the game from 12GB to 21GB in February 2012 I think (based on translation here) though I don't know that it was mentioned in NA patch notes.

While they obviously didn't add more RAM, there was an increase in what the PS2 could manage that ended up allowing for an "all new" expansion. Presumably, the liberal recycling of assets prior to that had something to do with that limited storage space.

[Ophannus]

They don't even need to add new animations, just give us existing NPC weapon skills, starting with the Campaign NPCs because they're fucking rad. We can use a few of them with those silly campaign latent effect weapons, like Uriel Blade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej8D6DuiwQw

[Kirin]

A full on Switch or mobile version would interest me a lot. Not sure if character data can be recovered from 6+ years ago or if this would basically be a new game starting from scratch, but I would certainly be interested in it for the 30-40 dollar range with $5-10 expansions every few months.

I know XI is profitable, but I wonder how profitable it becomes long term with SE's tendency to bloat dev costs by 3-4x and the ceiling they think they can reach for return purchasers.

[Ophannus]

They could make it an FFXI-lite, in that it's a much more streamlined game with lot of the fat cut out. Almost like FF-Explorers. Like mostly single player with occasional co-op.

[Sirious]

Seriously. Weapons now. Seriously.

How in the fuck. Why. What.

[Sechs]

Are we seriously getting Ambuscade-like augmentable weapons that are gonna work in the offhand as well?
Sound strange.

Honestly I would've been happier with one of the non-ilevel slots augmentable things.
Like I dunno, an augmentable ring, an augmentable earring, an augmentable Waist.
Ruling Neck out because of the recently added Dynamis-related JSEs.
Wouldn't that have been cool?

Weapons I dunno, altough it's gonna be cool for dualwielding jobs if they work offhand. Not so much for jobs that do not dualwield I suppose...

[Kanriel]

Considering I presently consider a SR reward to be my BiS offhand...I can get behind an Ambuscade offhand.

[Isiolia]

Are we seriously getting Ambuscade-like augmentable weapons that are gonna work in the offhand as well?
Sound strange.

It really remains to be seen, as that's a lot to assume off of half a sentence in the update announcement. It really could just be a poorly worded way of saying there are more cosmetic items.

Assuming they are adding i119 items, they could be more like the armor sets than capes. If you look at it as targeting new/returning players, this could make some amount of sense. I don't think there are i119 weapons for a freshly dinged 99 that match the time/reward that NQ or possibly +1 Ambuscade armor represents. Even for more established folks, this could net some decent storable weapons for less-played jobs.

If they -are- augmented, chances are every job would have some sort of niche weapon(s) they might want to make. Kind of like some of the remaining skirmish pieces people go for.


That said, I think the slots with the biggest potential for augmented items would be sub and ammo. Grips, shields, non-expendable ammo, I guess an animator as to not leave PUPs out in the cold... most every job geared to most any level probably has at least one they could make great use of.

[Sechs]

I dunno. Ammo, ranged or Sub are kinda job-specific slots. Would be hard to make equipment that would undoubtely benefit every job in those slots, like it was possible for capes and like I would've been perfectly possible for other slots as well like Neck, Waist, Ears and Fingers.
Not that I wouldn't welcome augmentable ambu-like stuff in the Sub/Ranged/Ammo slots, but as I said they would kinda be a bit trickier to handle than the other slots I mentioned.

Neck is out of the scenario now that they released Divergence JSE necks. Fingers, Ears and Waist remain.
I honestly don't see it coming though...

[Isiolia]

I dunno. Ammo, ranged or Sub are kinda job-specific slots. Would be hard to make equipment that would undoubtely benefit every job in those slots, like it was possible for capes and like I would've been perfectly possible for other slots as well like Neck, Waist, Ears and Fingers.

True, for any given slot there you'd have some jobs that either rarely use that item type, or don't at all.

What makes them stand out to me is that the competition, in most cases, is much thinner. Where there are standout examples, they tend to be very limited. So I don't so much mean that you'd make one thing and every job would make great use of it. More that there'd be something you could make for each, even if somewhat niche. Plus, grip/ammo are in the weapon category, and shields are often included in that too, if considering what Ambuscade could offer in that regard.

The more universal accessory slots would be great too, but there's a greater variety of options there already.

[Sirious]

Ready to throw away all the new dynamis weapons you just bought, good news!

We start out with Ambuscade, which this time will receive an additional set of rewards in the form of an all-new set of weapons.

AND they come with a new augment system (I'm assuming based on this)

・ Add new rewards and buff system

[Shenrien]

Doubt they would add anything to challenge the path c augments on su5.

All these augments I bet will be mainhand only just like those however.

[Rehn]

Did anyone who did dynamis d during statue crusher plus remember their distribution of personal rewards? Is it tilted more towards the stuff like rusted/blackened cards vs. shards/void pieces?

[Hitou]

Never seen anything but id cards and like 1 medal in all the runs my group has done during the event.

[Kyte]

It's only the Plus campaign that gives extra shards/void items.

[Tarage]

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/cam...wcb/index.html

I'm trying to figure this one out. It SOUNDS like it you're already subbed you don't get any of this? It's weird. Any thoughts?