Special Dev-Team Interview (Game Watch)

[Kaylia]

They are instanced. These areas allow 3 groups inside. If more than 3 groups want to be inside, every group after the first 3 is stuck waiting until a group exits. If you're arguing that this isn't what "instanced" means, replace my use of "instance" with something that makes you happy.

They aren't instanced. It's 3 "floating" battlefield in the middle of nowhere, but in the same region. You simply occupy one of those 3 arena. You could in theory telehack in the middle of someone's BC and watch them fight.

Your definition of instance is just wrong in the context, because they can't remove the limit of 3 groups. There is only 3 battlefield. Of course, they could add a new .dat and the like, I don't think they ever made you download new area.

[Alistaire]

Nyzul floor 300 and "climbing downwards" go!

Climbing downwards makes me think of SC4. Tougher floors but more "save points"?

[Damane]

WHMs problem is not an ability to recover MP....
gees if they wanted to fix that they could just change devotion the way that you can target yourself.

WHMs main problem is that it doesnt differ much from RDM and SCH in their main aspect: Healing.
There is not a big difference in healing capacity between theese 3. RDM and SCH combined make far a better healing combo then WHM and RDM or WHM and SCH.

[mackerel]

They aren't instanced. It's 3 "floating" battlefield in the middle of nowhere, but in the same region. You simply occupy one of those 3 arena. You could in theory telehack in the middle of someone's BC and watch them fight.

Your definition of instance is just wrong in the context, because they can't remove the limit of 3 groups. There is only 3 battlefield. Of course, they could add a new .dat and the like, I don't think they ever made you download new area.

Arguing over semantics takes away from the important issue here. To alleviate congestion, SE needs to stop limiting us to 3 groups in a battlefield at a time. If Blizzard can make that concept work, SE should be able to handle it in 5 emergency maintenances or less.

[ringthree]

Elmer, a very specific translation question for you. After reading this and hearing from Kallo about specific questions that he asked the Dev team, I was wondering if the translation of the term "negotiation" is exact or if it is just the closest possible term?

The reason I ask is that it seems that in both places "negotiation" is being used to describe discussions between the different teams and the development process itself. Do they mean that the different teams actually have negotiations between themselves, almost like horse-trading ideas that the different teams want to implement. Or do they use negotiation in the context of negotiating the development process, like avoiding obstacles and allocating resources. It also appear that the term could simply be used as a word for the development process itself, determining what is and is not possible while creating more content. Which do you think is closest to the way they are using the Japanese word, or is it something completely different?

I know that this may seem like a very minuscule difference, but I think that it would provide an interesting insight into how things are done during development. If they are actually negotiating between the teams, trading one idea for another, then it would be a rather unique development project, almost anti-hierarchical in nature.

Thanks for any insight.

[Dimmauk]

The "melee WHM" as the solution for WHM being the only mage job without a way of getting MP back quickly confuses me too.

BLM has aspir, high clear mind and their playstyle allows them to /heal
SCH has sublimation
RDM has refresh
SMN has siphon
WHM has... a big paddle to run up and hit the mob with. WTH.

It's almost as if they ran out of ideas.

Maybe the change to RDM and WHM is allowing those jobs some "DD" potential, since amongst the jobs listed above, these two are the weakest in that aspect (if we disregard that RDM solo) outside of just farm-level mobs.

But seriously, nobody was asking for it, and to approach it from this perspective is just outright stupid. They really couldn't tweak WHM as a healer job and give it some method of MP recovery and not be outshined by SCH or RDM?

Just give WHMs a Self-Target only Refresh spell. make it a Level 65 spell. The End.

[Zaredx]

Arguing over semantics takes away from the important issue here. To alleviate congestion, SE needs to stop limiting us to 3 groups in a battlefield at a time. If Blizzard can make that concept work, SE should be able to handle it in 5 emergency maintenances or less.

Arguing over semantics is extremely important because they can't remove the limit of 3 groups without making a whole new zone, something that's never been done in all the time FFXI has been running, and may in fact be impossible for them to figure out how to do!

Think of it like a hotel that has convention rooms. They say that they can support two simultaneous events because they have two convention rooms. You can't say "Ha, they allow more than one so it's instanced, so saying 2 is them being assholes, they can allow unlimited simultaneous conventions just by changing the number on the sign!"

They can't, there's only 2 rooms. To let 3 in instead of 2 they have to build a new room. Same with FFXI. To let 4 instead of 3 in, they need to send you a whole additional copy of the zone files. And a whole new server to keep track of each one probably. It's easier than adding a floor to a hotel, but it's not trivial! If it used dynamic zones, where each zone is created in memory on the fly, then yes, it could handle as many as the server could do without choking. But it doesn't, it uses multiple copies of a static zone, and the only thing dynamic is the scheduler that choses which of those static zones to throw you into!

Blizzard can make the concept work because they DO use dynamic zones. The client only has ONE raid zone on it. The server makes a new copy in memory for everybody entering the instance, so the only limit is its CPU and Memory.

FFXI doesn't work that way at all, it would need to be completely reworked from the ground up. That's not easy...they could probably double the current numbers allowed, but it would be a HUGE update, since zonefiles are humongous.

[test123]

Fujito: My future goals are clearly set on improving and expanding the MMM system that I am implementing in this update. Besides that, I don’t work on much mainstream content, so I want to see if I can’t make something happen with side-content that has been neglected.

Ballista, Brenner, The colosseum, knock yourself out!

[Alistaire]

If it used dynamic zones, where each zone is created in memory on the fly, then yes, it could handle as many as the server could do without choking.

You mean like applying the MMM concept to BC zones?

[Drex]

Dare I say...nerf DRG?

[Reapz]

Thanks again Elmer! Great interview

[Guitarman]

Dare I say...nerf DRG?

PUP has been nerfed before, anything is possible.

What caught my eye was a "different way to summon" in reguards to the new avatars. I wonder if this isnt something like, get 4 summoners together to group-summon something friggen huge like bahamut or alexander?

[Redshift]

I hope they meant DRG relic WS...

[Valkrish]

Fantastic work elmer, i enjoy your works

[test123]

prob a tanking avatar and a melee avatar.

[Kaylia]

Arguing over semantics takes away from the important issue here. To alleviate congestion, SE needs to stop limiting us to 3 groups in a battlefield at a time. If Blizzard can make that concept work, SE should be able to handle it in 5 emergency maintenances or less.

How do you define "instance"? And explain me how getting better server and increasing the limit on the number of group would help in Splitting Heir?

[Pikarya]

lol at that interview being 500x better then any NA one.

rofl ^

[quannum]

prob a tanking avatar and a melee avatar.

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

[arus2001]

If memory limits are 80 items per "page" of stuff, why not just make a page for every equipment slot, and then additional one for miscellaneous stuff like random goods, food, medicine, and tools/cards? Almost seems too easy a fix, but meh... budget?

[Izzy]

If memory limits are 80 items per "page" of stuff, why not just make a page for every equipment slot, and then additional one for miscellaneous stuff like random goods, food, medicine, and tools/cards? Almost seems too easy a fix, but meh... budget?

I'm guessing because they'd then have to allocate memory for that as well. The problem is it loads your entire inventory into memory when you zone, sorting it into categories like that is still not going to fix the problem they're having. It's still going to have to load all that stuff as you zone.