Dev Tracker - Discussion

Lol. Like 10 ppl have finished all the content so far. . . and there's still new stuff comin.

TVR and Sortie are both low effort content. The kind you'd make when you're on maintenance mode. Segment and mat farms in ody are just reusing existing assets.

At least with Gaol they took away subjobs and added a consistent loot system to make us consider that they put in any effort. And it's actually enjoyable to play, so kudos to them and that's the silver lining. But that means part of 1 of the 3 things you mentioned wasn't them just slapping blue paint on old content.

This isn't woe is me the servers are shutting down silliness. It's just pointing out that we've been in maintenance mode for several years at this point and they've still managed to put out content that is worth playing during that time. And also add Wardrobes and do periodic job rebalances. Sometimes they even realized that they implemented a WS wall into content "they didn't intend".

Grind out those master levels manually. That should last you more than a lifetime.

One thing to point out, not trying to dissuade anyone's opinion, but let's not miss the forest for the trees here.

We get excited about a monthly update where we have ANY potential upgrades. That has been about 2-3 patches a year for awhile now. Usually it is cosmetic (because no balancing needed) and mounts (because riding a vagina dolphin is the thing to do now), so really if you are still here, online, and "playing", then you should already have the expectation that FFXI players will get what they get and should be happy about it.

We are here because this place feels like home. I know any real player has logged on, stood around, left their character AFK, and checked on what's happening around them periodically because it feels good. Standing around doing nothing is part of the game because existing in Vana'diel is what makes us happy. New content is awesome, but quickly spammed through and it is back to status quo.

I really think the player behaviors are mostly going to stay intact. Bitchers will ***, casuals will buy gear, and the select few will make a weapon for the hell of it while we push occasional clears. That can last YEARS and the proof is, it already has.

Would we have gotten Odyssey in maintenance mode? No.

Would we have gotten Sortie in maintenance mode? No.

Would we have gotten an entire culmination of the TVR events in maintenance mode? No

When we’re in full maintenance mode, we will get recycled Ambuscade, monthly logins, and if we’re lucky, the various cycled campaigns, unless they say *** it and leave everything active. The term maintenance mode is being used a little too loosely the last year or whatever it’s been. You might call the content shitty, or low effort, or whatever, but it’s still content nonetheless.

Maintenance node means whatever they want it to mean and changes when they want it to change. It's a meaningless word.

The only thing they mentioned about content after TVR was that there was battle content at the end of it, since then the only mention of new battle content has been master trials.

I think expecting more than that at this point is going to result in a lot of disappointment. I'd love to be wrong, but I think we have to take what they are saying at face value and all they've said is there is going to be a new master trial to demonstrate the power of prime weapons and prime weapons will be completed at the end of VR, which seems to tie into what they said before. Unless I missed it, there has been no mention of anything else from SE staff. It seems to make sense that Valhalla would be a next step, but that could just be a new BCNM area for the master trial.


They are likely changing out hardware while they have the resources and knowledge on hand to do so. If they are scaling the team down, this needs to be done before that happens if they plan on keeping the game running into the future. If there is a hardware failure and no one knows how to fix it, then that is a big problem, seems smart to get ahead of that if it is dated.

The final grind for Primes will be to delevel your character to 30 using only the weapon to slowly devour your soul. Dying to mobs or using poison pots to speed it up will only render the weapon useless. Only then will you have access to Valhalla

Damn.... The end of ffxi... RIP FFXI - I guess I can play FF14 with all the other skill-less scrubs...

Screw 14. The only great aspect of it is it’s lore / storyline.

I slaved for my Anima weapon only for it to be a glamour piece with 2 consecutive updates.

Imagine earning a REMA and it’s not longer relevant 6 months from now.

To be fair, I believe relic and mythic weapons were not originally planned to be improved beyond level 75 cap but everyone complained so they begrudgingly added steps to improve them. Similarly with zodiac weapons, they acknowledged the timesink they required and let you skip a massive step for anima weapons if you turned your zodiac weapon into the crystal.

Unlike all the doomsayers, I don't think FFXI is going to go into full maintenance mode despite the downscaling of the team.

By Matsui's own admission, Fujito is the one who pushed for the small amounts of modernization we got over the years, like the new installer and the chat filter. I doubt a person like that would just go "Oh, I'm in charge now? *** it, let's just sit back and relax until retirement."

Maybe it's overly optimistic, but the way I read the parts about backend improvements and reassigning the team feels like long-term planning to me. It's absolutely gonna make content updates grind to a halt for at least a year, but virtualizing the servers on newer hardware could actually improve lag in instances, for example. And letting your team explore better career options means they won't burn out just working in ancient development environments.

There's a chance Fujito will use the downtime to plan for future content and budgeting and then request people from the FFXIV team (as Matsui previously had to) once that game's development cycle reaches a lull.

At the very least we already know they are planning stuff for Ambu, MTs and prime weapons. That's not a whole lot, but it might just be to tide us over for the time being.

I don't think you replace hardware and invest in that, to shut things down.

In before sell it off - SE is too proud to let someone else have a FF title

Didn't they talk about this in one of the livestreams in the last year or two? They have non-technical tools to make basic changes - new items, cutscenes, missions, adjusting monsters, etc. They aren't pulling coders from other teams to bang out Phuabo mounts and Platinum Moogle Belts.

Obvs. new content systems or features like the new chat filter are a different ballgame.

Can't unsee this now. Thanks for ruining the new mount.

Lag in instances is a software problem, not a hardware one. Their packet prioritization seems backwards and it drops things off the end of the queue too early. Without changing their netcode, it's not something that's likely to improve.

This game still scratches that itch for me after all these years and I have enough like-minded people around me to do what I want in-game. While this news definitely fleshes out what we already knew, I don't think it's going to change anything for me or the people I play with. People are still going to want to do Odyssey and Sortie and whatnot or just be social. And I'll probably still be logged in when the servers shut down for good, whenever that is.

I think he means it in the whole "throw hardware at bad code" solution. It's terribly inefficient, but poorly optimized code can be masked over by just throwing more cycles at it.

The real world events aspect of this is interesting. Wonder what that entails? I imagine just in Japan but still. One final vanafest?

Either that, or they might use the opportunity of backend work to actually improve the netcode itself, since they're already spending FFXI's limited budget on that instead of content updates. And who knows, maybe the virtualized servers will allow them to create more separate instances in content, which might help.

You are getting your hopes up way to high.

The only thing you should expect is as more people finally quit, things will run smoother since servers aren't processing 50000 bot commands per second.

I'm not particularly hoping for anything. I'm simply not interested in going full doomer mode when nothing is set in stone, yet.

Yeah.... games dead bro... quicker you get with the program you can play another game. RIP FFXI

So many drama queens.

When I think of maintenance mode it's ftp or live service games that have died. They stop doing real updates and leave their cash shop on. They make cosmetics and leave boosters up for sale. Eventually they yank their servers because the cash shop completely dries up.

You're right, maintenance mode is being thrown around too loosely. But we actually pay a sub. So, yes we would have gotten all of those things in maintenance mode because otherwise they can't justify a sub. We can expect the bare minimum of a piece of content every year~ish and maybe an update for balance or to address general concerns. They can pepper in as many HTBs or Master trials as they want so long as they don't use any new art resources. That's what we've been doing for awhile now. There aren't going to be anymore big pushes of content like a full expansion like Rapsodies.

We'll probably get Vagary part 3 is a couple years because it's easier than actually making BLM balanced and fun. I really hope we occasionally get things like Odyssey that are different and rewarding to mix things up. TVR end will probably be more than just bare bones so we don't start complaining immediately. I'm honestly looking forward to them trying to keep this game going medium to long term preservation.

I did this just before Adoulin came out. Made a Ragnarok when it was still being used by folks, and then a week later, SE introduced ilvl and it was outdated by Bereaver and Senbaak. They eventually got around to adding reforge to ultimate weapons, but it took a long time. I haven't played FF14 since the original beta, but I'm guessing anyone who plays it with any kind of pride in making weapons/armour will be sorely and regularly disappointed.

Fujito didn't even mention maintenance mode, yet so-called journalists are running with click bait headlines instead.

I mean, doesn't this quote read just the opposite?

He said downscale and let some of their dev's work on other project. XI cant have all that many devs exclusive to XI even prior to this announcement. How many dev's does it take to rotate ambu loot and write up another TVR mission every month two months?

Not always.

I could be mistaken in my understanding, but this isn't a performance problem, it's a logic issue. If I understand it correctly, there is queue of chunks to be sent to the client that is assembled server side. That queue is flushed (sent) to the client on a timer or if a packet is received from that session. If the number of chunks exceeds a certain size/count, then chunks are dropped before being sent. The problem being that with todays mass pulls with 30-40 mobs and 6 players doing things combined with a shared instance, the queue fills too quickly before they can be flushed out, so stuff gets dropped.

If that is the case, then you could throw as much hardware at the problem as you want and it wouldn't solve anything. They have to change the logic to either prioritize dropping less significant chunks, increase the queue size, or flush more frequently to fix it.

The hardware updates are probably to improve uptime, reduce risk of outages, and make maintenance easier/faster in the long run by a smaller team. I wouldn't read too much into them

Sharks come out when there is blood in the water. Those click bait headlines didn't force the incoming director to say they were downsize their already tiny staff. He did that all on his own.