Ps2 Limitations Brah... NO MORE!

Don't forget that that's also why we have 119 AF1~3s.
He saw all the bitching about the REM outdate, and all the rose tinting that the 75era got...
Looked at 75era (and I'd assume 99era too) gearing paradigms and saw:
75: Artifact+1 and Relic sets as a base, supplemented by drops, Relics and Mythics at the top, small gap between endgame dropped weapons
99: empyrean set as base, supplemented by relic+2 pieces. Empyrean and Relics at the top, massive gap between them and everything else.

So now we have 119 AF1~3 as a base, supplemented by drops, with REAME at the top, but not being massively ahead of random drops (though the "121"s are a step above).
And it's that "giving us more than what we bitched for" is why I respect Matsui's lead.

I mean, can you imagine life without the RFs? If all he did was make REMs 119 and the top?
That would suck.
(Though I must profess that I despise the special treatment RUN and GEO got. They should have been integrated better and not inverse SCH&DNC, 99-only jobs. That goes triple for Ergon weapons. The Ergon process is just terrible compared to Mythic making... They should have been real Mythics. And any "lore" excuse is 100% invalid and BS. RUN is the oldest job in the game. It's a Zilartian job. Any argument that it couldn't be elsewhere is BS since everyone is Zilart. And GEO is apparently a lie. That was a fun tidbit RoV gave us. Lore is not an excuse for Relic and Empy expansion, that's design rules. Ones that need be done away with.)

Why Ergon process terrible compare to mythic? It's just the coalitions right?

Over the years, SE has blamed the PS2 limitations for a lot of things that they just didn't want to do. Here's a list of things that would be beneficial and these changes do probably make possible:

1) As mentioned for items, they could retain all player structures in memory during zones changes (this probably would have been possible with PS2 if they managed garbage collection carefully)

2) Add terms to the autotranslate dictionary. Pretty much as many as you want.

3) If I'm not mistaken, FFXI's graphics are currently ported from PS2 with a Dx8 conversion library/shim. Those function calls are then proxied by a Dx9 shim by all modern computers. In the future (if not already), modern computers will drop hardware Dx9 support and we will start seeing Dx11 shims for Dx9. Upgrading FFXI to Dx11 would be way too much to ask for and also pretty unnecessary. In fact, even Dx9 wouldn't be necessary because Windows has the conversion library that's really pretty good. However, if they could upgrade to real Dx8 (no PS2 shim) and change the awkward way they handle particle effects, glows, etc., that would dramatically reduce/eliminate the graphical lag that some people experience. It is probably a pretty major project, though.

4) Officially nod to 3P software. One of the big reasons SE cannot endorse 3P software at the moment is its PC-onry nature. When all of FFXI is PC-onry, this is not an issue any longer.

5) High res textures, etc. Nahtgannahappan


Anyway, #1-2 could probably be done and likely actually wouldn't be that hard. #3 is probably not going to happen, but would be a massive improvement if it did. #4 is also not going to happen and doesn't really matter. #5 is definitely not going to happen.

Maybe they ditched the consoles so they can convert ffxi into a pay-to-win game with in game credit card purchases available. xD

Coalitions, the minor detail of 13099 HPB costing ~twice as much as 30k alexandrite, etc.

on Shiva, a Mythic will run you ~180 million, whereas an Ergon will cost you close to 600 million. factoring in how much more difficult it is to obtain 50 HPB compared to 100 Alexandrite merely compounds the issue further (a fair 1:2 ratio considering final numbers required). prices are roughly 3x as much here, with stacks creeping into the 4.5 mill territory prior to this week's WKR campaign (where they will quickly return after the short influx). even if the shortened respawn rate became the norm, beating on the WKR for a single guaranteed HPB and the slim chance at what equates to a Cotton pouch would not exactly be much improvement.

aside from legendary rank in all coalitions (which you have PLENTY of time to work on while you try to get all those Bayld) you have to factor in the Naakul items which are becoming harder to get, the 2.5 million Plasm from Delve, and all the various Ghastly/Wailing/Verdigris stones. the task for an Ergon weapon is far more onerous simply because it was designed around "current" level content instead of pre-iLevel.

It's done that way because PS2 doesn't have a "GPU" per se, instead it has two DSPs (VLIW cores called vector units) on the CPU die (Emotion Engine, this processing all geometry stuff) and a "smart frame buffer" (Graphics Synthesizer, which does particles and lighting) so the source is designed with that separation in mind.

To keep the source code solid, they have the PC CPU perform all tasks the Emotion Engine would on the PS2 version (but using PC native formats like DX textures and such natively) and have the GPU do lighting and particles.

Because particles and lighting is handled on that obnoxious way, we have that problem of frame rate drop when we are near stuff with heavy effects (avatars, npcs with glows, telepoints, confluxes, geo bubbles and similar crap).

Wrapper inside wrapper, inside wrapper. I honestly don't see them retooling this game even after PS2 support is dropped...


And btw on that translation the "DNS" thing should read "DNAS" or "Dynamic Network Authentication System". That's SONY DRM for online gaming on PS2 and PS3.

My biggest problem with the game is inventory space. I just want them to double it. I'm fine with the graphics as they are; they look great for such an old game. I feel it has definitely aged well as most Final Fantasy games tend to do.

After that, the work that needs to be done has nothing to do with PS2... fix lacking jobs, make adjustments to improve other jobs' quality of life... and nerf the ***out of blue mage ;)

This is the worst thing I ever saw,

^ I still have inventory space issues and I have so much stuff that I'm not using muled/on storage slips.

When I game back in November, I had 3 new boxes (Safe 2, Case, Wardrobe). I was like "Yay, never gonna have inventory problems again!". That didn't last a month.

One specialized box I'd really like to see is "Medicine Box" (can be witty and call it First-Aid kit) that only holds Usable Items (not gear) like echo drops, ninja tools. I don't even care if they're just generic and it can hold spell scrolls too. Whoop de doo.

Also, in retrospect, I wish storage slips for RAE gear was job based, rather than type based. Storage Slip PLD could hold Gallant, Valor, Creed (NQ/+1/+2/Reforged/R+1).


Or just get real about other jobs. I'm playing BLU because of how powerful it is, but part of the reason it seems so powerful is that a lot of the other jobs haven't aged well AND have crappy jp/gifts.

That, and blue magic doesn't suffer from the aoe limitations that elemental does.

Why does everything including PS2 limitations lead to blue mage discussion !

Because Kate Upton's *** are amazing

RIP PS2/Xbox, I doubt it will change population numbers much. I hope they change their mind later and do something like an add-on or enhance graphics somehow, they always change their minds.

glad to see it happen. but i think it happens WAY to late... hope this opens possibilities for a "revival" adding new content otherwise not being able to done before due to limitations!

Somebody didn't read the thread.

Hmm my sarcasm must be completely broken or some of you have a very big very rigid serious stick up your ***.

1. Makes a bad thread with an ill informed premise.
2. Gets schooled on the matter in said thread.
3. ????
4. Claims others have sticks up their respective ***.


Yeah...

It didn't require XBL to play but you couldn't disconnect from XBL while playing or else it would drop you from POL services. There were some rare situations where I would have a quick loss of XBL services and wouldn't kick me, but for most part you had to be connected to both systems (which I believe caused the system to notoriously crash, especially in large scale events like Campaign battles and Whitegate invasion battles.)

You might be cofusing... It doesn't require LIVE at all to function but you can't log on POL from a XBOX360 without it being connected to live. After you're logged in, LIVE can crash and burn and it won't even care (unless you log out your profile from the console which then indeed will cause you to be kicked faster than you can say "gold").

The reason for that is achievements management.

I know my specific system would not stay connected to POL if it lost signal from XBL, I've never ran into a situation where my XBOX ID was signed out, but that's a different matter. I jumped from Xbox cause how horribly it ran (don't get me started on updates...) Support for both PS2 and XBOX lasted way longer than need be, honestly even a cheap barebones pc should run the game better.

Xbox One doesn't require a subscription to play games online though. It's the PS4 that requires it now.

Honestly i saw alot of people quiting because of void watch, which was 100% tanaka btw.

I always wanted to find a way to make a picture with multiple PS2s stacked on top of one another and server names labeled on them. Then make it worse with a few character names labeled on PS2 memory cards.


My biggest issue with SoA was how fast after it was released (about a month) they came out with Delve. That there dropped it pants on everything else and took a dump on it. You went from Ilvl 106 right to 110 and 119. There was no reason to do reives or get the colonization rank up. And that also messed up Bivoacs as well, was a real nightmare.

EDIT: Also the REM problem was another big issue and how long it took to give a solution.


This is something we all wish would have been done along time ago. Sadly updating it would of too much cost and shutting it down to revamp might just end you up with a smaller player base than before because of being down for so long.

Another announcement from Matsui insisting the game's not over with the PS2 shutdown.

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11eu/detail/14626/detail.html

Man, they're getting nervous about it I guess.

By how much will server populations drop? 20%? 40%?

JP players will make up a significant portion of the PS2 player base and if in theory none of them switched over to PC that would be a significant drop, there will be some NA PS2 players and slim to none EU players since we never got the PS2 version.

Not sure about 360 but that will surely be mainly NA+EU players as JP were very much in the Sony camp.

I'm glad to see these comments from Matsui, altough it makes me raise my eyebrow thinking about how they handled the announcement last march. I mean, wtf, seriously?

I'm happy stuff is gonna keep coming, and on a monthly basis too opposite to what previously announced.
At the same time though there won't be anything big (no new miniexp or full exp, no new story, no new zones etc) kinda kills, in part, the value of this latest announcement.


Getting new events, new stuff, new drops, no mobs etc is cool and everything, but can only last so long without nothing "big" coming.
Altough, dunno, maybe it's wrong on my side to be concerned about it, not like it's gonna be a problem in the near future.