No more PS3 support at 4.0Follow

Awesome news! Great for the game's future. Some of the best news all day.

Depends on how you're defining the game's future though, since for example XI expanded constantly and even evolved quite a bit despite still supporting and being largely developed on the PS2 and lasted over 14 years, only ever had "downtime" during XIV 1.0's development and the "PS2 limitations" suddenly went away when new programmers looked over the code and made changes. WoW evolved fairly quickly even after the first expansion and that was never a console MMO.

If by future you mean it no longer being "held back" due to having PS3 support, it doesn't change anything sadly. It still supports the PS4, thus it's still supporting Console architecture in the core design (and unless they ditch the PS4 for the PS4 Pro PS3 and PS4 aren't that different in architecture so if there were "PS3 limitations" holding the game back the PS4 will still hold true to that) as well as still supporting 32-Bit windows and DX9 instead of moving onto full 64-bit DX12 support (current standard is 64 bit/DX11.)

Still have to take into consideration Yoshida's confirmation on the formula not changing or the game's core changing significantly, which is actually dangerous for the game's future because it didn't work out for WoW, which anyone who follows or plays MMOs knows WoW was the king in terms of MMO subscription and retention until..well, they chose to stagnate. Which is why Legion is amazing (not perfect but they properly designed the progression for once.)

So realistically, the only good news about that is they're bringing back the free upgrade campaign for people who haven't swapped over to a PS4 yet, since now that they're far cheaper it'd be a good time to upgrade.

And as an aside, the JP community are already saying "when will the 32-bit windows or DX9 limitations excuses start? "

The best news in my opinion, is that they're actually tying relics to a NEW SYSTEM FOR ONCE and it sounds very similar to Dynamis, more so than Diadem did.

They may go into detail on the battle system tomorrow, but err on the side of caution and wait till Tokyo fan festival.

Soo a level cap raise and expansion every 2 years it seems, in that case if they raise the cap to 99 like FFXI then we can expect to see this at least another 10 years. Guess that means theyll be moving on from PS4 to PS5 and 6 soon lol. Lets hope dropping PS3 support means we'll finally see a vast change this expansion cause so far with the exception of flying the game wsnt changed much, just new areas and dungeon, no new battle systems or modes, whereas FFXI changed the game every year.... Dynamis, Salvage, etc etc, were all very different gameplay experiences, not just the same thing with a different name.

Oh and maybe this time theyll do what they said about Heavensward and give us open world enemies that can actually kill us. Sure the HW enemies were harder but never once when fighting one did I feel like I would die or come close to it... and even if I did.... just run 10 feet away... so really it hard to be scared or death when its so easily avoidable.

Wonder how much of the Japanese population is still rockin the PS3. Most of them were the ones still using the PS2 towards the end. PS4 sales have been abysmal compared to PS3 at this point in the consoles life span over in Japan. I'm sure they have the data on what consoles people are using for this though. Can't imagine they'd bail on it if there were still a on of users...or would they?

Yeah, to be fair with XI though, Nexon is already making an "XI HD" so SE won't give the resources to properly overhaul XI, but at the same time, PS2 limitations went away when more talented programmers touched the code and fixed quite a lot....

The fact Yoshida even muttered "we need the playstation 5" says it's mostly a crutch excuse if anything. Yeah limits exist, but needing a new generation of console to allow accent dyeing is more of a design issue...

lol at "If by future you mean it no longer being "held back" due to having PS3 support, it doesn't change anything sadly. It still supports the PS4, thus it's still supporting Console architecture in the core design (and unless they ditch the PS4 for the PS4 Pro PS3 and PS4 aren't that different in architecture so if there were "PS3 limitations" holding the game back the PS4 will still hold true to that)"

Doesnt make a difference? Look at the specs of PS3 and 4 and telling me you could do a LOT more with just PS4 than you could with PS3. Sure PS still has limits but not having PS3s much WORST limits opens thing sup. Also what difference with a PS4 Pro make? Its not even using new hardware than the PS4 its just the same stuff the PS4 is using but overclocked.

I mean heck if I recall correctly with FFXI one of the main things that was holding the game back with Ps2 was the lack of RAM... and the fact that because of it you couldnt give more inventory space all you could do is clone more inventory types with the limit or 40 spaces or w/e. PS4 fixes that problem like hundred fold (exaggeration) by having more ram than EVER game console ever made combined (except maybe the Xbox One)

Did what?

if you mean the 80/80 that was one LONG before "PS3 limitations" ever since then is was mog safe/mog satchel, mog etc etc, did they actually increase the inventory space again prior to PS3 removal?

Initially, they said they couldn't increase the inventory slots beyond 40/45, then they said they couldn't beyond 60 and so on because of "PS2 limitations" - Mog Satchel/Sack/Case/Wardrobe 1/2 were added despite the "PS2 limitations" because what SE never wants to admit is:

"Well, it's just our ****** coding."

The only problem with inventory spaced I ever had during my avid XI days was actual on-person inventory.. being a rdm meant carrying around healing, nuking, enfeebling and melee gear. I was pretty much walking around maxed out. I never had a problem with additional space in my MH though.

Isn't it possible that rather than SE being completely incompetent, that maybe the devs just didn't see the need to really increase inventory space until the game went more vertical, making it much easier for players to rack up numerous gear sets and pieces? And not just storing gear pieces, but also all the various types of chips/seals/shards/whatever needed to pop NMs, trade to NPCs for rewards, etc?

I'm not sure how far you delve into the "underground", (and I don't mean KI underground) but pretty much anyone who's made any app/addon/plugin/etc for any of SE's MMOs can tell you just how bad their clients tend to be depending on the nature of said 3rd party app. This is even if you ignore some SE producers admitting to their faults, especially recently. "Limitations" doesn't suddenly vanish while supporting the same system that is supposedly causing the limitations. In FFXI, there was ALWAYS a need for more inventory space, which is why when the Porter Mog system came out, it actually got A LOT of people thinking why they didn't use that kind of system from the get go? (clarification: it pretty much just tells the server which item(s) you have so after it deletes the item from your character data it knows which to restore.) The only reason is the server strain back at XI's peak would have been pretty terrible prior to their hardware upgrade during ToAU.

Even in Japanese society it is generally seen bad taste to say "no" directly to your customers, but A LOT of features and changes that came to XI were stated as impossible due to "PS2 limitations", but new programmers fixing their coding is why they were able to do a lot they were recently, even "dropping support" simply means there won't be any more releases on that platform and they don't have to create multiple assets incase they need to scale certain things or even separate certain features due to the different framework they work with. For example with XIV, the PS3 gets a "lesser" version of some new features if not completely omitted, but it in no way limits them from doing anything else. However Yoshida stating they need "the PS5" to update the dye system any further beyond added colors, simply means the client design just simply can't do it efficiently - You can to this very day still edit your XIV session and have the server comply. So not saying SE is completely incompetent...it's just well known and documented even back to their single player games, their programmers....just aren't efficient lol.

Duo - I work with the PS2, PS3 and PS4 on a near daily basis, I know the boundaries of the platform because I know during optimization of one of our current projects it's VERY easy to have something underperform on the PS3 and PS4 more so than it is to basically push the system to the limit in a way similar to GTA5 (basically due to content rather than poor design.) Similarly to how Thayos said "rather than SE being completely incompetent", most developers are extremely talented, but so few pushed any of the new gen Sony consoles to the limits, because it's actually fairly hard to. PS2, in this day and age, is fairly easy to basically make it your *****, but the PS3 and PS4? Not so much and the PS3 is well documented in being rough to develop for - That's why PS4 development is so much easier, but FAR more expensive, especially now with having to essentially create two versions of your game with the Pro in mind, which I'm fairly sure is why yoshida even mentioned "we need the PS5" because the PS4 is definitely different from the PS3 in stats, but the architecture is very much the same when you get down to it.

Trust me - If the "PS3 limits" XIV, the PS4 will, the PS5 will just as continuing to support DX9 and 32bit OSs will limit this game. The problem comes down to design. As said, SE is far more transparent with some behind the scenes stuff with XIV than they were with other MMO projects (but the info is easy to find if you look) there's some questionable design choices that has nothing to do with the PS3 for example.

*looks at the extra retainer charge of $2/mo*

What do you think?

That's exactly right. The game is sending way more data than it needs to send and it's doing it way more often than necessary. For instance, all your retainer data is sent at the same time as everything else every 15 seconds. This is ridiculous because for the vast majority of time people are playing, their retainer data is unchanged.

I especially enjoyed when they came out and said that their servers couldn't handle the data from extra retainers................unless you pay $2 more per month for each one. Then it's ok apparently. Because reasons.

Making you subscribe to extra bank space is just about the shadiest thing. I don't even see F2P games doing that to you. You pay once sure, but not every month.