Better Update System

I would have to say one of the other HUGE annoyances of FFXI of mine is the maintenance and update system. There have been months were we paid $12 for the month to sit in PlayOnline and see 'Unable to play during maintenance.' as if things weren't tested prior to being added to the game.

Along with that, having everyone in the world connect to the same server to obtain the update? Whos bright idea in SE was that? 10MB patches taking 8 hours.. yeah..

Find a better method of releasing updates, such as 'rolling updates' where they install as we play a few days ahead of time and when things are ready, the update is 'installed'. Or possibly releasing them as individual installers and distributing them on trusted gaming sites such as:
IGN, FileFront, FilePlanet, etc.

There are plenty of other ways this could be fixed or made better, out of 7 years I'm surprised it hasn't been fixed already in FFXI.

I'll be the first person to say "PS2 Limitations" as bad an excuse as it is but it's more that likely fact.

Technology has evolved over 7 years so you can almost guarantee that the update process will be different.

Bah, who cares anymore, everyone's gonna leave once FF14 comes out.

Not me, I've been playing FFXI too long to dip out when a new game comes along. I resisted the WoW temptation, the EvE Online temptation, the LotR:O temptation...

I can resist the FFXIV temptation ^^

Just a reminder, this is an FFXIV suggestion thread.

This is implied for FF14, hoping that they do something better then what they have done in 11. I was merely using 11 as an example of what they have done already.

Updates are done directly via their servers here in an attempt to be more secure than those updated via torrents and mass-download sites. This is one of the very few games that aren't modded through updates by hackers to do whatever they want. A few years back people found out how to change certain files in EQ2 after updates in order to gain mass amounts of stat increases secretly. WOW had a similar issue with saving stats in PC memory then sending them to the server during an update which because permanent afterwards.

It happened in EQ1 and 2, WOW, Diablo2, Hellgate, warcraft and starcraft, etc. Now Blizz has their own server bot which monitors packets in game constantly (forget what its called). SE hasn't gone that far yet but its probably something similar in the works for FF14.

I'd much rather them have a packet monitoring bot running like Blizz does than have to wait through 4-8 hours of "servers are too busy" to download on my free night off work ...

p2p updates :P or at least a torrent update system lol, the updates and POL in general are craptacular

Totally agree...14 hour updates can eat my ***.

Um, hell no.

Lol @ people not leaving FFXI for 14
sad thing is when 14 hits the new content for ffix
stops then eventually the Lifers and the elitest
will eventually get bored and stop playing then
se can shut down the 1 or 2 ffxi servers that will be left.
I see this happening a year or 2 tops after 14 drops.
I know as soon as it comes out i'm done with ffxi.
And if 14 proves to be better than 11 which i'm sure it will
i'm canceling my ffxi account :0

Holy necro, Batman.

I enjoy this to much and to be honest, FFXIV have yet to show me something that look even interesting. At this momement they just let me into disappointment after disappointment, starting to look more and more like a FF version of WoW.

Come on SE, IMPRESS me already ~_~;

lol@people that think FF11 will just disappear when FF14 comes out and living everyday screaming "ITS THE END!!!"

Umm... the update system is pretty efficient... it first downloads a list of hash values of each file, then checks too see if the hash of a local file matches the updated list. If it doesn't, it's downloaded. This is intended to make sure that should your download be interrupted it downloads only the necessary files. And it doesn't matter what version you have installed, it'll always download the complete update.

They've done "rolling updates" in the past. As for installers downloaded from other sites, how are PS2 and 360 users supposed to fetch these files? Let alone install them. Hell I hate downloading updates thru FilePlanet and the like. They are hard to find and you gotta jump thru hoops to download anything. Unless your a premier member.

Updates are a hassle. There annoying w/ WoW as well.