Besieged – Additions and Adjustments(07/10/2006)

[Dayner]

Since its introduction in the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion disc, Besieged has become far more popular than the development team ever anticipated.

This popularity leads to certain victory with little need for strategy on almost every World, as hundreds of players unite to repel the beastman hordes. With the gradual adjustments that have been implemented, it is now possible to witness the furious battle unfolding within Al Zahbi. However, many players have voiced their desire to participate in a more strategy-based Besieged.
With this aim in mind, the following adjustments are planned for the upcoming version update.

New Notorious Monsters
With the addition of Notorious Monsters that require more than just numbers to defeat, Al Zahbi will find itself under attack from even more powerful beastman armies.

Invading the Beastman Bases
The composition of the armies advancing on Al Zahbi will be greatly affected by attacks on the beastman bases.
Invading the home ground of the savage beastmen and weakening their forces will become an essential step in the defense of Aht Urhgan's capital.

We are aware that the crowding that accompanies the Besieged event overwhelms the processing power of many clients, and prevents a smooth gaming experience.
The standard solution to this issue would be to restrict the number of players in the area; however, we feel that hundreds of characters of all levels participating in the same battle is what makes Besieged so popular in the first place.

We have no plans to restrict or remove this new feature based on hardware issues. While there is no simple solution, we intend to continue making adjustments that will improve players' enjoyment of Besieged.
We are also planning on implementing measures in the next version update that will address issues associated with insufficient memory for certain types of hardware.

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/631/detail.html

two headed Mamool Ja ?

 

[Lecan]

Hmm.. let's see. Beseiged is laggier than just about anything else in the game... and they want us to try to strategize when we have enough trouble just walking around without DCing?

I think their number 1 priority should be trying to solve the lag issues first, then we can worry about making it more strategy based. Currently, trying to form a strategy and actually employ it against an NM during beseiged is difficult at best, Impossible at worst.

 

[Dayner]

they want us to lose

 

[Khajit]

So basically we are gonna have to rely on the intelligence of other players for beseiged in this game now? We are so doomed.... I do like the fact that our invasions of the beastman areas will affect beseiged more.
SE really must want us to lose. either that or they're listening to those masochists that actually wanna lose. Either way we kicked too much ass. Now lets go stay undefeated and foil SE's plans.

 

[Tyrath]

We're all gonna die!!!!!!

Dont forget the fat mamool:

 

[Uzor]

lag issues can't ever be resolved, as the lag is not server-side, tis client-side. The only way to solve it is ot get a better computer.

<3 the two-headed mamool

 

[Lecan]

lag issues can't ever be resolved, as the lag is not server-side, tis client-side. The only way to solve it is ot get a better computer.

<3 the two-headed mamool

Or institute a minimum level. According to SE's own census a huge chunk of players are 70+. Couple that with the fact that unless you're a mage anyone under 65 is essentially useless, and it seems to only make sense (at least to me) that by removing those who can't actively contribute the lag will be at least somewhat reduced.

Another option I would imagine is to have the beastmen zone in gradually, maybe only 20 enemies at a time every 5 minutes until their forces are depleted. Part of the reason the lag is so immense is that 700 players + 150 enemies = CPUDOOM. Limit the number of enemies to 20 every 5 minutes all coming from different entrances.

If the beastmen are smart enough to organize their own armies and attack a major city, they're smart enough to not attack head on and try attacking from different directions at once to spread out enemy forces. If you had 5 beastmen coming out of 4 different entrances (Bhaflau Thickets, Wajoam woodlans, and the two "secret" exits) to try to attack the city, poeple wouldn't be in a giant clump, there would be less lag, and trying to strategically beat them would be a bit more feasable.

 

[Uzor]

Or institute a minimum level. According to SE's own census a huge chunk of players are 70+. Couple that with the fact that unless you're a mage anyone under 65 is essentially useless, and it seems to only make sense (at least to me) that by removing those who can't actively contribute the lag will be at least somewhat reduced.

Another option I would imagine is to have the beastmen zone in gradually, maybe only 20 enemies at a time every 5 minutes until their forces are depleted. Part of the reason the lag is so immense is that 700 players + 150 enemies = CPUDOOM. Limit the number of enemies to 20 every 5 minutes all coming from different entrances.

If the beastmen are smart enough to organize their own armies and attack a major city, they're smart enough to not attack head on and try attacking from different directions at once to spread out enemy forces. If you had 5 beastmen coming out of 4 different entrances (Bhaflau Thickets, Wajoam woodlans, and the two "secret" exits) to try to attack the city, poeple wouldn't be in a giant clump, there would be less lag, and trying to strategically beat them would be a bit more feasable.

It wouldn't really matter, you get split up at the start anyway, and the beastmen try to attack all 5 generals at once, meaning about 1/5th of the people attending will be at each general. There's still plenty of lag.

 

[Lecan]

How many people do you know that actually stay where they're put after they are split up? After everyone gets split up they just regroup back where they were, most commonly the bastion, where it is subsequently the laggiest.

 

[reddogneo]

There is no solution for the lag besides makin a lvl minamum or limiting the amount of ppl in the zone. I agree that vll 50 and 60 for melee there not much use in besiged but at the same time SE doesnt want to kick those ppl out of besige. But what they can do is have certain lvl cap mission that raid enemies bases whitch does help besiege become easier. IDK I doubt that will help there will still be 600 lvl 70+ ppl there anyway

 

[Direwolf]

The only worlds that have lost so far where because of maintmaince, they realize we are more or less unbeatable. NMs and their talk of "Strategy" basicaly is them making it so we can lose. Kinda hard to do anything but Zerg with 700 people.

 

[Chasym]

lag issues can't ever be resolved, as the lag is not server-side, tis client-side. The only way to solve it is ot get a better computer.

<3 the two-headed mamool

actually they CAN be improved. Most of the issues with lag are not client side issues. one could be to actually uncap the connection speed to let those with faster connections take advantage of the game more, The game is as we all know capped at 56k. So if you play on cable or not, your playing at 56k speeds.

another issue that was discussed over at the windower forums is that the game is poorly coded, as anyone would notice. This game does not pool threads. Meaning, evertime you do something in this game, a thread is made. Talking to an NPC, checking the AH, checking your menus, anything! Most games pool this information instead of creating seperate instances for all of them, generally slowing down the game badly. Imagine how many threads go on in a place like lower jeuno, thousands upon thousands all at once. one of the devs over at windower actually made a plug in that pooled these threads, and reported GREAT improvements in the gameplay, alot less lag. We sadly will probly never see a final version of such a plug in.
theres many other things within the game itself that causes alot of the lag, i would say 20% if that is system problems compared to SE's poor coding and laziness to improve.

 

[Rappa]

SE's poor coding and laziness to improve.

I'd say it's more "making sure it's playable on PS2" and less "laziness to improve". Honestly the greatest thing they could do would be to faze out the PS2 version and make the PC and 360 versions better. PS2 limits a lot of things they could be doing with the game. But that'll probably never happen.

 

[Lecan]

I'd say it's more "making sure it's playable on PS2" and less "laziness to improve". Honestly the greatest thing they could do would be to faze out the PS2 version and make the PC and 360 versions better. PS2 limits a lot of things they could be doing with the game. But that'll probably never happen.

Yeah, unfortunately the majority of players in JPland play on PS2 if I remember correctly, which means unless SE does something drastic to get them to change platforms it just isn't going to happen. One of a few things need to happen:

1. SE ships a free copy of the PC ToAU+RoZ+CoP+FFXI to every registered PS2 player currently playing the game. The flaw in this is of course that a lot of people on PS2 don't have a computer that can play FFXI, so this is a costly and unlikely choice by SE.

2. SE awaits the PS3 launch and moves FFXI to that. A few major flaws in this of course, being that the PS3 is going to be 500 bucks minimum, not to mention the cost players will face having to not only locate but buy the PS3 version.

3. SE cancells PS2 outright, forcing PS2 players to either ante up and go to PC or Xbox360, or just quit.

4. SE seperates the servers based on platform, and changes gameplay accordingly. This will likely be a costly endeavor on their end, and cause outrage from players being seperated from their friends and linkshells, not to mention outrage that the PC and Xbox users will ultimately be getting better features for their money. However, it will allow SE to change some problems that bother PC users. For instance the 30 fps cap, the outdated graphics, 56k cap on connection, etc.

Basically, I doubt we'll ever see the PS2 players go unless PS3 becomes widely supported and SE decides to put FFXI on the PS3. Even then, I almost expect it to be a shitty port like it was for the PC from the PS2.

 

[K. Ishitar]

Hmm.. let's see. Beseiged is laggier than just about anything else in the game... and they want us to try to strategize when we have enough trouble just walking around without DCing?

I think their number 1 priority should be trying to solve the lag issues first, then we can worry about making it more strategy based. Currently, trying to form a strategy and actually employ it against an NM during beseiged is difficult at best, Impossible at worst.

Lol maybe they are working with Alienware to increase their profits

So your saying Besieged is laggier than sky 0.0

 

[Lavi]

Just limit the levels. Pretty much every below 70 is useless and it's not exactly like SE hasn't done anything like this in the past. Heck, almost everything you do in the new expansion requires a job level of 50 to do the most simplest tasks. To defeat CoP you need (without being a leech) a job that is 75, same with RoZ. It's nothing new for SE to exclude the lower level players for the more veteran and experienced members of the game, why should this be any different? Besides, it should have been obvious to the low level players that they are nothing but a burden and should do something else.

As for the PS2, they will never get rid of the PS2 players because they are paying customers. "Hi mister/miss PS2 user, we are sad to regret your huge portion of the gaming community is a burden on the rest of the users, so we have decided to decline your service." Right... We all know every action SE takes is a direct result of profit and if that means keeping a large portion of customers at the inconvenience or burden of the rest of the communitty, SE doesn't care. Personally, I don't see why they can't just update the whole system for improvement, PS2, PC and XBox. Is there some reason the PS2 cannot be improved to remove lag like the Xbox and PC?

 

[Rhaddy]

We're all gonna die!!!!!!

Dont forget the fat mamool:

fat troll....?

 

[Tyrath]

fat troll....?

Thats what i meant -.-

 

[Skaw]

We're all gonna die!!!!!!

Dont forget the fat mamool:

[ximg]http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/631/631.jpg[/img]

You see guys, now there will be Generals. Not the mobs you like to call Generals that are just regular jobs(especially when theres 3 of them around wtf srsly..)

The troll looks like he's going to be like The Boulder from Avatar, with about 30 years on him.

 

[Uzor]

You see guys, now there will be Generals. Not the mobs you like to call Generals that are just regular jobs(especially when theres 3 of them around wtf srsly..)

The troll looks like he's going to be like The Boulder from Avatar, with about 30 years on him.

The ones people like to call generals are the ones who are larger then the other ones with the same name, and which enjoy doing the /hurray and /cheer motions among the troops.