Hey! If you really want SquareEnix to listen up and reconsider fixing Duty Recorder (or adding more features for video recording in general), speak up! Make a thread on the forums, or /ffxiv reddit! Raise a ruckus, because that's how the Devs listen!
Maybe that would be better for servers, but i think that saving something on your pc (output of client based dr) and putting it back into the game (i mean the part of the memory reserved for the game) would be an easy way to create new types of cheats or other 3rd party tools that se does not like. Maybe a solution would be another program installed on top of the game (but ouside of it) that uses the saved data from dr. Still, this would probably cost much and the playbacks could be modified (but it's still outside of the game so who cares).
It put huge burden on the server because when you play it back, it simply recreate the recorded fight in REAL TIME. I mean, imagine if thousands of players replay their duty. Gpose on the other hand, is a lot more simple.
Something to consider is asking someone to help you put japanese subs in this video. They clearly see what other content creators post and that would grab their attention right away
Instead of a duty recorder, they could create a spectator mode. This tool could be an alternative way for mentors to help sprouts while also allowing content creators to get amazing shots using their own 3rd party software instead, which removes the strain on the servers. This would also allow benched static members to actively participate in the duty in another way.
Spectator mode would be cool in its own right, but unfortunately wouldn't be able to have the same characteristics as a recorder such as being able to control the speed of the fight (pause/rewind/fast-forward). In order to implement those features, it would have to be recording events, which seems to be very server-based in how they went about implementing their current event recording system. It'd be better than what we have right now, for sure, but it wouldn't quite scratch the exact itch a lot of content creators are looking for in a recording tool. They could probably easily make the recorder client-side, other MMOs have done it in the past. However, I'm sure they considered this and opted out for specific reasons (security concerns, client storage concerns, etc).
a great idea for the spectator idea would be to utilise the alliance finder have 1 party be participants and the other be the spectators, hell even add in a setting for once one side completes it it auto sets the next party in to have there go while the first party watches, As for the Duty recorder they could limit every player to one saved recording instead of 3, I do wish they go back and look into it, some action shots are almost impossible to do while your In combat.
I hope this video gets awareness and that Duty Recorder is expanded upon in Endwalker. I used it to make a video to youtube once and it was my most watched video on my channel at the time. There is value in it and I hope Square sees that. I'd rather they either expand upon it or if they don't have the technology, to simply remove it. It should be one or the other. Why waste resources on it if they aren't going to do anything with it?
I totally forgot duty recorder was even a thing. And during the first few minutes of the video I was like "Why did I forget about this? This is amazing!" But then I continued watching and realized why I forgot about it.
The problem with Duty Recorder is that it was poorly implemented from the beginning. It suffers the same issue as housing does; It's a netcode/server end issue that is a direct result of the underlying framework of the game. In other words, great ideas, bolted together execution. The issue lies in it being a server side feature meaning that ultimately it's as they said, a large strain on their resources and the additional features of it only compounded those issues. It exists purely because they likely figured out they could do it, thought it was a cool idea, so they tried it, then realised after the fact the limitation. The technology was later adapted to a more reasonable client side solution in the form of the group pose editor, which is doable. Unfortunately it seems SE has yet to figure out a client side solution for Duty Recorder, or is unwilling to set up a client side version for one reason or another (my guess is afraid that it might be reverse engineered or piggybacked on for use in ACT etc). There are a couple of developers SE could turn to for help on the issue, the two that first come to mind would be Bungie and Creative Assembly, who have both pioneered the technology of in game full capture recording, but have done it differently. The CA version is arguably flawed but is less resource intensive, where A.I copy the combat commands issued during the match, problem with this method is that over time the recorded actions suffer from variability and the outcomes differ from the original events, especially when patches change the stats of the units involved. The Bungie method is similar to the method used in FFXIV, except it's client side and records positional data (very long strings of coordinate data, actions, animations and such, it isn't perfect because if you watch the same footage over and over, corpse ragdoll differently every time, it isn't a recording so much as a series of tell commands to manikins) so in other words extremely long lists of data where effectively everything in the recording act like marionets acting out the second by second actions recorded. Problem with the Bungie method is that it is client side stored, so it's vulnerable to being datamined, meaning it could be used by 3rd party tools and SE wouldn't want that. It's very unfortunate as FFXIV has very powerful client side framework since the engine it uses is based on a single player game engine, the Luminous Engine (same engine as FFXV and likely FFXVI). Although it's based on it's prototype and it's a very stripped down version of that engine and is a bit of a Frankenstein monster with components from both Crystal Tools and other features brought in during the 2 year crunch to rebuild it (although a much smoother custom job than say Phantasy Star Online, it's in the same ball park but with smooth edges instead of rough ones), where the majority of it's client side features are primarily used to mask game latency (FFXIV suffers from a lot of movement ghosting, which makes high end raiding for high ping players a terrible idea, because not only does it make gameplay deceptively smooth, it hides what both the server and others players see from you to accomplish this smoothness). The dev team however seem extremely reluctant to make strong use of client side (only you can see it, no one else) features of FFXIV's game engine... in general and I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact (and they have admitted this themselves) that they can not and are not capable of seeing the client side game, only the data it sends to the server and the data sent from the server to it. Which is also why they do not know if people have mods or are using ACT (this is why the rarely talked about cheating issue in The Feast is kept on the hush). The only two ways a developer can know about the client game is if they either A) built the engine from the ground up as being an MMO game engine, such as in the case of Guild Wars 2, or B) they added scanning tools, effectively spyware into their account networking API at a later time, such as in the case of WoW.
The choice of duties to record just seems so weird to me despite there being a pattern. Why would we be able to record the puppet's bunker but not TEA?
I'm so glad you haven't forgotten or given up on Duty Recorder. I'm not a content creator, and I can stream or record my static so I never had a reason to use duty recorder just as you mentioned most people do, but I LOVE your Byakko MV and it's a real shame that Duty Recorder seems to have been left in the dust when it has such potential. I really hope this gets their attention. I understand that due to server limitations it'll probably never be open to every duty 100% of the time, but it'd still be awesome to see it get expanded (and to bring back the features that they removed for some reason).
I came in, curious to know what the deal was with Duty Recorder. And I leave having learnt a good deal I didn't know, but I did *not* expect that fine editing and machinima (is that the right word?) alongside this. Great work, Denmo!
Why did they load the workload onto the server in the first place? Why can't the recorder be on client side? I believe these things exist in Total Warhammer and they did it right. I know it's a different genre but the system is there.
If I had to guess I'd say it's because only the server has an accurate picture of what's going one in the first place, while clients will always have a slightly different perspective because of latency/imperfect connectivity etc. Since this feature was created to review raid progression, you'd want the most accurate replay possible, so it needs to be recorded server side. Or at least that's what I think the reason might be.
@@WannaComment2 That makes sense. TF2 is the same way with the same feature, but if replays are disabled on the server, there's the option to record it on your side, including voice chat, and put in a demo file. Less than perfect is still better than nothing.
@@traugdor Because this is an MMO with lots and lots of people playing at any given time. A servers would have to record hundreds, if not thousands of simultaneously running instances at any given moment, and have all that data ready for transfer as well. It's not impossible but it's a massive additional load on the servers. A client side recording feature would still be nice though, inconsistencies be damned.
@WannaComment2 Yeah I get that, maybe to combat the server load maybe they can have a limit to how many of these you want to record per-account and you can have the option to download these. Heck maybe have a timelimit to how long you should hold onto them unless you want to pay some gil or whatever to hold onto them longer. I know that last bit is janky but if its an issue of holding onto vast amounts of data then these options are better than what we got now. maybe a special moogle storage for these clips like an off server or some such, frogot the word.
I fully agree. I was super excited when Duty Recorder was introduced and have been patiently waiting for it to be reworked into something more viable alongside with Fellowships. With its current limitations I find it difficult to make any use of it. It has so much potential.
This needs to be expanded not just in duties but outside as well! Would love to have the ability to slow mo or fast forward emotes for machinima Also they need to add frame by frame emote control for those perfect Gpose shots. This is why I think they should like stop doing story at 6.0 for abit and just focus on expanding current and future content, just go all out.
I've recently started trying out recording and filming in game to make my own MV's as well (mostly inspired by you, denmo!!) And I'm starting to realise how much WORK and CONSISTENCY and CONTROL is needed to even get a steady shot and hot damn. Do i sure wish duty recorder works
Duty recorder strikes me as something the devs made for use in-house for making screen shots and whatnot for upcoming content. But, because it was never designed for public use, it has the whole "using too much data" problem. And that might be a fundamental problem they can't fix, so they keep it in this broken, barely usable state.
THANK YOU OH MY GOD someones finally mentioned the duty recorder. I remember first finding out about it and also being hyped then realizing the heavy restrictions and the near impossible ability to get to record the new instances
I actually had the exact series of emotions and reactions as Denmo when I heard about Duty Recorder, including the immeasurable disappointment when I saw where they ended up going with the system. I think with the new influx of players (who are likely used to having a plethora of tools at their disposal to make content), the demand for this kind of stuff will only grow.
If Duty Recorder was available to all fights, I would've gone into E11S to get some cool shots fighting the boss. But alas, this will never happen cause it's lock behind Puppets Bunker and E12S.
I saw the Duty Recorder in my tab many times before, and every single time I’m like “Oh yeah, I should check out what that thing even is.” And then forget all about it. Good to know you’ve got me covered… a year ago.
I'll admit I was of the same mind when this first came out. It looked like such an amazing feature for battle screenshots (my potato of a PC crashes if I try to render videos so that isn't a thing I could use it for sadly). But when I saw it was limited so drastically to content I knew I'd not even get to it was a system that I never got to touch. Up until this video I forgot it even existed and I am not sure how much use it gets these days. I give SE kudos for adding something new but it's saddening to see how much of a failed thing it ultimately became. Here is hoping they spruce it up in the future and make it vastly more accessible if not useful altogether. Great work Denmo!
I didn't even know this existed, I would love to see this implemented like WAYYY more like you said with how GPose is getting all sorts of cool updates/features, this Duty Recorder would be PERFECT!!! We could go through and show off all of the Amazing content that this game has to offer!!! and also like you said without being a burden to the 7 in the group!!! I'm not always the fastest to take shots/video and I know that I would have to ask a group to go through soo many times to get all the possible content for videos, so I don't want to go about it in that way, but being able to fight with my friends and then replay footage later would be AMAZING!!! even if it has to save on my own side instead of server side I would think this feature would be the MOST USEFULL TOOL for me!!! Thanks for making this video! and please know that there are other people who want to see this Re-Implemented Mr. McStrongHuge! SQARE ENIX PLEASE Expand on this AMAZING Feature!!!
I use this regularly, it's a fantastic tool. It's a shame it's only available on current high-tier content and your saves disappear every time an update rolls out.
It's great when it works but I feel that it's just an experimental feature right now that isn't on the top list of priorities for SE to fix since it's not broken; it's just a proof of concept that they might expand on in the future. Also, FFXIV's features for gpose/content creation seems to be focused more on screenshots rather than video as a medium, so workarounds are the only way to go for me right now.
Absolute (Virtue) ly! Not just video creators but as someone that loves both combat AND screenshots, getting to snap up some tasty looking photos via duty recorder would be a godsend! I would hazard a guess that the way duty recorder works is it sneds all the information to the servers where it is stored and reviewed later... If this information was instead stored on the computer that took the recording, like a screenshot then they could make it possible across the board.. Doubt that they will though sadly.
I remember doing TEA when it released, and would have loved to make a video in the style of your Byakoo video when i cleared. Sadly thats immposible, given how TEA was neveer avaliable for Duty Recorder, my dreams were dashed.
I remember when you posted the byakko video and watching it over and over because it was so cool! I was so excited to see more fights and videos from you and other players to see what everyone could make with it and now I know why that didn’t happen :( what a shame! Such wasted potential. I hope they can give it some love in the future, but if people aren’t using it because of the limitations it’s probably low on their list of priorities.
I agree, but I see where the data storage is a huge problem for them, especially because we also see other server load issues. 100% would love to see it expanded, and to be available as a native option so third-party tools for the same function would not be required if someone doesn't want to use them.
I'll be real, I forgot this feature was included but you're absolutely right in that with the right support, this would be astounding for content creation. I'm not even a content creator myself, but I've already got a handful of ideas that would make for interesting videos I've yet to see in FFXIV community. It's actual tragedy that this feature was gimped before it could really take off.
I do understand why the duty recorder is a bit more stressful for the servers than a regular duty. Not only does it have to tell the client what's important for them to display, it has to tell them everything that's going on for every character and every enemy. If they were to have more duties available, people might just record anything and everything despite not "needing" it, causing even more and oftentimes unnecessary stress for the servers. Right now, with the servers begging for a break by the influx of people and supplies of new servers still not coming up to stock, I don't see how they could improve it in a timely fashion.
I too am all about making my gameplay as cinematic as possible at all times. I take screenshots every chance I get too. More than any game I've ever played combined. I didn't even know there is a duty recorder as i am new and only 55 in one job. So obviously I was excited seeing this video pop up for me. Then, like yourself was supremely disappointed. I DID like and subscribe though since our interests align and I'm interested in your content. Tyvm for the vid
I think one method they could use is to have it work like a "Replay feature". Where one can download the replay of the events happening, so that it would be recorded in local storage rather than in servers. Giving players that local access to the Duty Recordings within their files, I think, would be a more suitable idea. Of course, Playstation players may suffer since most PS players I know often have little storage space to spare.
Shouldn't have been a server side thing for the recording data. If it just spat out a txt file locally that duty recorder can read to create the playback, then it could be on EVERY duty. I mean... why should SE care if you go out and buy a 10TB drive and fill it (somehow) exclusively with replay files for your video editing needs?
I'm not sure they want more people at this particular point in time, when it's impossible to buy server farms or set up data centers due to the cost of the chips.
Godddddd I remember being SO excited when this was first announced for byakko. I was so disappointed when I saw how limited it is, and it's insane how limited it still is even now years later. It's so sad... It had so much potential and they just left it in the dust.
I'd like to bring up a point you made earlier in the video. You said that Yoshi P had said that it was problematic due to server limitations, basically, correct? It stands to reason that for as long as these servers maintain the game, the duty recorder will never be able to be what you want it to be. However, with the recent influx of new players to FFXIV due to various reasons, and Square Enix response to upgrade the servers, this may simply be a limitation of their current hardware. So this may be a feature that is coming up when they are eventually able to put them on better servers, hardware, etc.? What do you think?
Great (if saddening) vid. So unfortunate that this is as limited as it is. I was our videographer for WoW boss vids and had to deal with the ToS-breaking tools or being the Xth wheel before Blizzard stamped them out completely (FreeFarSight, etc) and when I first heard about Duty Recorder I had stars in my eyes imagine the possibilities. Here's hoping they come up with a way to make this more accessible someday. 🙏
The biggest feeling is, can’t they just save all the data locally? Like, just store all the character movement and actions executed. Then store the character looks and items equipped too. Isn’t this already good enough ghost data to play back a duty?
Oh yeah and thank you for pointing all of this out, I'm going to try and use it more to make some videos to show off, in hopes we can as you say bring this up to square enix by gaining interest on multiple levels, they do listen and hopefully like you said if enough of us bring it up we can get this to be more of a thing!
I had a grand idea to make a 2.0-5.5 story recap in the style of soken's trailers with big bossfight moments and voicelines playing and I was planning to use duty recorder to do it. Imagine my surprise when duty recorder turned out to be useless! It's a shame because it's very apparent that SqEnix uses some form of spectator mode to make their trailers in the first place. I might have to make do with CMTool and controller camera panning...
From a technical stand point, I can only infer that it records EVERYTHING in 3d which can potentially be a lot of data, from mob + player position for every recorded point time point, to animation queues, then maybe actual un-parsed logs? I imagine offloading it client-side would kill bandwidth (and your cpu if it isn't powerful enough) when it's being done real time. But I don't know how their engine and backend works.
SE does seem to have a long history of starting up new systems/frameworks/additions in the game and then letting them suffocate to death. Looking at you, lord of verminion. Maybe we can trade that in for precious server space to make the record work, or just offload the recording data onto the user, though considering the game's spaghetti code that might come with is own issues. Anyway, housing and their stance on FFlogs. Like c'mon, even YoshiP records logs.
Back when it was commonplace Halo and Smash Bros. machinima's were able to strive with similar features and I'm sure it played a part in sales cause it gets others curious to try the games out or even inspire them to make they're own content which continues the cycle.
Fun fact: I unlocked duty recorder by accident. The quest which unlocked the feature was right next to the actual quest I wanted, I just misclicked and it gave it to me.
What an amazing tool! I only unlocked this recently and now I see why I never see anything I can use it for in game. So much potential, but as a software engineer, I totally get why they had to restrict its use so much. Perhaps it will make a full appearance in some future game.
I have been silently biding my time because all I want is to take cool shots of cool bosses and I feel like I'm an anchorite on a rock in the ocean awaiting the Rapture that may never come in my lifetime.
That has ALWAYS been their excuse though for literally anything. They still blame things on 1.0's codebase being in the game and holding the inventory back etc. Well how about fixing it? They're literally deleting belts to make more space.
@@trignite I think you highly underestimate how much carnage it would take to completely overhaul systems like that which have been ingrained deeply into the game like the inventory system...it’s not as simple as “delete this, add this”, it’s something that has the potential to shatter the entire game, and all of its item systems if they happen to get one thing wrong. Relic weapons, hand in quests, grand company turn ins, vendors, trading, retainers, etc; just some things off the top of my head that utilise the inventory system currently, and changing how the inventory works would also involve changing those things mechanically. You wouldn’t just be “fixing” a thing. You would essentially need to tear up the entire game’s foundations by the roots to get a new method working smoothly.
@@nottelling215 I work in I.T, I never said it was going to be easy but it sure as hell can be done. It's time for them to actually fix it rather than use it as an excuse every year
I think if the concerns was server load, they could just make the recordings delete after a day (which is definitely not much but I doubt they can do a week) Alternatively they could convert it into an expanded combat log, allow it to be downloaded, and make a player in-game capable of reading such files and not store it on the servers at all but that may be too much to hope for…
It just amazes me at all that it's SERVER stored. Instead of stored locally. So many ways they could have done it. I had a similar reaction for 4.3 and just immediately assumed Square was going to butcher it. Not to mention that EVERYONE has to agree to record, and I ain't got 7 friends.
If the issue with allowing multiple duties is data, maybe they could have recordings download to the player's PC and develop an app specifically for playing those back? Idk much about this kinda thing, and maybe those files would have data they don't won't people having direct access to, but it sounds like a plausible solution in my mind.
When I saw this originally, I immediately flashed back to the days of Dissidia and making dope replay edits. I was super disappointed when I saw it actually implemented.
I hope one day some does approach Yoshi-p about this, really pick his mind about the duty recorder, and if can if possible gush about the content creation possibility with an expanded recorder.
if the amount of data required from the servers is the issue preventing squeenix from making the feature available to more duties, wouldn't it be a possible workaround to instead store and process most that data on the client side? can't imagine it would be an easy fix obviously but it'd be better than just letting that super cool feature sit around gathering dust
I don't think it's as simple as "fix duty finder!" they'd have to allocate what sounds like a lot of resources to rework it from the ground up to lighten the load on servers or make it client sided. what with covid slowing down their workflow I'd rather they put as many resources towards gameplay, story, quests, raids, cutscenes, etc as possible. duty recorder is a niche feature and putting more of their limited resources towards the other stuff I mentioned would impact more players.
I understand and appreciate your enthusiasm, but the sad reality is that not many/enough people even use this feature. With that in mind, it's easy to note that it is VERY low on the priority list. Moreover, it is apparently a resource hog. I think a fair compromise would be to limit it to a single expansions tiered content of any section per patch ONLY IF/WHEN the resources permit it. Otherwise, it is only right of them to keep it on the backburner until all the other and/or more popular aspects have been taken care of FIRST.
The fact the tool takes a lot of server data, means we won't get much for it as the servers are already at a capacity and there are a lot of strain because of the influx of new players. I don't know if it's true, I hear they are struggling to get new servers at the moment. And although I like the content you produced with the tool, I am more hoping the servers will be updated/maxed for endwalker.
i remember using duty recorder on e12s to show my friends how to do triple apoc and it was so fucking hard but worked i wished they would expand on it so much
I see they made it server-side to get rid of the lags/network/synchronization issues, but I can't understand why they did it, the last 5% of the footage fidelity is completely not worth the limitations.
What if they... Like... Made an officially licensed, separate program who's whole thing was storing recordings of Raids locally on your own hard drives? Would it be niche? Yes, but... It would hopefully take off load from the server by not needing to literally store every stupid action and detail for it to be called upon at any time like this. People who want to use it for it's intended purpose (Whatever that may actually be) can do so, and content creators can use it like a toy.
Now i am in no way even close to knowledgeable enough to know if this is possible or not or if this is already the case, but couldn't there be a way to keep the files of the recording on the local drive, so all the server has to do is record and play files from local, and maybe this would bring down the stress on the server?
FF14 has always struggled with memory space and how much they can add to the game, if they said it used too many resources its most likely true. If they remove features to enable this then ppl will be complaining about that instead. Good video though and sorry your dance video got removed it was really good.
So basically, what it should be, is Halo's theater mode, but it's XIV. That'd be perfect. With some hope, the server upgrade might fix their date issues? I hope.
I'm not a content creator but I'm a a huge FF XIV youtube content consumer. pls yoshi-p you don't have to load the duty recorder on the server side you can load it on the client side,but gave these guys a tool
i get what they're saying in terms of duty recorder being insane on the servers. think of it this way, for each character running around data is being sent to the server and back again to make the game work. so every second you're sending like 10mb of data while receiving 10mb of data at the exact same time (actually far more but for sanity's sake i'm just bullshitting a number) while duty recorder will be sending you an additional 10mb of data a second for that recording. while the % of people who would use that feature so much might be small, if even 10% of players use it in some way thats still A LOT more data required. so while it is an amazing feature, i honestly dont think it's all that viable with the current state of the servers. to the point i would honestly say for this feature to be implemented as well as you'd want. they would have to either A, move the servers to brand new, triple the power servers or B, make a few new servers that are severely limited in the number of people it could have and have those be "recording servers" so to speak. what i think would be cool is a new duty setting called practice duty. where you have options to practice the duty where you can set damage numbers, the health level of the boss etc to practice sections of the duty. this could also be used for recording as you can constantly set the boss to the health levels you need for the shots you want. i dunno i htink it would be nice.
Whelp, just commenting so that the devs can see this. I didn't know the tool can make such awesome video, that's like gpose (savage) already. Come devs, hear what this man says!! Loves your video denmo, and I hope you got more easier ways to create content for this game. Thank you for your hard work!!!
They could do what Riot does with League of Legends and store the data for 7 days or something on the server and allow the Client to download it. That way, all the storage management is up to the user
Hey! If you really want SquareEnix to listen up and reconsider fixing Duty Recorder (or adding more features for video recording in general), speak up! Make a thread on the forums, or /ffxiv reddit! Raise a ruckus, because that's how the Devs listen!
Fixed: client based duty recorder
Maybe that would be better for servers, but i think that saving something on your pc (output of client based dr) and putting it back into the game (i mean the part of the memory reserved for the game) would be an easy way to create new types of cheats or other 3rd party tools that se does not like. Maybe a solution would be another program installed on top of the game (but ouside of it) that uses the saved data from dr. Still, this would probably cost much and the playbacks could be modified (but it's still outside of the game so who cares).
Anyway, thank you man for your videos
It put huge burden on the server because when you play it back, it simply recreate the recorded fight in REAL TIME. I mean, imagine if thousands of players replay their duty.
Gpose on the other hand, is a lot more simple.
Something to consider is asking someone to help you put japanese subs in this video. They clearly see what other content creators post and that would grab their attention right away
Instead of a duty recorder, they could create a spectator mode. This tool could be an alternative way for mentors to help sprouts while also allowing content creators to get amazing shots using their own 3rd party software instead, which removes the strain on the servers.
This would also allow benched static members to actively participate in the duty in another way.
Goodness yes. Someone to slow mo and analyze who blew up what in stuff like Light Rampant would be so helpful.
Spectator mode would be cool in its own right, but unfortunately wouldn't be able to have the same characteristics as a recorder such as being able to control the speed of the fight (pause/rewind/fast-forward). In order to implement those features, it would have to be recording events, which seems to be very server-based in how they went about implementing their current event recording system. It'd be better than what we have right now, for sure, but it wouldn't quite scratch the exact itch a lot of content creators are looking for in a recording tool.
They could probably easily make the recorder client-side, other MMOs have done it in the past. However, I'm sure they considered this and opted out for specific reasons (security concerns, client storage concerns, etc).
this would be fuckin awesome, or just have my friends in the background call me a dumbass when we wipe, whichever one works best really
@@rinnnnnnnnnnrin This guy gets it.
a great idea for the spectator idea would be to utilise the alliance finder have 1 party be participants and the other be the spectators, hell even add in a setting for once one side completes it it auto sets the next party in to have there go while the first party watches, As for the Duty recorder they could limit every player to one saved recording instead of 3, I do wish they go back and look into it, some action shots are almost impossible to do while your In combat.
I hope this video gets awareness and that Duty Recorder is expanded upon in Endwalker. I used it to make a video to youtube once and it was my most watched video on my channel at the time. There is value in it and I hope Square sees that. I'd rather they either expand upon it or if they don't have the technology, to simply remove it. It should be one or the other. Why waste resources on it if they aren't going to do anything with it?
I totally forgot duty recorder was even a thing. And during the first few minutes of the video I was like "Why did I forget about this? This is amazing!" But then I continued watching and realized why I forgot about it.
Truly the only feature more forgettable is fellowships...
The problem with Duty Recorder is that it was poorly implemented from the beginning. It suffers the same issue as housing does; It's a netcode/server end issue that is a direct result of the underlying framework of the game. In other words, great ideas, bolted together execution. The issue lies in it being a server side feature meaning that ultimately it's as they said, a large strain on their resources and the additional features of it only compounded those issues. It exists purely because they likely figured out they could do it, thought it was a cool idea, so they tried it, then realised after the fact the limitation. The technology was later adapted to a more reasonable client side solution in the form of the group pose editor, which is doable. Unfortunately it seems SE has yet to figure out a client side solution for Duty Recorder, or is unwilling to set up a client side version for one reason or another (my guess is afraid that it might be reverse engineered or piggybacked on for use in ACT etc). There are a couple of developers SE could turn to for help on the issue, the two that first come to mind would be Bungie and Creative Assembly, who have both pioneered the technology of in game full capture recording, but have done it differently. The CA version is arguably flawed but is less resource intensive, where A.I copy the combat commands issued during the match, problem with this method is that over time the recorded actions suffer from variability and the outcomes differ from the original events, especially when patches change the stats of the units involved. The Bungie method is similar to the method used in FFXIV, except it's client side and records positional data (very long strings of coordinate data, actions, animations and such, it isn't perfect because if you watch the same footage over and over, corpse ragdoll differently every time, it isn't a recording so much as a series of tell commands to manikins) so in other words extremely long lists of data where effectively everything in the recording act like marionets acting out the second by second actions recorded. Problem with the Bungie method is that it is client side stored, so it's vulnerable to being datamined, meaning it could be used by 3rd party tools and SE wouldn't want that.
It's very unfortunate as FFXIV has very powerful client side framework since the engine it uses is based on a single player game engine, the Luminous Engine (same engine as FFXV and likely FFXVI). Although it's based on it's prototype and it's a very stripped down version of that engine and is a bit of a Frankenstein monster with components from both Crystal Tools and other features brought in during the 2 year crunch to rebuild it (although a much smoother custom job than say Phantasy Star Online, it's in the same ball park but with smooth edges instead of rough ones), where the majority of it's client side features are primarily used to mask game latency (FFXIV suffers from a lot of movement ghosting, which makes high end raiding for high ping players a terrible idea, because not only does it make gameplay deceptively smooth, it hides what both the server and others players see from you to accomplish this smoothness). The dev team however seem extremely reluctant to make strong use of client side (only you can see it, no one else) features of FFXIV's game engine... in general and I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact (and they have admitted this themselves) that they can not and are not capable of seeing the client side game, only the data it sends to the server and the data sent from the server to it. Which is also why they do not know if people have mods or are using ACT (this is why the rarely talked about cheating issue in The Feast is kept on the hush). The only two ways a developer can know about the client game is if they either A) built the engine from the ground up as being an MMO game engine, such as in the case of Guild Wars 2, or B) they added scanning tools, effectively spyware into their account networking API at a later time, such as in the case of WoW.
OK straight up need a Camera Drone of Ronka minion now.
Achievement: Use Duty Recorder [ ] times
5:20 Shame on everyone in that poll that voted Blue Mage as a useless feature.
I remember hearing you talk about this on mog talk but this is such a good story video
The choice of duties to record just seems so weird to me despite there being a pattern. Why would we be able to record the puppet's bunker but not TEA?
I'm so glad you haven't forgotten or given up on Duty Recorder. I'm not a content creator, and I can stream or record my static so I never had a reason to use duty recorder just as you mentioned most people do, but I LOVE your Byakko MV and it's a real shame that Duty Recorder seems to have been left in the dust when it has such potential. I really hope this gets their attention. I understand that due to server limitations it'll probably never be open to every duty 100% of the time, but it'd still be awesome to see it get expanded (and to bring back the features that they removed for some reason).
I came in, curious to know what the deal was with Duty Recorder. And I leave having learnt a good deal I didn't know, but I did *not* expect that fine editing and machinima (is that the right word?) alongside this. Great work, Denmo!
Why did they load the workload onto the server in the first place? Why can't the recorder be on client side? I believe these things exist in Total Warhammer and they did it right. I know it's a different genre but the system is there.
If I had to guess I'd say it's because only the server has an accurate picture of what's going one in the first place, while clients will always have a slightly different perspective because of latency/imperfect connectivity etc. Since this feature was created to review raid progression, you'd want the most accurate replay possible, so it needs to be recorded server side. Or at least that's what I think the reason might be.
@@WannaComment2 That makes sense. TF2 is the same way with the same feature, but if replays are disabled on the server, there's the option to record it on your side, including voice chat, and put in a demo file. Less than perfect is still better than nothing.
@@WannaComment2 why not just record it server side and then ship the replay back to the client? That'd make the most sense to me.
@@traugdor Because this is an MMO with lots and lots of people playing at any given time. A servers would have to record hundreds, if not thousands of simultaneously running instances at any given moment, and have all that data ready for transfer as well. It's not impossible but it's a massive additional load on the servers.
A client side recording feature would still be nice though, inconsistencies be damned.
@WannaComment2 Yeah I get that, maybe to combat the server load maybe they can have a limit to how many of these you want to record per-account and you can have the option to download these. Heck maybe have a timelimit to how long you should hold onto them unless you want to pay some gil or whatever to hold onto them longer. I know that last bit is janky but if its an issue of holding onto vast amounts of data then these options are better than what we got now. maybe a special moogle storage for these clips like an off server or some such, frogot the word.
I fully agree. I was super excited when Duty Recorder was introduced and have been patiently waiting for it to be reworked into something more viable alongside with Fellowships. With its current limitations I find it difficult to make any use of it. It has so much potential.
This needs to be expanded not just in duties but outside as well! Would love to have the ability to slow mo or fast forward emotes for machinima
Also they need to add frame by frame emote control for those perfect Gpose shots.
This is why I think they should like stop doing story at 6.0 for abit and just focus on expanding current and future content, just go all out.
Duty recorder is amazing.
It's so amazing I've yet to ever use it because of the restrictions.
I've recently started trying out recording and filming in game to make my own MV's as well (mostly inspired by you, denmo!!)
And I'm starting to realise how much WORK and CONSISTENCY and CONTROL is needed to even get a steady shot and hot damn.
Do i sure wish duty recorder works
Duty recorder strikes me as something the devs made for use in-house for making screen shots and whatnot for upcoming content. But, because it was never designed for public use, it has the whole "using too much data" problem. And that might be a fundamental problem they can't fix, so they keep it in this broken, barely usable state.
Such a cool concept, I really would love to use something like this in my own stuff in the future.. Great video denmo!!
THANK YOU OH MY GOD someones finally mentioned the duty recorder. I remember first finding out about it and also being hyped then realizing the heavy restrictions and the near impossible ability to get to record the new instances
I actually had the exact series of emotions and reactions as Denmo when I heard about Duty Recorder, including the immeasurable disappointment when I saw where they ended up going with the system. I think with the new influx of players (who are likely used to having a plethora of tools at their disposal to make content), the demand for this kind of stuff will only grow.
Such LazyPurple vibes from this, I love it!
This was an emotional journey.
If Duty Recorder was available to all fights, I would've gone into E11S to get some cool shots fighting the boss. But alas, this will never happen cause it's lock behind Puppets Bunker and E12S.
Honestly video essay's seems like a natural fit for you and your editing skills, this was done very well.
I saw the Duty Recorder in my tab many times before, and every single time I’m like “Oh yeah, I should check out what that thing even is.” And then forget all about it. Good to know you’ve got me covered… a year ago.
I'll admit I was of the same mind when this first came out. It looked like such an amazing feature for battle screenshots (my potato of a PC crashes if I try to render videos so that isn't a thing I could use it for sadly). But when I saw it was limited so drastically to content I knew I'd not even get to it was a system that I never got to touch. Up until this video I forgot it even existed and I am not sure how much use it gets these days. I give SE kudos for adding something new but it's saddening to see how much of a failed thing it ultimately became. Here is hoping they spruce it up in the future and make it vastly more accessible if not useful altogether. Great work Denmo!
I didn't even know this existed, I would love to see this implemented like WAYYY more like you said with how GPose is getting all sorts of cool updates/features, this Duty Recorder would be PERFECT!!! We could go through and show off all of the Amazing content that this game has to offer!!! and also like you said without being a burden to the 7 in the group!!!
I'm not always the fastest to take shots/video and I know that I would have to ask a group to go through soo many times to get all the possible content for videos, so I don't want to go about it in that way, but being able to fight with my friends and then replay footage later would be AMAZING!!! even if it has to save on my own side instead of server side I would think this feature would be the MOST USEFULL TOOL for me!!!
Thanks for making this video! and please know that there are other people who want to see this Re-Implemented Mr. McStrongHuge! SQARE ENIX PLEASE Expand on this AMAZING Feature!!!
I use this regularly, it's a fantastic tool. It's a shame it's only available on current high-tier content and your saves disappear every time an update rolls out.
It's great when it works but I feel that it's just an experimental feature right now that isn't on the top list of priorities for SE to fix since it's not broken; it's just a proof of concept that they might expand on in the future. Also, FFXIV's features for gpose/content creation seems to be focused more on screenshots rather than video as a medium, so workarounds are the only way to go for me right now.
Nicely done
Absolute (Virtue) ly!
Not just video creators but as someone that loves both combat AND screenshots, getting to snap up some tasty looking photos via duty recorder would be a godsend! I would hazard a guess that the way duty recorder works is it sneds all the information to the servers where it is stored and reviewed later... If this information was instead stored on the computer that took the recording, like a screenshot then they could make it possible across the board..
Doubt that they will though sadly.
Hey, this was great video. Your typical videos are always great but I would definitely like to see more like this one as well.
Denmo, I already knew you were my favorite FFXIV content creator, but this just cements it even more. Is there anything you can't do??
I remember doing TEA when it released, and would have loved to make a video in the style of your Byakoo video when i cleared. Sadly thats immposible, given how TEA was neveer avaliable for Duty Recorder, my dreams were dashed.
I remember when you posted the byakko video and watching it over and over because it was so cool! I was so excited to see more fights and videos from you and other players to see what everyone could make with it and now I know why that didn’t happen :( what a shame! Such wasted potential. I hope they can give it some love in the future, but if people aren’t using it because of the limitations it’s probably low on their list of priorities.
I agree, but I see where the data storage is a huge problem for them, especially because we also see other server load issues. 100% would love to see it expanded, and to be available as a native option so third-party tools for the same function would not be required if someone doesn't want to use them.
I'll be real, I forgot this feature was included but you're absolutely right in that with the right support, this would be astounding for content creation. I'm not even a content creator myself, but I've already got a handful of ideas that would make for interesting videos I've yet to see in FFXIV community. It's actual tragedy that this feature was gimped before it could really take off.
I do understand why the duty recorder is a bit more stressful for the servers than a regular duty. Not only does it have to tell the client what's important for them to display, it has to tell them everything that's going on for every character and every enemy.
If they were to have more duties available, people might just record anything and everything despite not "needing" it, causing even more and oftentimes unnecessary stress for the servers.
Right now, with the servers begging for a break by the influx of people and supplies of new servers still not coming up to stock, I don't see how they could improve it in a timely fashion.
I too am all about making my gameplay as cinematic as possible at all times. I take screenshots every chance I get too. More than any game I've ever played combined. I didn't even know there is a duty recorder as i am new and only 55 in one job. So obviously I was excited seeing this video pop up for me. Then, like yourself was supremely disappointed.
I DID like and subscribe though since our interests align and I'm interested in your content. Tyvm for the vid
Love this - really fun and well produced video, keep it up!
I think one method they could use is to have it work like a "Replay feature". Where one can download the replay of the events happening, so that it would be recorded in local storage rather than in servers. Giving players that local access to the Duty Recordings within their files, I think, would be a more suitable idea. Of course, Playstation players may suffer since most PS players I know often have little storage space to spare.
Shouldn't have been a server side thing for the recording data. If it just spat out a txt file locally that duty recorder can read to create the playback, then it could be on EVERY duty. I mean... why should SE care if you go out and buy a 10TB drive and fill it (somehow) exclusively with replay files for your video editing needs?
100% support this. Loved the idea when it was introduced. The potential content we could make would bring in more people.
I'm not sure they want more people at this particular point in time, when it's impossible to buy server farms or set up data centers due to the cost of the chips.
Man thanks for highlighting that this feature even exists!
Really hope this spurs Square on to update the system.
Godddddd I remember being SO excited when this was first announced for byakko. I was so disappointed when I saw how limited it is, and it's insane how limited it still is even now years later. It's so sad... It had so much potential and they just left it in the dust.
I'd like to bring up a point you made earlier in the video. You said that Yoshi P had said that it was problematic due to server limitations, basically, correct? It stands to reason that for as long as these servers maintain the game, the duty recorder will never be able to be what you want it to be.
However, with the recent influx of new players to FFXIV due to various reasons, and Square Enix response to upgrade the servers, this may simply be a limitation of their current hardware. So this may be a feature that is coming up when they are eventually able to put them on better servers, hardware, etc.? What do you think?
Great (if saddening) vid. So unfortunate that this is as limited as it is. I was our videographer for WoW boss vids and had to deal with the ToS-breaking tools or being the Xth wheel before Blizzard stamped them out completely (FreeFarSight, etc) and when I first heard about Duty Recorder I had stars in my eyes imagine the possibilities. Here's hoping they come up with a way to make this more accessible someday. 🙏
The biggest feeling is, can’t they just save all the data locally?
Like, just store all the character movement and actions executed. Then store the character looks and items equipped too.
Isn’t this already good enough ghost data to play back a duty?
Oh yeah and thank you for pointing all of this out, I'm going to try and use it more to make some videos to show off, in hopes we can as you say bring this up to square enix by gaining interest on multiple levels, they do listen and hopefully like you said if enough of us bring it up we can get this to be more of a thing!
Wait... there is a Stormblood Dance video?!?!? Is there any place where we can watch it?
I had a grand idea to make a 2.0-5.5 story recap in the style of soken's trailers with big bossfight moments and voicelines playing and I was planning to use duty recorder to do it. Imagine my surprise when duty recorder turned out to be useless! It's a shame because it's very apparent that SqEnix uses some form of spectator mode to make their trailers in the first place. I might have to make do with CMTool and controller camera panning...
Had no idea this even came out back in Stormblood. Neat.
From a technical stand point, I can only infer that it records EVERYTHING in 3d which can potentially be a lot of data, from mob + player position for every recorded point time point, to animation queues, then maybe actual un-parsed logs? I imagine offloading it client-side would kill bandwidth (and your cpu if it isn't powerful enough) when it's being done real time. But I don't know how their engine and backend works.
First Time hearing Denmo talk. Through me for a loop.
Your "heh" at 3:46 killed me.
SE does seem to have a long history of starting up new systems/frameworks/additions in the game and then letting them suffocate to death. Looking at you, lord of verminion. Maybe we can trade that in for precious server space to make the record work, or just offload the recording data onto the user, though considering the game's spaghetti code that might come with is own issues.
Anyway, housing and their stance on FFlogs. Like c'mon, even YoshiP records logs.
Back when it was commonplace Halo and Smash Bros. machinima's were able to strive with similar features and I'm sure it played a part in sales cause it gets others curious to try the games out or even inspire them to make they're own content which continues the cycle.
Fun fact: I unlocked duty recorder by accident. The quest which unlocked the feature was right next to the actual quest I wanted, I just misclicked and it gave it to me.
What an amazing tool! I only unlocked this recently and now I see why I never see anything I can use it for in game. So much potential, but as a software engineer, I totally get why they had to restrict its use so much. Perhaps it will make a full appearance in some future game.
I have been silently biding my time because all I want is to take cool shots of cool bosses and I feel like I'm an anchorite on a rock in the ocean awaiting the Rapture that may never come in my lifetime.
WE NEED IT FOR ALL CONTENTS
Great work Denmo!
I have no idea how this ended in my recommendations but I subscribed.
The substance of this video is really good and I agree with all of it
But the composition is EXQUISITE and adore your delivery.
cries in egi glamour
Totally agree this tool should be available to all users and not require the check. The users names in the party can be just obscured
I understand server load is a huge issue, and would totally support a compromise of limiting a full duty recorder option for content creators XD.
That has ALWAYS been their excuse though for literally anything. They still blame things on 1.0's codebase being in the game and holding the inventory back etc. Well how about fixing it? They're literally deleting belts to make more space.
@@trignite I think you highly underestimate how much carnage it would take to completely overhaul systems like that which have been ingrained deeply into the game like the inventory system...it’s not as simple as “delete this, add this”, it’s something that has the potential to shatter the entire game, and all of its item systems if they happen to get one thing wrong. Relic weapons, hand in quests, grand company turn ins, vendors, trading, retainers, etc; just some things off the top of my head that utilise the inventory system currently, and changing how the inventory works would also involve changing those things mechanically.
You wouldn’t just be “fixing” a thing. You would essentially need to tear up the entire game’s foundations by the roots to get a new method working smoothly.
@@nottelling215 I work in I.T, I never said it was going to be easy but it sure as hell can be done. It's time for them to actually fix it rather than use it as an excuse every year
I think if the concerns was server load, they could just make the recordings delete after a day (which is definitely not much but I doubt they can do a week)
Alternatively they could convert it into an expanded combat log, allow it to be downloaded, and make a player in-game capable of reading such files and not store it on the servers at all but that may be too much to hope for…
It just amazes me at all that it's SERVER stored. Instead of stored locally. So many ways they could have done it. I had a similar reaction for 4.3 and just immediately assumed Square was going to butcher it. Not to mention that EVERYONE has to agree to record, and I ain't got 7 friends.
The editing on this was pretty awesome!
0:35 completely accurate lmao
If the issue with allowing multiple duties is data, maybe they could have recordings download to the player's PC and develop an app specifically for playing those back? Idk much about this kinda thing, and maybe those files would have data they don't won't people having direct access to, but it sounds like a plausible solution in my mind.
When I saw this originally, I immediately flashed back to the days of Dissidia and making dope replay edits. I was super disappointed when I saw it actually implemented.
3:44
you genius
Great video. you never cease to amaze me.
I hope one day some does approach Yoshi-p about this, really pick his mind about the duty recorder, and if can if possible gush about the content creation possibility with an expanded recorder.
if the amount of data required from the servers is the issue preventing squeenix from making the feature available to more duties, wouldn't it be a possible workaround to instead store and process most that data on the client side? can't imagine it would be an easy fix obviously but it'd be better than just letting that super cool feature sit around gathering dust
I don't think it's as simple as "fix duty finder!"
they'd have to allocate what sounds like a lot of resources to rework it from the ground up to lighten the load on servers or make it client sided.
what with covid slowing down their workflow I'd rather they put as many resources towards gameplay, story, quests, raids, cutscenes, etc as possible.
duty recorder is a niche feature and putting more of their limited resources towards the other stuff I mentioned would impact more players.
If they had the server capacity to do that then we would had a bigger glamour chest
..wasn't even aware there was a Duty Recorder, so there's that
I understand and appreciate your enthusiasm, but the sad reality is that not many/enough people even use this feature. With that in mind, it's easy to note that it is VERY low on the priority list. Moreover, it is apparently a resource hog.
I think a fair compromise would be to limit it to a single expansions tiered content of any section per patch ONLY IF/WHEN the resources permit it. Otherwise, it is only right of them to keep it on the backburner until all the other and/or more popular aspects have been taken care of FIRST.
The fact the tool takes a lot of server data, means we won't get much for it as the servers are already at a capacity and there are a lot of strain because of the influx of new players.
I don't know if it's true, I hear they are struggling to get new servers at the moment. And although I like the content you produced with the tool, I am more hoping the servers will be updated/maxed for endwalker.
i remember using duty recorder on e12s to show my friends how to do triple apoc and it was so fucking hard but worked i wished they would expand on it so much
I love you Denmo, that is all.
I see they made it server-side to get rid of the lags/network/synchronization issues, but I can't understand why they did it, the last 5% of the footage fidelity is completely not worth the limitations.
Let's get this video to Yoship!!
What if they... Like... Made an officially licensed, separate program who's whole thing was storing recordings of Raids locally on your own hard drives? Would it be niche? Yes, but... It would hopefully take off load from the server by not needing to literally store every stupid action and detail for it to be called upon at any time like this. People who want to use it for it's intended purpose (Whatever that may actually be) can do so, and content creators can use it like a toy.
Not a programmer, but if it’s a server issue, can’t they move it to your PC instead. I’m questioning why we even need a server to record that.
Now i am in no way even close to knowledgeable enough to know if this is possible or not or if this is already the case, but couldn't there be a way to keep the files of the recording on the local drive, so all the server has to do is record and play files from local, and maybe this would bring down the stress on the server?
Hope they bring it back, I never used it, but I think it's an amazing tool for content creators
FF14 has always struggled with memory space and how much they can add to the game, if they said it used too many resources its most likely true. If they remove features to enable this then ppl will be complaining about that instead. Good video though and sorry your dance video got removed it was really good.
So basically, what it should be, is Halo's theater mode, but it's XIV.
That'd be perfect. With some hope, the server upgrade might fix their date issues? I hope.
Why can't they store the recording client-side? Then it's no load on the server. You just need a big memory store.
I'm not a content creator but I'm a a huge FF XIV youtube content consumer.
pls yoshi-p you don't have to load the duty recorder on the server side you can load it on the client side,but gave these guys a tool
i get what they're saying in terms of duty recorder being insane on the servers. think of it this way, for each character running around data is being sent to the server and back again to make the game work. so every second you're sending like 10mb of data while receiving 10mb of data at the exact same time (actually far more but for sanity's sake i'm just bullshitting a number) while duty recorder will be sending you an additional 10mb of data a second for that recording. while the % of people who would use that feature so much might be small, if even 10% of players use it in some way thats still A LOT more data required.
so while it is an amazing feature, i honestly dont think it's all that viable with the current state of the servers. to the point i would honestly say for this feature to be implemented as well as you'd want. they would have to either A, move the servers to brand new, triple the power servers or B, make a few new servers that are severely limited in the number of people it could have and have those be "recording servers" so to speak.
what i think would be cool is a new duty setting called practice duty. where you have options to practice the duty where you can set damage numbers, the health level of the boss etc to practice sections of the duty. this could also be used for recording as you can constantly set the boss to the health levels you need for the shots you want. i dunno i htink it would be nice.
How did you make all the things with the potato?
Used a extra programm?
Screenshots
Whelp, just commenting so that the devs can see this. I didn't know the tool can make such awesome video, that's like gpose (savage) already. Come devs, hear what this man says!! Loves your video denmo, and I hope you got more easier ways to create content for this game. Thank you for your hard work!!!
They could do what Riot does with League of Legends and store the data for 7 days or something on the server and allow the Client to download it. That way, all the storage management is up to the user
Can we get a Photographer or Producer job class? Kthnx
THIS. ALL OF THIIIIIIIIIIIIS.
Please, I want to make videos. That's all I want, man.