Inability to alt+tab in FFXI

[Zaptruder]

I know this forum doesn't condone the 3rd PT utilities that allow FFXI to do this...

but I think the game suffers tremendously because of this inability... whether its a programming limitation (i.e. there are unsatisfactory problems that alt+tabbing out causes when trying to fix it) or whether its a design oriented decision, it takes away from the game alot.

I mean, the nature of the game requires a person to spend a good deal of time playing the game to make any decent progress (there's no way you'd make it very far if you played this as a casual gamer), and while you're playing the game your entire machine is dedicated to running it, if you're waiting for a PT, you're forced to patiently wait and like it. If a PT member goes AFK, you're also forced to wait. If you need to change your settings (maybe sound settings, for whatever reason) you're forced to log out...

and the fact that logging in and out of the game is so troublesome... I really don't see how such a design decision can be justified. If it's a programming problem... come on Square! fix it! we pay you enough! ><. They really shouldn't deny you your computer as a resource while you play this game... At the least you can if you could alt+tab out, use winamp and set music as you like it (and change it while still playing the game).

To me this problem is *unacceptable* (which is why I've taken to using 3rd PT program, but less about that). Does anyone else aggree? or is everyone more tolerant of this glaring problem than I am? Can anyone possibly rationalize against giving us the ability to minimize FFXI temporarily?

Also as a note... because I *can* alt+tab out now, it's a godsend for the stability in the game - my windows has this problem where it minimizes from fullscreen once in a while at random (I have no idea what causes the problem, but it's there) - this use to crash FFXI - which was upsetting while I was in critical situations (and it did happen). It doesn't happen anymore now because it doesn't crash when minimized... just like it should be!

[Dux]

The general consensus is that it is there to prevent hacking.

Whilst at a purely supeficial level this seems like a good idea, it is completely useless in every possible regard as any hacker worth their salt can create a hacking program that runs in the backgroud and rips all the data they needs based on the process ID and name.

Why? Dunno. Purpose? Dunno. Pointless? Oh yes.

[Aanya]

Some MMORPG's are like that... Some let you alt-tab out some don't. *shrugs* And the pain in the butt login procedure is to deter you from even logging out. Either way, just log out in your moogle house. Its instantaneous and you don't have to wait 30 secs if logging out bugs you that much.

[Zaptruder]

it's not even instantaneous.

For me there's approximately a 5 second wait between me entering the logout command and reappearing at the FFXI title screen - another 5 second before I regain access of POL.

This is of course not counting the time it takes to travel back to the moghouse.


And it's certainly not just a *shrug* issue for me.

If it is there as some sort of flawed prevention scheme against hackers, then S-E should carefully reconsider this as they penalize many many innocent players for nothing.

[Yarr]

Im gonna be super pissed if they put Alt Tab or a Windowed mode into FFXI. After Mythic put Alt tab and Windowed into DAoC it was impossible to xp without having some one constantly alt tabbing out to read the internet.

[Zaptruder]

If they did it, they should include something like an away symbol, similar to the disconnect symbol.

it would be upto the etiquette of players to not alt tab every 5 seconds, and especially during PTs, but I have faith that most of the community would be courteous enough not to abuse this in social situations.

[Issaac]

Hacking prefentation?
If you are skilled enough to hack a game, read the datastream and associate it with the actual game content. You realy think ALT TAB would stop me? And if you created a 3rd party program and you cant tab out to configure it, write a ingame interface. Its realy easy to do....

Even Everquest had exepted this fact and as far as i know EQ2 will allow ALT TAB.

Personaly o dont realy care, i have a couple of computers connected to the internet so i just switch when i need to read something or find a map etc.

[Machiko]

I understand that these forums aren't allowing us to post windowed or tab+alt "hacks". I'm trying to find one right now and having a VERY HARD trying to do so. I want to know if you can get banned from this by Squaresoft. I don't care if it's a hack, I'm trying to level a damn Black Mage from 10 - 12 soloing and it's boring as hell. I refuse to have to run back and fourth between my computers just to chat with my girl friend on the other computer. I would use the phone if her mother weren't so bitchy. Must find FFXI in window mode!!!! >,<!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dark Aphalite]

Just use Temp Logout, Alt + Tab, then come back to game.

[FreakinRican]

Originally posted by Dark Aphalite
Just use Temp Logout, Alt + Tab, then come back to game.

[Tukka]

Can anyone possibly rationalize against giving us the ability to minimize FFXI temporarily?

I certainly can't.

I've heard different supposed reasons for the buggy client (and "buggy" is the only way I can think of to describe a program that has an undocumented "feature" that causes the program to crash and spit an error message at you when you try to use a standard Windows feature), but none of the explanations wash.

What I find ironic is that every time I log on, one of the dozen clicks I have to forge past is a message telling me not to "lose myself" in the game and neglect friends, family, ect., but due to the fact that I can't alt-tab, the design of the client assures that neglecting my friends, family, ect. is exactly what I will do. The current functioning (or should I say, "non-functioning") of the client removes some of the best ways for my friends, family, ect. to contact me (instant message and e-mail) while I'm playing. When I decide to log in to FF11, I am essentially "locked in" and can't use my PC as a powerful communications tool anymore (it becomes a mere "toy"), and I may not answer the phone if I'm busy in a group (nevermind the fact that some people may connect to the Internet using their only phone line). So short of someone coming to the door, for the X number of hours I'm logged in to FF11, there is no way I'm going to have a life outside the game.

What's also ironic is if this "feature-bug" is allowed to remain in place to thwart hackers/cheaters, is that many legitimate, otherwise EULA-abiding individuals hate this "feature" so much that they are willing to use 3rd party programs to get back the simple, innocent functionality of alt-tabbing. If you want to prevent cheating/hacking, you don't give your otherwise legitimate users a tempting reason/excuse to start looking for 3rd party programs that alter the way the game behaves! I can't go into details about why it's a bad idea without treading too close to discussion of the 3rd party apps themselves, but suffice to say, of the 3rd party tools out there that enable alt-tabbing, I don't use any of them... one I don't use because for me it is still in unacceptable state of bugginess, and the other I don't use for "moral" reasons.

I am really hoping Square-Enix will fix their client soon, though, because it is broken.

Im gonna be super pissed if they put Alt Tab or a Windowed mode into FFXI. After Mythic put Alt tab and Windowed into DAoC it was impossible to xp without having some one constantly alt tabbing out to read the internet.

People don't need alt-tab capability to find ways to distract themselves from the game. For the record though, I never had problem grouping with people who were distracted in EQ due to alt-tabbing... at least not to my knowledge.

Also, for the record, I started enjoying EQ a lot more when I started using EQW (the 3rd party app that allowed windowing in EQ). I found it to be simply liberating.

[Machiko]

I want to be in a party while tab alting. I can't play FFXI with my gf always messaging me or calling me. She gets pissed off and I don't blame her. Squaresoft is limiting my ablities to communicate with my lo por >=(

[Kage Kitsune]

I really never had to Alt+Tab in a MMORPG much, except while playing Talesweaver, if I lagged on that game I'd have to or else I'd get disconnected..... But anyways, if Square-Enix's client is buggy, they should fix that problem. Rarely I have seen a MMORPG client left buggy for intentional purposes.

It is quite...sad, actually. But if someone actually tries to do something as to hack FFXI or use a third-party program that intends to cheat or do any malicious act on FFXI, the client should be able to work against that, like be encrypted and such. That much I can say.

A lot of MMORPGs I've played I was able to Alt+Tab out of, for one reason or another (And strangely....it was a rare thing.), so Square-Enix should....

er....

Join the bandwagon!

[obsidian]

Any company that thinks this is even a decent attempt to stop hacking doesn't know what the hell they are doing. For one, it's not hard to make a 3rd party app that allows for alt+tab or minimizing. They exist already. Two, even if you couldn't alt+tab or minimize, it is still possible to set a DELAY to give ample time to log in after starting the hack. 3rd, you can grab the keystrokes that are used in FFXI and trigger events off them (like turning on and off a hack).

I for one think this is a pathetic attempt. I multitask. I don't sit there and watch myself heal up when farming or when trying to sell my stuff on a bazaar. To expect people to do so is unreasonable.

[Tukka]

It is quite...sad, actually. But if someone actually tries to do something as to hack FFXI or use a third-party program that intends to cheat or do any malicious act on FFXI, the client should be able to work against that, like be encrypted and such. That much I can say.

Well, they can and should take whatever reasonable measures they can against people hacking the client, but there is only so much they can do. I'm not an expert, but it seems like the key or decryption scheme for any encryption they put in place would have to be stored somewhere client side, or at some point received by the client, so it ultimately could be discovered and would be accessible to the end user. There's nothing they can really do to change the fact that the client is fully in the control of the end user (providing the end user has the proper tools and expertise) and therefore the client should never be fully trusted.

The best way they can preserve the integrity of the game is to design it in such a manner that the client is trusted as little as possible, so that even if it is hacked, it can't do anything of consequence to enable cheating. They should be operating as if they think that the client has already been fully hacked by some genious with too much spare time.

There are some things the client has to be trusted with though. You have to trust the client to send commands to the server, and you have to trust the client to faithfully display the information the player should have access to (and no more). However, the worst hacks would be detectable by server-side scripts, leaving it so there should only be a couple possible hacks that would be advantageous in gameplay that would be difficult or impossible to detect.

Intentionally breaking the alt-tab feature doesn't make the client more secure for the reasons others have already pointed out. But yeah, just because the client can/will be hacked, they should still do everything they can to make hacking it a more difficult task... but with the understanding that the client is not where the most important battle for the security/integrity of the game is to be fought and with a policy to never implement a feature in an attempt to secure the client which is going to be a serious annoyance to many legitimate users of the software.

So "security" is a dumb reason for the disallowing of alt-tabbing.

The only other reasons I can think of are that they don't like the idea of people alt-tabbing out of FF11 to bring up a spoiler site to get a bit of information about a quest or whatnot, or don't like the way it might distract some players to enable alt-tabbing. Of course crippling FF11 PC users doesn't stop PS2 users from doing exactly the same thing (my game consoles are located about 2 feet away from my PC), or people with two computers or a second box and a KVM switch from doing that, so reasoning would seem pretty silly to me.

Oh well. They cripple the way our PCs function without so much as an explanation as to why. They don't think they even mention the "feature" in the manual, so it's left as a pleasant little surprise for a new player when they first try to alt-tab out of FF11. Irritating.