Steam Deck Compatibility

Does anyone with more technical knowledge have any assumptions as to whether the Steam Deck will fairly easily be compatible to run FFXI?

I ask because my sons have been wanting to hop into XI with me. We are just now reactivating content IDs and while I have two machines that would run XI, I'm pretty iffy about a third.

Instead of spending likely $600-1000 for a laptop that would be suitable for XI *and* traditional PC loads, I thought snagging the low end Steam Decks to use as essentially XI (and a few other games) switches for myself and the boys. Would make on the go gaming easy since we visit extended family often.

Obviously, I know not all information about them is known as of yet and it is subject to change- but just wanted to see if preliminary thoughts were that it would be a fairly feasible option for lower end on-the-go PC gaming, most specifically XI.

Specs are sufficient, compatibility is probably the bigger concern. XI doesn't have the best track record there, and SteamOS is based on arch-linux not windows. Rumor is windows can be installed on it, but overall, it's far too early to accurately say if there'll be a compatibility issue or not.

Keep in mind the preorders are already out to late 2022, and there probably won't be another source for them, so if you want it any earlier than that you're going to be looking at scalper prices(at which point you may as well just buy a laptop).

As XI runs decently on AMD's APUs in general: perhaps. It's an x86 based cpu, has the storage and ram, really the only major concern would be any potential power saving features it may have and network connectivity. Would have to test it though.

edit: I'm sure you could get the game to run, but windower is another story.

I figured windower would be easier to start up than POL's picky self. I remember when I first got a dual GPU laptop it was a nightmare getting the thing to stop swapping to the on-board during low usage times or between the POL boot and XI starting up.

It would crash to desktop every time. So yeah, POL/XI is rather finicky and that's why I posited this. I figured other alternative setups have already ran into compatibility issues.

That is on Windows, but no typically windower v4's hook has issues being run on things like Wine. Dgvoodoo is a good way to get around dx8 being forced on the igpu on laptops, however. (There's other dxwrappers that do the same).

I saw that gvoodoo in a thread about better visuals when I searched to see if this Steam question has been asked.

Completely off topic, is that a solid and somewhat easy means of better XI graphics or is the tried and true method of HQ texture swaps still be best route?

If my kids actually stick with this, it'll probably become our main source of family gaming. Might as well make it look as good as we can.

Dgvoodoo won't really change the graphics much itself, but does allow you to use other graphic enhancements. In voodoo though, you can turn up the vram limits, which will give a smoother experience with HQ dats, as the higher texture sizes can negatively effect performance.

ftfy

but tl;tr it enables somewhat better visuals, but more importantly it's one great way to avoid using intel hd ***.

FFXI is on steam, you should be able to just install it from steam, and just play. Assuming you own it from steam, even if you dont you should still be able to install it otherwise anyways, they said you can load what ever you want on it.

This is a 20 year old game. (19+ with beta and development so likely longer). You can run this on most any machine you can find at a goodwill for $20.00 with a "Made for Windows XP" sticker on the front/top.

As to your "and traditional PC loads" comment, maybe something for $100.00 on craigslist could get you going. AdblockPlus, NoScript, Spybot, most free antivirus, CCleaner, and keeping whatever Windows platform you have running updated as well as safe browsing habits will keep you going.

Installing apps and things like "free" Casino (or whatever bloatware) games you find on the internet (looking at half of our boomer parents) will run any budget machine into the dirt even if it's brand new from any bigbox store.

You don't have to spend upwards of 1k to play FFXI. Reminds me of my parents always buying new PCs when theirs slows down and I'm just screaming internally: Just ask me to come over before you drop 1k on a new PC and I could AT LEAST system restore it and save you the cash. (Likely running a swath of all of those programs I listed in the 2nd paragraph of this post could clean up a lot of their "slowdown" problems up.

Anyway, good luck.

Phones these days are more powerful than the Windows XP machines we likely all started playing the PC version of this game on 2 decades ago.

Edit: I know this isn't what you're asking, but I wanted to contribute.

steam has developed proton for this problem

Straight cap.

lolno


budget machines come with bloatware and run like crap anyway

True, however you do want a dedicated gpu and a ssd (for windows itself).

Yes/no. Find a single person who is running this game in even 1024x768 though.

Congrats, you contributed nothing. Nothing in what you said was relevant to the topic at hand, nothing in your rambling was even close to the subject at hand and I award you no points.