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blognorg
Member UncommonPosts: 643
So, there's been a new Final Fnatasy XIV video released. It's funny how much they emphasize the jumping now. I can't tell if they are proudly displaying it as a joke, or if they consider it some kind of 'revolutionary' feature. Regardless, it's nice to see it. I was wondering, though, will you actually be able to jump in the water and swim around. Some of the areas looked pretty nice, but they seemed to avoid anything other than the pathway. Is this game going to be 'open', or a series of pathways?
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Compared to the maps in the 1.0 (such as the original Black Shroud that this video is a remake of) it is MUCH more open. You still can't swim but it's definitely much less of a linear path. Judging by some of the monsters I saw in the river I'm going to assume you can run/jump down there too; it's probably shallow enough to run in it.
As for the jumping, a lot of people simply refuse to play games like this without jumping (many refused to play the original XIV for that very reason), so I imagine the constant jumping in the video is to try and make sure people notice it. It does look a little like they're trying too hard though, hehe.
As someone who never tried the original FF XIV and stayed away based upon the experiences of others who played it, I am wondering how people who previously played this game are viewing this video. Are you seeing potential improvements? Are you seeing more of the same? Is it not enough to form any realisitic opinions?
The smoothness and pace of that video makes it look like an entire different game yet look the same asthetically.
A great improvment.
i looks great but until you actually play the game for a bit and see all aspects it's hard to say
UI seems better and more key+mouse friendly
That video only really shows how they've redesigned one of the more frustrating zones in the game. If you never saw it, the original Black Shroud was essentially a series of very narrow paths runing through the forest, very reminiscent of the Yuhtunga Jungle in FFXI. It was effectively a maze of sorts, and had a lot of repeating sections.
This new version is much more open and has no copy and pasted sections. It is a MASSIVE improvement, but like I said this really only shows us the map changes. We still have yet to see the combat changes in detail and things like the new housing and quest systems. It's a promising start though.
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This is a small thing, but I'm always bothered by character sliding in moving animations. The game and the ambiance looks great though.
In retrospect I think FF12's run animation feels better IMO.
I've actually heard people say that they wouldn't play it because of the lack of jumping. I mean, it was clearly large enough of a deal that they rectified it. It's a little sad that people have that mentality, though. My favorite MMO (RO) didn't have jumping, and I somehow coped with it. Besides, I haven't really played an MMO yet where jumping really changes the game that much. I'm not saying that I wouldn't prefer jumping, but I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at a game without it.
I've always seen the issue as a personal preference for character immersion over world immersion. I'm happy with either system but some people can't connect to their character if they can't jump which I can kinda understand. There are people on the other extreme though, who see constant jumping by players as immersion breaking since in reality people very rarely jump, if at all. It is rather sad to see some players decide entirely based on it, but I can understand why it bothers them either way.
I'm seeing huge improvements. Substantial ones.
The environments are incredible. When I realized I actually *knew* some of the areas they were running to in that video, it blew me away, because I would not have recognized it otherwise.
The re-working of the zones can not be over-stated. They're nothing at all remotely like the originals - except for maybe some of the old trees, but that makes sense lol.
As for performance, you can't really tell from that vid, 'cause it's just one person running around at a time, etc. However, in the last live letter they did, there were a *lot* of people in the video, following Yoshi-P around. You couldn't see them all at once, but it was reportedly at least a few hundred people all in the same vicinity as him, zoning at the same time, etc. It seems they were testing as he was recording the live letter, because he'd direct them to stop, then to follow.. then to stop again, etc.
The performance was silk-smooth except for a couple hiccups at a few points (which you're never going to eliminate completely, I don't care what MMO you are; too many factors involved in that which are out of the control of any developer to completely mitigate).
Currently they're pushing about 800 people in a single zone, with several hundred fighting at the same time, etc. They're pushing for a max of 1000 in a single zone with several hundred fighting... and that' along with mobs, NPCs, etc. There should hardly ever - if ever - be a situation where there's 1000 people in a single zone at a time, but it seems they're working on a system to automatically spawn another instance in order to prevent any problems should that happen. In all they expect to support up to 5000 players logged in at any given time, on any given "world".
He's noted that there's about 40 zones for ARR's launch and so people will naturally be spread out among them.
It was also noted recently that people are making remarks about how well it's running already, even for an Alpha. Remarks have been reported in articles/letters that people are saying it's running well enough for a Beta already. However, Yoshi-P isn't satisfied with that. He wants to make sure it's as solid and air-tight as it can be before moving on to that stage.
A remark he's made is that he's telling the developers that no one is allowed to say "it's only "Alpha", as that's what got XIV into hot water to begin with (at least partially). He wants it to be as hiqh quality and polished as he can get it. Only after he's satisfied, will it move on to the next stage. It's entirely on his time-frame, per Wada himself. ARR will not launch until Yoshi-P says it's ready to launch. Although, he is still trying to hold to a pre-set schedule, of course. So it's not like he'd be dragging it out forever.
That might sound like a whole lot of PR and hyperbole, but if you've been following the way they've been handling things, how particular, forthright and up-front Yoshi-P has been about the game at launch, about the changes they're making now and about where it needs to go, I think you'd agree... it's not just "to put on a good face". They are serious about turning this behemoth around.
As for the jumping around a lot in the video, yeah. It's annoying. I think they really are doing it a lot to drive home the point "we do have jumping", because - silly as it is/was to me personally (I feel jumping is only necessary in a game where the design specifically requires it) - an awful lot of people were extremely vocal about it. Plus, I guess it's kind of a novelty in the series overall to have an actual live jumping system lol. Not many of the FF titles have it. I find it annoying because I'm trying to focus on the scenery and the jumping is extremely distracting. I hope they don't keep that up in later vids.
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Of course you can't swim. S.E. only do the minimal effort. They thought adding jump would be enough to bring FFXIV up to standard.
Meanwhile, every other MMO out these days has jump, swimming, and climbing, etc. Black Desert is even going one step further.
Right, they only do the minimum effort.
Such as rebuilding practically the entire game from scratch (90% of the game's content and infrastructure is new), giving people up to a year of free playtime while they figured out a new direction, putting 300+ people - including SE's best - on the team, opening channels of communication with the community that is unheard of for SE, and almost unheard of for many other MMO devs... and so on, and so on, and so on...
The minimal effort would have been to do what other MMO devs end up doing when their games do horribly: They either unapologetically go F2P/Cash Shop to try and recoupe their losses by nickel and diming players instead, or just shutting the down the game completely. SE did neither.
But clearly that's "minimal effort", right? (I hope you caught the sarcasm in that question)
They've already noted - long ago - that there would be swimming and that, in fact, a large degree of underwater exploration and content would come to the game. Their first, and most important task for now, is to rebuild the game that they released, make it stable, fun and "complete" based on that standard.
You know, just because something sounds "clever and insightful" in your mind, doesn't always mean it actually is. The trick is learning to tell the difference. You should work on that.
Very few games, if any, actually utilise jumping or swimming in any way. GW2 is the first MMO I've seen to actually have platforming puzzles and I don't think any MMO has underwater combat that anyone actually likes. In most games it's just a gimmick.
There's also the realism/immersion issue. To some extent jumping and swimming is unrealistic as in reality people don't jump over fences, they walk around them, and in reality people look for a bridge or crossing rather than swimming through a river. There are solid arguments both for and against these features so it's nothing to do with effort.
Personally I don't mind it either way; though I liked having to actually behave in a natural way when moving about without the features.
I'm not sure I 100% agree with that immersion argument. In real life, we completely have the choice to jump in the water... we just don't want to. If it were immersive, then the game would let you, but it would have some kind of mechanic that would make you not want to. Say, if certain items in your inventory would get ruined, or there was a possibility of getting hypothermia if you did it in a cold place. That kind of thing. But simply not allowing you to, I don't that thinks adds immersion.
There are a lot of things we have the choice to do in real life that we can't do in games. While I would actually love a game to do something like that, I can guarantee a lot of people would then complain it was pointless because no one would ever do it. It's one of those cases where lack of resources and higher priorities would cause something like that to be never done in such depth. I love hyper-realism in games when it comes to environmental effects and basic survival but I know I'm very much in a minority with this kind of stuff...
Oh, definitely. For a triple-A studio to do something like that, it would be suicide. Those would be some pretty hardcore sandbox features. I agree, though, stuff like that would be fun.