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Invisible Walls and Corridor map design. Is it still like this?
Foomerang
Member UncommonPosts: 5,628
One of the things that kills an mmo for me is invisible walls and zones that have very little off the designed fairways and roads. This one did just that when I played it the first time around. SWTOR does it too and it ultimately turned me away from the game.
I remember wanting to hang a left through a treeline just a few feet away and met with an invisible wall. Some areas I couldn't even walk down to a stream under a bridge and was only allowed to walk over it. Have the devs commented on this aspect of the new version? Ive watched a few videos and havent seen much of an improvement in this aspect. I still see towns blocked off by impassible treelines and steep rocks to both the left and right. It gives a feeling of only being able to go forward or backward.
Are there some videos that showcase more environment freedom? Thanks.
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smart.
I wish they would do that in TOR as well
I believe they have said in TOR that future worlds will be open, not much they can do about the crap thats already there
There will be invisible walls b/c the game will be made up from separate maps but they should be much more open. From the new vids it looks like the design will be similar to FF XI with jump added.
btw. current FF XIV already has open maps. There just were a few places which had terrrible design like gridania whichw as made up of corridors.
Thanks for the replies. I'll watch more videos.
This.
And my impressions of ARR so far is it will be more corridor-like than 1.0, at least when you compare it with anything outside of The Black Shroud. Though that's not to say it's going to be as guided as, say, FFXIII or TOR's indoor planets - it'll just be more like FFXI than the wide open zones 1.0 had.
There will be invisible walls. SE said they don't want players to be able to jump from very high areas, and they obviosuly don't understand the concept of fall damage.
As of alpha, no evidence of such high places yet though.
Freedom of movement, such as being able to scale mountains, as well as general platforming just makes an MMO feel so much more real. I find it's exceedingly difficult for a game to capture that free MMO feel if a game lacks these fundamental movement and exploration features. It was one of the things that helped make WoW feel so much more immersive to me coming from a background in FFXI first.
This is definitely one of the features I'll be keeping my eye on regarding FFXIV, and how it pans out will be one of the major factors that determine whether or not I will give 2.0 a shot.
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Yeah, and crossing the world on foot should take several weeks, or even months, in real life time...
There are obvious concessions that must be made or else certain components of the game cease to be any fun at all. Adding a level of interactivity with the environment can make the world feel real without it being a spot on realistic parallel to our actual reality.
i agree but again in reguards to climbing there should be a animation to it. Not spam jumping a mountain and call that realistic. dont you agree?
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At first I was about to say, "Yeah, a climb animation would be pretty awesome!" but now that I think about it I'm not so sure it would. When I think about the "vertical" MMO's I've played--namely WoW, Rift and GW2, most especially the later--the thrill of exploring vertical territory I think is derived from the uncertainty of whether or not I can climb each subsequent step of a slope or make the leap from one ledge to another. If my character just suddenly engaged in a climbing animation when I touched the side of a mountain and then clung there like spiderman, sliding side to side or up and down until he bumped into a *vertical invisible corridor wall* without allowing me the ability to feel around and see if I could jump over the barrier, I think I would have a problem with that. It would actually sacrifice realistic gameplay (the ability to freely interact with the environment according to a limited set of movement rules) in much the same way players complain FFXIV sacrifices realistic exploration gameplay, in favor of a more realistic visual representation of the game scenario. Maybe that's the distinction we're drawing: the choice between realistic gameplay versus realistic appearance of the game being played.
To preserve the platforming aspect of traversing vertical territory, it's also crucial that a player's movement speed isn't hindered. This is again highly unrealistic, but absolutely necessary. I'd fear that normal movement speed would look very awkward with a climbing animation. That doesn't mean it can't be done; this is just my initial guess. Although I'll admit WoW and GW2 have players swimming through water at lightning speeds and I don't recall ever gasping at the awkwardness of the unrealistically fast swim animations. So if every aspect of current vertical platforming in MMOs remains unchanged and only the animation of the "jumps" are turned into "hoists" or whatever, and if it doesn't look absolutely ridiculous, I think it would be cool.
Since it's relevant, I have noticed that characters that stand on slopes in GW2 stand with their legs at different elevations, one knee bent and that foot perched higher up. It actually stood out to me as being pleasantly realistic when I first noticed it, and I thought it was cool. So yeah, I see a climbing animation as being plausiblely cool as well.
If you're asking me whether or not jumping detracts from the immersion of the climbing experience for me, I think I would honestly answer no. But that's just me. Everyone draws their immersion line in different spots and at different angles. (As surely as some players aren't even bothered by the lack of an ability to jump or by the invisible walls and narrow corridors that this thread is about.)
i just dont see spam jumping a bluff or mountain as real or real like. I never played WoW or Rift or GW2 . Because they never intrested me WoW to me always looked like some tweeked out saturday moring cartoon so i played FFXI for 8 years off and on. As for spam jumping i played Skyrim where you can spam jump every cliff you see and yes i have done this lots of times , But to me doing that takes away from seeing all there is to be seen . You spam jump a mountain because you just want to go from this side to that side fast . But thinking more direct a MMO is never ending , the story keeps going and we our Chrs. are the story. So why take away from that ? Example ill use old FFXIV landmarks
Your leaving Ul'Dah and heading to the Black Shroud walking from Tanalan . You see a group of people killing a roaming Orge or you see someone about to bite it your a healer and can shoot that person a cure to help them quick. You come across a mining node off the main road you remembered your pick ax so you hit the point on the way. You run into a NM and call it out to the LS (now Free Company) or just watch it. your allmost around the mountain to the zone now.
OR
You can spam jump the mountain and avoid all these type of interactions in the name of time and or convience because nothing is going on , on the mountain no mobs no towns maybe other jump spamers .
Witch one sounds better ? ill take the 1st over the second anyday ....or to avoid it all ill jump on the Air ship lol
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I'm not saying the act of jumping across mountain tops is realistic, only that being able to interact with and traverse a vertical environment makes the world feel more real and immersive. I then acknowledge that there needs to be some consistency in character movement (jumping, strafing, ASDW) or else it could feel too clumsy, awkward or downright frustrating.
I feel the same way about swimming and delving into underwater environs, even though I generally don't like underwater content at all. Even if I don't always enjoy it, being able to do it is a must for me now. I'll never forget the first time I "fell" into water in WoW. After having played FFXI for a few years, I expected an invisible barrier around the pond in the night elf starting area. I was asked to pick some plants to develop a cure for an NPC's injured friend. These plants tended to grow around ponds in the area. There was a steep ledge near the one plant, which caused me to plummet in! Suddenly I was underwater completely. In that moment, I was as immersed as one can possibly get in a video game. My mouse, keyboard and monitor ceased to exist. I was my character for a few seconds. I actually felt panic as if I was drowning. I did think my character was probably going to die (I had no idea how water worked in that game.)
As far as experiencing the content all around a mountain versus taking a shortcut across the mountain to bypass that stuff goes, you answered the question yourself! There ARE indeed times when you want to avoid the stuff around the mountain and just get to the stuff on the other side. Most people who played Skyrim, for example, didn't want to walk all the way across Skyrim every single time they got a new quest that led them to the other end of the world. Thus, waypoints. Hopefully the game you're playing will offer some mode of fast transportation when those moments occur as well. You said yourself that that's what airships are for in the FF MMO worlds. Other games have flight paths or waygates. Another partial option is a simple geographical shortcut. And those shortcuts become all the more fun when they're hidden and not everyone knows about them. That's the fun of being able to explore up and down and over and under things in huge 3D games, they usually grant the opportunity to discover something hidden that not everyone knows about. There's always a certain joy that accompanies those moments.
That brings me to the 2nd point. A good vertical game actually has content up on top of many of those mountains, or inside hidden caves, or beneath secret tunnels under lakes that lead you to an opening inside a cavern on the other side. To go around the mountain in these games, participating in the "normal" content, means you're actually missing the secret stuff.
Overall I think you and I like to play games the same way: take our time and experience the content. But I don't think good games that allow you to explore hidden nooks and crannies all over the world necessarily take you away from content, but instead lead you toward hidden (hopefully fun) content.
I don't know if you ever played Morrowind, but there's a common feeling amongst the older TES players that waypoints killed the world in Oblivion and Skyrim. The game lost its sense of scale as a result of travel becoming trivial and you did indeed miss out on a huge amount of discoverable content by using waypoints. There were a lot of mods created just to remove the waypoint systems.
The issue here is something that has plagued 'virtual worlds' since their inception. Convenience in travel is constantly sought and demanded but then once players have it the game suddenly loses something and they don't know what. That something is scale. If you can trivialise movement in the world then it stops feeling like a world. This is one of those cases where (in my opinion) what players want is actually not in their best interests. There were times when playing FFXI that I wished I could get somewhere faster, but looking back at the game I know it was precisely because things took time that I valued my experiences in the game so much more than any other.
Think of an epic quest that requires a player to travel the world collecting valued items from several different dungeons. If that player could just teleport between the dungeons to get each item the quest would instantly lose much of its epic scale. As much as people equate time=grind (which isn't always true), time is a necessary factor in making things in MMOs have value.
Your comments with regards to climbing mountains and such hits on another issue with the genre though. There seem to be two types of immersion that I've noticed. Some players focus on world immersion whereby they have complete control of their character and are free to do anything their character would realistically be capable of (even if it doesn't make sense for their character to be doing that). Other players focus on character immersion wherein players are restricted to the things their characters would realistically do in a given scenario (such as not jumping in rivers or climbing mountains; in reality people would find an alternative route).
Though I recognise the value and appeal of both, different games cater to different tastes on that one and the FF series has generally always catered to the latter. That doesn't necessarily mean invisible walls galore though. A good developer will find ways to mould the environment to organically restrict players, rather than giving them arbitrary barriers.
I agree i am from the old school of FFXI and at times i would get mad like damn i have to travel from Jeuno to Delkforts Tower then climb the stupid tower. This is going to take so much time. BUT the great thing was this on my way there i run past at the time before abyssea around 10 or 15 parties leveling watching them as i pass seeing a level 20 tank die and the whm getting yelled at and remembering to myself learning the jobs at low levels . Or watching someone pull a crab at night and a revrent pops right on them that was always classic. Checking 2 NMs spots along the way to the tower . Getting to the tower and getting to the upper levels and thinking ok crap i need these Bats to move or im dead or i hope Sneak and Invis stick because i need to pass The gigas hope Pallas isent up ill get owned . And that was when you had to remember what mobs were agressive and by what means .
Thats what i LOVED about FFXI that you had to always be on guard death could be anywhere at anytime. And like i said a few posts up You felt the story and had a sence of all most pride to get things done. Or getting that AFV2 from Dynamiss that only took 3 weeks to do . Or the 3 months it took to FINISH Sea.
I dont think a game will ever replace FFXI (pre Abyssea) but i am hoping FFXIV:ARR will come close .
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Hello, fellow Rush fan!
I wouldn't be so sure there's nothing they could do about it. They could always phone up SE and ask Yoshi-P if they could borrow Bahamut for a little bit to help them do some renovating... :-p
Sporadically replying to points raised by both Aleberel and DarknessReign.
FFXI was my first MMO, which I began playing shortly after release in 2003 and played through CoP; Oblivion was my first ES game. So there might just be some old-school/new-school disconnect going on here between us. But at the same time, I can totally commiserate with the nostalgia-fueled lamentation of the loss of old ways, even concerning transporation. I couldn't possibly go as far as DarknessReign goes when he says he appreciated or even enjoyed the agonizingly slow transportation of classic FFXI. I found absolutely no redeeming factor in walking a real life 30-40 minutes to get to my destination across landscapes that were mostly completely empty, and I certainly got nothing out of missing an airship by 15 seconds, resulting in an 18 minute AFK wait. I experienced all those things he recounted as well, but when I recall them, I'm not exactly overcome with extreme fondness. My general assessment of FFXI's transportation is that it was almost masochistic. I would personally combine that with a rather negative assessment of the "content" you experience while traversing Vana'diel (which was essentially summarized by Darkness) and I can't help but say good riddance.
But of course, all that says nothing other than he and I have different ideas of what constitutes *fun* sights to see while exploring.
That said, I absolutely agree with your claim, Alberel, that it is important to preserve a sense of the massive scale of the world. I would add that it is also important to preserve a sense of geographical continuity across the world. And I agree that instant teleportation all over the place endangers this sense. I have games of my own where I lament changes made for convenience's sake. The last time I played WoW, which was during WotlK or it's 2nd expansion, they introduced a dungeon finder system, which allows players to simply click a button and queue for any dungeon in the world. Once the queue was ready, that player would teleport inside that dungeon and be grouped randomly with strangers. To me, this took so much away from the sense of lore and geographical continuity of the world. No longer would players quest through a zone to learn about a dungeon fortress and some of the enemies that await within. No longer would new players know where the dungeon entrance was or, indeed, even where the dungeon itself existed in the world. There was no more context for being there. The dungeon was no longer an ominous monolith looming over a part of the world. Instead, it was completely disconnected from the rest of the wrold. There was a loss of purpose...other than to get loot, of course. But I won't turn this into a rant about dungeon finders.
One of my fondest memories in WoW occured very early on when I wanted to do my first dungeon. I caught wind of a dungeon appropriate for my level named the Deadmines. But I was a Night Elf, and the Deadmines were in a far away land. I resolved to travel to them, even though I had no idea where to go. I had to take a flight to the elvish port town of Auberdine, then catch a boat to a human harbor on another continent. From there I had to ask players for directions. They pointed me south to the Dwarven lands. Thus I began my trek on foot across the swampy Wetlands, crocodiles beyond my level nipping at my feet. I caught sight of the great waterfall, a consequence of a colossal dam built by the dwarves, as I made my way up the carved-out mountain pass. I had to stop at a local leather shop to purchase a pair of thicker boots. The thick snow and jagged ice were foreign and harsh to my soft elven feet. That and my old boots were on their last tread after the swamp and the crocodiles. NPCs from every town I passed beckoned me for their aid, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. I was on a mission! Besides, there were plenty of other players around to help them. I eventually ascended into the volcanic capital of the Dwarves, Ironforge. This seemed to be a dead end to me, until players directed me to the Deeprun Tram, an underground mechanical railway system designed by the ingenuitive gnomes. It turned out this engineering marvel connected Ironforge to the human capital of Stormwind. Ah! To behold two wondrous cities on one journey!
I was now finally in the region of the Deadmines. A comparatively short trek through a peaceful forest and some rural farmlands later, and I arrived at Moonbrook, the town above which I was told the Deadmines were dug. There, I helped others fight off bandits while I sought a party for the dungeon. I eventually allied myself with some worthy looking companions and we ventured forth through the labyrinth of mines. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now, of course I embelished this experience in my recantation, as surely as DarknessReign embelished his. But this is exactly how this memory stands with me today. I'm sure I was wide-eyed with glea throughout it all. It was a truly immersive MMO experience for me. (I'd add that I was also simply much more enthralled by the environments, zones and variety of sights and sounds to see in WoW compared to FFXI--but again, that just speaks to a difference of personal preferences.) I related that whole long story only to say that I'm sympathetic to experiences of the *journey* one can encounter in an MMO, and also to lament the fact that such experiences, in all liklihood, will no longer be had by new players in WoW today. They will just press their little green button and instantly teleport inside the Deadmines in a matter of seconds. Plain and simple, this is sad to me.
That said, if I had to make that long arduous journey every time I wanted to do the dungeon, I very likely simply wouldn't have run the dungeon much more after that. So there are flaws with the opposite extreme too. If desireable content is so spread out and it takes so long to get to different things, players will simply miss out. There needs to be a happy balance between experience of the scale of the world and accessibility of content from all over.
I haven't fully brainstormed what I think the optimal balance of both would look like, but I do see 2 broad rules as being vital:
First, players must explore their way to new content their first time through on a character. The game should make it impossible for players to bybass lore and context for a given area; and players should have to geographically find where they are going. If I were to praise any aspect of FFXI, it would be this. The zones, although mostly vast wildernesses of nothingness, were like puzzles to navigate. Collecting maps and navigating through them to reach your destination or explore a dungeon area was effectively a form of gameplay in FFXI, and, in my opinion, the most fun gameplay the game had to offer.
Second, once players have unlocked access to a new area, they should be able to get back to that area more easily. The journey should not be as difficult or lengthy the 2nd time. Here, a balance must be struck. Return trips to anywhere shouldn't necessarily be instantaneous, but they shouldn't be too tediously lengthy either. I agree with the assessment that adding some time to travel, and requiring some level of geographical traversion adds value to the experience of the MMO world, but too much can take decrease value of other MMO experiences.
A lot of this conversation has deviated from the original topic, so apologies for that, but I do think the resulting conversation has been interesting and fun
The story you described echoes a few of my own. When a world is new and alien exploring it can be a real adventure and my greatest experiences in MMOs are generally all related to such long journeys through unexplored lands. You're right though, there needs to be a balance somewhere because that journey won't hold the same wonder after the first time and once you get to know the world it can start to feel like a chore.
I don't think any games have really struck that balance though. WoW, as you said, has taken it to the extreme of convenience and essentially killed the world. Flying mounts contributed to this a great deal as well due to the way they let you completely circumvent even areas you've never been to before. FFXI was quite harsh in comparison but I found the time spent waiting around for airships or such allowed me a great deal of time to simply socialise and form strong friendships with other players. The white mage's teleports also helped a great deal, but not everyone had access to them and requesting another player to teleport you could prove expensive (I mained SMN/WHM in the early years).
Personally (with no compromise available) I favour XI's nigh-masochistic approach to WoW's but that's down to personal taste. I just like a game that forces players to socialise as I feel it encourages a stronger community. As for how a compromise might be made though I couldn't say. Some kind of waypoint system would probably be the obvious choice but GW2 did that and I feel that was too extreme (it also didn't make much sense in the lore). Perhaps something akin to XI's travel options but made somewhat more extensive? I don't know...
This has been an interesting discussion. To try and return this to FFXIV though,as far as I'm aware the game has the same travel options as XI (airship, chocobo, etc.) as well as teleportation between the aetherite crystals. How extensive these will be in ARR I can't really say though... I imagine Yoshi P will make things slightly easier for getting around but nothing drastic.
Finding that elusive balance will always be tricky because, like you said, part of it comes down to personal taste. Not everyone enjoys the same parts of MMOs, and not everyone would have enjoyed my treck from Teldrassil to Westfall. I'm sure there are some people who would have logged off in frustration and maybe lost interest in the game entirely. Game developers have to take into account all kinds of players.
I do think you hit something with an earlier point you made though. I think many players mistakenly trick themselves into thinking they want certain conveniences, when in fact those very conveniences cause them to lose interest in the game more quickly than they otherwise would. This adds another element to the developer's conundrum, as it's obviously in the developer's (and really the health of the game's) best interest to keep players playing longer. However, I don't think this should just mean arbitrarily increasing the length of time it takes to get from point A to point B. That would be akin to old RPGs like Final Fantasy 2, which claimed to have "over 40 hours of gameplay!", an insane number at the time; but in reality, a solid 20 of those hours were spent grinding random encounters to get strong enough to survive the next area. Games can add all sorts of tedious obstacles to prevent players from reaching certain content too fast and, as a result, keep them playing longer. But nowadays, those obstacles tend to be more transparent to players who have been around the block and experienced a variety of games with varying levels of convenience. If something is in place solely to slow players down, they tend to identify it and complain about it.
I tend to agree that GW2's waypoints are a bit too extreme. Fine tuning them would be an extreme challenge, but I think it can be done. There are moments when I'm immensely grateful for them and I couldn't imagine playing the game without them; but when I think about it on the grand scale, I think I would have had more experiences like the WoW story I related if there weren't quite so many. I especially don't think one should be able to access Lion's Arch and all other major cities immediately by traveling through a gate without either exploring your way to those places first or otherwise earning the right to use the Asura Gates, much like FFXI treated the Kazham airship pass.
I've grappled with GW2's handling of waypoints several times in the past on these forums. My initial posts were dead against them...until I played Skyrim and loved them. I then warmed to the idea of waypoints even further after playing the GW2 beta. I concluded that I could still travel on foot whenever I wanted to, or if I wished to arrive at my destination faster, the convenience was there. The world was still there for me to explore if I wanted. But now, after having time to reflect, I DO think the city gates and excessive waypoints (not to mention loading screens between zones) have prevented me from having the same kinds of awe-inspiring traveling adventures, or at least as many of them, as I did during parts of early WoW. Even when I did force myself to avoid the fast transporation, like when I resolved to walk to Ebonhawke on foot rather than take the gate in Divinity's Reach, the experience of my journey felt tainted. All the walking I was doing was unnecessary. I could have gotten there by now. Even knowing it's all psychological, it's very real nonetheless. (All that said, I do have to add that I think GW2's cities, world and zones are infinitely more beautiful than any other MMO I've ever played. The areas within each zone are an absolute joy to explore. Not only are the zones some of the most massive zones I've ever seen in a game, but they are jam packed full of content, life, and hidden secrets around ever corner and in between every nook and cranny.)
So have I arrived at any further conclusions about transportation in MMOs after all this discussion? I'm not sure. Here's where I'm personally at with this philosophy:
Can't/won't say too much... but... if you're hoping for "fewer invisible walls".. Well.. wouldn't get my hopes up.
You can see glimpses of it in some of the official videos released by SE if you pay attention. Yoshi's also already indicated that there's going to be places where they specifically will not let you jump - even if it looks like you could or should be able to.
Let's just say a whole lot of the "jump anywhere" folks are going to find themselves frustrated in short order. I expect a lot of complaint threads about it. You can call that a prediction.
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I saw footage of someone trying to jump over a railing and into a stream that was maybe 5 feet below them. Invisible wall stopped them. They tried jumping over another spot later on where they would not have injured themselves... Invisible wall stopped them.
And so on.
The limitations on it are pretty arbitrary and inconsistent, frankly. And again, I can see a lot of people complaining about it. Probably well before full launch.
Personally, I'm in the crowd who was fine with no jumping at all. I'm not "anti-jump". I'm more "add jumping if it's absolutely necessary". It wasn't in XI and it wasn't in XIV 1.0 (people not wanting to spend "forever" (as in 5 or 6 extra seconds) running around a cliff to get to a ramp once in a while notwithstanding).
That jumping was added at all is, like you say, a blatant concession to "appease the masses" as Yoshi stated it would serve no purpose in the game other than to just let people hop around because they can. That disappointed me. Had he said "we're implementing jumping, and to make it interesting and useful, we're going to be building some content to make good and challenging use of it, that would have been awesome. But he didn't. It's a useless "feature" added just to try and get more warm bodies into the game.
Yoshi's making an awful lot of concessions with the game and, personally, I'm not okay with a MMO being built on ass-kissing and fan service, mixed into yet more "WoW-inspired gameplay".
And nothing I'm saying there is hyperbolic or inaccurate. Yoshi's commented on each of those things on a number of occasions. I'm just responding to what the bigger picture is when you put all those separate bits of info together.