"Oh btw, FFXIV Online in 2010"

[Murgos]

That said, how the hell did you get uncanny valley from buildings against creatures. That's not really how the classic definition of uncanny valley works.

He regularly fights giant chubby chickens and then sells their phat lewts at the item shop irl?

[ezrast]

It just gave me this sense of "this almost looks real but something's wrong" and that's the best way I could think to describe it. Maybe I'm just crazy.

[bhodi]

And here I was just thinking "My god, look at how slow he runs. It's going to SUCK to get anywhere."

[Murgos]

Yeah but they had Town Portal.  I mean, right?

[Draegan]

They did have the "Kill Dobbs 5/6 in there."  So we'll have kill quests.

[Margalis]

The combat looked very slow to me, but I assume some of that was the player not knowing what the fuck to do or being busy giving a speech or whatever.

In the vids I saw the person playing stood there getting hit until they had enough TP to use Red Lotus Blade and that was all they did. They were also facing the wrong direction a lot of the time. So I'm not sure what the vids say about the pace of combat, other than that there is no trivial auto-attack.

[tmp]

few more clips

weather effects
character animations
semi-gameplay: kill 10 3 rats. apparently there's no jump in the game and won't be.

[Fordel]

Well, I won't be playing this one then.

[Margalis]

I believe people were told that the devs are considering adding jumping.

Unless you count Dragoon jump, which is in the game since you switch to Dragoon class when you equip a spear.

I just made that up. But I'd put even money on it being true.

I don't really care much about jumping itself but being able to freely jump does imply a certain sort of real 3D-ness to the world that would manifest itself in different ways. Oddly in FFXI there were plenty of places where you could fall off of things.

[Koyasha]

As I mentioned in the Guild Wars 2 thread, for some reason the lack of jumping didn't bother me much in FFXI even though it did in GW, so I have no idea whether it'll bother me in FFXIV.  Just knowing there's no jumping won't keep me from trying it, when it really depends on whether it 'feels wrong' in play without jumping.

[Margalis]

That's actually exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote that you could oddly fall off of things in FFXI.

I only played a little bit of GW but the lack of jumping really stuck out there. Maybe because it's more actiony than RPG, or maybe just the way the terrain was done made me want to jump. From what little I remember of Guild Wars it seemed very heavy on arbitrary invisible walls. Whereas in FFXI you could fall off of most things that it looked like you could fall off of, you just couldn't jump back onto them.

[Trippy]

I don't know for sure how they actually did things in GW but given the way pathing works in toolkits like the NWN one I'm pretty sure GW was designed so that all terrain, even a flat surface, was impassable unless a path/mesh was specifically drawn on the surface by the level designer. Games like Quake and EQ, however, were made so the player could go anywhere unless the "physics" prevent the player from moving like mountain walls that were too steep to climb (not that we didn't try all the time in EQ). I believe one of the reasons why GW went with the former method (assuming they actually did it that way) is that it makes pathfinding for the AI (e.g. your henchmen) easier as you don't have to worry as much about collision detection during pathfinding.

Edit: assuming

[grunk]

i worry about the lack of a job system.  Sure the skill based system sounds great but we actually had that in ffxi.  My biggest issue with FFXI was the econ, if they re-did the crafting system and actually allowed players to gather resources, id re-sub tonight.

I worry about the use of instances, worry about how this game is going to allow far to much soloing.  Also, since someone can solo there skills up, the only reason to do group based missions would be for loot?  so that would mean the econ wouldnt be player driven? 

I am keeping my eyes on on FFXIVCORE for more info but its all up in the air.

[Bzalthek]

If the world was a sane place I wouldn't expect FFXIII to fall to far from a solo friendly experience.  The solo players are legion, and will provide a lot of money.  That doesn't mean they'd have a free pass for a shitty game, though.  However, when I think of Japan, sanity is not exactly at the forefront of my mind.  Anything goes from that sector, as far as I can tell.

[Malakili]

If the world was a sane place I wouldn't expect FFXIII to fall to far from a solo friendly experience.  The solo players are legion, and will provide a lot of money.  That doesn't mean they'd have a free pass for a shitty game, though.  However, when I think of Japan, sanity is not exactly at the forefront of my mind.  Anything goes from that sector, as far as I can tell.

Aside from WoW, has this model really given rise to any other big time games?  In fact, if this tries to do that I expect it would actually do worse than FFXI.  I don't personally like really solo oriented MMOs at this point (I used to), so I might just be biased here, but most of the MMOs that have tried to capitalize on it don't seem able to retain/grow subscribers.

I know, for instance, a REALLY casual player that I met in Champions Online who players FFXI also.  So, the sort of "brutal" requirement of grouping isn't necessarily going to turn people away, as long as you offer them something they like/want.  With the huge amount of soloable MMOs out there at this point, I don't see a big advantage to making this a selling point.

[ghost]

Aside from WoW, has this model really given rise to any other big time games? 

That isn't a great argument because MMOs, in general, have not given rise to any other "big time" games for the most part.  That is part of the reason WOW is so big-  there is a large swathe of the gaming population that likes to play online without other douchebags to fuck up their experience. 

[raydeen]

Aside from WoW, has this model really given rise to any other big time games? 

That isn't a great argument because MMOs, in general, have not given rise to any other "big time" games for the most part.  That is part of the reason WOW is so big-  there is a large swathe of the gaming population that likes to play online without other douchebags to fuck up their experience. 

I resemble that. I like to be the 'lone wolf' character who joins up now and then with others when duty calls. Which can be a bit challenging on a PvP server.

[Bzalthek]

If the world was a sane place I wouldn't expect FFXIII to fall to far from a solo friendly experience.  The solo players are legion, and will provide a lot of money.  That doesn't mean they'd have a free pass for a shitty game, though.  However, when I think of Japan, sanity is not exactly at the forefront of my mind.  Anything goes from that sector, as far as I can tell.

Aside from WoW, has this model really given rise to any other big time games?  In fact, if this tries to do that I expect it would actually do worse than FFXI.  I don't personally like really solo oriented MMOs at this point (I used to), so I might just be biased here, but most of the MMOs that have tried to capitalize on it don't seem able to retain/grow subscribers.

I know, for instance, a REALLY casual player that I met in Champions Online who players FFXI also.  So, the sort of "brutal" requirement of grouping isn't necessarily going to turn people away, as long as you offer them something they like/want.  With the huge amount of soloable MMOs out there at this point, I don't see a big advantage to making this a selling point.

I would say Free Realms.  Last I heard they were touting over five million.  But I agree with you that being group oriented is not going to turn players away if the game is good enough.  I played EQ for five soul crushing years because at the time it provided everything I wanted out of a MMO (Well, I almost quit after the first 3 months because it wasn't the D&D anytime experience I was initially looking for, but my expectations changed.)

The problem is you have to provide a very good incentive to get people to play a strictly group oriented game.  This is not the case for a solo friendly game.  I posit there are a LOT more (MMO) people who enjoy a solo experience with multiplayer flavoring than there are group/raid fetishists.  Cultivating a solo-friendly game is economically preferable not only because of the larger base of potential players but because of the time-intensive process of devising group oriented content.  While the quantity of things to do may increase when designing for soloists, the time needed to tune content for groups of people is an exponential process in which people must not only take into account the number of players, but the level disparity between players and the potential class combinations which comprise the group.

It's actually been said on these forums before and I agree with it:  FFXI was in response to EQ and for it's time it was rather successful.  But now WoW has shown a much more lucrative field to exploit, and FFXIV looks to be the response to WoW.  If they work like a corporation should work, they will be trying to blend their unique animation styles and exotic lore and stories into a solo friendly experience with optional group experience.  It's the financially sound thing to do if they're trying to capture the hearts of the Western market.  

Whether or not this is something any given individual will want is rather pointless and anecdotal.  The masses have spoken with the only thing they have that means jack shit: money.  

Then again, they could just way fuck the roundeyes, we're going to pimp shit for the chinese and koreans, there's a lot of them and they don't mind repetitious bullshit.

[Typhon]

If the game requires grouping upfront it's going to have to:

• Depart from tank/healer/dps/(cc) - this shit is tired, find another way to have group members depend upon eachother
• Depart from using loot to bring out the worst in group members - people suck just standing still, I don't need a game design that actively encourages them to suck more
• Provide at launch an excellent looking-for-group mechanism
• A sidekick ability
• The ability to easily add group members as replacements for group members that have to leave

Do not plan on adding any of that later, have it at launch. If you don't have all that at launch, do not require grouping. 

[Malakili]

The problem is you have to provide a very good incentive to get people to play a strictly group oriented game.  This is not the case for a solo friendly game.  I posit there are a LOT more (MMO) people who enjoy a solo experience with multiplayer flavoring than there are group/raid fetishists.  

I don't disagree with this, really.  I Just don't think that a lot of the people who enjoy a solo experience are going to necessarily  leave their current MMO to start a brand new one.  And if they do, they'll probably leave after a month or two, at least thats the trend we've seen for pretty much every game that has tried to capitalize on the market WoW illuminated.

Oh also, I don't really care that much about "group/raiding" content.  What I would like it a game to really focus on player interaction, even if its not "hey we need 4 people to kill this thing."  Require people to go to others to get gear, or repair gear, items etc.  If you get people interacting and talking to each other, then you might actually "gasp" just group up because you met someone new and go out and play in a group because its fun.  Thats the kind of grouping I want to see encouraged.  The solo friendliness has gotten to the point where even having to so much as interact with another player from  1 to Max level-1 is considered "hardcore."

[Lantyssa]

I don't disagree with this, really.  I Just don't think that a lot of the people who enjoy a solo experience are going to necessarily  leave their current MMO to start a brand new one.  And if they do, they'll probably leave after a month or two, at least thats the trend we've seen for pretty much every game that has tried to capitalize on the market WoW illuminated.

They left because the games sucked on some fundamental level.  I really wouldn't read too much into it beyond there are a bunch of people out there interested in trying something new.

[Malakili]

They left because the games sucked on some fundamental level.  I really wouldn't read too much into it beyond there are a bunch of people out there interested in trying something new.

It isn't just that the "sucked" but they simply weren't as good as what people have been playing (in most cases WoW, but not all).  If you are going to try and replicate a formula that has worked, you've got to do it REALLY well in order to take players away long term from a game that already uses that formula.  Its not that people aren't interested in trying something new, but rather that no matter how much they want to play something new, its going to be nearly impossible to find a game that uses the WoW formula that is good enough to tear you away from WoW.  I've criticized WoW plenty here, and other places, and said some nice things about it too, but regardless of how you feel about what WoW does, you have to admit it does it well.  So, if you are looking for "WoW 2.0" or whatever, you'll be consistently disappointed barring some MMO development miracle, or MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE a new blizzard game that has many years of dev time.

Edit: My point is, in case it wasn't clear, isn't that people don't like the single player MMO experience, just that I think its already been done about as well as it can be.  I think there is more market space in doing something different and doing it well than there is copying WoW.   Especially when you've already got FFXI, which is quite a successful game, and doesn't use the WoW model, so there is already a precedent there.

[grunk]

Square really looked at old school EQ for ideas and inspiration and added far more to the formula.  In many ways, FFXI was a highly polished version with far more depth.  My question is, who do they look at now?  I may be off (not much of a news flash) but i expect square to look at Ultima Online and EQ2 far more than WoW... in fact i dont think WoW will even enter there mind given how badly all of these games have done (aside for lotro and aion)

[Count Nerfedalot]

If the game requires grouping upfront it's going to have to:

• Depart from tank/healer/dps/(cc) - this shit is tired, find another way to have group members depend upon eachother
• Depart from using loot to bring out the worst in group members - people suck just standing still, I don't need a game design that actively encourages them to suck more
• Provide at launch an excellent looking-for-group mechanism
• A sidekick ability
• The ability to easily add group members as replacements for group members that have to leave

Do not plan on adding any of that later, have it at launch. If you don't have all that at launch, do not require grouping. 

Kudos Typhon, you nailed it there.


Some more stuff that might not be mandatory, but sure would help:

Allow groups of any mixture of classes to succeed relatively equally.  Not necessarily against the same opponents, but averaged over all. 

Don't allow the encounter designers to get lazy and do the same things over and over such that any one grouping of classes will generally be better than most others.  Make them think about (and react to once the game is live) ways players actually play and provide challenges that a "standard" group can't handle while some other mix can.

Do make each class flexible enough that NO one class is mandatory in every group.  And make sure this extends to the end-game/raids as well as low and mid levels.

Use encounter size to encourage some grouping, without using it so much that grouping is required.  EQ2 tried this at launch and did pretty much everything wrong in that regard.  EQ2 now is much better, but still not perfect, being both perhaps too solo-friendly AND to rigorous in its encounter sizing.  CoH on the other hand nailed it at launch, but later additions and nerfs made grouping pretty much mandatory rather than just advantageous.  I'm still waiting for a game that implements tactical positioning properly.  Taunting and aggro management is such a silly (but so far necessary) substitute for having the tanks actually physically BLOCKING their opponents from getting to the squishies on the back row.  AC actually had this mechanic back in the dark ages, why hasn't anyone else tried it?  (Ideally without the rubberbanding, wall-licking, and shots bending around corners that AC had! )

Oh, and just to reiterate the most important of Typhon's points:  make sure my friend and I can group every night we want to no matter what our relative levelling speeds are.  That means no travel cockblocks as well as no level disparity cockblocks.  EQ2 is far and away the best at this so far with its mentoring system and advanced transportation system, although CoH started the ball rolling in the right direction with its Sidekicking.  If grouping is required and only no-lifes who are able to dedicate most or all of their evenings to playing your game are able to establish long-term groupings, then only no-lifes will end up playing your game for very long!

[Lantyssa]

Edit: My point is, in case it wasn't clear, isn't that people don't like the single player MMO experience, just that I think its already been done about as well as it can be.  I think there is more market space in doing something different and doing it well than there is copying WoW.   Especially when you've already got FFXI, which is quite a successful game, and doesn't use the WoW model, so there is already a precedent there.

People do not play WoW because it is single-player friendly.  They don't quit WoW because it is single-player friendly (along with a host of other reasons).  That is an incredibly important distinction.

There are a lot of people who would play FFXI had it been more friendly to soloers and less harsh with grinding and xp loss.  The world, stories, and systems have a lot of appeal.  The world is self-consistent and not a tribute to pop-culture.  It doesn't matter how desirable those things are if a game mechanic drives players away.

That is true of all the problems impacting recent releases.  AoC, WAR, Aion, CO...  Not a one failed because it tried to hard to be solo friendly.

[Malakili]

Not a one failed because it tried to hard to be solo friendly.

Well, you could say WAR had other problems too, but I think that trying to be a viable WoW alternative, in addition to an RvR game was a pretty big mistake.  It ended up a big muddled mess.  Oh also, RvR sucked in its own right, but I wonder if it would have been different had they built the game in an entirely different context.

Anyway, I see your point.

[Rendakor]

Oh, and just to reiterate the most important of Typhon's points:  make sure my friend and I can group every night we want to no matter what our relative levelling speeds are.  That means no travel cockblocks as well as no level disparity cockblocks.  EQ2 is far and away the best at this so far with its mentoring system and advanced transportation system, although CoH started the ball rolling in the right direction with its Sidekicking.  If grouping is required and only no-lifes who are able to dedicate most or all of their evenings to playing your game are able to establish long-term groupings, then only no-lifes will end up playing your game for very long!

I'd argue that CoH has the better system still than EQ2; mentoring in EQ2 only allows the high level player to reduce his level, while in CoH, the higher level player can exemplar down OR the lowbie can be sidekicked up.

[Malakili]

I'd argue that CoH has the better system still than EQ2; mentoring in EQ2 only allows the high level player to reduce his level, while in CoH, the higher level player can exemplar down OR the lowbie can be sidekicked up.

Champions Online is actually doing a decent job with this now.  The sidekicking is basically the same.  Also, they are working on, or maybe they even added in into this recent patch last week, a system by which you can get any quest someone in your group has, even if you aren't eligible for it (not high enough level, or you've already done it, haven't done the previous quest in the chain, whatever), and it generates a reward appropriate for your level.  It also doesn't count as doing the actual quest if you haven't already done it, so it doesn't mess up with your questing later on.

Champions still does have the problem of level gated zones though.  So if you aren't level 27 you aren't going to see Monster Island, and if you aren't level 33 (I think its 33), you aren't going to Lemuria.  I'd like to see that changed.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Oh, and just to reiterate the most important of Typhon's points:  make sure my friend and I can group every night we want to no matter what our relative levelling speeds are.  That means no travel cockblocks as well as no level disparity cockblocks.  EQ2 is far and away the best at this so far with its mentoring system and advanced transportation system, although CoH started the ball rolling in the right direction with its Sidekicking.  If grouping is required and only no-lifes who are able to dedicate most or all of their evenings to playing your game are able to establish long-term groupings, then only no-lifes will end up playing your game for very long!

I'd argue that CoH has the better system still than EQ2; mentoring in EQ2 only allows the high level player to reduce his level, while in CoH, the higher level player can exemplar down OR the lowbie can be sidekicked up.

My bad.  I only remember it sidekicking you up.  Did they add exemplaring later or is my memory that bad? 

[Count Nerfedalot]

I'd argue that CoH has the better system still than EQ2; mentoring in EQ2 only allows the high level player to reduce his level, while in CoH, the higher level player can exemplar down OR the lowbie can be sidekicked up.

Champions Online is actually doing a decent job with this now.  The sidekicking is basically the same.  Also, they are working on, or maybe they even added in into this recent patch last week, a system by which you can get any quest someone in your group has, even if you aren't eligible for it (not high enough level, or you've already done it, haven't done the previous quest in the chain, whatever), and it generates a reward appropriate for your level.  It also doesn't count as doing the actual quest if you haven't already done it, so it doesn't mess up with your questing later on.

Champions still does have the problem of level gated zones though.  So if you aren't level 27 you aren't going to see Monster Island, and if you aren't level 33 (I think its 33), you aren't going to Lemuria.  I'd like to see that changed.

Um, you can sidekick up but you still can't get into the zone?  I vaguely recall that from CoH (it's been a long while), but wtf is up with that anyway?  Why bother?  The point is to be able to play together.  Adjusting levels up and down as appropriate.  The quest rewards for all thing is brilliant tho. 

[Malakili]

I'd argue that CoH has the better system still than EQ2; mentoring in EQ2 only allows the high level player to reduce his level, while in CoH, the higher level player can exemplar down OR the lowbie can be sidekicked up.

Champions Online is actually doing a decent job with this now.  The sidekicking is basically the same.  Also, they are working on, or maybe they even added in into this recent patch last week, a system by which you can get any quest someone in your group has, even if you aren't eligible for it (not high enough level, or you've already done it, haven't done the previous quest in the chain, whatever), and it generates a reward appropriate for your level.  It also doesn't count as doing the actual quest if you haven't already done it, so it doesn't mess up with your questing later on.

Champions still does have the problem of level gated zones though.  So if you aren't level 27 you aren't going to see Monster Island, and if you aren't level 33 (I think its 33), you aren't going to Lemuria.  I'd like to see that changed.

Um, you can sidekick up but you still can't get into the zone?  I vaguely recall that from CoH (it's been a long while), but wtf is up with that anyway?  Why bother?  The point is to be able to play together.  Adjusting levels up and down as appropriate.  The quest rewards for all thing is brilliant tho. 

Well, part of it is that there is content all the way up to level 30 in the other  zones in the game, so there is a lot of side kicking up you can do without access to those zones.  Still, its stupid.

[Rendakor]

My bad.  I only remember it sidekicking you up.  Did they add exemplaring later or is my memory that bad? 

They did add it later than sidekicking, but relatively early IIRC. Well before the ED and aoe nerfs.

[statisticalfool]

I don't disagree with this, really.  I Just don't think that a lot of the people who enjoy a solo experience are going to necessarily  leave their current MMO to start a brand new one.  And if they do, they'll probably leave after a month or two, at least thats the trend we've seen for pretty much every game that has tried to capitalize on the market WoW illuminated.

They left because the games sucked on some fundamental level.  I really wouldn't read too much into it beyond there are a bunch of people out there interested in trying something new.

Games that were/are wrecks (aoc, warhammer) each sold over a million boxes, the kind of figures most non-mmog developers would be delighted for. There's a huge audience out there for the next mainstream MMO which isn't broken in some way (barren content, buggy client, horrendous grind), and Final Fantasy is more than enough of a license to get that buy-in.

[LK]

The next MMO I'm going to play with any seriousness is this one. I just hope they don't fuck it up.

[grunk]

The next MMO I'm going to play with any seriousness is this one. I just hope they don't fuck it up.

SS is really smart and what we have learned is that they study other companies very well and i am willing to say, they watched SoE and EQ2 and found many ideas and lessons learned.  In addition, they seem to have adopted concepts from UO and other f2p mmos on the market, for example atlantia.