Alpha Video #8: Instanced DungeonsFollow

yepyepyep. couldn't have said it better myself. Those beastman strongholds kind of sucked in practice, as I mentioned in another thread. Loved rushing in my first time, seeing no mobs, dying an ungraceful death, then mobs appearing around my corpse. Thanks SE!

But if the tech had worked, that stuff would have been pretty fun. And sometimes it did kind of work. Think it depended on the Stronghold/how many mobs were there/how many players etc. Been awhile. Never got around to Hamlet, but am looking forward to the open-world versrion planned for ARR. Especially because this time around i'm leveling at least one crafting and gathering profession now that its fun/streamlined. Or, uh, appears to be. Yeah. That.

And your last statement is sort of a double edged sword. Yes the devs have more control over the content, but you lose the unpredictability that many gamers enjoy. Many however, do not enjoy that.

Random aside: think i remember your name from the XI dragoon forums waaayyy back in the day?

Hmmm, I have to disagree with most of what you said, and NOT just for the sake of argument.

Actions being flashier isn't always a good thing. In fact it usually isn't. The party had what? Four people? It was a fricking fireworks show. Imagine a group of 8 or more? It would just be absolutely absurd.

Fights are of good length. Well, clearly this is 100% subjective, but in my case and I know there are MANY who feel the same way... The two biggest things that would keep me away from becoming a dedicated player of his game are:

A. 5 second battles where your party is forced to run around like chickens with their heads cutoff in every direction non-stop.

B. As a consequence of A., this type of party structure leads to decreased tendency to party and increased tendency to solo. This is not a good thing no matter how you chalk it up.

I don't mind having to run around every once in a while, however I feel like the whole camp-mode of XI was how it should be. It really gave you a chance to have good length battles (30 seconds to several minutes generally) and it also gave you a chance to fraternize with your fellow party members. Which was absolutely the best part of XI.

They'll definitely cause lag and visibility problems, but I also agree that to some degree, less is more. If these are only level 20 abilities, they shouldn't be so flashy. That kind of flash should be reserved for those really powerful, eye-catching abilities.

My issue is the battle system hardly seems changed from 1.0, guess we'll just have to wait some more.

The only reason is because SE released it far too late in 1.0's life that the majority of people actually playing couldn't really utilize the dungeon for what it's worth. My brother and his gf joined at the time of it's opening and got to use it and the first thing they said?

"This feels like FFXI in a good way, going to a dungeon to level and fight some NMs while finding chests..hell it's almost like a FF game."

Then when they hit end-game, they were bored to tears and wondered why all dungeons weren't like Shposhae, especially since 9.9/10 you get really nothing out of chests not to mention the boss itself unless you sped run it.

I tend to agree. I had no problem with the 1.0 animations per se, there just wasn't nearly enough variety, and ofc they were way out of sync. They were simple at first though, and started to look more impressive as you got higher level skills (in some cases). Then you got to say, 50PGL and saw your whole screen nuked by Simian Thrash.

I do think there's a bit too much particle effect happening too early. It leaves little room for visual growth.

I think we can all mostly agree some happy medium is in order between 1.0 and what has been presented thus far for ARR.

From what I saw, the battle system changed quite a bit from 1.0...at least when I beta tested it...

I'm still critical of Yoshi and crew using the Alpha to show off segments like this, especially with the combat system still in the rough. Hard to really display party content with only 3 playable classes.

All and all, the dungeons feel like the standard, which isn't bad given this is Final Fantasy. And yes, this one does feel like a FF dungeon, from what I've seen.

The more detailed and in depth the dungeons, instanced or otherwise, the better, IMO. There likely will be open world dungeons on top of instanced ones so I've no worries there. However, part of me is really glad that we're done with Alpha Videos. Let's hope that they make a better showing with the Beta (though the players likely will do that for them, provided the NDA is lifted.)

Fine with me, while I do like getting some lore, the main attraction of MMOs, for me at least, is dungeon delving with friends :P

We have to be careful here. By making a game with such a design philosophy we tend to get "everyone's a winner!" mode stuffed with brain-dead easy content. As long as all goals are supposed to be achieved by all players, there's never going to be any higher achievement than going through the motions like everyone else.

I don't think we need to be that careful. There's a not very subtle difference between, "You can achieve everything with ease," and, "You can achieve anything if you practice at it." Game designers are supposed to challenge players to achieve their goals, so that when they finally achieve it, they experience the double-barrel reward of a sense of accomplishment and an in-game prize. That's where the powerful feel-good response comes from. They're not supposed to intentionally create boring obstructions to those goals. You want players to, again, -be able to- achieve their goals, rather than feel like it's just not worth it because they'd have to go through too much crap.

To a point I agree with this. A game with no challenge is not fun. But I also agree that all goals should be achievable after a certain amount of time.

What I am thinking about specifically is random loot drops. The system that I prefer is:

1.) You have a small chanch to get a drop on your first win.
2.) Subsequent wins increase your drop chanch.

The alternative, which I think is equally successful, is to provide tokens or chits to all party members for each win, which can be traded for the item directly after you accrue enough. This system does not prevent the item from also dropping directly from the NM, chest, etc.

All MMO veterans have their story about the time that they spent weeks, months or even longer, solely searching for a single item. With a purely random drop system, they may never get it. There is no reward for skill, no reward for perserverance, no reward for leadership or patience. No reward for spending countless hours helping friends, or having good friends willing to spend hours helping you.

The decision to even begin playing a game that we know includes randoms drops is basically accepting the possiblity of eternal defeat.

Because of those stories of continual faliure and endless frustration, I agree completely that goals should eventually be achievable to some degree of certainty. I want to know for sure that if I keep trying, improve my skills, make friends and pool resources, success is eventually garuanteed.

Totally random thought, but this is totally true. One of the things that FFXI really did right (probably unintentionally) was to really make people take pride in their primary jobs in the game... I think because grinding a job to 75 took so long in the game's early days, and getting good gear for jobs was extremely time intensive, too. For a semi-hardcore player like I once was, I only really had time to focus on really tricking out one job (red mage, FTW). Anyway, players like me became known for playing as certain jobs. It really became part of our online identities.

So every time SE put a new rdm item in the game, I took notice. I have barely played since Abyssea, and it drives me nuts that I still don't have my Abyssea rdm set... and even though I hear rdm is pretty useless in FFXI right now, that set is still the ONLY set of Abyssea gear that I honestly care about, because rdm is MY job.

I did Dynamis over and over and over and over again, planning two days/week around linkshell dynamis runs, just to maintain my "lead" for the Duelist's Chapeau (that ls broke as soon as the d-bag leader got his chapeau, but, luckily, I got it much sooner with the next ls I joined... love you, TeamSuicide!).

Anyway, in FFXIV, I hope SE puts as much focus on job storylines/quests/gear as they are on the flashy battle motions that so many people were clamoring for during 1.0.

Were you on Lakshmi?

Ah, the WoW paradox. How does one constantly make more desirable shoulderpads with each ensuing update? At first it makes some sense: spikes to bigger spikes to glowing spikes; everyone's happy; but after a while it's not so easy. Eventually you get some too-daring ideas that throw the whole thing out of measure. You get giant, floating, lava-spewing flaming skulls that progress into statues weeping tears above fiery basins while shooting lasers from their eyes. I'm saying that the whole affair begins to get ridiculous. There's no reference point anymore. I'm desensitized (and not just because the effects blinded me). No: certainly, a modest progression, like what others are saying, is best -- both in armour and animations.

I admit that the "Dragoon" armor does kinda look very flashy, almost on the level of what most games save for expansions, but I actually kinda like that...the armor we've seen so far looks pretty nice, even the leather, which is odd

Guess we'll see how it goes in the coming months. And during the first expansion, if they plan on doing those, and if they want extra box income, chances are, they will.

Seems like a good plan really. Planning an expansion when your first release didn't go that well would have been a bad idea haha. Hopefully, with the changes, and the console crowd coming in, they succeed, because while I haven't been liking SE games lately, rarely do I wish for a company to fail.

Plus, I'm actually interested in it :P

XI has places that have been like that forever. There are boat docks in Lower Jeuno in the Tenshodo, in Kazham, and in Norg, where SE clearly left an ambiguous place for future expansions. "No no, can't let you in here," says the NPC in Kazham. It's pretty clear the cave leads to a second boat dock besides the airship one. San d'Oria has three inaccessible docks.

In order words, this is pretty par for the course for SE.

That's where I was. I was in Divirtr up until I quit ^^ Usually on Rafoot

Yeah, sadly, that's what happens when a game has to be redone, all their old plans get thrown on the back burner, so that they can fix the game...so I think they did the right thing by focusing on 2.0 to get it out quicker, and to get more people into the game

I am torn when it comes to difficulty because when it comes to storyline I really want to be able to experience it all while at the same time I want it to be very challenging so that I feel like I accomplished something when I win a certain battle.

For me CoP was the best expansion in XI, it was by far the most fun I had even though it could be tough as hell sometimes, but I think that is part of why I actually think it was so fun too.

In 1.0 the storyline was once again the most fun, like Hyrist mentioned To Kill a Raven and United We Stand are great examples of fun fights, but to be honest the excitement I felt was nothing compared to when I finished a CoP mission. The fights were still a bit too easy in my opinion, but at the same time I was happy they were since there was a timelimit before I could never experience it.

Also the fact that in XI doing missions usually meant gathering together six people whereas XIV meant eight people made it more frustrating sometimes so in that sense too it was nice that it was a little easier.

Having HM fights is a decent idea, but to me progressing through missions is different going back and fighting a mob in HM. Maybe they could give storyline missions different level of difficulty too so that your group can decide what they want to do?

I don't know, but what I do know is I want the cake and eat it too! >.<

Edited, Dec 30th 2012 8:31am by Belcrono

*laugh* Don't make me hungry. I'm resisting running out for groceries in the horrible weather we've got right now.

Anyways, I think if Yoshi can replicated what he did in FFXIV 1.2x we're good as far as a storyline that is accessible, but provides a good challenge for you as well.

A lot of the fights in the old version had some different ways you could pull them off. For example, you could chose to kite or destory the Magitek Vanguard that was protecting the target.

There were variable party compositions that could beat the final fight as well, though some usually liked defaulting with 3 black mages for the final segment of the fight.

No matter what, the fights were never quite as simple as just a tank and spank.

Hey guys, my first mmorpg was ffxi and I fell in love. I can still remember when I got my earthen body abjuration from Nidhogg for my dark knight. It felt really good when I got to un-cursed that hauberk.

Reminiscing aside, I’ve been following FFXIV on the sidelines and would hope to join you guys when the ps3 version comes out. I’m writing this post with regards to how I think they should implement the Whole HNM thing because I felt the HNMs in ffxi was great, but that doesn’t mean they don’t change anything about it.

This is just my opinion, I think if they implement the world HNMs, they should make everyone in the zone be able to fight it, maybe kind of like besiege. People can just start wailing on it and if as a community you choose to do that, SE should make the fight longer by maybe making the HNM perform moves that can one-shot players or have individual attacks cause less damage. The other choice would be that the community could work together as a group and perform those limit breaks SE will be implementing, which can kill the HNM faster.

By now you might be wondering how the drops are going to be distributed. I think that these world HNMs would reward items like beastmen seals or kindred seals and base it on player’s performance on taking down the HNM. Those seals can then be used to fight the HNM with your desired party where the priced items can drop and the drop rate can be increase if you turn in more seals before the fight. This gives everyone in the community a chance to work for the price item. Also when you think about it, the world HNM can be use for practice for your real HNM fight with your party. This allows for collaboration and interaction within the community, which I think a lot of players would want.

I know there’s going to be those people that would want to ruin it for everyone. That’s why the seals will be based on the player’s performance. If he decide to just do his own thing then he can just get the bare minimum of the seals one can get and plus it would be hard for him to get a group for the HNM that drops the item since people know how he/she is.

Well that’s it for me. I just wanted to share my opinion on the whole HNM thing. There’s probably some flaws in this system so feel free to try and mend it.