[devPLEASE] Dynamic World - If Ever You Do Something - Do This!

[Amsai]

the waiting has been worthwhile, because it has gotten better. And it will continue to do so. Someone once said "It's not the destination that matters, it's the journey."

It's not like FFXIV is just going to hit a certain spot and be "finished." It will be expanded upon and changed as long as it has a playerbase supporting it.

Or so we all hope!

[Kowen]

Sure a lot of us want FFXIV to succeed, But by inspiration, I feel you want SE to go into the direction, "Oh man, "X" looks pretty sweet! Lets replace that with our "A"! Oh man, the players don't like B so much, lets cut it and replace it with this feature "Y" that is being show cased in this new MMO! Our player base will love us for it!"

Soon as SE gets "Inspired" enough, the player base will only turn on them. I know I will be the first to stand up on my little dingy soap box to proclaim SE is a bunch of hacks and screw your high profit margins (as I get off of it to play more, cause I love the abuse)!

We'll just have to give the players what they want, FFXIV- Frankenstein's Remix of the Goodies From Any MMO That Looks Fun.

You have a point, but an immersive world and quests isn't a feature that should be exclusive to one game, just like optimization and an easy-to-use UI shouldn't be exclusive to World of Warcraft. They're things that XIV (and every other MMO) should strive to implement.

[Lux_Rayna]

Please tell me how what i described is the same?

Where in XIV do quests have consequences?
Where in XIV do quests have dynamic reactions and realtime adjustments?
Where in XIV do quests have any meaning other than loot?

Every quest in every game has consequences. The only thing that changes is how those consequences are revealed.
Dynamics are just another way for an old formula to feel fresh.
Quests are always about story/xp/loot, and I don't see how GW2 isn't about those three things as well.

What you're describing is a scripted quest chain. That's it. Instead of me going to an npc, getting a quest, and that quest leading to another quest, which i get from another npc, it all happens randomly while you are out and about. I'm not saying that its not a neat way to do things, but its essentially the same formula. Just a fresher way of presenting it. It makes the world feel more alive. Is it fundamentally different? Not really. Does it feel different? Apparently so. The latter is all that really matters. Instead of quest chaining through scripted npcs, you quest chain through scripted events generated through rng. After you've done it 50 times, and the new presentation wears off, it will start to feel no different than quest chaining in any other game. GW2 just cuts out the middle-man and all that exposition, and lets the action/events dictate how quests unfold. It makes sense, since this generation of rpgers are more about action and less about all that exposition stuff. We like to see things not read them/imagine them. The old school style relied heavily on player imagination and exposition, but GW2 is keeping up with the times. Still, a quest-chain is a quest-chain, and scripted events are scripted events no matter how you dress them up.

[viion]

Every quest in every game has consequences. The only thing that changes is how those consequences are revealed.
Dynamics are just another way for an old formula to feel fresh.
Quests are always about story/xp/loot, and I don't see how GW2 isn't about those three things as well.

What you're describing is a scripted quest chain. That's it. Instead of me going to an npc, getting a quest, and that quest leading to another quest, which i get from another npc, it all happens randomly while you are out and about. I'm not saying that its not a neat way to do things, but its essentially the same formula. Just a fresher way of presenting it. It makes the world feel more alive. Is it fundamentally different? Not really. Does it feel different? Apparently so. The latter is all that really matters. Instead of quest chaining through scripted npcs, you quest chain through scripted events generated through rng. After you've done it 50 times, and the new presentation wears off, it will start to feel no different than quest chaining in any other game. GW2 just cuts out the middle-man and all that exposition, and lets the action/events dictate how quests unfold. It makes sense, since this generation of rpgers are more about action and less about all that exposition stuff. We like to see things not read them/imagine them. The old school style relied heavily on player imagination and exposition, but GW2 is keeping up with the times. Still, a quest-chain is a quest-chain, and scripted events are scripted events no matter how you dress them up.

Holy crap how dumb are you?

No quest in XIV has consequence, non at all, they have the exact same identical story for everyone, with the exact same identical outcome for everyone.

If you go to some NPC quest in XIV who says "must kill these dodoes who are eat my crops", if you dont do it, does it matter? no it doesnt do ANYTHING, it has no meaning, the dodos are fake, the crops are fake, its just text, on GW2 this is not the case, if you dont do the quest, the crops are gone and something will happen such as you cant buy stuff from this person anymore, or the farm dies (REAL ENVIRONMENT CHANGES), or prices inflate because the npc have to get it from somewhere else.

To take it to an extreme, what if some quest says "Defend the bridge!" if you dont do it, the bridge is broken, and you can no longer get across to where it leads, A REAL CHANGE ON THE WORLD.

Then there are further consequences, the bridge is broken, so the villege or whatever is on where it leads has no access, thus when they're attacked by monsters, they can only defend themselfs until that bridge is repaired, which YOU have to go do.


Another example, you see an NPC stood near a gate that is being attacked, mobs smash it down and come in and start attacking npcs, you fend these off successfully but the mobs have stolen the weapons, so no NPC's can sell weapons anymore, they've been stolen! its what is supposed to happen, its not fake text. You can look around and see no weapons. They dont have an infinite supply, so you escort him to a weapons supply, to fetch more, on way fending off mobs, if you suceed the npc can sell weapons, until he has to go do it again, sure its repeatable, but it has purpose, it has visual keys, and it becomes dynamic when different stuff happens.

XIV has nothing like this, no matter what you do, you will have the same boring quests as everyone else, which have no consequence, have no choice, and have no player control, zero, name me 1 quest where if I go and dont do something, the world will change. Would love to see it.

[MrKupo]

From what I understand:
Everybody shares quests
The quests are chained and effect the content
These are eventually reset at the end of the quest line

It's a cool concept but not enough to change the way FFXIV's system works. I love me some good story line, and entering a quest that is already half way done seems kind of awkward.

People tend to forget the massive arsenal of innovation that FFXIV has:
Position based combat
Armory System
An upward crafting system (where various classes rely on other classes i.e. DoL->DoH->DoW/M)
Beautiful Graphics (on top of characters seeming to be lifesize... lots of MMOs have a wierd problem where the character doesn't feel as big when playing)

Even with that amazing concept of Dynamic World thing, I don't see myself switching over to GW2 anytime soon. I thought about it before I saw footage... and after seeing it.. meh

[Alhanelem]

GW2 this is not the case, if you dont do the quest, the crops are gone and something will happen such as you cant buy stuff from this person anymore, or the farm dies (REAL ENVIRONMENT CHANGES)

It's still going to come back later. You'd run out of farms to protect, enemies to kill or whatever if these things were permanent. This kind of takes away from the whole "your participation matters" aspect of a 'living, breathing world."

To take it to an extreme, what if some quest says "Defend the bridge!" if you dont do it, the bridge is broken, and you can no longer get across to where it leads, A REAL CHANGE ON THE WORLD.

FFXI did things like this with Besieged, and people didn't like that aspect at worst, or didn't care about it at best. In besieged, if you failed to defend the astral candy, you'd lose out on some benefits, the music in the city would stop, and you'd have to go do a battle to get it back. All this stuff did is make go "god dammit somebody go do that fight so we can teleport again."

The funny part here is the world in FFXIV is about to undergo a radical and permanent change. So I don't see what all the hubbub is about.

[viion]

From what I understand:
Everybody shares quests
The quests are chained and effect the content
These are eventually reset at the end of the quest line

It's a cool concept but not enough to change the way FFXIV's system works. I love me some good story line, and entering a quest that is already half way done seems kind of awkward.

People tend to forget the massive arsenal of innovation that FFXIV has:
Position based combat
Armory System
An upward crafting system (where various classes rely on other classes i.e. DoL->DoH->DoW/M)
Beautiful Graphics (on top of characters seeming to be lifesize... lots of MMOs have a wierd problem where the character doesn't feel as big when playing)

Even with that amazing concept of Dynamic World thing, I don't see myself switching over to GW2 anytime soon. I thought about it before I saw footage... and after seeing it.. meh

See you are again totally misguided, you're forming an opinion without any knowledge on the subject. The whole Chain is like 20% of the system, there is another 80% of the system you're completely missing. There is no "Reset" on quest line, it isnt even a quest line, there is non, they're events. There is story also, plenty of lore.

Its Dynamic.

Also GW2 has position based combat, thats old, it also lets you equip multiple weapons, the crafting system in XIV is nothing good, people hate hating it hence why it got dumbed down so much. Graphics are only good because copy/paste, expect a reduce in graphics (we've already been told) in 2.0 lol

It's still going to come back later. You'd run out of farms to protect, enemies to kill or whatever if these things were permanent.

The crops are gone until real world changes happen, not magically viola they reappear, it could take days, weeks, depending on the content, Because when they're gone, the farmer needs to start from scratch, they need to increase their prices to pay for the cost of the loss, thus it has consequences, which you pay for, for not protecting, and then it will get back. It could get attacked again the mean time tho.

Its all player controlled.

Some stuff, like bridges breaking or doors smashing, they are permanent until player goes and sorts it, like repairing.

[Alhanelem]

The whole Chain is like 20% of the system

It's the mere fact that it's part of the system. It doesn't matter if it's the whole system or even the majority part.

reduce in graphics

The graphics aren't being "reduced." they're being optimized. FFXIV currently hogs way more resources than it should really need to render the level of graphics it is capable of displaying. The "copy paste" was due to a lack of time to create enough assets to fill out the size of the world they were going for.

Who's the one who doesn't know what they're talking about now?

the crafting system in XIV is nothing good

i thought it was pretty good. If it was that bad, it would have been totally replaced with something else.

You need to be careful how you word your thoughts. The way you're writing now, you sound like a GW2 fanboy or an FFXIV hater- you're not being objective.

[viion]

It's the mere fact that it's part of the system. It doesn't matter if it's the whole system or even the majority part.

It does, because there is lots of stuff to the quest system, there isnt "Go talk to X, go kill Y, finish back at X" which is XIV's tool, that is skipped by not even talking in GW2, and then there is tons more features on top which make the questing system so much more unique and better.

You can white knight out your ass for sure, but you cant sit there and say XIV is doing it right and doesnt need improving.

[Kowen]

It's still going to come back later. You'd run out of farms to protect, enemies to kill or whatever if these things were permanent.

Who cares if it's not permanent, it's still way better than a static, completely unchanging world.

The things don't just suddenly revert to the way they were before, either. It's entirely up to players to reclaim the farm/help rebuild the bridge/etc or the changes are permanent.