Poll: Seamless+CopyPaste VS. Zones+Variety

Hm maybe i was "lucky" then when i first went there a month ago and fetched rain right away. o.o
Im not there alot so i think this event thing+my seemingly raindancing abilitys add up.. lol

I love the big seemless world. I may be the minority because I like to walk around and explore. Makes it actually feel like a world not just some instance. I've had a lot of problems with games where there is an epic scene and it is interrupted with a loading screen. Half life 2 had major problems with this when it first came out. I also find there is enough variety in the zones that you can visually tell which part of the zone you are in. There are many unique parts of the world as well that just require you to explore a little. The copy and paste complaints are just from people who like many people on this forum, are just trying to find something to complain about. It's not like they made a suburban zone here.

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Originally Posted by Sonic_the_Hedgehog

Well how about?

The world that we have now and future zones, that are massive seamless regions, with more environmental variety in each one.

or

A world with multiple smaller zones, with 1-2 sec. loading time in between zones, with environmental variety in each one.

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If you word it that way, then you're missing the point of the entire poll.

Based on the Tanaka quote in the OP, there is some kind of tradeoff between seamlessness and variety for this game. I realize that in an ideal situation, we should be able to have both. However, FF14 isn't able to do this for some reason, so if we really had to choose (seamlessness of variety), which would you choose.

This is supposed to be a "one or the other" type of choice, otherwise the poll looses all meaning.

Also, FYI to everyone who doesn't know already:

You know those long valleys that connect Black Brush to Drybone, Black Brush to Horizion, Skull Valley to Bald Knoll, Bloodshore to Cedarwood, etc?

Those are there to hide the rest of the environment while the game loads the next area for you. Those long, pointless valley parts are in essence, a loading zone in itself.

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Originally Posted by Rentahamster

Also, FYI to everyone who doesn't know already:

You know those long valleys that connect Black Brush to Drybone, Black Brush to Horizion, Skull Valley to Bald Knoll, Bloodshore to Cedarwood, etc?

Those are there to hide the rest of the environment while the game loads the next area for you. Those long, pointless valley parts are in essence, a loading zone in itself.

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I just wish the other players wouldn't disappear when you cross these borders. Makes for a loss of immersion, and as I said earlier, breaks any auto-follow you might have. Lord knows how many times I've gone AFK to go to the bathroom and put myself on auto-follow, only to find myself running into a wall when I come back.

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Originally Posted by Rentahamster

If you word it that way, then you're missing the point of the entire poll.

Based on the Tanaka quote in the OP, there is some kind of tradeoff between seamlessness and variety for this game. I realize that in an ideal situation, we should be able to have both. However, FF14 isn't able to do this for some reason, so if we really had to choose (seamlessness of variety), which would you choose.

This is supposed to be a "one or the other" type of choice, otherwise the poll looses all meaning.

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I get what you're saying, but I still don't think it's a fair poll. You're influencing the results of your poll by the way it's worded.

Basically you're saying "Do you want this big pile of smelly crap or do you want this small, beautiful fragrant flower?", obviously most people aren't going to pick a big pile of smelly crap. Also having the fonts colored also affects a person's choice on a subconscious level. Blue is perceived to be a more of a "good" color and red more of a "bad" color. Anyway I really don't think they're going to put smaller zones in any time soon, I'm sure they have most locations planned up the first expansion.

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Originally Posted by Rentahamster

Also, FYI to everyone who doesn't know already:

You know those long valleys that connect Black Brush to Drybone, Black Brush to Horizion, Skull Valley to Bald Knoll, Bloodshore to Cedarwood, etc?

Those are there to hide the rest of the environment while the game loads the next area for you. Those long, pointless valley parts are in essence, a loading zone in itself.

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Thats why its even worse that AFTER that pointless long run the area looks kinda the same as the one you just "ran away" from :)
Thats why i think that the copy paste stuff really is just a LAME excuse to a rushed game. THere is not one bit of "love" in environment design ... and exactly that makes you forget playing a ff game at times.

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Originally Posted by Nuru

This statement is so full of fail. /troll

BUT HERE IS WHY! /not troll

Because that's why the whole definition of GENRE exists! :D

EX. Racing games are not meant for exploration, they are meant to race, and be the first to cross the finish line! >_>

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An open world game is still an open world game, despite the genre. Fuel is a racing game and open world game. If Fuel was purely a track based game, then yes, optimizations would be different. But, it's not. In fact, you could make the argument that a game like Fuel is at a disadvantage compared to FFXIV. Why? Because at the speed you traverse these environments, the distance the player travels within the few frames of load time is far greater than that of FFXIV. A greater distance means more potential objects to load.

Either Tanaka's response is just an excuse, or he has limited knowledge of how engine optimization works. I'm beginning to think it's the second reason of the two. As a game designer once said to me, "I stay as far away from the code as I can." To which, of course, he's just implying the technicalities in developing a game and the engine it runs on. I'd place my bets most designers mainly care about, "Does it work or not work? Is this possible, or not possible?"

4 zones in an MMO is a joke. This is the cheapest game world design I've ever seen. Even downloadable small games beat this easily any day of the week.

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Originally Posted by Ava

I don't think they are redoing Black Shroud, I'm pretty sure that was just a mistranslation taken too far (referring to fixing the landscape to alleviate collision issues).

Anyways, I kind of wish they did separate zones with load times, but it's too late for that. This thread is pretty much pointless because at this point it just has to be chalked up as a mistake, maybe they can work something out for future zones but I don't think the current ones will ever be fixed. What a lot of people don't understand is that every MMO uses a ton of copy/pasted material. What FFXIV did was not new, personally when I was running through RIFT I couldn't stand the amount of copy/paste in that game. But most people don't notice it. Square did a poor job of hiding it, and mixed with having to tone it down because of memory issues, we have the things we have now.

Imagine if the maps were artistically drawn with a "fog of war". Do you still think we'd have even half the whining? I'm not so sure, I mean it is clearly noticeable without looking at the map, but the maps make it just that much worse. Ideally, I'd like to see them put a zone line at every "corridor" and instead of fixing the terrain, just cover it up with scenery like huts, wagons, more trees, etc.

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It seems like thats the route they are going with encampments...and I have no complaints there. I just hope they do alot more than that...and seeing how they want to tie in everything with the overall story, I guess they could do some excavation or mining collapse thing to implement new dungeons in certain areas, or even magic related stuff for possible towers or fortresses added to existing places.

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Originally Posted by Seif

4 zones in an MMO is a joke. This is the cheapest game world design I've ever seen. Even downloadable small games beat this easily any day of the week.

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The question is, would they be able to add more zones within the larger regions?