Crouching, Climbing, Jumping and Swimming
My condolences and prayers for those who lost loved ones in the tsunami.
I have been exploring Eorzea and I have been seeking techniques for safely navigating
the terrain. I feel that the addition of the following features would greatly increase gameplay enjoyment and make the game more fun to play:
1. Crouch
2. Climb
3. Jump
4. Swim
I feel that these commands should each have a specific dedicated control button, although initial implementation might be easier by using the menu system.
1. Crouch
A typical crouch could lower the top of the head to that of a sitting position or to waist height.
An advantage to crouching could be reduced visibility allowing adventurers to more closely approach dangerous enemies and creatures.
A disadvantage could be reduced movement speed while crouching.
The Lalafell would obviously be the best at this, while the Roegadyn would be hard to miss in almost position.
I feel this would be the easiest of the features to implement.
2. Climb
There are numerous ladders throughout the game that would benefit from being climbable.
Any object that is reachable with the arms could be climbable.
The Highlanders would likely be the best climbers, due to being from mountainous terrain.
Larger objects could be climbed by jumping, then climbing.
Lalafell would probably have to use this technique to climb, due to their small stature, but they might be able to find unseen handholds and footholds as well.
3. Jump
This seems to be one of the most contentious issues I've come across. There seems to be a fairly vocal group opposed to improving the game in this way. To these I say, imagine Super Mario without jump, How fun would that be?
I would suggest putting boundaries that bring up the exclamation mark, (similar to Fishing) that allows the user to know when they can jump in addition to a dedicated button for these users.
If Hydaelyn has similar gravity to Earth's I would suggest that a reasonable jump height would be between knee height and waist height.
The Miquote and Elezen seem like they would be the best leapers, while the Roegadyn and Lalafell would not be able to jump as high, due to size and girth for the former, and stature of height for the latter.
An idea to limit jumping, if required, would be to implement a fatigue system, similar to that used in World of Warcraft for swimming. Jumping height could be reduced if used excessively.
4. Swimming
Swimming is fun! I played a World of Warcraft trial account during the hiatus and was extremely impressed by their swimming system.
When a player swims too far from shore a fatigue meter pops up, notifying the player that they must return to shore or risk drowning.
There is also a breath meter for underwater swimming, that limits how deep and far a player can swim.
I think being able to swim the Strait of Merlthor would be very cool!
Swimming could also allow the introduction of underwater battles (ie. with Sahagin!, etc.)
The Roegadyn should be the best swimmers due to the fact that they are pirates, people of the sea, and they need to be good swimmers.
The Miquote would probably be the worst swimmers. You know felines and water!
One of these features could be released with each of the next four patches, or one per month, allowing the programmers and animators enough to time perfect these features. A quest could be used to introduce each of these features into gameplay.
Please let me know what you think, whether this is feasible or not. Thanks!