More prominent Open World Music in Heavensward?

[ZanzhizExaverion]

Right now I don't think we have any memorable open world music.

Dungeons/Trails, Incredible compositions, but the open world just feels dull.

Most of the time it's silence unless you're in a town area.

We need memorable area music like in FFXI, I mean, we have the same composer on the sound team, I'm surprised this hasn't been advocated.

[Shioban]

The open world music was re-made with instruments to better suit each location, according to SOKEN.

There's a few memorable and quite nice field tracks out there, nowhere near as memorable as FFXI, but that's due to the fact that the music was designed to have an 'intro' of a maximum 2-3 minutes and then players were 'meant to enjoy the silence'. However SOKEN at the Tokyo fanfest commented 'Players weren't very happy with the idea of it', which is why The Lost City/Sastasha(HM)/Quarn(HM) etc, have constantly rolling music.



One of the sad things is that SOKEN and his team get VERY pressed for time. Alot of things are very very last minute.


======================

Forgot to add this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4UOPAOB0kg#t=170 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC5vwfhNpYY#t=33
Hearing this after going across High-Bridge or The Burning Wall hearing these were pretty amazing the first time.


I found the field-tracks when the game first came out quite enjoyable, they weren't in your face prominent like some of other tracks, but they suited the areas at least.

[Eltaire]

I agree for the most part - except for the music in Coerthas Central Highlands.

The start of the track, which is called Fealty is very moving.

Although I know what you mean about FFXI's music. I loved the music in the woods around San D'Oria.

[ZanzhizExaverion]

One of the sad things is that SOKEN and his team get VERY pressed for time. Alot of things are very very last minute.

I didn't get to watch the translated fan fest panel with Soken. Thanks for some info.

Pressed for time I guess I can understand, considering they probably spend a lot of time on the trial themes.

Hopefully his understanding that players didn't like it will give them more leeway on how to spend their development time.

[Shioban]

I didn't get to watch the translated fan fest panel with Soken. Thanks for some info.

Pressed for time I guess I can understand, considering they probably spend a lot of time on the trial themes.

Hopefully his understanding that players didn't like it will give them more leeway on how to spend their development time.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/124...t-Translations

[Enkidoh]

Right now I don't think we have any memorable open world music.

Dungeons/Trails, Incredible compositions, but the open world just feels dull.

Most of the time it's silence unless you're in a town area.

We need memorable area music like in FFXI, I mean, we have the same composer on the sound team, I'm surprised this hasn't been advocated.

I don't mean to correct you, but Naoshi Mizuta actually isn't on ARR's sound team - he did a couple of tracks for FFXIV version 1.0 which returned in ARR (the O'Ghomarro kobold stronghold track Quick as Silver, Hard as Stone, the Maelstrom Grand Company HQ theme Maelstrom Command, and, for ARR, a remix of a track he did for the FFXI add on pack A Shantotto Ascension - the FFXI crossover event FATE battle theme Reign of Pain ~ originally called Feast of the Ladies in FFXI.)

These were the only tracks for FFXIV he's ever done - everything else was almost exclusively composed by Nobuo Uematsu and Masayoshi Soken, with a couple of exceptions by Ryo Yamazaki, Tsuyoshi Sekito and a third party company named 'Film Score'.

Also, FFXI didn't actually have BGM in every outside zone either - in fact, most outside zones didn't have any music period - it just had a generic wind sound effect. Only the starting zones like Ronfaure (Ronfaure in fact had one of the few Uematsu tracks in the game), the areas next to Jeuno like Batallia Downs, the original 'final' zone Xarcabard, and expansion zones and dungeons had backing music. Everything else just had wind FX.

I can understand why Soken made ARR's zone music in a similar way - a lot of FFXI music got so damn repetitive hearing it loop for the thousandth time (if I ever hear that stupid Irish jig for Selbina again I'll scream! And Kazham outlived it's welcome long ago. ><), and thus Soken tried to make ARR's music more ambient than as a leitmotif in order to avoid repetitiveness.

Naturally this hasn't been too popular though with players who are more used to single-player FF games with distinctive area music. So it remains to be seen whether Heavensward will feature true zone music or a similar ambiance that is already in existing zones.

[Ecks007]

I'd rather listen to a loop of in-game music than hear none. But that's me. I'm one of the wierdos that actually listens to only the game music while playing the game. I prefer some music to dead silence any day of the week.

[ZanzhizExaverion]

snip.

Ah, I wasn't entirely sure about that.

While I understand your gripes with the "looping" music, as someone who greatly appreciates ambiance and memorable moments, music truly helps create that.

While FFXI did have it's quiet zones, they usually had the ambiance surrounding a quiet zone. The areas also had more visual beauty within them so that they less required music to make it seem more lively. Music creates a feel for the area, and gives it more unique stature among other areas.

For example; would you enjoy it if all primals had Ifrit's music now that they have developed their own ambiance? Probably not. Would you REMEMBER these trials if they all had the Final Boss of the Dungeon music we have in the lower level dungeons of XIV? Of course not.
For me and probably everyone else, when you hear Titan's theme you probably remember dying to Extreme for a couple hours. You may have wiped to say, that boss at the end of Thousand Maws five times, but you're not going to remember that struggle because it doesn't have anything surrounding it that makes it really stand out.

As it stands in XIV, I'm lucky if I NOTICE the music for more than fifteen seconds if I'm not in a township or whatnot that plays music throughout.

[zeth07]

My main issue with the non-looping open world music is when I am gathering that silence is painful. I can understand it if you were just going from Point A to Point B for a quest then moving on to another area. But with gathering you're there for an extended period of time usually, so the music is eventually gone and all you hear is the clanks of the tools repeatedly. That ambiance is now gone since I hear nothing but clanks, defeating the purpose.

[Marxam]

... all you hear is the clanks of the tools repeatedly. That ambiance is now gone since I hear nothing but clanks.

Just put Steiner's Theme on your ipod and listen to that while gathering.