Keiji Inafune talks about Japanese Games: how it relates to XIV

[Firon]

Heh it seems so many people play turn based games wrong

I'm always using magic classes in turn based games, Lulu in FFX was awesome.

Noone plays them wrong jinko ppl just use what works best and kills fast. FF9 for example no point in using some chars trance when you could hit for 9999 dmg faster with a spell or the attack command

[Jinko]

Noone plays them wrong jinko ppl just use what works best and kills fast.

Oh you mean like stacking BLM in this game ?

It's kind of like you said before how people don't appreciate FF13 because they just use auto attack, I see it the same way when people just press X X X to attack.

You can't complain a game is boring and monotonous if all you are doing is the same attack attack attack, when you have other options available to you.

Meaning the fault lies with the player not the game.

[Klive]

Yoshi was brought in on FF14 to save it after a terrible failure by the President of SE. This is why I have faith in this game. Pride has already been hurt and the damage has been done. SE had it's reality check and now they have to fix it. They can't half try on this game nor hope the FF and SE name will be enough. They know they have to shoot for the stars.

[Peptaru]

That sums up soooo much of why XIV bugs me. Even in offline titles people just want to win as fast as possible with as little effort as possible. I play for the story, the varied characters, etc etc. Ya, you can win by hitting attack over and over and over if you've levled some. Congratulations, you just sucked all the fun out of your offline, single-player game that would be awesome if you let it.

People just wanna win something, they don't care 'bout having fun along the way sometimes. (most times)

[Cendres]

I am with you on GW2, the hype train makes me sick. There are going to be a lot of disappointed people when GW2 is released. This is coming from someone who played GW1 at launch and still pop on from time to time. Almost makes me want to wait until the honeymoon period of first/second month is over before I even get near it. Actually, with the genre as it is now, should wait that one - two month period by default.

This is exactly what I'm doing, just watching to see what happens. And I'm so in love with XIV right now anyway, I'm very content. I'm sure I will play GW2 eventually but I don't want to hop the craze train this time.

[JakeRoon]

I think one of the key points the interview made was Western developers make good GAMEPLAY, not necessarily great artistry or presentations....

I think WoW, GuildWars, Anarchy Online D&D online ALLODDS etc all have much better gameplay than ffxiv (all not from Japan), but none of them have that special pazaz of presentation like Square enix can offer. Like their Chrono Trigger / FinalFantasy etc games.

But they seriously have to stop using this as a crutch....

Well you just have to suffer through shitty gameplay to get a that awesome feeling setting/style/presentation. I just don't agree. I think we should get the great gameplay of Mass Effect, Skyrim, and it's ilk WITH the great settings like FinalFantasy, and it's siblings.

[Daniel_Fury]

It felt more like a Starwars game to me lol.

You read my mind. I hated the theme and the BGM sucked.

[Arcell]

We should criticize systems that we feel aren't up to par certainly. However there's a big difference between constructive criticism and complaining. On this forum, there's quite a bit of the latter. I'm all for getting things fixed when they're broken or innovating when we can however a lot of people here seem to complain for the sake of complaining.

[Biggs]

Really I thought they said they would never make a TES MMO.

I was under the impression it wa sa Fallout MMO, since they just spend years in litigation and millions of dollars in order to get the rights from interplay to do so.

[OJtheLIONKing]

Oh you mean like stacking BLM in this game ?

It's kind of like you said before how people don't appreciate FF13 because they just use auto attack, I see it the same way when people just press X X X to attack.

You can't complain a game is boring and monotonous if all you are doing is the same attack attack attack, when you have other options available to you.

Meaning the fault lies with the player not the game.

The fault lies with the game. Players, with rare exceptions will always find the most efficient way to play a game. It's up to the game designers to make sure there are a variety of ways to play that aren't necessarily more effective than others. Same with MMOs--players may be the ones stacking BLMs in this game, but in the end it's the designer's responsibility to incentivize them to shake it up. I've played lots of other MMOs, including the 800 pound gorilla I won't name, and I've never seen the job elitism I've seen in FFXI or this game because they make sure to design jobs and fights specifically to avoid that. There are shades of it, sure, but things like content party finders and no ranged safe zones in fights help keep things balanced.

Now FFXIII had the auto-battle system, but you certainly could completely ignore it and input commands manually. I know a few who did just that. What FFXIII did which I think was brilliant, however, was basically incorporate the tendency of the vast majority of players to just mash attack through most random encounters and make that the baseline amount of time to attack, nuke, debuff, whatever. When you do that, people actually start thinking about the most efficient paradigms to use and actually start using the more technical jobs. I found that system much more engaging than the old ATB system, especially the way it made buffs and debuffs practical to use in an average battle where I would often skip them even in boss fights before.

By the way, I do like a good turn based game. FFT is one of my favorites of all time, and of the ATB styled games FFX is my favorite because it doesn't pretend to be real time and has a more methodical feeling. I'm also a fan of the Total War series and 4X games. The thing is, the JRPG style of turn based game is just slow without requiring tactics to win, and combine that with random battles and you get some seriously bloated games. In most fights, you're just attacking, maybe reacting to an attack, or in a rare case like a boss fight using a plan. You can do all of those things at a much quicker pace, as FFXIII showed, without really losing much. If something's turn based, I think things like terrain, direction of attack, the weather, etc should be factored in to justify the extra time you have to think. FFX is the exception since it had things like aeons, much more powerful management of elemental resistances than most games and the ability to deliberately plan out your turns because you could see who was going in advance, like FFT.