MMO on Rails

[Zozor]

Nothing in FFXIV is or ever will be on rails the way EQ2 is... with a massive glowing 3D line from you to your objective that snakes around obstacles.

[Antipika]

Or... FFXIV targets a different segment of the market: Those who can figure out things on their own and do not need constant guidance.

A market that doesn't exist and would make this game fail again. You want a FF XI-2? Where quests were just telling you "go find [thing]" without any detail at all?

Nor can they read the forums/guides (or feel they should not need to).

Sure there is a big difference playing with a wiki open and having direction in-game. The advantage of in-game directions over wiki is that at least you are not spoiled since you don't see what's coming up next. And that's impossible to avoid with a wiki. You will at least see how long the page is, so have an idea how far you are in a quest.

[Asiaine]

A market that doesn't exist and would make this game fail again. You want a FF XI-2? Where quests were just telling you "go find [thing]" without any detail at all?

Are you sure the market does not exist? Can you point me to market research that confirms this as I would be interested in such studies.

Also are you sure it has to be an all-or-nothing approach? There is no room for happy medium? (To be honest, I thought the present map-marker was plenty but then I am surprised at the huge quantity of people who still struggler with that. Have yet to be in a 'help-someone-get-AF/quest/etc-done' party without at least one person not finishing the pre-reqs).

But as I have stated. The world is now full of people who have learning difficulties and attention span disorders and need as much help as possible to get to the point where they make big explosions occur (as that is all they are primarily after).

(Imagine if the community here had to play a text adventure game without a guide.......).

[Antipika]

Hurr durr asking for market studies. Look around for products that are being released, how do they work, why do companies choose to make them run like that? Hell even PSO2 is now giving direction on where to find the NPC you need to find, despite the world being really small...

It's not an all or nothing approach, it's an ALL approach, and then if you don't want to follow directions, disable the feature, done.

The right way of doing thing is always to give more possibilities to players, while providing a way to disable features that some of the audience do not want to use. That way you make more players happy.

[Asiaine]

Hurr durr

I do not know what this means ; ;

It's not an all or nothing approach, it's an ALL approach, and then if you don't want to follow directions, disable the feature, done.

The right way of doing thing is always to give more possibilities to players, while providing a way to disable features that some of the audience do not want to use. That way you make more players happy.

If all you are referring to is directions on where to go next, then that is fine. But that is already here, so I am unsure what exactly you mean? Or do you mean more help on getting to a destination, then being shown where it is on a fully-filled-out-map that you can access whenever you want?

(One suggestion was that you click on a button and you are instantly teleported there. Is this the sort of help you mean?). Sometimes the route to a place can be tricky (trying to get around scarry mobs). Do you mean a marker should be shown which tells you the 'easy' route, then tells you when its safe to sneak behind a monster? Just how much 'help' is needed?

Some people find travelling to the NPC, or trying ot find a route too hard and would rather it be done for them. Others like the challenge. But the value of the challenge is diminished when it is entirely self-imposed. For example:

Adventurer1: I spent 3 hours travelling through Coerthas and Mor Dhona but I finally made it to the NPC and delivered my item!
Adventurer2: I clicked the button and was instantly sent there, and delivered the item.
Adventurer1: >.<
Adventurer2: Noob.


But back on topic, and like I said before, it seems less and less people want a 'challenge' in their games (I can understand that), and they do not wish a challenge here. Therefore all sorts of help must be given to them for the simplest tasks or they will be sad and leave ; ;

This game already had little challenge in it... if we continue the way of hand-holding there will be naught left for those who wish to use their brain.

[Antipika]

XIV is already unchallenging because of the Teleport system. You are allowed to travel to places you never visited before, even MMOs people here call "easy" do not allow a such thing to happen.

Being instantly teleported to a location is convenient, not "easy" as long as you visited the place before. When I'm doing the same raid every week with my guild, one player running to the entrance should be enough to teleport the whole raid, wherever we are on the map. I shouldn't be forced to run to a place every single time.

People want more challenge in their game, but they want the challenge to be well located. As in, challenge in their raid encounters, challenge figuring boss mechanics etc. Not challenge of running hours from A to B. No one wants that, it only add frustration.

[Seif]

Game design doesn't have to be that black and white. Even XIII-2 has some depth in it when you're doing endgame.
FF X has a lot of depth and complex stuff to uncover even if the main storyline was super linear.

What in XIV really bugs me is that an npc uses 9 lines of text to describe where I need to go and then the map marker appears. Even in situations where it makes no sense at all that my character suddenly just knows where a mob is.

There usually is a big disconnect between gameplay and story. It's like quest designers were only allowed to do one type of activity and the writers are powerless to make the 2 parts of the game work together.

[Atoli]

Oh great, another topic about Rokien overreacting

I doubt SE will lead us around every area with a big yellow glowing arrow above our heads..
Having more help than now would certainly be good.

If SE does it well they start off with a lot of "Hey, you can go there and do this" and "Look, that's how it works", reduce these tips more and more as your character grows and by the time you reach the third area you want to explore you don't get any more help.
Right now there's way too less 'rails' for beginners who don't know what to do at all when they get into the game.

[Nikita]

Wasn't one of the reasons for XI originally having no windowed mode being that Tanaka saw it as an unfair advantage that PC players could look everything up if it was allowed and PS2 players couldn't?

I think a strong in game guide would be great for this reason alone.

[Rokien]

XIV is already unchallenging because of the Teleport system. You are allowed to travel to places you never visited before, even MMOs people here call "easy" do not allow a such thing to happen.

Being instantly teleported to a location is convenient, not "easy" as long as you visited the place before. When I'm doing the same raid every week with my guild, one player running to the entrance should be enough to teleport the whole raid, wherever we are on the map. I shouldn't be forced to run to a place every single time.

People want more challenge in their game, but they want the challenge to be well located. As in, challenge in their raid encounters, challenge figuring boss mechanics etc. Not challenge of running hours from A to B. No one wants that, it only add frustration.

It also tells me that challenge people don't want is "I don't wanna read!", Heck, they could have the npcs tell exactly where to go and how to get there and people would still be like, HOW DO I GET THERE!?!?! We don't NEED an arrow pointing to where some gobs are, go out and find em! We don't need a bubble saying HEY QUEST HERE! We definitely don't need HEY THERE IS A NM IN THIS LOCATION, BET YA CAN'T FIND EM!!!! lol it's really laughable. Like, this game should have adventure, it's not even about challenge, it's about laziness. Hell, I'm a super lazy guy, but do I wanna get even more lazy? No.

With silly things like that going to be added, they might as well add auto path. So everyone can just go afk and have the game play it self.