Alpha First Look: Video 5 - Quests and Combat

[Biggs]

My god thank you.. Its nice to know that I am not the only one who hates mindless party grinding...

I am just really happy to finally have the option to do either of those things in a FF game instead of being forced to do only one, and thats not even counting the NM hunts. Hurray for choices!!!

[Zezlar]

I won't argue at all that they are held to a high standard in game design and story telling, but no offense here, virtually ALL of their games have fetch quests identicle to the ones seen in the video. I am failing to see why anyone is suprised they would include these in 2.0.

Besides that, if its so easy to reinvent the wheel here like many of you are suggesting, go ahead and spitball 1 or 2 ways you would rather see this done that no one has ever done before......

Don't get me wrong, I 100% understand what you all are asking for, I just think that conceptually it sounds a LOT easier than it actually is to pull off in a way thats successful, especially since we are talking about a game that already failed trying to take a bunch of risks.

Square-Enix doesn't need to reinvent the wheel, but they can at least create a sturdy quality based product rather then churning out hundreds of wobbly unfinished ones. Sending characters on adventures through the world to explore, to undertake grand assignments to better the realm. These are the types of things I want. Fighting 6 chickens, and then 8 goats x1,000 but varied monsters sucks balls. What Square-Enix is doing is just copying off of other MMOs...and lately I haven't seen many successful ones.

[Ruisu]

Y-yeah guys. FFXI's quests were m-m-much better!

HEY SONNY YOU NEED TO HIT LEVEL 55 NOW FARM THESE SILLY ENEMIES FOR A CERTAIN ITEM.

NOW DO IT AGAIN FOR 60.

NOW 65.

NOW 70.

WANNA GET THAT SUBJOB? COLLECTS THESE THREE ITEMS THAT DROP FROM MOBS.

KILL THIS NM FOR ME.

Yeah, FFXIV's quests are soooooooo unoriginal.

[pool842]

You guys are way over simplying the leveling process there is going to be tons to do beyond quests or group grinding... and honestly I like this type of solo content. So please get off your soap box, this model will sell and this model will help people who have never played an mmo learn to play. Mindless maybe, but I can guarantee it will be better mindlessness with a final fantasy flare then any other mmo so don't kid yourself. And I am sure quests will be interesting later on and throughout the process this is Alpha this is a video on basics this is not the whole game... do people even think before they post or do they just trollolol all day?

I agree. This version of XIV is terrible. The graphics are fantastic, the environments are stunning but the quests are an insult to gamers. The battle animations are a giant leap backwards as are the spell casting animations and the spells themselves. All weapon skills so far look identical too each other not to mention they happen so fast you dont even know what just happened. I could tell you how every weapon skill looks and functions in 1.0 but this.... this is all forgettable mindless icon spamming..

I didnt play WoW, Rift, SWTOR, GW2 because they all look and play like this game now. I stayed away from all of those titles because they were all clones of WoW; its safe to say this game is too. They want what's popular in the MMO market to make a buck. This is all just mindless fetch quests, mind numbing, time sinking garbage.

Why cant we just have a main story line and progress through that? By the time we get done with our 1 millionth quest of kill 6 of X and 3 of Y, we will have forgotten what the story was even about.

I think current customers that stuck it out for 2+years will leave for good now that this game has morphed into yet another standard MMO. So much for innovation. But hey.. at least the graphics are good huh!?

[Psykotsu]

I also distinctly remember people saying "This is Final Fantasy, even if we quest grind it will be nothing but high quality storylines and action packed, it won't be like WoW or Tera."

Anyway, the music I dislike the style of, but it doesn't really fit with general battle given the tonality of it but I can definitely see it moved towards boss fights in starter dungeons. At least it's shaping up very nicely to being a typical MMORPG, now let's see what will set it apart from everyone besides the Final Fantasy name.

FFXI took EQ and ran away with the concept into something unique, let's see if ARR can do this with the "WoW formula" as they say these days.

It will, but I think it will be harder for you and others, (people who repeat the same points about it being like WoW and "generic"), to see because you will try to forcefully find differences between WoW and ARR down to it's programming code. The difference between XI and EQ is that people didn't even realize the game was a copy due to the fact that XI brought many of it's players in the MMO world. A lot of them hadn't even heard of EQ before then.

Is the handholding any different than a single player RPG world being designed solely with the intent of guiding a player to the next part of the story? (Ex: The only accessible town in FF3 at the beginning just happens to be the starter town, even though you have a boat to explore with.). The game doesn't necessarily have to tell you where to go, because the developer knows that even if you butt your head into every wall available like an idiot, you'll still end up where you need to be. You're not "set free" until the game has - by virtue of design and story telling - guided you through enough of the game to where you feel comfortable in setting out on your own (IE: obtaining an airship in FF6)

It just can't be the same with MMOs. MMO's are complex beasts from a play design perspective because they have to accommodate for multiple players of all ranges doing all sorts of different things. There are techniques for hinting at where players should be at what level (hostile mobs blocking access to higher level areas), but ultimately in an open world, a new player will get lost when trying to figure out what to do next. First gen MMOs have tried to just let players figure it out for themselves, but it never seems to be enough and it's not a very user-friendly way of doing things. Some players 'enjoy' this. Or rather, they 'enjoy' the status they feel they obtained by roughing it out even though they know it was bad game design (See: FFXI endgame, Legacy Members [like me!], and elite EQ players). The quests offered in modern MMOs are designed to do the same things the story in single player RPGs do: Guide the player from point A to point B until they feel comfortable with the world. At least in ARR, we can expect quests with a good bit of flavor and meaning to them.

Final Fantasy has never been particularly difficult. I don't recall ever throwing my controller at the screen while fighting my way through Balamb Garden in FF8 (though I did smash in the PSOne power button when I lost my Shiva card to some random jack-off in a TripTriad game). You're constantly going from point A to point B killing hordes of random encounters that mean nothing to the story except to make you stronger. How then, is the quest system XIV:ARR is using such a step back for the genre?

You make a great point and it's not a step-backward whatsoever. I think people want just want players to "suffer" in the "difficulty" they did in XI. @_@

[Denmo]

Square-Enix doesn't need to reinvent the wheel, but they can at least create a sturdy quality based one. Sending characters on adventures through the world to explore, to undertake grand assignments to better the realm. These are the types of things I want. Fighting 6 chickens, and then 8 goats x1,000 but varied monsters sucks balls. What Square-Enix is doing is just copying off of other MMOs...and lately I haven't seen many successful ones.

Because every player has already saved the world 3 times by level 7, and their quest for level 8 is to fight universe-destroying world eaters?

Because you've seen every quest FFXIV:ARR has to offer based on the 2 quests shown in the video?

Are you in Alpha or something? SHOULD WE ALL BE WORRIED?

[Elexia]

It will, but I think it will be harder for you and others, (people who repeat the same points about it being like WoW and "generic"),

Yeah, I'm still waiting for an MMO to do the quest progression differently, so far as of today, they all end up exactly. the. same. way.

Deny it as much as you want, you're guaranteed to see the same style quest repeated everywhere you go even if it mixes it up between:

"Kill 10 boars!"
"Go pick 5 vegitables!"
"Roll that rock down the hill!"

You'll repeat these 3 types of quests 100x over every hub you go to. Let's not forget the dungeons that tend to also repeat in objectives unless they're linked to a story, which is very rarely.

[pool842]

Ffxi had good quest system, yeah i know this isnt xi-2 but at least i prefer by far having to read a quest and figure out wheres the spot and wich mobs i have to take care of, instead of this wow cloned quests, i prefer real time events as level progresion, like GW2, i hated all those quest that i had to do in WoW like killing 5 cows for exp,

i think is a bit late for them to change this system, but seriously sometimes getting a game to close to the standars might prevent it to shine by its own, i came back a month ago to XI after 5 years, it changed a lot on how much exp you can do in 1 hour and im glad to say the hard time i been having completing my nation missions trying not to read too much on wiki, on level im high level now but i must say that i might do just 2 or 3 things per night, but everything that i accomplish feels a lot rewarding, imo MMO's should be games for the long run, so whats the problem of taking the time to do your stuff, i think thats the main issue with new MMO's btw the population is still average for an old game, good games die hard

Is it just me did any of you make is past level 7 on GW2? I thought the leveling in that game was boring as hell... I much prefer wow quest/dungeon leveling to GW2 leveling. On the other hand the GW2 events which 14 will have will be badass really excited for that.

[Zezlar]

Because every player has already saved the world 3 times by level 7, and their quest for level 8 is to fight universe-destroying world eaters?

Because you've seen every quest FFXIV:ARR has to offer based on the 2 quests shown in the video?

Are you in Alpha or something? SHOULD WE ALL BE WORRIED?

Yoshida said himself awhile back. Do you want 300 quests per patch or do you want 10 quality ones. He answered that we all wanted 300. As a fan of Final Fantasy XIV. I will say that decision scares the crap out of me.

[Elexia]

Yoshida said himself awhile back. Do you want 300 quests per patch or do you want 10 quality ones. He answered that we all wanted 300.

People didn't ignore this, they're just in denial that those 300 quests a month will have the quality of the main storyline :\

Also:

"You only seen.."

Most people seen a lot more than what SE has posted :\