Climbing in ARR - Ladders, Rock/Ivy Walls

[Jynx]

I don't want a FFXI-clone

Yes...yes.

Because pointing out that a 10 year old MMO can do something that FFXIV apparantly has trouble with means I want a clone. When you trying to tell me that if I want good animations I need to stick to single player games.

[Reinheart]

Well, Yoshi-P. It's time to scrap all the maps and do it again. Now they want climbing. But hey, won't it be fitting if you end up releasing the game in 2014?

If same as old school game RPG programming... the way I know, maps are made by placing objects together. On the object you set setting such as passable, or none passable and you can assign motions to them. It will cost devs to create the new motions, that's for sure, but they won't need to redesign the maps at all. They can just replace or add new objects in existing maps to climb or go lower in existing map model.

[Gramul]

Actually, why stop at climbing and jumping.

Let's have hanging.

And digging.

Swimming!

And flight!

And interdenominational quasi-temporal reverence trotting!

[Warlock]

And interdenominational quasi-temporal reverence trotting!

I want to Back Pedal there!!

[mbncd]

Actually, why stop at climbing and jumping.

Let's have hanging.

And digging.

Swimming!

And flight!

And interdenominational quasi-temporal reverence trotting!

I expect all but the last of these in various expansion packs, but hey, it's Final Fantasy, the last one might be coming too one day ^_^

[Renala]

I would like to see this and swimming.

A thought that came to my mind for this specifically.. It'd reduce its usefulness, but why not design it for in dungeons? Future dungeons, mind you. It reduces the whole redesigning every map thing. Animations still have to be made, but hey.. that can be worked on post release, and added in expansion packs/huge updates.

[Nayto]

I'd rather just find the green chocobo that could scale mountains, like those horses from skyrim.

But on a serious note, ladder climbing shouldn't be too hard to implement. A good chunk of videogames already has ladder climbing. If animation's too expensive we can do it the old classy style where the character can just walks up the ladder :P

[mbncd]

I'd rather just find the green chocobo that could scale mountains, like those horses from skyrim.

But on a serious note, ladder climbing shouldn't be too hard to implement. A good chunk of videogames already has ladder climbing. If animation's too expensive we can do it the old classy style where the character can just walks up the ladder :P

Wasn't ladder walking how it worked in FFVII? There's the nostalgic references everyone wanted right there XD

Seriously though, I fully support scripted climbing events (as in set items you can climb, not necessarily every wall/mountain/etc; some examples would be ladders, ropes, hand holds, vines - heck, even a scripted event chimney for the Starlight Celebration, I wouldn't mind a little Chim Chim Cher-oo time up there ^_^) all over Eorzea 100%!

Bring on the great heights! ^_^

[Kafeen]

Cost of building new animations.
As YoshiP mentioned in the interviews that the cost to build new animations/motions are high and also there may be PS3 memory limitations to add in more animations.

SE always complain about memory limitations on the consoles but usually in the strangest of places. We had it on FFXI with inventory and mog house space and here with animations. Animation files are pretty small in comparison with other visual assets. If they're really that low on memory we can say good bye to being able to have any new models for weapons or armour and definatly no new textures so more equipment at all. I can't see this happening. We're going to get new equipment, new mobs, etc. All of these use much more memory than animations, especially the mobs since they'll have new animations of their own, and model data, textures, particle effects for attacks, sounds effects, etc.

There will be time constrains to adding additional animations and they may consider it less worthwhile to add new emotions because they are a purely visual aspect and add nothing to gameplay.

While climbing up/down/across how to handle if during battle? Wouldn't players try to use this feature as advantage to battles?
It's possible the players can use this feature to avoid getting hit from mobs while in battle.

My solution would be to not allow climbing while you are being targeted by a mob. If you're in a party, those party members that have the target will be the ones who can't climb. But say for others like WHM, if you cure or something you will be added in the hate list so it will also not allow them to climb during the duration of the fight. But at the same time I also feel like for example, archers, they should be able to shoot at mobs from the other side of the ledge, or from the top so restricting too much would cause problems imo.

That would be one way. Another could be to allow people to climb during combat as part of the strategy but allow mobs to chase if they need to. Players could be knocked off walls they're climbing, maybe even the monsters too.

What if you press 'jump' button by mistake while climbing?
Dev's could either lock the jump key while you're climbing OR if they are going to add damage values when you fall it may be good to leave it alone. But there will be people who will press jump by mistake so they need to come up with something for sure imo.

Plenty of other games allow you jump off walls as you're climbing so that could be an option. Otherwise just lock out jump if for some reason it doesn't work well.

What if you're on a mount?
I would just say, they need to get off first. Being able to go up/down/across with mount would just increase more work for devs to create those animations.

I agree. While some climbing mounts could work I think its better that you need to be unmounted to climb.

Climbing is something I'd like to see along with other moment features such as swimming and vaulting over small walls/fences. Given that we're only now getting the ability to jump, I can't see it happening though.

I think my climbing while fighting large monsters will have to be kept to Monster Hunter.

[Arkine]

It's a fun idea, but I don't see any real use for it. In other games like the Souls games where enemies can climb after you and kick at you to make you fall down, and you can do the same.

I like the idea of being able to climp as long as the pervs go up before me.

Be reasonable.