IGN Poll Are oldskool RPG players still among us?

[Naqaj]

The paths XIII gives you to move around on is exactly the same as the paths you follow in games like FFX, the difference is FFX has a static camera so your character moves into the screen or out of it, or side to side. Because XIII's camera follows behind you you get a clearer view of what your character sees, not the camera. So is it a linear path? Yes, but only in the same way that most other FF games are, the difference is perspective.

Interestingly, FFX was indeed almost as bad with the corridor level design as XIII, yet hasn't been criticized for it nearly as much. I supposed back then people were still too impressed with the 3D graphics to notice?
However, "most other FF games" certainly were not built this way.

[Konachibi]

Interestingly, FFX was indeed almost as bad with the corridor level design as XIII, yet hasn't been criticized for it nearly as much. I supposed back then people were still too impressed with the 3D graphics to notice?
However, "most other FF games" certainly were not built this way.

It's the camera that does it. In XIII it's always behind the character so you can see how all paths are just straight tunnels, in other FF's the camera is placed somewhere else in the enviroment so you appear to move across the screen or further into it etc.

And yes other FF games suffered from the same tunnel paths. Remember the forest near Nibelheim in FF7? Or perhaps Ifrits Cave in FF8? The Petrified Forest of FF9? Just a few examples but FF games are literred with these linear paths, the only difference is no one really gave a damn about it untill FFXIII came out and made it a bit more obvious.

[Eekiki]

Exactly. FF games have always been linear. 13's only crime was it didn't bother to try and hide it.

[Naqaj]

Good point, maybe it was really the camera that fooled people.

Yes, particular dungeons in earlier FFs had such a linear design too. But while the story progression was of course leading you along a linear path, the game worlds as a whole were not built linearly. You had much more freedom to roam around, pointlessly as it may be.

XIII made this particularly painfull as the design of the world you could see around you was so stunning, but you simply couldn't go there to explore it.
Actually, the more I think about it, the parallels to X are quite strong. You even had the large, open, pointless plain towards the end where you could grind up your party for the final stretch.

[grandm]

what made 13 so god dam awful. yes it is true that u had the same linear path to follow in in 10 and 10-2 as u do in 13 but in 13 u just feel a little more closed in, in 10 u get an airship and u can go back to besaid or luca if u wish, and also u are activley encouraged to go back to these places and catch the monsters u needed to make the new super monster in the battle arena. the battle system in 13 is terrible, the battles didn't engage me. and leveling up to get past a boss was a chore, even the system of changing stance was a let down. the battle system in FF12 was bad but this could be forgiven as it was a good game with many side quests and a good story. which brings me to the storyline in FF 13, many ppl say FF13 is story driven, so is FF 6 7 8 9 10, in fact what FF game is not story driven. show me a final fantasy game, and i'll show u a great story. so saying FF13 had a great story does not make up for the pile of crap that was bolted around that story. if SE loved that story so much but didn't want to make a great game around it, they should have released it as a dvd! and the item system that was god dam awful.

and i'm going to stop going on now coz i'm upsetting myself with these memory's i have tried to supress

[Konachibi]

Indeed, the one thing I didn't like about FFX was the lack of a world map. In fact every FF since X has lacked a world map, and the lack of world map has caused a lack of 'secret' content, and a lack of feeling like you're in a world, rather than just a continent. Other games had a world map and thus, had secret content, like how you could get into the waterfall and meet lucretzia in FF7 or go to Cactaur Island in FF8. The world map made people WANT to wander around looking for things, because they could see a huge world with lots of stuff in it that they hadn't seen yet. In FFX you never got to see that stuff, you could only see an area from within that area, not from a zoomed out perspective of the world (well.... you could, but you couldn't run around on that zoomed out perspective, you could only choose a destination), same goes for FFXII and FFXIII. I can only hope FFXV brings back the good ol' world map and let's us explore the far reaches of the planet it puts us on once again.

[Konachibi]

what made 13 so god dam awful. yes it is true that u had the same linear path to follow in in 10 and 10-2 as u do in 13 but in 13 u just feel a little more closed in, in 10 u get an airship and u can go back to besaid or luca if u wish, and also u are activley encouraged to go back to these places and catch the monsters u needed to make the new super monster in the battle arena. the battle system in 13 is terrible, the battles didn't engage me. and leveling up to get past a boss was a chore, even the system of changing stance was a let down. the battle system in FF12 was bad but this could be forgiven as it was a good game with many side quests and a good story. which brings me to the storyline in FF 13, many ppl say FF13 is story driven, so is FF 6 7 8 9 10, in fact what FF game is not story driven. show me a final fantasy game, and i'll show u a great story. so saying FF13 had a great story does not make up for the pile of crap that was bolted around that story. if SE loved that story so much but didn't want to make a great game around it, they should have released it as a dvd! and the item system that was god dam awful.

and i'm going to stop going on now coz i'm upsetting myself with these memory's i have tried to supress

I dunno, I really can't bring myself to play FFXII very far at all. I look at the world it's in, I look at and listen to the main character, I try to use the god awfull battle system, and I think, "I want nothing to do with this garbage, why do I have to train this douche to put a hat on his head? Is he really so dumb?", then I look at FFXIII and how it's a fast paced action style RPG with a battle system that just keeps flowing with hardly any pause, with amazing cut-scenes and great music and interesting characters and I think, "This smells faintly of FFX, which I thought was pretty good."

But then that could also be down to a difference of perspective, I like the pseudo-futuristic FF's like FF6, 7, 8 and X so XIII was my kind of thing, where as the more old style fantasy of XII with it's castles and stuff makes it all feel a bit cliche. Then also taking into account that the futuristic FF's tend to have a much faster pace to them, where as XII was just plain slow. The story was slow, running around the city was slow, the battle system was so slow it was unbearable.

[grandm]

konachibi i guess we are just different , least we can agree 10 was good

[Konachibi]

Indeed.

It's all down to personal preference, sometimes a game will come out that will cater for a large majority that prefer that kind of game and it'll do well, but then sometimes that game will only appeal to a small minority and not do so well but still be loved by the ones that like it. The only difference between something like that is a game that goes the minority route ends up getting a worse slamming because there's more people saying they hate it than there is people saying they like it. FFXIV has pretty much gone down that same route. Many people love it, but there's many more people that hate it.

This all leads full circle over to the topic at hand though. A lot of the people still playing FFXIV despite it's many flaws do seem to be the people that remember how the classic traditional RPG style worked, and why it was so enjoyable, where as those that hadn't touched an RPG before WoW left in a hurry, then went and screamed about how bad they thought the game was.

But nowadays we're living in a world where CoD reigns the multiplayer deathmatch, Duke Nukem receives bad reviews for being rude, and games like Mass Effect are considered RPGs. Back then, Unreal Tournament owned the deathmatch crown, Duke Nukem was applauded for his rude behaviour and party mouth, and Mass Effect would have been called an action shoot 'em up.

None of 'this generation' of gamers have a grasp on what we once perceived was the 'right' way games should work, so when they see FFXIV and the way it operates using plot and cut-scenes, and feels more like the RPG genre we remember rather than the speed-through-quick ones of today, they take it as wrong, when we feel it is right. Sadly though we are the whispers to their shouts.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

I thought this thread might have been about the .Golden box games or Tandy rpg old-school. This Demon Souls game is sounding almost interesting enough to buy a PS3