Linear, linear, linear

[R041]

Who in this thread is actually playing XVI? It sounds like a lot of people aren't, and you're kinda just talking to talk. Because yeah it's linear. But it's more like old FF linear, not XIV linear.

Some of the 'dungeons' are mostly just DMC linear, not really designed like XIV linearity. Most dungeons have small branches, and some secrets. So it definitely doesn't feel like I'm just auto-running forward like XIV. Mob placement isn't 2 pulls > boss > 2 pulls > boss.. It's more chaotic than that, but it DOES have DMC style 'rooms' and corridors. It's not all string to circle.

If you also open the Location Map, you'll see everything is connected, so it kinda feels like Dark Souls in that way (not Elden Ring).






ALSO - For anyone looking at the main world map and thinking it's all 'Teleport here for small zone' It's also not that. It's more like a bunch of very large areas with multiple Aetherytes. Every teleport option you have on the map goes to an Aetheryte in open world basically. You can see in the second pic it has 3 Aetherytes just in that area. And those are large exploration areas. There's so much misinformation. lol

Anyway - I have my XVI criticisms, but I'm not gonna pretend what it is or isn't.

[Rufalus]

Streamlining things down to a main scenario tunnel is another big part of the problem. At their peak, the FF games were accompanied by thick strategy guides full of secrets, some of them so obtuse that it made you think "how the f**k was I supposed to know that?", but it was all part of the series identity. There was a very unique style that separated the series from just any other story-based games out there.

FF XVI doesn't really have any puzzles, any fun minigames, any large cities that can be fully explored with events other than battles, any significant optional/secret zones to discover, any big mysteries to discuss. It's not a terrible game in its own right, but we feel strongly about it because it replaced the old FF signature style. They killed the series people loved and replaced it with a linear story action series.

Yoshida felt S-E needed to regain trust after XV, but XVI is his solution? Funnily enough XV began as a spin-off title because it was too different. They were to brand it Versus XIII until development hell and sunken cost forced them to position it as a mainline title to boost sales. Action games are supposed to be spin-offs like Crisis Core. The core series was what we called JRPG. Then they went from the 4-man action of XV to the 1-man army XVI. No party, no airship, no strategy, no meaningful stats, no RPG, no Final Fantasy.

[TheDecay]

Streamlining things down to a main scenario tunnel is another big part of the problem. At their peak, the FF games were accompanied by thick strategy guides full of secrets, some of them so obtuse that it made you think "how the f**k was I supposed to know that?", but it was all part of the series identity. There was a very unique style that separated the series from just any other story-based games out there.

FF XVI doesn't really have any puzzles, any fun minigames, any large cities that can be fully explored with events other than battles, any significant optional/secret zones to discover, any big mysteries to discuss. It's not a terrible game in its own right, but we feel strongly about it because it replaced the old FF signature style. They killed the series people loved and replaced it with a linear story action series.

Yoshida felt S-E needed to regain trust after XV, but XVI is his solution? Funnily enough XV began as a spin-off title because it was too different. They were to brand it Versus XIII until development hell and sunken cost forced them to position it as a mainline title to boost sales. Action games are supposed to be spin-offs like Crisis Core. The core series was what we called JRPG. Then they went from the 4-man action of XV to the 1-man army XVI. No party, no airship, no strategy, no meaningful stats, no RPG, no Final Fantasy.

It would be fine if it fully committed to being the best action game it could be. But it's also linear in the dimensions where action games don't want to be linear in, such as enemy combat, skill choices, weapon customization etc.

Yoshi P said this game is like a rollercoaster. Indeed it is, because you have to ride the rollercoaster on a fixed path designed for you and cannot make any of your own choices.

[Shurrikhan]

It would be fine if it fully committed to being the best action game it could be. But it's also linear in the dimensions where action games don't want to be linear in, such as enemy combat, skill choices, weapon customization etc.

This. An Action game having little customization among its RPG elements is potentially... totally fine. But then it actually needs to have, to satisfying degree, the kinds of nuances and depth we'd expect from an Action game, rather than trash just being a carpet rolled out for their 'and then they all spontaneously combust' near-CS via Eikon skill.

If the game had difficulty modes, from the start, beyond just Easy, Easier, and Easiest, trash wasn't just a joke, and what few systems it carries for depth and skill-gap actually mattered... sure, that'd be fine.



And analogs abound in XIV itself: What is the point of Materia, if the only stat with gameplay ramifications is, 90+% of the time, to be avoided? What is the point of having all jobs available on a single job, if lockouts force you onto a single armor class when it matters and the jobs of any given role (and perhaps the roles themselves), apart from a 'flavor' and 'loser' of a given patch, play increasingly similar to one another?

It's fine to prioritize different things. I'd just rather the product of those shifted priorities not be half-assed thereafter.

No you could not. The Tonberries with the oil are in specific places and the levers you need the oil for are also in set places, this creates an optimal path through the area.

To be fair, the larger factor was in the very next sentence that you left out: in non-optimal situations, the contextually optimal path shifted, because you'd arrive at different times relative to the Tonberry's patroling position.

And they could easily force variance (rotating which path is essentially barred, which will proportionately often include the path that'd be most time-efficient if the patrol did not exist) by just varying the patrol's starting position on dungeon start.

They could also have just had more opportunities for the oils to drop (with still only the original number being required, and no further drops occurring after you had acquired enough). The means of creating non-linear pathing in that dungeon were right there, even if they weren't yet implemented in a way that'd last through wholly optimized play.

In short, I don't think you guys are in as great of disagreement as you seem to think, Mikey?

[Mikey_R]

To be fair, the larger factor was in the very next sentence that you left out: in non-optimal situations, the contextually optimal path shifted, because you'd arrive at different times relative to the Tonberry's patroling position.

And they could easily force variance (rotating which path is essentially barred, which will proportionately often include the path that'd be most time-efficient if the patrol did not exist) by just varying the patrol's starting position on dungeon start.

They could also have just had more opportunities for the oils to drop (with still only the original number being required, and no further drops occurring after you had acquired enough). The means of creating non-linear pathing in that dungeon were right there, even if they weren't yet implemented in a way that'd last through wholly optimized play.

In short, I don't think you guys are in as great of disagreement as you seem to think, Mikey?

The next sentence doesn't do anything of the sort, as I implied, you done the same thing every single time. There was no 'organically different route' based on team DPS, as the route was the same every time, it did not change.

As for the Tonberries, their locations were very predictable, which leads me to believe they do not even spawn until you are close, likely when you open the door and step into the room itself. If you want to start playing around with different spawn locations and different routes for the large Tonberries, you have to take into account that there are fixed locations you need to go to. Right at the start, the middle, by the exit door and in the NE corner is the locations for all the switches. You get enough oil for 2 switches from the room prior, so you have 2 switches left, and 2 Tonberries to kill in the room. Unless you want to start moving the locations of the little Tonberries, you will still take the same route. However, if you do start moving the spawn locations of the small Tonberries, forcing people to have to look around for them, I suspect that will just be frustrating to people rather than something people will take a liking to.

As for RNG drops to progress, you either get lucky and you can progress quicker or you get unlucky and it takes a bit longer. It is, again, going to feel frustrating when the run is going to take longer just because RNG screwed with you for no reason.

And no, it is definitely a disagreement. Their claim was you can take multiple routes based on the Tonberries, so it isn't the same every time, and I completely disagreed with that claim. That is never how the dungeon was run (baring maybe week 1 when people were learning it, but I wasn't at that point at that time) but as soon as people found the fastest route, that is the one they will take and I guarantee, after 1 week, that route would have been the standard.

The rest of my post is just about trying to make a linear dungeon seem non-linear whilst still being linear. Whether that solution will please people who wanted a non linear dungeon, who knows (probably not), however, it is still something that can make each run of the same dungeon different, to a point. Only so many routes you can make after all.

[Shurrikhan]

The next sentence doesn't do anything of the sort, as I implied, you done the same thing every single time. There was no 'organically different route' based on team DPS, as the route was the same every time, it did not change.

As for the Tonberries, their locations were very predictable, which leads me to believe they do not even spawn until you are close, likely when you open the door and step into the room itself. If you want to start playing around with different spawn locations and different routes for the large Tonberries, you have to take into account that there are fixed locations you need to go to. Right at the start, the middle, by the exit door and in the NE corner is the locations for all the switches. You get enough oil for 2 switches from the room prior, so you have 2 switches left, and 2 Tonberries to kill in the room. Unless you want to start moving the locations of the little Tonberries, you will still take the same route. However, if you do start moving the spawn locations of the small Tonberries, forcing people to have to look around for them, I suspect that will just be frustrating to people rather than something people will take a liking to.

As for RNG drops to progress, you either get lucky and you can progress quicker or you get unlucky and it takes a bit longer. It is, again, going to feel frustrating when the run is going to take longer just because RNG screwed with you for no reason.

And no, it is definitely a disagreement. Their claim was you can take multiple routes based on the Tonberries, so it isn't the same every time, and I completely disagreed with that claim.

You... did, though, unless you were just going to stand around waiting for the patrol to pass, you may well start on one side or the other. Additionally, a WHM could solo the central winch (Holy was a 5s stun at the time) while the rest of the party went left, right, or through (if pat didn't block it or one had a PLD to tank it) to grab the oils and winches from East to West or West to East by just nuking down the oil-bearer and then Sprinting onward, outranging the mobs where possible and using the boss wall to hold them in place where not. We had that shit down to a science, but it still technically had some variation.

Yes, it could have been better balanced for variety and some 80% of runs, so long as they were done at full speed, all took the same route. In the remaining 20%, though, yeah, variations happened to recover or to better make use of BLM's AoE Sleep/Blizzard II (or Holy/Miasma II) and potentially Sprint w/ Paeon.

The rest of my post is just about trying to make a linear dungeon seem non-linear whilst still being linear. Whether that solution will please people who wanted a non linear dungeon, who knows (probably not), however, it is still something that can make each run of the same dungeon different, to a point. Only so many routes you can make after all.

To my mind, it's just a matter of the added initial extent of, and the added longevity of, the dungeon's novelty vs. those obviously diminishing returns. Honestly, though, in terms of 'dungeon content novelty/longevity per hour of development time' would already seem to incentivize spending a bit more time on each dungeon (and systems encapsulating them).

In terms of varying up pathing slightly (again, less important to me than shaking up the pacing, flow, and encounters, but still worthwhile)... plopping mobs on the map doesn't take up much more time. Nor is pathable ground so much more time-intensive than making an equally interesting path or slope leading (inaccessibly) off the main trail for purely visual purposes. So, if the dungeon seems like it should look that large (even if just for visual purposes) already, then... yeah, some more paths would be cool and probably a slight net increase to value for the dungeon's distinction and longevity.

Ultimately, though, a lot of the benefit of making more interesting dungeons depends on the amount of interest that can be generated from the differences and agency within the party members' respective kits, which it turn requires that the dungeons not just be a steamroll. So... also really hoping that minimum item level difficulty would actually be worth speaking of and that the ilvl caps would fall far closer to merely the ilvl the dungeon rewards OR a real Expert Roulette (dungeons upscaled to level cap and to the party's average ilvl).

(No, I see absolutely no reason why Savage gear would "need" to "reward" players with a gutted dungeon-running experience from steamrolling the whole thing. Frankly, I'd be fine with most content having a maximum item level barely over what they reward, and just reducing the weekly grind requirements in exchange, or having the amount by which ilvl has been synced down increase rewards near-proportionately.)


EDIT: Now, if we REALLY want to incentivize more varied layouts for dungeons, then there'd simply have to be further use for those variations, even if that might not be for "Dungeons" themselves -- and instead some new content type (I used the term "Delves" before) that borrows from those prior "Dungeon" assets (to perhaps less of a visual rehaul than Hard Modes, but still likely significant).

[CerusSerenade]

This misconception that non-linear is somehow always superior to a linear game needs to die. There are plenty of linear games that have proven to be masterpieces.

[Shurrikhan]

This misconception that non-linear is somehow always superior to a linear game needs to die. There are plenty of linear games that have proven to be masterpieces.

I don't think anyone's conflating it with some sort of irredeemable problem so much as just an opportunity not taken (it's more just a... salient symptom, so to speak), in the same way that having no customization, or having little combat depth, or little available range in difficulty, or not having a well-crafted learning curve, or not having a responsive and intuitive UI, or having little story coherence, or having little explorable worldstory or backstory, would all be wasted opportunities that could otherwise positively affect a game's apparent quality.

[TheDecay]

This misconception that non-linear is somehow always superior to a linear game needs to die. There are plenty of linear games that have proven to be masterpieces.

Like???

God of War?

And how did they make their linear dungeons? With puzzles. Alternating paths. Varied enemies that require the player to use different tactics. Environmental interactions. Verticality. I can go on and on. All of these, FF14 and FF16 have not achieved.

That's why GoW is a 94 and a 9.1 in User Score while FF16 has a 7.9 User Score.

Because they mastered the art of non-linear design in linear dungeons: that is, breaking the gameplay loop into chunks of walk forward, do puzzle, attack enemy, dodge, interact with environment, attack enemy, do puzzle, find hidden path etc. What you're actually engaged in while in a GoW dungeon that is actually incredibly linear when you look at the map, is highly non-linear gameplay.

What is there in FF14/FF16? Press W and smash Square/AoE combo.

[Ransu]

Like???

God of War?

And how did they make their linear dungeons? With puzzles. Alternating paths. Varied enemies that require the player to use different tactics. Environmental interactions. Verticality. I can go on and on. All of these, FF14 and FF16 have not achieved.

That's why GoW is a 94 and a 9.1 in User Score while FF16 has a 7.9 User Score.

Because they mastered the art of non-linear design in linear dungeons: that is, breaking the gameplay loop into chunks of walk forward, do puzzle, attack enemy, dodge, interact with environment, attack enemy, do puzzle, find hidden path etc. What you're actually engaged in while in a GoW dungeon that is actually incredibly linear when you look at the map, is highly non-linear gameplay.

What is there in FF14/FF16? Press W and smash Square/AoE combo.

User scores on metacritic are a waste of time. A big chunk of the FFXVI user reviews are dumb console warring people review bombing it along with a weird section of people that seem to hate Nomura and somehow think he was involved with FFXVI and its "kingdom heart nonsense" story.