Realm Reborn = downgrade?

[Nemy]

Thank you very much for your application to be a FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn alpha tester!

All good.

[Velhart]

Okay, it seems some people simply do not understand why this choice was made. I understand why there is so much defence for keeping the current animations but what people need to realise is that the current animations do not work in a proper MMO. Before you go crazy on me, you need to understand that even though this is Final Fantasy, it's an MMO first. In an MMO the franchise itself means NOTHING if the gameplay is shabby and poorly developed, hence 1.0 and its failure (also notice SWTOR).

For example, take the classic 'move out of the fire' scenario. You're a caster. A fire appears underneath you. You need to quickly move out of the fire and then continue damaging the enemy. As it stands, to be able to quickly run out of the fire and properly reposition yourself, you need to switch off the targeting, press the movement keys, let go of the movement key and then wait until the character reaches a complete halt before you start casting again. You simply can't allow these kinds of aesthetics to affect combat and gameplay in such an inferior way compared to what's known as 'the standard', or it won't be in any form a success. It's this situation where the animations are affecting core gameplay and shouldn't exist.

As much as people hate others bringing up WoW, there is a BIG reason as to why it's such a success. And no, it's not because it's Warcraft, out of the hundreds of people I've played with not one of them cared about lore (even though I know there are lore-lovers out there), it's because it's the ONLY MMO since its release to be strict to a cast time and not care about animations. You press a movement key and you run, you let go you stop. Everything is instant, and it's fluid and smooth. Is it realistic? Not really. Is it aesthetically pleasing? Not really. The point is, when you're playing an MMORPG, the combat, movement and gameplay have to be fluid, smooth and have the player fully in control of what the character is doing.

As long as these types of animations have NOTHING to do with combat or gameplay, it's okay for it to be implemented. But seeing as there's no animation lock for 2.0, having the movement animations of 1.0 WOULD affect gameplay. I'm trusting the devs on this one because they honestly seem like they know what they're doing and they're being vastly underappreciated for the amount of dedicated work they have put into this game. It's like you guys are wanting another 1.0 failure. You can throw as many realism arguments around as you like, but you need to realise the people who would rather settle on 'realistic' movements and aesthetics over core gameplay are in the minority and are being ignorant at the fact this is not how MMO's work. The rest of us actually want fluid movements and combat, because that's the main importance in an MMO over graphics and animations. I don't mean to sound disrespectful because I can see why people would want the animations back, but they just don't fly well in an MMORPG.

Beautifully written. The most important thing in "any" game honestly is the game play itself. Miyamoto from Nintendo has said several times that how they make games is that they build the core game play and make sure it is solid, then they will make a story around that game play. This is the same thing with MMO's, and even Blizzard did this. They made sure the game play was solid before adding the world, lore, and neat animations in later.

The new development team for FFXIV is going by these ideals, they want to make sure that the game play is as solid and fluid as possible, and one of the things to do was cut down on the animation. You can be disappointed all you like, but on a technical scale, you should understand the situation.

[Nemy]

Beautifully written. The most important thing in "any" game honestly is the game play itself. Miyamoto from Nintendo has said several times that how they make games is that they build the core game play and make sure it is solid, then they will make a story around that game play. This is the same thing with MMO's, and even Blizzard did this. They made sure the game play was solid before adding the world, lore, and neat animations in later.

The new development team for FFXIV is going by these ideals, they want to make sure that the game play is as solid and fluid as possible, and one of the things to do was cut down on the animation. You can be disappointed all you like, but on a technical scale, you should understand the situation.

Technically, its not a year and a half into development, since they had so much content from FFXIV, and working on an engine that should be compatible with Crystal Tools in many ways. Also nobody forced them to rebuild the game from the ground up, instead of heavily patch and expand the current one.

From a player's point of view, you have to also realise that we're not just potential customers, we are people who invested in this game in many different ways so taking away core elements of it shouldn't be made so lightly in my opinion. I really don't want to sound like a self-entitled idiot, but there is a difference here worth pointing out.

[Xmbei]

Technically, its not a year and a half into development, since they had so much content from FFXIV, and working on an engine that should be compatible with Crystal Tools in many ways. Also nobody forced them to rebuild the game from the ground up, instead of heavily patch and expand the current one.

Yoshi actually addressed this in one of his earlier letters to us. They problem with the current engine was the code was such a jumble of a mess to decipher it was decided it would be easier to just build a new engine and game off of that from the ground up. Since they determined fixing the current coding would cause more problems then fix anything >.<. I seriously want to know who they hired for the initial coding job to make such a horrible speghetti knot mess of the original engine and game to make it hard to improve upon it correctly.

[lololink]

Yoshi actually addressed this in one of his earlier letters to us. They problem with the current engine was the code was such a jumble of a mess to decipher it was decided it would be easier to just build a new engine and game off of that from the ground up. Since they determined fixing the current coding would cause more problems then fix anything >.<. I seriously want to know who they hired for the initial coding job to make such a horrible speghetti knot mess of the original engine and game to make it hard to improve upon it correctly.

sometimes i think the original FF dev team didn't care at all of this game .

[Nemy]

Yoshi actually addressed this in one of his earlier letters to us. They problem with the current engine was the code was such a jumble of a mess to decipher it was decided it would be easier to just build a new engine and game off of that from the ground up.

It was still their decision though. Its not like they had to do it.

Also, if the lack of the current quality of animation is due to their decision to build a new engine, then the word easier there, takes a whole new meaning.

[Velhart]

Technically, its not a year and a half into development, since they had so much content from FFXIV, and working on an engine that should be compatible with Crystal Tools in many ways. Also nobody forced them to rebuild the game from the ground up, instead of heavily patch and expand the current one.

From a player's point of view, you have to also realise that we're not just potential customers, we are people who invested in this game in many different ways so taking away core elements of it shouldn't be made so lightly in my opinion. I really don't want to sound like a self-entitled idiot, but there is a difference here worth pointing out.

Sorry, but SE's objective right now is to not cater to a niche audience, they want to appeal to "everyone". If you are so hooked on FFXI's outdated(not saying bad) game play and concepts, well, FFXI is still up, and getting an expansion pack.

You cannot hook your audience back in just by making major fixes to the current version and say "Ohh its fixed now, come play our game!". Potential customers are not going to buy that. Now when a developer says "Hey we trashed the old game and built a completely brand new one from scratch that meets MMO standards and beyond.", I am very sure, that potential customer is more intrigued to buy the game.

Sorry, but this decision from them to completely rebuild the game play to it's core was completely necessary. A lot of ideas and requests not just from the developers, but even the "invested fans", simply cannot be done with the 1.0 engine and battle system. PvP would be a joke in 1.xx. All keeping the current battle system would do is the developers making a poor attempt to standardize an outdated feeling battle system. Also, making beautiful animations and moving around at the same time would be stupid looking.

[Kallera]

Beautifully written. The most important thing in "any" game honestly is the game play itself. Miyamoto from Nintendo has said several times that how they make games is that they build the core game play and make sure it is solid, then they will make a story around that game play. This is the same thing with MMO's, and even Blizzard did this. They made sure the game play was solid before adding the world, lore, and neat animations in later.

The new development team for FFXIV is going by these ideals, they want to make sure that the game play is as solid and fluid as possible, and one of the things to do was cut down on the animation. You can be disappointed all you like, but on a technical scale, you should understand the situation.

I'll understand when people start muttering incessantly about combat feeling like "The Secret World" and once again declaring the game a failure for new reasons.

[Xmbei]

Oh ya the other thing I liked about playing FF's is the ingenuity and uniqueness of each game. In essence they were the same feel and enjoyment but they were never the same. Art direction, combat/leveling/skill system was unique in each one. The originality of each game is what interested players to because it never felt repetative moving from one FF to another. But they always hadf the unique elements and great story telling in each iteration. It is what got me into FF as my favorite video game RPG because they were all unique, for me. If I don't feel cpnnected to the character I am playing on a design basis in first few hours of play, I end up stop playing never have done that for a ff. FF game I will play over and over for the story because it never gets old for me... but I played Skyrim and Oblivion and Fallout, and for the most part I hate playing the same content over and over again because it doesn't grab me as a FF does...

Sorry kind of detracting... but It is what makes me love final fantasy , their quality production. I hope that the game we get lives up to the promise Yoshi has given us. So as I have stated before in this thread I will wait till I actually play to pass final judgement, if it doesn't have that spark when I play it, then I know, this is why I hope I can get into testing. I want to ensure that spark is there for everyone as well as fix glaring bugs and things that 1.0 has that 2.0 doesn't that got my attention . I can never be sure of that spark by watching someone else play.

[Nemy]

I hope I can get into testing.

I actually wanted to ask someone about this, Currently i'm in Europe, (although i will be in LA in November) and i get an "area error" when i try to apply for the alpha. What's the deal?