Alpha First Look: Video 2 - Gridania

[Onizuka]

5 years into the future and those children STILL aren't good at balancing on stumps. >.<

I was glad to see the kids in the Acorn Orchard back, but... yeah, I also noticed they don't seem to be any older, even after 5 years...!

I hope there'll be an explanation to this. On a similar matter, I never understood how, for instance, Lalafell children look exactly like Lalafell adults...

[hrdndv]

The cat's adorable when she jumps, but she would fall on her face landing like that...

Otherwise, it looks fantastic. =)

To be fair, the lack of inertial animations hasn't really bothered me thus far (I didn't even notice in previous videos until someone pointed it out, ) but I cringed every time she landed and just slid forward without falling over...

I don't see any problem with the jumping, but the cat's tail looks like a limp rag... not like a living animate tail. I always thought cat's tails had a mind of their own. They move as though they are alive and sensing the world. Cats often seem surprised by their own tails and will pounce on them as though they saw a mouse. Tails have expression. They curl and twist. Thery do not hang limply.

[hrdndv]

The first thing i noticed is that the camera movements are locked on to the characters back. Meaning we would have to right click and turn the screen to see our characters front side. Really not a fan of those sort .....

the music itself is wonderful. But within the game i feel its not one that would make a lasting impression, like a 'signature' tune. Take windy for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEWeTsJV5Q4

I also noticed this. I also love "Windy" (Final Fantasy XI OST - The Federation of Windurst ). You can listen to that one for hours. I think the music in Grid Alpha was meant to build excitement but it would be better if it was just good listening music.

[Tiberious]

Cheers to your efforts Yoshida! Check out my full write up below.

http://boredom-inspires.blogspot.com...-gameplay.html

[syntaxlies]

Cheers to your efforts Yoshida! Check out my full write up below.

http://boredom-inspires.blogspot.com...-gameplay.html

[hrdndv]

Wanna add something.
If someone haven't seen recent trailer of the elder scrolls online yet, please take a look. With all that blah-blah about next great MMO and so on, when you see animations you CAN NOT take the game seriously anymore! I was like: What...? and then hahahahaha till the end of the trailer.
My point is XIV 1.0 had its distinct (and I repeat still unrivaled) style that I'm sure helped the game get through all negativity in the first place.
Though I still have high expectations about ARR and looking forward to, hate to say, some kind of guildwarsiness is killing me.
I guess it's about new auditory SE aiming for...

I don't believe in comparing games... the whole style is different. ESO has a particular flavor that I like, despite unrealistic features. Final Fantasy has its own unique flavor. Minor oddities in visuals (animation) do not affect game play. The game is the real issue. Is it a great game or meh. I hope SE will tell us more about what they have done to overcome the meh gameplay in FFXIV-1. You can't level up all the time... there has to be story. ESO is obviously heavy on story... that is a very good thing. If FFXIV does not improve the story then it will fail. You can't do fetch and kill quests without a underlying story. Massive game play requires a multiplex story with tangled threads all over the world. The trailer does not show any story.

[Fafnir_Nidhogg]

Keep the new content updates coming! We all need something to tide us over till 2.0 release. Great work, considering its built from the ground up and in such little time. Love the moogle mail courier <3

[Soukyuu]

Gridania looks great for an alpha footage. New/Old Gridania makes sense, I'm guessing the impact wave will go that far and the only reason the old part will stay mostly unchanged is because it's deeper in the cliffs. I like how each area in the city has it's distinct look, it's a huge improvement compared to our current Gridania which has a fixed theme everywhere in the city.

The lighting still looks too harsh, but since it's an alpha build and we saw the huge changes in 1.0 alpha to beta (and since Yoshida said alpha is a frozen build), I'll wait till beta.

The lack of inertia/shuffling animations is, as already mentioned, pretty jarring to the eye. It would be a lot less noticeable if we didn't have them in the game atm, imho. But since we do, let's just hope they'll insert them back around beta.

Seriously though, my good mood about this video has been fried by the community and the posts that appear - the music, the animation, Jesus, why do they bother?

Because we saw how 1.0 turned out. Oh and because we were asked to share our opinion. Also, see my sig. Not being aware of this fact will continue to ruin your mood on a regular basis.

edit:

quick question; Will the official verison have such a blurry camra turn like in these Alpha Videos?

That's just because of the low video bitrate. It is enough to give you good detail when not moving since there is not a lot of change in the scene, thus not so many bits required to code the frames. Once you move the camera, there is a lot of change in the scene, thus requiring many more bits to code it, but with a fixed bitrate it results in a image quality drop -> blurry image when turning.

The fact that after uploading the video to youtube, it is re-encoded on their servers doesn't help the quality either, since h264 is typically used in its lossy mode.

[Venat]

The Camera doesn't move around the character. Also Character feet doesn't move when your looking around. Pretty much at a stand still. There's small problem with Mini map. I can see cut out lines on the mini map.

[Orophin]

On a similar matter, I never understood how, for instance, Lalafell children look exactly like Lalafell adults...

Yeah pretty weird. There was a noticeable distinction between the child and adult Tarus in FFXI..dunno why it wasn't done in FF14.