Alpha First Look: Video 5 - Quests and Combat

[Nox]

I agree. This version of XIV is terrible. The graphics are fantastic, the environments are stunning but the quests are an insult to gamers. The battle animations are a giant leap backwards as are the spell casting animations and the spells themselves. All weapon skills so far look identical too each other not to mention they happen so fast you dont even know what just happened. I could tell you how every weapon skill looks and functions in 1.0 but this.... this is all forgettable mindless icon spamming..

I didnt play WoW, Rift, SWTOR, GW2 because they all look and play like this game now. I stayed away from all of those titles because they were all clones of WoW; its safe to say this game is too. They want what's popular in the MMO market to make a buck. This is all just mindless fetch quests, mind numbing, time sinking garbage.

Why cant we just have a main story line and progress through that? By the time we get done with our 1 millionth quest of kill 6 of X and 3 of Y, we will have forgotten what the story was even about.

I think current customers that stuck it out for 2+years will leave for good now that this game has morphed into yet another standard MMO. So much for innovation. But hey.. at least the graphics are good huh!?

Oh look! One of THOSE responses. Let me spell it out for you bro. Not doing this (standardizing the game to the current market) and releasing 1.0 in such a pathetic state, was what made Xiv 1.0 a fail pretty much everywhere. what they are doing here is *gasp* making the game up to standards. congratulations on missing the point. If they don't provide these type of "cookie cutter" quests, then it's difficult to bring forth content (For all types of gamers). I highly doubt these are the only type of quests that ARR will provide. But if you are going to be ignorant enough to assume that, walk away now. Your point of view won't be missed by those of us who want the game to succeed.

[Psykotsu]

This is how you make level progression, repetitive, mindless and boring if you have no imagination and have decided instead to just copy almost every other MMO for the past 8 years with the same repetitive "kill x of y" crap.

Talk about uninspired and derivative.

And why even have the quest dialog in there at all? Hell even the person in the video isn't taking the time to read it. And why bother? They have *3* different indicators showing you exactly where to go for the kill quest, and 2 showing you where to go for the "moist depression".

"Well, we have all this dialog but, you probably won't read it anyway. But, in case you do, you're probably too dumb to figure out where we're directing you to. So, we'll show you on the mini-map. And because you're probably too dumb to realize the circle on the mini-map indicates where you should be, we'll put markers for the mobs on the mini map too. Now don't panic... We know you're too dumb to figure it out even then. We've accounted for that by also putting large markers over the mobs' heads in-game too. You don't even have to know what the mobs are called or what they look like. Just look for the big, intrusive golden markers walking around."

For the other quest.. "go to the clearly marked, pulsating markers on your mini-map and look for the moist depression. Okay, you're too dumb to figure out the purple hazy looking spots that just happen to be exactly in the same spot as the mini-map markers are likely them, and you're probably too much of a mouth-breather to figure out that targeting those spots will tell you what they are. So, don't worry. We'll make sure to have the words "moist depression" hovering over them as well. Hopefully it's not too presumptuous of us to assume you can read big words like "depression".

"See? We have your time in mind! We know you don't want to be bogged down with boring stuff like interesting content that actually requires your participation, attention and, you know... usage of your brain (I mean, pfft.. who wants to use that?). We realize what you're really interested in is getting all this boring gameplay stuff out of the way so you can get back to serious stuff... like jumping up and down on tents."

Give me a freaking break already with this patronizing, hand-holding "we will show you exactly where everything is so you don't even have to try" crap already. Seriously. Gamers are far smarter than this nonsense.

What a cop-out.

Why are you saying this like MMOs are ever difficult in the first place? Omg, please relax. "Hand-holding" or not, it would only make a 1 to 2 second difference to figure out what to do.

If you want a got damn mystery and problem solving, I believe you can play Prof. Laten? Is that the name or some Pheonix Wright.

[Elexia]

-Snip-.

Thank you for explaining exactly why I dislike this format in the general form almost all MMOs use lol.

[Drygir]

And why even have the quest dialog in there at all? Hell even the person in the video isn't taking the time to read it.

The person making the video doesn't need to read it and the point of it being there isn't for them it's for the people who are going to read it. Like me and many others who care about storyline and other bits of interesting info in the game. Sure it seems pointless to some but to others it's a treasure trove of information like that little snippet in the video about Tam Tara. The dialog serves a purpose for those who care. Maybe you don't and even if you do it doesn't much affect me because it won't change the fact that I find it interesting. I'm just voicing my opinion for those who haven't said anything and feel this way and for myself. Sure there are some things monotonous in this video but my point is the dialog has it's rightful place and it does belong. It's the player's choice to read it or not.

[Platinumstorm]

This is how you make level progression, repetitive, mindless and boring if you have no imagination and have decided instead to just copy almost every other MMO for the past 8 years with the same repetitive "kill x of y" crap.

Talk about uninspired and derivative.

And why even have the quest dialog in there at all? Hell even the person in the video isn't taking the time to read it. And why bother? They have *3* different indicators showing you exactly where to go for the kill quest, and 2 showing you where to go for the "moist depression".

"Well, we have all this dialog but, you probably won't read it anyway. But, in case you do, you're probably too dumb to figure out where we're directing you to. So, we'll show you on the mini-map. And because you're probably too dumb to realize the circle on the mini-map indicates where you should be, we'll put markers for the mobs on the mini map too. Now don't panic... We know you're too dumb to figure it out even then. We've accounted for that by also putting large markers over the mobs' heads in-game too. You don't even have to know what the mobs are called or what they look like. Just look for the big, intrusive golden markers walking around."

For the other quest.. "go to the clearly marked, pulsating markers on your mini-map and look for the moist depression. Okay, you're too dumb to figure out the purple hazy looking spots that just happen to be exactly in the same spot as the mini-map markers are likely them, and you're probably too much of a mouth-breather to figure out that targeting those spots will tell you what they are. So, don't worry. We'll make sure to have the words "moist depression" hovering over them as well. Hopefully it's not too presumptuous of us to assume you can read big words like "depression".

"See? We have your time in mind! We know you don't want to be bogged down with boring stuff like interesting content that actually requires your participation, attention and, you know... usage of your brain (I mean, pfft.. who wants to use that?). We realize what you're really interested in is getting all this boring gameplay stuff out of the way so you can get back to serious stuff... like jumping up and down on tents."

Give me a freaking break already with this patronizing, hand-holding "we will show you exactly where everything is so you don't even have to try" crap already. Seriously. Gamers are far smarter than this nonsense.

What a cop-out.

I don't mean to be trite but I have problems with certain elements of this too in World of Warcraft. You know what I do to remedy that? I customize the experience so it fits my needs, so if I'm leveling it means I'm not using the minimap tools, if I'm leveling an alt that I haven't played for a long time I turn it on since I don't know where I'm going, or if I'm doing repeatable quests I turn it on to end some of the suffering.

I'm not defending their system of choice, but to see an unreasonable condemnation of the system with such limited information is distressing.

Leveling systems should support users seeing content, and even though aspects of the questgrind are indeed not perfect, it accomplishes that goal far better than spending days in the Valkrum Dunes sitting in one spot.

[Maxthunder]

This is how you make level progression, repetitive, mindless and boring if you have no imagination and have decided instead to just copy almost every other MMO for the past 8 years with the same repetitive "kill x of y" crap.

Talk about uninspired and derivative.

And why even have the quest dialog in there at all? Hell even the person in the video isn't taking the time to read it. And why bother? They have *3* different indicators showing you exactly where to go for the kill quest, and 2 showing you where to go for the "moist depression".

"Well, we have all this dialog but, you probably won't read it anyway. But, in case you do, you're probably too dumb to figure out where we're directing you to. So, we'll show you on the mini-map. And because you're probably too dumb to realize the circle on the mini-map indicates where you should be, we'll put markers for the mobs on the mini map too. Now don't panic... We know you're too dumb to figure it out even then. We've accounted for that by also putting large markers over the mobs' heads in-game too. You don't even have to know what the mobs are called or what they look like. Just look for the big, intrusive golden markers walking around."

For the other quest.. "go to the clearly marked, pulsating markers on your mini-map and look for the moist depression. Okay, you're too dumb to figure out the purple hazy looking spots that just happen to be exactly in the same spot as the mini-map markers are likely them, and you're probably too much of a mouth-breather to figure out that targeting those spots will tell you what they are. So, don't worry. We'll make sure to have the words "moist depression" hovering over them as well. Hopefully it's not too presumptuous of us to assume you can read big words like "depression".

"See? We have your time in mind! We know you don't want to be bogged down with boring stuff like interesting content that actually requires your participation, attention and, you know... usage of your brain (I mean, pfft.. who wants to use that?). We realize what you're really interested in is getting all this boring gameplay stuff out of the way so you can get back to serious stuff... like jumping up and down on tents."

Give me a freaking break already with this patronizing, hand-holding "we will show you exactly where everything is so you don't even have to try" crap already. Seriously. Gamers are far smarter than this nonsense.

What a cop-out.

You are completely correct. All this is is more hand holding to the extreme. Yoshi makes a game that is so easy that a player dosent have to think its all done for them, isnt this so wonderful? So instead of presenting challenges as well as mental challenges Yoshi spoon feeds everyone. Well it seems the players asked for this and I highly doubt this is exactly what they asked for but than again I could be wrong about what the players asked for.

[BartFat]

So you're telling me you'd rather grind out 8million of the same mob for a few levels instead of having an objective to accomplish? Because I don't know about you but between 9 years on XI and one year on XIV I'm glad to see leveling become possible in a fashion other than grinding in an MMO FF. Don't worry I'm aye grinding will still be possible. Also, these are low level xp quests, nothing to do with the story I'm sure. Or even story focused side quests. So stop being a whiney little c*** and maybe appreciate the incredible amount of work YoshiP and his team have put into what most of us that have been paying attention, is sure to be an exciting and engaging game.

[Duelle]

This is how you make level progression, repetitive, mindless and boring if you have no imagination and have decided instead to just copy almost every other MMO for the past 8 years with the same repetitive "kill x of y" crap.

Right, because sitting in whitegate for several hours hoping for an invite, then taking up to 20 minutes to get to camp only to kill the same mob for three hours ad nauseum is so much more imaginative. >.>

That being said, I see a four-second GCD. I'd personally be more worried about the fact melee hits can still interrupt spells in combat over your whining over the quest system. It's going to make mages' life real difficult in PvP.

[Davy]

Right, because sitting in whitegate for several hours hoping for an invite, then taking up to 20 minutes to get to camp only to kill the same mob for three hours ad nauseum is so much more imaginative. >.>

That being said, I see a four-second GCD. I'd personally be more worried about the fact melee hits can still interrupt spells in combat over your whining over the quest system. It's going to make mages' life real difficult in PvP.

Thank you for FINALLY pointing that out!

[Kyra]

Have really been impressed with the last 2 alpha vids, getting very excited for 2.0 now!

Seriously. Gamers are far smarter than this nonsense.

What a cop-out.

Hahaha no their not lol.