Alpha First Look: Video 5 - Quests and Combat

[RoninDarkchild]

Did someone just say FFXI had a good quest system??? Super vague quests that dont tell you what youre looking for, or where.... forcing 98% of the game population to look up a wiki, or shout in town for just basic direction.... if you like directionless question with no markers dont look at the map then... go explore to your hearts content...

telling you what area to go to, and what npc to speak with, and what thing to defeat is basic quest structure...
FFXI questing was stupid...

[Elexia]

-Snip-.

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

[Zezlar]

People that keep going on about "cookie cutter" quests are going to need to pony up some seriously sweet examples of which MMO's don't do this as part of the game structure or quickly zip it. Not trying to white knight this thing, but your responses are based on 3 mins of video showing a higher level character doing low level fetch quests. Kind of a soggy cardboard soap box your standing on if you ask me......Its ok, I can wait while you look up all those examples you must keep drawing from.......

That's exactly the point. They aren't offering anything new but more of the same. Final Fantasy is held at a high standard for storytelling and questing. Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 had complaints about the cookie cutter quests, and now 2.0 will have those x6000 per year. Riveting.

They decided for quantity over quality in the end.

[valetarkus]

YEEEEEESSS!

I like how the quest's are just right there on your screen and easy to access. In 1.0 in order to find out where you had to go it felt like you had to be constantly opening and closing 4 window tabs. Menu -> journal -> "the quest" -> map..... yeah i hated that every single time. now its just right there and looks so much more strait forward with out huge long paragraphs explaining each quest.

[Biggs]

That's exactly the point. They aren't offering anything new but more of the same. Final Fantasy is held at a high standard for storytelling and questing. Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 had complaints about the cookie cutter quests, and now 2.0 will have those x6000 per year. Riveting.

They decided for quantity over quality in the end.

I won't argue at all that they are held to a high standard in game design and story telling, but no offense here, virtually ALL of their games have fetch quests identicle to the ones seen in the video. I am failing to see why anyone is suprised they would include these in 2.0.

Besides that, if its so easy to reinvent the wheel here like many of you are suggesting, go ahead and spitball 1 or 2 ways you would rather see this done that no one has ever done before......

Don't get me wrong, I 100% understand what you all are asking for, I just think that conceptually it sounds a LOT easier than it actually is to pull off in a way thats successful, especially since we are talking about a game that already failed trying to take a bunch of risks.

[Elexia]

That's exactly the point.

I also distinctly remember people saying "This is Final Fantasy, even if we quest grind it will be nothing but high quality storylines and action packed, it won't be like WoW or Tera."




Anyway, the music I dislike the style of, but it doesn't really fit with general battle given the tonality of it but I can definitely see it moved towards boss fights in starter dungeons. At least it's shaping up very nicely to being a typical MMORPG, now let's see what will set it apart from everyone besides the Final Fantasy name.

FFXI took EQ and ran away with the concept into something unique, let's see if ARR can do this with the "WoW formula" as they say these days.

[Izariael]

They say necessity is the mother of invention, so if anyone here is unhappy with the quest procedure, feel free to design your own MMO the way you'd like. I'll come alpha test for you.

[Virtuso]

Oh man, talk of FF XI "quests" and people saying that those were somehow "better". Like that main story line quest that required me to find a merchant who the NPC said was "Some where in the world". Great...So I can narrow my search now to the world. Fan-freaking-tastic. Or that fly exterminator quest that required a full alliance to earn a 300ish exp scroll reward...

There's a good reason why no MMO cares to copy FF XI's quest design. As for the approach Yoshi-P took for ARR and to the folks upset at it, all I got to say is,

As for the video, loved the music, the visuals, a little string in my heart got tugged on when I read about that second quest being to protect the burial site for the victims of the Umbra era. I can't wait to see what other story bits of treasure they have in store for us.

[Denmo]

Is the handholding any different than a single player RPG world being designed solely with the intent of guiding a player to the next part of the story? (Ex: The only accessible town in FF3 at the beginning just happens to be the starter town, even though you have a boat to explore with.). The game doesn't necessarily have to tell you where to go, because the developer knows that even if you butt your head into every wall available like an idiot, you'll still end up where you need to be. You're not "set free" until the game has - by virtue of design and story telling - guided you through enough of the game to where you feel comfortable in setting out on your own (IE: obtaining an airship in FF6)

It just can't be the same with MMOs. MMO's are complex beasts from a play design perspective because they have to accommodate for multiple players of all ranges doing all sorts of different things. There are techniques for hinting at where players should be at what level (hostile mobs blocking access to higher level areas), but ultimately in an open world, a new player will get lost when trying to figure out what to do next. First gen MMOs have tried to just let players figure it out for themselves, but it never seems to be enough and it's not a very user-friendly way of doing things. Some players 'enjoy' this. Or rather, they 'enjoy' the status they feel they obtained by roughing it out even though they know it was bad game design (See: FFXI endgame, Legacy Members [like me!], and elite EQ players). The quests offered in modern MMOs are designed to do the same things the story in single player RPGs do: Guide the player from point A to point B until they feel comfortable with the world. At least in ARR, we can expect quests with a good bit of flavor and meaning to them.

Final Fantasy has never been particularly difficult. I don't recall ever throwing my controller at the screen while fighting my way through Balamb Garden in FF8 (though I did smash in the PSOne power button when I lost my Shiva card to some random jack-off in a TripTriad game). You're constantly going from point A to point B killing hordes of random encounters that mean nothing to the story except to make you stronger. How then, is the quest system XIV:ARR is using such a step back for the genre?

[pool842]

lol did you not watch the video? the player was higher level than the mobs, and these are progression quests, they aren't supposed to be the hardest.

I'm sure the quests you do when you're approaching level 50 will not be so easy.

Every quest in every mmo is in some way or another going to fit into a particular archetype. Ive seen people laud the quest system of this game and that game but it's not very different. Do you really want longwinded, complicated quests for leveling up at level 10, when you probably could have leveled up faster by ignoring the quest altogether and just grinding? I'd still take a simple kill-the-target-monsters quest over mashing monsters with no purpose or reason other than to get XP.

My god thank you.. Its nice to know that I am not the only one who hates mindless party grinding...