Current Gen Games: what do you expect from them?

[Galamantyl]

Me and a friend were laughing our asses off watching some of the gameplay preview for SW:TOR. Personally I thought KOTOR sucked, but at what point in that 3,500 year gap did the Jedi decide that wearing plated body armor was less effective than robes? lol!

I won't even get into the hilarity of the septic tank that the consulate can rip out of the ground anywhere anytime.

[Lamhirh]

what scares me in TOR, are lightsabers, In KOTOR and KOTOR II they were nice, plain, simple but nice. THose look like flashlights with the 15$ plastic lightsaber toy sticking out of them. But that was just a digresion.

To stay on topicm FFXIV did one good step towards progressing the genre. as there is almost no loading screen. Still however i would like to be able to progress to different zonres instead to hit exit and emerge in different landscape.
But step in good direction was made.

[Winterclaw]

1. In terms of sales, GW and its expansions sold 5 million.
2. bioware puts out a lot of hits and are one of the bigger western RPG developers.
3. Ergo those games are going to get a lot of sales and SE should pay attention to them.
4. Despite being really old, a game like EVE is trying at least to keep its gameplay up to date. It's still boring, but at least they are trying.
5. The purpose of this thread is for talking about newer features of MMOs and the games that have them. If you only want better graphics say so. If you want a gameplay advance that X game has, then say so. Saying I hate X, Y, or Z alone doesn't help anyone.

Furthermore:
A. People seem bored with leves. Adding dynamic content like rift and eve has (oh noes, two games that aren't GW2 or SWTOR) might go a way to making them happy. Monster hunter 3 has something like this... mobs appear depending on the day of the week. Pokemon black/white has this (as did plat), mobs appear during the season of the game or the time of the day. So I don't see how saying GW2 as a whole sucks means that this idea in particular sucks... cause a number of games are doing it... it's like, I dunno, a current trend perhaps that maybe SE should look into.
B. People love tons of options for their character. Making your PC is a lot of fun in some games. I don't see how GW2 or SWTOR sucking has anything to do with this.
C. People don't like stale boring combat. GW2 offers a slight improvement on a system that has been around and unchanged for years. Maybe it'll suck. Maybe it won't. At least give them credit for trying something new. Take the puglist, maybe instead of adding haymaker to your bar, and having a slot that isn't being used most of the time, your first skill turns into haymaker whenever you evade an attack. That would be an improvement. Or let's say you are an conjurer, maybe it'd be nice to go from fire to ice at the push of a button in combat if you need to and switch to the element you need to, when you need it. Or let's say you are a melee fighter and you are surrounded, maybe your single target attacks turn into AoE attacks for the circumstance.



red herring
ad hominem

[Kazahashi]

I'm just curious why you're pushing other games though? Asking what you'd like to see in a game is great, but your last post is force feeding people with stats and info about your favorite companies....you sound more like a salesman then someone looking for some constructive opinions and ideas.

Again, I posted about the "dynamic content" in Rift....and generally all the people I talked to IN Rift, found it boring and didn't really like it after a certain period of time, wherein it became stale and old.

[Galamantyl]

2. bioware puts out a lot of crap and are one of the crappier western RPG developers.

Another reason I like eastern RPGs more. ;D

[Lamhirh]

Well its more like reinforcing arguments by comparing to other ( upcoming) titles. There are some point in it... Except eve is not boring. Eve is boring when you only come to eve do some misions, and some pve. In this eve is boring. The life of eve is politics, aliancs, and pvp.

but back on topic again. This also one point i would like in FFXIV. SOme areas which players can 'play sandbox'. In this eve does well. There are Empire space, where empires enforce laws, and wild lands, lowsec and nullsec where players create endgame for themselves ( usually by manufacturing and utilising various means of mass anihilation). I wish they add continent where players could be able to colonise, or maybe at some point fount some thing like countries, and fight among themselves. but that is a whish, that can but doesnt needto be fulfilled.

Still the point of sandbox stays. Becouse if you design a good sanbox into your world, you dont need to worry about endgame, it will create itself. Or rather players will create it.

An example of how players can do it is SWG. Game was ruined by mechanic'update' ( a WOWization) there is almost no content to run there is some pvp, but its not really good, as the game mechanics simply suck. But still, i do play it every now and than, and most of what we do is fuinding ourself something to do. hell we spent few days wile kiling every creature around our town, we were riding on speeders, patroling, and 'keeping pests under control'' while roleplaying. However in this case, it was game settings and SW universe, not the game. This is another point Story. if the game universe is rich, the players will build on it.

On the sotry ill use another example from eve. Eve history expands. There are hundreds of stories and chrionicles, and eve book written in eve universe. Every few weeks or months the ingame universe progresses, everyexpansion introduces some changes in power balances, some new developement in unknown regions. like the story of amar empire succesion, that took few years, and ended quite unexpectedly with jamyl Sarums coronation.

Well still my origina,l wishes stands. i can only hope at least those will be fullfilled,

[gifthorse]

Since FFXIV is supposed to be a current gen game (and not a last gen game) what are some of the things you're seeing from other games and how they can be applied to FFXIV where necessary.

1. Extensive Voice Over - GW2 and SWTOR
People don't like reading walls of text anymore. No discipline I guess. So in order to get people more immersed in the game, voice overs seem to be used more and more. You don't just read the text, you hear it too... and in GW2's case you don't even read it.

2. Advanced char creation - EVE, super hero games, AoC
People really like to customize their avatar as much as possible. Selecting from one of a few options just doesn't cut it anymore. They want to tweak the nose, eyes, lips, chin, overall body type, and boob size. Likewise people want lots of ways to customize their armor and looks. In other words they want to stand out and look different from everyone else. They want to make their ideal char.

3. Dynamic Content - Rift, EVE, GW2
Eve just added incursions, areas where one NPC group takes over and people have to band together to get rid of them. Rift's rifts have the same effect I hear. In GW2 there are dynamic events and they operate in a chain of sorts (you complete one it goes away or back a step, if you fail one, it goes to the next step), the things you can do in an area change as well (ie a village gets burnt down, no more vendors until you drive away the raiders).

4. Dynamic Combat - GW2
Warriors have attack chain skills, as you keep using that skill slot it changes into the next skill in that line. Elementalists can change which element they are using on the fly. Everyone can switch weapons in combat (between two sets) and this changes the first 5 skills on your bar. If you get downed you get 5 skills just for that. Skills interact with each other (swing your sword through an allied fire zone and your sword catches fire). There's dynamic grouping so you don't have to party formally to team up against a mob and everyone gets a reward.

5. Lots of lore/storylines - GW2 and SWTOR
Only a little bit of lore and story here and there isn't good enough anymore. People want to be involved and invested in the world. Who are the people and NPCs? What do they want? Why do they want these things? What are the events of the world? How and why are they impacting things? What are the fundamental ideas that are in conflict and why?

These things are all that I expect the current gen to have. The first isn't so necessary and is pretty expensive. I'm sure there are more things, I just can't think of them right now.

Those are all the things I want also.

I think voice overs don't have to be extensive, just a few comments here and there. TERA has walls of text for all the mini-quests, but even then, the NPCs still have voices and make little comments whenever selected. Also, for the most part, TERA's story quests are almost all voiced over.

It's weird to see FFXIV fall short in this one aspect since the single-player games have extensive voice overs nowadays, and the cutscenes especially.

On the subject of combat, dynamic combat isn't needed. Guild Wars 2, Age of Conan, and now Blade & Soul use some kind of dynamic hotbar thing. But it doesn't really add much to the combat, I feel. Combat systems that incorporate strategic positioning and active blocking/dodging are systems I would like to see. And this was something FFXIV promised it was supposed to have. Guild Wars 2 and TERA seem to have accomplished a battle system where positioning is half the battle, so to speak. Which I think is more realistic and more representative of Final Fantasy. If you look at the cutscenes, characters are always jumping about and using active blocking abilities (as opposed to just throwing off a Protext and being off on their merry way).

Everything else you mentioned (Dynamic content being the most imperative) are things I want and expect from any MMO that seeks to call itself next-generation.

In line with Dynamic content, I would also like to see games incorporating more player-driven content. Although with dynamic quests, you can change the outcome etc etc., it would be nice if players could change the world in other ways: player housing etc (thinking Star Wars Galaxies here).

[gifthorse]

what scares me in TOR, are lightsabers, In KOTOR and KOTOR II they were nice, plain, simple but nice. THose look like flashlights with the 15$ plastic lightsaber toy sticking out of them. But that was just a digresion.

To stay on topicm FFXIV did one good step towards progressing the genre. as there is almost no loading screen. Still however i would like to be able to progress to different zonres instead to hit exit and emerge in different landscape.
But step in good direction was made.

LOL... no loading screens? Are you serious? How many MMOs have you played to make you think FFXIV was a leader in the field of seamless worlds?

FFXIV fails as a seamless game, compared to MMOs which are ten years older than it and had truly seamless zones.

While I don't think seamless zones are necessary, they do add something to the sense of adventure. They give off a sense of no limits and boundaries.

[Shelia]

The people that are defending FFXIV in it's current state... sorry, but that's quite laughable.

I'll commend SE for trying to be different, but they didn't do it very well. They promised a battle system full of strategy, awesome skills and regimens. What do we get? This:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC5E8kUeyFE
(yes, I'm aware it's a beta 3 video... but it's pretty much the exact same system as retail)
Hitting skills over and over and over and over EVERY TIME to attack. Regimens barely work... if you can figure them out.
If I'm going to be pressing so many buttons, why can't we just make the game like an action MMO and use a controller?

SE is pretty much -known- at this point for their unwillingness to change. Most of the FF's in terms of combat are exactly the same (turn-based). It started to change around FF11 and FF12. The combat got a little more action oriented, but for the most part at it's core it's still turn based. FFXIV... I don't even know what it is. It's trying to be action-ish, but it's sort of failing miserably. Hitting the same skills over and over and over and over really gets tedious. It isn't fun at all.

For being a next-gen MMO, FFXIV is pretty terrible. The game feels pretty lifeless. Whenever I watch NPCs or walk around Ul'dah or elsewhere, nothing really moves or talks. They just stand there. Sometimes they'll shuffle or move their hands, but for the most part nothing changes. This is one thing I definitely miss about another MMO I played (will remain unnamed, because it will create bias). Whenever you got close/talked to an NPC they'd greet you with some quirky saying. They didn't just stand idly by, either. They'd bounce up and down, get angry, scratch themselves or look around. They did stuff, and it definitely helped immersion. There would even be NPCs walking around town in some places.

The character creation is also pretty horrible. Four hairstyles for lalafells and highlanders. FOUR. I expected every race to at least have equal amounts of options for hair. Better yet, I expected every male haircut to be available to every race, and every female haircut to be available to every race. The fact that certain things are race locked is really stupid, especially when it would add quite a lot to people's experience just by unlocking that barrier between hairstyles.

The lack of vanilla content is also pretty disgusting. I at least expect to have NPC quests at launch, and -MAYBE- nation rank missions like in XI. They didn't even add in stupid fetch quests/ kill x amount of these quests upon release. the only thing the game had was leves, and those got old very fast.

The game is just overall very drab... It's pretty much nothing I haven't seen before. Even the environments are nothing spectacular. Hell, the races are even recycled! I was expecting much more with these kinds of graphics and the FF artistic team. Sure, the graphics are pretty... but what's it worth if there's never anything to do... or even look at, for that matter?

At least games like SWTOR and Guild Wars 2 are attempting to break the mold. I'd rather try something different than stick with the same 'ol. Sure, GW2's ideas seem very far-fetched... but if they can actually manage to pull it off, it will be a complete turning point in MMO history. I hope it happens. I need something amazing and fun to play.


tl;dr anybody who defends FFXIV blindly at this point

I feel bad for you

[Lamhirh]

As much as i am defending XIV, i dont defent that game is perfect nd such. I deeply believe game is UNFINISHED. It shouldnbt be released for next few months. I consider this what whe have now real open beta. However things what i defend are combat system, which i really like and enjoy ( andf no, its nots spamming same skill. learn 2 play if you do) and classes system ( becouse now i can be anything i want to be. I love freedom, and sandbox feelingin my games and ill defent that till last pixel of blood in my mi'qote.

However this topp[is is not discussion aboutstate of FFXIV, but general discussion of what we expect from modern MMO.