I got an email recently asking me to sign-up for the reboot beta. Has anyone been following what's gone on with this game? My understanding is they nuked the previous game and set it a few years ahead. Just how much has actually changed (other than scenery), I don't know. For those who need a refresher on how bad the initial release was, read the first post in this old thread.
played the alpha, do generic quest -> level... still limiting leavequest(random quest) you can do per day, but they added a bunch of normal quest as well so you can level off those too, not sure how well it's gonna help since player can potentially level a lot of different class at same time, so you might ran out of quest after doing them with first couple classes. it might be more polish and accessible compare the original FF14, but I think it might be too little too late, they probably will pick up the hardcore FF people(assuming they don't just stick to FF11), but nothing to see here..
I will say that the trailer for the reboot is one of the most gorgeous cinematics I have ever seen associated with an MMO. (And longest! Almost nine minutes!)
They changed a bunch of things during the game's initial lifespan (after they canned the original dev leadership), but ended up scrapping the entire thing for this 2.0 attempt. From what I've seen it will be FF-flavored but nothing revolutionary for the MMO genre. I signed up for the beta out of curiosity (I never played the original release), but I think Idris is right that this may be too little too late, in terms of salvaging more than a niche playerbase. I think their insistence in keeping it sub-to-play won't help, either. I'm willing to give it a fair try anyway, though.
I prefer the shorter version that ends with them being teleported away, but yes, gorgeous and a great atmosphere.
I will admit, I had kind of written FF14 off... until I watched that cinematic a few months ago, and then I read all the letters from the producer and realized holy crap, he gets it. Now I am signed up to the beta and am waiting with a kind of fanboi glee I haven't felt since - well, since MoO3 came out and destroyed my ability to experience hope in relation to a video game. Of course, I am right in FF14's target demographic; about seven minutes into that video I'm going "FUCK YES - ODIN!" while I'm sure a large number of other people are muttering "what is this JRPG bullshit I am watching?" So I cannot write about this without getting lost in the nostalgia fog. I will TL;DR myself to just: I am anxiously awaiting the release of this product and hopeful for its success. It will be a niche game, but fuck, this is my niche, let me crawl in.
That is the worst trailer I've seen for a long time. Every company involved in its creation should go out of business, and everyone who finds it inspiring should have a moment of clarity where they stop eating paint chips and acknowledge that self-indulgent false advertising is, in fact, no better when it's animated than when it's a bullshot.
I don't mind certain type of CG trailers for games, most of the WoW trailers are awesome, I really enjoyed the Lich King one.
Why? For many games that I play I don't want to know the intricate details of your new gameplay system, and I sure as hell don't want to see footage because nothing is more dull than watching someone else (unless it's with witty commentary) playing a game. I would much rather have a trailer which makes me buy into their world and get to experience the kind of atmosphere and story they're aiming for. I disliked the Dark Messiah demo, bought it after seeing the trailer, and ended up really enjoying it. Trailers of this sort have their place, but they should never be used as a single point of decision unless you're happy taking that risk.
Seriously, CGI game trailers and games that use ? and ! over questgivers heads instead of coming up with something original are starting to become my pet peeves.
If they're your pet peeves then you must really enjoy MMOs as nothing else bothers you. (People getting upset over CGI movies? Really?)
It's not like I RAEG about them but I find them annoying when there's little actual game info released before they put out a 5 minute CGI cutscene that's supposed to get me excited about it when it doesn't actually represent what you can do in the game at all. It isn't unique to MMOs either, so not sure what your comment is supposed to mean.
I don't get upset over CGI in game commercials. But if it's a commercial for a new IP/Game system/Developer and they go heavy on the CGI, it always makes me wonder if the ingame visuals and/or game play are so crappy that they're trying to hide it behind the CGI.
... it's a CG opening video, not a gameplay trailer. Seriously, you've probably seen literally hundreds of these play when you start a new game; they serve no purpose except to be pretty, tell a little story, and set a certain mood. You might want to wind back the hyperbolic fury and the condescension long enough to recognize that you're basically screaming at an apple for not being an orange. Which isn't to say you're wrong about Square-Enix's tendency to release trailers that are staged nonsense. The 2010 E3 trailer was just a mix of CG and in-engine cutscenes, without a speck of actual gameplay to be seen. At the time, this should have come as a dire warning. The official YouTube channel has more in the way of actual game footage, although it's a bit spare and uninspiring since the game is still in alpha. We might see more when the beta starts next week, although I'm not holding my breath.
I'm sick of RPGs especially that show CGI of "awesome" things happening without any intention of integrating them into mechanics. Setting aside my misuse of bullshots, that's what I'm getting at. So no, I'm not winding anything down.
Again, I think you're applying the standard of a gameplay trailer to something that's story focused. I don't think it's unreasonable to use pre-generated movies to show story events in greater detail than the game engine can achieve. If you don't think the event is "awesome" enough to be worthy of the treatment - hey, that's a reasonable opinion. Who cares if a huge dragon kills everyone with fire? You've seen that already, hell, "dragon rearranges planet" is a pretty good synopsis of WoW's Cataclysm expansion. So in a certain light, there's not much new here. Am I correct in thinking you'd prefer something like WoW's earlier CG trailers, where practically everything that occurs in them is something you can do in the game? If you want to be the wizard slinging fireballs from a tower, or the druid turning into a cat and leaping down a waterfall - you can do that in WoW. Judging by that standard, yeah, in this FFXIV video, there's not a lot of gameplay-capable things to be seen - but I think we're running up against some genre conventions. This is a cinematic from a Final Fantasy game, the purpose here is not really to show off game mechanics, it's to illustrate a story event. In this case, the revelation that Dalamud was Bahamut's prison all along and the heroes' plan to save the world (and their improvised backup plan to put Bahamut back in his box) has completely failed. So, to conclude: I think you're raging at something for not fulfilling requirements it was never intended to fulfill, and that calling for the heads of everyone involved and implying that anyone who disagrees is a lead-poisoned invalid is a little beyond the pale.
I'm annoyed at the fact that Squenix is still in business doing the same thing they have always done, but progressively worse. I think their expansion into second-rate MMORPG-from-the-top-down-knockoffs is the only thing that could have been worse from continuing to travel up their collective ass. This trailer is one indicator, albeit a profoundly irritating one, that they continue to learn nothing and that we're going for a victory lap on mediocrity. So my objection is more to the essence of what it portrays and, consequently, those who enable it. That it could pretty much be a trailer for any FF product and convey information about the product no less accurately is just a bonus. Those WoW trailers are fine, I'd never seen them and I only have casual knowledge of the game, but they do seem both accurate and appealing if you're into that. At this point, I can't even say what it is that keeps me masochistically engaged with Square's product line; I really thought they had something worthwhile adapted to their models of gameplay in FF12, and I guess that still has some weight with me.
You do realise that the CGI team has nothing to do with the development side, right? That all that happens is someone storyboards the mini-movie and then they sit down and churn out industry-leading pretty pictures to spec? Anyway, FF12 was terrible; second only to FFXIII in the trainwreck stakes. The last adequate FF was ten, the last good one was nine, and if you want to start pointing fingers about where Square lost their way, start with eight.
I think that's a huge problem, right there in a nutshell, and could just as easily describe their cutscene designers from within the games. X was adequate, IX was fine if a bit of a throwback, and while VIII was rock bottom, VII laid the foundation by being terrible in many ways and then being widely applauded for those especially terrible traits to the point where the entire subgenre was irredeemably warped. XII was an interesting experiment that managed to take many of the more interesting ideas out of MMORPGs, evolve them intelligently, and integrate them into a mechanically interesting singleplayer experience, and that's especially true when it comes to the excellent party AI programming system which other AAA titles have attempted with dismal results(HI DRAGON AGE). The plot and setting were both mediocre to bad, but represented a shockingly small amount of the time I spent with the game, which still had a strangely closed world in the manner of JRPGs but was a step in the right direction. XIII, from what I've seen of my wife playing it since we bargain binned it recently, has some interesting combat ideas that are hostage by the rest of the FF infrastructure, and you can't get away from the horrible story and writing. And you could see the problems a mile away. In a way, it's almost like the CGI department is now in charge of designing a warning label tailored to the amount of bullshit thrown their way by the rest of the company.
Gosh. Final Fantasy XII and XIII are my favorites in the series. *sits in the Bad Wrong Fun corner* Somewhat more seriously, "awesome cut scenes" are a large part of what I'm looking for in Final Fantasy games. If I'm going to take a Final Fantasy MMO seriously as something that's actually part of the series, I would expect to be rewarded with such now and again as part of the basic path of plot. So a big fancy trailer of CGI video going "Look! This is the sort of thing we're doing for atmosphere and plot and character design!" is right up my alley, when it comes to selling me on a game.
In case it got lost in the fist-shaking, I understand that position even if it doesn't do much for me. I think I just got tired of that particular selling point a while back when the upgrades in the visual/storytelling component from game to game seemed primarily cosmetic rather than having the themes and writing evolve much. In that sense, I can definitely see where FFXIII's visual aspect would be a good thing, because it's definitely visually stunning.
That makes sense. And conversely, I would expect some video of gameplay eventually; one becomes suspicious if there's a complete lack of it, much like when all the promo pictures for a game are from the cut-scenes. That's never a good sign.
I can definitely accept "this is symbolic of everything I hate about modern Final Fantasy", because the series has drifted from what it was when we were young and impressionable. That said, I don't know if it's really objectively worse, or if it's just different. We want more FF6, but the series - and presumably the tastes of Japanese youth - has moved on without us. Do we get to yell at its new audience just because they enjoy it? Is their enjoyment of giddy spectacle somehow less authentic than our enjoyment of oddly-translated steampunk? But hey, I don't get to tell you what you're allowed to hate. I'm still hooked in because I am easily moved by pretty graphics and explosions, and because I kind of want FFXI again. I mean, that game beat me black and blue ("Slipped up and died? Two hours of grinding for you! Don't make that face at me, mister, or you can critfail your next synth too!") but there were genuinely wonderful moments in there that no other MMO has really managed to approach since. Also I loved everything about being a Summoner - it was flashy, it was flexible, and it had a careful pace. ARR is adding Summoners as a playable class to FFXIV, so that probably explains a lot of my interest. The class system is also interesting (to me), and might be able to shine if all the other interface and gameplay problems were solved. We'll see; I was looking forward to the original release too, but if I am served the same catastrofuck I got two years ago, I'll be gone again.
SE has posted the benchmark for ARR, if anyone wants to give it a whirl: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/benchmark/ (note: ~450mb download) Mostly an interesting showcase of character animations, spell effects, and new character models. Nothing really blew me away (except the monk, who is constantly doing crazy fighty acrobatics in the background as if it meant nothing). I'm pleased to note it ran much, much better than the original FFXIV benchmark, which chugged awkwardly while just showing some dull people in drab clothing sitting around a bar. This one flies easily through scenes of catpeople shooting dragons in the face with laser arrows. So that seems to have improved. You'll want to mess with the settings, it looks drab and plastic at the default of "medium". I found enabling "increase the quality of lighting effects" made the largest difference in terms of apperance, but YMMV. Displays in windowed mode only for whatever reason. Probably more a marketing tool than an honest test of the engine on your hardware, but there it is. I liked it and found it encouraging, but: local squealing fanboy.
5438 at maximum quality with my mostly old machine (recently changed cards to a gtx 650 after the 8800 died). That's a major improvement over the old benchmark, which I think I got maybe 1200 on with whatever its default settings were. I haven't seen much of a performance gain with my new card in other games, so I don't think it's playing much of a hand with this benchmark.
Oddly enough i think their older engine produced better visuals (and while running on lower settings compared to maxed out demo) but that'd probably explain the difference in performance. In any case it confirmed i'm pretty much done with the "fights" boiling down to everyone standing in one spot and producing intense showers of particles in different colours for a few minutes until one side falls over.
I've always liked turn-based combat (I'm a dinosaur, I know) so I don't really mind non-actiony combat if there some strategy involved (which doesn't mean 'spam your optimum dps/heal/aggro rotation). A lot of time that IS all it is, though. I'll reserve judgment until after I get a hands-on tryout of the game.
I think Beta start on monday, I apparently got in the beta, so will have some more feedback next week..
I didn't get picked for this round of the beta, so I'm not 100% sure, but I think this phase is covered by an NDA - so idris_z may not be able to tell us much.
Beta NDA never stopped anyone. server is super laggy at moment, there are so many people in the tree town. same 3 classes from Alpha, conjurer/lancer/archer, but now you can choose all of the races instead just human and cat. that's about as far as I get since the ping is like 5000...
It ends up looking like the girl in that picture is rolling her eyes at the ping number above. How appropriate.
