Comments from the Devs

[Cichy]

I'm more concerned at how big of a download it will be with how shitty of a download system SE has.

I'm assuming that if you're not home to start the patch the moment it hits you will have to wait till week after to get it.

[Lucavi]

Yeah, you'd be downloading about a 5th of the game at this point. God, that's going to be awful.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

This was posted in response to asking about support for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11, specifically. When taking into consideration the performance of the PlayStation 3 version, we currently have no plans of supporting DirectX 10/11. However, in the event that large changes or alterations take place to the graphics, or if DirectX 10/DirectX 11 continue to grow in popularity, we will begin to support them.

Someone just started a fire.

[Corrderio]

With some of these recent rep responses I swear Tanaka is still in charge but using Yoshida as a sock puppet.

[Siatdiat]

With some of these recent rep responses I swear Tanaka is still in charge but using Yoshida as a sock puppet.

This has been my view for a few months now.

[Lucavi]

I fully expect an appearance by Tanaka Troll Dad.

[Kaylia]

you just described TERA

Didn't read anything about Tera. Will be interesting to see if its like this.

The trouble with your example is that the exp given was considered too low for the time/effort involved; it was something that no one I knew paid any attention to. It's a bonus, but I can't see it becoming the main way people level in this, or any other game

Who said to uses the same xp reward? This kind of shit is so easy to balance if you want to control the xp gain and leveling rate.

Design the zone with the average of fight an average they will be forced to do, gives X xp reward per quests, and Y for completing the big objective.

Perhaps; but I doubt they will. What kind of repeatable quests could you design that would let you mainly level through them? I imagine they would end up looking a lot like "kill X mobs. Fetch X item". Oh look, Leves. WoW's quests, which are often held up as an example of "levelling through questing" are basically just focusing your grinding with a bonus at the end; people argue that they introduce you to the lore of the world and such, and frankly, Leves have that potential too. Just a shame the execution has been lacking.

Is it me or players who played FFXI too long lost any kind of imagination.

Of course, quests centered around killing are the easiest one to implement, but nothing stop you from implementing puzzles, minigame, side boss (that reward everyone in the party even if one person spawn it), fetching quest that are on your way.

As long you design the quests intelligently, you can control the flow for everyone.

[Kurokikaze]

Is it me or players who played FFXI too long lost any kind of imagination.

It's not just you. lol When all someone knows is that then everything has to work like that or similar. Deviation from the norm means failure even if that deviation has been tried, tested, and proven to succeed.

Lemme show you some innovative (tribute/joke) quests that were added to WoW with Cata:



It's not all about killing x mob here and collecting y there. Every once in a while you throw in a group quest or something completely out of the ordinary (like above) that breaks the monotony and makes people smile/have fun. It is a game after all. The way I see it; Quests should be a distraction from the grind while essentially being a grind itself.

Katamari shit had me dying when I did it. Was like wtf.

[Cichy]

You know SE doesnt want us to do anything fun, if they did they'd provide us with costumes to dress up as a favorite FF char for hallowen or something like that so players can have fun.

[Kurokikaze]

Btw this was not posted and its actually fairly important:

Greetings everyone,

I apologize for the delay in getting a comment to you all about this. We are aware it is a hot topic in the forum, but it’s one that is difficult to provide a satisfactory comment on. Firstly, I want to bring attention to the following comment was posted by Yoshida on the Japanese forum back in March:

Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida
Hello! This is producer/director Yoshida.

I appreciate you bringing up your concerns in regards to the map.
Just like you, I am keenly aware of the concern, and even though it is going to be a lot of work, we are drawing up plans for a proper rebuild. However, as you have all pointed out already, these fixes are related to the core of the game itself, so it is going to require quite some time.

Therefore, we are also making long-term plans alongside of this to alleviate the current map collision in a step-by-step fashion. This is an answer to the fundamental structure of the maps as well as the specs as a whole, so please note that the level design of a single area as well as other things are included in this.
We brought up the concerns being presented by the community, as well as the comment made above, to Yoshida again today.

In regards to the overall direction, he said that nothing has changed and he is still dedicated and moving forward with the edit work.

Next, in regards to the main focus of this thread, that the game is just a single area filled with monsters of different levels; the necessity to revamp this has not changed and we feel stronger than ever that along with the edits, each area should have its own specific theme.

However, as stated by Yoshida in the comment before, please understand that there is a large amount of work to be done and it will take some time before we can even share the information with you. Once the new designs start to take shape, we will make it our top priority to share them with you.

This is in regards to leveling from 1 to 50 in the same fucking zone. Talking about giant zones like La Noscea. Not talking about this gem that was posted in that thread:

http://seahorror.com/happyparade.jpg

Also clarification for yesterday because it wasn't obvious enough:

While I can't offer too many new details, another thing I wanted to clarify about the upcoming job system; jobs won't be unlocked at rank 50, but when leveling a class up and it hits a certain rank you'll be able to unlock the related job.

My moneys on 20 cause it just makes sense.

[Cichy]

I doubt they put any serious work into the areas till after the summer if the updates are well recieved.

[Lucavi]

Just give me some fucking decent combat. Everything else can wait. I want to have fun keeling things, even if it is nothing but crabs and shit. We all had fun in XI killing crabs for 60 levels, remember?!

[Kurokikaze]

Reading the OP in that thread... My god this is probably one of the best suggestions I've seen on those forums. Would take a metric fuckton of redistribution. Also, its what I envisioned the game would look like moving out of beta. I figured high level mobs were in low level areas cause we were confined to La Noscea but... we all know how that turned out.

Here are some images. It's honestly good shit - the OP is Siobu go thumbs up if you like:

http://img40.picoodle.com/i56a/ccf18/s2p9_715_uceje.jpg
http://www.gwcdn.com/albums/images/4...0a2b004f5e.jpg
http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/4...ceaconcept.jpg

Pipe dreams eh.

[Kaylia]

It's not just you. lol When all someone knows is that then everything has to work like that or similar. Deviation from the norm means failure even if that deviation has been tried, tested, and proven to succeed.

Lemme show you some innovative (tribute/joke) quests that were added to WoW with Cata:
]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dsck5U-0Vg[/video]
;F_XdgPlK5uo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_XdgPlK5uo[/video]

It's not all about killing x mob here and collecting y there. Every once in a while you throw in a group quest or something completely out of the ordinary (like above) that breaks the monotony and makes people smile/have fun. It is a game after all. The way I see it; Quests should be a distraction from the grind while essentially being a grind itself.

Katamari shit had me dying when I did it. Was like wtf.

WoW has a ton of over the top quests that most people consider fun, but I can see why other are turned off by that mood.


Lotro is another good example of a games that has very fun quests (at time), but kept a very serious tone. One of the new dungeon they added for example has a bunch of riddles and puzzles, trap floor, and other stuff like this. Another one had platforming elements that werent particularly hard, but could easily kill you if you were careless. A 3rd one has a light beam puzzle similar to zelda game.

The games doesnt have the fluidity of WoW, but I sure have a lot of fun doing some of these quests and dungeon.

[Lucavi]

Shit, even AoC has puzzles and traps in their dungeons, and nobody plays that game save for those that demand bare tits in their games.

[Kurokikaze]

The games doesnt have the fluidity of WoW, but I sure have a lot of fun doing some of these quests and dungeon.

Did you do the Super Mario part of Heroic Deadmines in WoW? Shit is so fucking lulz.

Friend on vent: Who put this platformer in my MMO!?

[Kaylia]

Did you do the Super Mario part of Heroic Deadmines in WoW? Shit is so fucking lulz.

Friend on vent: Who put this platformer in my MMO!?

Heroic deadmine should start at Cookies and end with Vanessa.

And yes, that part is pretty fun, but kinda short Same deal with the boulder in Zul Gurub, or the ice tunnel from pit of saron last year.

[Kurokikaze]

Yeah I agree. I feel like the entire Deadmine's run should've been like that. Started normal and mildly boring to wtf is going on right now. lol

Never did ZG or Saron. :O

[Gadritan]

My moneys on 20 cause it just makes sense.

I think 30 makes more sense. The dungeons are being designed for 30/50, so 30 is going to be sort of a benchmark level. Not to mention it was the same in that other game.

[Sephiroth]

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/4143/lanosceaconcept.jpg.

Looking at that it seems they could make a huge difference by doing nothing but changing ground textures and adding more variety of grass/plants/rocks/trees. Of course Black Shroud requires a lot more effort. It did make me think how all of La Noscea has cliffs around the sea apart from when you go down to the beach, what's up with that? They should lower some of the land to sea level, maybe even make a beach area like Valkurm near Bloodshore.