FFXIV 2.0 Screenshots from E3

[Kurokikaze]

More than content, finding people to do it with is the hardest thing. Then after you find those people, you gotta pray they have half a brain (or the patience to wipe until you get it right).

Tall order if you ask me.

Finding people - ok that can only be fixed by the game becoming successful.

Finding competent people - this is an issue that plagues all games. I will say this though... players I've ran into in FFXIV are far less competent than random players I encountered in WoW. At least in WoW I could get a random group and clear dungeons and some raids. I've had very little luck with this in FFXIV. And no - Ifrit/Garuda/Moogle/DH/CC/AV are not harder than most encounters found in Heroic Instances.

[miokomioko]

Constant minimum party-size requirements to even attempt content is what annoys me the most.

I wish for content that scales in difficulty and rewards depending on the size of your party.
Low-man if you just need the wins and basic rewards, full party if you want the good shit.

For example: As a Lv.50, why the shit do I need another person with me to allow me entry to a dungeon where I can almost one-shot the hardest boss? WHY.

[Kurokikaze]

Constant minimum party-size requirements to even attempt content is what annoys me the most.

I wish for content that scales in difficulty and rewards depending on the size of your party.
Low-man if you just need the wins and basic rewards, full party if you want the good shit.

For example: As a Lv.50, why the shit do I need another person with me to allow me entry to a dungeon where I can almost one-shot the hardest boss? WHY.

Wholeheartedly agree. Thats such a fucking cockblock. I don't need another person to farm seals in Totorak but for some reason I can't enter without one. Stupid design decision that I hope they get rid of. You should be free to enter any instance/raid solo and get your ass kicked.

I hope someone asks about dynamically scaling content in one of these interviews. Thats definitely something I wanna see. Open world boss that scales in difficulty the more people are in the area. With loot and progression for everyone, not one lucky person from the bunch.

I bet what they didn't want was people going in solo to farm early chests. So they add an artificial cockblock.

[Waraji]

For those still confused about wtf Luminous has to do with XIV - it was mentioned a couple of months ago (will not bother to look it up) that 2.0's engine was being designed by the Luminous group within SE's XIV department. Logically it will not utilize the extreme amount of graphics in that video, but it is being tailored specifically by the Luminous group For an MMO game, as is XIV atm.

[Kurokikaze]

Random - I'm surprised that haven't outed Gilgamesh yet... You KNOW hes gonna be a boss in the game, more so now since Yoshi-P admitted that hes doing fan service with this game. He'll probably be a Colosseum boss. Whatever Grand Company takes control of the contested territory has a chance to challenge Gilgamesh before the next battle starts.

Obviously this better come with a remix of Clash on the Big Bridge.

[Patriarch]

They just need more content, period.

This.

I quit playing cause there isn't shit to do.

More content please.

[Corrderio]

Finding people - ok that can only be fixed by the game becoming successful.

Depends on the content. If there are things like group based storyline missions again, population won't matter worth a damn.

[Takiwaki]

This.

I quit playing cause there isn't shit to do.

More content please.

Here lies the largest problem facing most MMOs, its not the lack of content is the fact the the game is genuinely not fun and everything we do ingame is basically a chore towards some goal or reward, and so we treat it like a job, get it done get your money and leave.

If the game was anywhere near fun such as the basic battle system, or the content was actually enjoyable then people will still play and enjoy doing the same shit over and over.

I hear everyone needs content but really, is that the real issue?

Also to add for some reason most devs shoot themselves in the foot by adding "temporary content" they seem to always add shit that will be outleveled, our underpowered, within a period of time, be it zones, equipment, skills. Its stupid that its still being done.

[Alkar]

Well the content is temporary in XIV because the game is getting overhauled in a few months. We need to wait for 2.0 and see what happens after that.

[Sephiroth]

Lack of people is why I can't be arsed to play any more. All too often I found myself sitting around doing fuck all for most of the night/weekend until people signed on and even then I wasn't guaranteed a group due to the 8 or nothing limitation. My PC is fairly shitty so I don't like leaving the game running in the background until something happens. Building a new one this month so that may become a viable option.

Content that scales is needed. You shouldn't be left doing fuck all because there's only 6/12 people online in your linkshell. Content should be designed with 16 people in mind and it should be just as difficult with 8, 6, 12 or whatever you feel like doing (perhaps 4 minimum) with the same rewards. That way you can form two groups of whoever is available and split them as you need. No forced multiples of 8 or nothing shit. It can't be that difficult to design a dungeon to spawn more or less mobs or give the boss more/less HP/stats based on the number of entrants.

I think SE is making a mistake making levelling too easy too. At least it was something to do in the down time. When the cap goes up to 55 or 60 I'll have something to keep me busy when no one is online. Crafting to sell shit should be made worthwhile too. Gil is completely worthless. Even then people only buy consumables, I've had double melded gear rotting on my retainer since last year because people don't buy it. That's when I gave up on crafting.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Well the content is temporary in XIV because the game is getting overhauled in a few months. We need to wait for 2.0 and see what happens after that.

That's the slippery slope I'm afraid the devs will fall into though. It's reasonable to assume that everything up to 2.0 is just patchwork, but what if this is truly a vision of the future? It would suck, just while looking prettier.

[Croy]

Lack of people is why I can't be arsed to play any more. All too often I found myself sitting around doing fuck all for most of the night/weekend until people signed on and even then I wasn't guaranteed a group due to the 8 or nothing limitation. My PC is fairly shitty so I don't like leaving the game running in the background until something happens. Building a new one this month so that may become a viable option.

Content that scales is needed. You shouldn't be left doing fuck all because there's only 6/12 people online in your linkshell. Content should be designed with 16 people in mind and it should be just as difficult with 8, 6, 12 or whatever you feel like doing (perhaps 4 minimum) with the same rewards. That way you can form two groups of whoever is available and split them as you need. No forced multiples of 8 or nothing shit. It can't be that difficult to design a dungeon to spawn more or less mobs or give the boss more/less HP/stats based on the number of entrants.

I think SE is making a mistake making levelling too easy too. At least it was something to do in the down time. When the cap goes up to 55 or 60 I'll have something to keep me busy when no one is online. Crafting to sell shit should be made worthwhile too. Gil is completely worthless. Even then people only buy consumables, I've had double melded gear rotting on my retainer since last year because people don't buy it. That's when I gave up on crafting.

Yeah convenience is the biggest issue with FFXIV for me right now, and I actually have plenty of friends to play with. I really don't think the 8 or go home part is going to stick around in 2.0 or at least I hope not. I see it largely a problem with the current server architecture, they even said the original reason they did it 8 or nothing for raids was because of instanced server capacity and they wanted to cut down the amount of people opening up new instances by making sure each one had the maximum amount of people. The other issues include the loot system, party search and invite is still broken along with a whole host of other communication issues. The instances we have right now (including Hamlet I might add) seem almost tailor made for group finder system. But yeah scalability is certainly what I would prefer they work on instead. The funny thing is they already have content in game that does scale for party sizes so its not like they have that much of an excuse. Behest dynamically scales based on the highest level party member and how many are signed up for the event.

[Alkar]

That's the slippery slope I'm afraid the devs will fall into though. It's reasonable to assume that everything up to 2.0 is just patchwork, but what if this is truly a vision of the future? It would suck, just while looking prettier.

I think Garuda kinda proves that the current endgame content is nothing but a test and most bad systems are there just to keep us playing. Had they implemented something similar for Ifrit, Moogle and the raids from the get-go all of those would be obsolete and abandoned by now. Not to mention primal fights are getting a new purpose come 2.0 and everything will be updated as well.
Heck all of the dungeons save for CC will need to be changed because their gimmicks and storyline revolve around the Seventh Umbral Era storyline that is leading us into 2.0 and will be gone after that.

[Ropeydonkey]

Just poking around since seeing the Luminous vid. I didn't realise they were building a new engine for xiv from scratch... Good effort o.O

"…the current engine like Crystal Tools or the Luminous project, are made more for console games where they’re able to show the greatest level of graphics in a passive environment whereas an MMO is an active environment where, while you still want it to look beautiful, you also have many many people coming together in the same world.

You have something like MW3 ( Modern Warfare 3 ) where the graphics are beautiful but what would happen if you had like 3 or 400 people on the screen at once. Would the engine be able to handle that?

So what we wanted was something that could handle more of an active gameplay that we’re aiming for but also be able to provide beautiful graphics and landscapes. We found that Crystal Tools and Luminous would not be the optimal solution for this so that’s why we’re going to develop our own.

One of the reasons we had some trouble with the original launch of FFXIV was because we went through Crystal Tools and it was an engine that wasn’t really optimized for an MMO and so we’re currently working with technologists that are working on Luminous to make us a custom, optimal engine that will work for FFXIV.”

http://thesilentchief.com/2011/10/19...l-fantasy-xiv/

As for thinking it'll be shit like before; anyone who played in the Alpha must've been secretly/openly worried. It clearly wasn't going to be ready in time but Yoshi's been there of there abouts the whole way on the dev schedule since taking over.

There's so much to like about these screens <3 - can't wait for that 'flood' of info come August!

I believe.

[Valacirca]

Random - I'm surprised that haven't outed Gilgamesh yet... You KNOW hes gonna be a boss in the game, more so now since Yoshi-P admitted that hes doing fan service with this game. He'll probably be a Colosseum boss. Whatever Grand Company takes control of the contested territory has a chance to challenge Gilgamesh before the next battle starts.

Obviously this better come with a remix of Clash on the Big Bridge.

One of FFXI's biggest failures was completely wasting the potential for a Gilgamesh battle for practically no reason.

[Kurokikaze]

One of FFXI's biggest failures was completely wasting the potential for a Gilgamesh battle for practically no reason.

Haha yeah. Was disappointed when he was just simple pirate in Norg.

[Corrderio]

Oh god I totally forgot about that.

[Alkar]

I'm sure Yoshi-P won't disappoint there. We already got Typhon lol.

[Burningthought]

I haven't seen it yet but here's the famitsu interview: http://andriasang.com/con1d3/ffxiv_interview/

One area that Final Fantasy fans in particular can look forward to is the inclusion of many fan service elements in Version 2.0. Yoshida personally feels that FFXIV should be a fan service title. They're adding elements from past FF games, recreated with FFXIV-level graphics and in the FFXIV world style. As an example, you'll find a Crystal Tower in Version 2.0. This, of course, is from Final Fantasy III. The Mado Armor (Magitek Armor) that appears in Version 2.0 is pretty much the same design as that of FFVI. He also said to expect an Ivalice and the FFXIII world in FFXIV form. Yoshida hopes that this type of fan service gets players excited as they wonder what game's "essence" will next be added to FFXIV.

EDIT: Andriasang kinda summed up everything but didn't go into too much details. If you can read moonsquiggles check out the famitsu article: http://www.famitsu.com/news/201206/07015922.html

EDIT2: After some more searching Reinheart (The unofficial official fan translator on the OF is translating the famitsu article completely. He's not 100% finished yet though.): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...3AA/edit?pli=1

[Jamison]

I don't remember specifics on chocobos being mentioned yet:

People play MMOs in different ways, especially ones who play on a console like the PS3, he reminded us. Some want to play them like a single player game, with storyline and enviroment providing incentive to spend hundreds or even thousands of hours in game. Other players, he said, want to stray far from the specific story and work on crafting, raise Chocobos, or do side quests. Players will be able to train their own Chocobos from birth and give them unique abilities for taking a support role in the game, like a mage chocobo or an item-storage chocobo. Other players might want to simply visit friends, hang out, or create and manage guilds.

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