Famitsu Interview with Matsui and Saito - Vana'diel Project

[Sechs]

I have no clue what you were trying to say Spira. Mind reformulating?

[Spira]

i was referring to this.

They add flying mounts for no reason other than because wow didn't add them last expansion, not because they think it suits the game but purely to try to attract players a annoyed about no flying in the last wow expansion.

...

Flying mounts are bad but they add them purely because wow didn't and they try to profit of that.

the flying mounts adapted to XIV revolve around the Dravanian dragons who fly, around the floating island areas above the sea of clouds, and will on release be limited to areas in the expansion that is based on the theme of heading to the sky.. with an expansion named Heavensward.

of course theres no other reason to add flying mounts. it has to be because of wow.

also i bet you didn't know wow is the reason for ebon panels as well. its true.

[Dotsudoku]

I know nothing of WoW and it's history with flying mounts, but not being able to use them in any pre-expansion zone is a pretty large limitation, no?

And as far as perspective is concerned, new areas are double the size of existing ones. I have to imagine it's going to alleviate any overwhelming sense of smallness

[Byrthnoth]

I fully expect Heavensward will be a disappointment on release, particularly for hardcore players. It feels they have gone as far as intentionally lowering expectations.

However, I am a noob and have very little invested in the game, so it will be fine for me.

[dasva]

Uh there's a practical use for flying mounts if you can only fly from 1 floating island to another. I sense some degree of twisting the facts to fit your logic

Just warp like in sky!

[Draylo]

I fully expect Heavensward will be a disappointment on release, particularly for hardcore players. It feels they have gone as far as intentionally lowering expectations.

However, I am a noob and have very little invested in the game, so it will be fine for me.

You say the same thing every time. You probably enjoy it for now, keep doing it until it gets boring. Why keep yourself pessimistic when you don't have to?

[Byrthnoth]

I was optimistic for years with FFXI, but then I got better.

[Niiro]

Flying mounts makes the world seem smaller, removes most of the danger, most of the running across people in the open world, and makes you skip most of the areas.

This isn't really a concern for XIV as the open world is already small and not the least bit dangerous >_>

[Sechs]

i was referring to this.

Oh ok, so you were sorta addressing him and not me.

Personally Spira I think all of the things you mentioned could have been performed, from a game design point of view, even without giving players access to a fully controllable flying mount.
Altough I admit the reasons you wrote do make sense, it's more a matter of What came first: the chicken or the egg?
Did they first decided they wanted flying mount for the reasons Rate mentioned, and then they proceeded to create a good place for it? (i.e. lore and gameplay reasons you mentioned)
Is it the other way around?

Personally I think that it would be highly complotistic to say that the reason Rate reported is the only/main one for their choice.
At the same time I think it would be highly naive to think that it didn't have a weight in SE's decision to go on that path.



@Dosudoku
That means nothing imho. It's the typical P.R. sentence that means nothing.
"Double the size of existing ones". Which ones specifically? Because some are really big (like Coerthas), many others are very very small. One of the main disapproval ARR received from fans at launch was exactely that about areas being so small.
So "double the size" alone doesn't really tell us much. I want to see with my own eyes how really that will amount to.
Regardless, I think the size of the zone has very little to do with what we were talking about, unless we're thinking of something REALLY huge, and I mean REALLY. And clearly that's not the case here.
Imho it's more a matter of Flying being a dangerous treshold that, once passed, it's very hard to go back from for Developers, without creating massive drama among players (see WoW).
I don't know what will happen in FFXIV and things don't necessarily have to go the same way, down the same path, but for the time being I'm legitimately concerned about it.

[Psion]

uh, have you even seen the pictures from the update? those zones are MASSIVE. im pretty sure its closer to double the size of coerthas, especially since they said the overall size of the expansion zones is about equal to the zones we have now in 2.0, despite there being less zones overall.

and if they wanted to, they could probably just create monsters/turrets that shoot at flying mounts from far distances, with a chance of knocking you off your mount to your doom. If they wanted to create future zones dangerous even to flying mounts, that is. would force you to make a decision to either land in a safe spot on foot and trek it that way, or risk flying a faster route with the possibility of dying.

It's not like we don't have telepoints anyways. and we have to unlock the ability to fly in each area, which will probably involve a dangerous trek on the ground to the unlock point... probably.

[Dotsudoku]

I thought it was mentioned at some point that flying wasn't a carefree endeavor. Something about being subject to attack in the air. I could be making that up.

[Sho]

I thought it was mentioned at some point that flying wasn't a carefree endeavor. Something about being subject to attack in the air. I could be making that up.

There's nothing stated that that effect. However, they did mention that going into beastman areas as well as a few other areas will now be dangerous if you aggro more than one mob.

[Prothescar]

They did in fact say in one of the live letters that you'll be able to be attacked in the air similarly to how you can be attacked on the ground. I don't remember what the effects of being attacked while flying were, but I expect a snare just like ground mounts get. If the monsters in HW are as dangerous as they say, this can be deadly.

[Viertel]

Imho it's more a matter of Flying being a dangerous treshold that, once passed, it's very hard to go back from for Developers, without creating massive drama among players (see WoW).

Let's be honest: WoW's issue is they're lazy as fuck as developers. TBC, when they introduced flying mounts, they made a token effort in future patches of adding more and more quest hubs and placed that required flying and were still fairly dangerous.

WotLK had a few areas you couldn't get to without them in Icecrown and Storm Peaks, but it was mostly done as a ground mount expansion. Cata, despite adding flying to old world, didn't require flying for anything more than just getting to two raids and a single instance. MoP they didn't even bother trying.

Blizzard's issues with flying is a problem of their own making: laziness and their "less is more" so they don't have to bother actually putting any effort forth. So, instead of actually trying to design content around flying they just decide to utterly remove it going forth and completely piss off a lot of people for removing a core game aspect.

Heavensward isn't some uber MMO of awesomesauce, but at least the flying department the zone designs shows they're at least trying.

[Malithar]

Let's be honest: WoW's issue is they're lazy as fuck as developers. TBC, when they introduced flying mounts, they made a token effort in future patches of adding more and more quest hubs and placed that required flying and were still fairly dangerous.

WotLK had a few areas you couldn't get to without them in Icecrown and Storm Peaks, but it was mostly done as a ground mount expansion. Cata, despite adding flying to old world, didn't require flying for anything more than just getting to two raids and a single instance. MoP they didn't even bother trying.

Haven't played since the end of WotLK, but that was my take on it as well. Areas like Netherstorm and Storm Peaks were made great because of flying. They were developed with it in mind. It really made it fun and adventurous to be able to explore those areas in such a way. I can see where Blizz's logic is coming from for removing flying, but you can't really talk your way out of the fact that they just don't want to develop content around it. Creating artillery in enemy strongholds that shoot you out of the sky for flying in wouldn't be hard, they've had similar things in the game since TBC.

Totally agree with the less is more bit too. From what I read, you'd think Apexis Crystals were your lord and savior if you followed the design of the game now.

[Tarage]

Why are we talking about FFXIV and WoW in the FFXI forum?

[Selamis]

Because someone always manages to bring up XIV and how it's subs are incorrect or the money that it has made SE is a lie, or how SE wants to kill one game to get people playing the other and threads get derailed. Happens even in the XIV section when there is no news to discuss. =/

[Sho]

They did in fact say in one of the live letters that you'll be able to be attacked in the air similarly to how you can be attacked on the ground. I don't remember what the effects of being attacked while flying were, but I expect a snare just like ground mounts get. If the monsters in HW are as dangerous as they say, this can be deadly.

I'm willing to believe there will be a specific height limit where they won't aggro at all, which will also be pretty low off the ground. Otherwise we will be seeing land monsters haphazardly lifting themselves into the sky to bop every passerby that flies overhead.

Why are we talking about FFXIV and WoW in the FFXI forum?

It's going off a tangent, but it's not so big a conversation that it disrupts the flow of the real topic at hand.

Because someone always manages to bring up XIV and how it's subs are incorrect or the money that it has made SE is a lie, or how SE wants to kill one game to get people playing the other and threads get derailed. Happens even in the XIV section when there is no news to discuss. =/

Those points are always silly, but it's fun to read the wacky numbers people come up with to justify their arguments or make fun of others. The truth of the matter however is that they want to focus on XIV and cull what's left of XI and place them in a mobile platform arena. One can only imagine it's a combination of XI declining, XIV doing well, the on-going, saturated MMO market, and SE execs in general wanting to repurpose the XI team for other SE products. To be fair, SE has the money to throw at XI endlessly like they did to revive XIV, but you have to imagine that they looked at the current numbers, projected any future profits, saw it wasn't much, and instead opted to cancel the game into maint mode.

[Prothescar]

I'm willing to believe there will be a specific height limit where they won't aggro at all, which will also be pretty low off the ground. Otherwise we will be seeing land monsters haphazardly lifting themselves into the sky to bop every passerby that flies overhead.

I suspect that we may need to deal with things that aren't just ground monsters. But we'll see, less than a month to go.

[Psion]

Yeah, you could even have flying wyrms or the like patrolling an area of the sky, and even a soft cap on flying height via Midgardsormr blasting anyone that dares come near him in the sky or something.