Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

**Lucavi** · 2011-01-22 19:40

^ Same here. That's fucking memorable.

**The Q** · 2011-01-22 20:08

Ok. Here's a complaint that's different from any I've seen so far. First you'll need to watch these two videos. Be warned that if you don't want parts of the last available mission spoiled DO NOT watch them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z83ZiqzTREk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQft48GHzec

Going to spoiler my complaint out of courtesy...

Spoiler: show

**Lucavi** · 2011-01-22 20:14

Everyone knows swords beat guns, so no worries. Just look at Cloud and Lightning and all the others.

I did see that "final fight", and yeah, that guy looks like Darth Vader + a Judge from FFXII. Guns and shit vs our puny fists and magic.

Edit: No problem though, as we'll never be able to engage in any of those fights unless we've got NPCs doing all the work for us. Can't have the crafters feeling shafted, now can we?

**The Q** · 2011-01-22 20:24

I think what bothers me most is the presence of a straight up fucking SPACE SHIP.

I'm literally shaking my head in real life here.

**Kaylia** · 2011-01-22 20:29

Originally Posted by Alderaan

I'm surprisingly rather enjoying LOTRO now myself. The world is amazing and i know exactly where i am at any time without having to look at the map due to landmarks and areas that stand out.

Not to mention the world is huge without being too annoying to navigate. There is a good balance between instant horse ride (or teleport), normal horse ride, and walking. Out of the 12 zones I explored/quested in, only two of them left me underwhelmed (angmar, and half of northdown), but I enjoyed almost everything else.

My screenshots folder speak for itself. In LoTRO, I have well over 200 screenshots of different locations, in FFXIV, I have a bunch of differents outfit (armor design is great) and an handful from the first 10 min spent in every zone.

And to anyone who havent seen lotro, here is four different pictures took within 30sec of the same location

Spoiler: show

Want to go beyond these mountain? Just hop on your horse and head there

Spoiler: show

Add another 5-10 minutes and you will pass by a glacier, volcanic water/geyser (no screenshot), and eventually reach the northern sea

Spoiler: show

In the end, after a trip that lasted 15-20 minutes, I passed by 5 towns/encampment that fit with the environment, and saw a bunch of completely different landscape with relatively decent transition between them. And this is only 1 region and half.

While questing in itself isn't great, that alone made me look forward these zone a lot.

Same thing on the other side of the world (15 minutes and one region and half). I start in trollshaw, then move to Elrond's valley, and eventually get to Misty hill and enter one of the many dungeon.

Spoiler: show

Originally Posted by Hyan

The world was the best part of LOTRO for sure. Of all the wow clones I've played (including wow itself), I had the most fun in that game. But I still felt like I was always alone. It gets boring as fuck.

The intros were also particularly impressive.

You will meet people at 40+ when quests get too hard to solo. I teamed up a few time before that for dungeon and random stuff.

I'm sure there is an active community once you reach endgame too. People I met in that game were usually very nice, and most encounter were quite similar to the one I had in FFXIV so far.

**jPuff** · 2011-01-22 20:38

Originally Posted by Yoli

And I genuinely like how it maintains some diversity of pricing - I hated how powercrafters/rmt/etc would just drive regular AH prices in xi. Or how undercutters could semi-permanently alter the prices on things because they were lazy and wanted a quick sale. So I think the market wards had the potential for some very real upsides, which just got lost in a completely shoddy implementation.

Totally. As bad as the economy is, I love how I don't have to worry about if my prices are too low and ruining the market for certain items (the few left worth crafting, anyway) among other things. This is one thing that worries me about the future implementation of an AH. I don't trust S-E to put in a system that curbs these negative aspects. In my opinion, they are far worse than the wards we have currently. It's really too bad they fucked up the wards so bad, because now anything less than a clone of the FFXI AH is just going to get blasted.

**Kaylia** · 2011-01-22 21:30

Originally Posted by Yoli

Definitely agree with this. The market wards were a really neat idea imo, but the majority of people would certainly rather have a less neat idea that's more convenient. I wonder if people would have liked the market wards more if they'd come with a search function at the start though. The bad experience of months w/o one leaves a pretty bad taste in the moth, but it's honestly not /that/ hard to find what I want now that a search is in. And I genuinely like how it maintains some diversity of pricing - I hated how powercrafters/rmt/etc would just drive regular AH prices in xi. Or how undercutters could semi-permanently alter the prices on things because they were lazy and wanted a quick sale. So I think the market wards had the potential for some very real upsides, which just got lost in a completely shoddy implementation.

Honesly, I don't think a search would have helped much. Simply looking for an item (or any upgrade) mean wasting 10-15 minutes of your time, and it often lead to frustrating situation (overpriced shit). This isn't the kind of thing I (or most player) want to deal with on a daily basis.

The whole thing just feel wrong. The moment I enter the market ward, I will be fighting against the mechanics more than anything. Retainers spawn very slowly, you have to run to the other side of the room to input another search, menu are still laggy (despite some improvement), changing area take 10-20 seconds...and the whole thing look completely silly from a role playing standpoint (mindless zombie that face random direction and dispense loot).

Even if the gameplay was as smooth as WoW (instant menu, lot of people on the screen), it wouldn't be fun to hunt for items, and selling would still take an extensive amount of time because the system doesnt encourage people to buy.

I really don't understand why they decided to go with retainers in the first place (other than bank up on "mules"). "Hiding the market" excuse makes no sense

On one hand I totally know what you're talking about and agree. On the other hand - and what puzzles me - is that there actually are some (very few) neat spaces in the world, tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Gridania's zone is awful tunnel, awful tunnel, awful tunnel, really nice lake in the middle of nowhere serving no purpose and out of everyone's way, and then more awful tunnels. But yeah, I agree. The world is overall very lifeless and flat. And I don't think there's much they can do to fix that in the short term at this point - will have to wait for an expansion should they salvage the game (which I'm feeling optimistic about - I like what seems to be going on).

The potential for cool zones is there in the future, if they do pick up on this as a problem. It'd be awesome to have an HD riverne, or HD sky, etc. But the starter zones I guess we're stuck with.

Yeah, I agree there is a few key locations that are very nice (ie: the city shot from far away for one), but they are far too sparse, even compared to FFXI. The second issue is that I can rarely interact with these landmark in a way that satisfy me. You can look, but you can never touch...it's annoying. If I see something big, I want to climb on top of it, if I see a lake, I want to cross it, if a see a huge cliff, I will want to jump off it.

Take the huge mountain you see in Limsa lominsa (is it Ishgard?)...it's pretty neat, but in the end, it's just a big wall paper.

Spoiler: show

It makes a pretty screenshot, but at the same time, that's not exactly what I was looking for here (running toward it was the first thing I did when i logged in the alpha)

New zones might improve the situation (like you said, riverne 2.0 would be amazing!) but I fear this impression is never going to disappears completely with the current gameplay. I don't see how they could fill the current world with something that make it not feel empty.

At this point, I pretty much gave up on the exploration, all I'm hoping is an interesting endgame, but after raiding in WoW for months, they will have to do an awful lot to impress me.

**Kaylia** · 2011-01-22 21:49

Originally Posted by The Q

Kaylia I feel exactly the same as you do on #1. When I look back to FF11 I can remember unique landmarks and points of interest in every single zone I ever visited. Even Gustaberg had many little nuances that I remember and nostalgia hard for whenever I hear that music. Take that hill with the graveyard atop it. When I played the game I thought it was a pretty neat little touch but nothing overly spectacular compared to a lot of other things in the game. If that same landmark were in FF14 it would most likely be the single most interesting landmark in the entire game, mainly because it would damn near be the only one in the game lol. Even then it would probably be blocked off and only viewable from a distance with no known story relation to anything as with every landmark I know of that actually exists in this game.

It's sad when we have zones so huge yet one couldn't tell one end from the other because they are so homogeneous in design.

Yeah, FFXI map design wasnt bad at all most of the time. Even if some zone were generic, they were too small for repetitiveness to become an issue. I mean, no one liked Dangruff Wadi, but it's not like you would spend weeks in it either, and crossing it take 3minutes top.

Originally Posted by The Q

Gusgen mines scared the shit out of me. Not going to lie.

Yeah. I loved that a lot the first time.

That said, a 2010 games would need a little more than that to impress me.

Originally Posted by The Q

What. The. Fuck. What the hell is with the technology gap between the Garleans and the people of Eorzea? It's not even some kind of generational gap or something that could be explained away by distance. No this is fucking super future hi-tek laser guns and space ships shit vs our medieval swords and sorcery and primitive (comparatively and guessing since we haven't actually SEEN them) airships. I remember in early previews the devs mentioned something about not wanting there to be high-tech stuff that's out of place compared to the normal world like in XI but have more of a modern fantasy. Then we get this which seems to be EXACTLY what they said they did not want to have. This is like Mass Effect coming to fight Final Fantasy 1. I just don't.... understand.

My roommate had an interesting theory though it will never happen: The entire game up to this point has been a ruse. Just some kind of beginner/tutorial area leading up to some warp into the future or wherever where the real game, which is completely different than everything we've experienced thus far, takes place.

I really just cannot wrap my head around the disparity of technological levels and have no idea what they were intending with such an opposition. I mean it's practically Darth Vader shooting lasers and shit and I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg. What are we supposed to do just go up and punch him or or or SHOOT HIM WITH AN ARROW!?

They got some 'splainin' to do.

Technology gap is fairly common in the FF series. Lunarian in FF4, the empire in FF6, midgar versus the world in FF7, Esthar in ff8, Terra in ff9, the empire in ff12.

Where they want to go with this exactly...I don't know, and maybe it's hinted somewhere in the lore, but there is many possibilities. Eorza could be an experiment controlled by the Garlean, maybe Cid started working for them 30 years ago, etc...

They might be saving Garlean's country for a future expansion, but considering we havent seen everything in eorza yet, it can't be a simple "tutorial".

**Lucavi** · 2011-01-22 22:15

I fully look forward to more invisible walls and unreachable areas when we get to "explore" the Garlean mothership.

**The Q** · 2011-01-22 22:18

Originally Posted by Kaylia

Technology gap is fairly common in the FF series. Lunarian in FF4, the empire in FF6, midgar versus the world in FF7, Esthar in ff8, Terra in ff9, the empire in ff12

Yeah and it worked for those games. Don't know how/if it can work in an MMO though. Time will tell. I mean that stuff LOOKED cool in the cutscenes but once again it's a matter of look, don't touch. Also the tech gap displayed here is, except for maybe the FF4 example and even then we only got an airship as example and they were a long gone race, the biggest I've seen yet. At least in so far as two societies that cohabit the same planet.

**miokomioko** · 2011-01-23 00:17

I'm curious as to how the (often ignored/shrugged-off) technology gaps would be treated any different in an MMO?

**solracht** · 2011-01-23 00:30

His rant made me think of this (WoW-related): http://lorelol.ytmnd.com/

**The Q** · 2011-01-23 00:40

Originally Posted by miokomioko

I'm curious as to how the (often ignored/shrugged-off) technology gaps would be treated any different in an MMO?

Maybe it's just me that's shocked at the premise of fists and swords vs laser guns, nukes, and space ships. The stuff looks so futuristic and out of place next to everything the players encounter and use regularly. There's no mid-way, just one extreme against another.

**Kaylia** · 2011-01-23 02:06

Originally Posted by The Q

Maybe it's just me that's shocked at the premise of fists and swords vs laser guns, nukes, and space ships. The stuff looks so futuristic and out of place next to everything the players encounter and use regularly. There's no mid-way, just one extreme against another.

Well, the whole premise of the game is based on the Garlean empire obliterating a city 15 years ago, and you can see the technology gaps in the intro CG. I can't talk about a "shock" with all the foreshadowing. That's pretty much what we should expect from the game!

The contrast between medieval and futuristic stuff is usually very interesting. FF game did it to some extent before, but other series like Starocean push it even farther, and a couple of book I read before did something similar as well (Margaret Weis's Darksword saga). I'm glad they are doing it because it makes good story imo, but it wont be the first case of sword vs laser guns and space ship.

**solracht** · 2011-01-23 02:10

I didn't watch the videos, but... is there actually a spaceship or is he just freaking out over the looks of the Garlean airships?

Likewise, are there actually lasers or is he talking about the gunblades?

**Kaylia** · 2011-01-23 02:29

They are "airships" (even if they look like space ship by sci-fi standard), but his point was about the technology gaps between both nation more than anything, and it's hard to argue there is none.

The "judge" guy has a gunblade, but he shoot energy from his right hands (that could very well be magic though)

**Hiroishime** · 2011-01-23 02:46

i watched the trailer again, i guess i was too amazed with the CG details and didnt think further about the technology gaps, but its definitely there.. air fights, airships, gatling guns, big creature-like-ship that fall down from the sky.. it MIGHT makes a good story me thinks.

**Hyan** · 2011-01-23 04:34

I'm quite glad we got a new art director for the (possible) expansions. Akihiko Yoshida pretty much failed in this game as far as most areas go. Especially if we'll see something more hi-tech at some point.

To be fair, there's a lot of alone time in this game as well, and that's without having such an expansive world.

And that's what they should be fixing. World like this is fine if there is something to make up for it.

**Corrderio** · 2011-01-23 05:29

Originally Posted by Hyan

I'm quite glad we got a new art director for the (possible) expansions. Akihiko Yoshida pretty much failed in this game as far as most areas go. Especially if we'll see something more hi-tech at some point.

It would be nice if he'd give redoing outdoor zones a shot to make them look a lot better, but the thought of how big of an update that would be makes me shudder.

I'd still say if they'd tone the graphics down a bit for the sake of not having to rely on copying terrain over I'd say go for it, but that would be even a larger update. At which point I'd think they'd ask us to turn in our current game discs and they'd replace them with new ones.

**Hyan** · 2011-01-23 05:53

I'd still say if they'd tone the graphics down a bit

Eww. Just make the zones smaller if it comes down to it. Although they'll learn to use their tools better, so it should be a vanilla problem if anything.

Thread: Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

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