FFXIV Flame Wars Thread: because ten threads is not enough threads

[Kaylia]

But then again, when it comes to points above you never seem to respond to them, you just ignore them. You only pick things I generalize as an opinion, which is fine to do, but why does it end there?

Because these points can't be addressed directly, they are based on nothing. There is no rational tool against blanket statement.

I simply think this type of game can't achieve a proper sort of exploration (ex. Elder Scrolls) without sacrificing the pace of storytelling at the same time. It's not like this is a "maybe it won't help but won't really hurt either" situation. There is clear disadvantage for a world map and it is in conflict with the general purpose of these games (linear storytelling, no real "sandbox" element).

There is obviously a limit to how much contents you can squeezed into a game, but "freedom" and "storytelling" are not directly proportional. You can have a decent amount of both if you cut something (graphics, gameplay feature...etc), or invest more money (time).

For the pace..why are you even playing ffxiv? You have to wait days, if not weeks to see the next part? Is it that hard to handle?
What's about tv show? Are you trying to kill yourself when you see "in the next episode"? Or when you reach the end of a book and needs to wait 5 more years for the sequel?

I don't think it's a real issue for most people. Maybe it is for you but shit, don't you think this request is a little excessive?.

I demonstrated how they are in conflict. If you like exploration, story suffers. Story is an important part of the franchise, if not the most important. This isn't trivial.

Do you seriously think you demonstrated anything lol?

A story is a story. It doesn't have to be the longest story to be the best. Hell, some game like Xenogears managed to have an absurd amounts of everything (althought, they were too ambitious, it didnt turn out so bad)

[notorious bum]

Man, when I finally got that airship, gold chocobo, found the various easter eggs in FFIX(that pop quiz battle shit? happy, random battles? lol), or when I flew into some new fucking area I had no clue existed in Skies of Arcadia, those were some good times and some of the best kind of replay value in an RPG imo

Fuck your "warp airship to your fav zone" or "choose your destination" alternatives to a world map. Where's the immersion in that?

Isn't FFXIII versus supposed to have a world map with all the bells this time? I might actually play that even if the story sucks.

[Hyan]

There is obviously a limit to how much contents you can squeezed into a game, but "freedom" and "storytelling" are not directly proportional. You can have a decent amount of both if you cut something (graphics, gameplay feature...etc), or invest more money (time).

Of course. FFXII style game works pretty well, but I still think XIII did better (or would have, quality of both stories aside). The story was always the driving factor in XIII, until they came to the more open area.

I don't think pacing can be solved with money or cutting something else. But that's beside the point- "freedom" and "storytelling" are in conflict with each other. Linear games like FF are not really that "free". "Freedom" means the pacing of the story breaks. Why have both subpar, especially when one is clearly more important to the fans than the other?

For the pace..why are you even playing ffxiv? You have to wait days, if not weeks to see the next part? Is it that hard to handle?
What's about tv show? Are you trying to kill yourself when you see "in the next episode"? Or when you reach the end of a book and needs to wait 5 more years for the sequel?

If needed I will just have to wait, but usually in an FF game I expect no "to be continued"-bs. Books and tv pass because they need to make more material, but the game already has all the material and just breaks the pace for no good reason.

Do you seriously think you demonstrated anything lol? A story is a story. It doesn't have to be the longest story to be the best.

No talk about length. It could be 30mins long and still paced horribly. And it does have to be paced well to be the best story.

[Elrina]

Or when you reach the end of a book and needs to wait 5 more years for the sequel?

This is the only part that I'd like to interject about, even though it isn't the main point, simply because I find it more interesting :3

I only know one author that takes that long to write a sequel to a book, and the fact that it takes him so long is retarded. 2 years is probably more average, and easily acceptable time frame for a sequel to be released. Hell, Brandon Sanderson writes like a beast, takes him even less time than that.

I haven't really paid attention to this entire argument (about halfway through I just sorta skimmed to the end), but after the last few posts I think Hyan is right about the fact that television and books have a reasonable excuse for having stories broken up into pieces, considering their time frames. I don't really agree with him as far as how a single RPG should be paced (I happen to enjoy the way those old school FFs were made, 6~9 especially), however pacing is important, and games especially shouldn't be split into parts. There should be no "to be continued". RPGs have no reasonable excuse, unless they're being too ambitious (the original Xenosaga plan comes to mind), and should be able to have a complete story that ends, even if there are aspects of that end that leave room for a potential sequel. Which would be a different story. That also ends.

Edit:

Man, when I finally got that airship, gold chocobo, found the various easter eggs in FFIX(that pop quiz battle shit? happy, random battles? lol), or when I flew into some new fucking area I had no clue existed in Skies of Arcadia, those were some good times and some of the best kind of replay value in an RPG imo

Fuck your "warp airship to your fav zone" or "choose your destination" alternatives to a world map. Where's the immersion in that?

Isn't FFXIII versus supposed to have a world map with all the bells this time? I might actually play that even if the story sucks.

And I agree with this post 99%, with the only exception being that I'll definitely be playing XIII Versus, not just might. And I'll probably enjoy the story even if it sucks. ^^

[Kaylia]

This is the only part that I'd like to interject about, even though it isn't the main point, simply because I find it more interesting :3

I only know one author that takes that long to write a sequel to a book, and the fact that it takes him so long is retarded. 2 years is probably more average, and easily acceptable time frame for a sequel to be released. Hell, Brandon Sanderson writes like a beast, takes him even less time than that.

I think you got it backward. Hyan seem to believe that side-quest/going off track break the pacing. I'm saying he is over-emotional about something that really doesn't matter. I pointed how books and episodic format doesn't hurt the story even if it prevent you from rushing through it.

It's the same deal here. Actually, being able to explore the world on the side usually have positive effect on the player.

original Xenosaga plan comes to mind

Xenosaga was incredibly linear just like FFX and FFXIII. That's one of the reason why most people didn't like it as much as they liked Xenogears.

The reason why it was cut into 3 part is because they could not afford writting such a massive story with current gen graphic, not because they let you go offtrack.

[Elrina]

Well yeah, which is why I said I didn't agree with him about the pacing issues he was claiming. I like being able to sidetrack and wander around exploring, generally, online or off.

And Xenogears was supposed to be the sixth part of a series of 7 stories, with one massive overreaching arch. Originally, Xenosaga was supposed to be 7 games, to fully explore that entire series, and as it progressed the graphics were supposed to gradually become more animated and less CG based and expand further. Like I said, it was too ambitious, and was eventually turned into the set of three games it was. It wasn't originally supposed to just be 3 sequential games, and it wasn't going to stay as linear as it started.

[Kaylia]

Xenogears was part 5 of perfect works (part 1: omega-1/deus creation and end with the eldrige leaving, part2: Cain/abel, part3: Kim, part4: lacan, and part 6:no one know)

Xenosaga was originally supposed to have 3 arc with 2 episode per character (that's 6 games, not 7). First two games were going to deal with Shion's team and Omega creation, and the second arc was most likely going to deal with Abel (it was hinted kinda)

You can tell from the very first trailer how much they had to cut from the games. They basically had episodes 2 ending (omega awakening, Abel) in it. But yeah, like we both said, they were too ambitious (on the graphics imo) and had to restructure the whole thing to lower development cost. If they had aimed for less impressive cinematics, I'm certain they could have created a game as massive as we were hoping for.


In xenosaga case, the issue isn't the episodic format imo, it's the quantity they mananaged to squeeze in every games.


[edit]
Never heard anything about the game not being linear and/or become more animated. The only thing remotely close to this i can remember is Takahashi explaining that it was much harder to make good "anime" model in 3D, not that they would change them.

[Elrina]

Yeah, I screwed that up, you're right. Was fifth out of six, not sixth out of seven. It's been a while, and I never did find a fully translated copy of Perfect Works that I was happy with, although I remember one project working on it that I'd forgotten to check back in on till just now to see if they'd finished it.

Going to go digging for that later tonight. ;3 But yeah, if they hadn't decided to do that weird CG > anime progression throughout the whole thing, and just went with the cheaper art to start with, it's entirely possible they could have gone a lot further along the way of delivering. Man, just thinking about what Xenosaga could have been makes me sad, I remember being so excited when they were first talking about the project.

[Kaylia]

Just take the DS game they made. It had both episode 1, 2, with even more material, and all this done with a really small budget. I'm not saying that game was good, but I'm sure there was an inbetween people would have prefered. Personally, I was just hoping they would finish the goddamn story for once, and for that, they needed better gameplay for people to stick around.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/2995619...7616593453778/
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4772263
You can also read the translation on gamefaqs if you don't care about picture.

There is some very interesting stuff in that book. Same deal with Xenosaga's "perfect works" equivalent if you can find them (episodes 1 and 3 mostly..episode 2 books was kinda lame).


[edit]
I probably enjoyed Xenosaga story more than Xenogears by the end. It's just about everything else that took a hit.

[Zilong]

obligatory xenosaga sucks post from me And let's forget the anime series too, just to remind you of the all encompassing suck that is xenosaga Beside, it may be a good idea to not fucking ditch one of your scenario writer not even halfway to the series if you'd actually expect the damn story to not suck. Though I suppose, judging from the length of episode 2, it is more or less halfway into the series when they gave Soraya the cut

[Lucavi]

Xenogears. God I miss that game. And that music. And dat' Emerelda ass.

[Kaylia]

And let's forget the anime series too, just to remind you of the all encompassing suck that is xenosaga

Persona 3 anime was terrible. I'm not quite sure where you want to go with this. I can probably count on one hand the number of decent game/anime adaption.

[miokomioko]

The first one being:

http://nesbuckle.com/images/users_captainN.JPG

[Zilong]

Persona 3 anime was terrible. I'm not quite sure where you want to go with this. I can probably count on one hand the number of decent game/anime adaption.

Persona 3 anime wasn't exactly based off the game considering the only connection was a cameo by the older yet personaless Akihiko on the latter half of the series . Xenosaga anime in the other hand... In any case, I'm just adding the anime to the shitty side material that came with xenosaga, since you brought up the DS game. And yeah, I'd tap Emeralda, either form

[Elrina]

The first one being:

http://nesbuckle.com/images/users_captainN.JPG

So many good memories of Captain N' <3 I can't think of any other cartoon I enjoyed more when I was a little kid, except for maybe The Legend of Zelda show. It may not seem so now, but they were definitely made up of so much win back then.

[Sign]

DC Universe Online PS3 Beta has started, lets see how another company handles a Cross-Platform MMO. I might check it out.

http://www.gamespot.com/shows/now-pl...online20101207

If anyone wants to see how it plays

[Drakath]

Jesus fuck. FFXIV is making me so angry. We are now approaching 3 months since release and none of the updates (including today's, but I'll get to that) have significantly added any sort of content or playability value. All we ever see are minor tweaks and improvements (of course SP is another story altogether) to this horrendous system, and it's these tweaks that are the meat and juice of the updates. It's never anything to give any incentive whatsoever for the thousands of people who already left to come back. Not saying that the focus should be regaining the people that left, but how the fuck can they possibly hope for newcomers to not do the same thing?
With the amount of hype that has been given to the addition of NMs in today's update, I am absolutely shocked to see that it's targeted entirely towards rank 50. We literally only got what was previewed to us in the Lodestone posts. Nothing extra, nothing for 95% of the FFXIV population which is not rank 50. We only get 4 Rank 50 open world NMs that require 15-man parties, plus the "special" leves. I tried 3 of these and in none of them did we fight an "NM" or get any special items/gear. Like what the fuck is this? I remember updates in FFXI where 100+ new NMs were introduced. I used to think FFXI updates could be mediocre sometimes (and for the last 2 years most of them have been accompanied by a mini-expansion), but FFXIV ones pale in comparison to even the most lackluster FFXI one. Is this there attempt at trying to create "endgame" content people keep expressing desire for? Fuck! This should not be the priority! Make the journey to rank 50 more enjoyable so you actually have people playing the god damn game!



*sigh*

[Cichy]

What he said above. Really fuckin pissed about this update. Colored boxes and shit is nice but asides of leave and behest still nothing to do.
Ohhh and 90% of shit is a reskin again, goblin gladius, goblin longsword, new team better fuckin have some ideas.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Can't even get to rank50 unless you have a stupid leve static with 5+ friends doing only specific leves every reset for like 25k per cycle. Dumb shit.

[Kaylia]

Jesus fuck. FFXIV is making me so angry. We are now approaching 3 months since release and none of the updates (including today's, but I'll get to that) have significantly added any sort of content or playability value. All we ever see are minor tweaks and improvements (of course SP is another story altogether) to this horrendous system, and it's these tweaks that are the meat and juice of the updates. It's never anything to give any incentive whatsoever for the thousands of people who already left to come back. Not saying that the focus should be regaining the people that left, but how the fuck can they possibly hope for newcomers to not do the same thing?
With the amount of hype that has been given to the addition of NMs in today's update, I am absolutely shocked to see that it's targeted entirely towards rank 50. We literally only got what was previewed to us in the Lodestone posts. Nothing extra, nothing for 95% of the FFXIV population which is not rank 50. We only get 4 Rank 50 open world NMs that require 15-man parties, plus the "special" leves. I tried 3 of these and in none of them did we fight an "NM" or get any special items/gear. Like what the fuck is this? I remember updates in FFXI where 100+ new NMs were introduced. I used to think FFXI updates could be mediocre sometimes (and for the last 2 years most of them have been accompanied by a mini-expansion), but FFXIV ones pale in comparison to even the most lackluster FFXI one. Is this there attempt at trying to create "endgame" content people keep expressing desire for? Fuck! This should not be the priority! Make the journey to rank 50 more enjoyable so you actually have people playing the god damn game!

*sigh*

Developper: Players are leaving left and right. We need content now!
Tanaka: Players were entertained for years by 3 NM, let's try this again.
Developper: And put really good gears on them?
Tanaka: Oh no, that would make previous content obsolete. Let give this gears an original look instead.