as beautiful as this game is, its very linear, in the respect that, when you travel your not openly traveling whereever you want, there are funneled areas, if you look at the map, all the other places you see from your character arent really able to get there. so to me this isnt really an open world, its more like a maze of paths, and small "coves" and nooks, and then you got the towns. to me thats really linear exploration, which is not typical of a MMORPG. but i guess considering the limitations of the PS3, that is to be expected, afterall the PC version is nothing more than a slightly visually upgraded port of the Console version. granted im not knocking it, it looks good, but you end up losing alot of aspects of a true MMO experience we used to have, where you could go to remote places, have an adventure. Here its all funneled, and in what amounts to a maze of predefined paths.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
You can see that all really within a couple hours, I saw most of the top right zone within 30 mins. Sad thing is once you've done the main quest, there is nothing left to do but grind, the game doesn't even have PVP to make up for the lack of quests.
Small? You've got to be kidding. It's about the size of Azeroth. And they WILL add more stuff later, trust me.
as beautiful as this game is, its very linear, in the respect that, when you travel your not openly traveling whereever you want, there are funneled areas, if you look at the map, all the other places you see from your character arent really able to get there. so to me this isnt really an open world, its more like a maze of paths, and small "coves" and nooks, and then you got the towns. to me thats really linear exploration, which is not typical of a MMORPG. but i guess considering the limitations of the PS3, that is to be expected, afterall the PC version is nothing more than a slightly visually upgraded port of the Console version. granted im not knocking it, it looks good, but you end up losing alot of aspects of a true MMO experience we used to have, where you could go to remote places, have an adventure. Here its all funneled, and in what amounts to a maze of predefined paths.
Not at all, this game really is an overworld though. Extremely free roam in my opinion, linear is Aion's world. There will be a plethora of zones as there were in FFXI, expect to see it. This is launch so it will have roughly about 9 zones, with more zones and classes coming in patches every month or 2, as well as more content. SE is really good about having a copious amount of content and class variety in their games; it will just take time for people to see this.
as beautiful as this game is, its very linear, in the respect that, when you travel your not openly traveling whereever you want, there are funneled areas, if you look at the map, all the other places you see from your character arent really able to get there. so to me this isnt really an open world, its more like a maze of paths, and small "coves" and nooks, and then you got the towns. to me thats really linear exploration, which is not typical of a MMORPG. but i guess considering the limitations of the PS3, that is to be expected, afterall the PC version is nothing more than a slightly visually upgraded port of the Console version. granted im not knocking it, it looks good, but you end up losing alot of aspects of a true MMO experience we used to have, where you could go to remote places, have an adventure. Here its all funneled, and in what amounts to a maze of predefined paths.
Not at all, this game really is an overworld though. Extremely free roam in my opinion, linear is Aion's world. There will be a plethora of zones as there were in FFXI, expect to see it. This is launch so it will have roughly about 9 zones, with more zones and classes coming in patches every month or 2, as well as more content. SE is really good about having a copious amount of content and class variety in their games; it will just take time for people to see this.
that I cant deny, SE if anything has been on the spot with content updates, and expansions. so your agruement is founded.
I am just hoping once the issues are dealt with I will be able to see more. i barely got to see anything remotely interesting due to the overbearing problems associated with this OB. definitely having some serious growing pains.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
as beautiful as this game is, its very linear, in the respect that, when you travel your not openly traveling whereever you want, there are funneled areas, if you look at the map, all the other places you see from your character arent really able to get there. so to me this isnt really an open world, its more like a maze of paths, and small "coves" and nooks, and then you got the towns. to me thats really linear exploration, which is not typical of a MMORPG. but i guess considering the limitations of the PS3, that is to be expected, afterall the PC version is nothing more than a slightly visually upgraded port of the Console version. granted im not knocking it, it looks good, but you end up losing alot of aspects of a true MMO experience we used to have, where you could go to remote places, have an adventure. Here its all funneled, and in what amounts to a maze of predefined paths.
Ok, so I see you played WoW, at least for a while until you got hacked. And I suppose you are under the illusion that WoW is an open world? With no 'funneled areas' that isnt' linear exploration. Can you please enlighten the masses on how many choke points there are between the different zones in WoW? I mean how many paths, small paths, does WoW have between each zone? Lets put each zone as a balloon shall we. inside that balloon you can go whereever you want, as long as its inside the walls of that zone. To moze out of that zone into another you have to go to whatever tiny path they give you that allows you to move to the other zone. And once your in that new zone, you are again fee to move about however you see fit, as long as you dont try and go outside the walls they put up around you. So basically WoW is exactly the same right? Oh thats right, the forest zone has tight little canyons that are about 20-30 feet wide in most spots, like a big maze. Branches all over the place, up and down, side to side, mixed all up and very confusing. I can see how that can cause someone to think its linear, since your not allowed to climb the canyon walls and look down from above. Shame on SE.
So lets take this a step further shall we, lets look at the home of the elves in Kalimdor shall we? You start off in Teldrassil, inside a tree that has mountain ranges so high you have to walk around them to get to 4 small little sub regions, the last is the city of Darnasis. All of which you have but one way out of, and thats to fly or boat to Darkshore. No funneling there. Once your at Darkshore, you can take a boat to someplace else or go explore this open zone. Boarded on one side by the ocean (which you can't swim out in far or fear the dreaded fatigue and drown, and mountain on the other side which for now you can't fly over unless its a payed for travel route. At the north its a dead end (you can actually swim the outer edge of the continent in this direction though - very boring as there is nothing there at all for hours as it was never built as a playable region). At the southern edge, you have access to 2 paths which lead you to Ashenvale, another open world zone borded on all sides by either water or mountain ranges which you cannot cross unless by specific funneled paths or purchased travel routes.
Now I can go into all the other zones you can go to if you find the small path they provided for you to go thru, but this is turning into a history lesson and I think this is quite enough facts to prove my point. WoW gives you the illusion that the world is open, but it is not. As for being non-linear, all you have to do is follow the recommended guideline of level to zone and you see it is entirely linear. level 1 moved to level 20 in a direct path through the connected balloons.
Oh and for those who say in Cataclysm there will be old world mount flight, yes your right. But did you ever take a few minutes to wonder why they had to completely rebuild the old world in the first place? I mean what was the point of rebuilding the entire old world zones? Yeah, you guessed it, its the only way they could bring flight on mounts to the old world. Next time your in game in the old worl, look up - see any tree tops? ever look at a topigraphical map of the old world? http://mapwow.com/ Thats a good place to see it for yourself. They dont connect very well do they? Even the climates dont match up. They go from snow to desert to temperate to jungle in half a mile bounderies. It's no wonder they went with the entire earth split, burning fire, volcano idea. I would too if I was tasks with fixing that mess for mount flight. And the funny part is, they are fixing the mess they call old world so you can fly in it AND charging all of you money for an 'expansion'!! What a bunch of.... yeah not gonna say it.
In conclusion, might I recommend moving to one of the other 2 starting zones if your actually playing this right now, otherwise please stop with the uninformed bias. And sorry for the wall of text, mah game servers are still down and I'm bored.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
Its called a beta test not a free trial, only in the last 2 years or so did people start using beta tests are a free trial, yes you are supposed to buy the game, its not blindly, read around, follow the articles, and like a every other single player game choose to buy it.
Beta test are both a free trail and in most cases a stress test. Game companies have been using beta test as a marketing tool and sell point forever now so not really the fault of the gamers to see it as a free trail. It is often included in pre-orders.
Also would like to note that the maps do not contain the maps of the cities and while they are not huge I did spend a good while in the city itself and not just to buy stuff.
To end the wow comparison. FF XVI has three zones that look different because of climate (desert, forest, highlands). WoW has what, like 40 completely unique Zones? So plz stop. And if WoW is not a seemless open world i really would like to know WHAT is in your opinion.
This whole discussion is pointless, and I don't even play the game (yet), just started reading up on it.
The fact that FFXIV's world in some ways may feel restricted to some because of the choke points and corridors ingame, doesn't change that it's still a persistent, open world. Maybe just a type of MMO world that's not your preference.
WoW is known for its content density, but not for its large worldsize. In fact, there are quite a number of MMO worlds vastly larger in worldsize than WoW. Other posts seem to point towards FFXIV as being larger or at least equal to WoW in size, but constructed differently. But if you want to be sure, there's a very easy test: run 1 minute in a straight line, measure the distance you've crossed on the area map and see how it compares to the worldmap.
And about persistent, open world:
do you have loading screens when moving from one area to another, or do you need to 'zone'? Then FFXIV is a persistent, open world in the style of EQ and EQ2.
If it's seamless transitioning, then it's a persistent, open world in the style of WoW.
In all the cases, it's still a persistent, open world.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
as beautiful as this game is, its very linear, in the respect that, when you travel your not openly traveling whereever you want, there are funneled areas, if you look at the map, all the other places you see from your character arent really able to get there. so to me this isnt really an open world, its more like a maze of paths, and small "coves" and nooks, and then you got the towns. to me thats really linear exploration, which is not typical of a MMORPG. but i guess considering the limitations of the PS3, that is to be expected, afterall the PC version is nothing more than a slightly visually upgraded port of the Console version. granted im not knocking it, it looks good, but you end up losing alot of aspects of a true MMO experience we used to have, where you could go to remote places, have an adventure. Here its all funneled, and in what amounts to a maze of predefined paths.
Ok, so I see you played WoW, at least for a while until you got hacked. And I suppose you are under the illusion that WoW is an open world? With no 'funneled areas' that isnt' linear exploration. Can you please enlighten the masses on how many choke points there are between the different zones in WoW? I mean how many paths, small paths, does WoW have between each zone? Lets put each zone as a balloon shall we. inside that balloon you can go whereever you want, as long as its inside the walls of that zone. To moze out of that zone into another you have to go to whatever tiny path they give you that allows you to move to the other zone. And once your in that new zone, you are again fee to move about however you see fit, as long as you dont try and go outside the walls they put up around you. So basically WoW is exactly the same right? Oh thats right, the forest zone has tight little canyons that are about 20-30 feet wide in most spots, like a big maze. Branches all over the place, up and down, side to side, mixed all up and very confusing. I can see how that can cause someone to think its linear, since your not allowed to climb the canyon walls and look down from above. Shame on SE.
So lets take this a step further shall we, lets look at the home of the elves in Kalimdor shall we? You start off in Teldrassil, inside a tree that has mountain ranges so high you have to walk around them to get to 4 small little sub regions, the last is the city of Darnasis. All of which you have but one way out of, and thats to fly or boat to Darkshore. No funneling there. Once your at Darkshore, you can take a boat to someplace else or go explore this open zone. Boarded on one side by the ocean (which you can't swim out in far or fear the dreaded fatigue and drown, and mountain on the other side which for now you can't fly over unless its a payed for travel route. At the north its a dead end (you can actually swim the outer edge of the continent in this direction though - very boring as there is nothing there at all for hours as it was never built as a playable region). At the southern edge, you have access to 2 paths which lead you to Ashenvale, another open world zone borded on all sides by either water or mountain ranges which you cannot cross unless by specific funneled paths or purchased travel routes.
Now I can go into all the other zones you can go to if you find the small path they provided for you to go thru, but this is turning into a history lesson and I think this is quite enough facts to prove my point. WoW gives you the illusion that the world is open, but it is not. As for being non-linear, all you have to do is follow the recommended guideline of level to zone and you see it is entirely linear. level 1 moved to level 20 in a direct path through the connected balloons.
Oh and for those who say in Cataclysm there will be old world mount flight, yes your right. But did you ever take a few minutes to wonder why they had to completely rebuild the old world in the first place? I mean what was the point of rebuilding the entire old world zones? Yeah, you guessed it, its the only way they could bring flight on mounts to the old world. Next time your in game in the old worl, look up - see any tree tops? ever look at a topigraphical map of the old world? http://mapwow.com/ Thats a good place to see it for yourself. They dont connect very well do they? Even the climates dont match up. They go from snow to desert to temperate to jungle in half a mile bounderies. It's no wonder they went with the entire earth split, burning fire, volcano idea. I would too if I was tasks with fixing that mess for mount flight. And the funny part is, they are fixing the mess they call old world so you can fly in it AND charging all of you money for an 'expansion'!! What a bunch of.... yeah not gonna say it.
In conclusion, might I recommend moving to one of the other 2 starting zones if your actually playing this right now, otherwise please stop with the uninformed bias. And sorry for the wall of text, mah game servers are still down and I'm bored.
why do you have to revert str8 to wow as your source of arguement? yes I got hacked but I managed to get it back, and? Lets say you not pick and choose certain parts of what i say and take it out of context. and Yes your correct wow,does have chokepoints, entry points to the zone, but the zones themselves are large and open, and the transistion is seamless.where as FFXIV for example where you start, is riddled with little paths that you cant get away from. then load to a new area. I played plenty of other MMO's that were far more open visually, as well as to exploration. Secondly you cant jump, or jump down to other places to get there quicker. Frankly your response is filled quite a bit of distain. and No Its not uninformed bias. The game isnt necessarily bad, but do recognize its limitations. I saw what i saw, and played, I then responded on it.
Yes it is a wall of text, though a Well thought out wall of text, servers down or not, there is always something else to do. laundry, dishes, walk the dog, pick your choice. I have my opinion on things I experienced, if you like the game cool, but dont try to break down my arguement by picking out tid bits, then taking them out of context, and going on a rant about them.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
I always thought WoW was kinda linear, say you start in the human area and play you are going to end up going Northshire to Goldshire/Ewynn Forest to Westfall via Hogger (the early level WoW world boss) then on to Lakeshire. Heck all of that is just two roads...how could you get much more linear than that?
I've been watching a livestream for 2 days now and the world map (at least for the beta) looks like a road map. Freeways going everywhere with on-ramps and off-ramps every so often. And when you do see an open space it's just a small patch of ground. It looks just like people going to and from work with no real purpose besides lvling as fast as they can. So far it's not a very social game IMO.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
The game world at launch seems sort of small, but to be honest, I went from Limsa all the way to Mor Dhona, hitting every area in OB, that was a 6 hour walk. That's pretty impressive, the zones are massive. Bigger than any MMO zones I've ever seen, I could get across hellfire in WoW in 15 minutes, 20-25 walking, depending on whether Alliance was roaming around. It took me 50 minute to get through the black shroud, and and hour and a half to get through Coertha. Don't get me started on Mor Dhona, too much land to cover. Not to mention SE will add a lot more zones through the upcoming months; also more zones are being added at launch. They just funneled us into a few, we are still missing several like the highly publicized area in the header of this page. There are also supposed to be 2 more mini-city states that are not in OB, as well as Mog House zones (Lily Hills, 3rd floor of Ul'dah castle) and a bunch of other things. I presume there are 2-4 ones we don't have in OB, and SE adds new zones pretty frequently. I am not worried about the game world, FFXI had more zones than it probably needed...
im impressed someone in this day and age of post wow making everyone whiney bitches, actually went and walked for 6 hours to get somewhere! hehe, i remember back in eq1, my freeport shadowknight, heading over to crushbone to level, it took me 8 hours to get there, and before i could learn enough elvish to talk to the local druids to see if anyone would bind me for some money (lets face it, tree hugging hippy elves werent going to bind a seathing blackhearted evil shadowknights soul for free on an rp server) i got killed by a guard. this of course resulted in me being sent thru the 7 levels of hell and landing back in freeport, 8 hours of riding boats dodging angry npc 1 shotter guards, away. luckily a neutral shaman had been teaching me that elvish, he felt my darkness balanced out the treehuggyness of the area, and managed to trick a local cleric into performing a ressurection and binding (said shaman didnt possess those abilities yet or he woulda done it himself!) hehe sometimes one misses the old days where defeat could really hurt, and victory truely was sweet.
im impressed someone in this day and age of post wow making everyone whiney bitches, actually went and walked for 6 hours to get somewhere! hehe, i remember back in eq1, my freeport shadowknight, heading over to crushbone to level, it took me 8 hours to get there, and before i could learn enough elvish to talk to the local druids to see if anyone would bind me for some money (lets face it, tree hugging hippy elves werent going to bind a seathing blackhearted evil shadowknights soul for free on an rp server) i got killed by a guard. this of course resulted in me being sent thru the 7 levels of hell and landing back in freeport, 8 hours of riding boats dodging angry npc 1 shotter guards, away. luckily a neutral shaman had been teaching me that elvish, he felt my darkness balanced out the treehuggyness of the area, and managed to trick a local cleric into performing a ressurection and binding (said shaman didnt possess those abilities yet or he woulda done it himself!) hehe sometimes one misses the old days where defeat could really hurt, and victory truely was sweet.
Well luckily I had camps to save my spot if I died, but they became extremely scarce in Coertha, and even more scarce in Mor Dhona (there was one camp, that's it) Exploring was really fun though, I can at least say SE has an extremely impressive world to explore here.
To end the wow comparison. FF XVI has three zones that look different because of climate (desert, forest, highlands). WoW has what, like 40 completely unique Zones? So plz stop. And if WoW is not a seemless open world i really would like to know WHAT is in your opinion.
Left out 2 different kinds of mountainous terrains, Mor Dhona (volcanic looking, hard harsh land) and Coerthas (kinda like the rocky mountains) are very distinct from one another, from the world map it looks like Eorzea alone has at least 4 more zones that we can't access yet (look to be comparable in size to the current 5 we can).
Eorzea is the first region of the world, Hydaelyn, still for a release, I find the size of Eorzea alone fairly impressive.
Few MMOs I'd put in to truly seemless and open though, only ones that come to mind atm are WURM online and Mortal Online both are relatively small in population compared to other MMOs though.
Only game I could think of that would be a big seamless open world would be Daggerfall (much of it admitadly was just blank space but you could walk the whole thing if you really wanted takes about 2 rl weeks end to end on the diagonal).
Originally posted by stayontarget I've been watching a livestream for 2 days now and the world map (at least for the beta) looks like a road map. Freeways going everywhere with on-ramps and off-ramps every so often. And when you do see an open space it's just a small patch of ground. It looks just like people going to and from work with no real purpose besides lvling as fast as they can. So far it's not a very social game IMO.
Watched the livestream myself and I don´t get why this game has such high PC requirements.
Trust me. If you give FFXIV 6 years (how long WoW has been out), it will make WoW's world size look like a complete joke. Just 1 year is probably enough to completely beat WoW in terms of size.
If FFXI at launch vs. now is any indication of FFXIV's potential, then FFXIV will be one hell of a game in a few years.
I've been watching a livestream for 2 days now and the world map (at least for the beta) looks like a road map. Freeways going everywhere with on-ramps and off-ramps every so often. And when you do see an open space it's just a small patch of ground. It looks just like people going to and from work with no real purpose besides lvling as fast as they can. So far it's not a very social game IMO.
Watched the livestream myself and I don´t get why this game has such high PC requirements.
Originally posted by Raxeon Originally posted by Herodes
Originally posted by stayontarget I've been watching a livestream for 2 days now and the world map (at least for the beta) looks like a road map. Freeways going everywhere with on-ramps and off-ramps every so often. And when you do see an open space it's just a small patch of ground. It looks just like people going to and from work with no real purpose besides lvling as fast as they can. So far it's not a very social game IMO.
Watched the livestream myself and I don´t get why this game has such high PC requirements.
there not that high The tube-like world is designed so that a PS3 with 512MB can play it (or not yet). But the PC version needs 4GB RAM at least. Same with Graphics I believe.
If a world has invisable walls and mountains that block your way and can't be crossed and on top of that all dungeons are instances.
If it has forced loading to get to other islands with no option to get their without loading then it can never be an open persistant world.
This is fact and their is not getting away from it. Saying that the world only has a little loading or instances are better still does not make it open and persistant.
Yeh but the problem is they're all corridors and really small and restrictive. There is only one zone that is open and even that is annoying because of all the invisible walls, the game needs jump so we can negotiate the terrain better. Even frigging map feels like Kash on SWG.
The dev's said the open beta pretty much has everything in it that the final game will have, minus a few things.
Actually the Dev's have stated the exact opposite of that. A good portion of the story content and 90% of the crafting items are not in the OB. There are several areas on the map that are NOT open yet to players.
The Lead Producer has stated several times in interviews that what we see in CB and in OB is not everything that will be in the game at launch.
You have a link to that quote? I see players saying that in EVERY beta and it's ALWAYS false. At this stage in the game what you see is almost always what you get at launch. Unless you can find a link where a dev states that, it's BS.
Unless you can find a link where a dev states your point then it's BS. Works both ways. It's very obvious, when running around the beta, that there are lots of areas that are not in yet. Try it out.
Wait are you seriously saying that unless i can find a link where a dev states this is all of the game then it's not true?
Seriously? That's seriously your point? I'm not tryin to be mean, but that's by far the stupidest counterpoint i've ever heard. It works both ways? Only if you're like 10 and can't argue a point and your biggest comeback is "no YOU"RE a doody head" "no you are!" and so on.
I've been in just about every MMO beta except for a few pvp centric games like mortal, and i wasn't in DAoC. Not once in any beta test have i EVER seen a substantial amount of content held back to surprise everyone at release. What i have seen though is players constantly say "the devs said this isn't all the game they are holding back for launch so players don't see everything and get burnt out". I've seen that a billion times and it's NEVER been true. It just doesn't work that way. So unless someone can provide a quote from a developer saying they are holding back large portions of the game then it's complete BS. It just does NOT happen that way. I'd love to see such a link and be proven wrong, i really would as that would give something to look forward to.
I'm really on the fence about this game, it seems like it has some charm to it, but i'm really concerned by the fact that it might be just a grind fest like all other asian games. Is it? Or are there quests and storylines all the way to max level.
LMAO, wow I must have hit a nerve. I guess you see how stupid your argument is now. Demanding proof for a POV when your ownopposite POV has no proof is as weak as an argument gets. BTW, I haven't tried to have a "comeback" since I was 10 years old.
Sadly that is one thing I'm hugely disappointed with in XIV. The world design.
FFXI's world design was awesome. Yes, there was tiling in that game, and you could point out re-used geography from one area to another... though you had to really look for it. But the areas themselves all felt large, and open (except those that weren't supposed to, like the Elshimo jungles, or Zi'tah). Each area has its own "feel" and identity. You can drop someone who's been playing long enough into any random zone blindfolded, remove the blindfold, and they'll be able to tell you where they are, with at least very high accuracy (E versus W Altepa Desert might not be so easy... nor might E. or W Ronfaure, etc).
Areas had their own "wonders"... the spine in Meriphataud Mountains, the ruined towers in Sauromugue (for years before WoTG came out, I wondered what that area must have looked like before the war ravaged everything...). The towers in the Sarutabaruta region.
Hell, the areas even have much more interesting dungeons. The Horutotu Ruins and Toraimorai Canal that runs right beneath Windurst and Sarutabaruta... King Ranperre's Tomb... The creepy haunted Gusgen Mines... Pso'xja... The Eldiemme Necropolis with its alternating gates, or Garlaige Citadel with its Banishing Gates.. that area alone has a very cool history that gives it an awesome sense of "place", to me. There's so much mystery and history and wonder in XI - even from its earliest areas - that I thought for *sure* SE would recapture that - and then some - with XIV.
To the contrary, I am finding that lacking in FFXIV and it's one thing I've been very vocal about. The video you linked demonstrates it well, but you *really* notice it when you're running through Black Shroud. How many times can you possibly run through the same damn creek, in the same damn clearing, in the same damn run?
I don't know what SE was after, or how it got past all levels of approval to go with a design that relies so arbitrarily, and evidently, on repeating land features... but... well... yeah. There ya have it.
Now, thankfully, they do a better of it in other areas... Thanalan (around Ul'dah) doesn't betray its design as much. Nor does Coerthas. At least not from the ground.
Overall though... Very uninspired work from SE who has proven they can do much, much better.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Comments
as beautiful as this game is, its very linear, in the respect that, when you travel your not openly traveling whereever you want, there are funneled areas, if you look at the map, all the other places you see from your character arent really able to get there. so to me this isnt really an open world, its more like a maze of paths, and small "coves" and nooks, and then you got the towns. to me thats really linear exploration, which is not typical of a MMORPG. but i guess considering the limitations of the PS3, that is to be expected, afterall the PC version is nothing more than a slightly visually upgraded port of the Console version. granted im not knocking it, it looks good, but you end up losing alot of aspects of a true MMO experience we used to have, where you could go to remote places, have an adventure. Here its all funneled, and in what amounts to a maze of predefined paths.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Yup
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35uv3oa1fx0
70-80 Songs.
Lots of songs = Big maps
im not getting it , http://ffxiv.zam.com/en/zone.html?ffxivzone=5 how is that linear?
Not at all, this game really is an overworld though. Extremely free roam in my opinion, linear is Aion's world. There will be a plethora of zones as there were in FFXI, expect to see it. This is launch so it will have roughly about 9 zones, with more zones and classes coming in patches every month or 2, as well as more content. SE is really good about having a copious amount of content and class variety in their games; it will just take time for people to see this.
that I cant deny, SE if anything has been on the spot with content updates, and expansions. so your agruement is founded.
I am just hoping once the issues are dealt with I will be able to see more. i barely got to see anything remotely interesting due to the overbearing problems associated with this OB. definitely having some serious growing pains.
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Ok, so I see you played WoW, at least for a while until you got hacked. And I suppose you are under the illusion that WoW is an open world? With no 'funneled areas' that isnt' linear exploration. Can you please enlighten the masses on how many choke points there are between the different zones in WoW? I mean how many paths, small paths, does WoW have between each zone? Lets put each zone as a balloon shall we. inside that balloon you can go whereever you want, as long as its inside the walls of that zone. To moze out of that zone into another you have to go to whatever tiny path they give you that allows you to move to the other zone. And once your in that new zone, you are again fee to move about however you see fit, as long as you dont try and go outside the walls they put up around you. So basically WoW is exactly the same right? Oh thats right, the forest zone has tight little canyons that are about 20-30 feet wide in most spots, like a big maze. Branches all over the place, up and down, side to side, mixed all up and very confusing. I can see how that can cause someone to think its linear, since your not allowed to climb the canyon walls and look down from above. Shame on SE.
So lets take this a step further shall we, lets look at the home of the elves in Kalimdor shall we? You start off in Teldrassil, inside a tree that has mountain ranges so high you have to walk around them to get to 4 small little sub regions, the last is the city of Darnasis. All of which you have but one way out of, and thats to fly or boat to Darkshore. No funneling there. Once your at Darkshore, you can take a boat to someplace else or go explore this open zone. Boarded on one side by the ocean (which you can't swim out in far or fear the dreaded fatigue and drown, and mountain on the other side which for now you can't fly over unless its a payed for travel route. At the north its a dead end (you can actually swim the outer edge of the continent in this direction though - very boring as there is nothing there at all for hours as it was never built as a playable region). At the southern edge, you have access to 2 paths which lead you to Ashenvale, another open world zone borded on all sides by either water or mountain ranges which you cannot cross unless by specific funneled paths or purchased travel routes.
Now I can go into all the other zones you can go to if you find the small path they provided for you to go thru, but this is turning into a history lesson and I think this is quite enough facts to prove my point. WoW gives you the illusion that the world is open, but it is not. As for being non-linear, all you have to do is follow the recommended guideline of level to zone and you see it is entirely linear. level 1 moved to level 20 in a direct path through the connected balloons.
Oh and for those who say in Cataclysm there will be old world mount flight, yes your right. But did you ever take a few minutes to wonder why they had to completely rebuild the old world in the first place? I mean what was the point of rebuilding the entire old world zones? Yeah, you guessed it, its the only way they could bring flight on mounts to the old world. Next time your in game in the old worl, look up - see any tree tops? ever look at a topigraphical map of the old world? http://mapwow.com/ Thats a good place to see it for yourself. They dont connect very well do they? Even the climates dont match up. They go from snow to desert to temperate to jungle in half a mile bounderies. It's no wonder they went with the entire earth split, burning fire, volcano idea. I would too if I was tasks with fixing that mess for mount flight. And the funny part is, they are fixing the mess they call old world so you can fly in it AND charging all of you money for an 'expansion'!! What a bunch of.... yeah not gonna say it.
In conclusion, might I recommend moving to one of the other 2 starting zones if your actually playing this right now, otherwise please stop with the uninformed bias. And sorry for the wall of text, mah game servers are still down and I'm bored.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
Beta test are both a free trail and in most cases a stress test. Game companies have been using beta test as a marketing tool and sell point forever now so not really the fault of the gamers to see it as a free trail. It is often included in pre-orders.
Also would like to note that the maps do not contain the maps of the cities and while they are not huge I did spend a good while in the city itself and not just to buy stuff.
To end the wow comparison. FF XVI has three zones that look different because of climate (desert, forest, highlands). WoW has what, like 40 completely unique Zones? So plz stop. And if WoW is not a seemless open world i really would like to know WHAT is in your opinion.
This whole discussion is pointless, and I don't even play the game (yet), just started reading up on it.
The fact that FFXIV's world in some ways may feel restricted to some because of the choke points and corridors ingame, doesn't change that it's still a persistent, open world. Maybe just a type of MMO world that's not your preference.
WoW is known for its content density, but not for its large worldsize. In fact, there are quite a number of MMO worlds vastly larger in worldsize than WoW. Other posts seem to point towards FFXIV as being larger or at least equal to WoW in size, but constructed differently. But if you want to be sure, there's a very easy test: run 1 minute in a straight line, measure the distance you've crossed on the area map and see how it compares to the worldmap.
And about persistent, open world:
do you have loading screens when moving from one area to another, or do you need to 'zone'? Then FFXIV is a persistent, open world in the style of EQ and EQ2.
If it's seamless transitioning, then it's a persistent, open world in the style of WoW.
In all the cases, it's still a persistent, open world.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
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why do you have to revert str8 to wow as your source of arguement? yes I got hacked but I managed to get it back, and? Lets say you not pick and choose certain parts of what i say and take it out of context. and Yes your correct wow,does have chokepoints, entry points to the zone, but the zones themselves are large and open, and the transistion is seamless.where as FFXIV for example where you start, is riddled with little paths that you cant get away from. then load to a new area. I played plenty of other MMO's that were far more open visually, as well as to exploration. Secondly you cant jump, or jump down to other places to get there quicker. Frankly your response is filled quite a bit of distain. and No Its not uninformed bias. The game isnt necessarily bad, but do recognize its limitations. I saw what i saw, and played, I then responded on it.
Yes it is a wall of text, though a Well thought out wall of text, servers down or not, there is always something else to do. laundry, dishes, walk the dog, pick your choice. I have my opinion on things I experienced, if you like the game cool, but dont try to break down my arguement by picking out tid bits, then taking them out of context, and going on a rant about them.
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I've been watching a livestream for 2 days now and the world map (at least for the beta) looks like a road map. Freeways going everywhere with on-ramps and off-ramps every so often. And when you do see an open space it's just a small patch of ground. It looks just like people going to and from work with no real purpose besides lvling as fast as they can. So far it's not a very social game IMO.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
The game world at launch seems sort of small, but to be honest, I went from Limsa all the way to Mor Dhona, hitting every area in OB, that was a 6 hour walk. That's pretty impressive, the zones are massive. Bigger than any MMO zones I've ever seen, I could get across hellfire in WoW in 15 minutes, 20-25 walking, depending on whether Alliance was roaming around. It took me 50 minute to get through the black shroud, and and hour and a half to get through Coertha. Don't get me started on Mor Dhona, too much land to cover. Not to mention SE will add a lot more zones through the upcoming months; also more zones are being added at launch. They just funneled us into a few, we are still missing several like the highly publicized area in the header of this page. There are also supposed to be 2 more mini-city states that are not in OB, as well as Mog House zones (Lily Hills, 3rd floor of Ul'dah castle) and a bunch of other things. I presume there are 2-4 ones we don't have in OB, and SE adds new zones pretty frequently. I am not worried about the game world, FFXI had more zones than it probably needed...
im impressed someone in this day and age of post wow making everyone whiney bitches, actually went and walked for 6 hours to get somewhere! hehe, i remember back in eq1, my freeport shadowknight, heading over to crushbone to level, it took me 8 hours to get there, and before i could learn enough elvish to talk to the local druids to see if anyone would bind me for some money (lets face it, tree hugging hippy elves werent going to bind a seathing blackhearted evil shadowknights soul for free on an rp server) i got killed by a guard. this of course resulted in me being sent thru the 7 levels of hell and landing back in freeport, 8 hours of riding boats dodging angry npc 1 shotter guards, away. luckily a neutral shaman had been teaching me that elvish, he felt my darkness balanced out the treehuggyness of the area, and managed to trick a local cleric into performing a ressurection and binding (said shaman didnt possess those abilities yet or he woulda done it himself!) hehe sometimes one misses the old days where defeat could really hurt, and victory truely was sweet.
Well luckily I had camps to save my spot if I died, but they became extremely scarce in Coertha, and even more scarce in Mor Dhona (there was one camp, that's it) Exploring was really fun though, I can at least say SE has an extremely impressive world to explore here.
Left out 2 different kinds of mountainous terrains, Mor Dhona (volcanic looking, hard harsh land) and Coerthas (kinda like the rocky mountains) are very distinct from one another, from the world map it looks like Eorzea alone has at least 4 more zones that we can't access yet (look to be comparable in size to the current 5 we can).
Eorzea is the first region of the world, Hydaelyn, still for a release, I find the size of Eorzea alone fairly impressive.
Few MMOs I'd put in to truly seemless and open though, only ones that come to mind atm are WURM online and Mortal Online both are relatively small in population compared to other MMOs though.
Only game I could think of that would be a big seamless open world would be Daggerfall (much of it admitadly was just blank space but you could walk the whole thing if you really wanted takes about 2 rl weeks end to end on the diagonal).
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Trust me. If you give FFXIV 6 years (how long WoW has been out), it will make WoW's world size look like a complete joke. Just 1 year is probably enough to completely beat WoW in terms of size.
If FFXI at launch vs. now is any indication of FFXIV's potential, then FFXIV will be one hell of a game in a few years.
there not that high
Watched the livestream myself and I don´t get why this game has such high PC requirements.
there not that high
The tube-like world is designed so that a PS3 with 512MB can play it (or not yet). But the PC version needs 4GB RAM at least. Same with Graphics I believe.
If it has forced loading to get to other islands with no option to get their without loading then it can never be an open persistant world.
This is fact and their is not getting away from it. Saying that the world only has a little loading or instances are better still does not make it open and persistant.
LMAO, wow I must have hit a nerve. I guess you see how stupid your argument is now. Demanding proof for a POV when your ownopposite POV has no proof is as weak as an argument gets. BTW, I haven't tried to have a "comeback" since I was 10 years old.
I know all games do this but...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La9nLBfH44c
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
Sadly that is one thing I'm hugely disappointed with in XIV. The world design.
FFXI's world design was awesome. Yes, there was tiling in that game, and you could point out re-used geography from one area to another... though you had to really look for it. But the areas themselves all felt large, and open (except those that weren't supposed to, like the Elshimo jungles, or Zi'tah). Each area has its own "feel" and identity. You can drop someone who's been playing long enough into any random zone blindfolded, remove the blindfold, and they'll be able to tell you where they are, with at least very high accuracy (E versus W Altepa Desert might not be so easy... nor might E. or W Ronfaure, etc).
Areas had their own "wonders"... the spine in Meriphataud Mountains, the ruined towers in Sauromugue (for years before WoTG came out, I wondered what that area must have looked like before the war ravaged everything...). The towers in the Sarutabaruta region.
Hell, the areas even have much more interesting dungeons. The Horutotu Ruins and Toraimorai Canal that runs right beneath Windurst and Sarutabaruta... King Ranperre's Tomb... The creepy haunted Gusgen Mines... Pso'xja... The Eldiemme Necropolis with its alternating gates, or Garlaige Citadel with its Banishing Gates.. that area alone has a very cool history that gives it an awesome sense of "place", to me. There's so much mystery and history and wonder in XI - even from its earliest areas - that I thought for *sure* SE would recapture that - and then some - with XIV.
To the contrary, I am finding that lacking in FFXIV and it's one thing I've been very vocal about. The video you linked demonstrates it well, but you *really* notice it when you're running through Black Shroud. How many times can you possibly run through the same damn creek, in the same damn clearing, in the same damn run?
I don't know what SE was after, or how it got past all levels of approval to go with a design that relies so arbitrarily, and evidently, on repeating land features... but... well... yeah. There ya have it.
Now, thankfully, they do a better of it in other areas... Thanalan (around Ul'dah) doesn't betray its design as much. Nor does Coerthas. At least not from the ground.
Overall though... Very uninspired work from SE who has proven they can do much, much better.
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