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Do you come to care about the world?
Holophonist
Member UncommonPosts: 2,091
So I played FFXI a LITTLE bit and one of the things I noticed is that you really get to know the world itself from things like supply quests and the fact there was no (I think?) fast travel. Does FFXIV feel the same? Is it difficult to get around to the point of making your positioning in the world MEAN something? Are all cities the same with maybe a different architectural style?
Any insight would be appreciated.
Comments
I think that if a world is crafted well enough and the story is immersive enough it is natural to start caring about the world. The best mmo's that I have ever played have all had settings that I get wrapped up in. I still remember the first time I saw a sunset on Corellia in the original SWG... it was breathtaking (by 2003 standards). Based on the little time that I've spent playing FFXIV:ARR, I think that Eorzea is definitely a world I could become immersed in.
As for quick travel. There is a teleport system in place for quick traveling to certain locations. It's kind of similar to FFXI's "warp" spells. Yes, it makes travel easier, but you can only go to certain waypoints via teleport and you have to pay certain amount of gil to use it. They also have chocobo mounts, chocobo porters (think flight paths from wow), and Magitek armor (which I haven't seen yet).
I expect that over time many people will come to care about Eorzea.
It's defiantly got a world feeling even if it's zoned (
).
Each city is unique, NPC are even given different dialects (some I find annoying though). The story is great imo. And, you'll interact with smaller characters on your journey (not just some military guy but you'll actually talk to the farmer you're helping for example).
Remember that sunset music? The trumpets playing their beat as the sun creeps down, as the bugs hover around with their trail of gas and the sound of creatures could be heard all around. The first sunset was more than a decade ago.
I also loved the evening music on tattooine.
If there's on thing the FF franchise is truly good at, it is associating music with experience. On a similar level that SWG had. So hopefully it will be good.
Thanks for the replies.
Unfortunately what I'm hearing is that the game's aesthetics and feel are what pull you into the world. I'm still going to try the game but this isn't really what I wanted to hear.
Well if you aethetics just watch some of the tour of eorzea videos. They'll do better job any any writing I could do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW6fL5X1fM4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9YRS7wW6Bs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0w5dyfENwA
Thanks for the links. But no my point was that I don't particularly care about aesthetics in this case. Obviously I would prefer better graphics, but in the context of this thread I was hoping the game would offer meaningful quests etc to help create a feeling of importance to cities and regions.
Just out of curiosity, what were you looking for? (honest question, not trolling)
You have quick travel in XIV and each city does have its own different look and style so you don't feel like you're in the same area with a different skin. even with out quick travel getting around in XIV isn't that bad. just the teleporting you really can't do untill you open up the cyrstals in the same aspect of XI. The quests ties into the story pretty well. all FF series have always been all about the story. which is great
BUT you can only do the line of quests once. Once you complete the quests for the first time, you must go about leveling up the other classes in another way 
reguardless if its via grinding, hunting log, dungeon grinding, fates... ect.. lots of options ^^
I dunno maybe I wasn't clear enough but what i'm talking about has nothing to do with graphics, music or story. Those things are great (especially music!), but I'm talking about real gameplay elements that give you a reason to be in different places.
The best example I can give is Darkfall. Different parts of the world have different things to give you a reason to be there. Certain areas have certain types of mobs, more of a certain type of harvesting resource etc. Traveling from the north east part of Agon to the southwest was kind of a big deal, before they made portal chambers super cheap. You would basically make a day out of it. If you still had to complete your "kill 150 grungrocs" feat (aka "quest"), you'd travel to wolf lands, and while you were there you would get other things done. If your clan was sieging another clan's city, you'd have to travel to a nearby allied city or hamlet to stage your attack hours before the siege went live to make sure you got everybody there in time.
This in my mind is in direct opposition of zones or cities related to levels. I don't want a situation where I go to a city, take in the view, and leave and never come back once I'm past the optimal level for that area. I want the world to be a place I travel around often.
Thanks for the reply. By the way my comment about cities being the same but with different architecture was meant as a bad thing! Nice to look at, sure. But when it comes down to it I want something that's gonna continually pull me to that city for some benefit, not just to look at the difference in theme, you know? Like specific NPC's only being in certain towns, the market being regional, etc.
It honestly sounds like FFXIV has a lot of the things you're looking for. Each city is very unique as far as NPC's etc. are concerned. Each of the main cities is home to certain guilds and the NPC's associated with them are only found in those cities. For instance, Limsa Lominsa is home to the Marauder's guild where as the Gladiator's is located in Ul'dah and the Archer's guild is in Gridania. You must travel to each respective city to advance within those guilds. Also, the quick travel (teleport) ability is only available after you visit each city for the first time. This means that you still have to discover the crystals in each city before you can use them.
Also, another feature that sounds similar to what you described in Darkfall is the Hunting Log. In order to complete your hunting log you'll have to go to different areas and kill creatures that are specific to those areas. Unlike a lot of the games that are out nowadays, FFXIV doesn't tell you exactly where the mobs are, it just tells you a region and you get to find them. I hope this info helps.
I think I know what you're talking about here OP.
For me, the answer is no.
Then again, I've never played and mmo that really made me care about the world at large ever.
That isn't to say that I did not thoroughly enjoy some stories of some mmos, but in the grand scheme of things I've always seen the game worlds created as a means to an end.
This is also probably why I roll my eyes when ever I hear devs use the buzzwords "A living, breathing world". At the end of the day not a single game has ever come even close to that lol. Even games that have mechanics that actually effect the world are short lived and not very consequential.
As for me, I simply don't care anymore. I'm not expecting/looking for anything like that.
I haven't played this game as yet (while I do look very forward to doing so as I loved FFXI). That said, I doubt that townships will have that kind of weight as this game is appears to be missing many of the aspects that would make towns/cities/locations have that significant importance that you would find in Gen 1 games.
It's more solo friendly ( so I hear) which would make travel to the towns less of an ordeal as you won't have to find groups to travel with or folks to escort you there.
Quick travel is enabled
The game doesn't appear to have intervening PvP zones that you have to either travel carefully through or take a much longer trip to skirt around.
The factions are not actively warring amongst each other in the regular gameplay spaces which would make other factions towns hostile to the player (as you know, this makes a huge difference if the town is the gateway to a resource area or dungeon).
No Open world PvP flag that can be enabled either by action or location.
I know that feeling you are speaking of and I feel most games have let these systems go due to the fact that it limits content to some degree for all players based on faction,level, reputation, or gear. It's one of the things I loved about games like AC2 ,AO, and FFXI.
I can't say this game won't have anything to make these townships truly unique as I haven't played the game. But, I won't hold it against SE if they can't create that feel as that has become the norm now.
The guilds for classes, whether combat, crafting, or gathering are bound to certain cities, and multiple classes should be leveled to be optimal in any one, so you will be traveling between the cities often to complete the milestone quests, or hanging out to craft. The leveling of those classes is optimal in or near the cities in they are based in too. The hunting log, unique to each class, generally requests you kill mob types native to that classes' home region.
Crafting, at a certain point, requires materials from certain dungeons, and/or certain mobs types native to specific regions. Each specific type of gathered material is found only in certain regions. At higher levels, you must stealth to reach some, so rare item farming areas will likely be remote and dangerous.
Given that you are encouraged to level all the classes, or at least multiple classes, on one character, you will likely grow familiar with the various cities and regions as you pass through them many times.
There is player/guild housing - you can buy a house in a city and customize it, giving you a home base. The devs are talking about possibly allowing wealthy players to invest in multiple houses spread between cities.
There is a pvp arena that is visitable in the world and RvR zones (which we don't know much about yet).
FATEs, some of which, at high levels, will be large-scale world-boss fights, pop up in every zone - they will become an important part of endgame besides being helpful to level.
Provisioning quests (and the crafting versions have another title) for crafting and gathering require you to craft or gather something and then deliver it to a, sometimes remote, outpost, kind of like supply quests. Guildleves are bound to outposts/hubs and are also turned in at them.
There are raids of course...
There is teleport-based location-bound fast travel in most, but not all, outposts which can be engaged from anywhere, but it costs in-game currency and can be rather pricey, getting notably more expensive the further you travel, so less immediate forms of travel are encouraged. Airships are cheap and go between the major cities, but you'll probably want to hoof it or ride your chocobo to places further out of town, especially away from outposts. But most players will probably make smart use of their return to bindpoint spell and teleportation to move around quickly while keeping costs reasonable, then chocobo where they need to go from there. Honestly, its not that different from XI's teleports except that you can do it from anywhere with no cooldown, and there are more outposts,but the expense for distance traveled is a notable factor.
I remember FFXI and the massive content updates they would have every few months and compared for some other MMO's those patches might as well have been full on expansion packs because of all the stuff they added. I don't know maybe I am being worried for nothing and the game will do gangbusters. I just think they have done a great job saving XIV from what it was and I want it to be around awhile. The quality is there I just wonder if people will get over their hatred of SE and having to pay monthly.
Considering the massive change FFXIV went through from the time Yoshida took over, while at the same time developing ARR I am not worried about content for patches.
I wouldn't be satisfied with them in ARR, but considering the skeleton crew he had working on the original version they really pulled off a miracle in that game.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
This is the kind of thing that worries me a bit. I love the idea of multiple jobs, but are you saying that the zones are level-based? As in there are low level zones, high level zones etc?
There is high level content spread out throughout many zones, including the ones that feature early level content as well.
However there are some zones that would be very dangerous for low levels to go exploring.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
For the most part yes. Remember this is a themepark through and through. What you're looking for is a sandbox. EVE or DF are really the only option right now :P.
More or less, yep. There is not as much of a focus on sticking to the normal world quests as in other themepark games like WoW, but it is a level-based game, and so mobs must be given levels relative to the players, and it generally makes sense to organize them roughly by zone...
You'll run into higher level stuff even in the newbie zones on occasion, or depending on where you wander (there are areas even in the newb-zones where you can find lots of level 35 mobs etc.), but otherwise zones could be said to have levels, yes.
There are still plenty of reasons for your going here or there to 'mean something'. If you are bent on avoiding this form of organization though, then I'm afraid any level-based game is not going to work for you. Even FFXI was organized this way, roughly.
Speaking strictly on experiences from the first version of the game, it does in fact make you really fall in love with the world. It was not so when the game first came out (for most), but evolved into such once the new team took over and the Grand Company storyline was introduced.
I know of people who actually cried when they saw The End of an Era cinematic when the game ended because of what happened to the characters they grew to love. The story really induced that feeling, and there was a lot of tragedy (depending on your city state, some more than others when it came to the original main story in the game). It wasn't that feeling that you wouldn't play the game again (as it was being remade), but just the sheer emotion that last storyline invoked into people and how everything they fought for was presumably for naught. It was an ending whereby you as the player lost, despite doing your best and accomplishing overwhelming goals that for all intents and purposes you should not have been able to do. That is why they put emphasis on the whole "Warrior of Light" thing when they talk about the past five years in game.
The world was really alive, but not in an aesthetic way back in 1.0. It was a good looking game, but everything was barren. It's the story and what they did that made it so. Every patch they made it so most (even common) NPCs had something new to say regarding what happened or was happening. People were terrified of what they saw in the sky, and had no answers (Meteor was falling down upon the world). Meteor was getting closer and closer up in the sky dome with each patch, children were crying, people were falling to despair. Yet the Heroes -- Adventurers all -- stood firm and united three City States into an old alliance that was all but broken due to years of difference. They fought primals and the empire and the beastmen and the mad plans of a lunatic, but in the end they could not prevent the disaster from happening. Everyone would be doomed to perish, or so they thought until more information was released months after the last battle in game happened. This was doubly felt if you were on the unofficial Role Play server as there were quite a bit of stories, people worried and just doubt and worry. It was a hopeless situation, you were being invaded from all sides, Meteor was still falling despite you're efforts against those who caused it... and then at the final battle, the cinematic was shown.
With A Realm Reborn they pretty much remade the whole game. The areas are majesty and expertly crafted. No longer are they barren in any way, but as a result the areas are now instanced as more things have to be loaded. Cities are now even more important as they house Guilds that related to classes in a more prominent way. If you're a specific class, it would be best if you stayed in one area to fight as your guild will keep on giving you new missions or permanent skill increases (whereas you will have to take airships or warp a lot to travel to your guild across the world to unlock these when you're able). Though the story is still there and is looking to be fairly well crafted.
There will be three arcs of main story at launch, along with many side arcs. These side arcs include the classes you pick to level; every five levels or so you will get new story pertaining to your class and even unlock abilities and new jobs for that class altogether (Gladiator -> Paladin). Then go on storyline based quests for your Artifact armor and weapons and abilities for that advanced job once you are accepted as one of them in the world. The same is for crafting classes as well, as they have their own storylines as you craft and such, which may take you around the world to craft things for people and show off your expertise and meet strange people with strange stories of their own.
In 1.0 for instance, if you were a clothcrafter (IF YOU DON'T WANT TO LEARN ABOUT 1.0 CRAFTING STORIES FOR WHATEVER REASON, THEN SKIP THIS; I'm pretty sure they'll be different in 2.0 as it's 5 years in the future), then you were basically caught up in a murder mystery as you went from one location to the next. You used your special Echo skill to help solve it as you posed as a clothcrafter (which you were, but you took on the case for yourself) to make items for customers and learn what they have to say or to gain access to some things. With each new instance of that story you learned a new skill or got a new items for your craft as well as payment for the job rendered. In the end you unlocked a scene with your Echo powers (which was an ability 1.0 characters had -- the ability to see the past). You then witnessed a confession of the crime that was in private. With that, you confronted the head of the weaver's guild and the people who were involved walked in. They explain to you that you were a part of a grand play for which many were watching from the sides; it was a live play of sorts enacted by people, and that what you witnessed was just the rehearsal of such when you were trying to deduce the mystery. The group then bowed and everyone was clapping, and you were like... "What?!". xD
The villains themselves were also sublimely done. It's one of the first times in a MMO where they felt like real villains and not just working on a past game or just suddenly appearing at the end of an expansion or something. There is true FF interaction with them, and there is at times even a mutual respect between you and them despite being enemies. They aren't just bent on destroying everything without reason, as their own beliefs and stories are revealed through their own actions and dialog as they talk to you.
Here's a nice little fan made video of Nael Van Darnus from 1.0:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4UtKf_sSX8
Here's what the game looked like the last five minutes of being online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgEg8kXmifo
The Meteor above is menacing in that. To think that it was just a red speck when the first patch of that story came along. The cinematic that they saw is also in that video at roughly 4:50.
So considering it's the same team and world, it inspires a lot of confidence that people will really feel attached to the world after they spend long amounts of time in it. They also mentioned continuing the three main storylines with patches until entirely new storylines will be introduced with expansions and the like.
Some Boss Introduction videos (their fight and not the storyline you see with them before such):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RPLtShLHA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q13FHaHUlLs
There are also a few links in my signature if you're interested in seeing the storyline of 1.0 and the like in preparation for A Realm Reborn.
Just a side note about Hunting Logs as well: Each area also has different enemies which may contribute to your hunter's log, in addition to having their own side quests and FATES that relate to their region.
Yes. Not sure they effect much though.