UI design, will SE follow like the rest of the sheep?Follow

I love FFXI-type games. The overall atmosphere of the game is great. However, I tried playing it again (started last week, uninstalled last night) and I couldn't do it. If FFXI was released again today, it'd be an epic flop -- not just because of its graphics, but because everything you do is soooo slow and time-wasting. Even getting around town on foot is unpleasantly slow. After playing WoW (which I started *after* I played FFXI), you can't go back to the strolling ways of FFXI.

Square has the advantage of learning from many mistakes and watching their MMO develop over time, and being able to try new things on their market. If there's to be a difference in amount of support the new MMOs will get from the players, it'll be because of 1) the difference in developer experience and 2) theme (sorry, some people will always choose Star Wars, just because its star wars, regardless of how sloppy the interface may be). I'm sure SE will have a pretty great interface though -- they're very good about it in almost every other game they've made.

WoW has a macro system same as FFXI you know.


You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I hate that saying. Sure you can. What's the point of having the cake if you can't eat it? To stare at it longingly? To admire what you can't have?

FFXi was slow. If you wanted to get anywhere you had better clear your calender for the next few month because it needed that devotion to truely reap the rewards it offered. But this kind of game-play is a thing of the past. Many people who enjoy MMOs have jobs, school and real life commitments and when your in that situation you can't enjoy a game like FFXI because, you literally get no-where.

Hell, it takes you a good fifteen minutes to run from Sandy to the Dunes and thats before you've even pulled your first Crab. To get a level you could be in a party for at least three hours (level 70+).

At the end of a really good session it did however feel like I had accomplished something, yet it was just a level. What made it feel better, was the fact that the people I partied with, helped me and I had helped them. The sense of team-work and comradre was rewarding in itself in some cases.

Long. Hard Work. Other Players.

The three things often spring to my mind when I think of FFXI and I still love it!

Regardless of eating cake, I believe my point stands. The general atmosphere in FFXI wasn't tied simply to the fact that it took forever to get anything done. The game was hard, not because everything was a time sink, but because the game provided options for deep interactions between players (skill chains) and tough encounters. It's ok for THESE things to take time to learn and master. However, the time to get to places was too long and too drawn out.

Also, I'm tired of people using extremes as counter examples. Just because I say things like "it was too slow" doesn't mean you prove your point by saying "yeah well, if it was instant it would be even worse!" Ok, so don't make it instant then. How about a normal amount of time to get places? What if zones were actually packed with content, and not just enemies and land-scapes (except where appropriate)? Why not have tons of things to do, places to go, people to meet, things to observe, natural occurences, etc.? WoW made an attempt at fixing this by providing more 'scenic stops along the way' -- wolves chasing rabbits, NPCs working, packs of deer, a few hidden quest-givers here and there, treasure chests, etc. Adding these things and making the distance generally smaller (in terms of FFXIs distances, not WoWs) would go a long way.

People need a pace that doesn't make them feel like they're working. Period.

The first time I trekked from Sandy through La Thiene to party in the Dunes was amazing. The fifth time, the novelty had worn off, but it was still pretty cool. By the 10th-plus time, it was a mind-sucking timesink that I despised.

"On the slow side" doesn't even begin to describe it. It's a solid 15 minutes of travel time from the gates of Sandy to the safety of Selbina, and worse, the trip required your attention the whole time, lest you aggro something capable of easily killing you and forcing you to start the journey over at the beginning. That's not "atmosphere", and S-E finally realized it, lowering the level restrictions on outpost warps.

From reading your posts, I can tell that you want the new game to be FFXI with better graphics and some minor tweaks, but don't confuse the removal of unnecessary timesinks with poor design.

As much as I feel the whole argument that's going on here, I still think the thing is that FFXI's atmosphere came from the leisurely pace of it. It wasn't a race, it was something that just took time, so you might as well have stopped to smell the roses.

I just think, instead of speeding things up, they can very well make the game better for players who otherwise just saw the game as slow leveling and nothing else by actually putting emphasis on the atmosphere of the game. Say, instead of speeding up leveling, give players more things to do during each level so they never feel like they're having to chug upwards just to get more interesting content. Instead of, say, diminishing the effects of travel, give players more incentive to enjoy the journey; there could be achievements or awards for finding things, for doing little things like witnessing dawns and dusks in certain places, or just many more smaller techniques.

I think one of FFXI's errors wasn't that it was too slow, but that it made a great world and simply trusted that people would figure out how to enjoy it on their own. Which didn't work, at least for many, many westerners who played and quickly left; you've got to make sure you let as many players know as possible that your world is super teh awesome.



Agree to disagree, lol?

The only thing that would be considered outdated about any of those games nowadays would be the graphics. (Except maybe MGS1, putting up with those controls nowadays can be a terror.) Otherwise they're all pretty timeless and well designed to hold up.

Whereas FFXI has a lot of features that wouldn't fly or even be considered "an enjoyable throwback" if it were released in current form.

Meh, guess we'll just agree to disagree then. WoW has just as many of those for me as ffxi does. ~.~

I am slightly confused. You don't sit at a table and eat? You want a game to be playable for eating? 9/10 When I am eating, I'm sitting at a table, not in front of the computer or a console.

Back on topic:

As I've said before FFXI compared to more modern games has VERY few abilities compared to games like wow. Just because something is fun does not make it casual. People play games to have fun and enjoy themselves. A clunky UI that is difficult to learn does not make the game hardcore. It's stupid to think like this. I prefer an easy to larn/pickup Ui that can be customizable and complex as you want. Why? So that people don't get frustrated and quit. You're playing a MMO you need people to play with.

A few things to keep in mind, at least for how FF14 UI/controls will be.
SE needs to adapt the controls so that it can be played on a PS3 controller as easily as on a keyboard+mouse configuration.

Another point is that controlling you character in the enviroment should _not_ be heavily dependant on latency (lag/ping) since servers are in Japan. This will leave out fast action/button movement that we see in WoW. I agree that you can speed up from how fast FFXI is now but no way close to how WoW is.

On a side note, has anyone tried to play WoW with a PS2 lookalike pad? Oo


PS. Also the post that AureliusSir posted with the intervju as to the challanges that will face an MMO that tries to get into the console market;

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?game=268;mid=124588085922480384;num=1;page=1

"There's a lot of challenges. I'd say challenge number one is the input device. So if you're going to port a game like WOW how does that work? Do you ship a keyboard and a mouse? Do you try to make a game that [adapts] to all the different controls and buttons? That's a porting issue," Pardo said. "The bigger issue would be things like hard drives. I think WOW now is about 10 gigs and we're always pushing out more content. That's something cloud computing could eventually solve, but in the current generation of consoles that's a lot to deal with. You'd have to eat almost the entire hard drive, and there are Xbox consoles [sold to consumers] that don't have hard drives."

As you see, Nr1 issue is undoubtedly the input device limitation.

Edited, Jun 24th 2009 6:11pm by Maldavian

We don't yet know this. I certainly hope it wont be the case. It makes me angry just to think SE might once again screw over people outside of japan and even, as you suggest, limit the game simply because they are unwilling to spread out their servers as any other MMO worth its salt does.

If they still want to keep the servers international, fine. They can still spread out their servers, and tell us where the servers are located. This way we can choose if diversity > latency. Those who want to play with those in different countries need only place themselves in the servers located there.

I don't know about you, but I don't eat 3 square meals a day. The only meal I always eat at the table is dinner. Breastfast, Lunch, Desert, and all snacks inbetween are eaten whereever I please.



On average? Hell no. On average ffxi is going to be slower than wow. We never mentioned average though. You mentioned a range and took ffxis fast range and it's slow range and compared it to WoW. I merely enhanced upon that and included wows slow range and high range as well. At certain points the games will have at least a 1:1 ratio.



Regardless, you yourself probably agree that at least 95% of all games made don't fit into that category. Right?

It's a complete server transfer, just as a world transfer would be in FFXI. New hardware in a different location, new community, new everything...no ties to the old realm at all.

At some point, they'd all have to be connecting to the same hardware anyways...you'd just be inserting another hub into the pipeline. In terms of internet connections, less is usually more. The fewer machines your connection is routed through, the faster your connection.

Edited, Jun 25th 2009 12:06am by AureliusSir

HA! Seriously...and unless there's some sort of mechanic in these forums that automatically rates down someone who has been rated down a lot and rates up someone who has been rated up a lot I think people are starting to go rate crazy on a few people.

Out there, you mean, maybe I exagerate? LOL! Nah! I literally knew a guy who put in a month off work just to finish his CoP and Zilart quests, then for weeks after work each day he would be shouting for Aht Urgan (sp) quests.

It's not that the game was THAT long or difficult, but it could be if you couldn't find the people, or worse... found the bad kind of people. The ones that didn't have a clue how to play.

But FFXIV is meant to be more single player friendly. I hope it is, but at the same time I really hope there's parts you need to group up because I found some good friends and had a few good laughs doing that.

I agree with most of this, but I have some changes. :p The macro system basically is a hotkey system. When using windower you can even bind macros to any keys you want. The only difference is that WoW's macro system has buttons that you can also click on to activate, right? I'd like to do without needing to have the picture somewhere before I can bind it to a key. (I could be wrong about not being able to do that.)

And for the mini-map thingy, I'd like to keep the compass but to also have the ability to have a scaled down translucent mini-map as well. Like you can do with ffassist. FFXI has radar too, although only some jobs get it. I for one wouldn't be able to live without my red dots! XD

The point of having cake is to share it with friends and everyone eats a slice and has a beautiful time. However, after the cake has been eaten, it is no longer there. When you eat it, it is gone, and thus you cannot have and also eat a cake at the same time. Although I guess if you were somehow able to eat it and then somehow regurgitate it in an uneaten form, you would be able to both have and eat it... but regurgitated foodstuffs of all sorts tend to end up in a post-eaten, actively disgusting form that is less than edible.

Hunh. By the tenth plus time, I was taking a Chocobo and thumbing my nose at Bloodtear Bald-whateverhislastnameis. But then, the first time I went to Valk to PT I set my Home Point there and didn't leave 'til I was level 20 and had Support Job access unlocked. Then I went to Jeuno (thanks to the assistance of a more experience adventurer who stealthed me there) and got my Chocobo License. THEN I went back and started leveling my first subjob.

I love Chocobos.

Allegory, you're being a bit disingenuous here. Minimum and average are not, I repeat <b>NOT</b> the same thing. A minimum is this: It take the exact same number of keystrokes (1) to one-shot a level 1 monster when you are at or above level 70.


Oh hey guess what?! Guess what guess what guess what! FFXI has come a long way from then, too! You see, there's this endgame thing, it's called Einherjar, and it's 30 minutes a run at an average limit of 2 runs a week and a maximum of 7 runs every 3 weeks! You can get all the abjuration armors from the ground kings there, plus some other new stuff. Also there's Nyzul Isle and Assault which are both an average limit of 1 run a day (usually ~30 minutes a run), though you can bunch up a normal maximum of 4 run in a day by not doing it for three days. It has other endgame-level gear. And and and... well you already know what I'm getting at: you don't need to raid anywhere near that much to progress.

I like you. Not in that way, but still.

Edited, Jun 30th 2009 3:00pm by Volkai EDIT: moved into a new post.

Umm, did you every type /macro? WoW has a very complex macro and keybind system, and just because you failed to learn it, doesn't mean it's not there.

Edited, Jun 30th 2009 3:50pm by duneadx

Normally I'd assume sarcasm, since this is such a blatantly silly resposne, but with your failing to understand how much more robust and even similar WoW's macro system is I don't think I can make that safe assumption. Unless that too is satire.

To say that the minimum is 1:1 because both max levels can one shot a level 1 mob is the very definition of disingenuous.

Doublepost, whoops.

Edited, Jun 30th 2009 4:11pm by Volkai

That's not true. You can use your mouse to activate your skills by clicking on the action bar (it's a practice frowned upon because it's disturbingly inefficient, but it's an option nonetheless).

WoW allows for a total of 10 action bars with individual keybindings (that you can edit) for each spot, giving you access to 100 abilities and macros. I think there are addons that let you extend that limit. You can also bind action bar slots to mouse buttons, or combinations of keypresses + mouse button presses (ie. Alt + Mouse5). The stock UI is customizable to a very significant degree (even without addons).



The macro menu in WoW is available from the main in-game menu. Like...if you're in-game in WoW and you press the escape key? Ya...right there. It's labeled "Macros" on the list. I know, I know, WoW has just...so many menus and drop down lists and whew...mind boggling...oh wait...that's FFXI. That same menu where you find the "Macros" option is also the one you use to access the UI keybindings interface so you can adjust the location and visibility status of your action bars as well as edit your keybindings.



Ya, but see...here's sort of the frustration from the point of view of someone who is trying to be open minded and objective in my critique of all MMOs and what I'd like to see in FFXIV. I make a post outlining that the action bar in WoW and the macro palette in FFXI are functionally identical once you have them set up. In that same post...the one you responded to...I specifically mentioned WoW's macro system, and your response is to the effect that WoW doesn't have a macro system because you haven't found it. I'm not singling you out, but this is getting really, really old. I told you there's a macro system. It's in my post. The on you responded to. Did you skim over that part? Read it and think I was making stuff up? I could understand if the command to access the macro interface in WoW was hidden and buried under layers of different menus, but it's not. It's directly accessible from the main in-game menu.

True enough, I suppose. I should mention you can use the mouse to click on FFXI's macros as well, then - though you need to hit Ctrl or Alt to bring them up on screen first. (It may be possible to get them to stay showing, I don't know if so or not.)

So that's a default 100 vs. FFXI's default of 4,000... by my view, FFXI is still coming out ahead. <.< And while you can't, via FFXI (though you can via windower, I hear) bind macros to additional keys, there are macro commands to switch macro pallete/book so that you can bypass the standard 6-line code limit pretty easily. And again, this is all while ingame.

I never said there is no macro system. What I put in my analysis is based on what I have experienced, not what others have experienced or told me about. I did not automatically gain your experiences by reading your post so I'm not going to be able to include the WoW Macro system I've never used firsthand just because I read about it in your post!

Where are you getting 4,000?

Yeah where is 4000 coming from? When I played a few years ago you had 10 panes of 10 macros each. One for ctrl, one for alt. 200 macros. Unless they added 3900 since I left....



Picking up the speed of the game doesn't necissarily mean making battles take place at 2x the speed, there are other ways too. I don't see why you would WANT the game to tick over so fast you can see what the hell is happening...



And conversely, I can't see why someone would want to play a game where voluntary actions frequently occur at such large intervals.


Which is why I advocate a happy medium. Not as twitchy as WoW but with more than 3 melee abilities so you're hitting buttons more than every 20 seconds as I did as a melee in FFXI.

You can access abilities faster than by clicking. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but it does affect your DPS when you're using abilities .1 second faster every 1.5 seconds. It can also mean the difference between a dead tank and a living one.