Gamescom 2012 "A Realm Reborn" Screenshots.Follow

http://xivwiki.com/wiki/Screenshots

Enjoy.


Update: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=486993

Update: Gameplay:



Edited, Aug 15th 2012 8:30am by UltKnightGrover

Edited, Aug 22nd 2012 10:29am by UltKnightGrover

Jumping, I believe.

It looks awesome! One more day for gameplay footage, can't wait!

The game looks great, only gripe is that stats and item menu...it looks...cheap, no other way for me to describe it. As long as it works and is fluid though, that's all that matters.

is it me or the screenshots from june look better (in definition) than these, well the game looks great and i am enjoying my actual ffxiv since i came back 3 weeks ago, so if the game just improve from now, well it has my vote. i just would like to see some casting spells screenshots. Are those 2 screenshots from weaponskill/combo effects?

Oh happy day. I can say something positive about the game. It does not look like Tera.

Did someone want gameplay?

A few things about the gameplay I think were of interest:

-There is no more blinking when you change gear.
-When you use an ability, apparently you can slide around without animation; in fact, there's a lot of sliding throughout.
-Jumping... lots of random, pointless jumping: while standing there, while walking, while pulling, while fighting, while bored, while twitching. They honestly seem way too proud of such a mechanic.
-The UI seems very customizable - and easy to customize, at that.
-Chocobos blink in without an animation... and they jump around a lot.
-There seems to be a system of full party skill-chaining.

Overall: 2.0 looks like any modern MMO in a vague Final Fantasy skin, which is, I believe, what they were trying to accomplish. There's not really much else to say, either bad or good, unfortunately.

I think I've seen enough, in fact, only real negative is the animations being a bit too "slidey" and the jumping. Jumping... Bunny Hop away.

Outside of that, looks neat, if a little generic and samey. Hopefully pans out well and just doesn't end up being the same as every other MMO around at the moment.

Edited, Aug 15th 2012 12:47pm by ScorpionEx

Interesting. When they get experimental, people seem to want more of the same. "Why was it missing x feature from y game?"

When they go for common features and game mechanics, people blast them for lack of originality and generic.

It is true that not everyone can be pleased with the direction the game is going in, but on the other hand, I'm not quite sure what people were expecting.

I'm interested to see how their new primal/summoning system is going to work. None of that has been showcased yet. Also, some examples of how cutscenes will work. I do hope they keep the features where you can look in the journal for where to go next, and have party members appear with you in appropriate scenes. Two aspects I think XIV improved on over XI.

Edited, Aug 15th 2012 9:43am by UltKnightGrover

For the very same reason why I played Final Fantasy XI over any other MMO that came out before or afterwards.

You compare XIV to x, y, and z saying it's more of the same.

Yet, you also mention that XI was based off of EQ, yet was able to create its own identity. What's not to believe XIV won't do the same? I've yet to see a MMO since XI that has had a captivating story where you actually get attached to the characters in the quests, and in reality that's Final Fantasy's main selling point as a franchise.

IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX all had very similar gameplay systems to not only other games in the same franchise, but other single-player RPGs as well, and the selling point was the mix of familiar gameplay with a few twists with an original score and story.

Final Fantasy XIV is taking popular elements from other MMOs that it should have had in the first place, and adding the familiar Final Fantasy-feel with characters, primals, and the Uematsu score.


Edited, Aug 15th 2012 10:16am by UltKnightGrover

I don't see much of anything in that gameplay video that screams "I am a WOW/EQ/RIFT clone".

If anything...I see a very unique look to a FF title that has been updated to the current needs of what 2012 MMO player wants in gameplay and UI.

Yes, I understand we still only see what they want us to see...but they are so far holding true to what they said they would do with the new version. I'm not sure what else we can ask for at this time besides that they stay on schedule.

Just take a look at the original first gameplay videos released on the first version and compare to this new gameplay video. Wow...

While I agree with you (and other posters) that XIV 2.0 is taking a conservative approach, I have to disagree with the part you bolded. While EXPing in XIV is a solo/small-man affair, the battles that DO involve a party as of right now are pretty damn punishing, arguably far more than XI's were. In XI, other people in the party could pick up the slack for you and continue with 5. XIV's battles are so punishing that if even one person disconnects it's pretty much start over/wipe.

This is especially true with Hamlet, Garuda, the level 50 8-man raiding areas, the final AF-quest battles (except WHM), and the higher-level post level 40 Company quests.



Edited, Aug 15th 2012 10:31am by UltKnightGrover

The game at launch was filled with a ton of great mechanics that was drowning in terrible decisions. The market wards for example felt like Rolanberry market on FFXI except with an incredibly sluggish UI that took much longer to load. Then they started cutting edges and make it more convinient that today it's like any other auction house out there with the absolute worst way of selling items. I don't know what their purpose was, all I know is that the Ul'dah market wards gets filled up very quickly and you can spend a lot of time trying to push one of your retainers into it.

Even if they make an auction house so awesome it will blow everyone's mind it's still just an auction house. I think some people wouldn't be happy about selling stuff the same way like in every other MMORPG out there. I would be happy just to get a system that works with much less frustration than today.

So pragmatic. You figure this from the 10 minute video that showed mostly some running around and fighting trash mobs. I think at the end of the day its not about certain mechanics differentiating games, its about content and how fun the game is. Every FPS game is the exact same, still people are all over the CoD bandwagon, why?

On a side note: i think the new limit breaks look like a cool party mechanic, pretty flashy too. Cant wait to see the summoning system in action and what they have for content.

Yet party battle feels like a big bar brawl to me. Complete mayhem. Arms, legs, weapons, mobs and explosions everywhere. I think that the thrill should come out of accomplishing something as a group of individuals working as a team, not as a group of people just trying to hit things while keeping their fingers crossed hoping nobody will dc.

Edited, Aug 16th 2012 4:14am by Woofdram

I don't know if this was posted but here are screenshots with loads of concept art.

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20120815_553349.html

I am beginning to wonder how many of the posters here even play 14 as it stands at the moment.

It is not that FF14 is trying to be like other MMO its that people who play other MMO have gotten used to certain things and that without them, it feels akward.

1) Jumping - Like it or not pretty much all other MMO beside FF11 let you jump. It is like when WOW added flying mounts and had to go back and add textures to the top of everything because when they built it they didnt think there would ever be flying mounts so why bother animating the tops? Well with no jumping, it is a lot harder to get stuck, so FF11 and 14 both prevented jumping to limit the amount of times/places you can get stuck. It was the lazy way to avoid a good collision detection system.

2) Functional/Customize-able UI: Again, pretty much every MMO aside from FF11 allows you to at least customize their UI, a lot even allow for 3rd party custom made UI. FF14 was a direct mirror of 11, and they didnt have multiple chat tabs, their amount of customization has gotten better but at first you could barely do anything. I fail to see how having the ability to arrange/customize a UI is a bad thing, or how it makes you a 'clone' of other MMO. If you want to be really creative, allow for 3rd party UI, give out source code and software to make officially licensed UI, then host them on the lodestone.

3)... sigh too tired to go on, the majority of things they are fixing are things that really should never have gone live as it was. Who releases an MMO with no system for finding/making parties easy? The challenge of an MMO should not be from finding people and figuring out how to invite them. And I understand the desire to stop hackers/boters by making everything server side, but menu/ui/server lag is unacceptable in 95% of situations in FF14.

Summary:
To me it has always been the jobs/classes that set MMO appart. I prefer the korean/jap MMO because of the non-D&D based jobs. I hate how EQ1, EQ2, Vanguard, etc were all basically D&D online. There wasn't a single job like Samurai, Ninja, Puppet Master, Geomancer, Dragoon.

Yes, but you know, the game has more than three fights in it.
And I think he wants more than a bar brawl in those, too.
Shocking truth.

Both versions of Nael Darnus can be added to that list.

Let's not forget United We Stand, which is more fun that any BC I've played in FFXI short of Divine Might

And Skirmish, which is effectively a trial run showing off every world NM that you cannot sit and just blitz down.

I'm with Grover on this - if you feel this game is mindless, you need to go out in the game an do something besides grind levels/spirit bind. Those are pretty much the only situation in which fighting in a party feels like a mosh pit.

P.S.:
BUT! We'll have to wait and see I guess. Perhaps it's just the bad experiences I made in FFXI, when coordination and skillchains suddenly died out with the appearance of the pink chicken expansion.

P.S.II:
Above article also states that EXP grinding will be by far less efficient in comparison to EXP questing than it is now. So perhaps we've seen the last of EXP parties anyway - bereaving this discussion of it's base entirely.

P.S.III:
Hey wait! This could mean that the powerleveling "problem" might be solved at the same time. Nifty. More and more of my gripes with 1.xx seem to evaporate. Dammit. What will I be able to bitch about now? Grass?

Edited, Aug 16th 2012 2:12pm by Rinsui

I think the important distinction here is that SE was in a prime position to create an audience when they released FFXI. They had an excellent track record, MMOs were still relatively new and novel with few competitors, and gaming in general was still in a phase where expectations were naive.

Fastforward to today, SE's track record is poor, there are dozens of alternatives (many are free), and there's already a game for people who want a Final Fantasy MMO... FFXI. Even die-hard fans like myself have managed to die in the last few years after years of poor management of XI, a subpar release history, and this totally botched launch.

Whether or not I play 2.0 is going to depend heavily on the gameplay features I see. Would I be content to play WoW with a FF flavor? Maybe. But the problem with that formula is that XIV won't have sufficient content to support that pace of play (neither did WoW at its launch, as I recall, nor could one level as quickly). Will they substitute a lack of content for slow-paced progression? Almost definitely. The question is going to be how fun that progression is, and that will be determined by the battle gameplay. If it's dull, then we're in for another long grind just to access a few special cutscenes and battles, and frankly, FFXI wore me out on that.

I'll probably be playing GW2, even though I'd much rather see FFXIV be the next breakaway MMO.

And don't forget about the loss of this thing called hate management.

And you were correct. Of course I was talking about battles in experience parties and not about some exceptions boss fights. Btw, I do not consider "tank grabs boss while others kill the rest" and "stay away from the mages" as all too different from a bar brawl either. Most of the time it is impossible to notice what the other 7 members are doing besides "killing". Ever heard "nice damage!!", "great tanking!" or "please don't turn that mob!" in party? No.

I am sure that every battle system has its charm, and hey... maybe I'm just stuck in the early-to mid 2000's for liking FFXI party play and CoP-like bossfights.

Fair game. With quest based leveling, "trash" mobs might be less of an eyesore in the future anyway.
Still, I would prefer longer, challenging fights that provide relatively more EXP over mindless speedkills
that provide less EXP per mob anytime.

FF has only one entry in MMOs, aside from FFXIV, and in their single player RPGs, they were absolutely flooded with trash mobs.

In fact you could wipe an entire encounter (or most of it) with a single spell if you chose appropriately or simply outleveled the content.

The point of what these encounters engaging is that these monsters were also often paired either in random encounters or in the same encounter, with heavier monsters that took more time to kill.

Looking at the video, I saw a Treant link with all of the little marmots that showed up, and Yoshida avoided the Treant. So the system of 'encounters' verse just fighting a single trash mob over and over again is there. I hope they use it with intelligent frequency. Making engagements more interesting does not always mean every monster has to be difficult to fight. I'm in support of the group v group concept FFXIV often goes with, verses the Group vs 1 monster FFXI was notorious for.

This and more of this... Crabs in the Dunes would have been much more tolerable if that 3-5 minute fight meant I got 500+ exp... but nothing was more depressing than killing it and only getting like 150exp because one person in the PT was 1 level higher than everyone else. I know they have moved past that, but I did like the feel of team against monster in the early days of FFXI... learning how and when to use your abilities. It wasn't until about 2 weeks after I got DRG to 50 in FFXIV before I finally got to fight things that I was able to play around with my self skillchaining stuff... and that is depressing.

Hopefully a lot of the questing will be to go fight big things (take a page from XII and put 'marks' in the game please!) or at least make it a decent challenge of some sort... if it is continual meaningless fetch quests for exp I doubt many people will respond well...