Ok, I'm going to refrain from the "welcome to blah blah blah" bit that I had in my last two posts. They were a bit too presumptuous in my opinion. If you're here and reading this then you know you're welcome already. Public blogs are public after all, yes?
Anyway, this is pretty much a simple concept I think any regular player of MMO's can appreciate. How do you balance PvP gameplay with PvE gameplay in games like this. There is no doubt that there are tons of dudes and ladies out there who like nothing more than to pit their skills against human opponents and try to win bragging rights on who is most leet. Some people like to take part in battles between huge armies. Others just like to band together with friends and go up against dungeons filled with AI monsters. It's a pretty diverse group of gamers out there and games like this should normally be diverse. Some MMO's on the market lean more towards PvP, such as Warhammer Online, others are more PvE like Everquest 2 (last I checked anyway). Others try to be in the middle and give equal share of both pies, like World of Warcraft.
I say "try" when I mention WoW, but I should also say "fail rather discretely".
This is one of the main reasons why I turned my back on WoW. Imagine you are playing a certain class and have his talents set so he can perform in a certain role, and you are doing really good in that role. You are having fun doing raids with your guild or heroic instances with your friends, and you don't PvP that much. Life is good for you.
But somewhere else we have the player of another class besides yours. He's really into PvP, he's really into playing the arena, he wants to be thought of as leet. The dude has this notion of him and his team getting to the top %10 of all arena participants. However, for some reason, the dude can only win half his matches, and he is upset about that.
This poor guy is not the first to think too highly of his own abilities and end up not doing all that well in the arena ladders. Neither is he the first to not face the facts that his skills are just average. Remember, he wants to be leet, and he wants people to think he's leet! Psychologically, he just isn't capable to face the fact that he kind of sucks, so he tries to make excuses instead. If he's so leet and awesome at PvP, and yet he's still losing many of his matches, then OBVIOUSLY the system is broken! No way it can be him!
Like I said, he's not the first with these thoughts. Nor is he the last. There are TONS of players who are currently playing WoW PvP who are in this mindset. They flood the forums almost daily with threads saying...
"Warlocks are to OP, NERF THEM NOW OR I QUIT WOW!!"
"ZOMG War is Broken! Fix Now Blizz! U SUXXORS!!!1111lol"
"Blizzard, you guys suck with deathknights! Frost strike can hit every time and they can do it bunches of times in a Row! OMG! NERF NOW!"
Nerf this, nerf that, nerf it all, buff me, buff my class, nerf his, yada yada yada, blah blah blah...
The river of crap and tears never ends!
Well, since these whiners and cheeseheads make up so many of the WoW playerbase, it would be foolish on Blizzard's part to not listen to what they want, and sometimes they get the nerfs that they demand. Now, we come back to the guy who does not PvP and prefers to raid and dungeon crawl with friends. Supposedly, WoW has just as much balance into those who prefer PvE over fighting other players, but suddenly this guy find he can't tank as well as he used to, or his abilities are not damaging as much as the last time he went through. Are they still able to get through the raid and get some loots? Maybe, but not always. Maybe that decrease in armor makes it so he dies to early when he's trying to tank a boss or that decline in DPS makes them take too long to get the boss down. Who knows?
The PvE was working before though! So, what the hell Blizzard? Why the nerf?
OHHHHhhhhh!
It's because Johny Wannabe the PvP Fanatic cried for the nerf bat and he got it.
Folks, it's almost impossible to balance both PvP and PvE at the same time. If one class or job gets nerfed because they're too much on the battlefield, the PvE factor of their jobs is going to take a hit as well. That's just the nature of the beast. That is why I am hoping against hope that SquareEnix sticks predominently to their original MMO roots and keeps the majority of gameplay on Final Fantasy XIV on a PvE basis. Am I outright opposed to any type of Player vs Player game? No, I am not. I might be willing to do a Ballista match here and there, or whatever FFXIV might have included, but it won't be very often.
I'm interested in FFXIV because I'm looking for a better, cleaner gaming environment then what I had in WoW. Part of the dirt that developed there was that there were too many PvP'ers making ridiculous demands and too many of them were getting listened to. It would have been stupid for Blizzard not to at that point. Those impacts had negative concequences for those of us who didn't want to fight in battlegrounds.
So, the bottom line is this. If you are having trouble in whatever FFXIV's PvP system, you can't kill that black mage because he nukes you too hard before he can get to you, I'm going to tell you to learn how to silence him. If SquareEnix is smart, every job should have at least some counter to something like that. That's just basic class balance.
If you demand that SquareEnix nerf the black mage and downgrade his ability to nuke, I'm going to tell you to get bent and go play some other game with rampant PvP.
If SquareEnix actually gives into your demand and nerfs the black mage because you can't kill him otherwise, I'll tell them to get bent and I'll be the one to go play something else.
If that happened then I think FFXIV would officially be WoW 2.0
Have a nice day.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Final Fantasy XIV and MMO Essentials #2: The Challenge of Balance
Hello and welcome to a new edition of "Final Fantasy XIV and MMO Exxentials," a blog series where I try and talk about what I think any good MMO should have and hopefully FFXIV will include in their game. In this section, I'm going to be talking about something I think anyone will agree to be important: Class/Job Balance. Being that WoW has been my most prominent MMO experience I usually refer to them as classes, but those of you who play Final Fantasy can think of them as jobs if you prefer.
Those of us who've been playing MMORPG's long enough and have the mind to pay attention know one thing: class balance is not an easy thing to pull off! In fact, it's damn hard to make sure that the system is fair and impartial across the world, especially in games with lots of PvP like WoW or Warhammer Online. World of Warcraft set it up...or at least they tried to set it up as a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" scheme, where one class might have an advantage against one class but be at a disadvantage against another. For instance, a rogue has the stabbing power and silencing abilities to silence and quickly kill a mage, but when the rogue finds himself against the warrior or a paladin, those really don't count for much. Meanwhile the mage can immobalize a warrior and nuke him from a distance. Rock, Paper, Scissors. A fairly basic concept, yes?
Well, at the basic level this was true but players with skill, who knew how to properly set up talents and ability rotations on their rogue could work their way around these disadvantages and still get wins over the warrior. On top of that, no matter what class you play or how great you are at the game, if you only have half your equipment as blue and green level (superior and uncommon level gear, respectively) you are going to be hard pressed to win against a player who has their toon decked out in all epic purples. So, in the end, the balance of the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" system was kind of thrown off by levels of gear and actual player skill.
And that's fine! That's actually how it's suppose to be. No one wants to play a game where you can always win against one class and never win against the other, right? So, for the past four and a half years, players were able to battle based mostly on skill and gear and go to war and have fun about it. Oh sure, it was a common occurance where some player who thinks too highly of their own abilities would get their face eaten by another player and then cling to this illusion that the problem was with the game, not with them. They would then petition for nerf bats to be swung or for their class to be "fixed". Fixed means different things for different people. In this case it means "I really want my class to be able to steamroll all competition with little effort!"
Deny it all you want, but in the end the truth is the truth.
Well, unfortunately, they got their wish. About the start of Patch 3.0, just before the release of their newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, the World of Warcraft community at large began to notice that something peculiar was going on. A certain class that had been rather average compared to all the others was all of a sudden doing a lot better on the battlefields. They were doing a lot more DPS, it seemed that it was much harder to kill them, they were basically dancing their way through victory after victory. I'm talking about the paladin class, specifically those who specced their talents towards Retribution.
Thus was born what I consider to be the first real "Face Rolling Class" of WoW. A few idiots in the world might argue that warlocks were a face rolling class in the beginning, and remained so over the years since then. Not true. You had to actually know how to play the warlock effectively in order to make it look like it had edges over everyone else, and people cried for warlock nerfs for the reason I stated above. They couldn't face the fact that they sucked and had to blame the system. Sure, no one likes being feared constantly but ask any warlock player in the world what it feels like to be stunlocked either. Yet there were ways around both.
Ret Pallies, however... Wow. Literally, Wow. It was rather curious for me to see players who previously ranged from average to downright bad at PvP all of a sudden doing well in the battle grounds. It was rather amazing to watch a rogue or a warrior get the drop on a paladin, stun them, apply a hamstring, and then run circles around them beating them mercilessly. That was before, provided the warrior was good enough. Usually the paladin was able to cancel the stun and start hitting back, but he was still slowed and he had half his life. He was usually forced to bubble up and heal or use Lay on Hands on himself.
Not anymore though, right ret pallies? Oh no. Now you can use abilities to cancel out both the stun and the slow, and now you have the DPS to turn around and three shot that warrior into the next age. It must feel good to have all that extra power, right? And that wasn't even using ye ole Bubble n' Heal trick or their Lay on Hands ability either! Players of hunters and mages were all getting beat a lot more as well. In the end, Ret Pallies were topping DPS charts in battle grounds, having far more kills than everyone else, and getting killed a lot less than before.
Something was clearly wrong here.
Did it get fixed? Not really. In an odd way it actually got worse with the introduction of Death Knights. Now let's understand here, I loved my WoW Death Knight. He was a great, fun class to play and I do miss him. I just might go back and play him more before FFXIV is released, but let's all be honest here folks. To say that Death Knights weren't overpowered is like saying that a modern politician isn't corrupt. We're talking about a class that were extremely effective tanks and extremely effective DPS in dungeons and raids no matter what talent tree you chose. Unholy DK's especially with their powerful ghoul pets and insanely high DPS rates. They were tearing up everyone left and right...except for ret pallies. Ret pallies, not surprisingly enough, still had the edge over DK's. In fact, ret pallies had the edge over almost everyone, but that did not stop the flood of people who rolled up a Death Knight hoping to find a new face-rolling class to play, which, in a sense, they got.
By the time I last logged off WoW over a month ago, it was almost impossible to get into a group that did not have a DK in it, and it was also almost impossible to get into a battle ground and not meet a pally or a DK you would soon come to hate. Other classes, like the poor rogue, were pushed out into the cold more and more.
That brings us to one thing I cannot stand in an any MMO that has ever used the type of class or job system in games like WoW or Final Fantasy XI, and that is that class balance becomes so screwed up that one or two classes in the game become virtually obsolete. Rogues were still active in WoW by then but they seemed to be dwindling. No one wanted them in their groups because Death Knight DPS was just as great, if not better. No one wanted to play them because they were having trouble against pallies and DK's in PvP.
Folks, this is one of things I expect the development team for Final Fantasy XIV to strictly avoid as long as they are playing the game. No job or class should become the unwanted because a piss poor job of balancing the system makes them unpractical to play. I don't care if it is a good idea on a business standpoint. Think about the game itself and not how well you can line your pocket books! Towards the end of WoW, I can't help but wonder if Blizzard was actually thinking "Gee, we got a hot thing going here with ret pallies and death knights! People like to be facerollers! Mo' Money!!! Sorry rogues, but we want you to go play DK's more, so we're going to nerf you until you abandon your toons and roll up a death knight! Paladin works too! YEEHAW!"
...Ok, that last bit was a bit of a stretch, but the actions do speak for themselves. The nerfs that were scheduled to happen to the rogue were off the wall in light of how powerful certain other classes got. Whether they actually happened since then I'm not really sure. I know at least one of them has, and it became more pointless for rogue players to keep logging in as such. Thus, class balance in WoW was screwed, perhaps not for all time, but come on. Blizzard is now thinking on a maximum profit standpoint. They know that the young, no talent face rolling players are the primary force in their subsribers today, thus classes like ret pallies and death knights are the hot commodity. They're not about to nerf who should be nerfed and buff who should be buffed, not without threatening their maximized profits.
Right now you might be thinking "What's the point to all this? That can never happen in Final Fantasy XIV! The devs care about the game too much!"
Yet it did happen, though not quite as bad, in FFXI. Ask long time players of that game what happened with the Ranger job. Once upon a time, they were perhaps the best damage dealers in the game, though their damage was expensive because bolts, arrows, and bullets were Expensive. Then the Samurai job gets a little buff with "grips" that could be added to weapons, and all of a sudden their faster TP growth makes them better damage dealers than the ranger. Guess what! It's free damage too! Just the price of one great katana that certainly doesn't require ammo. The result of this was players knowing that they had a free option to do more dps over an expensive option that does less dps. That's pretty much a no brainer, folks! The poor ranger kind of became an endangered species.
They at least still had a few roles left though. They're considered to be one of the best pullers in the game, so they at least have a spot left in groups and raids, but considering how difficult it is to level them...yeah. Rangers are the FFXI victim of poor class/job balancing decisions.
So how will things look in FFXIV? We know that the job system will not quite be the same in this new game, they've stated that experience points are pretty much out the window, but that doesn't mean that jobs will be balanced fairly. The developers did say that that they were taking into account a lot of the feedback the gained from FFXI, so maybe there is hope there. Considering how many fans of the Samurai class that are out there...I don't know. We can hope.
So that brings us to the question to the developers of Final Fantasy XIV: Will you do everything you can for job balance to make sure that one job does not become too powerful over other jobs, and to make sure that none of them fall into a state where very few want to play them?
This question ties in with my next issue which will be coming shortly. Until then, stay cool.
Those of us who've been playing MMORPG's long enough and have the mind to pay attention know one thing: class balance is not an easy thing to pull off! In fact, it's damn hard to make sure that the system is fair and impartial across the world, especially in games with lots of PvP like WoW or Warhammer Online. World of Warcraft set it up...or at least they tried to set it up as a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" scheme, where one class might have an advantage against one class but be at a disadvantage against another. For instance, a rogue has the stabbing power and silencing abilities to silence and quickly kill a mage, but when the rogue finds himself against the warrior or a paladin, those really don't count for much. Meanwhile the mage can immobalize a warrior and nuke him from a distance. Rock, Paper, Scissors. A fairly basic concept, yes?
Well, at the basic level this was true but players with skill, who knew how to properly set up talents and ability rotations on their rogue could work their way around these disadvantages and still get wins over the warrior. On top of that, no matter what class you play or how great you are at the game, if you only have half your equipment as blue and green level (superior and uncommon level gear, respectively) you are going to be hard pressed to win against a player who has their toon decked out in all epic purples. So, in the end, the balance of the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" system was kind of thrown off by levels of gear and actual player skill.
And that's fine! That's actually how it's suppose to be. No one wants to play a game where you can always win against one class and never win against the other, right? So, for the past four and a half years, players were able to battle based mostly on skill and gear and go to war and have fun about it. Oh sure, it was a common occurance where some player who thinks too highly of their own abilities would get their face eaten by another player and then cling to this illusion that the problem was with the game, not with them. They would then petition for nerf bats to be swung or for their class to be "fixed". Fixed means different things for different people. In this case it means "I really want my class to be able to steamroll all competition with little effort!"
Deny it all you want, but in the end the truth is the truth.
Well, unfortunately, they got their wish. About the start of Patch 3.0, just before the release of their newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, the World of Warcraft community at large began to notice that something peculiar was going on. A certain class that had been rather average compared to all the others was all of a sudden doing a lot better on the battlefields. They were doing a lot more DPS, it seemed that it was much harder to kill them, they were basically dancing their way through victory after victory. I'm talking about the paladin class, specifically those who specced their talents towards Retribution.
Thus was born what I consider to be the first real "Face Rolling Class" of WoW. A few idiots in the world might argue that warlocks were a face rolling class in the beginning, and remained so over the years since then. Not true. You had to actually know how to play the warlock effectively in order to make it look like it had edges over everyone else, and people cried for warlock nerfs for the reason I stated above. They couldn't face the fact that they sucked and had to blame the system. Sure, no one likes being feared constantly but ask any warlock player in the world what it feels like to be stunlocked either. Yet there were ways around both.
Ret Pallies, however... Wow. Literally, Wow. It was rather curious for me to see players who previously ranged from average to downright bad at PvP all of a sudden doing well in the battle grounds. It was rather amazing to watch a rogue or a warrior get the drop on a paladin, stun them, apply a hamstring, and then run circles around them beating them mercilessly. That was before, provided the warrior was good enough. Usually the paladin was able to cancel the stun and start hitting back, but he was still slowed and he had half his life. He was usually forced to bubble up and heal or use Lay on Hands on himself.
Not anymore though, right ret pallies? Oh no. Now you can use abilities to cancel out both the stun and the slow, and now you have the DPS to turn around and three shot that warrior into the next age. It must feel good to have all that extra power, right? And that wasn't even using ye ole Bubble n' Heal trick or their Lay on Hands ability either! Players of hunters and mages were all getting beat a lot more as well. In the end, Ret Pallies were topping DPS charts in battle grounds, having far more kills than everyone else, and getting killed a lot less than before.
Something was clearly wrong here.
Did it get fixed? Not really. In an odd way it actually got worse with the introduction of Death Knights. Now let's understand here, I loved my WoW Death Knight. He was a great, fun class to play and I do miss him. I just might go back and play him more before FFXIV is released, but let's all be honest here folks. To say that Death Knights weren't overpowered is like saying that a modern politician isn't corrupt. We're talking about a class that were extremely effective tanks and extremely effective DPS in dungeons and raids no matter what talent tree you chose. Unholy DK's especially with their powerful ghoul pets and insanely high DPS rates. They were tearing up everyone left and right...except for ret pallies. Ret pallies, not surprisingly enough, still had the edge over DK's. In fact, ret pallies had the edge over almost everyone, but that did not stop the flood of people who rolled up a Death Knight hoping to find a new face-rolling class to play, which, in a sense, they got.
By the time I last logged off WoW over a month ago, it was almost impossible to get into a group that did not have a DK in it, and it was also almost impossible to get into a battle ground and not meet a pally or a DK you would soon come to hate. Other classes, like the poor rogue, were pushed out into the cold more and more.
That brings us to one thing I cannot stand in an any MMO that has ever used the type of class or job system in games like WoW or Final Fantasy XI, and that is that class balance becomes so screwed up that one or two classes in the game become virtually obsolete. Rogues were still active in WoW by then but they seemed to be dwindling. No one wanted them in their groups because Death Knight DPS was just as great, if not better. No one wanted to play them because they were having trouble against pallies and DK's in PvP.
Folks, this is one of things I expect the development team for Final Fantasy XIV to strictly avoid as long as they are playing the game. No job or class should become the unwanted because a piss poor job of balancing the system makes them unpractical to play. I don't care if it is a good idea on a business standpoint. Think about the game itself and not how well you can line your pocket books! Towards the end of WoW, I can't help but wonder if Blizzard was actually thinking "Gee, we got a hot thing going here with ret pallies and death knights! People like to be facerollers! Mo' Money!!! Sorry rogues, but we want you to go play DK's more, so we're going to nerf you until you abandon your toons and roll up a death knight! Paladin works too! YEEHAW!"
...Ok, that last bit was a bit of a stretch, but the actions do speak for themselves. The nerfs that were scheduled to happen to the rogue were off the wall in light of how powerful certain other classes got. Whether they actually happened since then I'm not really sure. I know at least one of them has, and it became more pointless for rogue players to keep logging in as such. Thus, class balance in WoW was screwed, perhaps not for all time, but come on. Blizzard is now thinking on a maximum profit standpoint. They know that the young, no talent face rolling players are the primary force in their subsribers today, thus classes like ret pallies and death knights are the hot commodity. They're not about to nerf who should be nerfed and buff who should be buffed, not without threatening their maximized profits.
Right now you might be thinking "What's the point to all this? That can never happen in Final Fantasy XIV! The devs care about the game too much!"
Yet it did happen, though not quite as bad, in FFXI. Ask long time players of that game what happened with the Ranger job. Once upon a time, they were perhaps the best damage dealers in the game, though their damage was expensive because bolts, arrows, and bullets were Expensive. Then the Samurai job gets a little buff with "grips" that could be added to weapons, and all of a sudden their faster TP growth makes them better damage dealers than the ranger. Guess what! It's free damage too! Just the price of one great katana that certainly doesn't require ammo. The result of this was players knowing that they had a free option to do more dps over an expensive option that does less dps. That's pretty much a no brainer, folks! The poor ranger kind of became an endangered species.
They at least still had a few roles left though. They're considered to be one of the best pullers in the game, so they at least have a spot left in groups and raids, but considering how difficult it is to level them...yeah. Rangers are the FFXI victim of poor class/job balancing decisions.
So how will things look in FFXIV? We know that the job system will not quite be the same in this new game, they've stated that experience points are pretty much out the window, but that doesn't mean that jobs will be balanced fairly. The developers did say that that they were taking into account a lot of the feedback the gained from FFXI, so maybe there is hope there. Considering how many fans of the Samurai class that are out there...I don't know. We can hope.
So that brings us to the question to the developers of Final Fantasy XIV: Will you do everything you can for job balance to make sure that one job does not become too powerful over other jobs, and to make sure that none of them fall into a state where very few want to play them?
This question ties in with my next issue which will be coming shortly. Until then, stay cool.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Final Fantasy XIV and MMO Essentials #1: Running, Swimming, and Jumping
Hello and welcome to the first edition of "Final Fantasy XIV and MMO Essentials", a series of blog entries where I'm going to go over some things that I think that any decent MMORPG MUST have, and Final Fantasy XIV damn should have. In this part, I'm going to be talking about a few different ways a player should be able to move his character around in a game world: running, jumping, swimming, crawling, etc.
Yes, you heard me right. Haha, what stupid game developer would forget to include those?
You would be surprised. I have yet to see an MMO where your character can't run, but the others? I don't know, but some MMO devs seem to have trouble including things like swimming, jumping, or crawling. Let's do some backtracking and look at Final Fantasy XI as an example.
Don't get me wrong! Final Fantasy XI was a great MMO experience! The amount of content that is included in it and the things that you can do, the class system, the lore, and the story make it one of the most memorable MMO experiences I've ever been involved with. There were times when I took a hiatus from WoW and went back to play FFXI for a little while. However, in the long run, comparing this game to WoW was like comparing a komodo dragon to a tyranosaurus rex. One of the reasons I think WoW was better was a simple thing: the limitations of where a character could go and what they could do as far as movement goes.
In FFXI, your character could do both, run and walk. I think these are pretty cut and dry things to do in any fantasy based MMO. How else would your character get around, right? In both WoW and FFXI, only the thief (rogue in WoW) have the ability to sprint. I say give it to all classes, at least a short burst of speed. If you want to give improved sprint to a thief, by all means do so. But anyone should have the ability to run has tail off for a few seconds, yes?
Let's talk about swimming next. In WoW, a character can jump in deep water, be it lake or river or a vast ocean. They can swim around on the surface and even dive underwater for a time. Nowadays in WoW, players can stay underwater for a pretty lengthy amount of time. Far too long in my opinion. Not every player character hero should be as good a swimmer as Michael Phelps! But at least it beats FFXI.
All of you residents of Vana'diel as yourselves one very important question. What happens when your avatar tries to go for a dunk in a lake, river, or ocean. There you are, running towards a beach, eager to enjoy a summer swim, and just when you get to the shore, you splash out a few and then...BAM!! Ow! That invisible wall you just busted your face on must have really hurt! But why? Shouldn't that wall be further out like a thousand feet from the shoreline? Apparently not. I feel sorry for Vana'diel people when the summer gets hot.
Next item: Jumping. Some people are going to say, "Geez, WTF do you think this is, Mario?!?" No, not exactly, but I think it is kind of a reminder that it's just a computer game we're playing if we come to a ledge and not have the ability to jump over, or come to a short gap in the floor and not have the chance to leap over it. Once again, we're treated to the Invisble Wall effect. Lameness. Pushing the space bar and having your character leap a few feet up in the air should not be hard to implement into a game.
Crawling. Getting down on your knees and moving around on all fours or just getting low and moving through confined spaces? Not so much essential because there are not so many MMO's out there that let their character do this. It would, however, be a nice thing to have and also include a few environments where it might be warranted. Let's say that there's a little hole in a rock face and you have to get on your face and belly crawl to get to the treasure chest on the other side. Personally, that would add a special element to the game, Legend of Zelda-ish even.
You might even add the ability for characters to climb, such as scaling a rock face, a tree, a wall, etc. These are just thoughts though, and it would be cool to see them.
I've always thought these things should be added into the game. I know that creating underwater environments can be a tricky undertaking, but it can be done, and it would add some depth to this game. The ability to jump off a cliff (or fall off even), or create some obsticles that require to jump, crawl, or climb? That would be cool as well.
If you wanted to put restrictions on it, you could always include a stamina bar like many MMO's out there, which drains off as a character does strenuous activities such as these. These are just my opinions and suggestions though. If Squareenix chooses not to implement all of these things, I will still be willing to try out the game, but I won't stay unless the story, setting, and gameplay are all interesting enough to keep my interest.
So, the question to the Final Fantasy XIV developers is: Aside from the obvious ability to run, will our characters be able to walk, sprint, swim, dive underwater, jump, crawl, or climb?
That's all for now. See you next time for Final Fantasy XIV and MMO Essentials #2: Class/Job Balance (part 1)
Yes, you heard me right. Haha, what stupid game developer would forget to include those?
You would be surprised. I have yet to see an MMO where your character can't run, but the others? I don't know, but some MMO devs seem to have trouble including things like swimming, jumping, or crawling. Let's do some backtracking and look at Final Fantasy XI as an example.
Don't get me wrong! Final Fantasy XI was a great MMO experience! The amount of content that is included in it and the things that you can do, the class system, the lore, and the story make it one of the most memorable MMO experiences I've ever been involved with. There were times when I took a hiatus from WoW and went back to play FFXI for a little while. However, in the long run, comparing this game to WoW was like comparing a komodo dragon to a tyranosaurus rex. One of the reasons I think WoW was better was a simple thing: the limitations of where a character could go and what they could do as far as movement goes.
In FFXI, your character could do both, run and walk. I think these are pretty cut and dry things to do in any fantasy based MMO. How else would your character get around, right? In both WoW and FFXI, only the thief (rogue in WoW) have the ability to sprint. I say give it to all classes, at least a short burst of speed. If you want to give improved sprint to a thief, by all means do so. But anyone should have the ability to run has tail off for a few seconds, yes?
Let's talk about swimming next. In WoW, a character can jump in deep water, be it lake or river or a vast ocean. They can swim around on the surface and even dive underwater for a time. Nowadays in WoW, players can stay underwater for a pretty lengthy amount of time. Far too long in my opinion. Not every player character hero should be as good a swimmer as Michael Phelps! But at least it beats FFXI.
All of you residents of Vana'diel as yourselves one very important question. What happens when your avatar tries to go for a dunk in a lake, river, or ocean. There you are, running towards a beach, eager to enjoy a summer swim, and just when you get to the shore, you splash out a few and then...BAM!! Ow! That invisible wall you just busted your face on must have really hurt! But why? Shouldn't that wall be further out like a thousand feet from the shoreline? Apparently not. I feel sorry for Vana'diel people when the summer gets hot.
Next item: Jumping. Some people are going to say, "Geez, WTF do you think this is, Mario?!?" No, not exactly, but I think it is kind of a reminder that it's just a computer game we're playing if we come to a ledge and not have the ability to jump over, or come to a short gap in the floor and not have the chance to leap over it. Once again, we're treated to the Invisble Wall effect. Lameness. Pushing the space bar and having your character leap a few feet up in the air should not be hard to implement into a game.
Crawling. Getting down on your knees and moving around on all fours or just getting low and moving through confined spaces? Not so much essential because there are not so many MMO's out there that let their character do this. It would, however, be a nice thing to have and also include a few environments where it might be warranted. Let's say that there's a little hole in a rock face and you have to get on your face and belly crawl to get to the treasure chest on the other side. Personally, that would add a special element to the game, Legend of Zelda-ish even.
You might even add the ability for characters to climb, such as scaling a rock face, a tree, a wall, etc. These are just thoughts though, and it would be cool to see them.
I've always thought these things should be added into the game. I know that creating underwater environments can be a tricky undertaking, but it can be done, and it would add some depth to this game. The ability to jump off a cliff (or fall off even), or create some obsticles that require to jump, crawl, or climb? That would be cool as well.
If you wanted to put restrictions on it, you could always include a stamina bar like many MMO's out there, which drains off as a character does strenuous activities such as these. These are just my opinions and suggestions though. If Squareenix chooses not to implement all of these things, I will still be willing to try out the game, but I won't stay unless the story, setting, and gameplay are all interesting enough to keep my interest.
So, the question to the Final Fantasy XIV developers is: Aside from the obvious ability to run, will our characters be able to walk, sprint, swim, dive underwater, jump, crawl, or climb?
That's all for now. See you next time for Final Fantasy XIV and MMO Essentials #2: Class/Job Balance (part 1)
Friday, July 17, 2009
I made the peon cry...
Just to let you all know, at least for the time being, I'm done with World of Warcraft. I don't know when I'll be back. I don't know if I'll be back. It's just the onset of a burnout phase that might last a little while.
It's honestly been a month since I last logged in anyway over the past couple of weeks I've been toying with the idea of suspending my account. I finally made the decision a couple days ago and my account is no longer active. I wanted to give the peon a hug because he was crying so bad that I left. I felt bad about that. Gotta love those game services that lay guilt trips on you when you decide to leave, don't you?
Anyway, I have a few reasons for leaving WoW. At the forefront of them is Blizzard's increasingly lousy job at balancing classes. I've had enough of overpowered ret pallies running around thinking they're leet because they can faceroll their way to victory. Death knights as well. You are all pathetic. Looking at the situation now, it would be impossible for Blizzard to fix the situation and not piss off a whole lot of their player base which would cost them a pretty good number of players, so a bad decision they made a while ago is screwing game quality but businesswise it's not practical to fix it. I get that. That's one reason I'm saying goodbye.
I have other reasons for leaving too but I'm just going to let them rest. Needless to say, the attitudes of a few people over the last few days of gaming have put a bad taste in my mouth, so I needed to get away from them. Days turned into weeks turned into a month, and I find I don't miss it. I've kept tabs on the guild website over that time and I see that some of the people who I cared about most have decided to throw in the towel as well, so I'm honestly not too broken up about leaving people behind anymore. That's just the way it is.
Finally, I quit because I want to increase my social life. I'm tired of being one of the only single guys in the guild, and I aim to rectify that one way or another. So if I come back it might be alongside a significant other, possibly...hopefully...we'll see.
There's no guarentee that I'll come back to WoW either. I'm starting to check out a couple other MMO's here and there that are in development. I was looking at Star Wars: The Old Republic, but my interest in that game has withered. The community looks like it is dominated by people who are wholly infected by what I call "The Jedi Syndrome" (or the "Sith Syndrome" whichever you prefer). By that I mean that people are beginning to think that Jedi and Sith are the only things that matter in Star Wars, which is bullshit. People have actually been saying that they don't want any kind of space flight or space combat in this new Star Wars game! Seriously?!?! I mean, Seriously!?! That's not even Star Wars, you frickin' jackass! That's D&D with laser swords! On top of that, I think this game is going to be catered towards Jedi and Sith in the end, who are just going to be another version of paladins and death knights.
No thank you.
My current prospect, however, is Final Fantasy XIV. Right now, we know almost nothing about this game except that it's going to have pretty much the same races as they had in FFXI but with an entirely new setting. Hints have alluded that the class system will be changed up, gameplay has had a shift from almost strictly group play to more solo options, and some sort of weapon level up process which sounds kind of interesting. My interest in FFXIV will last depending on what information I find out about it. I am very picky when it comes to MMO's anymore, I have certain expectations before I devote $15 a month any more. We'll see if they can deliver.
Anyway, Call of Thunder is back, but it's no longer just devoted to WoW. Expect to see some Final Fantasy XIV ramblings in the future.
It's honestly been a month since I last logged in anyway over the past couple of weeks I've been toying with the idea of suspending my account. I finally made the decision a couple days ago and my account is no longer active. I wanted to give the peon a hug because he was crying so bad that I left. I felt bad about that. Gotta love those game services that lay guilt trips on you when you decide to leave, don't you?
Anyway, I have a few reasons for leaving WoW. At the forefront of them is Blizzard's increasingly lousy job at balancing classes. I've had enough of overpowered ret pallies running around thinking they're leet because they can faceroll their way to victory. Death knights as well. You are all pathetic. Looking at the situation now, it would be impossible for Blizzard to fix the situation and not piss off a whole lot of their player base which would cost them a pretty good number of players, so a bad decision they made a while ago is screwing game quality but businesswise it's not practical to fix it. I get that. That's one reason I'm saying goodbye.
I have other reasons for leaving too but I'm just going to let them rest. Needless to say, the attitudes of a few people over the last few days of gaming have put a bad taste in my mouth, so I needed to get away from them. Days turned into weeks turned into a month, and I find I don't miss it. I've kept tabs on the guild website over that time and I see that some of the people who I cared about most have decided to throw in the towel as well, so I'm honestly not too broken up about leaving people behind anymore. That's just the way it is.
Finally, I quit because I want to increase my social life. I'm tired of being one of the only single guys in the guild, and I aim to rectify that one way or another. So if I come back it might be alongside a significant other, possibly...hopefully...we'll see.
There's no guarentee that I'll come back to WoW either. I'm starting to check out a couple other MMO's here and there that are in development. I was looking at Star Wars: The Old Republic, but my interest in that game has withered. The community looks like it is dominated by people who are wholly infected by what I call "The Jedi Syndrome" (or the "Sith Syndrome" whichever you prefer). By that I mean that people are beginning to think that Jedi and Sith are the only things that matter in Star Wars, which is bullshit. People have actually been saying that they don't want any kind of space flight or space combat in this new Star Wars game! Seriously?!?! I mean, Seriously!?! That's not even Star Wars, you frickin' jackass! That's D&D with laser swords! On top of that, I think this game is going to be catered towards Jedi and Sith in the end, who are just going to be another version of paladins and death knights.
No thank you.
My current prospect, however, is Final Fantasy XIV. Right now, we know almost nothing about this game except that it's going to have pretty much the same races as they had in FFXI but with an entirely new setting. Hints have alluded that the class system will be changed up, gameplay has had a shift from almost strictly group play to more solo options, and some sort of weapon level up process which sounds kind of interesting. My interest in FFXIV will last depending on what information I find out about it. I am very picky when it comes to MMO's anymore, I have certain expectations before I devote $15 a month any more. We'll see if they can deliver.
Anyway, Call of Thunder is back, but it's no longer just devoted to WoW. Expect to see some Final Fantasy XIV ramblings in the future.
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