What A Change a Few Years Can MakeFollow

I get what you're saying Callinon. I think Killua means they could have kept the cooler cutscenes and added that info you mentioned sort of like the intro of this movie.

Perhaps my wording is bit harsh. I take Metacritic with a large helping of salt, mainly because all it takes is a dark horse looking for attention to skew the ratings. The number rating is not universal across all reviewers and Metacritic tries to beleive that the law of averages can appropriately control this, where I feel as if it compounds the problem - creating a more homogenized viewpoint of games rather than creating a variant perspective.

That and endgame was buggy as hell for TOR. It is not a good indicator with the ease of leveling and dungeons of this being a long term game (yet). Im not saying we go back to 1.0 or XI grind which was awful. But people will burn through all the content quickly I fear, and you would need some solid gold endgame to keep them playing. If they get the RvRvR pvp up and going before three months that will help immensely with retention. They will need a Rift style content release schedule of new raids every couple of months as well. Bringing out new jobs/classes will help, but if people get bored it wont be enough. So yes 2.0 is in a precarious situation that every other wow style themepark puts itself in, balancing accessibility with content generation. To this date only rift has been able to keep up with its lofty goals (somewhat). Others like TSW failed miserably (they got what 3 monthly expacs out before reversing course and then ending up f2p?). If it takes 6 months for the next raid to come out/RvRvR, then yes 2.0 will have a retention problem.

True, about SWTOR. But please add...

• Horrible project management: They never did anything right, delayed absolutely everything, and took several weeks to even patch game-breaking bugs
• Worst QA in MMO history: We cleared all the end-game content in our guild. But the amount of bugs found in the damn TWO raids (EV ought to be the worst, that was the one with Soa, wasn't it?) was stupendously high. And the bugs were getting more and more / worse and worse as the difficulty climbed up. It's as if the QA never bothered to enter these instances at Hard / Nightmare in the first place.
• Poor implementation decisions: So, you are Bioware / EA, have spent an obscene amount of money making this game, and then go and use an unknown HeroForge engine, which a) is free b) has never been used in anything of scale before and c) cannot sustain more than 10-12 fps on very high end computers when crowd gathers. You then make Ilum a desert because the "mass PVP" you wanted can't work at 2 fps.

Um, profit?

It takes considerable effort to take a game which had a solid concept, nice leveling and all, and perhaps the strongest brand on Earth, and ruin it so profoundly.

I speak from experience, of course.

Yes I love this.

This would also allow players to get a sneak peak/hands on with a class before having to invest hours to see if a certain class was what they wanted.

While that probably would be cool for us, there's a very real possibility of overwhelming a completely new player. Far from being a cool experience at full power, it'd be a mass confusion of buttons that a lot of new players would sit and read first. So then your first few minutes of cool gameplay turn into your first few minutes of reading tooltips for skills you aren't going to have again for 40 levels.

I certainly see your point about putting the player right into some combat, and other MMOs would probably do exactly that. But I think it's ok for a Final Fantasy game to lean a little more heavily on the story aspect and then ease players into the combat.

I can say that, personally, I wasn't bored in either the Gridania or Ul'Dah opening sequences. Haven't tried Limsa, that one might suck, don't know.

Nearly everything discussed here since the NDA was lifted is about a game that has yet to be released and is subject to change. Forum is irrelevant? I don't think so. It's just discussion and given that it's based in what most people would consider valid concern, I feel it has as much place here as any.

It's completely possible that there will be people that will play through to cap and it'll be good enough to hook them. Not as likely, but still possible I guess that there will be legacy players or other 1.0 players returning that will stick around and pay until endgame content arrives. No one is saying that there is no endgame content, but no one expects to see any of it prior to launch so... valid concern is valid. Take it as you will, but if you follow XIV or any other games recently released since then; you'll see people asking specifically "What is there to do at endgame?".


Call me a heathen, but I place faith in no one. I'm a 'believe it when I see it' kind of person. That's not to say that I refuse to accept any optimism at all, but to be fair; Yoshi is only doing what should have been done the first time around. Credit where due, no doubt.


Your observation is pretty extreme. No one has said it's not possible.

Yoshi is in the unique situation of having to develop content for both new and established players. Considering the overhaul, this is no easy task. No one is dismissing him or his effort to make it happen, just recognizing that it's going to be a more difficult task and acknowledging that it's probably not something we'll see until release(as you'll remember it was too late by then last time around).

For those who didn't want to pick through every single video out there to compare, it looks like someone put up the original opening cutscenes back in 2010.

Note that the parts where you fight in between cutscenes has been removed.

They are actually pretty interesting -- well maybe not Gridania, to me. The CNJ Guildmaster also has a far deeper voice than I'd expect, given his appearance.

Original Limsa intro cutscene (Attack of the killer jellyfish...and Leviathan)

Original Ul'dah intro cutscene (Goobbue Gone Wild) (Note: I wouldn't be surprised if Thancred sounds the same in ARR too.)

Original Gridania intro cutscene (Wolves and Trees and Moogles, oh my.)

I think the 2.0 cutscene pacing and introduction is actually a lot better. Like I mentioned, these 6 minute cutscenes also included a fight in the middle of the cutscene.

So for the Limsa version who started as a GLD (Goldsmith, NOT Gladiator, which is GLA), throwing rocks for 1-2 HP and then winning the fight...yeaah...

Um. No they don't? Once you finish talking to Momodi, Mioune, or Baderon, you're more than free to just go outside and kill stuff without ever (a) touching an aetheryte, (b) going to the market district, or (c) going to your guild. The game doesn't force you to do any of that before you can just do your own thing, or keep you inside of an instanced zone like it does before you talk to the proprietor of each respective Adventurer's Guild.

Additionally, most every class's guild's first quest is for you to go outside of the city you're in and, you know, kill stuff.

Edited, Jul 24th 2013 9:35am by Satisiun

In 1.0, Leviathan showed up and tried to sink the ship you were sailing on. In 2.0, you talk to a friendly merchant and are shown that the beastmen are on the warpath. This is after seeing a vision of "future you" having some sort of confrontation with a masked, mysterious villain.

Like most things ARR, Killua is over critical, but it is fair to say that 2.0 does not have the jaw dropping scale to the opening cut scene that 1.0 had.

Chill out folks, or I'll start stepping on necks.

I'm not agreeing about the opening being bad in XIV, but just to play devil's advocate here... in Skyrim, let us remember that the opening scene also includes a first person viewing of a beheading and then a dragon comes in and destroys a town lol.

Edited, Jul 24th 2013 11:07am by ClydesShadow