Levels 1-30 supported, which means that I am still lagging behind a bit and will have to stack on an additional 5 levels to stay competitive. I think NCSoft is trying to kill me.
Missing the second CB meant I started out at a 20 level deficit that I have been unable to eradicate. That's ok though. I'm not intent on busting through the levels and burning myself out before the game releases - I plan on finishing my current zone, checking out the desert zone a little, and playing a child sized Elyos to experience their content a bit. Hopefully it will help me chose which faction to play.
I can't wait for next weekend!
Friday, July 24
Thursday, July 23
Hilarious WoW PvE Videos
I had to post this series of "pro strat" Ulduar videos. They're funny beyond words:
Flame Leviathan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azFo-Mlh3Fc&NR=1
Razorscale - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3lFKbVaPZw&NR=1
Auriaya - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elA3bFPLbd8
Flame Leviathan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azFo-Mlh3Fc&NR=1
Razorscale - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3lFKbVaPZw&NR=1
Auriaya - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elA3bFPLbd8
Hunter Q&A....
Wow. I mean really. Nothing in this Q&A was particularly interesting, exciting, or clever. In fact, the first third of the class review dealt with every hunter's favorite long-term undelivered promise: special arrows. But I suppose the overall cluelessness toward the class was best summarized in this quote:
I can resolve that for them right now. The hunter never raptor strikes. Ever. You know when a hunter raptor strikes? When they tank Bloodboil in Black Temple and are forced to melee for 30 seconds with no other option. And even then most hunters just melee and watch their healthstones/healthpots/deterrence in a desperate effort not to die. Even before the launch of Burning Crusade there was only one time to ever bother with Raptor Strike - Thaddius in 40 man Naxx, if your tank failed at positioning him just right and you could not get out of your dead zone to shoot. Even in PvP the only useful melee skill a hunter posesses is counter-attack, which is not nearly worth the point spent, especially since it requires a parry or a dodge to trigger it...I really forget, since I haven't even bothered to train level 1 on my new hunter. Hunters do not melee. EVER.
The hunter is not a ranger, a hybrid, a melee character of any kind. They are a physical dps ranged class with a pet (regardless of the "magical" aspect to some attacks, they are still an archer). I sincerely hope Blizzard does not make the mistake this late in the game of redesigning the class to involve any melee skills whatsoever - if this was inteded to be a ranged/melee hybrid class then it should have been developed in that vein rather than with a pet. Oh wait,
I was confused about this "melee attack issue" until I read further to see the other community questions addressed. This reads like the laziest list ever - complaint after complaind regarding pet controls, survival, heals and resurection for pets. The heal issue was actually my favorite:
I have an alternate suggestion. People who are too slow/bad/lazy to heal their own pet should not play a pet class. Pets already recieve pleanty of accidental healing from AoE heals, PoM and other passive regeneration skills. Proper management of pets, such as pulling them AWAY from whirlwinding mobs goes a long way to keeping a pet alive, as does healing it when you know unavoidable damage is incoming. Often, keeping your pet alive in PvE content is as simple as setting your pet on the melee target and setting yourself on the ranged target. Not hard. But then again these are the same people who complain it's too slow to resurrect your pet as BM spec - even though the cast timer goes down to 5 seconds or so.
Finally, the largest misstatement of the interview:
We want to resolve what a hunter is supposed to do in melee (Raptor Strike? Disengage?).
I can resolve that for them right now. The hunter never raptor strikes. Ever. You know when a hunter raptor strikes? When they tank Bloodboil in Black Temple and are forced to melee for 30 seconds with no other option. And even then most hunters just melee and watch their healthstones/healthpots/deterrence in a desperate effort not to die. Even before the launch of Burning Crusade there was only one time to ever bother with Raptor Strike - Thaddius in 40 man Naxx, if your tank failed at positioning him just right and you could not get out of your dead zone to shoot. Even in PvP the only useful melee skill a hunter posesses is counter-attack, which is not nearly worth the point spent, especially since it requires a parry or a dodge to trigger it...I really forget, since I haven't even bothered to train level 1 on my new hunter. Hunters do not melee. EVER.
The hunter is not a ranger, a hybrid, a melee character of any kind. They are a physical dps ranged class with a pet (regardless of the "magical" aspect to some attacks, they are still an archer). I sincerely hope Blizzard does not make the mistake this late in the game of redesigning the class to involve any melee skills whatsoever - if this was inteded to be a ranged/melee hybrid class then it should have been developed in that vein rather than with a pet. Oh wait,
I’ll add that the melee attack issue for hunters themselves is something we keep discussing. While we are unlikely to go back to a melee-focused build for hunters, we might consider a model where hunters don’t run away most of the time but switch to melee attacks – perhaps even a single punishing attack on a cooldown before the hunter Disengaged or whatever. This would be one of those things that helped hunters feel more different than actual magic casters, and might make them care about melee weapons as more than stat sticks.
I was confused about this "melee attack issue" until I read further to see the other community questions addressed. This reads like the laziest list ever - complaint after complaind regarding pet controls, survival, heals and resurection for pets. The heal issue was actually my favorite:
One suggestion made by many hunters was to add a passive ability that healed the hunter's pet when the hunter received a heal from a party or raid member.
I have an alternate suggestion. People who are too slow/bad/lazy to heal their own pet should not play a pet class. Pets already recieve pleanty of accidental healing from AoE heals, PoM and other passive regeneration skills. Proper management of pets, such as pulling them AWAY from whirlwinding mobs goes a long way to keeping a pet alive, as does healing it when you know unavoidable damage is incoming. Often, keeping your pet alive in PvE content is as simple as setting your pet on the melee target and setting yourself on the ranged target. Not hard. But then again these are the same people who complain it's too slow to resurrect your pet as BM spec - even though the cast timer goes down to 5 seconds or so.
Finally, the largest misstatement of the interview:
Now for hunters specifically, we think the class is just too cooldown limited,
which creates problems with haste.
This just made me laugh. Out loud. Hunters have many different shots, all of which share a global cooldown. We also have a large number of INSTANT shots - all stings (viper/serpent/scorpid), black arrow and explosive shot for survival, chimera shot and silencing shot for marksmanship, aimed shot and arcane shot for all specs. The only shots that have a cast time are multi-shot, steady shot, and the channeled volley. So perhaps when thinking about itemizing the hunter set gear Blizzard should take into account that haste is not a desired stat - it is equally useless to all. Haste would have been useful in the days of aimed shot spam, but this is the age of hunter instant shots with steady shot mixed in when nothing else is available. Haste is simply not beneficial to most of our skills. This has nothing at all to do with cooldowns. I prefer to play without cooldowns, and that is how it works for Survival spec - I hang onto my Rapid Fire for Bloodlust or favorable conditions, and then maximize my dps. As Marksmanship it's another story that involves on use trinkets, properly timing Rapid Fire, using Readiness to make Rapid Fire available again, and then reusing it again at the proper moment. So yes, I feel this build is restricted greatly by cooldowns and I don't enjoy playing it. But that has nothing to do with haste whatsoever. To make haste useful would require reworking hunter instant shots to include cast time, and would fundamentally redesign the class.
So to summarize. Nothing interesting in the pipe, nothing necessary being fixed (apart from the oft made "we're going to streamline the pet bar" promise and the teaser of maybe, possibly, perhaps in a few years you can tame more pets). And no real solid understanding of what real hunters want, just responses to the whining masses.
Full Text:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/hunter.html
Sunday, July 12
The World vs. The Character: Meta and Micro Story in MMORPGs
One of the fundamental problems with storytelling in an MMORPG is that the game provides two basic types of experience: gaming and social. There needs to be a well defined balance between the game's story (meta) and the character's story (micro), but also some consideration must be given to the player as well, and the fact that their interraction with the world is but one facet of the game.
The World of Warcraft approach to questing and game story has been to focus on the meta story - the world in peril, pushing back the never ending assault of the burning legion on the world of Azeroth. The micro story of each character suffers as a result. Though each character grows in strength and level, there is not much in terms of "character" development. You never "mature" from one class into another, and though you may attain titles and honors, there are no real "ceremonies" or acklowledgement within the game, aside from the odd congratulatory mail from NPCs. In this regard, WoW plays emphasizes the MMO aspect while minimizing the RPG - it sacrifices the small scale narrative and character growth of an RPG for the meta story and social gameplay. The real accomplishments of the game are collective: success in the PvP arena or Battleground system, or success with the 10-20-25-40 player raiding content.
There are small nods to a micro story - opening the dungeon Ahn Quiraj required the completion of a massive quest chain, at the end of which one character on each realm was able to finally break the seal and open the instance. In this instance, individual players were able to impact the world and interract on a "personal" level with the meta story. Other such quests have been since added in small quantity, most notably the zone-wide quest chain in Dragonblight for the Horde (there's some sort of Alliance counterpart, I'm sure) that culminates in the death of an Alliance and Horde Hero, the overthow of Sylvannas Windrunner, and the retaking of the Undercity. Even so, these quests that attempt to draw the player into the meta storyline do little beyond make the player feel like a witness to great events - not a participant. The gameplay video was a nice touch, as with the short one you encounter before Brutallus in the Sunwell. These small moments help to draw the character, and the player, into the world. Ultimately they fall flat due, in my opinion, to their infrequency - they tell little stories but ones that are largely unrelated and don't build on any sort of narrative or momentum.
It's no secret to anyone who has heard me talk at length about my feelings about WoW that I believe Blizzard blew a golden opportunity. Before the release of Burning Crusade, the game did make small efforts to develop characters. They were simplistic, but they did exist: class quests as you leveled, or epic weapon quests for some classes allowed the player to participate in a narrative that was specifically for them. With the release of Wrath of the Lich King, a move was made back in this direction for the Death Knight class. NPCs treat Death Knights with disgust, as does the general population before each individual character is accepted as a member of their faction. In this sense, the DK earns its place as a fighter of the Alliance or Horde. This type of character accomplishment has a strong role playing aspect to it, and manages to draw the character into the story. The starter DK quests are also well designed, taking the character through a number of linked objectives to prove their worth, though they ultimately reject domination by the Lich King and defect to their faction instead.
This type of interraction and questing could have made WoW into a truly phenomenal game. Unfortunately, the choice was made to bog the game down under hundreds and hundreds of quests unrelated to any greater objectives or to develop the feel of the world. "Go fetch" and "go kill" quests are just vehicles for free money and experiencem not storytelling. Players were resigned to grinding out these quests for miscelaneous rewards to gain wealth, rather than move a story point forward. The balance between narrative and practical advancement was lost. WotLK seems to attempt to right this imbalance, but the formula was already set. The excellent quest lines and the ability for quest completion to literally redesign the world (absolutely brilliant) become burried under all the bloated extra quests that simply exist to grant xp and useless items, guide players through each zone from quest hub to quest hub, and occupy player time. Every thing the game does right is countered by something the game does wrong, leaving it at a net standstill.
It's because of this "overburdening" of quests in WoW that I was nervous to hear that NCSoft had implemented a large number of quests in their forthcoming "Aion: The Tower of Eternity" MMORPG. Having experienced NCSoft's idea of quests in Lineage II, I was greatly alarmed. Quests in Lineage II were generally not story telling devices - instead, they were ways to maximize your use of time. Since you were going out to hunt anyway to regain experience you'd lost, or build up some materials and wealth to craft some new gear, you simply accepted a quest that would take you days or weeks to complete that you could inch forward on simultaneously.
There were also "character narrative" quest lines at level 20, 35, 37, and 39 that allowed you to develop your character into a more advanced and specialized class. At level 75 you completed an even more complex and complicated quest line to gain access to a new set of abilities. Beyond that there were additional complex questlines for becoming a noble character, a ranking that came with numerous privledges and special qualities. These types of quests were frustrating but made the player the agent of their character's development. They also punctuated the character's lifespan well, giving the players a feeling that their character was truly advancing periodically. The game did not have many quests, but still managed to draw the player/character into the world by the development of the character through the levels and - most notably - through server reputation. Being a game that focused almost entirely on world pvp and wars between individual players, each person was deeply tied to the other players through social and political actions.
The open pvp system forced players to constantly watch their backs, protect their friends, and build the strength of their clans, alliances, and relationships with other individual players and groups. This social/political structure was incredibly immersive and addictive, drawing players into server drama and making each person an integral part of the server. The "meta story" of Lineage 2 was not a world of NPCs in peril - it was a world entirely populated by players. The void of content actually served to increase the immersive qualities of the game. Player choices - alliances, wars, castle sieges - these drove the story of the world forward and each server was unique and told a different "story". There were servers on which people generally cooperated and worked together, sharing castles and collaborating to defeat the most difficult world spawn raid bosses. Then there were servers like mine (Kain) where massive wars were formed on a server-wide scale with kill zones, territorial lockdowns, and constant raids of the "enemy" territory. As a casual virtual social anthropologist it was an incredibly fascinating experiment in human nature. Given a blank slate, people responded with a terrific breadth of actions, from incredibly collaborative and supportive to aggressive, violent, or manipulative.
The World of Warcraft approach to questing and game story has been to focus on the meta story - the world in peril, pushing back the never ending assault of the burning legion on the world of Azeroth. The micro story of each character suffers as a result. Though each character grows in strength and level, there is not much in terms of "character" development. You never "mature" from one class into another, and though you may attain titles and honors, there are no real "ceremonies" or acklowledgement within the game, aside from the odd congratulatory mail from NPCs. In this regard, WoW plays emphasizes the MMO aspect while minimizing the RPG - it sacrifices the small scale narrative and character growth of an RPG for the meta story and social gameplay. The real accomplishments of the game are collective: success in the PvP arena or Battleground system, or success with the 10-20-25-40 player raiding content.
There are small nods to a micro story - opening the dungeon Ahn Quiraj required the completion of a massive quest chain, at the end of which one character on each realm was able to finally break the seal and open the instance. In this instance, individual players were able to impact the world and interract on a "personal" level with the meta story. Other such quests have been since added in small quantity, most notably the zone-wide quest chain in Dragonblight for the Horde (there's some sort of Alliance counterpart, I'm sure) that culminates in the death of an Alliance and Horde Hero, the overthow of Sylvannas Windrunner, and the retaking of the Undercity. Even so, these quests that attempt to draw the player into the meta storyline do little beyond make the player feel like a witness to great events - not a participant. The gameplay video was a nice touch, as with the short one you encounter before Brutallus in the Sunwell. These small moments help to draw the character, and the player, into the world. Ultimately they fall flat due, in my opinion, to their infrequency - they tell little stories but ones that are largely unrelated and don't build on any sort of narrative or momentum.
It's no secret to anyone who has heard me talk at length about my feelings about WoW that I believe Blizzard blew a golden opportunity. Before the release of Burning Crusade, the game did make small efforts to develop characters. They were simplistic, but they did exist: class quests as you leveled, or epic weapon quests for some classes allowed the player to participate in a narrative that was specifically for them. With the release of Wrath of the Lich King, a move was made back in this direction for the Death Knight class. NPCs treat Death Knights with disgust, as does the general population before each individual character is accepted as a member of their faction. In this sense, the DK earns its place as a fighter of the Alliance or Horde. This type of character accomplishment has a strong role playing aspect to it, and manages to draw the character into the story. The starter DK quests are also well designed, taking the character through a number of linked objectives to prove their worth, though they ultimately reject domination by the Lich King and defect to their faction instead.
This type of interraction and questing could have made WoW into a truly phenomenal game. Unfortunately, the choice was made to bog the game down under hundreds and hundreds of quests unrelated to any greater objectives or to develop the feel of the world. "Go fetch" and "go kill" quests are just vehicles for free money and experiencem not storytelling. Players were resigned to grinding out these quests for miscelaneous rewards to gain wealth, rather than move a story point forward. The balance between narrative and practical advancement was lost. WotLK seems to attempt to right this imbalance, but the formula was already set. The excellent quest lines and the ability for quest completion to literally redesign the world (absolutely brilliant) become burried under all the bloated extra quests that simply exist to grant xp and useless items, guide players through each zone from quest hub to quest hub, and occupy player time. Every thing the game does right is countered by something the game does wrong, leaving it at a net standstill.
It's because of this "overburdening" of quests in WoW that I was nervous to hear that NCSoft had implemented a large number of quests in their forthcoming "Aion: The Tower of Eternity" MMORPG. Having experienced NCSoft's idea of quests in Lineage II, I was greatly alarmed. Quests in Lineage II were generally not story telling devices - instead, they were ways to maximize your use of time. Since you were going out to hunt anyway to regain experience you'd lost, or build up some materials and wealth to craft some new gear, you simply accepted a quest that would take you days or weeks to complete that you could inch forward on simultaneously.
There were also "character narrative" quest lines at level 20, 35, 37, and 39 that allowed you to develop your character into a more advanced and specialized class. At level 75 you completed an even more complex and complicated quest line to gain access to a new set of abilities. Beyond that there were additional complex questlines for becoming a noble character, a ranking that came with numerous privledges and special qualities. These types of quests were frustrating but made the player the agent of their character's development. They also punctuated the character's lifespan well, giving the players a feeling that their character was truly advancing periodically. The game did not have many quests, but still managed to draw the player/character into the world by the development of the character through the levels and - most notably - through server reputation. Being a game that focused almost entirely on world pvp and wars between individual players, each person was deeply tied to the other players through social and political actions.
The open pvp system forced players to constantly watch their backs, protect their friends, and build the strength of their clans, alliances, and relationships with other individual players and groups. This social/political structure was incredibly immersive and addictive, drawing players into server drama and making each person an integral part of the server. The "meta story" of Lineage 2 was not a world of NPCs in peril - it was a world entirely populated by players. The void of content actually served to increase the immersive qualities of the game. Player choices - alliances, wars, castle sieges - these drove the story of the world forward and each server was unique and told a different "story". There were servers on which people generally cooperated and worked together, sharing castles and collaborating to defeat the most difficult world spawn raid bosses. Then there were servers like mine (Kain) where massive wars were formed on a server-wide scale with kill zones, territorial lockdowns, and constant raids of the "enemy" territory. As a casual virtual social anthropologist it was an incredibly fascinating experiment in human nature. Given a blank slate, people responded with a terrific breadth of actions, from incredibly collaborative and supportive to aggressive, violent, or manipulative.
Saturday, July 11
Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds
I grabbed a ticket to Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds, the symphonic rendition of some of the Final Fantasy Franchise's music while I was at Benaroya Hall for The Planets a few weeks back, and I've been looking forward to it ever since. I'm really glad I went, and I will gladly go again in the future in the hopes that a few things are improved. And I hope they never, ever remove To Zanarkand, Liberi Fatali and One Winged Angel from the tour!
Program: [updated to include video links from the Seattle performance]
Liberi Fatali (VIII)
To Zanarkand (X)
Don't Be Afraid (VIII)
Aerith's Theme (VII)
Medley FFI-FFIII
Dear Friends (V)
Vamo' alla Flamenco (IX)
Love Grows (Eyes on Me) (VIII)
Ronafaure (XI)
Main Theme (All)
Bombing Mission (VII)
Fisherman's Horizon (VIII)
Memoro de la Stono (XI)
The Man With the Machine Gun (VIII)
Theme of Love (IV) (skipped due to time constraints)
Swing de Chocobo (All)
The Opera - Maria and Draco (VI)
Terra's Theme (VI)
One Winged Angel (VII) (encore!)
First Complaint: The Accompanying Video
Most of the video footage was classic gameplay footage. Not movies, not opening cinematics. Not even later gameplay footage with acual expresssion and body language. A large amount of great game movie footage and CGI movie not used at all, and a the small amount that was used was actually reused. The "classic" style gameplay footage was hilarious and adorable at first, but though the novelty wore off quickly the footage persisted. Why use minutes and minutes of old school chocobos running across maps when you have pleanty of more dynamic footage from the more recent titles that shows the depth of the art and how the chocobo has evolved throughout the titles? For those of us who have been playing Final Fantasy for a long time it was nostalgic in small quantites, but it got old after a while. For those in the audience (mostly confused girlfriends) who haven't, it was just silly. The narratives and the art - what have always set Final Fantasy apart from the rest of console RPGs for me - were totally lost in the representation.
This was compounded by the fact that there was a heavy emphasis on early titles. The tribute to Final Fantasy I - III was great, especially since it featured some of the recently redone DS content which is beautiful. But the DS gameplay would have been preferable to the old style stuff. The FFVII gameplay was nostalgic for me since it was the first title I had access to, but after a little bit of it, they could have gone to the movie quality as well (towards the end they actually used the Advent Children footage, and it was AWESOME. If they had used the CG quality stuff throughout, the experience would've been so much more profound). The "cuteness" of the blocky avatars really drew me away from the power of the music. Terrible, terrible decision that undermined some of the strongest music of the night.
Beyond the poor choice of footage, it was constantly recycled. Really. Eleven console titles, one online title, 3 DS titles, plus additional FF stuff...and they couldn't find enough unique footage for a 2 hour symphony show? Unbelievable. For titles like 8 where a lot of footage was used, I was shocked to see none of the ballroom sequence "Waltz for the Moon", none of the very end movie, and almost none of the parade sequence. From FFVIII and onward the video sequences were really stunning, and yet there was not that much used (except, thankfully, quite a lot of Yuna's sending dance in one sequence). From FFX onward the gameplay footage is excellent too. Even as early as VIII it's possible to glean emotion from the characters in play mode, but instead of using the footage to tell a story to accompany the music, it was really just a distraction. If the video is not telling a story, then static art images would have been far superior.
Opening videos tell stories! Stories are good!
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy XII
Second Complaint: No Music From FFXII
NONE. Far and away FFXII is my favorite title. Best and most well rounded cast, best story in terms of complexity and flow, best writing, best language, best voice actors, best art....and an amazing score of music that was completely ignored for this performance. I could have done without any of the FFXI music, period. I found it to be the dullest, though at the very least the choice of video for the FFXI segments told a story. And the true loss was the gorgeous movies and expressive gameplay. There were just a few tiny, tiny clips of the wedding scene.
I'm hoping that they'll add FFXII in the future, since aparently the addition of FFXI was relatively new. Even the small bits were amazing, like the resting music! Seriously...they could tour on this alone...
Full Collection of FFXII Music on YouTube
Full Collection of FFXII Movies and Cutscenes on YouTube
Some Examples:
Final Fantasy Theme (opening credits)
Symphonic Poem Hope (end credits)
Time for a Rest (inn music)
To The Place of the Gods
The Forgotten Capital
Theme of the Empire
The Battle for Freedom
State of Emergency
Seeking Power
An Imminent Threat
Rebellion
Final Thoughts
The FF Series of games are not hard, tricky, or complicated to play. They're really just beautiful interactive stories. That's what this concert series missed and could have capitalized on. There were moments here and there where a certain clip reminded me about what it was I loved about an earlier title that I haven't played in some time. This series had the opportunity to take us back, walk us through the story and retell in a few minutes' time the dramatic and often tragic sweep of each game's narrative. I really feel a better presentation format might be to take each title, chronologically, and present its music. Leading off with the Main Theme, and moving through each title - starting with the I-III medly. For some of the games, which have a lot of music, you would have a large chunk of time to string together footage to tell a comprehensive story.
I hope that as this event continues to tour and hopefully prepares for tours in the future they take this into account. And I hope I can get "To Zanarkand" out of my head before I go completely insane.
Program: [updated to include video links from the Seattle performance]
Liberi Fatali (VIII)
To Zanarkand (X)
Don't Be Afraid (VIII)
Aerith's Theme (VII)
Medley FFI-FFIII
Dear Friends (V)
Vamo' alla Flamenco (IX)
Love Grows (Eyes on Me) (VIII)
Ronafaure (XI)
Main Theme (All)
Bombing Mission (VII)
Fisherman's Horizon (VIII)
Memoro de la Stono (XI)
The Man With the Machine Gun (VIII)
Theme of Love (IV) (skipped due to time constraints)
Swing de Chocobo (All)
The Opera - Maria and Draco (VI)
Terra's Theme (VI)
One Winged Angel (VII) (encore!)
First Complaint: The Accompanying Video
Most of the video footage was classic gameplay footage. Not movies, not opening cinematics. Not even later gameplay footage with acual expresssion and body language. A large amount of great game movie footage and CGI movie not used at all, and a the small amount that was used was actually reused. The "classic" style gameplay footage was hilarious and adorable at first, but though the novelty wore off quickly the footage persisted. Why use minutes and minutes of old school chocobos running across maps when you have pleanty of more dynamic footage from the more recent titles that shows the depth of the art and how the chocobo has evolved throughout the titles? For those of us who have been playing Final Fantasy for a long time it was nostalgic in small quantites, but it got old after a while. For those in the audience (mostly confused girlfriends) who haven't, it was just silly. The narratives and the art - what have always set Final Fantasy apart from the rest of console RPGs for me - were totally lost in the representation.
This was compounded by the fact that there was a heavy emphasis on early titles. The tribute to Final Fantasy I - III was great, especially since it featured some of the recently redone DS content which is beautiful. But the DS gameplay would have been preferable to the old style stuff. The FFVII gameplay was nostalgic for me since it was the first title I had access to, but after a little bit of it, they could have gone to the movie quality as well (towards the end they actually used the Advent Children footage, and it was AWESOME. If they had used the CG quality stuff throughout, the experience would've been so much more profound). The "cuteness" of the blocky avatars really drew me away from the power of the music. Terrible, terrible decision that undermined some of the strongest music of the night.
Beyond the poor choice of footage, it was constantly recycled. Really. Eleven console titles, one online title, 3 DS titles, plus additional FF stuff...and they couldn't find enough unique footage for a 2 hour symphony show? Unbelievable. For titles like 8 where a lot of footage was used, I was shocked to see none of the ballroom sequence "Waltz for the Moon", none of the very end movie, and almost none of the parade sequence. From FFVIII and onward the video sequences were really stunning, and yet there was not that much used (except, thankfully, quite a lot of Yuna's sending dance in one sequence). From FFX onward the gameplay footage is excellent too. Even as early as VIII it's possible to glean emotion from the characters in play mode, but instead of using the footage to tell a story to accompany the music, it was really just a distraction. If the video is not telling a story, then static art images would have been far superior.
Opening videos tell stories! Stories are good!
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy XII
Second Complaint: No Music From FFXII
NONE. Far and away FFXII is my favorite title. Best and most well rounded cast, best story in terms of complexity and flow, best writing, best language, best voice actors, best art....and an amazing score of music that was completely ignored for this performance. I could have done without any of the FFXI music, period. I found it to be the dullest, though at the very least the choice of video for the FFXI segments told a story. And the true loss was the gorgeous movies and expressive gameplay. There were just a few tiny, tiny clips of the wedding scene.
I'm hoping that they'll add FFXII in the future, since aparently the addition of FFXI was relatively new. Even the small bits were amazing, like the resting music! Seriously...they could tour on this alone...
Full Collection of FFXII Music on YouTube
Full Collection of FFXII Movies and Cutscenes on YouTube
Some Examples:
Final Fantasy Theme (opening credits)
Symphonic Poem Hope (end credits)
Time for a Rest (inn music)
To The Place of the Gods
The Forgotten Capital
Theme of the Empire
The Battle for Freedom
State of Emergency
Seeking Power
An Imminent Threat
Rebellion
Final Thoughts
The FF Series of games are not hard, tricky, or complicated to play. They're really just beautiful interactive stories. That's what this concert series missed and could have capitalized on. There were moments here and there where a certain clip reminded me about what it was I loved about an earlier title that I haven't played in some time. This series had the opportunity to take us back, walk us through the story and retell in a few minutes' time the dramatic and often tragic sweep of each game's narrative. I really feel a better presentation format might be to take each title, chronologically, and present its music. Leading off with the Main Theme, and moving through each title - starting with the I-III medly. For some of the games, which have a lot of music, you would have a large chunk of time to string together footage to tell a comprehensive story.
I hope that as this event continues to tour and hopefully prepares for tours in the future they take this into account. And I hope I can get "To Zanarkand" out of my head before I go completely insane.
Tuesday, July 7
Aion Closed Beta 3: Asmodian 1-20
This past Fourth of July/Canada Day weekend was the third Aion Closed Beta. I'm sad to have missed the second one, particularly because it meant I had to start from scratch to catch up to my friends, and by the end of the weekend I had only managed level 18 and 1/4, largely due to my insistence on making one of EVERYTHING. No, really. My character selection screen looks like a harem.
I played most extensively as a Chanter, a competent fighter with moderate damage output, supportive heals and buffs. I was pleased with the class - it's got great longevity for soloing, and will be a nice class to start out with when the game goes live. The damage output wasn't that extraordinary, which is appropriate. I found that Gladiators, Scouts, and Assasins all killed faster than me, but with greater downtime due to their lack of heals and mana regeneration skills. I seemed to kill at the same rate as a tank, which seems reasonable. So it seems relatively balanced for now - I sacrifice power for my hybrid status. Long ago I played a Warden in DAoC. It was one of my all time favorite classes, even though it was extraordinarily underpowered. My heals were so small they might as well be non existent (not to mention my mana pool could not support them as my buffs were chants that constantly pulsed, drawing mana) and my attacks were ridiculously weak (a few low damage physical attacks, but reliant on auto attacking), but I supported a group and I loved the class type. I was pleased to see that NCSoft has created a buffing class that can participate in fighting, too. After years as a prophet - a real player prophet and not a second box - I am glad to get back into the action. No more sitting to regen mana and buffing the entire party, one buff and player at a time, EVERY TWENTY MINUTES. Just thinking about it makes me want to cut myself.
I had a wonderful time exploring the Asmodian starting zones. The Elyos starting zone, of which I saw less (I only created characters and played until level 5 in the first beta), is beautiful and tropical. Lush and vibrant, with bright colors and burning sun. I was concerned the Asmodian zones might be homogeneous barren terrain since they are dark and cold places, but I was quite wrong. The frozen parts were gorgeous and shimmery, and there was a fantastic diversity of terrain, ranging from partially frozen lakes to farmland and forested mountains. I should have looked around more and taken terrain screenshots - I found myself amazed at the variation in plant life and even in critters. I was having so much fun just running around the world that I didn't take too many shots, unfortunately.
Compare (click for larger image):
Left: Elyos starting zone. Intact buildings, warm colors, lots of trees and flowers.
Right: Asmodian starting zone. Shattered buildings (same as the intact ones for Elyos) and tents, cool colors, different types of foliage.
As for the hunting - at first I was underwhelmed by the variety of mobs to hunt. The models they do have are pretty nice - birds, beasts, and some humanoids. But as I flew over the world from one town to another (a very fast endeavor compared to WoW - the flight points were short and flight speed was very quick) I realized how small the world actually is, compared to World of Warcraft. Rather than a flight point on a mount, you are given beautiful magic wings and you zoom over the terrain. I began to evaluate the size and structure of the world and made a couple of awesome discoveries about how the world's structure impacts the gameplay.
Firstly, the number of quests for the first 20 levels is perfect and is part of what kept me from realizing how small the actual world was. You don't out level a place with half the quests left, and you don't really run out of quests before are done with an area. Since there aren't a ton of quests, there isn't the need for a lot of different types and camps of monsters. The quests keep you moving through the world at the correct pace, so for the most part you don't spend a lot of time hoofing it from one quest hub to the next just for new tasks, or backtracking a ton just to polish off old quests. This gives the starting zones a good feel in terms of size - since you don't spend tons of time in transit the world doesn't feel frustratingly large, but instead "just right" even without the luxury of flight or increased run speed. As an aside note - these quests provide you primarily with money and consumables rather than gear which I love. The longer quests and those in the "story progression" tab tend to give occasional item upgrades, which is perfect. With WoW you get random green quality quest rewards from everything, and there's a real feeling of "lets just finish up this quest to get my free loot so I can move onto the next" that cheapens the questing and turns it into mindless repetetive behavior.
A brilliant new idea is the use of "channels". Each server is a world, but within this world there exist 10 channels which, for WoW players, function like a limitless instance. It's essentially 10 layers of the same world stacked ontop of one another. If you find yourself unable to kill an overcamped quest mob, change to a less populated channel. If you find that you're unable to clear through an area fast enough as a healer or other squishy class and actually prefer a crowded channel for the security, search one out. There are also two different "map" modes. One functions like a traditional map - it's small and displays an old style parchment map with towns, roads, and NPCs marked. The other is an overlay of your area and is quite useful for finding your way around confusing locations such as the massive capital cities.
Also visible in this shot of the overlay map: the campaign quest log (left) and inventory (right). The Character portrait displays my health (red), mana (blue), and DP (orange/yellow) - daeva points. The DP are what cause my character to glow, and are used in special skills and some types of crafting (level 3 glow is very neat). The inventory is annoyingly small, but as per Lineage II, items have unlimited stacking (or so I currently assume, I got well over 100 for some materials).
This allows for the second quality: a fluidly designed world that is both small and large simultaneously. In WoW, flying from one corner of a continent to another can take quite a lot of time, as can navigating through a zone (especially at the lower levels). Aion is smaller, and uses the channels instead of vast expanses of wasted space to give people room to exist. An additional benefit is that the smaller size of the world allows for it to feel more dynamic and detailed. For the most part MMO's trade in flat spaces in their effort to balance the realism of a dynamic physical world and a practical maneuverable one. Aion, with instant flight and the ability to glide even in "flight free" zones gets around this general rule. The world that I have seen thus far has been incredibly detailed, but also varried in terrain which gives it a nice realistic sense.
The NPCs are also detailed. See below for a number of images.
Left: NPC tending a fire
Right:NPC painting
Series 1: My character discovers that it's snowing and reacts accordingly. For Elyos, I found that characters responded to the rain. Both races also splash around in water :)
Series 2: Here are a few emotes up close: (left to right) Laughing, Pondering, Disapproval. The full list of emotes is extensive, and a number of them are lengthy as well. Some are a bit silly, such as "comfort" that attempts to console a player lying on the ground. This is due to the fact that one of the dejected emotes involves a player throwing themself down onto the ground. I just can't imagine two players managing to time and position it so that the two emotes properly coincide...
Series 3: Striking a pose - interracting with the terrain. I was really surprised to see that I was able to stand like this. Normally, my character would just be standing with one foot on the higher terrain and the other "hanging off" in mid-air. The fact that I was able to interract like this with a normal object in the world without any sort of specific command to do so (such as chairs in WoW) was unexpected. I had just logged in to check my mail and was surprised to see myself standing like this.
Wednesday, July 1
LAN for SC2 Petition
Sign it, I did!
I was the 24,567th person, too.
please do not castrate this game by forcing the burden of a dedicated
internet connection as an absolute necessity for gameplay. though the majority
of play does and will happen on battlenet, the flexibility of LAN play greatly
enhances gameplay and encourages people to network and have LAN parties. please do not remove this bridge between the virtual and visceral community of SC players.
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