Connect!On gives a bit more information on FFXIV

There seems to be a lot of Asian media covering FFXIV, it's just a pity the western media isn't. Connect!On managed to get an interview with Producer Hiromichi Tanaka and Director Nobuaki Koumoto. Zam have an article about it which you can read right here.

A lot of the information is recycled but I'm going to list the bits of information I found to be most interesting.

First up

"The keyword is "growth" and FFXIV will be sold as a game that allows improvement without unnecessary hardship. Koumoto references FFXI, saying it is a game that relies too exclusively on defeating enemies over and over to advance, and that FFXIV will bring new avenues of facilitating character growth, such as quests."

This is great news. Anyone that has played FFXI knows how much of a grind fest the game is and how long it can actually take to level up to cap. I also got a hint of a Free Realms kind of class system from that paragraph. Maybe we'll have a Postman Moogle class?

Next!

"Speaking of which, we have also heard from Tanaka that the traditional experience points and level system will not be used this time around. "

This definitely has the smell of Free Realms, I'm not really sure what I think about that, I think as long as questing and killing is an option to progress I'll be fine with it.

"The team is looking into large-scale battles as well. Also, it may not always be against an enemy. PvP content is also been worked on as an option, but it seems they are stopping shy of allowing unrestrained dueling and player killing."

This was one of the main things I think was missing from FFXI, PvP was never really there. I think this, as long as it is implemented well will bring a lot of people into the game.

"Tanaka adds that they are maintaining the same stance against griefing through PKing and kill stealing as they have in FFXI."

I hope that doesn't mean they will keep the same system of locking a monster to the character...It was a bit distressing when you were in serious need of help and couldn't fumble through the menu fast enough to get to the call for help button.

Web applications intergrating with MMO's

@Jess_Gaming has brought to my attention the awesomeness of being able to send tweets from inside Champions Online by simply typing /tweet

I'm a major fan of these things. It makes business sense to keep players from having to leave the game to do certain things while at the same time they are great little features that aren't absolutely necessary but a nice touch all the same.

A Web browser would be nice, EvE has one as far as I know. The ability to record a short video and upload directly to video sharing websites like Youtube and Vimeo. MMO's are at heart a social community much like Bebo and Facebook are so having the tools to share certain things and expand that community make sense.

I think it's a safe bet to say that Star Trek Online will have the /tweet command as well which is awesome :D

What other kinds of things would you like to see or do you think these things are completely unnecessary? Leave a comment below!

To Tweet or not to Tweet...

I guess it's safe to admit it, although it was probably obvious. I'm a Twitter addict. Logging into the website every time I wanted to write a message was getting old fast so I decided I'd use a client to deal with it instead. The first one I came across was....

Spaz:
Straight away I really liked Spaz, it was very simple and pretty much had no problems with it, it did everything you'd expect. Although watch out for when you make a tweet with exactly 140 characters...caught me off guard is all I'll say.

Spaz did a good job for when I was just randomly spouting off about random things I was doing during the day but then things got a bit serious...Finding a lot of information through Twitter so I needed something that could keep track of it a bit better...

TweetDeck:
Hands down TweetDeck is pretty damn good, having the ability to group people together and having separate timelines for friends/mentions/direct messages was a brilliant idea. Unfortunately there is one problem that is very annoying. As of right now, there is no way to minimise it to the system tray so you're stuck with it on the taskbar.

I tweeted this and ended up getting a reply from @demonicpagan who brought my attention to another client with was similar to TweetDeck but had the ability to be themed and it also minimised to the system tray.

DestroyTwitter:
Straight off the bat I really liked the design of DestroyTwitter it just looked flashier than TweetDeck and Spaz, had the same 3 panel timeline. I started playing around with the options and got everything working but I noticed one thing that really annoyed me....with the wide setting the area where you input text didn't stretch with the window and it also had to be called up by pressing the button...couldn't find a shortcut key.

So after a good thirty minutes thinking + 30 minutes writing this and editing, I've come to my conclusion.

TweetDeck Wins!

It's up to the devs now to implement a minimise to tray option to make it awesome!

FFXIV: Death Penalty

I'm not a fan of death penalties in any game. I found XI's death penalty to be ridiculous. I think I would have been fine with losing 10% of my experience per level but with it being possible to down level was just too far.

Simply put I don't want to see this in FFXIV in any shape of form. World of Warcraft has a good system and if they were to copy any other game it should be that one. You turn to a ghost when you die, you have the option if walking back and getting back to work or resurrecting at the Spirit Healer and then you get a 10 minute debuff that lowers your stats by 75%

I'll be very disappointed if you can down level in XIV.

STO: Prime or JJ Universe?

A topic was brought up in #STO about whether the game should be set in the prime or JJ Star Trek Universe. Before I continue it is 100% confirmed that the game is set in the Prime Universe so this is just a hypothetical speculation.

Personally. I'm not sure if I'd be interested in playing a game based in JJ's universe, I'm more interested in seeing the places that I watched when I was a kid and maybe some of the characters too. I'm not saying an MMO based in JJ's universe couldn't be interesting but they would both come from completely different ways.

JJverse:
Everything could be completely new again, the game could be taken in a completely different direction being more ground based perhaps? The feeling that I got from the movie was that everything is bigger, TNG and VOY especially always felt like the ship was run by the bridge crew alone, while in the latest film we were shown groups working together. A lot of people have been asking for player run ships, using JJ's universe that could probably work.

Which universe would you like to see a Star Trek MMO take place in and what kind of game would you like it to be?

BattleForge Impressions

I surprised when I first heard about BattleForge. The thoughts of an RTS MMO with trading card elements didn't exactly sound appealing to me so I stayed away from it but now that the game is free to play I decided to take a look and I'm glad I did.

Funnily enough the thing that I found let it down the most was that it is an MMO. This game could have made a fantastic single player RTS game, it has all the makings of one that's for sure. I only played the introduction maps and had a look at a few of the menu screens after that but for the most part it really feels like an RTS except you've got your usual MMO skill bar running across the bottom of the screen except it's filled with your deck of cards which basically were only used to create new units/buildings and area of effect attacks.

The graphic style of the game was very pretty, you don't need to break the bank on a graphics card to get it running and it looks stylised. It reminded me maybe of Warcraft 3 updated to 2008/9

The controls all worked as you'd expect from an RTS without any hitches with some nice shortcut keys mapped like you would with an MMO.

The music and sound effects in the game was great as well, had the epic LOTR/WoW feel to it but the voices of some units were just annoying and having to listen to them every time you click on them got old fast.

Overall in my opinion BattleForge is just an RTS game that forces you to play multiplayer. EA Phenomic made a very wise choice of making this game free to play because I don't think I'm the only one who thought this and wasn't keen on paying a subscription.

Final Words: If you like Warcraft 3 and other fantasy RTS games, you should give this try.

STO: Classified Ship just an Upgraded Valdore?

I was surprised to see that Cryptic had gone and given us a Romulan ship of the line without actually giving us anything. It was a nice read though, good to see Chancellor Martok could still potentially be alive and well in 2409.

All we really got a picture which to me looks like a squiggly Valdore Class that was seen briefly in Star Trek Nemesis.

So my conclusion is we are getting an upgraded ship we barely saw in the first place. I guess that's not a bad thing really. It could also just be the Valdore itself. The Romulans could have went back to their space and upgraded ships between the events of the Dominion War and Star Trek Nemesis leaving the Enterprise E as the only ship that has actually seen that class.

What's your thoughts on everything? Got another ship in mind or completely disagree with what I think? Leave a comment!

FFXIV: Healing times and items

As much as I love Final Fantasy XI looking back now there just seems to be problem after problem after problem and I hate to sound like I'm bashing it. With MMO's being so popular at the moment you can see a lot of trends that have grown in the last few years. Healing items and the use of food is one of them.

Back when I played XI there weren't many options for healing yourself. You either /heal or get a white mage to take care of you.

The healing times were atrocious once you got up higher in levels. You were looking at 2+ minutes once you got over level 15 and with the lack of items to make it faster it always felt like the game was trying to make you slow down.

In FFXIV I'd like to see a better system to deal with this. The /heal is a great idea and I think should definitely be kept but I think it needs to be tweaked a little to make healing just a little bit faster. If they don't make it faster then the use of food and potions needs to be implemented where they are available cheaply. FFXI was known for being cruel when it came to prices and it's something that I'll be talking about in a later article.

A perfect example is World of Warcraft, their food/drink system works very well. It's openly available, doesn't break the bank and it still causes a small amount of downtime but not enough to take you out of the game.

STO: Question 7 Analysis

On the 16th of this month Craig Zinkievich took the time time out to answer some questions about in-game movement. Today I'm going to take a closer look at one of the questions and his answer.

Question: Movement has been described as a sort of 2dimensional map thing, which doesn't really sound all that exciting graphically. Are we at least going to see warp outs?

Craig dodged this one I think. He apologised that it has so far been described as 2D when in fact it's 3D. He mentioned being able to hide behind space debris and using all axis' but didn't go into much detail. Rekhan moved on quickly to the next question.

I'm glad that it is 3D but I'm still not convinced or to be honest happy about the map system. I can't really judge it right, I think once some screenshots and definitely a video showing it off is released I'll be able to put my mind at rest.

On the flip side it could be one of those game breaking moments where if it goes south I could end up not liking STO...

FFXIV: Hot Thread Thursday over at ZAM

Each Thursday ZAM pick a few threads on their forums they think is important to feature on their website.

Judging by their titles I can give my opinion right off the bat.

Thread: Jump??
My Opinion: Definitely, for the most part in MMO's it's not required at all but it's a nice feature and gives you something to do on long journeys.

Thread: Moving while casting.
My Opinion: Depending on what kind of MMO it's going to be, it really depends. If it follows FFXI then moving while casting isn't really necessary, on the flip side it could also be fun or a gameplay mechanic if the game is completely different.

Thread: UI design, will SE follow like the rest of the sheep?
My Opinion: I hope they do! The UI in FFXI was terrible to use and wasn't much to look at either. I think moving to more standardised UI like most are used to will give the game some mainstream appeal.

Thread: Auction House
My Opinion: A lot of people really enjoyed the AH and it had its moments, as long as its a bit easier to make money I'd be fine with leaving it the way it is.