I haven't played FF14. Someone explain to me how the cities are huge and convincing while also being quick to get around?
A combination of it not being a contiguous world, but rather one with zone transitions, so you can have all sorts of 'there's more city over there' scenery along the edges of the zones AND a point-to-point fast travel system within each city.
So the rest of the city is painted on, like backgrounds on Antorus?
Modeled, not quite painted on to that extent, but yeah, making sure there are clearly streets and houses and other buildings 'over there' that you cannot walk to and zone transitions that visibly take you to a completely different part of the city.
And the areas you do explore are bigger and more detailed than most WoW cities, they just litter the zones with crystals you can teleport to after you visit them on foot once.
Getting to visit one big sprawling residential neighborhood for each city because 14 has player housing helps, too.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I haven't played FF14. Someone explain to me how the cities are huge and convincing while also being quick to get around?
Everything the others said is true, but they are also more willing to use filler buildings than Blizzard is - buildings that do nothing more than be a place where people probably live but have no gameplay impact whatsoever. As in this picture of Ul'dah, for example, where I think along this entire strip there's only a couple vendors and points of interest, but it's mostly just building facades. Helps to sell the illusion that it's a real city - there's convincing places that people could conceivably live.
Those buildings in the background are part of the city, AFAIK, and you can go to them, but only through zone transitions.
I think I prefer the zone transitions to having cities with no living space like WoW cities, but naturally this is very much down to personal taste.
Yeah I think it can go either way. Personally I find big video game cities where doors are mysteriously always closed with no sign of life not to be very convincing. It doesn't take long before you figure out that building X is always empty. The first time you see it it's cool but after that it's some background art.
It's a trade-off between having cities that feel big and cities that feel dense and busy.
As much as I hated BFA as Horde, the leveling experience had nothing to do with it.
All 3 zones were perfectly fine.
Even if it turns out you effectively failed in all 3.
You don’t stop the coup in Zuldazar.
G’huun still rises in Nazmir
You don’t prevent the rise of Mythrax
you do stop the coup in Zuldazar, Rastakhan isn't done in until the alliance attacks later. Mythrax gets released in Vol'dun but you do stop the bad snakepeople and save the good snakes and the fox people. In Nazmir you do mostly just set the stage for the raid and the big blood troll-zandalari battle at the end of the leveling story though.
The FF14 cities are not really that big, I think the WoW vanilla cities have more actual square footage. They just have a lot of big buildings off in the background you can't go to and they don't need to worry that much about things like making everything be consistently scaled or be functional and accessible rather than just looking aesthetically like a big cityscape from a distance. Ishgard looks hundreds of times bigger from the inside than the model of the city you can see in the zone outside it. They're easy to get around in because there's teleport crystals scattered around at or near most of the points of interest.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited November 2019
Fun fact about the FF14 cities: they didn't have a zone transition back in 1.0, that only came about when they decided to make a PS3 version of 2.0. Compare the original three cities (and Ishgard, which was made with PS3 limitations) to Kugane and the two Shadowbringers towns (which were made after PS3 support ended).
If they wanted to, they could at any point tinker with the three original cities and return them to their full 1.0 glory.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I really gotta knuckle down at some point and go back to FF14, I'm hovering around low 30s.
As much as I hated BFA as Horde, the leveling experience had nothing to do with it.
All 3 zones were perfectly fine.
Even if it turns out you effectively failed in all 3.
You don’t stop the coup in Zuldazar.
G’huun still rises in Nazmir
You don’t prevent the rise of Mythrax
you do stop the coup in Zuldazar, Rastakhan isn't done in until the alliance attacks later. Mythrax gets released in Vol'dun but you do stop the bad snakepeople and save the good snakes and the fox people. In Nazmir you do mostly just set the stage for the raid and the big blood troll-zandalari battle at the end of the leveling story though.
You lose the top of the pyramid in Zuldazar, Rezan dies and Rastakhan is forced to take the deal with Bwonsamdi.
Mythrax leads the attack on Zuldazar which helps free G’huun completely
I just really like how Elwynn in lore is a huge spiraling suburban area with 20,000 residents, and Elwynn in the video game is like a mile long with 8, not including the 25 soldiers stationed there.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
I personally prefer no zone transitions.
Also I don’t think wow cities shy away from visual buildings as a cop out. It is a design choice. They make their towns with the intent that if you can see it, you can go there. Which for an mmo is kind of the better design choice as full world exploring is a HUGE part of the game to many players.
Cities like ff14 are usually much more acceptable in offline rpgs. Though eastern mmo design is absolutely huge on zones and invisible wall structure. I personally hate it, especially because my first mmo asheron’s call was one of the first ones to do a completely open seamless world. So that is what shaped my preference.
I don’t need to pretend mmo cities are inhabited. I’m already doing a lot of suspension of disbelief, so I’m good if towns don’t make sense
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Basically if they could have turned Suramar into a functioning capital then the pylon teleport network combined with the sprawling layout and stunning aesthetic would have made for the only city in WoW to tick both boxes for me, of convenience and immersion.
As much as I hated BFA as Horde, the leveling experience had nothing to do with it.
All 3 zones were perfectly fine.
Even if it turns out you effectively failed in all 3.
You don’t stop the coup in Zuldazar.
G’huun still rises in Nazmir
You don’t prevent the rise of Mythrax
you do stop the coup in Zuldazar, Rastakhan isn't done in until the alliance attacks later. Mythrax gets released in Vol'dun but you do stop the bad snakepeople and save the good snakes and the fox people. In Nazmir you do mostly just set the stage for the raid and the big blood troll-zandalari battle at the end of the leveling story though.
The alternative is the alliances story which you have almost no idea what/who g'huun is or whats going on there so there seems to be no reason why the alliance would know or care about g'huun or bother going over there to fight it.
The alliance campaign is basically failing or having phyrric victories the entire way. The alliance story for the whole first tier of the expansion was almost entirely disconnected from everything that was actually happening. The horde story lines all culminate with the first raid so you interact with the players in it and get an idea of the stakes. Alliance its just like yo I hear there is a titan vault lets go check it out.
The FF14 cities are not really that big, I think the WoW vanilla cities have more actual square footage. They just have a lot of big buildings off in the background you can't go to and they don't need to worry that much about things like making everything be consistently scaled or be functional and accessible rather than just looking aesthetically like a big cityscape from a distance. Ishgard looks hundreds of times bigger from the inside than the model of the city you can see in the zone outside it. They're easy to get around in because there's teleport crystals scattered around at or near most of the points of interest.
From what I remember of FF cities I think the big cities in guildwars 2 are bigger and more impressive especially the original lions arch.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
The FF14 cities are not really that big, I think the WoW vanilla cities have more actual square footage. They just have a lot of big buildings off in the background you can't go to and they don't need to worry that much about things like making everything be consistently scaled or be functional and accessible rather than just looking aesthetically like a big cityscape from a distance. Ishgard looks hundreds of times bigger from the inside than the model of the city you can see in the zone outside it. They're easy to get around in because there's teleport crystals scattered around at or near most of the points of interest.
From what I remember of FF cities I think the big cities in guildwars 2 are bigger and more impressive especially the original lions arch.
Agree with that, I didn't play much of GW2, think I've only seen Divinity's Reach, but it definitely had a punch to its presence.
stormwind has a cool looking entrance and a cool fanfare but the city itself is meh
the most interesting parts (the park, the cathedral) you barely visit, and while I think the canal layout is kinda cool the player never really interacts with it aside from accidentally falling in and needing to find the stairs out
imo ironforge, undercity, TB and darnassus are all cooler than stormwind
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
As much as I hated BFA as Horde, the leveling experience had nothing to do with it.
All 3 zones were perfectly fine.
Even if it turns out you effectively failed in all 3.
You don’t stop the coup in Zuldazar.
G’huun still rises in Nazmir
You don’t prevent the rise of Mythrax
you do stop the coup in Zuldazar, Rastakhan isn't done in until the alliance attacks later. Mythrax gets released in Vol'dun but you do stop the bad snakepeople and save the good snakes and the fox people. In Nazmir you do mostly just set the stage for the raid and the big blood troll-zandalari battle at the end of the leveling story though.
You lose the top of the pyramid in Zuldazar, Rezan dies and Rastakhan is forced to take the deal with Bwonsamdi.
Mythrax leads the attack on Zuldazar which helps free G’huun completely
I really gotta knuckle down at some point and go back to FF14, I'm hovering around low 30s.
They are going to revamp the 2.x ARR stuff in a few months to be less tedious busywork and fetch quests, so i would wait for that maybe as that will impact your leveling in the 30s. The expansions have been pretty good though, especially the most recent one.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Mostly I'm just overwhelmed with how much there is and trying to identify what's important and what's not. I imagine it's a similar feeling that someone would have starting WoW for the first time.
There ... is quite a lot to do now. A lot of it is basically side content, but it takes a while to sort it out which is which if you're new, yes. And a TON of questing if you take the story straight through. It was manageable when it was released in stages, but other than a token to skip an xpac or two, it's not like wow where you just outlevel stories or zones and can just start the new one, you more or less need to play the story straight through. The good part is the story is pretty good for the most part, and you only have to do it once because one character can do all the classes, but it's easy to burn out if you're just trying to power through the story quests.
Wow is probably stronger on the pvp front too, although 3 teams on the field in 14 has kind of a "fun" spoiler dynamic.
Mostly I'm just overwhelmed with how much there is and trying to identify what's important and what's not. I imagine it's a similar feeling that someone would have starting WoW for the first time.
Rule of thumb is any blue quest starter unlocks something - either a dungeon, or a game feature. Otherwise normal sidequests can be ignored as quest experience isn't the driving force behind leveling up like with WoW. Focus mainly on your main story and job quests, do anything else at your leisure.
Treat it as a single player game with multiplayer functionality. Take your time with it and feel free to pick it up and put it down when the interest takes you. When you eventually get to the end of the story, there will be a smorgasbord of content awaiting you, but there are a lot of design elements that keep almost all content in circulation, including the hardest stuff if that tickles your fancy.
A Realm Reborn has a lot of world building and they don't always pull it off cleanly. I enjoyed it and I am glad I went through it for the world building, but I am hopeful for the changes they have announced for 5.3 (about 7 months).
Something I would love WoW to copy from FFXIV is keeping old content in circulation more. I hope for Shadowlands they flesh out the Timewalking system and make it something the game integrates with more cleanly. Or whatever system they come up with. The level crunch is a big opportunity to do something cool with all the old content. Presenting the various expansions as different book volumes could be a way to get a handle on framing the WoW timeline in a way that isn't quite ad incoherent.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Mostly I'm just overwhelmed with how much there is and trying to identify what's important and what's not. I imagine it's a similar feeling that someone would have starting WoW for the first time.
Rule of thumb is any blue quest starter unlocks something - either a dungeon, or a game feature. Otherwise normal sidequests can be ignored as quest experience isn't the driving force behind leveling up like with WoW. Focus mainly on your main story and job quests, do anything else at your leisure.
As an example, I have two level one blue quests sitting back in my home city, so you want to be a pugilist, and so you want to be a thaumaturge, I can't figure out if they're important or not
Has there been any indication if the WoW devs are planning on strengthening the WoW main storyline in Shadowlands or loosening it up to be more like Vanilla/TBC?
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Biggest indication is that the path through leveling is now set, as opposed to letting you choose which zone to go to.
This kind of indicates a flowing story, which implies strengthening I would think. I mean the whole premise of Shadowlands is much more interesting than we have had recently. Legion was good for being core WoW Lore and finishing out a bunch of old plot points, even if some of the additions were a little off (like most of the Illidan junk). But WoD being so out there while also being TOO out there, in addition to being its own self contained thing played more like a fanfic story of what if. Shadowlands is prime lore, but uncharted. Which is when they have done best as seen with MoP.
I am starting to finish up the whole Horde side War Campaign. I look over what happens during it, and also the Alliance once, and like... if you just ignore all the Sylvanas shit it really plays out not much different than what Warcraft III was. Lots of small missions toward a point, then a big kind of payoff. It is nothing special, but it also is exactly what it set out to be.
Seems like a lot of people were more fond of the Alliance side than horde, but I have enjoyed Horde so far way more than Alliance from beginning to near end. Maybe I am just more Horde at heart then.
As much as I hated BFA as Horde, the leveling experience had nothing to do with it.
All 3 zones were perfectly fine.
Even if it turns out you effectively failed in all 3.
You don’t stop the coup in Zuldazar.
G’huun still rises in Nazmir
You don’t prevent the rise of Mythrax
you do stop the coup in Zuldazar, Rastakhan isn't done in until the alliance attacks later. Mythrax gets released in Vol'dun but you do stop the bad snakepeople and save the good snakes and the fox people. In Nazmir you do mostly just set the stage for the raid and the big blood troll-zandalari battle at the end of the leveling story though.
You lose the top of the pyramid in Zuldazar, Rezan dies and Rastakhan is forced to take the deal with Bwonsamdi.
Mythrax leads the attack on Zuldazar which helps free G’huun completely
those are not the same as the coup succeeding.
Rastakhan was nearly killed and had to be evacuated from the city. Literally the only reason the Horde player can still stay in the city is that they needed you to be able to since it's the capital.
As much as I hated BFA as Horde, the leveling experience had nothing to do with it.
All 3 zones were perfectly fine.
Even if it turns out you effectively failed in all 3.
You don’t stop the coup in Zuldazar.
G’huun still rises in Nazmir
You don’t prevent the rise of Mythrax
you do stop the coup in Zuldazar, Rastakhan isn't done in until the alliance attacks later. Mythrax gets released in Vol'dun but you do stop the bad snakepeople and save the good snakes and the fox people. In Nazmir you do mostly just set the stage for the raid and the big blood troll-zandalari battle at the end of the leveling story though.
You lose the top of the pyramid in Zuldazar, Rezan dies and Rastakhan is forced to take the deal with Bwonsamdi.
Mythrax leads the attack on Zuldazar which helps free G’huun completely
those are not the same as the coup succeeding.
Rastakhan was nearly killed and had to be evacuated from the city. Literally the only reason the Horde player can still stay in the city is that they needed you to be able to since it's the capital.
yeah he evacuates and then comes back after he recovers and you help him kick the traitors out, a coup succeeding implies the ruler is deposed! if he stays in power that's a failed coup! this is a trivial thing to argue about but words mean things damn it
As much as I hated BFA as Horde, the leveling experience had nothing to do with it.
All 3 zones were perfectly fine.
Even if it turns out you effectively failed in all 3.
You don’t stop the coup in Zuldazar.
G’huun still rises in Nazmir
You don’t prevent the rise of Mythrax
you do stop the coup in Zuldazar, Rastakhan isn't done in until the alliance attacks later. Mythrax gets released in Vol'dun but you do stop the bad snakepeople and save the good snakes and the fox people. In Nazmir you do mostly just set the stage for the raid and the big blood troll-zandalari battle at the end of the leveling story though.
You lose the top of the pyramid in Zuldazar, Rezan dies and Rastakhan is forced to take the deal with Bwonsamdi.
Mythrax leads the attack on Zuldazar which helps free G’huun completely
those are not the same as the coup succeeding.
Rastakhan was nearly killed and had to be evacuated from the city. Literally the only reason the Horde player can still stay in the city is that they needed you to be able to since it's the capital.
yeah he evacuates and then comes back after he recovers and you help him kick the traitors out, a coup succeeding implies the ruler is deposed! if he stays in power that's a failed coup! this is a trivial thing to argue about but words mean things damn it
Meh, the leader is exiled, he still has troops, but his powerbase was effectively destroyed and what he has is propped up by the Horde. When you go back into the city to deal with them, you find out the hard way that the coup was never intended to be permanent, it was intended so that it'd make it easier for Mythrax to destroy the seal.
Edit: in hindsight:
This may be colored by the order the zones are done in. Zuldazar first (which also spoils part of the storyline in Vol’dun) means you spend a long time with Rastakhan away from the throne, while Zuldazar last probably flows better with the final quest line.
Probably should go Nazmir>Vol’dun>Zuldazar for best flow and story progression.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
In “bugs I wish I had gotten to experience”...
“Fixed an issue that caused Outlaw Rogues that used Killing Spree against Ragnaros to teleport into the incorrect Ragnaros encounter.”
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A combination of it not being a contiguous world, but rather one with zone transitions, so you can have all sorts of 'there's more city over there' scenery along the edges of the zones AND a point-to-point fast travel system within each city.
Modeled, not quite painted on to that extent, but yeah, making sure there are clearly streets and houses and other buildings 'over there' that you cannot walk to and zone transitions that visibly take you to a completely different part of the city.
And the areas you do explore are bigger and more detailed than most WoW cities, they just litter the zones with crystals you can teleport to after you visit them on foot once.
Getting to visit one big sprawling residential neighborhood for each city because 14 has player housing helps, too.
Everything the others said is true, but they are also more willing to use filler buildings than Blizzard is - buildings that do nothing more than be a place where people probably live but have no gameplay impact whatsoever. As in this picture of Ul'dah, for example, where I think along this entire strip there's only a couple vendors and points of interest, but it's mostly just building facades. Helps to sell the illusion that it's a real city - there's convincing places that people could conceivably live.
Those buildings in the background are part of the city, AFAIK, and you can go to them, but only through zone transitions.
I think I prefer the zone transitions to having cities with no living space like WoW cities, but naturally this is very much down to personal taste.
It's a trade-off between having cities that feel big and cities that feel dense and busy.
If they wanted to, they could at any point tinker with the three original cities and return them to their full 1.0 glory.
Mythrax leads the attack on Zuldazar which helps free G’huun completely
Also I don’t think wow cities shy away from visual buildings as a cop out. It is a design choice. They make their towns with the intent that if you can see it, you can go there. Which for an mmo is kind of the better design choice as full world exploring is a HUGE part of the game to many players.
Cities like ff14 are usually much more acceptable in offline rpgs. Though eastern mmo design is absolutely huge on zones and invisible wall structure. I personally hate it, especially because my first mmo asheron’s call was one of the first ones to do a completely open seamless world. So that is what shaped my preference.
I don’t need to pretend mmo cities are inhabited. I’m already doing a lot of suspension of disbelief, so I’m good if towns don’t make sense
The alternative is the alliances story which you have almost no idea what/who g'huun is or whats going on there so there seems to be no reason why the alliance would know or care about g'huun or bother going over there to fight it.
The alliance campaign is basically failing or having phyrric victories the entire way. The alliance story for the whole first tier of the expansion was almost entirely disconnected from everything that was actually happening. The horde story lines all culminate with the first raid so you interact with the players in it and get an idea of the stakes. Alliance its just like yo I hear there is a titan vault lets go check it out.
From what I remember of FF cities I think the big cities in guildwars 2 are bigger and more impressive especially the original lions arch.
Agree with that, I didn't play much of GW2, think I've only seen Divinity's Reach, but it definitely had a punch to its presence.
Time to push those FOMO whale tokens, need a quick numbers bump ahead of Shadowlands.
to pump up their wow token numbers
the most interesting parts (the park, the cathedral) you barely visit, and while I think the canal layout is kinda cool the player never really interacts with it aside from accidentally falling in and needing to find the stairs out
imo ironforge, undercity, TB and darnassus are all cooler than stormwind
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It's only that much if you can find that much worth of other blizzard stuff to spend it on
They are going to revamp the 2.x ARR stuff in a few months to be less tedious busywork and fetch quests, so i would wait for that maybe as that will impact your leveling in the 30s. The expansions have been pretty good though, especially the most recent one.
Wow is probably stronger on the pvp front too, although 3 teams on the field in 14 has kind of a "fun" spoiler dynamic.
Rule of thumb is any blue quest starter unlocks something - either a dungeon, or a game feature. Otherwise normal sidequests can be ignored as quest experience isn't the driving force behind leveling up like with WoW. Focus mainly on your main story and job quests, do anything else at your leisure.
A Realm Reborn has a lot of world building and they don't always pull it off cleanly. I enjoyed it and I am glad I went through it for the world building, but I am hopeful for the changes they have announced for 5.3 (about 7 months).
Something I would love WoW to copy from FFXIV is keeping old content in circulation more. I hope for Shadowlands they flesh out the Timewalking system and make it something the game integrates with more cleanly. Or whatever system they come up with. The level crunch is a big opportunity to do something cool with all the old content. Presenting the various expansions as different book volumes could be a way to get a handle on framing the WoW timeline in a way that isn't quite ad incoherent.
As an example, I have two level one blue quests sitting back in my home city, so you want to be a pugilist, and so you want to be a thaumaturge, I can't figure out if they're important or not
Main Story Quest (MSQ) has a meteor for the quest symbol.
A guide to all the various unlocks below:
https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Guide:Progression_and_Level_Locked_Content
Has there been any indication if the WoW devs are planning on strengthening the WoW main storyline in Shadowlands or loosening it up to be more like Vanilla/TBC?
This kind of indicates a flowing story, which implies strengthening I would think. I mean the whole premise of Shadowlands is much more interesting than we have had recently. Legion was good for being core WoW Lore and finishing out a bunch of old plot points, even if some of the additions were a little off (like most of the Illidan junk). But WoD being so out there while also being TOO out there, in addition to being its own self contained thing played more like a fanfic story of what if. Shadowlands is prime lore, but uncharted. Which is when they have done best as seen with MoP.
I am starting to finish up the whole Horde side War Campaign. I look over what happens during it, and also the Alliance once, and like... if you just ignore all the Sylvanas shit it really plays out not much different than what Warcraft III was. Lots of small missions toward a point, then a big kind of payoff. It is nothing special, but it also is exactly what it set out to be.
Seems like a lot of people were more fond of the Alliance side than horde, but I have enjoyed Horde so far way more than Alliance from beginning to near end. Maybe I am just more Horde at heart then.
Edit: in hindsight:
Probably should go Nazmir>Vol’dun>Zuldazar for best flow and story progression.
“Fixed an issue that caused Outlaw Rogues that used Killing Spree against Ragnaros to teleport into the incorrect Ragnaros encounter.”