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Final Fantasy XV Hands-On Demo (Chapter 0-3) Previews

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H

Hentailover

Member
Skinpop said:
The only reason quest markers and even worse those prompts are in the game is to facilitate mass production of generic quests. there's no point to having this stuff if the world and story progression are well designed.
go to this place, kill # of these mobs, talk to that person blablabla. can't believe this is what has become of this series.
imo quest markers are probably the worst thing that ever happend to games. it invalidates the entire concept of "open world".
Click to expand...

It's kinda hard to make sure you go the right place, unless it's linear story, without giving you some sort of pointer. And that's where it's a decision between "make every quest have profound dialogue involving people telling you where exactly they want you to go, which is costly with VA and stuff and just showing you on the map or something like that.



And, to be fair, they do live in a world of technology, so it does make sense in-universe too, as nothing stops them from using GPS.
 
D

Death Penalty

Member
Gbraga said:
I hate the way magic works in this game, really hate, it's so boring.

Which is a shame, I love the environmental effects it has, but using it is just... meh.

The one aspect of Versus' combat from 2011 that I still think is better than what we have in the final game is magic, it seemed much more like, you know, magic, than this grenade bullshit.



Oh yeah, I think I sounded like a shield hater now, but it's actually really cool, it's so satisfying to land a parry with it, I love it! What makes it boring to me is that it's a tad too strong, at least against that particular enemy. If they find a fun balance with enemies' strenghts and weaknesses, it might actually get quite complex and fun to juggle all of the options and remember to switch to that playstyle when fighting only that particular kind of enemy, and doing so against something not as weak to it would get your ass kicked. That could be a blast.

Any other game I'd say it's madness to try to analyze and understand the combat system when you can only fight one fucking enemy, but we've been waiting for so long that I can't help but overthink every tiny bit of gameplay I can get my hands on.

EDIT: And flying enemies??? HGGGGNNNNN, that shit would be amazing to fight against. Please, S-E!
Click to expand...

Wow, your thoughts on magic and its changes since Versus are spot-on what I think. I am going to have to pay more attention to you in the future. I can confirm for you though that there are flying enemies and there's even a pretty impressive gif of Noctis warping to fight one. I'll see if I can find it, or maybe some kind soul will provide it.
 
G

Gbraga

Member
Death Penalty said:
Wow, your thoughts on magic and its changes since Versus are spot-on what I think. I am going to have to pay more attention to you in the future. I can confirm for you though that there are flying enemies and there's even a pretty impressive gif of Noctis warping to fight one. I'll see if I can find it, or maybe some kind soul will provide it.
Click to expand...

Senpai noticed me >////<
 
S

Skinpop

Member
Hentailover said:
It's kinda hard to make sure you go the right place, unless it's linear story, without giving you some sort of pointer. And that's where it's a decision between "make every quest have profound dialogue involving people telling you where exactly they want you to go, which is costly with VA and stuff and just showing you on the map or something like that.



And, to be fair, they do live in a world of technology, so it does make sense in-universe too, as nothing stops them from using GPS.
Click to expand...

sure it's hard, designing games is hard but are we supposed to be ok with them taking the easy route resulting in a worse product? These companies aren't interested in designing games since what they actually spend their budget on is designing systems that facilitate mass production of content. It's depressing that people these days are more interested in having lots of content than a well designed experience.

I disagree that profound dialogue is needed, it's all about the world design and story progression.

Seeing a prompt like "find the sword in the cave", or "kill 3 pests" kinda broke my heart. not that I had high expectations but now I know for sure it's over.
 
D

DarkLordMalik

Member
nelsonroyale said:
The PS4 version looks like that to me...
Click to expand...
Watch the part at 1:42 where they are fighting the giant Rhino in what appears to be the starting area of the game. That kind of lighting is nowhere to be seen in the 52 minutes video.

CrimsonSquall said:
Of course nobody knows what the game will look like right now, it got delayed
Click to expand...
We do know how the game looks like right now, we have the playable demo at Gamescom.

But we have no idea what it might end up looking like at launch.
 
N

nelsonroyale

Member
DarkLordMalik said:
Watch the part at 1:42 where they are fighting the giant Rhino in what appears to be the starting area of the game. That kind of lighting is nowhere to be seen in the 52 minutes video.


We do know how the game looks like right now, we have the playable demo at Gamescom.

But we have no idea what it might end up looking like at launch.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I don't see that particular lighting either in the footage...could possibly be a particular ToD, as that did change the look of Duscae drastically. But yeah, may not be in there. The assets look the same in that footage though to me.
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Member
So I don't quite understand combat. Is combat full on action? I thought there was pause options to slow it down a bit? Between combat and from the sounds of it badly designed magic system it just doesn't sound like a fun way to go at it for 100 hour RPG.

I have Tales Of games for ARPG combat.
 
D

DarkLordMalik

Member
StereoVsn said:
So I don't quite understand combat. Is combat full on action? I thought there was pause options to slow it down a bit? Between combat and from the sounds of it badly designed magic system it just doesn't sound like a fun way to go at it for 100 hour RPG.

I have Tales Of games for ARPG combat.
Click to expand...
Full-on action for the combat. You can change weapons mid combo and have a wide variety of weapons to choose from.

The pause stuff is called Wait Mode and makes the game easier, as said by Tabata. It is optional and can be tweaked on and off in the options.
 
I

Ishida

Banned
StereoVsn said:
So I don't quite understand combat. Is combat full on action? I thought there was pause options to slow it down a bit? Between combat and from the sounds of it badly designed magic system it just doesn't sound like a fun way to go at it for 100 hour RPG.

I have Tales Of games for ARPG combat.
Click to expand...

You can choose between action and "Wait Mode", which is basically what you describe in the bolded, more similar to turn based.
 
G

Gbraga

Member
StereoVsn said:
So I don't quite understand combat. Is combat full on action? I thought there was pause options to slow it down a bit? Between combat and from the sounds of it badly designed magic system it just doesn't sound like a fun way to go at it for 100 hour RPG.

I have Tales Of games for ARPG combat.
Click to expand...

There is Wait Mode that pauses the action for you to choose your next option, like where you'll aim your warp and things like that, it's up to you which way you prefer to play the game.

Personally, I do think it's fair to calssify it as an ARPG, but even so it's still very different from a Tales of game, kind of like you can have Street Fighter and Marvel playing nothing like each other, even though they're both fighting games. FFXV offers a very interesting (imo) combat that does indeed resemble the fighting we see in the early Versus CGI, which was the idea from way back then, real-time combat that resembles those CGs and Advent Children.
 
H

Hentailover

Member
Skinpop said:
sure it's hard, designing games is hard but are we supposed to be ok with them taking the easy route resulting in a worse product? These companies aren't interested in designing games since what they actually spend their budget on is designing systems that facilitate mass production of content. It's depressing that people these days are more interested in having lots of content than a well designed experience.

I disagree that profound dialogue is needed, it's all about the world design and story progression.

Seeing a prompt like "find the sword in the cave", or "kill 3 pests" kinda broke my heart. not that I had high expectations but now I know for sure it's over.
Click to expand...

Well, world design only gets you so far. If you don't need dialogue, then here's a hypothetical situation:

" You enter a village, crying woman gives you a quest - My son went to that cave I forbid him to go to, bring him back". Without having a quest marker and adding dialogue explaining where the cave is, how would you convey to a player which direction he is even supposed to go? There's south, north, east, west and everything in between. This is open world, meaning, you can't just make it "next level". You can make the area a corridor that naturally leads you to the cave by just going forward, but that also defeats the purpose of open world."

Now imagine that there are multiple quests all leading in different directions. how would you, through world design, convey the player where to go, when each quest needs them to go into different directions? If you use typical tells like trails/light/color/anyothertypical method games like ND ones do, how do you make sure player don't follow the wrong one, since, as stated, ther ewill need to be placed tells for all possible directions, to incorporate all possible quests in the area.

Story progression doesn';t even apply ehre, as side quests are not directly connected to it.
 
R

rayman1900

Member
Hentailover said:
Well, world design only gets you so far. If you don't need dialogue, then here's a hypothetical situation:

" You enter a village, crying woman gives you a quest - My son went to that cave I forbid him to go to, bring him back". Without having a quest marker and adding dialogue explaining where the cave is, how would you convey to a player which direction he is even supposed to go? There's south, north, east, west and everything in between. This is open world, meaning, you can't just make it "next level". You can make the area a corridor that naturally leads you to the cave by just going forward, but that also defeats the purpose of open world."

Now imagine that there are multiple quests all leading in different directions. how would you, through world design, convey the player where to go, when each quest needs them to go into different directions? If you use typical tells like trails/light/color/anyothertypical method games like ND ones do, how do you make sure player don't follow the wrong one, since, as stated, ther ewill need to be placed tells for all possible directions, to incorporate all possible quests in the area.

Story progression doesn';t even apply ehre, as side quests are not directly connected to it.
Click to expand...

Make an area on the mini-map around the zone where the cave is hidden. Let the player figure out, where, in that area, is the cave. This area could cover a big surface, as it would not be almost apparent where the cave is, but that if the player search for it and explore, he discovers it. Would that work well, do you think?
 
H

Hentailover

Member
rayman1900 said:
Make an area on the mini-map around the zone where the cave is hidden. Let the player figure out, where, in that area, is the cave. This area could cover a big surface, as it would not be almost apparent where the cave is, but that if the player search for it and explore, he discovers it. Would that work well, do you think?
Click to expand...

I guess I misunderstood you. From the way you described it, it felt like the idea of telling you a direction via UI was the culprit, and your solition is exactly that, telling the direction via UI, just giving a slightly wider area, so you have to search around a bit. That's not really "telling via world design" as you just rely on UI markers, They are just less precise, but...

I guess I see where you are coming from in general.
 
S

Skinpop

Member
Hentailover said:
Well, world design only gets you so far. If you don't need dialogue, then here's a hypothetical situation:

" You enter a village, crying woman gives you a quest - My son went to that cave I forbid him to go to, bring him back". Without having a quest marker and adding dialogue explaining where the cave is, how would you convey to a player which direction he is even supposed to go? There's south, north, east, west and everything in between. This is open world, meaning, you can't just make it "next level". You can make the area a corridor that naturally leads you to the cave by just going forward, but that also defeats the purpose of open world."

Now imagine that there are multiple quests all leading in different directions. how would you, through world design, convey the player where to go, when each quest needs them to go into different directions? If you use typical tells like trails/light/color/anyothertypical method games like ND ones do, how do you make sure player don't follow the wrong one, since, as stated, ther ewill need to be placed tells for all possible directions, to incorporate all possible quests in the area.

Story progression doesn';t even apply ehre, as side quests are not directly connected to it.
Click to expand...
there are so many ways to solve this. for example put a mountain close to the village. your intuition would be to look there first, or design the world so that the first time you visit the town you walk past a cave or maybe a sign. and there's nothing wrong with having a tiny bit of "funneling" baked into the map. after all that's exactly what happens when you follow a marker so it can't be any worse than that.

as for your second point, the solution is to design a game that doesn't put the player in a situation where he finds himself with a quest log full of unfinished quests at different progress steps. for starters throw out all templated token quests, and throw out the notion of discrete transparent quests that the player keep tabs on - we never knew which "quest" we were on in earlier FF games, the game just progressed in a natural seamless manner even when doing side content.
 
Y

YankeeDonB

Member
Gbraga said:
WHAAAAAAAT

HOLY FUCK

THIS FHSIT FUCKING AWEOMSE

daaamn

YES
Click to expand...

ha, the aerial warp follow does indeed look sick. Despite the fact that it wasn't needed in Platinum, aerial combat against the giant felt pretty good, too, and the camera was even mostly manageable. This could be a high point in the final game.
 
H

Hentailover

Member
Skinpop said:
as for your second point, the solution is to design a game that doesn't put the player in a situation where he finds himself with a quest log full of unfinished quests at different progress steps. for starters throw out all templated token quests, and throw out the notion of discrete transparent quests that the player keep tabs on - we never knew which "quest" we were on in earlier FF games, the story just progressed in a natural seamless manner even when doing side content.
Click to expand...

At this point, you enter cutting down content. What if there are people that like tons of quests? Like, it's fine to not personally enjoy that sort of exprience, but your post implied it to be objectively bad design. So now you imply it's objectively bad design to have lots of quests to do.
 
M

Maintenance

Member
Kagari said:
Tabata has a lot to answer for since he said Duscae was only 70% of the visual quality and it's obviously gotten worse from there. Not the only time he said the visuals would improve either. Instead they've gotten a lot worse.
Click to expand...

He never said those 70% would increase though. Maybe we are now at 30-40%.
 
D

Dark_castle

Junior Member
While magic fusion sounds interesting, I too dislike that it's a consumable, and you use rather than cast. Going into menu selecting magic to equip and use also breaks the pacing of combat. And last but not least, it takes up one of the four precious weapon slots.

Still prefer how Magic is handled in KH2, where you can chain them into your melee combo seamlessly.
 
S

Skinpop

Member
Hentailover said:
At this point, you enter cutting down content. What if there are people that like tons of quests? Like, it's fine to not personally enjoy that sort of exprience, but your post implied it to be objectively bad design. So now you imply it's objectively bad design to have lots of quests to do.
Click to expand...
I'm saying that the systems they put in to facilitate "lots of quests" forces bad design choices into the game.

the implication of quest markers is that the physical map becomes pointless outside of being "visual candy" or the occasional hurdle, instead of being an integrated part of the game design.

the implication of quest logs and progress bars is that progression is more of a todo list than a seamless naturally flowing experience.

"content" for it's own sake is completely meaningless. I like to call this kind of game design "content based game design", it's a cancer that unfortunately most big studios have adopted since it's designed to facilitate mass production which makes business sense to people who don't care about games.
 
J

James Scott

Banned
Something I noticed from the 50 minute video...they show a ton of the game off. Duscae itself was like 2-3 hours at the very least. I wonder how much content they spoiled/covered.
They got 3/13 swords, explored duscae and the beginning dessert area, went fishing and rode Chocobos, explored a town, went on a side quest for a journalist, and hunted like 9 contracts.
Some things I noticed (good and bad) from the footage:
Monster designs are cool, the big bird is pretty terrifying.
Chocobos seem pretty good. They move pretty fast, can swim, and fly a bit. Racing doesn't seem too fun, but traversal does.
Combat looks a bit better. Looking good and feeling good are two different things and I don't think XV's combat based on previous builds felt good, but maybe they've improved it enough.
Most of the content seems kind of fetch quest-y. Take on enemy contracts to get money to fix your car, find some gems to appease the journalist, find 13 magical swords, etc. If combat and traversal are fun then it wouldn't be much of an issue, but that's yet to be seen.
The intro has a good idea, but seemingly poor execution. Many games try to have an exciting opening to leave a good first impression and hook the audience. The intro seems interesting but the gameplay looks pretty bad. Kind of like MGSV's intro, but at least that had more to look at. Maybe have the fight show Noctis as full strength teasing what the combat will eventually be like and then have what happens. Noctis also glides on the ground accidentally. I would've imagined SE could fix that, tho.
Also, the Iron Gollum and the car seems pretty bad.
Overall the 50 minute clip does show some promise, but if they cut out all the mundane content and only showed the best they had for the first 3 chapters then it still leaves me with some questions. Hopefully it all turns out ok.
 
G

Gbraga

Member
YankeeDonB said:
ha, the aerial warp follow does indeed look sick. Despite the fact that it wasn't needed in Platinum, aerial combat against the giant felt pretty good, too, and the camera was even mostly manageable. This could be a high point in the final game.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna waste so much time killing birds.
 
I

Ishida

Banned
James Scott said:
Something I noticed from the 50 minute video...they show a ton of the game off. Duscae itself was like 2-3 hours at the very least. I wonder how much content they spoiled/covered.
They got 3/13 swords, explored duscae and the beginning dessert area, went fishing and rode Chocobos, explored a town, went on a side quest for a journalist, and hunted like 9 contracts.
Some things I noticed (good and bad) from the footage:
Monster designs are cool, the big bird is pretty terrifying.
Chocobos seem pretty good. They move pretty fast, can swim, and fly a bit. Racing doesn't seem too fun, but traversal does.
Combat looks a bit better. Looking good and feeling good are two different things and I don't think XV's combat based on previous builds felt good, but maybe they've improved it enough.
Most of the content seems kind of fetch quest-y. Take on enemy contracts to get money to fix your car, find some gems to appease the journalist, find 13 magical swords, etc. If combat and traversal are fun then it wouldn't be much of an issue, but that's yet to be seen.
The intro has a good idea, but seemingly poor execution. Many games try to have an exciting opening to leave a good first impression and hook the audience. The intro seems interesting but the gameplay looks pretty bad. Kind of like MGSV's intro, but at least that had more to look at. Maybe have the fight show Noctis as full strength teasing what the combat will eventually be like and then have what happens. Noctis also glides on the ground accidentally. I would've imagined SE could fix that, tho.
Also, the Iron Gollum and the car seems pretty bad.
Overall the 50 minute clip does show some promise, but if they cut out all the mundane content and only showed the best they had for the first 3 chapters then it still leaves me with some questions. Hopefully it all turns out ok.
Click to expand...

If they only showed the first 3 Chapters, then I guess they actually didn't spoil much. We didn't see gameplay in Tenebrae, or that cool volcanic zone, or the red sky area. I believe there is still a lot of stuff we haven't seen yet. :)
 
CrimsonSquall

CrimsonSquall

Member
DarkLordMalik said:
We do know how the game looks like right now, we have the playable demo at Gamescom.

But we have no idea what it might end up looking like at launch.
Click to expand...
How could u ever infer that's not what I'm talking about. This entire thread is dedicated to that preview, ofc I'm saying nobody knows what the final product will look like right now.
 
Muffdraul

Muffdraul

Member
I just realized I haven't seen a JP preview book for FFXV yet. There's been one for just about every FF at least since VII, that's the first one I ever saw anyway. Being that the release date was Sept 30 until very recently, the preview book is kinda overdue. They're mandatory for those moments when you're fantasizing about the game coming out soon whilst taking a dump.

s-l500.jpg
s-l1600.jpg
68709H.JPG
78722G.JPG
Click to expand...
 
A

AkirraKrylon

Member
Is no one else intrigued by what kind of magic synthesis we will be capable of mid to late game?

I don't know if we will be able to, but finding items like "Dark Matter" and combining it with even amounts of Fire/Ice/Lightning energy to create Ultima or Demi would be so sick.
 
R

Ray Down

Banned
Muffdraul said:
I just realized I haven't seen a JP preview book for FFXV yet. There's been one for just about every FF at least since VII, that's the first one I ever saw anyway. Being that the release date was Sept 30 until very recently, the preview book is kinda overdue. They're mandatory for those moments when you're fantasizing about the game coming out soon whilst taking a dump.
Click to expand...

I think Dengeki PlayStation is going to have a massive preview if I'm remembering correctly, but that was before the delay.
 
Y

YankeeDonB

Member
AkirraKrylon said:
Is no one else intrigued by what kind of magic synthesis we will be capable of mid to late game?

I don't know if we will be able to, but finding items like "Dark Matter" and combining it with even amounts of Fire/Ice/Lightning energy to create Ultima or Demi would be so sick.
Click to expand...

That would be awesome. I'm really hoping to see some ultimate-tier spells w/ these particles and environmental effect.
 
H

Hentailover

Member
I always found it interesting how powerful the "coconut": effect is in humans.

The only reason "world maps" even existed is because they couldn't pull off a seameless overworld. If they could, they would. Yet now, when we can do that, people just want back to the "cozy sound of coconut shells smacking together" XD
 
S

Supermanisdead

Member
A traditional overworld like the old FF games would look terrible with this style of game. Looked like garbage in FF Type-0. I think it still does have a place in games like Ni No Kuni, which fit with the charming fantasy style of the game.
 
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