Support NeoGAF

[BRocknRolla]

.

I believe though this is precisely why as you stated yourself, this isn't actually a "deal breaker." Because despite your preference for one measurement system over another, it has little to no effect on the game.

They're selling the idea on an American-style road trip, so that's why they're using miles in the road signs, GPS like menu navigation, etc.

This argument doesn't make sense on a number of levels.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

They're selling the idea on an American-style road trip, so that's why they're using miles in the road signs, GPS like menu navigation, etc.

Right but when you then use real units you realize that these outposts that are supposed to be far apart are only separated by a half a mile it just shatters the illusion.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

They're selling the idea on an American-style road trip, so that's why they're using miles in the road signs, GPS like menu navigation, etc.

That's a bad argument. The game automatically switches to Metric units if you choose any of the other 8 language options other than English.

Also, FFXV doesn't happen in the United States. GTAV this is not.

 

[Tyaren]

Yeah, it annoyed me too. I decided to go for the English dub and best fitting to that was having all of the text in English too since they also changed some names in different languages. The Oracle is for example the "Kannagi" in German, straight from the Japanese version and Cindy is Cidney, like in Japan.
Everythig was fine playing it completely in English...just not the feet/miles thing. I have literally no concept of how big a feet or a mile is and I was constantly miscalculating distances.
I feel a bit bad for native English speakers outside the US, because this game was clearly catering to US consumers first.

 

[wmlk]

That's a bad argument. The game automatically switches to Metric units if you choose any of the other 8 language options other than English.

Also, FFXV doesn't happen in the United States. GTAV this is not.

In that case, yeah you're right. It's a dumb thing. It bothered me too but I thought that's what it was.

 

[hamchan]

I was pretty confused as to how many feet went into a mile when playing this game.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Do they even have the right numbers for conversion anyway? Look at the size of the patron sitting compared to his seat. He looks like a small child! And that door Noctis is passing!

 

[Hades Hotgun]

But which side of the road do they drive on?

The right side or the wrong side?

 

[Alex_Mexico]

I believe though this is precisely why as you stated yourself, this isn't actually a "deal breaker." Because despite your preference for one measurement system over another, it has little to no effect on the game.

And it is not, I agree. I'm not outraged here, but I firmly believe it was worth pointing it out so that next time, maybe, have the option available. For many it may be nothing but for others it could mean a big difference. It's about accessibility and for a game like FFXV that's trying to reach as much a big international audience as they can it's such a weird and dumb detail miss.

 

[MrChocolate]

.

It isn't relatable in a world where there is magic and eidolons? Ehhh. As another user said: Why would you care if it's called Hufflepuff or inches. The fact is that it serves a simple purpose, to indicate whether you are closer to your objective or not.

 

[Tyaren]

Do they even have the right number for measurement anyway? Look at the size of the patrons sitting compared to his seat. And that door Noctis is passing!

Yeah, that's a very palatial diner actually. XD

 

[Unai]

How is that different though from a delivery of information standpoint here though? It's still 1 large unit become more smaller units. What's so confusing about that?
.

I, for one, wouldn't know (without looking up first) weather 500 feet is longer than 2 miles or not. My mind doesn't think in feets.

 

[Peltz]

Metric system is only necessary for engineering work.

The metric system is actually elegant compared to our system though.

 

[Kamina]

But which side of the road do they drive on?

The right side or the wrong side?

The right side of the road is always correct.

 

[dragonzdogma]

It's also preferable if you are not living in a backwards regressive country.

Stap.

 

[Izuna]

This game is broken

 

[MrChocolate]

I, for one, wouldn't know (without looking up first) weather 500 feet is longer than 2 miles or not. My mind doesn't think in feets.

But if you take 10 steps forward and the counter dials down from 990 to 980, wouldn't it give you a rough idea of how much does it represent?

 

[Admiral Woofington]

The metric system is actually elegant compared to our system though.

I never said I don't like it better. I'm just saying in this situation of "oh my God what will I do if I can't have speed signs in meters" it's such a silly reason to have it. If you're doing actual calculation work where the imperial/US system adds a bunch of annoying variables that the metric system doesn't deal with, it should be used every single time. For simple 1 to 1 systems though, then it's not necessary. As someone else said, in this case you can fast travel or you can see the number going down. It's not like you know what speed the vehicle is going to know what 5 miles will take you anyways

 

[Peroroncino]

Obligatory:

But not really an issue, while I found it annoying at the beginning, it really didn't bother me after a while, it does its job, which is telling me how far am I and how fast am I going there, those values usually never are properly implemented in games anyway.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

Yeah, it annoyed me too. I decided to go for the English dub and best fitting to that was having all of the text in English too since they also changed some names in different languages. The Oracle is for example the "Kannagi" in German, straight from the Japanese version and Cindy is Cidney, like in Japan.
Everythig was fine playing it completely in English...just not the feet/miles thing. I have literally no concept of how big a feet or a mile is and I was constantly miscalculating distances.
I feel a bit bad for native English speakers outside the US, because this game was clearly catering to US consumers first.

Near the beginning of the game I saw my objective at 0.30m away and I instinctively thought "300 meters, I'll run for it, it's close by" and feeling very disoriented when I felt it was too much of a distance for 300 meters and then was baffled when it went from 0.18m to 999 ft. This system has no scalability whatsoever and makes no goddamn sense

 

[BRocknRolla]

And it is not, I agree. I'm not outraged here, but I firmly believe it was worth pointing it out so that next time, maybe, have the option available. For many it may be nothing but for others it could mean a big difference. It's about accessibility and for a game like FFXV that's trying to reach as much a big international audience as they can it's such a weird and dumb detail miss.

I guess it's possible that it's my perspective as an American that it's entirely possible to view and understand the Imperial and Metric systems without it causing some type of pain. Though methods are different from converting one unit to another between the two, the concepts of distance are no different. If someone tells me I'm 2 kilometers away from something, and then tells me I'm 100 meters away, I full understand that I'm not closer even though I encounter metric very little on a day to day basis. I'd expect it would be no different if someone said, you're 2 miles away, and now you're 300ft away.

If it were real life, and the distances had a practical effect on my judging how long it was going to take me to get somewhere, I'd wholly understand the issue. But it's little more than a number rising and falling to indicate proximity here.

I hate complaining about complaining. I'm just having trouble seeing the pain point here.

It sounds like a court case in which someone proves they are right, but when it comes time to decide the cost to the person who was wronged, they can't actually show hardship. In other words, I agree with you in principle, I just don't see the practical implications.

I, for one, wouldn't know (without looking up first) weather 500 feet is longer than 2 miles or not. My mind doesn't think in feets.

But that's the beauty of the game handling this for you. You don't have to know how many feet are in a mile. Same with metric; you just don't have to know. The game say you have X miles to go. When miles are no longer a valuable measure of distance because you're so far below it, it can drop to another unit. All you need to see is that it's no longer a mile, so you're less than a mile. You've gotten closer.

 

[Garudan]

GAF will do anything to shit on FFXV.

"Why isn't there an option to drive on the left side of the road?" posts incoming.

 

[Alucrid]

Yeah, it annoyed me too. I decided to go for the English dub and best fitting to that was having all of the text in English too since they also changed some names in different languages. The Oracle is for example the "Kannagi" in German, straight from the Japanese version and Cindy is Cidney, like in Japan.
Everythig was fine playing it completely in English...just not the feet/miles thing. I have literally no concept of how big a feet or a mile is and I was constantly miscalculating distances.
I feel a bit bad for native English speakers outside the US, because this game was clearly catering to US consumers first.

a mile is four laps around a track

a foot is a third of a yard

 

[chrominance]

Does it matter?

It's not really a mile. It's just a number. Look at the number, see how long it takes to go down X amount, and calculate it in your head.

They could've put 182 rw or 4.29 tw and it wouldn't matter.

Because to people in the civilized world it's not relatable.

I'm 2 miles away, move 0.1 miles forward and suddenly this system switches to 800 ft.

It's confusing when you're used to the logical and actually useful system in which 1 big unit consists of 1000 small units

That's why it matters. This constantly confuses me; I keep seeing "0.43 miles" and thinking, "oh, that's pretty close, I'll walk it" because I'm mistaking it for 400 yards, which it totally is not. If they'd stuck to only ever showing distances in yards or only in miles, that would be fine and I wouldn't care. But because it switches between the two, I get confused.

I mean, I'll live with it and figure it out, and it's a tiny quality of life detail, but I was also a little sad when there was no option to allow metric units.

Do they even have the right numbers for conversion anyway? Look at the size of the patron sitting compared to his seat. He looks like a small child! And that door Noctis is passing!

Great, now I can't unsee this. Thanks!

 

[Alex_Mexico]

It isn't relatable in a world where there is magic and eidolons? Ehhh. As another user said: Why would you care if it's called Hufflepuff or inches. The fact is that it serves a simple purpose, to indicate whether you are closer to your objective or not.

You may not realize how disorienting it can be for a Metric user to have a measurement that goes from 0.19 to 999 in the next couple of steps. It's not a deal breaker but it makes the world less intuitive to navigate.

I also continuously keep feeling it takes too long to advance one 0.1 but thats because 0.1 of a mile is way more than 0.1 km.

Yes, they could've called the units something else but if they were going to go for real units and went to the trouble of including both Metric and Imperial then just give us the option to choose.

But if you take 10 steps forward and the counter dials down from 990 to 980, wouldn't it give you a rough idea of how much does it represent?

Yes but, like I said, it's not that simple because after 999 it goes to 0.18m rather than 1000 or 1.00 like it would in Metric. It's incredibly jarring for non Imperial users.

 

[wrowa]

I prefer playing games in English, but I have no sense of how long a mile is, so I agree with the OP. The lack of a metric option is really annoying.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

Near the beginning of the game I saw my objective at 0.30m away and I instinctively thought "300 meters, I'll run for it, it's close by" and feeling very disoriented when I felt it was too much of a distance for 300 meters and then was baffled when it went from 0.18m to 999 ft. This system has no scalability whatsoever and makes no goddamn sense

Your instinct wasn't far off- 0.3m = 480 meters. It's just that the game's scale is screwed up so bad that it it feels more like 4800 meters.

Even though I'm used to miles, ft, etc, the game is still disorienting because the scale is so jacked.

I prefer playing games in English, but I have no sense of how long a mile is, so I agree with the OP. The lack of a metric option is really annoying.

Again, because the scale is so broken you would have no sense of the distance even if was in meters. The distances in game don't correspond to real life.

 

[Kamina]

But if you take 10 steps forward and the counter dials down from 990 to 980, wouldn't it give you a rough idea of how much does it represent?

No because these "steps" don't have an understandable distance for metric thinkers.
Look, you are trying to describe a system to us that doesn't really make sense. We are used to 10mm being 1cm, 10cm being 1dm, 10dm being 1m, 1000m being 1km. Each of these are easy to comprehend due to the factor 10.

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

Literally unplayable.

 

[Gin-Shiio]

Options are always a good thing, and measuring systems fall in the same line as language to me. I don't get imperial. I don't understand it. So yeah, having the option would be welcome.

 

[Unai]

But if you take 10 steps forward and the counter dials down from 990 to 980, wouldn't it give you a rough idea of how much does it represent?

Yes, but in this game it changes from miles to feet. If I'm not looking at it when it changes I wouldn't know if I got closer or not.

I mean, now I know because of this thread that that I would be closer since the game changes when you get closer than 2 miles, but I meant in general.

 

[GTR R35_Supra RZ]

Jezus, end of the world, OP.

 

[AEdouard]

I think we can all agree that it would have been better if they gave us the choice to pick the metric or imperial system, but that it is a minor issue.

(And most of us agree that the meteic system is just better, even though it's tough to switch!)

 

[ghibli99]

You have to run/drive/load too far in this game whether it's in miles or kilometers. Do these measures really matter? All I care about is the number going down to zero, and ensuring Noctis doesn't go into his dumb "tired" animation if I don't hit the run button again at the right moment.

 

[SocksAndShoes]

Do they even have the right numbers for conversion anyway? Look at the size of the patron sitting compared to his seat. He looks like a small child! And that door Noctis is passing!

Yeah but to be fair this is after you eat a "strange mushroom" in the forest and get transported to Wonderland.

 

[Andrefpvs]

This very same thing annoys me when I check the Pokédex in Pokémon games. In every other language, the monsters have their weight and height listed in the metric system. In English, we're stuck with the imperial system with no way to switch it.

In this type of situations options are always good, even if in the game the things that are measured are not always to scale with the real world.

 

[rhandino]

Do they even have the right numbers for conversion anyway? Look at the size of the patron sitting compared to his seat. He looks like a small child! And that door Noctis is passing!

Lord of Shadows 2 has a successor, I see...

 

[Brazil]

While I agree that it should be a choice, I'm not sure what it really matters in this game. Yes, it says "miles," but what does that correspond to? It doesn't really feel like it has a 100% realistic scale, and I don't feel like I factor that into my experience. Distance in FF15 is a number relative to other numbers in FF15, and as such, could be labeled anything and accomplish the same exact goal. The only relevant piece of information is that 2 miles is twice as far away as 1 mile.

"1 mile" feels closer than it actually is. When the distance marker jumps from feet to miles (or the other way around), I get confused as fuck.

 

[davidwhangchoi]

i guess we need to get rid of madden and say football for FIFA.

i didn't even notice miles till this thread.

 

[CamHostage]

Hrm, interesting complaint.

FF XV is such a play on Americana that I can't see it being necessary to change here, but as a general service for video game information tools, go ahead and have the computer do the math, sure. Be good to the players, video game makers.

Even for somebody living in the States, if something changes from "2 miles" to "800 feet", it'd bother me. I'm much more in favor of a display system using simple base-10 tenths of a mile, at which point, it doesn't matter whether we're measuring in miles or kilometers or farthings or building stories or mattress sizes, it's all just a number and fraction of that number which I need to travel to get from place to place.

 

[Falk]

Do they even have the right numbers for conversion anyway? Look at the size of the patron sitting compared to his seat. He looks like a small child! And that door Noctis is passing!

that door is 300 microamperes tall

 

[BRocknRolla]

Yes, but in this game it changes from miles to feet. If I'm not looking at it when it changes I wouldn't know if I got closer or not.

I mean, now I know because of this thread that that I would be closer since the game changes when you get closer than 2 miles, but I meant in general.

The point though is that the game does take care of this for you, and you do understand how the units change and what they means, even if you're not watching the screen. (Unless you literally do not know that a mile > foot, then I could see it being a problem.)

1 km becomes a number of meters. You've gotten closer.
1 mile becomes a number of feet. You've gotten closer.

I've seen some people say, "Well, I see the "m" and assume meters and then realize it's miles, and that's much further." Well, the same thing happens to me when I play Forza Horizon 3; I drive on the side of the road I think I should be driving on, see an oncoming car and think, "Oh, that's right, I'm on the wrong side here." I recognize it, reorient my thinking, and continue playing. Are people unable to do that?

No because these "steps" don't have an understandable distance for metric thinkers.
Look, you are trying to describe a system to us that doesn't really make sense. We are used to 10mm being 1cm, 10cm being 1dm, 10dm being 1m, 1000m being 1km. Each of these are easy to comprehend due to the factor 10.

I find it very hard to believe that people who use metric having trouble understanding what a "step" is. If I say, "Take 10 steps forward," you're not converting that into metric to understand the distance; you're walking 10 steps. It's an imprecise measurement, but you would still know generally what it meant.

This person wasn't saying that a step = a foot, because it certainly wouldn't. They point is that a number going up or down to measure distance is arbitrary as long as you understand that up means farther away and down means closer.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

Literally unplayable.

I know you're joking

Spoiler

I think

but I'll still state that this oversight does not make or break an otherwise amazing FFXV experience. My hope is that developers can stumble unto this thread and hopefully avoid this the next time.

 

[Garibaldi]

In Britain:

- We get taught only metric at school
- We drive in imperial speeds but fill up the car in metric litres
- We drink milk and beer in pints but drink water and soft drinks in litres
- We measure our height in feet but measure everything else in metres
- We measure our weight in stones and pounds but weigh everything else in grams and kilograms

..and it goes on... must be confusing for visitors

LOL, it's so funny when you've written it down. It must be an absolute nightmare for non natives. Yet we take it in our stride. Haha thanks for the chuckle

 

[Alex_Mexico]

Yes, but in this game it changes from miles to feet. If I'm not looking at it when it changes I wouldn't know if I got closer or not.

I mean, now I know because of this thread that that I would be closer since the game changes when you get closer than 2 miles, but I meant in general.

I know for a fact it changes to feet after 0.18m but right now I cant remember exactly to what number in feet it changes to. I think it goes to 999ft but with this system it wouldn't surprise me that it changed to some arbitrary number like 947ft or something so don't quote me on that.

 

[SomedayTheFire]

Man, so cynical. Whatever happened to "options are good"? Nah better jump on OP, instead.

 

[Dremorak]

I'm going to bet its because the voice actors are american, so having them say miles and doubling down on the whole "american road trip" theme had a lot to do with this decision.
That said, I totally think they will DLC it in.

 

[Xanfrabot]

USA really should adopt the superior system.

 

[Arkeband]

Pretend it's an arbitrary unit, like Gil or Yalms.

 

[Killer Queen]

I've never quite understood this complaint in video games.
It's not like it's actually a measurable mile to me.
The number gets smaller as I get closer to the waypoint no matter what letters symbols or nonsense is after the number.

.