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[Ishida]

On a side note a buddy of mine said he found a niflehiem base but it was blocked off by tanks and he died cause they called in reinforcements to bombard him.

They killed his chocobo as well.

Holy shit that actually sounds awesome.

 

[Adam_Vania]

I don't know yet if they're imitating it or using it yet though. If they're using certain elements and forging others that's great.

People get so hung up on genre though.

the first JRPGs were directly inspired by WRPGs (Wizardry and Ultima specifically) so i dont see a reason why they shouldn't be able to still look at what other games are doing

 

[TheGreatDirector]

I just got home from gamescom and I feel like I should explain the tweet that people have been talking about.

I did not exaggerate and I didn't tweet that just for attention or anything. I haven't been keeping up with recent Final Fantasy XV previews so I have no idea what other people think about it. I don't even know if I played the same version. All I know is that the version I played was the exact same version the public at gamescom gets to play. All I did was get a Square Enix VIP card so I didn't have to wait in line for hours. I wasn't playing the game behind closer doors or anything.

The one thing I did notice is that my booth was the only one with a PlayStation 4 controller in the entire row. Every other booth had an Xbox controller. I figured I was lucky since that was the version I've been wanting to play. I was expecting some upgrades and a game that would feel a lot more final than Duscae back in the day.

Now, I won't get into story details or anything since I don't want to spoil people. I'll just talk about the points I mentioned in the tweet, starting with the downgrade talk. This is a weird one for me as I don't usually care about downgrades. As long as the game looks fine, I don't really care if the launch trailer looked a lot better. But in the case of Final Fantasy XV, I guess it's more of an issue since I've played Duscae before. So I actually played the game when it looked better. No hyperbole, I honestly thought the version I played at gamescom looked worse than Duscae. It ran better, but looked worse. It feels like they couldn't improve the performance without dropping the graphics. I remember, near the intro, the logo would appear with an overview of the Duscae zone in the background. The area looked so disappointing. Low quality textures in the background, popin, just a disappointing picture overall. It sure as hell didn't look like a cutting edge JRPG. And it's weird... because Duscae wasn't really that impressive either. But now I notice more popin and blurry/hazy graphics. It's weird. Maybe I just remember Duscae as a better looking game. I should give it a try again.

Now the sound issues were a big dealbreaker for me, but I'm starting to think this was specific to my booth. It was just way too awful to be a bug or anything. I have trouble believing the devs wouldn't notice it. The sound would distort, hitch and lag all the time. It honestly ruined the narrative part of the demo for me. It would sometimes go away, but then it came back, even worse. At one point it was just one distorted mess. I couldn't even make out what the characters were saying anymore. Unless other people who play the demo at gamescom also bring this up, I'm going to assume this is just a specific demo booth issue.

The one thing I might have exaggerated a little are the unresponsive controls. Gameplay worked fine for the most part, but every now and then Noctis wouldn't respond to the actions I'd give him. At one point, the game started to drop frames during a boss fight and it got so bad that Noctis would run left when I'd press the joystick to the right, he wouldn't regain HP even when I'd hide behind a rock and he wouldn't attack when I'd press the attack button. At first I thought he was confused or something but I didn't see any debuff or anything. Other times, Noctis would stop jumping when I'd press X for no reason at all. They could just be bugs, but I do hope they sort this out before release.

As for the car, tons of people have been telling me "BUT WE KNEW IT WAS ON RAILS AND THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE ROAD". Well, yeah. I get you. But that doesn't change the fact it feels like a very cheap/ancient way to drive a car in a blockbuster 2016 title. I'd rather have no car than a halfassed car. It just doesn't feel natural. It feels very sloppy and restricted. I don't get the feeling I'm driving a car. Maybe they'll get it right before the game releases. Who knows. I'm just commenting on what I played right now and I didn't like it that much.

Now, I know I'm painting a very grim picture of Final Fantasy XV but please note that most of my complaints are related to the technical side of the game. I actually enjoyed the new combat system a lot. It felt fluid, more natural and... fun. I understood it right away, unlike Duscae. I can't speak much about the story, but I liked what I saw for now. And honestly, if the gameplay & story end up being good, I won't mind the technical side of things as much. But if you're playing a short demo, you'll notice the flaws a lot more. And in this case, as much as I tried, I couldn't ignore the disappointing graphics.

I know it sounds inflammatory but I have to be honest: No, I didn't. And I don't think it was because of me or because of my unwillingness to accept the game's merits, strenths and weaknesses but because several of its technical and gameplay pillars are fundamentally badly designed and thought out. I have to give one big caveat though: I skipped the cutscenes because I didn't want to spoil me too much but what I saw from the screens next to me the pre-rendered cutscenes looked fucking gorgeous. But first I really want to dispel one thing:



This is absolutely 100% false. Those screenshots convey very accurately what the game actually looks like while exploring, running and driving around. This is how Final Fantasy XV's open world looks like when there's no motion blur and flashy effects from fight scenes, running on a PS4. The framerate seemed like it was a pretty steady 30fps, which is obviously a big step up from Episode Duscae and very likely the reason the game looks so much worse even compared to the demo.

But to get to my more important points:

I feel like there are three big pillars to this game:

1) Driving around (The Road Trip pillar)

2) Fighting (The Final Fantasy & Action Game pillar)

3) Exploring, Questing, Looting (The Open World pillar)

I have huge problems with each one. Let's start with my biggest disappointemnt from this demo:

1) The Driving feels bad, lacks interactivity and betrays what a road trip is about

When I think of the concept of a road trip I think about freedom. About driving around unshackled from any boundaries and obligations, about exploring unknown territory, about going out of your comfort zone. In contrast to all of these concepts FF XV takes all control away from you when you drive. Even when you choose to control the game "manually" you:
-can't leave the road
-can't turn the wheel more than a few cm, while you snap back to your previous position the second you let go from the analogue stick
-can't drive fast
-can't exit the car wherever you want (kinda, but not exactly)
-can't take corners the way you want, the game automatically breaks, even if you pull the Gas button as far as you can

You are basically on a fixed track and you have to hold R2 to keep on driving on that fixed track. Whenever an intersection comes up you hold in the direction you want to drive and the game does the rest for you. When you want to make a U-Turn you just press Square and the game automatically does a U-Turn for you. There is no way for you to do this yourself since you can't actually steer away from the road in front of you. Even if there's a huge, long, endless straight in front of you Noctis will not drive with more than what feels like 15 mp/h, no matter how much you just want to race to your next waypoint. This means that driving long distances takes WAY too long with no way to skip to the end (at least in the demo I played), even in Automatic mode. When I hold X to exit the car, they don't immediatly do it but instead drive a few meters further to a predetermint point where the game allows me to stop. After that, the screen turns black and I stand outside of the car.

Nothing works as you'd expect it to work, nothing feels good, you are never in control and the black screen seems completely unnecessary and betrays the seamless transition they were going for originally.

Your Number 1 method of transportation feels like garbage and isn't fun in the slightest.

2) The Fighting System couples the action of Character Action games with the control responsiveness of JRPGs. It doesn't go well.

The controls are incredibly sluggish and unresponsiv, even at a steady framerate. Since you have to hold the circle button to attack you can't accurately control each strike. It's not intuitively noticable when one attack started or the next one ended. You never know 100% if you already queued up the next hit or not.

At the same time the fast paced fighting demands the accuracy of a Character Action game. You should not attack enemies when they block you, you should block when enemies attack you. Since you do not have complete control over your character and instead just tell him which NPD to attack instead of actively attacking him yourself, this demanded accuracy seems unnecessarily frustrating to achieve.

The developers also didn't think about several fundamentals of the Action game genre and instead had to work around them with stopgap solutions. The biggest example to me is the utter lack of noticable enemy tells. The best character action games achieve a perfect balance of letting the player know when and how an enemies is about to attack while also demanding great reflexes and the knowledge of how to counter said attack. An obvious example would be the red flashe some enemies in Metal Gear Rising display shortly before attacking. This red flash always means the same and is an established part of the ruleset.

In FFXV everything explodes in effects and characters since 3 of your companions share the screen with you most of the time while you often fight against 3, 4 or 5 small enemies at the same time, making it utterly impossible to actually notice any tells from any of the enemie NPCs. So what did Square Enix do?

The put a Huge "GUARD! USE SQUARE!" tooltip up everytime an enemie attacks with an attack you could parry. Instead of actually working on the issue the built a ugly workaround, removing any learning curve and finesse inherent in actually learning an enemie's behaviour. With big enemies there comes a new problem of actually not knowing what is an attack and what's just movement. You don't really know what hurts you and what doesn't.

And don't even get me started on their solution to "Oh Jesus, no one knows what's going on during these battles, what should we do?" Just PAUSE them? Are you serious? That's like building a terrible shooter where no one hits anything and instead of working on the AI or the controls you just tell your players to pause the game and move the crosshair over your enemie's head in that time.


3.) Exploring the open world is tedious and straight-up not fun

I could go on and on about this point (oh my god using the car is seriously such a fucking chore) but this post is already way too long so I just want to give you one perfect example of how badly thought out almost every aspect of this game is:

I drove on a street when I heard a scream from somewhere and a new side quest popped up. A hunter needed help! I wanted to help him...but the game didn't actually tell me where I should go to do that. The game registered the side quest. It marked it in my Quest Log. And I could even get a waypoint! But not just like that - I had to put in some work. And, honestly? This feels so obviously unintuitive and easy to fix that I think I probably missed a button here. If that's the case, please correct me and I will quote you as soon as I see it. But I tried and tried and didn't find a way. So what did I have to do?

Well, I was driving in my car - and while driving I couldn't access my Skill Menu or Quest Log anymore. The options were gone from the Start Menu. I could only open my map. I had to get out of the car to be able to access the Quest Log. This was the process:

- Getting the sidequest notification
- Holding X to stop the Car
- Waiting for the Car to stop further down the road for no discernible reason
- Getting a Black Screen while my characters left the car.
- Accessing the Quest Log
- Marking the Side Quest as active
- Leaving the Quest Log
- Getting back in the car
- Turning around
- Slooowly accelerating and driving back to the point where I got the notification and go from there

For whatever reason I could only ever track one quest on my mini map. This sounds like a small thing but in an open world game where such notifications hit by the minute, making me leave me car slooooowly only to be able to tell the game to allow me to approach the activity while I could have done so way easier while actually already sitting in my car is a completely unnecessary obstacle between me and my desire to explore the world.

I would go in further detail but just imagine a really ugly Dragon Age: Inquisition and you got the picture.

Thank you for these impressions. It's good to hear criticisms on where the game stands now. Hopefully with the little time they gained with the delay they'll at least be able to fix a few of the technical issues in the game.

I don't see them changing the car mechanics much which is a shame. Perhaps they're too afraid it'll involve too many bugs if implemented like normal open world driving?

 

[Ran rp]

Darkest timeline

The car and quest stuff sounds like an absolute nightmare. Goddamn. There earlier complaints I read were troubling but now they sound like serious deal-breakers.

I can't deal with that mess in a 40/50h+ RPG.

Thanks for the impressions btw.

 

[chozen]

Even if the car is bad now, no one knows how the flying car controls I imagine that is the freedom you wanted, did anyone even try the chocobos? That looks pretty fun to control and good for land travel.

 

[Ishida]

did anyone even try the chocobos

Everyone seems to be ignoring them for some weird reason.

 

[.JayZii]

Pls be true. That was truly great and unique design. #believe

The only reason why I doubt it was in was because I was always under the impression that this sword (illustrated below) had replaced the engine greatsword due to its similarity in design:

Cid talked about upgrading his engine sword in that hour or so of footage they put out. It could have something to do with that.

 

[Ran rp]

Even if the car is bad now, no one knows how the flying car controls I imagine that is the freedom you wanted, did anyone even try the chocobos? That looks pretty fun to control and good for land travel.

If it's a late game upgrade it almost doesn't matter. People will be spending the vast majority of their time driving the car instead of flying it.

 

[Mr Git]

I think a bigger worry might be the slow feeling, I'm curious how accurate that is.

Like thinking about riding Roach in TW3, I kind of hated doing it, but at least it got me places quick enough. If the traversal is not fun, not interesting and slow, that's a pretty bad combination.

Yeah that's kinda the comparison I was making mentally - Roach was a pain in the ass but he was at least quick and could be forced to go off-road. Agreed, slow and uninteresting ugh. Like a forced walking section but, regularly and in a car.

You need a road to take off and land. You just can't land anywhere you please like GTA. However, there's specific areas that you can only access once you get the upgrade to fly. It's been known for awhile but I don't blame people being shocked if they don't follow every little detail.

Okay thanks. Yeah I've been picking and choosing which reports/media to digest, in a sort of half-blackout.

 

[James Scott]

On foot movement always felt pretty clunky as well. I'm not too sure how to describe it...laggy, maybe?Noctis running and then pausing to catch his breath is pretty infuriating as well. The Chocobos seem pretty fun, hope you can get them really quickly, though I'm not sure how you'd take them to different maps since they won't fit in the car

snip

I didn't know the car was on rails or that it controlled so poorly.
I've been pretty upset with the focus on the car for a long time...why include it and why make it so prominent in a fantasy game?
Most of the game you're driving in the car, near the beginning you're pushing the car for awhile, then you need to go grind in the Duscae region in order to get money to fix the car, and then in the Platinum demo Noctis's "safe space" is his dad's car, and the little dog thing is named carbuncle.
It's upsetting enough on top of it not seeming fun...
Also, if the ground controls are so limited and the game chugs on land...how will the game handle the flight mode?

Even if the car is bad now, no one knows how the flying car controls I imagine that is the freedom you wanted, did anyone even try the chocobos? That looks pretty fun to control and good for land travel.

If the car controls poorly on ground I can't imagine SE will make a great feeling air ship.
Also, I'd imagine that's probably very late in the game, maybe post game material.

 

[Damerman]

i'm just wondering what the delay will address... is it gameplay balance, or just visual fidelity?

hope the game is good.

 

[cackhyena]

I have zero issues with the car being on rails. It could go a little faster at times from the sounds of it, though.

 

[zokie]

Thank you for these impressions. It's good to hear criticisms on where the game stands now. Hopefully with the little time they gained with the delay they'll at least be able to fix a few of the technical issues in the game.

I don't see them changing the car mechanics much which is a shame. Perhaps they're too afraid it'll involve too many bugs if implemented like normal open world driving?

yes i agree debugging is a complex and complicated process , maybe car driving is limited till you advance more into the story , until you get the flying car

 

[chozen]

If it's a late game upgrade it almost doesn't matter. People will be spending the vast majority of their time driving the car instead of flying it.

Personally I was never planning on controlling the car and would rather have Ignis drive while I listen to banter and watch the sights, I always had that idea in mind.

But again, chocobos are there no clue why anyone is ignoring them, and when you drive to a location and discover it I hear you can fast travel.

 

[Servbot24]

the first JRPGs were directly inspired by WRPGs (Wizardry and Ultima specifically) so i dont see a reason why they shouldn't be able to still look at what other games are doing

Oh they definitely should and I'm glad they are. I'm just afraid people will expect the game to fully conform into being an WRPG rather than just borrow a few elements from it.

 

[Supermanisdead]

huh, so what the hell is the point of having a manual mode. just to hold r2?

 

[benzy]

The Regalia being on rails is trash design. I though there was also a brake button? Weird it's automated.

 

[Original Man]

Why would anyone want to drive the car off the road anyway? With all the ground textures and environments imagine the pain of adjusting the car to work just for that. That's why there are these things called chocobos for off road travelling. This is not GTA...ijs

 

[Ran rp]

Anyone know if Chocobos run faster than the Regalia?

 

[rayman1900]

I think it was more for story reasons they didn't want us to fully control the car. Why? Because the car is essentially a character in the story and play an important part in the game. The car represents Regis and is also very close to the theme of father and son relationship as to the gang caring for the car. I guess they thought it would be very out of character if Noctis would take the weels, tried to crash the car on purpose, ram into chobobos for fun or just be crazy with it à la GTA, even wrecked it for good.

Also I understand how it would be more convenient to have a car on rails instead of free controls considering the amounts of QA it would require !

 

[Ishida]

Anyone know if Chocobos run faster than the Regalia?

From the footage it seems that way.

 

[chozen]

Anyone know if Chocobos run faster than the Regalia?

My friend just told me that you can proceed in the story without having to use the car lol, you can travel by chocobo if you so choose and there is fast travel.

Unless there is probably scripted events but if you don't like it hey that option is there.

Chocobo is not faster than the car.

 

[Squire]

Personally I was never planning on controlling the car and would rather have Ignis drive while I listen to banter and watch the sights, I always had that idea in mind.

But again, chocobos are there no clue why anyone is ignoring them, and when you drive to a location and discover it I hear you can fast travel.

The car is your main form of transportation. That chocobos are in the game is completely beside the point. If the car moves too slow and doesn't control well (or hardly controls at all) those criticisms are not invalidated by the presence of chocobos, the airship, the gondolas in Altissia or anything else.

 

[Ran rp]

Let me equip the chocobo with a cd player and I'm good lol.

Edit: Not faster. Booo.

 

[BocoDragon]

I think there is wisdom in not making the car like in GTA where you're just ripping around plowing through monsters.

 

[NoctisVsStar]

Let me equip the chocobo with a cd player and I'm good lol.

Edit: Not faster. Booo.

Black chocobo please

 

[yami4ct]

The car is your main form of transportation. That chocobos are in the game is completely beside the point. If the car moves too slow and doesn't control well (or hardly controls at all) those criticisms are not invalidated by the presence of chocobos, the airship, the gondolas in Altissia or anything else.

It's a fair target for criticism, but if chocobos are faster, control better and you don't need the car much to progress, I don't personally see it as a major issue. It becomes a problem if all your accessible means of travel are trash.

 

[chozen]

The car is your main form of transportation. That chocobos are in the game is completely beside the point. If the car moves too slow and doesn't control well (or hardly controls at all) those criticisms are not invalidated by the presence of chocobos, the airship, the gondolas in Altissia or anything else.

Again, you don't need to use the car if you don't like it.

I don't know what anyone expected from being on rails. Only purpose it serves it to be Point A to Point B there probably is no point to using it since all you really do is hold R2.

But even then, I can appreciate the look that they were going for.

Do people want to drive it off road? Lol.

 

[The Last One]

The car represents FF XIII.

She must not be forgotten.

 

[wmlk]

Even if riding a Chocobo is not as fast, that's what I'll likely be doing to explore the environment and do fun, technical stuff. I would just let Ignis drive otherwise while I take in the sights.

I just want conversations to take place while I'm riding Chocobo too, and not just the car.

 

[BocoDragon]

The car represents FF XIII.

She must not be forgotten.

Checks out.

It even opens up late in the game.

Spoiler

The flying modification

 

[chozen]

Even if riding a Chocobo is not as fast, that's what I'll likely be doing to explore the environment and do fun, technical stuff. I would just let Ignis drive otherwise while I take in the sights.

That is the idea, this isn't Final Fantasy:Grand Turismo.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

Everyone seems to be ignoring them for some weird reason.

It's almost like the car and roadtrip angle has been a big focus of the marketing.

 

[The Last One]

Checks out.

It even opens up late in the game.

Spoiler

The flying modification

Now we just need a FF XIII skin to put on the car

 

[Supermanisdead]

the car having shite controls is a big deal. it's basically a main character from the way they market it. chocobos are a sidequest locked behind a boss battle, many people might not even bother. unless there are hundreds of lines of interesting dialogue to take up the slow ass car rides across the whole world, i could see that being a major negative for people.

 

[Squire]

It's a fair target for criticism, but if chocobos are faster, control better and you don't need the car much to progress, I don't personally see it as a major issue. It becomes a problem if all your accessible means of travel are trash.

Again, you don't need to use the car if you don't like it.

I don't know what anyone expected from being on rails. Only purpose it serves it to be Point A to Point B there probably is no point to using it since all you really do is hold R2.

But even then, I can appreciate the look that they were going for.

Do people want to drive it off road? Lol.

It's not the biggest issue in the world, but it's a fundamental flaw as the car is core to the experience and, as SilentRob got at in his post, suggesting chocobos in response to criticism of it is just applying a bandage to the issue.

We shouldn't need to do that. SE chose to make an open-world game. They should've looked at their contemporaries and realized mobility is as appreciated as scale is. Large locals are nice, but when people want to get on with the game, they just want to get on with it. Quickly. This is why the zip line is in AC Syndicate and the neon dash is in Secomd Son.

Now I'm sure someone will reply that a nice, slow drive through the Duscae sunset is exactly what they want, which is all fine and well, SE just runs the risk of turning off the larger audience they're trying to woo here.

Edit: LOL

 

[wmlk]

the car having shite controls is a big deal. it's basically a main character from the way they market it. chocobos are a sidequest locked behind a boss battle, many people might not even bother. unless there are hundreds of lines of interesting dialogue to take up the slow ass car rides across the whole world, i could see that being a major negative for people.

Yeah. For someone who wants to manually drive the car, it's a problem if it doesn't feel right to control it. If it's on rails, the lanes are probably way too small to allow that kind of freedom.

I don't see any situation why I would personally want to manually drive the car, though, other than in races (if they have them).

 

[jett]

Driving sounds objectively, factually, like complete and utter garbage.

 

[notaskwid]

If you don't like the driving, don't do it. It's not like it's mandatory.

 

[chozen]

Now I'm sure someone will reply that a nice, slow drive through the Duscae sunset is exactly what they want, which is all fine and well, SE just runs the risk of turning off the larger audience they're trying to woo here.

It's exactly what I want, I'd rather not be waypointing everywhere. Sorry, I'm not trying to rush through this after waiting 10 years.

Driving sounds objectively, factually, like complete and utter garbage.

I feel sorry for this man, no one will ever be pleased.

 

[Kwansu Dudes]

Does anyone who isn't a press member have a positive and in depth impression of the game? Not really liking what I've read so far.

Would also like to say the car being slow is a massive turnoff.

 

[Original Man]

It's exactly what I want, I'd rather not be waypointing everywhere



I feel sorry for this man, no one will ever be pleased.

Lmao, ain't this the truth. This game is probably the most feedback edited game in history and people will still be upset at it. As they say, "damned if you do, damned if you dont"

 

[Drain You]

Played the Plat demo on Ps4, first time playing any FF game ever. Kinda loved it, downloading the 8gb torrent right now of the 50 minute demo. Hopefully I won't be totally lost getting this as my first FF game.

 

[Mifec]

It's exactly what I want, I'd rather not be waypointing everywhere. Sorry, I'm not trying to rush through this after waiting 10 years.



I feel sorry for this man, no one will ever be pleased.

http://i.imgur.com/wNQYMnk.png[IMG][/QUOTE]

Maybe he shoulda made the driving better then.

 

[Maintenance]

Seems I was right that the driving is garbage.

Selling the road trip angle and making driving the car a pain is absolutely idiotic.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

It's exactly what I want, I'd rather not be waypointing everywhere. Sorry, I'm not trying to rush through this after waiting 10 years.

Making a gameplay mechanic shit on behalf of some weirdos who have been waiting for 10 years and want to drive slow sounds like a dumbass idea.

 

[Original Man]

"FFXIII sucks, it's linear!"

Fast forward to FFXV

"FFXV sucks, it's open world!"

*dead*

 

[benzy]

No one has provided them any feedback on driving because no one knew how it even played before today. I thought one mode was autopilot while the other mode gave us free control like an open world driving game with road barriers (Forza Horizon 1, NFS Most Wanted).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCZx4V9IT8

There is absolutely zero point in essentially 2 autopilot modes, except one just lets you hold gas while it does everything else for you.

 

[Squire]

If you don't like the driving, don't do it. It's not like it's mandatory.

Just given the premise of the game there will undoubtedly be at least a few sections where you're required to travel by car. If it was so optional as to the point of being completely ignorable, they wouldn't have bothered making it a front and center feature of the game.

 

[notaskwid]

Maybe he shoulda made the driving better then.

How would you do it with the objective being "not allowing players to roam of road and ramming against monsters and shit"? There is a car, but this isn't GTA, Just Cause or wtv.