LINEAR MAPS :@

[The Last Oath]

Apparently the maps in FFXIII are gonna be linear.

http://img4.sankakustatic.com/wp-content/gallery/cache/56088__468x_final-fantasy-xiii-extreme-linearity.jpg

Like that. And apparently theres no more towns, all the shopping is done at save points. And to add to that, I heard its auto-heal after battles.

This is only what i've heard from a FF buddy of mine, but if this is true then I feel that the traditional, get stuck-challenge is gone from the game. No more running around and looking for stuff?

[Skyblade]

I too heard of both the auto-heal and the linearity, and I don't mind it.

Apparently Pulse is much more open than Cocoon, but it takes a while to get to it. But there have been plenty of linear FFs, and some of them were great.

I'm not sure about the "no more towns" thing, though. Perhaps shopping is done at save points, but there are definitely some towns in the game. We saw some in the trailers.

[Raistlin]

No more towns? I hope that one's not true.

[demondude]

It is true, no more towns.

[Rantz]

I don't like the sound of any of this, but maybe this game can make it work. I hope it can!

[Wolf Kanno]

Not thrilled with the notion though I could have sworn the last series of news spiels on the game said their will be shops in towns as well as the ones accessable from save points, yet if all we're going after is generic accessories with minor stats boosts and refinement gear for our weapons that may only add small boosts to them a la FFVIII and X, then I feel shops might as well be dead like they are in VIII and X.

I'm not completely surprised by the linearity of the dungeon maps as seen in the demo and this may help explain the few comments heard from early reviews. At this point, it will be up to the plot to determine whether the linearity of the game is good or bad.

As for healing after battle, that was mentioned awhile back but the director swore that the normal battles would have bigger difficulty spikes to compensate for this feature. How this will work out will depend on how broken the leveling/battle system is.

[Skyblade]

The after battle healing was an inspired decision, I think. In other FFs, they had to balance battle difficulty based on the length of dungeons/treks. If you made the encounters too hard, people would be worn down by the end and would simply fall due to being overwhelmed, which is difficult to recover from if they already saved halfway along their journey. The usual response for this is to make the monsters pathetic. A lot of FFs had their share of random encounters that one did not want to fight due to simplicity and tediousness.

By ensuring that you always are at tippy top health once you are done with every battle, they can make the individual fights harder. It doesn't matter if you survive with 1 HP, because the next encounter you face won't be able to just knock that last point off to kill you. There is no chance of simply being attacked by so many creatures that you can't endure it. They can thus make the individual non-boss encounters more difficult and more interesting.

It might not work out, but I think it is a great idea, and I can't wait to see it in action.

[Psychotic]

When I think of linear dungeons I think of Final Fantasy X (eg Mi'hen Highroad and Macalania Woods) and to be honest, I preferred them to the soulless mazes of the very non-linear FFXII. Still, variation and exploration are both good things, and I'll be miffed if there are no hidden goodies to root out. I don't think we can really judge the game based on a couple of strat guide scans though. A lot of people are saying that there is a huge wide open area similar in size to the Calm Lands of FFX in the game, and I am really looking forward to exploring that.

I've also heard there are no towns, and I'm really disappointed in that, as I love seeing a variety of towns and settlements, just milling about and chatting it up with NPCs. :(

Auto-healing after battles is a fantastic feature and I'm glad they put it in. Saves me the bother of going to the menu and selecting "use potion" until my potions run out, then "use cure" until my MP runs out. Yawn. The battles are apparently very tough, too, and to me this sounds like an improvement. I prefer the idea of the challenge coming from winning battles rather than resource management.

[The Last Oath]

Well everytime theres been a new Final Fantasy its copped critsicm like this but they always are pleasing in the end. Im just gonna wait n see.

[Rantz]

When I think of linear dungeons I think of Final Fantasy X (eg Mi'hen Highroad and Macalania Woods) and to be honest, I preferred them to the soulless mazes of the very non-linear FFXII.

Yeah, I agree with this! While I don't particularly like linearity, dungeons that twist and wind for no real reason other than to make it longer/more complex are the worst. I prefer the classical FF setup to both of those, i.e. a world map that grows more open the further you get in the game, and dungeons that aren't mazes but have enough puzzles and divergent paths to still be interesting.

[crazybayman]

When I think of linear dungeons I think of Final Fantasy X (eg Mi'hen Highroad and Macalania Woods) and to be honest, I preferred them to the soulless mazes of the very non-linear FFXII. Still, variation and exploration are both good things, and I'll be miffed if there are no hidden goodies to root out.


Auto-healing after battles is a fantastic feature and I'm glad they put it in. Saves me the bother of going to the menu and selecting "use potion" until my potions run out, then "use cure" until my MP runs out. Yawn. The battles are apparently very tough, too, and to me this sounds like an improvement. I prefer the idea of the challenge coming from winning battles rather than resource management.
DUDE YOU SHOULD WORK FOR SQUARE

[Dreddz]

What exactly is the problem? Isn't this what you all wanted after laying into FFXII?

[Skyblade]

What exactly is the problem? Isn't this what you all wanted after laying into FFXII?

Why don't you look over the thread again and check how many of us actually have a problem with these announcements?

Most of us are happy to get away from the annoyingly pointless mazes of XII and are not unhappy with the after-battle healing, as it shows some interesting new info about the battles.

The only thing that people are unhappy about is the lack of towns, and that is mostly misinformation. We already know there are towns in the games, because we have seen them in the trailers. What is changing is that shops have been added to the save points and might have been removed from the towns.

[Moon Rabbits]

I loved the dungeons in FFXII :( Apparently I am the only one.

Auto-heal is the best decision game-play wise, imo imo.

[the AJman]

You're not the only one Moon Rabbits, I loved the dungeons from FFXII. I absolutely do not what to see the dungeon and world layout from FFX return. It's a shame that they are going more for that layout far a good part of the game. I'd much prefer massive world with a lot of different places to go, I also like dungeons that I have to navigate and find my way through. I doesn't have to be a ridiculously complicated maze, but some form of finding the way would be nice. I'm still going to remain hopeful for XIII though.

As for auto-heal, I don't have much of an opinion on that, I'll be happy with or without it.

[Raistlin]

I liked FFXII's dungeons, too, for the most part. Dungeon crawling is old school fun. I guess it would depend on how much you liked the gameplay and fighting, though.

[the AJman]

I understand that some people like the more linear dundeons and such, and that fine. I just personally like the old school dungeon crawling when it comes to the dungeons.

[Wolf Kanno]

The only problem I have with linear dungeons mostly comes from them being terribly uninspiring (Mi'hen Highroad anyone?) and they bank on the storyline being so good you won't mind rushing through the dungeon, which is a very dicey gameplan if you ask me cause story is subjective. I'm not asking for 3 hour dungeon crawls but I like it when my dungeons are more than a straight line to the next cutscene.

I only feel that RPG developers need to find a middle road cause they either do it old school and thus you spend more time plowing through it that by the time you reach the next plot point you have completely forgotten what was going on or its so streamlined and straight forward you wonder why they bothered making a game and not just make it a cgi movie. ;)

Mostly I would like to hear more about creative dungeons, not linear or open ended.

[arcanedude34]

I definitely prefer a happy medium to linear and so convoluted that I get lost three steps in/so open that my OCD compels me to explore every last inch for hours. Final fantasy VI-IX had good dungeons. Explorable, but not time guzzlers.

FFXII's were fun to extent, but after a while, they certainly began to drain my energy, and the relative difficulty of that game didn't help that at all

[Skyblade]

The problem with the dungeon crawling in XII was threefold.

First, I didn't like the combat, and the mindless trial and error of the dungeons did nothing to shorten the amount of it I had to experience.

Second, the dungeon design was no good. I love good dungeon exploration. Games like Golden Sun and Legend of Zelda, with their puzzle and exploration based dungeons, are among my top games ever, and I would love to see some of that sort of stuff in an FF game. But this game didn't have it. The dungeons were rarely anything more than "find door, look for switch to door, press switch to open door, rinse and repeat". But it gets worse. Take the Great Crystal (which is by far the worst offender in the point I've reached in the game so far). No map, and not even any distinguishing features from one room to the next. If you didn't do trial and error for hours drawing your own map (or steal one off the internet, or, as the developers hoped, buy a strategy guide), you had pretty much no way through that place. That is not good dungeon design (and hasn't been since the dungeon-crawler genre died so long ago).

Third, and perhaps the worst of all, there was no point to the dungeon exploration. Say what you like about the boring linearity of a place like the Mi'ihen Highroad, I still feel it was better than 90% of the areas in FFXII, because it was interesting. There were a ton of NPCs along it to talk to who would break up the simple jog down the path. There were several plot-heavy points that gave you background information. Maechen, Belgimine, Rin, Shelinda, Cally, Captain Lucille, Elma, Clasko, Gatta, Luzzu, Dona, Barthello, and, of course, the dozens of crusaders rushing around handing you supplies and building up the mood for Operation Mi'ihen. You knew why you were going down the path, and you still felt a connection to the rest of Spira as you did it.

In FFXII, you were so disconnected from the plot and characters that you never really knew why you were going through a dungeon, what your objective was, or why you cared. The plot and the dungeon crawling was so divorced it was like two entirely different games. You went from a couple minutes of cutscenes and city exploration to a couple hours exploring dull, repetitive, and uninspired dungeons.

I would take the interesting linearity of X versus the boring non-linearity of XII any day.

[Rad Bromance]

There are towns. Go to the official Japanese site and you can even look at some of them. There just aren't very many from what I've read, and there are several dungeons.

Personally, I'll just have to wait and see how the game pulls it off, because I remember how upset I was when I heard X had no world map and no ship you could fly, and XII had done away with the traditional battle mechanics, and yet, I ended up loving both games.

[Wolf Kanno]

The problem with the dungeon crawling in XII was threefold.

First, I didn't like the combat, and the mindless trial and error of the dungeons did nothing to shorten the amount of it I had to experience.

Quite surprised you hated combat in this game but that's a subjective opinion and personally I enjoyed combat especially since it allowed me to micromanage but that is a topic for the XII forums and not here. Personally, I hated X's combat cause it was easy and tedious and I asked myself very often why bother, but once again, that is a topic for another day.


Second, the dungeon design was no good. I love good dungeon exploration. Games like Golden Sun and Legend of Zelda, with their puzzle and exploration based dungeons, are among my top games ever, and I would love to see some of that sort of stuff in an FF game. But this game didn't have it. The dungeons were rarely anything more than "find door, look for switch to door, press switch to open door, rinse and repeat". But it gets worse. Take the Great Crystal (which is by far the worst offender in the point I've reached in the game so far). No map, and not even any distinguishing features from one room to the next. If you didn't do trial and error for hours drawing your own map (or steal one off the internet, or, as the developers hoped, buy a strategy guide), you had pretty much no way through that place. That is not good dungeon design (and hasn't been since the dungeon-crawler genre died so long ago).While I would never say that XII was the epitome of clever open ended dungeon design still had quite a bit more than X's single road... I also simply appreciated the scale and the fact I could get lost. Puzzles would have been great especially since XII rids itself of the problem I had with complicated puzzles in games like Golden Sun and Wild ARMs by reducing the issue of random encounter, nothing more annoying than trying to solve a puzzle that requires moving through several rooms when you are getting attacked every two steps and dealing with the loading of a battle screen and what not...

I personally never had problems with the Crystal though. I actually managed to get through it without actually consorting to a guide especially since the complicated part is getting to the secret bosses hidden in there (which is not that difficult if you have played FFT since it follows the Zodiac Stone) so once again I cannot in good conscience completely agree with you especially since being lost in a dungeon was refreshing after having my hand held by the game like 90% of all the RPGs released at the time.


Third, and perhaps the worst of all, there was no point to the dungeon exploration. Say what you like about the boring linearity of a place like the Mi'ihen Highroad, I still feel it was better than 90% of the areas in FFXII, because it was interesting. There were a ton of NPCs along it to talk to who would break up the simple jog down the path. There were several plot-heavy points that gave you background information. Maechen, Belgimine, Rin, Shelinda, Cally, Captain Lucille, Elma, Clasko, Gatta, Luzzu, Dona, Barthello, and, of course, the dozens of crusaders rushing around handing you supplies and building up the mood for Operation Mi'ihen. You knew why you were going down the path, and you still felt a connection to the rest of Spira as you did it.Except you forget the game stops you literally every 20 seconds to go into its story banter, and the fact that most of the dialogue consists of the three simple statements of:

1. The Crusaders are planning to stop Sin with the Al Bhed
2. Only a summoner can defeat Sin
3. Please Yuna, sacrifice yourself so I can go on with my meaningless life.

The majority of the dialogue ends up making a predictable plot scene even more predictable and ultimately destroys any sympathy I may have had for all parties involved, the plot practically sabotages itself by foreshadowing crap so heavily it basically tells you in advance how everything is going to turn out.

Not to mention this dialogue is repeated over and over again every 20 to 60 seconds while your walking down a straight line cause the game can't seem to let the player have a few moments of peace to think for themselves. The game bores you with what I consider to be pointless details on a repetitive level, its not story telling or immersion, its simply bad writing accompanied with terrible game design. X should have been a movie as it required no real interaction from the players part whether mechanical interface or even just thinking about the plot and cast.



In FFXII, you were so disconnected from the plot and characters that you never really knew why you were going through a dungeon, what your objective was, or why you cared. The plot and the dungeon crawling was so divorced it was like two entirely different games. You went from a couple minutes of cutscenes and city exploration to a couple hours exploring dull, repetitive, and uninspired dungeons.I found the sheer scale of things to bring life to all the locations of XII and I hardly felt http://forums.eyesonff.com/images/avatars/snowflake.gifplot and gameplay was divorced from each other as each place has its own history and significance to Ivalice as a whole. If Raithwall's tomb was simply five rooms with puzzles, I don't think you would have grasped the scale of his importance by wandering through a Tomb the size of a palace. The Pilgrimage of Mt. Bur-Omisace is far more real as you struggle to climb through a maze like mountain path filled with relentless monsters and snowstorms that turn you around. Giruvegan leaves you asking more questions than actually answering and for once I feel its a better choice than simply revealing the "magician's tricks". I don't really feel having your party stop every five minutes to explain the ADHD player why they are there is necessarily a good thing or a wonderful example of the marriage between story telling and game design.

Past FFs games had locations that never had real back stories in them yet people feel they need to complain about XII's? It is ridiculous in my opinion. You drive down the street to go to the store but its not like you need to learn the significance of the history of the roads you go to get to your destination. A good chunk of things in RPGs are never explained and most have such tedious reasons for existing that I feels its even more tedious to explain it to the player, we have to go through here to get to there. I see no real reason to have the game explain this to me as it seems quite obvious.


I would take the interesting linearity of X versus the boring non-linearity of XII any day.X was linear to the point of making me wonder why I should bother. I could get as much out of X simply by watching the cutscenes on Youtube whereas I would lose a bit of XII as a story by doing the same. The gamplay is important cause you actually earned a lot of it and while you take a look at the cinematic cutscenes of locations you the player understand what you had to go through to get there. If we want good linear dungeon design, we should look at Xenosaga or BoFV: Dragon Quarter as they handle it much better imho. Puzzles, claustrophobic mazes, and combat systems that are actually good throughout the game instead of just the end.

So please, when we discuss good linear gameplay let's actually stick to good games, that did it well.

[Rostum]

To me linearity isn't such a bad thing. I prefer the overall experience, and it doesn't matter if the game is linear or non-linear; as long as I have a good experience that is all that matters to me.

Of course I can't say anything about FFXIII, but I liked both FFX and FFXII in terms of dungeons.

[VeloZer0]

I haven’t included quotes with this because it is a response to everything I have read in this thread.
*I make several statements as fact which can obviously only be my opinions, but its far easier to phrase them this way*

Re: Great Crystal Dungeon

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My only problem with this zone was that the lack of map made it a significantly longer trek to get through. Had the game been enjoyable to me I probably would have appreciated it more, but as it was I was just trying to rush through to get some closure on the game.

Re: Combat System

---

I concur that this is the wrong place to discus combat systems, but I would like to note that if you are not enjoying yourself as you play through the dungeon, it will probably color your impressions of the dungeon in general. When I think of dungeon designs objectively I would say overall that XII was superior to X, but seeing as I was enjoying myself in X ans slogging through in XII I liked the dungeons in X far better. And it has nothing to do with dungeon design. Re: Puzzles Once again, in XII the puzzles just seemed to me like things they threw in to increase that games play time, not anything that involved me. As mentioned earlier, had I been enjoying myself I would probably feel differently. (I'm all for more complicated puzzles. Though I have mixed feelings about the phasing out of random encounters, this is certainly one good thing I can see coming of it.)

Re: Random Encounters & Dungeon Design

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I found one LARGE and crippling design constraint is that all dungeons in FFXII and other non-random encounter type RPGs is that all locations must be made open and suitable for encounters on the dungeon map. Though I don't despise large wide open areas on principle, it feels like all the areas are the same re-skinned version of each other. It makes virtually every RPG game I play nowadays feel very uninspired. Just think of how many areas of your favorite pre-PS2 RPGs would be impossible to recreate in the new paradigm.

Re: Camera Angle & UI

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I've ranted about this before, but this is another place to vent about my single biggest issue with the 'modern generation' of RPGs. This shift from overhead cam to third person camera is, imho, THE biggest shift in RPG dungeon design for me. This is significant because:
a) you always get the narrow tunnel vision perspective of looking towards your objective. I'm not looking around with this camera angle, I am looking where I want to go. With my vision focused on the path ahead (when I am looking at the path, see next rant) I am missing the work that only comes into enough detail I can see it when it is very close to my character.
b) maps lessen the focus of looking at the dungeon. Because of the constant camera angle change third person perspective makes it much harder to keep yourself oriented in a dungeon. This has made map essential and ubiquitous. However, this results in more attention being drawn to maps than to the environments themselves. I can't count how many dungeons I have blown through barely even taking note of the surroundings. If I was the person whose job was designing the dungeon textures it would make me want to cry.
c) there is a proliferation of crap on the field screen. I can't stress enough how much
better an environment looks with the removal of ALL UI elements. When I used to play WoW, which isn't known for it's cutting edge graphics, I was constantly amazed how much better the game looked if I were to turn of ALL of my UI elements. This occurred to me again when playing Tales of Legendia. The game isn't especially well developed graphically, but the game features rendered backgrounds done in the same style of old pre-rendered games. And despite the relative primitiveness of the textures all I was taking in was how good all the areas looked. (Not to mention I could navigate and not get lost w/o a map)

Re: Path Like Design

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Though there is much hate for the path like design of FFX, I can’t say the layouts of FFXII felt appreciably different. To me they were just big paths, with very wide shoulders on the side. They still felt like something I had to get through to get where I am going, not something I was exploring. I blame this on the camera angles, as if you think about it most pre-rendered layouts are essentially just long winding paths, the fixed camera just made you not notice it.

Re: Motivation

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Dungeons usually fall into one of two categories 1) It’s in my way, 2) I need to get something from it. In case number one the dungeon requires little or no explanation, it is just there. In fact, no explanation is usually better, as the more they try to explain the more it is apparent they have left out. In case number two, there has to be explanation to go with it. It has to be plausible why this object is in a monster filled pit, and why you know it is there in the first place. This becomes harder to explain the more civilized the world becomes. In games where the cities seem somewhat isolated from each other, and much of the world remains untamed it is much easier to accept all of these monster filled areas that you are the first ones to brave. The Pilgrimage of Mt. Bur-Omisace was one of the most disillusioning parts of FFXII for me, here I was feeling like I was exploring lands not claimed by civilization, blazing a new path into the unknown, and I get to a dam temple that everyone and their dog seems to be able to get to.

Re: Treasure Chests

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Do you remember how excited you were in FFIV to go the wrong way in a dungeon and hit a dead end? Why, because you were excited for the loot that was invariably waiting in a chest to reward your exploration. And these items were significant upgrades. Fast-forward to FFXII and it’s treasure chests. They were so useless that I stopped collecting them after the first half of the game. (And don’t get me started on the fact that you only have a random chance of getting a good item even if you loot a unique item chest). Having the extra exploration of a dungeon yield significant upgrades is one of the biggest ways to make exploring a dungeon more interesting. Once I realized exploring the areas of a dungeon get me nothing, it just becomes a big obstacle between me and where I am going.

[Skyblade]

I'm not going to argue with most of your post, because you are correct, most of the issues are subjective.

FFXII's battle system was so painfully broken and annoying to me that it detracted from the rest of the game, especially the exploration. While FFX's battles actually enhanced the experience of the game. ...For me. So I, personally, don't mind a more linear design that gets away from the troubles of XII.

Although, if they fixed the battle system, I would find XII's system more appealing than X's, but as long as the battle system is so broken, I'd rather take the approach that gets me through as few as possible. Dungeon exploration is fun as long as the combat is fun, so any puzzles on top of that would just be icing on the cake.

But you are wrong on one point.


While I would never say that XII was the epitome of clever open ended dungeon design still had quite a bit more than X's single road... I also simply appreciated the scale and the fact I could get lost. Puzzles would have been great especially since XII rids itself of the problem I had with complicated puzzles in games like Golden Sun and Wild ARMs by reducing the issue of random encounter, nothing more annoying than trying to solve a puzzle that requires moving through several rooms when you are getting attacked every two steps and dealing with the loading of a battle screen and what not...

In Golden Sun and its sequel, 95% of the puzzle rooms had random encounters disabled. They were in fact, decent places to rest and recuperate as you could walk around regenning PP without encountering enemies (though this took a while).


Re: Random Encounters & Dungeon Design

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I found one LARGE and crippling design constraint is that all dungeons in FFXII and other non-random encounter type RPGs is that all locations must be made open and suitable for encounters on the dungeon map. Though I don't despise large wide open areas on principle, it feels like all the areas are the same re-skinned version of each other. It makes virtually every RPG game I play nowadays feel very uninspired. Just think of how many areas of your favorite pre-PS2 RPGs would be impossible to recreate in the new paradigm.

This is an excellent point. Up until XII, the layout of areas was far more flexible. Since combat did not take place on the exploration field, the dungeons did not have to be designed with combat in mind, and it did allow them to be far more interesting. Kudos for picking up on that. I'd noticed the result, but not conciously identified the cause.

A lot of your post was great, but that one and the Treasure Chest one were among my favorite points. I hope like heck they fix Treasure Chests.

[Vyk]

A lot of my favorite action/adventure games were -completely- linear. Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone for the PS2 was -all- about the story and the gameplay. This just beefs up the story -extra- long. And adds RPG components. A lot. So I really can't judge the game badly based solely on this aspect. As an RPG sure, it may lose some marks. But it could still be awesome just as a game *Shrug*

[Wolf Kanno]

Treasure chests were damn annoying in XII though for me personally, collecting treasures has not been significant in an FF game since IX.

Forgot there is no random encounters in Golden Sun but I've only played a little, been having a hard time getting into the game. :(

Linear in the sense of X's design and what XIII looks to be (though the jury is still out on that one) is that I find the dungeons to be tedious cause there is nothing to them they are literally a means to get from cutscene A to cutscene B at which point I feel why one would bother telling a story from a gaming medium if you are not going to put actual effort into the layout design and often I feel that designers screw themselves by not fleshing out a location and making it feel more alive. Though VeloZero is correct that some of the "expansiveness" of dungeons amounts to very little in XII, I personally feel that the size of many of the locations made it feel more real to me. I always felt like Spira was a beautiful place but it was a shame I was stuck on the Summoner tour cause often I felt there was more interesting places to see and go to in the unreachable background than on the actual path that was laid before me.

The ultimate issue with XIII for me will be wither the combat is as good as it looks and whether the story will actually hold my interest but regretfully it already looks a tad predictable to me once you get a few facts. Time will tell of course.

[Rantz]

Re: Random Encounters & Dungeon Design

---

I found one LARGE and crippling design constraint is that all dungeons in FFXII and other non-random encounter type RPGs is that all locations must be made open and suitable for encounters on the dungeon map. Though I don't despise large wide open areas on principle, it feels like all the areas are the same re-skinned version of each other. It makes virtually every RPG game I play nowadays feel very uninspired. Just think of how many areas of your favorite pre-PS2 RPGs would be impossible to recreate in the new paradigm.

This is an interesting point, I never thought of it that way before. There is definitely a much larger amount of variety in dungeon design in games where random encounters are used.

[Del Murder]

I like the Zelda style where there are puzzles to solve and the dungeon takes you various places, but it isn't some elaborate maze with tons of dead ends. Though I do like side paths that lead to rare treasures. :) Do we know if the treasures are going to be like FFXII where they respawn and the contents are somewhat random?

[Skyblade]

Treasure chests were damn annoying in XII though for me personally, collecting treasures has not been significant in an FF game since IX.

Forgot there is no random encounters in Golden Sun but I've only played a little, been having a hard time getting into the game. :(

Linear in the sense of X's design and what XIII looks to be (though the jury is still out on that one) is that I find the dungeons to be tedious cause there is nothing to them they are literally a means to get from cutscene A to cutscene B at which point I feel why one would bother telling a story from a gaming medium if you are not going to put actual effort into the layout design and often I feel that designers screw themselves by not fleshing out a location and making it feel more alive. Though VeloZero is correct that some of the "expansiveness" of dungeons amounts to very little in XII, I personally feel that the size of many of the locations made it feel more real to me. I always felt like Spira was a beautiful place but it was a shame I was stuck on the Summoner tour cause often I felt there was more interesting places to see and go to in the unreachable background than on the actual path that was laid before me.

The ultimate issue with XIII for me will be wither the combat is as good as it looks and whether the story will actually hold my interest but regretfully it already looks a tad predictable to me once you get a few facts. Time will tell of course.

Actually, out of X and XII, I'd give best dungeon design to X easily. The Cloister of Trials for the various temples were vastly better designed than any dungeon in XII.

And stick with Golden Sun. It's worth it.

[black orb]

>>> I dont like linear maps but I can bear the pain, but that auto healing thing is totally absurd, and about the no towns part I hope thats not true..:luca:
BTW, the best thing about FF12 were the dungeons..

[VeloZer0]

I kind of took the Cloister of Trials out of the FFX equation, as I didn't really feel they were proper dungeons in the sense we are discussing. I have to say I did highly enjoy them though (with the exception of Bevelle) , and this is a perfect example of the no encounters in puzzle rooms concept.

As for healing after battles, I think it is an absolutely brilliant idea, allowing for each fight to be a challenge. I've been playing :ast Remnant recently (and while no means a perfect game), and that game allows Saving anywhere in a dungeon and full health recovery after battles. In that game you go into a separate battle screen when you touch monsters on the field screen, but it also allows you chain together multiple monsters into the single fight. So if I walk into a room with 3 monsters, I can face them one by one, or chain all three together. If I chain all 3 I probably have a 30% chance of getting a game over, and if I am 30 minutes into a dungeon there is normally no way I would do it. But since I can save right before, and I don't have to worry even if I get out of the battle with 1 hp left, I engage all three and have a very challenging and rewarding battle. Had I faced three separate trivial encounters the room would have been a simple boring grind.

One school of thought is that by making it harder to save you make it more difficult, but I think by making saving everywhere possible & HP recovery after battle you can make the game extremely difficult.

[Vyk]

Sounds like a pretty awesome concept, Velo. Get battles out of the way faster, and get better stuff for it. Battles are still tedious though. But supposedly XIII has made them intense and fun. We'll see

[Wolf Kanno]

Actually, out of X and XII, I'd give best dungeon design to X easily. The Cloister of Trials for the various temples were vastly better designed than any dungeon in XII.

And stick with Golden Sun. It's worth it.

I found the puzzles to be too easy and mostly tedious but then again I grew up with LttP and the Lufia series so I am very jaded when it comes to good puzzles. The only challenging part of the puzzles (and even then its only in the Macalania and Zanarkand temple, which once again is more tedious than actually challenging) was finishing the puzzle to get the special secret item you don't really need except to prove you are worthy to get game breaker Anima to go along with game breakers Bahamut and Yojimbo... guess you got catch em all. ;)

I'm sticking to GS for my GFs sake but right now I find the game to be fairly generic, despite the Psynergy puzzles which come off more annoying to me than special. So far I'm not catching onto why people think this series is so special.

I have no problems with HP restoration after battle as long as the game is hard to warrant it. SE has a really nasty habit of making the game difficulty unbalanced with the first half of the game being challenging and then the later half is all but too easy. Just watching some of the battle videos, I keep imagining the game is going to give your party some bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: "god mode" move like V's Dual Wield/Flare Sword/ Barrage, VI's Ultima, VII's KoTR, VIII's everything, and IX's Thievery/Frog Drop/Dragon Crest.

[Skyblade]

The puzzles may be easy, but the areas are still exceptionally well designed, far more so than the insane random mazes of XII.

How far are you in the game?

Halfway through? Not sure about all of those, but KotR wasn't unlocked until way later than halfway. And a lot of what I have seen seemed to be pushing for harder battles overall, so I doubt we'll have an ultra cheap shot added in.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

Whereas, I agree about the complaints with the treasure chests in FFXII since I am the type that will go through every corner of a dungeon to get all the treasure, there's still something about discovering every corner on a map that appeals me. In FFXII, the treasure may have been weak, but I just couldn't help myself from wanting to explore every inch of Ivalice: I found the world engrossing.

While I did really enjoy FFX, the linear world felt too much of going from Point A to Point B, there was no sense of exploration. Even when you finally got to the Calm Lands, my thoughts were more of "Oh great, I have this huge area I have to cross to get to the next point. Hope there's not a lot of random encounters". The sense of exploration was completely taken away. Sure, I explored the Calm Lands but it was more of a task, because I felt I had to, than for the pure joy of exploring.

I hope that even with its linear built it will combine elements of FFXII that will make the world so much more fascinating.

Also, I sorta loathe random encounters; they annoy me to no end. I'm sure that is a part of the factor of why I loved the vast world in FFXII but when given the Calm Lands in FFX I just wasn't as interested.

[Wolf Kanno]

The puzzles may be easy, but the areas are still exceptionally well designed, far more so than the insane random mazes of XII.

We'll leave this to subjective opinion cause I don't think we'll see "eye to eye" on this one. ;)


How far are you in the game?

I've met the Water Adept but I'm completely bored at this point.


Halfway through? Not sure about all of those, but KotR wasn't unlocked until way later than halfway. And a lot of what I have seen seemed to be pushing for harder battles overall, so I doubt we'll have an ultra cheap shot added in.

There are far more abilites in VII I could mention but I'm trying to lay off the trolling for this game for awhile. My point really is that I fear the game will get ridiculously easy by some point in the title due to several abusive systems within it. Its kinda been a bad trend for more than half the series life span right now. Watching videos of characters attacking monsters using Disgaea damage tables doesn't tell me "super special awesome battle system" as much as it nags at my little imp on the back of my head who claws into my brain and tells me something is a amiss here, why am I doing multi-hit attacks with 6K damage figures? I smell munchkin abuse... :shifty:

[Skyblade]

I find it amusing that the only games we ever seem to see eye-to-eye on are the FFTA games. But, yeah, a lot of it is subjective.:D

[Goldenboko]

I loved the dungeons in FFXII :( Apparently I am the only one.

I liked them too!

I don't know how I feel about all this. I don't want every encounter to be a boss battle (it would sorta take the fun out of a boss battle =P) however, making them slightly more engaging then "Vivi->Doomsday->Loot->Ether" would be cool.

[VeloZer0]

I think an excellent model for battles is FFT (in difficulty, not battle system). The random battles WERE the game for the most part. If we start thinking cross genre, can you imagine someone playing an FPS and thinking "man, I wish there were less enemies so I could run through to the end of the level quicker." This idea seems so rediculous, because in FPS games, killing stuff is the game. Can you imagine if they made an RPG that had a battle system so involving that you just wanted to run around in circles in a dungeon for the fun of killing stuff?

[Vyk]

Legend of Legaia was that RPG for me. Like playing through a crazy turn-based fighting game. I loved fights :] Here's hoping XIII manages to feel that inviting for battles, or I'm always going to be massively under-leveled. 'Cause any game that has enemies viewable on screen, I rarely feel like walking up to them

[Miriel]

Ok, maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but how are there no towns? Is it just a big world with no civilizations whatsoever? Where to people live? Where does the plot take place? Doesn't make a lick of sense to me and I find it pretty hard to believe.

[VeloZer0]

From what I understand no towns is in the conventional RPG sense. All shopping and inn services have been outsourced, so all civilization only exists as plot points. There are still collections of structures in which NPCs live.

[Mirage]

almost like "call shop" in FF8, and I loved those skills!

[Wolf Kanno]

I find it amusing that the only games we ever seem to see eye-to-eye on are the FFTA games. But, yeah, a lot of it is subjective.:D

Even then we don't see eye to eye on the FFT series when we get into the details. ;)


Ok, maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but how are there no towns? Is it just a big world with no civilizations whatsoever? Where to people live? Where does the plot take place? Doesn't make a lick of sense to me and I find it pretty hard to believe.

As VeloZer0 pointed out, it means towns lose their main gameplay purpose and serve as nothing more than a diversion until you talk to the right NPC or trip over the next story sequence while aimlessly wandering around. You will never see most of them again after their bit in the plot either from what I've read so ultimately it will be like VIII and X where towns are moot gameplay gestures.

I'm definetly not wild about this idea cause it always bugged me how pointless towns are in both those games cause you never need them (VIII technically has proper towns but due to gameplay structures they are still useless cause you almost never need shops or inns after the first half of the first disc) the world design is going deeper and deeper into territory I don't care for.

[VeloZer0]

While we are on the topic, back in the day, did anyone feel like a kid on Christmas day when you find a new town and first thing you excitedly run around looking for the new weapon/magic stores? I'm really going to miss that.

For me towns have been loosing their interest for a long time. I remember pre-PS2 I used to talk to every NPC in every town, just to see what they said. It then got to be a chore, but I did it anyways because I was stuck in my old school game trigger routs. Then in FFXII the towns were just so many NPCs to talk to and it was of so little value I just gave up, and NPCs have never been the same to me since. Is this just me getting older and jaded, or is talking to all the NPCs in an area less interesting than it used to be. (I do realize old school NPC dialog hardly gets nominated for a writing of the year award.)

[Wolf Kanno]

I loved getting to new towns and seeing the new stuff I could pimp my characters out with or talking to every NPC in hopes of learning about a sidequest I can do. Even when I replay FFVI, despite knowing damn well most of the stuff is useless and the next dungeon is going to offer tons of better loot, I still visit the three towns on the Imperial continent before visiting Vector, I do similar things in FFVII and lately in FFIX.

I usually find the NPC dialogue helps to either lighten up the mood (especially in a Working Design title) or as a ways to endear me more to the world. Persona 3 really brought back my faith in the usefulness of NPCs as they all had their own little stories going on and talking to them every few weeks revealed more. For once it felt like the NPC were actually living a life beyond the main story of my main characters, instead of just simply reacting to everything that happens in the game (Though to be fair, they still did react to major events as well so its not like its totally bad to do that).

[Loony BoB]

Regarding linear maps: I don't like this. Of course, I don't like FFXII completely either, as the maps feel too open. I liked things more similar to VII, where you have to figure your way around. With X, there was only one real way to go - forward. With XII, you could go in every direction all the time (at least for the most part). However, in VII you would find relatively small maps which, despite their low size, required you to actually think. This is what I find both X and XII lacked - making people think about where they're going (well, sometimes XII made you think, but only because you were lost, and that was more often than not due to the sheer size of the thing). So yeah. Hopefully there will be at least something to do on these maps aside from progress to the next fight.

[Slothy]

However, in VII you would find relatively small maps which, despite their low size, required you to actually think.

I have to disagree with that to be honest. Although all of the maps had at least a few minor detours, almost none of them required anything in the way of thinking to get through aside from simple trial and error, and there weren't even that many options for where to go. At most one or two slight detours that you would only bother going all the way down for some treasure that was at the end. The maps might not have been quite as linear as XIII since they had a few more of these short paths, but they were still very linear as I recall, especially since unlike XII there was only one way through every area.

[Loony BoB]

Well, okay, fair enough - they weren't actual mazes, but they still required you to have knowledge of how to turn to the right or the left, which you didn't have to do in most maps for either X (because the maps were the definition of linear for the most part) or XII (because they were so open, you just faced the direction of where you wanted to go and then ran forward).

Either way, VII is an ideal map grouping for me. VIII was good enough. But to have either open space or straight line is just... urgh.

[Rantz]

I think the gradually more open world map is one of the things I miss most from the pre-PS2 FFs.

[Loony BoB]

For the world map, I definintely miss the old style where you literally walked a complete world map. When they got rid of that, they got rid of one of my favourite things to do with FF's. I don't understand it, either - they have more power, but they have 'weaker' maps. Some argue "But in XII, you are constantly walking the world map, by walking around the different places!" ...no, you're not. The entire map itself isn't even visible, just a few countries. And there are most definitely gaps between explorable locations that we don't see. I just want a single load for an entire world map again. ;_;

[Raistlin]

I think the gradually more open world map is one of the things I miss most from the pre-PS2 FFs.

Yes. It's not only a classic FF thing, but a classic RPG element. I will concede I thought FFXII dealt with a lack of world map pretty well, but I still miss being able to wander around a huge world map trying to discover new places.

[nirojan]

i have the answer to your problem:
Final Fantasy Versus XIII

im gonna buy this one regardless, but still....at least i know there's a killer version of this which will probably be more open world coming soon

[Rad Bromance]

I think the gradually more open world map is one of the things I miss most from the pre-PS2 FFs.

Yes. It's not only a classic FF thing, but a classic RPG element. I will concede I thought FFXII dealt with a lack of world map pretty well, but I still miss being able to wander around a huge world map trying to discover new places.
I too, very much miss the world map. I don't see them ever coming back though...heck, has there been an RPG with a world map since FFIX?

I mean it's not required or anything for my enjoyment of an RPG, but I must admit that I was quite shocked and disappointed when I played FFX for the first time and there was no world map or airship I could fly around.

[Raistlin]

I too, very much miss the world map. I don't see them ever coming back though...heck, has there been an RPG with a world map since FFIX?

Not just FFs, but any RPGs? Suikoden IV and V had a world map (though IV's was intensely annoying). I can't think of any world map that was as well done as Suikoden V's; it just felt massive, and made the entire world fun to explore.

[Wolf Kanno]

Most RPG series by the end of the PS1 generation were adopting the Indiana Jones style map where their was a map and dots you could visit that were actual towns and dungeons a la BoFIV, Suikoden III, and Persona 3/4. I know Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne had a real world map but it was a very barren place (which fits nicely with the games main themes) which though having a few cool optional points of interest was not as engaing as mid-FF world maps. Suikoden V's map is pretty epic.

If there was one thing I would love to explore using a World Map, it was a minor feature from VIII and IX that I felt never got due justice. VIII had the trains that kept going on schedule and Lindblum had airships flying in its airspace to dock in the castle. I would have loved to see World Map with more interactive elements like these. Could you imagine flying your ariship and actually having to be careful not to collide with other airships? Hell, actually running into other people on the world map would be pretty cool even.

[Madame Adequate]

I'm less worried about it having read that there are towns, but that they're just not hubs in the way they usually are. After all it's not like there were many in X. Besaid, Kilika, Luca, Guadosalam, and I guess you can count Mount Gagazet if you're generous. Not like the game exactly lacked stuff despite this!

The more I realize how similar XIII's design philosophy seems to mirror X's, the happier I get. Compared to XII, it's hard to see how it's a bad thing; as was pointed out somewhere like the Mi'ihen Highroad, despite being a straight line, was far more engaging than any of the soulless quasi-mazes of FFXII.

World maps! I will agree that Suikoden V had a pretty sweet map. But Wolf Kanno's points are good too, FFVIII's trains were fun etc.

Edit: Then I read the preview thread and my hopes were lowered again :(

[Roogle]

If there was one thing I would love to explore using a World Map, it was a minor feature from VIII and IX that I felt never got due justice. VIII had the trains that kept going on schedule and Lindblum had airships flying in its airspace to dock in the castle. I would have loved to see World Map with more interactive elements like these. Could you imagine flying your ariship and actually having to be careful not to collide with other airships? Hell, actually running into other people on the world map would be pretty cool even.

The original LUNAR games on the Sega CD used the world map almost as if it were a dungeon in between towns. It was difficult to navigate because it was so vast that you would spend a little while looking for the next town with the directions given to you from the friendly townspeople. I really like the world map and I would like to see it again in a mainstream title.

As for the linear maps, I don't mind this, necessarily, if the story and design of these maps are done properly. If the party is traveling through a tunnel, then I would like that tunnel to be like a tunnel and not a labyrinth.

[Rodarian]

For the world map, I definintely miss the old style where you literally walked a complete world map. When they got rid of that, they got rid of one of my favourite things to do with FF's. I don't understand it, either - they have more power, but they have 'weaker' maps. Some argue "But in XII, you are constantly walking the world map, by walking around the different places!" ...no, you're not. The entire map itself isn't even visible, just a few countries. And there are most definitely gaps between explorable locations that we don't see. I just want a single load for an entire world map again. ;_;

I agree I do miss map exploration cause there was sense of adventure in that. Especially when you used chocobos and vehicles to explore the various terrains and discover secret places. I miss that the most.
Of course XII exploration was nice, I simply hated (as with X) the simple travel jump. Lack of fun there..

Why can't the newer games be a combo of both. A large map exploration within an even larger world map??

Maybe the PS3 engine /software isn't strong for that yet?

I want answers!! T_T

[Rye]

I like linear maps like FFX! But the no town thing sounds unusual and curious. Could it really be? It sounds so unlikely! How would anything get done?

[theundeadhero]

Linear maps drive me crazy. I enjoy exploration and the freedom to take your own path for a while, even if it doesn't expand the plot. The linear maps in FFX and X-2 were some of the worst features of the games.

Was the question ever answered about how XIII wil handle treasures. I hope they didn't bring back around the FFXII system. It made me angry.