Serielley's Adventures in Gaming

I love E3 week. So many shiny games, so little time!

The festivities this year get started on Sunday the 13th with an event thrown by Microsoft for their Project Natal launch event. Cirque du Soleil will be performing, ooooooh flashy. Monday will be the beginning of the ever-popular and heavily media-covered press conferences, with Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft all starting the party off. Sony and Nintendo will wait until Tuesday for their conferences, so by about… ohhh, 2:00p on Tuesday afternoon, we’ll have all of the juicy goodness spilling forth over the intarwebs to inform us about what to look forward to during the coming year.

There are very few games that I’m really looking forward to seeing at E3. I’m mostly waiting for the unknown, the big surprise announcements for things that no one knows about yet. I wanted to write about the few games we do know about that I’m looking for, and maybe put down a prediction for an announcement that would make my year.

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Welcome to 2010! A new year brings new games, new innovations, and new experiences in the world of gaming. I’m really excited for the year to come, as there are quite a few games being released this year that I have waited a very long time for. Some of them for years, no joke! Here’s my list of what I’m going to be playing this year, and I would love to hear from others about what they are looking forward to in the months to come, so feel free to let me know and discuss in the comments!

I’ve never done a “Top 10 List”, either here or at Adventaruing, and I don’t really see myself starting anytime soon, so the seven games I’m (SO FAR) looking forward to are below the fold. Follow me into the future, my friends…

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That’s right, Squenix is now accepting applications for the Windows beta for XIV! Head over to this link: http://entry.ffxiv.com/na/index.html and sign up today! You must have a valid Square Enix Account and/or Security Token in order to apply, and your application is good for all phases of the beta.

Remember, all beta participants will be required to consent to an NDA in order to participate, so if you get in, no sharing information!!!

UPDATE #2: New higher res images of the areas have been posted at BG and I’ve added the images to the gallery below. Credit goes to Luciferu.

UPDATED: Elmer posted more details in his article over at ZAM, including the following new images:

From Elmer’s update:

“Guild Leave” will be the main system of quests in the land of Eorzea.  The article states you can use a variety of “leaves” to customize your own quests.  This use of items to construct the requirements of your task sounds familiar to the Moblin Maze Mongers system in Final Fantasy XI. Each card, or “leave” depicts a patron saint of Eorzea doing a task representative of the goal that card will impose on your character.

The left-most card has a picture of a holy knight named Saint “Danofen” slaying a dragon.  It is labelled 勇胆 (yuu-tan) for “Stalwart Bravery” and is used to create a quest wherein you must defeat a fearsome monster.

The middle card depicts a Saint “Toturu” hunting rats.  This is labeled 勤勉 (kin-ben) for “Diligence” and assigns a goal of exterminating bothersome creatures to receive the gratitude of others.

The right-most card shows Saint “Moorugin” forging a sword.  The object here is to craft bows from branches for the benefit of fellow adventurers.

1UP has posted a long article detailing some of the information that will be included in this Friday’s Famitsu feature on the game, which is reported to be about 9 pages long.

How Final Fantasy XIV Works – 1UP

Eorzea’s nations used to be constantly at war with each other, but the advent of airborne battleships and other shockingly powerful weapons has created a state of détente throughout the land. The resulting peace has led to a wide swath of soldiers and mercenaries suddenly without a job, and so they’re now forming guilds and calling themselves under a new name: adventurers.

That’s the very basic plot behind Final Fantasy XIV, the PS3/PC online RPG that Square Enix revealed at this year’s E3. Now Square Enix is ready to reveal more of the goods, and in this week’s issue of Famitsu magazine, game director Nobuaki Komoto offered some of the first really concrete details behind the MMORPG’s gameplay. Here are the details:

- Eorzea, the continent where players begin their game, is a small continent with several surrounding islands. Time passes, and weather changes, on a regular basis in this world, with one in-game day currently set to be about an hour of realtime. This exact figure may change, but as Komoto puts it, “it won’t be like Eorzea will be night for hours because it’s nighttime in reality… I want FFXIV to be enjoyed even by those who can play only a short time out of the day, so I’d like the sort of time schedule such that it’s always a different experience timewise when you login to Eorzea.”

- Eorzea is home to five races which, although they have different names, look quite a bit like the races in Final Fantasy XI. You have the Hyuran (Hume in FFXI), Miqo’te (Mithra), Lalafell (Tarutaru), Elezen (Elvaan) and Roegadyn (Galka), and as you’d expect, you can fully customize the look your character no matter what race he or she’s a member of. Hyuran are further divided into “midlanders” and “highlanders,” and Miqo’te are divided into the diurnal Sunseekers and the nocturnal Moonkeepers, though how this affects gameplay is still under wraps.

- FFXIV’s “armory system” is what defines your character’s growth. The game has four broadly defined “job skills” — Fighter, Sorcerer, Gatherer and Crafter — each of which has a variety of more specific classes (Swordsman, Blacksmith, Caster, etc) attached to it. You can change your class instantly simply by changing your weapon and armor, and as you fight and complete quests with that equipment, your character will advance in that class. You’re free to concentrate entirely on one class, or try to balance yourself out among all the job skills.

This armory system isn’t exactly like the “job” concept that most Final Fantasy games work under. “The way I see it, the player can define how his own job works,” says Komoto. “For example, if you have the Swordsman skill, that’s enough to let you play by yourself, but if you’ve also raised your Sorcerer skill enough to unlock that skill’s healing magic, that’ll make solo play a lot easier for you. You can carry enough equipment around at any given time to change your style freely, and the system makes this easy by letting you change sets of equipment all at once.”

- This skill and class system largely replaces the traditional RPG concepts of levels and experience points in FFXIV. Instead of worrying about EXP, “I think the main thrust will be raising the skills you have at hand,” as Komoto puts it. You’ll probably still have to engage in good old-fashioned MMORPG grinding to improve your character, though.

- FFXIV’s quest system involves visiting Eorzea’s guild and receiving work passes from the guildmaster. Other players can cooperate with you, and everyone can put their passes together to involve the entire gang in a sort of mini-campaign. The available passes change at regular intervals, and completing a single quest from one of these passes will be a relatively short process — Komoto estimates it at around half an hour or so. “You don’t need a set number of people for each quest,” he said. “That you can work out by yourself with the other players in the guild, since they’re all there for the same goal.”

UPDATE #3: More tasty goodness keeps coming, but at this time, the following info is UNCONFIRMED. I’m posting it just for the sake of completeness though. Credit goes to croythegreat @ ZAM who saw it on the Neogaf forums and comes from this post:

Races:
Hyuran: 2 clans – midlanders and highlanders
Elezen: the original race of Eorzea, oppose the Hyurans, enhanced hearing
Roegadyn: more human looking than Galkans, their base is in the north and there are a lot of fishermen
Lalafell: based in the south, agricultural, high intelligence, not many females
Miqo’te: 2 clans – the Sun Seekers who live regular daytime lives and the Moon Keepers who are nocturnal, not a lot of males, not clear if they will speak like cats
More races to come later

*

Stages:
Desert City – Uldaha
Forest City – Gridania
Ocean City – Rimsa Rominsa
(the spelling could be way off, just going from the 2ch stuff Munba posted)

Armory System:
- you can change jobs and lifestyles freely
- by changing your weapon, you are essneitally changing jobs, and can do so anywhere
- so if you are invited to a PT and there are a lot of fighters, you can switch to a caster, then when your adventures are over, go fishing or synth some stuff
- weapons and def gear all have their own merit. if you want to hone a particular skill, you can coordinate your equipment in that direction
- rather than character levels and skills, the main thing is the skill of the item you are holding
- you can play on your own and switch between fighter and caster to heal yourself, so soloing is easy
- changing is as simple as changing your weapon, so there’s no stress
- typical jobs of the FF series, e.g. warrior and black mage, are being avoided
- you can basically enjoy this world in any way you want. (me: freedom seems to be the main point here)

Guild Leave:
- these are passes of trust you obtain from guilds
- a Leave is not a quest. it’s a card.
- you can mix your Leaves with other players’ Leaves
- at the Adventurers’ Guild, you can get Guild Leaves
- there are Leaves that you can’t get when your skill is low
- typically a Leave will take 30 mins to complete, there are some shorter too
- you can set the number of people needed to clear the Leave by yourself (seems to be like a difficulty level)
- if one person is carrying a Leave, other players may join whether they have the same Leave or not
- the contents of the Leave change after a week passes
- you can carry multiple Leaves (they are card form, like invitations)
- Guild Leaves are designed like Tarot cards and are really beautiful

*

Ethelite (sp?)
- installations that can warp you to your adventuring spot instantly

Interview
- in Eorzea, the cities are not all on one connecting landmass, like they were in FFXI
- the difference between races is not as big as FFXI
- but their is a difference between male and females, which they are keeping secret
- character creation: face, hair colour, eye colour, skin, etc. etc.
- battles are realtime, but not action based
- targeting an enemy and fighting (like FFXI) is not the main system, there will be a lot that you have to think about besides the target itself.
- because of the armory system, they are going to make it possible to carry lots of stuff
- there will also be stuff included that makes it easy to change gear
- they’re considering whether to let you master everything or not – there may be a see-saw like approach (like FFXI)
- the base of the character growth is the weapon. use a weapon and raise your skills.
- they are considering the option to let you arrange your windows how you want
- weapons will degrade with use
- Guild Leaves include monster hunting, expulsion, skilling up, etc etc
- when you go on a Leave run, you can use Ethelite to take you where you need to go instantly
- there are pirates in Rimsa
- Miqo’te are more catlike
- some trumpeting about how it’s going to be an awesome game
- right from the start, it’ll be exciting and you’ll be thinking “orly!?”
- weather changes, day/night too
- 1 game day = 1 earth hour
- people who can only play an hour a day will still be able to enjoy the game
- the monetary system is Gil
- the people living in the cities all have their own backstory
- you’ll start the game from your home city (I guess it’s based on race, but doesn’t say implicitly).

UPDATE #2: Taking a break from lunch, which is greatly appreciated m(_ _)m, Elmer the Pointy was able to translate most of the text on the images, and says that the full article will be available Friday when the magazine goes on sale. For now, here’s what we’ve got.

UPDATE:  the Miqo’te and the Elzan/Elzen (not 100% positive that is the correct name) races added to images, credit goes to Avvesione @ BG

Courtesy of BlueGartr forums, here is some preliminary race and job information from Famitsu:

We’re still waiting on translations at this point, and as soon as Elmer the Pointy, Corinth, or someone else is able to put them up, I’ll update this post with them, for now, though, here’s what little that people have been able to glean from the scans.

• official names for Elvaan and Mithra have not been released yet, or were not part of the scans we’ve seen
• character customization translation from takethistoyourgrave on BG forum: “When you make your character, aside from choosing the race, you will also be able to customize their appearance. Head, skin color, hair type etc, there will be multiple factors. Just how exact we will be able to customize their appearance is still unknown, but we mean it in a good way when we say that it seems like it will become a worry to many players.”
• Job information: 4 base classes (Fighter, Sorcerer, Gatherer, Crafter) jobs will be based off of those 4 base classes and preliminary translations are showing a fighter/archer, curser/illusionist, gardener/fisherman, smith/cook
• job/class changes will occur when you change weapons/tools

More to come as the translations come in, so keep checking back!