More FFXI thoughts

After 4 weeks of FFXI I know the game a lot better, so its time for a second review. But to give an abstract, I still like it a lot, and still look forward to playing this for several more months. That could be years, but frankly, in 2004 there are World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 coming out, and unless those are really bad, I'm likely to get pulled away from this. That has less to do with the quality of the new games being better than the quality of the old games, but with the fun you have from exploring something new. But having said that, I believe that FFXI is not only one of the newest games right now, but also one of the best.

That is primarily due to Final Fantasy XI having very much more content than most other new games. Zones are obviously hand-designed, and not just huge randomly created landscapes. Each zone has a distinctive feel to it. I mentioned the "Crushbone factor" in a previous post, FFXI definitely has it. The "Crushbone factor" roughly describes a zone having an immersive feel to it, with the monsters and quests telling a good story, after the Crushbone zone in Everquest. Now in FFXI the Crushbone zone is reborn in Ghelsba Outpost, which is also a very nicely designed zone about orcs. Wooden palisades, hanging bridges, crude huts, lots of orcs using "watch lizards" as watch dogs, an intrigueing quest to "save the children", Ghelsba has it all. And thats just one zone, there are many more well designed zones that reek of the designers having had 10 bestselling games of experience before this.

One of the things that really draws you into the world of Vana'diel are the quests. Yes, quests are basically the same in each and every computer roleplaying game: Go from A to B, fetch something, go back to A. Or kill something at B and bring whatever that monster dropped back to A. But the secret is in the presentation of this simple principle. Not only are the stories of FFXI quests believable and well-written. But brilliantly FFXI often uses cutscenes to tell these stories. Not pre-rendered ones, but created on the spot with YOU being part of them. Great way to make you really want to fulfill that quest.

But while the introduction into the quests of FFXI is near perfect, the execution often isn't. Most of the time you get not enough information to be actually able to do the quest without reading about it on some website like ffxi.allakhazam.com . And an important part of the information you are missing is for what level the quest is. You might get told to bring somebody a "vial of beastman blood", but you don't know what monster in what zone drops that blood, and whether you would be able to kill that monster. So you often end up buying the vial in the auction house, which trivializes the quest. The exception to this are the so-called missions, a series of quests you do for your starting kingdom. The items you need for those can't be traded, and the quests have to be fulfilled in order of difficulty. See? It's possible. Now please make all quests work that way. :)

FFXI is playing in a sword and sorcery world, but it has a distinctive japanese console game feeling to it. For example landing a critical hit shows some pretty light effects around the monster you hit, and if you play with a controller, it even vibrates from the impact. Orcs and goblins have a unique look. There are mushroom monsters with frog legs, and very cool looking turtles in roman legionaires armor. But while the monster models are pretty, there are not actually all that many of them. The same monster model is reused in another zone for a higher level monster. You start the game killing wild rabbits, later forest hares at level 5, then steppe hares at level 10, then sand hares at level 15, and they are look totally identical. Of course you aren't forced to always only kill rabbits, there are about half a dozen different mob types in each zone. But if you think you get half a dozen DIFFERENT mobs when moving into the next zone, you might get disappointed. Its more like half the same, half different.

So what motivates me to kill one more rabbit? Actually combat is fun, especially in groups. It is fun, because it has just the right difficulty level. It is not trivial, you have to make decisions in a group combat, and if you make the wrong decisions you or another group member might well die. That is was games are all about, a series of interesting decisions. There is a sense of achievement when you manage to play your character so well that everybody survived a tough encounter.

FFXI is very much a group game. Yes, you can solo if you don't have the time for a group, and you do get some experience points. But xp from soloing is very slow, and you have a lot of downtime. If you have the time to play for some hours, it is well worth looking for a good group first, and then playing with them. You level a lot faster, combats are more interesting, and you get some social contacts as well. The downside of this is, that you would often like to group with the guys you had so much fun with last week, but often can't. One problem is common to all online games, people are not always playing at the same time as you are. But FFXI adds another problem, by making it very difficult to group with people that are not close in level to you. So if you had a nice level 10 group last week, but are level 14 now, you might find that one of the guys you grouped with is still level 10, while the other played 16 hours a day and is now level 18, and the three of you can't group any more, because you the monsters that are easy prey to the high level character are incredibly tough to the lowest, and nobody would get many xp. So you need to have the skill to be able to make new friends. And if you particularly like a group of people, you can still use the linkshell system to set up a guild, and at least chat with them, even if they are not of a level to group with you.

Another good point of FFXI is the loot system. There is no useless loot. Everything you can find is either equipment, or a quest item, or useful in crafting, sometimes even more than just one of these options. And because everything is useful, you rarely have to sell your loot to a NPC. The rabbit hides you found can either be handed in for a repeatable quest with a reward of money and fame, or sold on the auction house to somebody working on leatherworking crafting. As in most games, higher level people are often much richer than lower levels, so they often start crafting and buy the loot of the lower level characters. That not only finances the lower level characters nicely, it also produces items which then fill the auction house, so you can buy items that are either not available at all from an NPC in the city you are currently in, or the auction house is offering better prices.

Unlike Everquest, most items have level restrictions. So you won't see level 1 characters run around with level 70 armor. You still have an advantage when you switch from a high level job to another job and restart that one at level 1, because you can buy the very best level 1 equipment there is. But that advantage is reasonably small, and doesn't totally outclass a real level 1 character. In fact, the knowledge you acquired with your higher level character is more likely to help you than the riches he got.

After 4 weeks of playing, I encountered the first bug in FFXI. And that was just a minor graphical glitch, when you draw your sword and immediately give the command to fire your ranged weapon, it looks as if your character is firing with his sword. The total absence of bugs is remarkable, especially when you played a very buggy game like SWG before.

So all in all, Final Fantasy XI is a high quality game. No bugs, well designed, well balanced in all aspects. It is not perfect, but closer to perfect than anything else I have seen yet. It can be frustrating at times, but when you look at it, that frustration is most often not caused by the game, but by the other players. And that is a problem the best game design can't possibly solve.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:32 PM Permanent Link