Holynub Report: Final Fantasy XIV

I know some of you are just finishing or still playing Final Fantasy XIII.  I am not one of those people.  My goddamn PS3 borked.  But lets not cry over spilt milk, lets look for some cool shit!  What is this?  Oh god.  No.  Just no... Keep that away from me.  Goddamnit.  It's Final Fantasy XIV or 14 for those of you that can't read Roman Numerals.

Well, I poked my nose around the FF14 scene a bit when the news was announced.  Seemed.... OK.  Nothing really spectacular.  But there is not a lot of news going on about it right now.  I think the closed beta started not too long ago.  *checks email* I didn't get shit.  oh well.  For those of you that don't want to actually look at the wikipedia page for FF14, let me throw up some quick highlights here.

Due to it being in semi-early stages of production, I have to give many things the benefit of the doubt.  I mean come on, WoW looks nothing like when it first released.  Believe me, I was there for beta.  I played WoW beta and actually didn't like it.  Then I played it after launch... Well, you know how that goes.  So anything you see, as of now, could very well not be there at launch.

Setting

The world of FF14 is not set in any previous universes.  Most Final Fantasies are set in their own separate worlds.  Exceptions being Final Fantasy 12, this universe was taken from the FF Tactics Advance.  FF13 is part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis universe.  However, from most of the screenshots, this universe is very similar to Final Fantasy XI(Square's first Final Fantasy MMO).  From what you can see in many of the screenshots and released trailers and gameplay videos.  It looks nice.  Very medieval fantasy setting.

Looks like SE is starting a video blog.  Kinda like they did in FFXI, with the wandering goblin chronicles thing.  It does give us a good look at the world this is set in.  And cooking looks pretty elaborate.


Gameplay

Now this was my biggest gripe about Final Fantasy XI.  Gameplay.  Number one, FFXI's gameplay sucked.  Don't you fucking try to defend it.  I shall sum it up in one line.  "Derp derp here comes the train."  Just accept it and move on.  FF14 looks to remedy of the gameplay flaws.  Upon hearing that I began to open up a little and not be so "insensitive."  Well Square-Enix, you seem to want to change.  Can a Japanese developer manage to create a decent MMO?  We shall see.

To give us some insight into the updated gameplay, we have this nifty convenient video.  This was taken at... Somewhere.  I didn't check to see.  Go to gametrailers.com, they probably have the full info of when this was posted.  But that's not the point.  The point is to figure out WTF is FF14's gameplay like.  Of course, it brings up more questions.  What do you mean skill based level ups vs experience based level ups?  Changing weapons changes classes?  What does that mean?  How does that make armor itemization?  Can you change armor as quick as you change weapons?  What kinds of "skills" are you talking about?  Does skill based level ups mean i sit there and spam "thrust rank 1" at something until it becomes "thrust rank 2"?  How is that any better than gaining experience from killing things and having all your skills increase?  Alas, these questions cannot be answered at this time.  We will have to wait and see.

Client Interface

Initial reports from the interwebs says that Playonline will not be the main interface for FF14.  THANK YOU GOD.  That was probably one of the biggest wastes of fucking time ever.  Granted, when I first saw the interface of Playonline, I was excited.  It looked pretty.  Really added some nice features.  I thought it was cool to get away from a "Windows" looking operating system.  That being said, WORST PATCH SYSTEM EVAR.  EVAR.  Hey, I love sitting around for 47 hours waiting for a game to update even though it's launch. What's that?  Every patch is like this? SIGN ME UP!  But nawwww, I hope they do something like World of Warcraft's patch system or even just a site to DDL with sponsored mirrors or something.

To be continued...
Through all that I've read about, it only generates more questions.  I shall try to keep all FF14 related crap in this post.  I'll be updating this so keep your eyes glued to this post.  I will probably edit it and what not over time.  Maybe bookmark it or something.  I dunno.  Anyway.  Till next update!

Gaming in 4D?!

Miegakure

So, I was loitering on slashdot.org again.  I found this.  Mind == Blown.  Not sure exactly how it works... Even with lots of reading and explanations.  Yeah no.  It's beyond my 3D comprehension.  I'm gonna keep checkin the website to see when the game's actually released.  Could be fun.  Or completely impossibly hard.

How Does I Play Game? Part 2

Moving on from where we last left off(Part 1).  So what were we talking about again?  Oh yeah, Human-Computer Interaction(HCI) and video games.  Well, we're kinda getting away from the HCI part of it.  I'm mainly focusing on the controllers throughout the years.  

This picture was actually used in class

In the first part, I briefly went over some concepts of HCI.  But what is HCI?  By definition(According to Professor Ikehara and the text book),

"HCI is the study of and applications of concepts and methodologies of human factors, psychology and software factors engineering to address ergonomic, cognitive, and social factors in the design and evaluation of human-computer systems." - What Holy Remembers from ICS464

But to put it in simpler terms, it's how we(people) do stuff with the thingy(computer).  And they study that.  Pretty kewl right?  HCI is a pretty large part of computer science.  Good HCI often goes un-noticed.  Why?  Because if the design is done right, you'll be too busy using the software/computer to notice.  And I respect that.  Here's to the hidden heroes.  Do work.

I'm typing as fast as I can!

I was looking to keep it to two parts.  But I found so much fun crap, I'm going to make it 3 parts.  So in part 1, we took a look at some of the tried and true video game controllers.  In part 2, I'll be going over the smorgasbord of random "OTHER" controllers.  What do I mean by "OTHER" controllers?  You'll see.  In our last part, I wanted to take a look at the future of game interaction.  That's got all the cool sci-fi-come-reality devices that are in development.  And I must say, looking at these will make you scream "BRILLIANT!"  But alas, that is the next issue.  For now, enjoy these...  "OTHER" controllers.