Improved 'Check' System

I deleted it.
it was a waste of space.

I don't like alot of things on my screen, especially a huge box that would pop up for mob info database. The chat log is enough for me at the moment, but adding more boxes for seperate chats, logs, and database would take up so much space when I just wanna claim the mob and kill it.

I mean do you want the game to look like this:

Yes there are people who depend on others to tell them what to fight, when, where and for how long. As well, naturally you'll learn whats going to be too strong or too weak through real world experience.

I just think this sort of point of "youre being lazy" or "that makes it too easy" is from the point of view of veteran players on known encounters. Visualize it from a noob or even just a new encounter. When WotG came out, you popped on sneak and invisi and spammed ctrl+c while running thru pashow[s]. With my suggestion it would be spamming tab to target as many mobs as you can and read the log/'pokedex' window abosrbing what you see and learning from it.

Oh god no, thats an excellent example of looking HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE and very recockulous; however, the mob info window + say the chat window is fine by me. Have a toggle on/off even. I certainly dont want all those onscreen selectable ability/spells like how other games have it either.

and christ almighty wtf game is that lol.

God, Alyria, is that your WoW screenie? How can you freaking stand it? LOL

LMAO No that's not mine. Mine has very little on it lol, I hate all that extra junk. I hate the quest box as it is :/ That thing gives very little info just to finish the quest, so I gotta have addons just to tell me where to go lol.

ewww. i liked my idea better.

icons are stupid. icons are representations of actual things. why do you need an icon when the ACTUAL THING should be enough as it is? you should be able to see aggressive... see slow movement, see rage... etc..

color is nice, but i'd personally like to see colors (as well as their intensities) used creatively (ie: subtle and intense auras, red and black for aggressive forces, yellow and white for assisting forces, whatever. and for strength gauging, i think relative auric/light intensity coupled with force feedback would present an intuitive and stable system (of course you can have the check system too, although it probably won't be used often) I have had enough being a mathematician playing final fantasy. i want to be a an intuit or magician in training having an insightful experience by playing final fantasy. =P (warriors need to be able to read into potential enemies anyway to be good at their job) Anyway, my idea comes from a real thing, although I personally haven't fine-tuned it for this post. EMF fields, and aura reading is apart of traditional lore. Well the EMF field is a neo-scientific term formalizing the same thing.

If we are gonna play with magic and things...

Force feedback for PC?

Yeah, for pc. But not for controllers. I was thinking about maybe in the monitor so when you see a hard monster your monitor kicks out at you.

sarcasm/off - of course for the PC too. you could even use speaker echos to enhance the fear you should be experiencing around really hard guys.

LMFAO.

"HOLY ***OWWWWWWWWW, MY MONITOR JUST HIT ME IN THE FACE, THAT MONSTER IS REALLY ANGRY!!!!!!!!"

http://www.bash.org/?4281
<Zybl0re> get up
<Zybl0re> get on up
<Zybl0re> get up
<Zybl0re> get on up
<phxl|paper> and DANCE
* nmp3bot dances :D-<
* nmp3bot dances :D|-<
* nmp3bot dances :D/-<
<[SA]HatfulOfHollow> i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet

THE FUTURE IS NOW!

Sorry that's what it reminded me of. While people are fine with using Ctrl+C to check mobs, this doesn't need to change. Just that what is displayed when you do check the mob could be different. The whole point of the OP was to say that the existing /check information is insufficient as everyone does know, they just try to make do without it. Something as simple as changing the target information in the bottom right corner when selecting something would be more than enough and it wouldn't be ugly and overcrowded on screen.
For example:

Then change the colours of the level 90 or w/e to represent if it is aggressive or not, but not how it is aggressive.

1st Point: We really shouldn't have to rely on "word of mouth" (Wiki) like we do so heavily in XI, I want to be able to learn this sort of thing for myself.
2nd Point: Kind of a cool idea, it would be neat to step outside a starter town and have level 1 bunnies throwing beating at you futilely, but it would mean that every semi high level would be kiting away all the mobs in the area that people are trying to kill, which would suck balls.

I like Karu's suggestion, it's a very simple way of gauging the mobs just be targeting them. Perhaps have a star if the mob is 10 levels or more above you or is an NM. A small symbol where the NM logo is in this example for sight or sneak would be okay too. I can only think of one mob (qutrubs) off the top of my head that agro to both, so it's not likely to get cluttered.

I'm also a really big fan of the pokedex idea though, and there's really no reason why you can't have both. The above idea can be in place to show name, level, agro and hpp only, and then if you've gathered enough information on the mob (see my pokedex suggestions in the other thread) you can also bring up the pokedex for additional information such as ~HP/MP, elemental weaknesses, immunities, special traits, lore etc.

Also, why not simple add more customisation? I'm sure everyone agrees that there should be SOME way of instantly finding out mob level (or at least EP, DC etc.) and DEF/evasion like we do now. Perhaps they can also add whether it's aggressive and what it detects by, but why not make it customisable as to how all that shows? Let the user decide if it's permanently over each mobs head, or only shows up when you target the mob. Let us choose whether it shows up over the mobs head or in the target box when we target them, let us choose whether we even want to show some features at all. And let us show which stats come up instantly and which stats come up with CTRL C.

Using this method, I'd personally have mob level and maybe agro show up on the target box (Like Karu's pic), and then DEF/evasion with CTRL C (which I'd almost never use).

As much as I hate all the clutter in Aly's pic, there are obviously people out there that want to be able to see everything all the time, so we should be able to choose that method if we prefer.

meh i hate all of theose ideas. everything that is discussed might as well be implemented in the current ff online via update. then what would you be talking about?

if we are going to talk about a next gen game, i'd say push the limits. how intuitive is it to look at a label and just approach a monster based on that.

none at all.

it's highschool.

SE might as well release the game packaged with their own windower program that has all the customizable plugins/stat notifiers, and then put an icon on the people who choose to use it.

FF has only gotten more shallow for the pleasure of the mass... i hate not having something exercising new ways of thinking/feeling/approaching something. (ff used to do that for me) from what i see in this forum is a bunch of old recycled ideas.

Then come up with one yourself instead of just ragging us all out? Aside from a million different colour shades that is, seems to be a pretty well disliked idea and for good reason.

SE made windowers against ToS so its normal for non~windower use to request this kind of thing

and tbh wtf do we need windowers when SE should clearly make it themselves

That's kinda the point. We're hoping and expecting that SE will learn from the past and realise just how many people use windower and why. The only way to stop people from using these programs is to implement everything it offers and do it better. I also hope that if they implement the majority of the features that todays windower offers (hence cutting the need for windower), that they will be a lot harsher on 3rd party tool users (and have ways of detecting them).

I did. Is the "million different colour shades" a reference to my idea? I wasn't suggesting color a bunch of mobs different colors. I said i wanted to see color used creatively (instead of just used to highlight names). What I was referring to was the auric depth concept. As you approach an enemy its "aura" if you will, will reveal both the nature and difficulty of a mob. It can be everything from a cloud of darkness with red energy glowing from it, or even just a distortion in its appearance that gives it an avatar like quality, perhaps different. That's up for the imagination and can use a million colors, or none at all. It can be accompanied by a deep echoing sound, maybe like a heartbeat, or something that creates the suspense of being "in danger" within the music, and even a rumble/controller feedback. All of these can be indicators that you are nearby forces not to be reckoned with, where otherwise the music and environment would be generally placid, worry free, otherwise. So when you are resting, and then a you start "feeling darkness come", you know you have something to watch out for. It's intuitive, by design.

This would be an idea to implement into a next gen game. All the other concepts are script/gif based, not really warranting a new release, but just something to be changed in the next FFXI update.

It seems like you are already resigned to get ffxiv no matter what it turns out to be, as you are restricting your imagination to that which is "predictable" on how they could and probably will change it. It makes sense how something once so deep, controversial, thought provoking, cutting edge... is constantly becoming something we wish was better.

And in defense to the usage of color in auras, 7 would have to suffice. That is the number, right? (Do black and white count as colors. =P) The only reference I used in color was to delegate the nature of the mob on a secondary notion. Red and black (aura) for an angry primal behemoth with floating dots of bluish purple to indicate it's magical potency. Maybe bluish green (aura) for a sprite that's going to heal you anyway. (it could turn red, with anger if you were to attack it) Anyway, my point is that colors can be useful in indicating specific aspects or character qualities other than toughness per level. It's an artistic notion that would be entirely up to the design and art of a mob. Just as how fire spells are made to look like fire. Firey creatures would have a fiery aura. Soothing and curing creatures would have the same "esse" as curing/healing spells.

I mean... these concepts are all pretty elementary in religious/cultural mysticism... and that is where FF draws a lot of its influence. (not all)

Well I understand what you're saying, but I still MUCH prefer some of the other ideas. Having every damn mob in the game, or even just every hard mob looking like Fenrir would make it look pretty shitty to me and take away from the sense of engagement and realism.

I think it was Dasva that comment in another thread about realism being ***. Why do you want everything to be more realistic when you live in a real world, no-one makes movies about me going down the street and buying a magazine because that's realistic, and it's *** boring. I understand where this notion comes from, but I think a massive point has been missed. If you look at all the most successful animated (2D and 3D) movies of all time, they've most of the time been the ones with the most realistic looking animation of the era. The trick though, is not just making it look realistic, but to actually have an interesting story as well.

The exact same thing applies to video games, but you also have the additional interactivity to help make or break it. There are a lot of shitty games with brilliant graphics because the gameplay was bad and was a constant reminder that you were playing a game. On the same token, there have been great games with shitty graphics because the gameplay or story was good enough to draw you in. Either way, a couple of the biggest killers of decent games is glitchy gameplay or graphics, if you're playing a good game and getting really sucked in to the story or environment, then you see a bunch of totally *** up polygons or something similar in gameplay (hello ranguemant pass walls and ordelle's caves stairs) you are instantly reminded that it's all just a game and you lose that sense of engagement. And all of this happens on a sub-conscious level.

So now, think of some of your favourite games of all time and ask yourself why they were your favourite. If a game has beautiful graphics, super smooth gameplay and an epic story, it's going to be an awesome game. If the graphics are flawed (like giving mobs an aura so that they don't look right in their environment), clunky gameplay or an unbelievable story-line, it might still be a decent game, but it's never going to awesome. Now before you say that dragons and magic are hardly believable, there's a certain level of realism that can be applied even to these stories, and is the reason why we play as human(oid) characters, so that we have something to relate to. Even though there's all these unrealistic fantasy elements, the stories and emotions portrayed via missions and quests are designed to be as realistic as possible. That's why the majority of npc's that ask you for something stupid in the game will have a semi-legitimate reason for wanting it, and all the quests in FF are different, instead of all being rehashed versions of the same thing. Seeing "Rabbits ate my entire lettuce crop, go and kill 30 rabbits" a 100 times is a fast way to kill an engaging experience.

This is turning out to be a novel, but what I'm trying to say is that to make a game the best it can be, it has to be as engaging as possible, and do everything it can to not remind you that you're playing a game. Filling your screen up with a million different colours and symbols, making it too awkward to do simple things (like checking mobs) and (in reference to other threads) requiring you to whip out a calculator every time you change gear, are all constant reminders that you're playing a game, and kill your sense of involvement. Ideally, you want to believe that you really are controlling a person on another world doing all these things, rather than just pushing pixels.

So what we're all trying to come up with (and a lot of people probably don't even realise that's what they're doing) is to think of ways that SE could go about fixing/improving the issues in FFXI, as well as totally new ideas they could implement to add to our gaming experience, and to detract from the reminders that it's a game we're playing.

Yasko this wasn't all directed at you of course, (I'm just a ranter) but I do think that your idea would detract from that sense of involvement, leading to a less engaging game (and therefor less successful) than we could have.

Yeah, because I said make everything look like Fenrir? Obviously you didn't catch the part where I said use your imagination.



Realistic doesn't have to be boring. I lived in hawaii for a couple years because I didn't want to get a real job. The adventures therein were borderline mystic. You ever play Dodgeball for the NES? Paperboy? What about pong? Sports games?



A story can be interesting, engaging, as well as entertaining. Or it can be butchered by the hundreds of hours in side quests and things to do before you are ready for the "next chapter". (that was an FFXI reference)



I liked my FFIV experience better than FFXI. I want to experience that again but I cannot because I have already eaten the fruit. Oh yeah, polygons didn't ruin Super Mario 64.



How about giving a mob an aura so it fits perfectly in its environment? Again lack of imagination on your part. Auras are real, but not everyone sees them. They exist on emf frequencies that some don't have the eyes, yet, to see. But they are indicators of potency, disposition, emotions/feelings... and so forth. It's all mystical lore, yet reappearing through the "quanta". It's energy and also "magical".



How can you honestly say that? We are talking about FFXI, right? How can you honestly say that?



I think you are just dumbing it down and discarding it. If you were making art, you'd make it beautiful, or at least expressive. If you are a real artist, you could use any medium. My concept is more engaging than any other concept listed here. (Like pokedex, more labels, etc..) as it engages multiple senses at once, and causes the player to respond to feelings and intuition, instead of relying on calculator reflexes. Obviously you keep missing that every time I write it, so now I'm thinking you are just dumb. It's obvious that you are lazy with your imagination, so I'll leave it at that.

Btw, we should make every mob look like an orc, so we don't get confused on who the bad guys are. =P

Basically.

I want to be able to look at the freaking screen and know how strong the mobs are. No overcrowded ugly UI ***. A simple tiny box would suffice. If they added the option to turn this on and off, all the total-immersion geeks would be happy too. OK?

Customizable panels are always a plus. And on that subject, I want there to be a way to cycle through targeting of alliance members as easy it is to target party members. I hope I'm just ignorant, and there already is a way.

It would make my experience so much more delightful!

You can only do it easily through windower I believe, unless you actually make macros for it. The targeting macros are <a10> to <a15> for top party and <a20> to <a25> for second party (not sure about second set, I'm in a two party alliance atm :p)

Now that that's out of the way, Yasko, can you stop being a prat by arguing with me for the sake of arguing and trying to insult me? I don't like your aura idea, you don't like any of my ideas, I'm fine with that, let it go dude. But hey, if you can come up with a way to make a different colour spectrum or some ***visible on our monitors, then go ahead and make a game with auras.

That's easier than macro'ing via name. Thanks for that bit.



Thank you for your blunt honesty. I thought you were insulting my intelligence by passively dismissing my idea, claiming that it was the "opinion" of "others", and for "good reason" when I seriously cannot see any one of the three criteria anywhere in this topic. (One possible maybe, that was so obscure, and missed my point pretty much entirely, if it was a response to my idea) I said I liked mine better on the sheer rationale of engagement and intuitive flow, which you argued against... which is just illogical really. But I guess "new" ideas can be confusing for traditional people. (Auras already exist in the game, btw, so my "idea" is nothing "new", but a suggestion for some sort of continuity)

I like you a lot better now. I do prefer you saying "I don't like it" than beat around the bush though and making it sound like you are the voice of others. I guess we could both make an effort to be more constructive instead of offering outright opposition.

I would like to see icons used in a more intuitive and even direct way. Like, instead of an icon representing a status, have it so you can actually see a mob demonstrating that status. (I mean, in a programmer's sense, a monster is already an "icon" as it is. Why put an icon on your icon, xzibit?) I think it would make things more intuitive, and even a bit more realistic. Something that is not only expected, but something that is demanded of next-gen gaming.

Calling me a prat funny. You are a passive aggressive ***. It's not an attempt to make you feel betrayed or ashamed. It's a logical conclusion of reason. I already know I'm an ***. Pointing that out is just more evasiveness on your part.

And "Let it go"? To give honor to such a quip, I humbly give my offering. =P "Eat your own medicine." Personally, I'm not ashamed. Trying to sound like the bigger person, yet trying to get the last word in, indicates that you are.

Ok. Saying I hate all these ideas was over the top. I hated the redundancy, not ideas.

</debate> can't be assed.

***.

Well excuse me for not arguing for the sake of arguing, we've both said out piece, but now you're just being a ***, so I'm not going to continue debating what could have been a perfectly civilised conversation.

Well, I think most people agree that having to CTRL C everything to find out its level is tedious and un-needed, so the discussion went on about easier ways for this to happen. Some suggestions were:

*All mobs with the same name have the exact same level/stats
*Mobs of different levels be different sizes (like when a wandering sapling can be level 3 4 or 5)
*Add icons next to the name above a mob giving extra info such as "detects by sight" etc. and/or evasion/level etc.
*Add the same info to the target box on the bottom right of your screen so it only shows up when you target the mob
*Change the colour of the mob name depending on it's level relative to you
*Give mobs an aura of different colours/hues depending on the same thing, including something to do with force feedback through your monitor...
*Full customisation on how/where/how much of the above stats/methods are shown
*Pokedex style ja/item/spell to be used in addition to the above standard methods of /checking mobs.

I think that about covers it, the pokedex has it's own thread though, lot's of good ideas involving that one.

Still makes me lol thinking of a monitor kicking you in the face