FFXI's world environment

[Zempten]

Have you ever wondered how they could improve FFXI environment wise rather then jobs?

I mean I just came across this thought one day and I was wondering what you guys thought about it.

I was wondering wouldn't it be interesting if the history of FFXI changed along the way? Hm . . . perhaps that is too vague. Let me use an example. I was thinking of something along the lines of during certain parts of the year (or some time period in the year as in during summer,spring,fall or winter) the ENTIRE landscape of FFXI changed. What I mean is that the landscape would look war torned and cities we're invaded (controlled by beastman) and what not, basically the aftermath of a war.

*now perhaps you think this is memory intensive, but what I mean is just replace some NPCs with various beastmen to symbolized their takeover of a country and have some houses collapsed or holes on some walls or random fires all around. I suggested this because of the idea of how the "Camp Group" (the guys that bind arrows and ninja bags and throw knifes and what not). You notice how they appear in random cities based on CP. So I was thinking they could implement the same thing, but make random cities under the brink of destruction. Sure there might be a long ass patch, but we're pretty used to it no? ^^*

During this worn torn period, special quests would appear that would only be accessed during THAT time period. Certain places to access during that time period and of course certain armor/weapons that can only be obtained during that time period.

One of the quests that popped in my mind is from the armor of yugado headware or what not. Basically you quest for items to make a all player spell that allows you to costume yourself in a certain beastmen outfit and infiltrate the cities for quest, sabotage/spying for your country that was taken over and what not.

Thoughts?^^

[TheGrandMom]

Re: FFXI's world environment

One silly thing that I always thought would be fun was:

When you go to Ghelsaba (sp) and you run into Flamthrowers and they are in those caves, how about have something possibly in the cave? A random chest, random healing spot for either hp or mp, another area, whatever but something so people would have to kill it to get to it. I don't know if its a hot spot for lvling anymore but back in the day it was. I just always thought it would be fun if something were in there.

[Johnny]

Re: FFXI's world environment

While this is a somewhat interesting idea, it would be very difficult to implement. To do this right, the beseiged/overrun city would have to be basically unavailable unless you were on these quests. This means no one who had their original MH there could access their storage. That AH would be unavailable. The crafting guilds there, fishing spots. New players would likely have a very hard time making it all the way to one of the other towns to start using it as a home base. Not too mention that this would entail a very large amount of graphical work, as it would be more than just adding a few trees here and there. That's just my thoughts though...

Double Post Edited:

One silly thing that I always thought would be fun was:

When you go to Ghelsaba (sp) and you run into Flamthrowers and they are in those caves, how about have something possibly in the cave? A random chest, random healing spot for either hp or mp, another area, whatever but something so people would have to kill it to get to it. I don't know if its a hot spot for lvling anymore but back in the day it was. I just always thought it would be fun if something were in there.

Lol, you posted this while I was typing up my above post. I have always thought the same thing. In fact, the first tiem I went there, I was at first confused, and then a bit disappointed when I realized there wasn't anything there.

[Balgas]

Re: FFXI's world environment

I'd have to agree with Johnny, although it would be nice if Vanadiel did have seasons. Would be nice to see snow, change of foliage, etc.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: FFXI's world environment

Oh yes change of seasons would be awesome! Also the town invasions would be GREAT fun! If some people didn't want to participate (like afk people or people bazaaring) have a /command of some sort to make it so you won't be attacked. I know they have hinted at this for the expansion so I am totally excited to see if they follow through. Of course, its only for a specific area but thats a start!

[Aeni]

Re: FFXI's world environment

One silly thing that I always thought would be fun was:

When you go to Ghelsaba (sp) and you run into Flamthrowers and they are in those caves, how about have something possibly in the cave? A random chest, random healing spot for either hp or mp, another area, whatever but something so people would have to kill it to get to it. I don't know if its a hot spot for lvling anymore but back in the day it was. I just always thought it would be fun if something were in there.

Or how about this? The flame/fire belchers work how it's intended. Basically, the damage is similar to a bomb's self-destruct. Heeeee.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: FFXI's world environment

Well it does spit out a ball of fire at you but its just not the same as the name implies. It should be more like the breaths the dragons use! OOOOO and how about it does that flamethrowing move and it could be extra nasty if its head spun in a circle like in the Excorcist while belching flames!! Ummmm...ok.....2:40 am....and its showing LOL Excorcist...good lord.....

[Kafeen]

Re: FFXI's world environment

I'd have to agree with Johnny, although it would be nice if Vanadiel did have seasons. Would be nice to see snow, change of foliage, etc.

It does, they just aren't very obvious. For example, it can snow in Battillia, but only in the winter.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: FFXI's world environment

I think thats the point. We don't want a brief "Oh here is a dusting of snow", we want the hills to have snow, the leaves on the trees to go from green to autumn colors, flowers to spring up where they weren't before, etc.

[Moaku Hyena]

Re: FFXI's world environment

Sieges and landscaping is great and all, hell I would jump into every one. But we have to look at the technical problems here.

With the current game structure, you need larger updates than normal. Changing the entire zone may have the effect, and I won't want to spend 120 hours/5 hours downloading an update for every damn zone in the game. =3
Now if the landscape was dynamically changed due to what players do to it then there may be significantly large transition times between zones. It can also lead to possible forms of griefing, i.e. people or groups continually changing the landscape and forcing longer or even infinite loading times between zones (I imagine Gilsellers doing this).

But it is worth a shot, but those on Dial-Up may show emnity toward the game for it.

[Johnny]

Re: FFXI's world environment

But it is worth a shot, but those on Dial-Up may show emnity toward the game for it.

Poor souls...I can't even imagine playing this game on dial-up.

The update to every single area of the game for seasonal changes would be insanely huge, and it would happen 4 times a year. That would definately suck. Dynamically changing zones would be incredibly cool, (unless they did things like if a place was mined to much, the mineral veins ran dry) but I agree with you again Moaku that the problems you suggest with it, are likely.

[Macht]

Re: FFXI's world environment

Dail-up is not the issue for making change of season and seiges like you are suggesting. What is an issue is the amount of VRAM available, to do what you guys are suggesting is beyond the PS2 capabilities with it's VRAM. This idea however has possibility if SE ever drops support for PS2 and lower quality PCs, the XBox 360, PS3, and high quality PCs should be capable of handeling these ideas no problem.

Actually the PS2 should also be capable of handling the Siege part at least if done right. Change of season and even changing background is extreemly intensive on the VRAM.

Double Post Edited:

Poor souls...I can't even imagine playing this game on dial-up.

The update to every single area of the game for seasonal changes would be insanely huge, and it would happen 4 times a year. That would definately suck. Dynamically changing zones would be incredibly cool, (unless they did things like if a place was mined to much, the mineral veins ran dry) but I agree with you again Moaku that the problems you suggest with it, are likely.

Actually this is were the VRAM neccessity comes in, you have the VRAM programmed to carry out a sequence and then let the processor randomly choose out paths for the object to go such as direction a leaf travels as it falls of a tree or snowflake's travel. The problem is to make the scenery realistic to that nature the system will have to load many objects, the number of objects far exceeds what PS2 can do.

It's actually pushing it for a PC to effectively do as well, but with a good quality PC and the next-gen devices they have enough to do this with a few masking techniques.

[PotentPotables]

Re: FFXI's world environment

Throwing some of these thoughts together, it might not be at all impossible or intensive.

I've always wondered myself, why when I'm running a Yag back to the Fabled gates of Windurst that the guards just stand there watching me fall to the ground. What ARE they there for? I always thought it was to watch for a Beastman Invasion.

Welllll, wouldn't it be great if the Beastmen also had a chance to "garrison" a particular town? Every so often the horns would sound of an invasion and the regional Beastmen would storm a town. Players/Mules that wished not to participate can either MH or /neutral or whatever command they want.

It would be like Beastmen having ultimate control of a Region. Should all the participating adventurers die or none are there t protect the town, the town's ecenomy would be raised, fishing spots would be mobbed, and you would have to eradicate them manually or wait a sufficient time for the town's guards to do it themselves. You could even add new city quests that are only available during the Beastmen controlled time period.

I would personally love for something like that to be in the game. I've always doubted the fact that a cities notoriety keeps it from being attacked, especially when the mobs are supposedly rising up.

[Manatra]

Re: FFXI's world environment

Adding the changing seasons has nothing to do with VRAM. If the seasons changed they would just load a different set of textures into the memory. The problem is, is that the art assets of the game would balloon in size. FFXI already takes up roughly 6.75 gigabytes of data. Having a texture set for every season would probably add another 3~ gigabytes at least. Not to mention it would waste the art teams time for something, that at this stage in FFXI's life, is meaningless.

It's actually pushing it for a PC to effectively do as well, but with a good quality PC and the next-gen devices they have enough to do this with a few masking techniques.

PS2 probably couldn't do it you're right. And even if stuff like this were added to the game on the PC and Xbox360 versions, it's moot. The FFXI engine is already stretched to its limits, and no amount of faster hardware will change that. However, for any follow ups to FFXI that Square does (and it's inevitable) stuff like this would probably happen. Though I doubt they would make it so every leaf on a tree could fall, that would be wasting system and development resources on a very small detail But there are many ways the developers can make it so that the leaves on a tree seem alive without actually going through the trouble of rendering all of them as individual objects. Kind of like how pixel shaders and all that jazz give the illusion of many more polygons on a model than there actually is.

[sevenpointflaw]

Re: FFXI's world environment

well, for what it is worth, there was a hint in the latest TAU developer interview that besieged cities (albiet in TAU zones) may be a possibility.