Sore! Sore! Sore! Sore!

So... This is my first MMO game. Writing my perspective down is extremely crucial for game designers. We’re most often blinded by our own experties. We often forget other people, or it’s really hard to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. I remember making the rhythm games in Hep Cat to be moderately difficult. Then, during play testing, only two people got pass stage 2. I will never unlearn as I play this game. Perhaps crucial bits in this write through will be part of the mundane. So while I am still learning and I can notice everything, I should write them down, and it’s gonna help me along the way as reference in designing games.

There are several reasons why I picked up Final Fantasy XIV. The game has an extremely interesting history. My exposure to the game was people talking about version 1.0. There are documentaries out there about it. Then, I further got exposed to it in Theatrhythm. I really liked the songs. Those are some of the things that I could remember. The final push was the realization that I could use the game for lighting reference. It was such a weird push, but here I am.

Maybe, I should also talk about everything before the game to get the game? So, I struggled for around an hour trying to recover my account. I thought I also had to have the One-time password to get in the game. The whole thing to get the game feels clunky. I don’t know if this is the normal thing for every MMOs out there.

So, finally, we actually get to the game. Not actually. We still had to watch the cutscenes and do the character creation. The character creation, I won’t deny, took me hours. There’s so much options, and I had no idea what to choose. Could this be a barrier? I don’t know. Maybe they could have improved the UI for the beginning part.

Then, the tutorial phase. The controls felt familiar. They’re like most controls in game engines, or in some games I’ve played in a 3D phase. I wonder which control setups better. I do have Nintendo’s pro controller, but I did not bother calibrating it. Well, I don’t really know lol. The starting world is a lot more complex than any starting world I’ve played. Usually, games I play have obvious paths. Limsa Lominsa has varying levels. You look at the map to move around, and you get stuck because the platform on the map is on a different level. Maybe there is color coding to indicate this, but maybe I was not paying attention.

The game dialogue felt in-character, but due to the amount of cutscenes I was exposed to, I got bored, and I skipped ahead.

For the UI / UX, there’s so much stuff. It’s so intimidating. I guess it’s true for most MMOs and I appreciate all designers who made the the game’s UI / UX. I wonder if the experience navigating through the HUD gets better as I learn more. Maybe the HUD was made for intermediate / veteran players.