FF14 Launch

[Souca]

Just set mine up. No where near the pain Pay Online was. When you set up the account, chose Crysta as the payment type. You can change it later, but if you select Crysta you don't have to provide any more details, they just discount everything so it costs 0 Crysta during the 30 day free period.

Also, anyone besides me think the stuff in the CE is great, but the box is so cheap that they might as well just throw it away?

- Souca -

[Naji]

Also, anyone besides me think the stuff in the CE is great, but the box is so cheap that they might as well just throw it away?

Yea its got some neat stuff - the in game item is uglyyy though lol

[d0z3rr]

Was playing it some yesterday. Beautiful game. But seems slow and I have no idea what I'm doing. I managed to make it to some camp outside where you stand near a crystal and do the "leve" quests. Is that pretty much all you do in the game to level?

I started a lancer. I'd like to be a class that is rare (kinda like druids in WoW) that no one plays. Anyone have any ideas on what classes that would be?

[Souca]

Was playing it some yesterday. Beautiful game. But seems slow and I have no idea what I'm doing. I managed to make it to some camp outside where you stand near a crystal and do the "leve" quests. Is that pretty much all you do in the game to level?

I started a lancer. I'd like to be a class that is rare (kinda like druids in WoW) that no one plays. Anyone have any ideas on what classes that would be?

Slow. Perfect word. It's almost like they built lag into the UI. This is the biggest thing that is getting to me about the game and really makes things that wouldn't be a chore normally (exploring the world and talking to NPCs) utterly tedious since it takes almost 20 seconds to actual walk away from an vendor after you are done looking at the items that you can't afford.

The second biggest thing is that you have no idea what you are doing. I am level 5 and still have no clue what I should be doing in the game. I'd love to answer your question about the Leve(l?) quests, but I can't since I have no idea what I should be doing after I completed the one quest in the game.

As for rare class, I haven't seen many Lancers, but considering you just need to buy the weapon and equip it to become the class, I'm not sure there really will be a rare class. More likely there will be rare abilities as few people will get the rank 50 abilities of a class. I do think it is kind of interesting that there are just as many or more crafting/gathering classes than there are combat ones. I just hope that only having a couple of those is required and you don't end up having to grind every crafter class to do anything useful.

I'm still playing, because there are nuggets of fun, but they really did miss out on some fundemental design issues that make the game painful in ways no games needs to be.

- Souca -

[Bigfish]

Slow. Perfect word. It's almost like they built lag into the UI. This is the biggest thing that is getting to me about the game and really makes things that wouldn't be a chore normally (exploring the world and talking to NPCs) utterly tedious since it takes almost 20 seconds to actual walk away from an vendor after you are done looking at the items that you can't afford.

The second biggest thing is that you have no idea what you are doing. I am level 5 and still have no clue what I should be doing in the game. I'd love to answer your question about the Leve(l?) quests, but I can't since I have no idea what I should be doing after I completed the one quest in the game.

As for rare class, I haven't seen many Lancers, but considering you just need to buy the weapon and equip it to become the class, I'm not sure there really will be a rare class. More likely there will be rare abilities as few people will get the rank 50 abilities of a class. I do think it is kind of interesting that there are just as many or more crafting/gathering classes than there are combat ones. I just hope that only having a couple of those is required and you don't end up having to grind every crafter class to do anything useful.

I'm still playing, because there are nuggets of fun, but they really did miss out on some fundemental design issues that make the game painful in ways no games needs to be.

- Souca -

Geez, sounds like my experience in beta. That's kind of disappointing.

[Ridere]

As sad as it is to say, I don't think FF14 will be boxable for some time, if at all. That being said, I'm a major fan of it, because I have super nostalgia for FF11 (My first MMO :P), as well as hooking back up with all my FF11 buddies in our new LS for new adventures.

I'm Rank 21 now, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about the game.

A few basics about the game. You have one character, and that character can be everything! There are 5 races to choose from, and while you can't change your race once picking it, you can change your class. Basically think of it as picking a race in WoW and then being able to freely change between any of the different classes at any given time simply by changing your equipped mainhand weapon/tool.

Because of this system, your character has a Physical Level, which gives you stat/elemental points each level to increase your stats (Which you can reallocate 20% of every 30 minutes - Meaning you can change all your stats from a mage-based one to a warrior based one in 2.5 hours). On top of the Physical Level, each class has its own Rank.

So say you start off as a Conjurer (Think Mage/Priest Hybrid) Rank 1, Physical Level 1. You're farting around, killing monsters, doing leve quests, blah blah blah. Well, when you kill a monster, you're giving EXP for your Physical Level, and when you use abilities, you have a % chance of gaining skill points towards your Class Rank. So after an hour of playing around, you're now Physical Level 5 and Conjurer Rank 4.

Well, in gaining those 4 Physical Levels, you've gained probably around 25 stat points to divide up among your main stats (Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Mind, Intelligence, Piety). This makes you pretty strong. On top of that, since you're a Conjurer Rank 4, you have access to spells like Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, Stone, Water, Aero and Cure.

Well, the cool thing is this. Say you got bored of Conjurer for now, and you wanted to try out Gladiator (Think Warrior - Including taking aspects). Well, your Gladiator Rank will be 1, since you haven't used it before, but your Physical Level will still be 5. Which means, you have a healthy pool of stat points to distribute to your new Gladiator to make the first Ranks a bit easier. Now there is an effectivenss cap on stats, so if you put all 25 stats in just STR, you wouldn't reach the full benefit, but you could put 5 in each of the stats just fine. I think it's currently set up so that like Rank x5 is the max effectiveness of stats, but people are still doing testing.

On top of that, though, you are free to equip any other abilities you learned on your Gladiator. That means if you wanted to make your Gladiator more Paladin like, there's nothing stopping you from taking that Cure spell you learned on Conjurer and using it on your Gladiator. The higher your rank, the more abilities you can "Equip" to your set of abilities you can use.

So there's actually a ton of customization in there for characters, and that's what S-E wanted. They wanted people to mix and match stuff to create the sort of "Class" that they felt they wanted to play.

Now as for crafting, it's hardcore.. This aint your create 450 items and reach cap type system you see in WoW. Crafters have their own Classes, just like Conjurer and Gladiator. Weavers, Alchemsists, Leatherworks, Carpenters, the list goes on. When you create an item, you are awarded both Physical Level EXP and Rank Skill Points. That means you could reach the Physical Level cap of 50 without every killing a monster. Crafting classes take the same amount of Skill Points to increase a rank, just like fighting/mage classes, so finding a recipe that you can easily create (more explained below), can find a buyer's market for, and that gives decent exp/sp is a good idea.

The actual crafting system is also pretty complex. It's not a matter of gathering the ingredients and pressing a button. Instead what you do is play a sort of mini-game, where there are many factors involved. You craft using elemental crystals (just like FF11), and the crystal's "state" is represented by a glowing orb near your crafting, tool (There are actual animations for crafting). There's a progress percentage, a durability and a quality statistic. Your goal is to get to 100% progress while having at least 1 durability remaining. The higher your quality stat at the end of a successful synth, the higher percent chance of creating a higher quality item (Better stats on equippable gear, more quanity (.e.g making 16 copper fishing hooks instead of 12) if you were making an item that would just go into another recipe) that sort of thing.

The mini-game consists basically of choosing to either do a Standard/Rapid/Bold synthesis move, or to simply Wait. Standard is the safest, giving a modest amount of progress and quality, while losing less durability if you "fail" the move. Rapid gives a lot of progress, and little quality, but if you fail, you lose a lot of durability. Bold gives little progress, but will greatly increase the quality, but if you fail, then you lose the most durability. Waiting is a way to let the element "stabalize" if get's unstable. So you basically just choose those four options, see the result, see what happens to the element, and choose again. You do this until you succeed and getting 100% progress, or your durability falls to 0 and you fail (losing all materials, as well). Even if you fail, you still will receive a handful of SP.

Again, hardcore.

The fishing, mining and botany classes are a bit different. There's also a mini-game involved, and it's sort of a hot and cold type game. You have a set number of tries to try and success get your materials from the rock/ground/water. You pick a spot in a semi-circle to try. It'll tell you if you're close to anything. You pick another spot, it'll say if you're getting closer or further away. And if you get it just right, you'll either get the item, or break the item. Higher rank = higher success, of course, unless you're targetting an item way out of your league. You get both EXP and SP for successfully getting an item, and you get a handful of SP if you fail.

Wall of text, I know. But hopefully that helps answer some questsions.

Again, I'm really having a blast, but I'm also the guy that got Loremaster, The Seeker, The Exalted, The Insane, the Deathcarger and Chocobo mounts in WoW, so obviously I sort of thrive in more "grindy" like environments. FF14 is a lot of fun for me, but it's definitely not a WoW copy, and that may turn people off to it.

If you have any questions, let me know. I'm happy to help answer.