FF14 Launch

[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.

[remanz]

A couple of my friends switched to FF14, I also purchased CE FF14 and tried.

Didn't like it.

Tech side of things:

No matter what I do, I just can't get this thing to run at above 50 FPS. The graphics are impressive, really ? Compare to some of the non-mmo I played on my PC, ff14 is barely on-par. Gears of war PC (a game from 2007) still looks better. Note that my PC is not top of the line, but by no means a push over. i7 920 OC at 4Ghz, 12G ram, GTX295. Running FF14 on it, with all details turned low/off, res at 1080p, barely 35-45 fps, UNacceptable. Having Crysis flashbacks~

Above all, my gaming laptop that has an ATI mobile 5730, can't even play the damn game. It crashes on start up. Sure, I just patch the game right ? nope, you need to start the launcher to download the patch. and Now it is the launcher that is crashing. Brilliant.

For the problem everybody complains about, the UI/input lag. This is the game breaker for me. The control is just not smooth. This game is designed and made with console in mind. MADE to be played on PS3. Sorry for bashing the game so hard, but I really have some high hopes for this game, being a long time Square-enix / FF serie fan and all.


Those 2 things completely put me off on this game. But somehow my friends were having a blast. Telling me "oh , as the game progress, it gets better. So much depth. the system is good. Unlike wow, which is flat and noob friendly. The combat is complex." (really ?? all I see is I can't move if i cast/execute anything, combined with the input lag)

So I ask you guys who got further into this game. Did FF14 get better later on ?

[Ridere]

A couple of my friends switched to FF14, I also purchased CE FF14 and tried.

Didn't like it.

Tech side of things:

No matter what I do, I just can't get this thing to run at above 50 FPS. The graphics are impressive, really ? Compare to some of the non-mmo I played on my PC, ff14 is barely on-par. Gears of war PC (a game from 2007) still looks better. Note that my PC is not top of the line, but by no means a push over. i7 920 OC at 4Ghz, 12G ram, GTX295. Running FF14 on it, with all details turned low/off, res at 1080p, barely 35-45 fps, UNacceptable. Having Crysis flashbacks~

Above all, my gaming laptop that has an ATI mobile 5730, can't even play the damn game. It crashes on start up. Sure, I just patch the game right ? nope, you need to start the launcher to download the patch. and Now it is the launcher that is crashing. Brilliant.

For the problem everybody complains about, the UI/input lag. This is the game breaker for me. The control is just not smooth. This game is designed and made with console in mind. MADE to be played on PS3. Sorry for bashing the game so hard, but I really have some high hopes for this game, being a long time Square-enix / FF serie fan and all.


Those 2 things completely put me off on this game. But somehow my friends were having a blast. Telling me "oh , as the game progress, it gets better. So much depth. the system is good. Unlike wow, which is flat and noob friendly. The combat is complex." (really ?? all I see is I can't move if i cast/execute anything, combined with the input lag)

So I ask you guys who got further into this game. Did FF14 get better later on ?

I'm going to try hard to not sound too much like a fanboy in this response, so please forgive me if I do. Let me start with this:

Did you even read my above post?

As MMOs go, FF14's Graphics are impressive. Comparing 14 to a non-mmo game is sort of retarded. Things get a bit more complex when you have thousands of users connected to a central server. Graphics alone aren't the only reason to play a game, however, so it's not a huge point. But yes, the game is quite pretty. That being said, the game has a heavy PC requirement, so your rig most likely has a bottleneck somehow. Also, you were running the game with all settings turned down, so that probably explains a good deal of why you weren't too impressed with the graphics. I have some screenshots I can post lated if needbe.

Controls and UI are slow. I hope this does get fixed, as it is annoying.

Storyline missions eclipse anything you could ever hope to see in WoW. S-E is a storyteller first and foremost. All shitty things in FF14 aside, the storyline, mission-related events, and cutscenes are wonderful. The closest thing I can really equate them to is the whole Dragonblight/Undercity quest in WoW, and even it comes up short (Though super buffed characters in WoW were pretty fun during that event). The immersion is real good and makes you feel as if you are your character, instead of just a guy clicking through a text box to see what items you need to collect for said quest.

The game is tough. Solo is possible in this game via quests/grinding up to rank 20. After that, solo ranking up is done pretty much only through quests (called guildleves). Soloing monsters is still possible, but the skill points you receive currently decrease. This may be an oversight on S-E's part, but I think it was intentional to try and encourage party play.

You can form parties of 2-15 players, and take on different monsters depending on the strength of the party. 2-4 player parties are pretty common and allow you to rank up at a good rate. If boxers can find a good way to box the game, then this fact would give them a clear advantage over others in the sense that they can party up whenever they feel like it.

And basically, as stated above, there's a ton of character customization, you don't need to do shitty quests more than once (as you basically only ever need one character per FF14 account), the crafting system is the most complex I've ever seen (this is more bad than good right now, IMO - But still pretty interesting).

The game is very rough around the edges, but as long as S-E works on some of those rough features, the game will be great. If you'r easily frustrated, though, I would probably stick to WoW for now. By the time it's realeased for the PS3, it should be much more polished. It is basically a paid open beta rigth now. I'm the first to admit that. But I'd rather be 6 months ahead than 6 months behind, so I'm enjoying the game a lot right now.

Just wish I had more time to play it. hah.

[remanz]

lol. I think I raged a little too hard on it. The game is made for ATI 5870 SLI and GTX460 SLI folks. and this is the reason my friends are playing. "They got new rigs" . They needed something more than wow to run.

With cata coming, I think I will pass on FF14. SE is brave enough to not get a WOW clone. Kudos for that. GL to all who enjoy the game.

[Fat Tire]

All the reviews I have seen have been 3,4/10

I have never seen a mmo reviewed that low. APB was 4.9 avg and it lasted 3 months until they shut it down.

Wonder how much hope they have hanging on the ps3

[Ridere]

FF14 got reemed by reviews, because the suits at S-E thought it would be a good idea to release before Cataclysm. haha. The game is so unfinished now, it's basically like a paid open beta. By the time the PS3 release comes around, the game should be much more polished.

The big question will be - is it too little too late? Who knows. There was a patch today that fixed some issues, so it's good to see progress going forward. But still, the game is very much so unfinished.

I'm still simply trying to remain positive, though, because I don't want to go back to the gear grind of WoW. FF14 may be my last MMO. I'll just have to wait and see.

[Souca]

Controls and UI are slow. I hope this does get fixed, as it is annoying.

This is what did me in. After a while I just couldn't deal with the constant feeling of hesitation. I avoided interacting with NPCs because I didn't want to get stuck in menus to only hear, "*sigh*. Times are tough."

Storyline missions eclipse anything you could ever hope to see in WoW. S-E is a storyteller first and foremost. All shitty things in FF14 aside, the storyline, mission-related events, and cutscenes are wonderful. The closest thing I can really equate them to is the whole Dragonblight/Undercity quest in WoW, and even it comes up short (Though super buffed characters in WoW were pretty fun during that event). The immersion is real good and makes you feel as if you are your character, instead of just a guy clicking through a text box to see what items you need to collect for said quest.

When did the story come back? Once I got done with the story quest that you get at the begining of the game, I felt like I'd been dumped without anything to do. My only choice was to grind out levequests or tutorials, and the 30 minute timer coupled with input lag made those frustrating. I'm sure I missed something, but being physical rank 5 and having no story quest or even breadcrumbs just left the game feeling futile. I wasn't expecting to have my hand held like WoW does at times, but I wanted to have something to work toward besides making numbers on the UI become bigger numbers.

But I'd rather be 6 months ahead than 6 months behind, so I'm enjoying the game a lot right now.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but how is that any different than a gear grind? I wanted to like this game, and I hope it gets better. It just didn't seem like there was a game yet, just a game engine.

Oh, and is there any end game? I couldn't really find any info on that, so I'm curious what happens at 50.

- Souca -

[Ridere]

Souca,

I'm not going to quote, as I'm basically just replying to everything.

UI lag is a big issue. Things are all stored server side. S-E is about the exact opposite as Blizz when it comes to this. Blizz encourages custom UIs and things like that, and S-E hates all of it. UI lag needs to get fixed, though, for sure.

Storyline missions start at rank 1 (The start of the game). And then they pick up each time you receive a certain rank. The currently-known missions are rank 1, 10, 15, 20, 26. From Rank 20 on, as far as we can tell, all three town's storylines merge into a single story arch. So the first three sets of missions are unique to the town in which you start, and after that, the storyline is the same for everyone (Evil empire in the NE, your character has special abilities, etc... I won't reveal much plot spoilers)

And you're true. S-E does basically little hand-holding. While it's a lot of fun figuring stuff out, basic things should not be treated this way. The game didn't originally tell you how to return to your home point after dying, for instance. It does now, but a lot of little things like that will probably be tweaked in the future to make it more user friendly.

And no offense taken to the gear grind comment. Here's my rationale for it. It was 2004, the game was FFXI, and Ridere the White Mage really wanted a Noble's Tunic. It was the end all of awesomeness for WHM body gear. Cut to 2010, Noble's Tunic is still a viable piece of gear to wear. There's be tons of gear added since then, but it's all situational, or "sidegrades", not upgrades. So there's always something new to collect, but if you want to focus on other aspects of the game, you can still return and be functional.

Maybe it's not the best scenario, I dunno. All I know is that I loved having that one piece of gear that always made me feel cool, instead of collecting an awesome set of gear (Appearance wise, or otherwise) and knowing I'd have to replace it next big patch.

I'm probably the outside on this particular train of thought. But I know as soon as I got to the point where I could solo heroics in WoW, I started collecting all sorts of badges and neat gear... for a month. And then I had to grind the same dungeons for newer gear again.

FFXI definitely had grinds, just like WoW. In fact, it has way worse grinds (Relic Weapons, anyone). But they were optional grinds.

As for end game, there is none. Highest players in the game are probably mid 30's at best. The game has a fatigue system that actually limits how much skill points you can get per week to rank up. The rationale behind this was so that they could keep the EXP/SP curve relatively flat, while making it so people don't reach end game in a week. They want casual players to be able to keep up with hardcore ones more easily one a single class, while hardcore players will still be way better because they'll have more ranks on a variety of different classes.

The system is super controversial. At first I thought it was pretty damned retarted. But now that I'm actually playing the game, I think it works, as it does help you to focus on other things that can make your character better, as well as lets you go to bachelor parties, and be social IRL, without worrying about getting left behind, since you really only need to focus on that one class a week, and everything else is just gravy to make your char better.

Any other questions?

[Souca]

Thanks for the response, Ridere. I started playing a little in beta, and then with the CE early launch. I haven't played since the game launched for everyone since the UI lag just got to me so much. I'll try and put a couple more hours into it before my 30 days run out, but it will take some effort to try and forget the issues that bugged me previously. I'm close enough to rank 10 that I will try and just grind my way to there so I can get back on the story quests.

I hope the game does flourish, it's good for the MMO environment to have some diversity in it.

- Souca -