FF14 Launch

[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 -