FFXIV: ARR Public Beta Info Thread, A realm neegnye Options

[Crushinator]

New intro video release today (although the first 5 mins or so is crap from a previous trailer).



Sign up here:

http://entry.ffxiv.com/beta/na

Here's the roadmap for the beta:

[Scan_Man]

Game is solid. UI and mechanics. Just to be seen if the content will be there for late game. For the starting area there is quite a lot to do as is. Just wish they speed up the town intro stuff. Other stuff is minor annoyances that will be fixed if they truly value feedback.

I will go into more detail on beta forums and later here after I got a good amount of time with the game.

I will say this though, I do want to keep playing it, unlike v1.0. Especially realized I had been questing for a hour and I I open my map and there is whole other sub zone I have quest for and have yet to explore.

[Knightsword]

Just wish they speed up the town intro stuff.

Esc key, my friend

[Scan_Man]

Just wish they speed up the town intro stuff.

Esc key, my friend

I am talking about the introduction to the game. The amount of "intro" quests and running around town before you properly receive your first batch of "intro" quests to go out in the world and kill things. It feels separated and long. If 70% of new players that try WoW quit before level 10, this game is in trouble imo. It is bad pacing for what they have there so far. FFXIV v1.0 at least had the boat sequence at the start and you were already getting your first kill Leves when you zoned into town. I don't see this changing much because it's story driven and they already finished the cutscenes. Hopefully other starting areas have a different flavor in this regard.

I cannot think of one recent MMO that does not have you questing to kill stuff within 3 minutes after character creation. Usually the town stuff, basically showing you where you can find things while teaching you the non-combat and social mechanics, either comes later after they hook you with the combat and rewards systems or it's woven in while you learn combat (in between quest turn-ins at the starting quest hub). Good quests that flow well aid in this. Which is why WoW is successful. Guild Wars 2 does this a bit better imo because you have a ton of options where to go, what to do and the order you like to do it in.

Here you are dragging your feet leveling up from just running around town handing things in. I guess you can argue it's getting the bullshit out the way first, so the game can just focus on content and combat later. I don't like it, but I am reading the beta forums to see what others think and of course give my feedback.

Not to mention you get armor upgrade rewards where the requirements are several levels above the quest level. Most likely rewards are not done and it's an easy fix.

But they can speed it up, by combining quests and steps, so there is less NPC turn-ins to find within the quest chain. Which will reduce the amount of time running around town. That's all I am saying. I understand the town stuff is a bit of necessary evil.

Once you are actually out in the world killing stuff and the FF battle music is pumping the game is fine. The amount of content per area is quite good from what I have seen. This is what really matters in the long run, which is what v1.0 lacked at the start.

There are annoyances, a bit of the tedium left over from FFXIV v1.0 design, like manually handing in the fetch quest items. Which is pointless and unnecessary. Unless they were planing to add a puzzle aspect to that or multiple NPC want the same thing and you have some choice. I doubt it because here they give you the picture of what you already have and you have to drag and drop it then "left-click" confirm, or "right-click" and select the hand over option then "left-click" confirm. V1.0 had a ton of stuff like this and my opinion now remains the same, it needs to go or reduce amount of steps down to one.