FFXIVstuff, aka monster hunter XIV Options

[Crushinator]

Can't wait to hear how this stacks up to World of Warcraft

[Scan_Man]

LOL! Maybe comparisons later when I get my Cataclysm beta invite. I'm going to play this with a clear mind, and see how it plays as just any game that would come out in 2010 that may potentially warrant a purchase. And then focus on the WoW and other MMO comparisons later. I think I've done enough ranting about that as is. I do have strong opinions about that, but thinking about those will spoil my ability to test and judge the game on its own on two legs.


Going to go play some Dragon Quest IX while I download. It's a Square-Enix week for me it seems.

[Scan_Man]

Testing was canceled for this weekend. Did play it for about 4 hours last Wednesday morning. The controls are bad as I feared. It is not friendly to new players that largely play PC games, much less other MMOs. They are very frustrating imo. A lot of complaints on the feedback forums about this. And from what I read on the feedback FFXI players are not happy about it either. UI needs to be cleaned up overall, as well as the the chat box. Wall of text from NPC is bad! Lastly, the game does not really tell you what to do in a clear manner; this may be due to the NPC hitting you with a wall of text, that you have to scroll up. You pretty much have to read the faq on the beta forums. I don't think this is good design because the game should have clear indicators. It is hard to figure out what NPC to talk in order to advance the story.

I love the questing system, called guildleve, because it is basically the hunts from FFXII, or missions from FFXIII. I like this style because you get to kill a unique monster that spawns only for you or party. You have a choice on which ones you want to partake in, or not, by reading the description. The best part is you can select from a range of difficulties and/or play styles. Another neat thing I love is the guildleve available to you are, as far as I know, random. Every two hours they change. With the fact they are casual friendly, this means you can always log in and find something interesting to do because what you see as available is going to be different each time you log in. Then you can choose how you want to play for that session by reading descriptions, then picking a playstyle and difficulty. Can't wait to see what they do with this for upper tier content.


Edit: What is up with the forums? It showing all posts in a list at the bottom.

This post has been edited by Scan_Man: Jul 18 2010, 03:44 PM

[Crushinator]

I like hearing that the quests are like the FF12/13 missions, that was easily my favorite parts of those games.

I got an invite this week so hopefully I'll be able to give it a shot later.

GALKA 4 LYFE.

[Scan_Man]

Well I have 14 hours under my belt on this game. Enough to get a decent feel for it. I'll take questions if anyone has any.

[Crushinator]

How do you unlock Marth?

[AC9breaker]

Why do kids love cinnamon toast crunch?

[Crushinator]

Why do they call it Apple Jacks when it doesn't taste like apples?

[donkeybeatz]

More importantly, why do they call it Grape-Nuts when it doesn't contain any grapes or nuts?

[Scan_Man]

There is a rainbow lucky charm in the rainbow of Lucky Charms. It's a double rainbow.

[Crushinator]

There is a rainbow lucky charm in the rainbow of Lucky Charms. It's a double rainbow.

What does this mean?!

[Scan_Man]

Phase 2 of the beta will start tonight. Servers will now be up 24 hours. No more stupid scheduled tests at crappy times if you are in the EST time zone. Hopefully they fixed a ton of problems with the game.


In other news Everquest 2 goes free to play. Just like I been saying subscription model is not going to work unless its WoW.

This post has been edited by Scan_Man: Jul 28 2010, 01:17 PM

[Scan_Man]

Phase 3 started. So pretty much this version of the game, and any tweaks in the coming weeks, is what we can expect at release. My impressions so far.

First, they fixed the crappy controls, which is a major plus. Along with the battle improvements, fighting stuff actually feels like a MMO on PC, and not a sloppy PS3 port. Go figure.

The system before for initiating battle works on a PS3 control scheme, but feels clunky when mapped to PC controls. Initiating battle had a lot of unnecessary intermediate steps involved. You had to press "F" to draw your weapon to enter aggressive mode, then tab target to find enemy, press "C" to lock on to enemy, press a number key or "T" to toggle on your action bar, then press a number for the ability of your choosing on your action bar. Very cumbersome to the point where it would make it difficult to enjoy gameplay when first starting out. In any game nothing should impede gameplay, however the old system did just that.

Combat is a lot more enjoyable because of improvements. Now all you have to do is target an enemy, use the ability of your choosing. Everything mentioned above is automatically done. It works how every other MMO works. No more unnecessary intermediate steps for you to do in order for something that should be simple and an integral part of gameplay.

The other beef was the UI. The UI was very tailored to a console experience, with menus with sub-menus upon sub-menus. It is fine for a console because you are working with a Dpad, and limited amount of buttons. In consoles, you need menus and sub-menus, with confirmations of actions in case there is a miss-click or miss-selection, because one of the ways to get more functionality with limited buttons is to add different contexts in which to use those buttons. For the most part, the UI has been streamlined. Silly stuff like having three different sub-menus for inventory, and having to distribute loot into your bags has been taken out.

Seriously, when you received loot it did not automatically put it in your bag. Your loot was placed in a "Loot" sub-menu inside the inventory menu. You had to manually click on each piece of loot you collected, and what quantity, confirm to keep it or decide to discard it. After 5 hours of play, such a process could take 20 minutes. Does not help that the GUI interaction is server side, which means you have to wait for it if there is lag: servers are in Japan, and region free. Beyond retarded. Another system that interrupts gameplay.

Anyway, these types of menus makes sense for a console game where you can't drag and drop, "right-click" to destroy, or "shift + right-click" to choose quantity like you can on a PC. All this has now been streamlined, but the very basic menu system remains intact. I don't have a problem with this as long as they add the ability to customize hotkeys to open up different menus. I don't like hunting for what I need in a long list, if I need to open my Journal I should be able to by pressing "J."

Battle speed has been improved again, and with new animations! Battles are actually interesting to look at. Before the battle speed and animations was very akin to console FFs, which is kind of weird and boring for a MMO if you think about it. Not to mention slow. You engage an enemy with FF6-9 era sounding battle music from Nobuo Uematsu (glad he is back), wait for stamina (like ATB) before you can attack. Unlesh an attack by rushing forward. Then after the attack your character hops a few feet away from the enemy! Admittedly, I found this charming because that is how Final Fantasy battles are. This was not present in FFXI, which went for the stand around to tank and spank. In FFXIV the Final Fantasy feeling to battles was there, even though it was not as exaggerated compared to the single player game. It is gone now, namely the slow pacing, and hopping back. The new battle speed and animations changes gives the game more a WoW feel. For a MMO this is more fitting because spending up to five minutes on a single enemy gets old fast. And the hopping backwards sometimes led to targeting issues.

Oh, the classic FF victory fanfare is now present when you defeat enemies. In the previous beta phases you could only hear it when you complete a quest. It is bugged though because it goes off if someone next to you kills something. Very annoying in crowded areas. But, it is nice they are trying to go for a more traditional Final Fantasy feel where they can, and where it works.

Skill increase speed has shot way up. There is no official word as to why they increased the speed. It could be they want testers to quickly jump in to test group content with a wide range of skills. Or they realized leveling a single job is not viable for any kind of group play, nor solo. That the old rate of skill gains was too slow for training other jobs you need skills in. Took me about 20 hours to get to Rank 16 with one job. I figure the old rate was more so discouraging to group play because you needed to grind out 10-20+ ranks in several jobs to gain maybe the good skills to be party viable. For instance, Lancer had a haste self-buff earned at like rank 10+, making leveling Lancer mandatory for everybody (they later changed it to a Lancer only skill thankfully). Then you add in the fact that, you may need to switch to a job that is not your primary because of group composition.

Lastly, mouse is still handled by software. Square improved this somewhat, but it still lags like hell in high populated areas. So using mouse to target things is not that viable. This needs to be fixed.

Overall, I am impressed with the improvements. Hopefully, the game receives some much deserved polish in the coming weeks to be ready for launch.

This post has been edited by Scan_Man: Aug 11 2010, 06:29 AM

[Kazicht]

Good info! I'm relieved about the control and battle improvements. Only a little over a month to go!

[AC9breaker]

So now the real question, is anyone here planning on picking up the Special edition of the PC version for that week early play. Assuming it's like 11, we'll probably gonna need that week to download updates and install them.