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

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.

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.

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.

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.

How do you unlock Marth?

Why do kids love cinnamon toast crunch?

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

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

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

What does this mean?!

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.

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.

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

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.

All depends on if I get a new computer up by then. If I don't then I'll probably have to pull an AC9breaker and wait till the PS3 release next march :(

The changes have actually made this game enjoyable in my opinion. It went from Superman 64 terrible, because controls and UI were that bad, to the level of any decent MMO you could spend hours and hours on. They listened to the ton of US players' bitching on the forums, and did not cave into the WoW haters and FFXI fanboys. It is a sign this game might actually end up being excellent in the coming months and years.

Though, I am not so sure yet I will pick the game up at launch. I'm still very much into World of Warcraft raiding, and there is still quite a lot of content left that my guild and I have not completed. I can see I'm not going to get a break from it before the Cataclysm expansion release. Also, DC Universe Online comes out in November which looks freakin fantastic in my opinion. But definitely, I have renewed interest in this game.


As far as computer goes. It is strange that FFXIV is a DirectX 9 game, but requires a DirectX 11 video card to run well. If you are not getting a constant frame rate of 30+ the mouse pointer is very laggy, and not usable (I'm not so sure if Square is going offer hardware mouse because the software mouse is to prevent bots or something). And you kind of need the mouse pointer to do things. I recommend the Geforce 460 GTX.


Check out this nice buying guide for anyone interested in building a new rig. http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/2003/1280087473915.png

I didn't want to say anything at the risk of drama, but this is why I kept secretly eye-rolling every time you posted complaining about stuff like controls in the BETA, and saying "I'm not gonna play this game because of so and so". There are many, many long, dramatic threads about these very kinds of comments in the beta forums. Did you think you were playing the finished product for free or something? Or that they wouldn't fix anything on the beta that people were concerned about? Then why have a beta?

I'm not trying to rage out, it's just you keep posting these walls of text that seem like wow-biased fully fleshed out game reviews full of invisible expectations, when they game isn't even finished yet. We could post about any game and say "this is not WoW, it can't do what WoW does". Just let it be it's own thing, ya know? Not every game has to be "the next WoW" for people to liked it, nor does it need the 9 gajillion players (or whatever WoW has) to be successful.

That aside, the more objective info you posted is much appreciated and very helpful, so thanks for that.

i'll be waiting for ps3 release. but at least phantasy tsar zero is keeping me busy for now.


gimme some dish on armor. the bandana is a nice ode to your old fone. i HATED rainbow armor in FFXI. to the point that sometimes i wore inferior armor so i wasnt wearing like orange and green and grey shit.

In any event. I've already pre purchased my copy of 14, collectors edition of course. At the same time though, I'm also eyeballing Guild Wars 2. That recent trailer they unveiled looks all kinds of jawsome.

WALL OF TEXT!

Response to Tanshin:

I am just giving my opinion. The content of opinions are up for discussion, but basically should be taken for a grain of salt. Nothing to "emo" over. If you have something to say about the game (as in gameplay or other musings), or disagree, say it. Talk about the actual game. I asked you questions, so I could possibly adjust my opinions based on someone who had first hand information. You declined to answer, which is your right.

However, I'm here to talk about this game, in its current form, based on information I am able to gather. What I think of it too. Retorting with that it is just a "Beta" talk, does not lead to any kind of discussion of this game. I understand that it is a Beta. Developers have an NDA because they don't want people talking about an unfinished product. However, there are people out there that are interested in knowing how the game is coming along, me included. They may not have beta access, or they may but not have the time to play. That is my audience, if it is not clear to you. Most of all, I love talking about game mechanics, and what that means for users, in detail. It is a passion of mine. I understand most people don't care, or it is beyond their scope of what they wish to discuss. But it is something, I like to talk about regardless if no one is listening. That is what passion is all about.

Sounds like you trying to start drama because saying things like "secretly rolling my eye" is dismissive passive aggressiveness directed towards me. So, if I got your engines revved up, I say good! I don't care if you have a problem with what I say, but I will not let that kind of hostility directed towards me slide.

You said you tried to hold off not saying anything because to not start drama. Why wait until now? If I were to take what you said literally, then your choice of words have failed that stated purposes. Again, why now? What makes now so safe for you to come out of your hole?

Saying stuff like "secretly rolling my eye" is a dick move. And you know it. Which why you put your "Did not want to start drama" disclaimer, to try and soften it. Stop. I am not fooled by such. You basically told me how your intentions are going to come off.

Not everyone emotionally attaches to things he or she says, or what other say, like you may do (I assume). For me, I expect disagreement, welcome it, and respect it. I would never dismiss someone because their point of view differs from mine because that stifles discussion. But, make no mistake I am going to defend my position.




Me editorializing in response to Tanshin's points:

Let me clarify something. Most of the things I write here are lifted from articles I wrote on my blog, or other forums, sometimes copied and pasted. That is why they are long (sometimes lifted from two or more entries). Also, I try to use enough detail in my writing to where I think there won't be a misunderstanding, or ways to misconstrue what I wrote.

People that follow my blog, or twitter, are interested in my current opinions on gaming, MMOs including WoW and FFXIV. I posted my thoughts here on FFXIV versus WoW because it is a FFXIV thread. I don't like some of the decision Square is making in relation to this game, which for me helps my buying decision.

I also assume, that most people here are not into WoW. Thus, know very little comparatively about the current state of the game. Its successes, problems, and failures. Competition has an influence. And WoW is FFXIV's competition. So it difficult to talk about one without mentioning the other because obviously FFXIV is being influenced by WoW. Believe me, I have more things to say on this, that I am saving because I writing a MMO buying guide.


A game forum is for discussing games and opinion of games. Plus, ultimately I am the one that has to make a decision to buy this game. And for FFXIV, my decision is going to be based on if it is worth my time over WoW. I have the right to have expectations because it is my money and time. I choose to determine how I am going spend those. I can only make a decision based on the information at hand. I am not a "wait and see" person. If I took a "wait and see" approach, then that means I am already making a mental investment to hold out for that thing to get better; which may not happen. Thus, I will miss out on potential better opportunities or mental investments available to me in the now that have a higher chance of working out. Not saying my way is right for everyone, but works for me. I am a "think about it today, forget about it tomorrow if it no longer holds my interest" type of person. So agree to disagree here.

And no one is saying a game should be the next WoW. But, there is no reason why a game should not strive to be the next step in MMOs like WoW was to Everquest. Why should I invest time and money in something if I have something that is better? Not only that, but there is a cheaper solution for what is essentially the same type of gameplay at its very core.

WoW has more content, and more features per dollar than FFXIV. That is a fact. Not to FFXIV's fault for being new. But, my beef is the pricing for FFXIV in regards with this. FFXIV is $12 for one character. I understand the arguments in favor of this. But those arguments ignore that people may want to play a different race, or have an alt on another server. This pricing point alienates a large portion of the MMO player base. The price is very steep to ask for someone coming from other MMOs such as WoW. And that is the point of view I am representing here. FFXIV borrows from WoW in a lot of places, so I think comparisons are fair. WoW rips from a lot of other games too.

I do have problems with WoW. A lot of them even. I still think it is the best MMO option out there. I give credit where credit is due. I extend this to FFXIV, or any MMO out there.

Like I said in another post, if you are coming from FFXI, or not currently playing any MMOs, this point of view does not pertain to you. Nor should it.

On a side note, discussion on this forum is abysmal these days. I know you guys save it for the podcast, which is excellent. But it would be nice to have a forum discussion once in a while like back in the old days. Lastly, I tend to play devil's advocate to get some discussion going; not just here, but on my blog. I get some of you may not be bothered with having other responsibilities to attend to.

Yes! Guild Wars 2 is another game on my radar. I loved the first one though expansions not that great in my opinion. But, I played it casually, so maybe I would enjoyed it more had I had devoted more time to see more of the content.

I know I'm seriously thinking about renewing my Aion sub for Aion 2.0. When Aion was launched it had none of the features they promised back when the game was just concept art. Then a month after release they showed the Aion 2.0 trailers with all the promised features. I was like wow! Why was this not ready? Here we are almost a year later.

Also, Torchlight 2 was announced. Going to have the much needed multiplayer.

So there is a lot of options out there. I say pick your poison. FFXIV is stuck in the middle between a lot of other games right now, I'm torn.

Ok, if you're doing it, I'm doing it. I'll get the CE, you twisted my arm.

i was talking to scan crush my love!

Yeah I will try to take more pics. It is annoying because there is no screen cap feature right now. So I am using printscreen and MS Paint. Unless someone can recommend a free screen cap software, that does not take low res pics. It would not be a problem if alt+tabing did not crash the game like it did in FFXI.

The armor variety for low level is kind of impressive compared to other MMOs. And does not look bad if you are mismatched.

Edit: By the way Alisha was referring to my fonewearl on PSO. She had a bandanna.

Wall of text for the win. I like to read walls of text, assuming it has value. The AT boards don't have much discussion, actually, so it's not always a bad thing to express an opinion.


Also, FFXIV will sucks balls because anything FF that's online has sucked, will suck and can only suck worse then the suckiest of the sucky suck sucks. So, my final conclusion from not playing the beta and being a blind FF fanboy is that the game has to suck because my opinion dictates absolute truth of reality, thus everyone must be offended... right now!

By the way WoW sucks too. I stopped playing it because its a waste of time and money. I can do something meaningful like educate myself and my mind. I'll be damned if I don't get the next rare loot drop that becomes useless in 6 months, while my real world body wastes away as I drink mountain dew and eat doritos.

I mean really. Why do people play video games anyway? It's a huge waste of time and anyone who plays video games is a total loser. Go do something constructive, like get a Doctorate Degree in real world awesomeness.

For that matter, don't go to the movie, or watch TV, surf the internet or read a book for entertainment. It's all useless, because we're soulless fleshbots.

With that said, MMORPGs suck, as do video games, life in general, and everyone who reads this. So, on that note, I'm going to take out my Super Mario Galaxy 2 game from it's shrink wrap and pre order FFXIV, since I just bought a new PC for for gaming.

Cheers.

LOL! Bravo HC!

Look, I haven't played a game with most of you in years but if you have me on facebook, which, I'm sure only Scan does. Tell me what server you guys are planning on getting on. I already have a few competent friends starting FF14 with me.

Also, hi!

/lurk

Of course subject to change. But, if you want to tentatively designate a server for organization purposes. Here is the list:


Gabranth
Garland
Golbez
Emperor
Exdeath
Jecht
Kefka
Ultimecia
Sephiroth
Shadowlord
Xande

Server names are named after FF villains. Shadowlord is the most populated server in the beta. Not surprising.


Also another wave of beta invites should be going out soon. So if anyone gets on the beta, I am on Jecht.

I'm up for any server, really. I just want to have an idea of where we'd go so I can start telling people in the group I made on facebook, you know?

I don't think any of us are really planning a designated server. Although I'd rather stick to a server thats medium populated. I was just planning on starting out wherever and then sending invites to people like that. If anything I'm definitely gonna try to stay away from the more heavily populated servers.

Did they do away with the bullshit friend passes and random server crap from FF11? That was the biggest load of shit, not being able to instantly group with your friends at the launch of the game.

I'm getting the CE. So I'll be there early, just keep me updated. I'll be watching the forums, regardless.

Yeah it seems like the game is gonna have friend codes as I recall thats one of the features of the collectors edition.

That could potentially just be a 14-day free trial for a friend too however? Maybe...

Picking your server is part of the character creation.

I doubt they are going to change this. We tested server selection, and server load with a limited amount of servers to simulate launch day. Basically, trying to crash them with everyone around the world logging in at once. For a good two weeks that is all we were doing. The game was unplayable until Square fixed the servers to be able to handle that type of load.

Actually what is the max population for a server? and whats the most a given area can hold? Are there any areas like Jueno where fucking rubes just gather?

The max population is indicated by 4 chocobos next to the name. LOL.


I don't know what the max population is. I would think it would be a lot since the game is cross region, and eventually cross platform.


There is no max for a given area. The game is open world like World of Warcraft. This actually is one of my issues with the game that I have not covered. It is also an issue in World of Warcraft in the neutral cities, like the current one, Dalaran. Super laggy, even if you have a decent system. Or you get spill over lag, because you are close by to a high populated area and it starting put that stuff into memory.

It is even worse in FFXIV because the game is more graphical intense, the city is huge, and character models are very detailed. Going to the city is very stressful right now to get things done because your input for controls and mouse are handled by software and server (to prevent botting). Flipping through menus and buying stuff is not fun in a city. They have improved it, but it still is laggy in high population areas; ie city or starting quest area.


So yes. Cities are where people gather. And it is laggy as hell. With it drawing all the models, and people loading into the game there. Right now it is bad because you start the game in a city, with one to choose from.

At launch this will be helped somewhat because there will be at least three main cities to choose from to spread folks out. But still it won't be fully resolved of how you just start in the city on top of everyone else that is starting out. I would of liked to see each race get a starting zone or something.

Crafting is very viable way of progressing through the game. And there are a ton of crafting classes. So there will be a lot of people hanging out in the cities.

Not that it can be helped much in games like this. But there are other ways to reduce the lag other than spreading out the population via multiple starting cities. I would like to see sub versions of the world, like in Aion. Like if there too many people in the area, just go to World 2 or 3. That would work great for this game.

I recommend to folks to have a nice CPU, quad core of at least 3.2 GHz, a minimum of a Geforce 460 GTX, and at least 4 gigs of ram to avoid these issues. Or else you going to be waiting for optimizations.

Ugh, right now I think the biggest thing holding me back is my CPU. I'm running an Intel Quad Q9400 @ 2.66Ghz. I was thinking of maybe trying to overclock it, but I'm pretty hesitant since I've never tried anything like that before and from the little I've read it's more or less guessing then a science.

Here is the recommended specs to run the game smoothly at default. Pretty fucking high if you ask me. And makes no sense for a DirectX 9 game.

OS Windows® 7 32-bit/64-bit*
CPU Intel® Core™ i7-920 2.66GHz or higher
# AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
RAM 4GB or more
HDD/SDD Installation: 15GB of free space
Download: 6GB of free space on the drive containing "My Documents"
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460 or better with VRAM 768MB or more
# ATI HD 5830 1GB or better.
Sound Card DirectSound® compatible sound card (DirectX® 9.0c or higher)
Internet Connection Broadband or better (always-on)
Resolution 1280x720 (32-bit) or higher
DirectX® DirectX® 9.0c
Others Mouse, Keyboard, Gamepad


Yeah wtf hexacore processor if you going with AMD!?

And anything lower than this is going to run into problems in high populated areas. I'm on a AMD Athlon 64 FX 62, 2.8 GHz, and 8800 gtx, with 2 gigs ram atm. It is not pleasant no matter how low I set the settings. It is smooth when I'm out questing, but going near a city or going to a crystal to activate a quest is terrible. It should improve as they optimize the game, or when new drivers come out after release. But, I would not recommend playing the game to anyone with less than the recommended specs for long. I'm going to be building a new system soon because my system is out of date.

I already showed Dave what I'm having built for me. So I'll be running this fine @ 3.6GHz with a decent card, I hope. I was never one for super cranked up graphic settings anyway, so...I'm sure things will be that much better.

Are those the official recommended specs? That's fucking absurd, the highest I think I've ever seen before! Reeks of a poorly optimized engine to me...

Its almost like Square-Enix DOESN'T want people to play the game.

No, I think they just don't want pc loving americans playing their game, just their ever loyal playstation using japanese followers.

I'm afraid they are. They are smart (or stupid?) to keep it hidden from Americans. You have to go to the jp site to find it.

http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/media/recom/jp/pc


"Its almost like Square-Enix DOESN'T want people to play the game"

That was the theme from 90% of the people voicing concerns on the beta forums. Phase 3 fixed a lot of the issues with UI, and removed the 30 FPS cap (30 FPS cap because its a PS3 game lol) so using things were a lot smoother and not as frustrating with people who don't have godly systems. But, it just means if you have the awesome system you see no problems with the UI, but if you on the lower side of specs it is tolerable if you know what settings to tweak.

"No, I think they just don't want pc loving americans playing their game, just their ever loyal playstation using japanese followers."

But they said they are going to focus on PC market, which why it is coming out first on PC. It was actually the PC FFXI players that stuck by them all these years. However, you can see there is evidence they don't know what that means. At least they seem to be listening to some American feedback. And boy can Americans give feedback lol.

BTW this is default settings:

Screen mode and window 1280 × 720 (window mode)
Ambient Occlusion OFF
Depth of field ON
Shadow Map Quality Standard
Multi-Sampling 4x MSAA
Buffer Size Drawing Window size
Texture quality High quality
Texture filtering High quality

Running this game at max or near max, is a different story.

oh my gyaaaaahd. I wonder if I can squeak by until I can afford a new computer.

i'm wondering if crafting classes can fight? otherwise the class lineup is pretty weak. i'll probally play monk/pugilist again.

They can definitely fight, they just suck at it, haha. I didn't get very far as the crafting classes but as a miner I was throwing rocks at stuff for like 1 damage.