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:

Just signed up, selected PC and Tr3y. Game looks pretty fun, and worst case scenario I can just play PSO 2. I know that game is awesome haha.

I signed up for the beta as well for the PC.

Ditto, on both.

i signed up ps3 and pc.

godamit.

can't believe you let him sucker you guys like that.

So how is it?

the beta doesnt start till feb.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/60542

FFXIV 2.0 Beta starts Feb 25th. I'm not sure if invites have been mailed out yet, though. Did anyone get something in their inbox for it?



Is this a lady galka? Lookit them bigass tittyballs.

The director's update says they've added open-participation type quests (in game they're called FATE quests) kind of like Guild Wars 2 where shit just "happens" in the world and anyone in the vicinity can join in and is rewarded for participating. Events like that were one of my favorite parts of GW2, glad to see something similar making its way to FFXIV.

I think that's a Highlander female. Also unless you had a minimum of 3 months paid subscription, you likely won't get in until the 3rd phase of beta testing, or if lucky phase 2, which would be April or so.

I just signed up for this the other day and thought I'd come see if anyone here was planning on checking it out or possibly playing once it's released. WoW is getting old and haven't been able to find anything else that interests me. I've been waiting for elder scrolls online, but now I'm more interested to see what happens with this (my daughter is too).

I'll be playing it when it drops, since godamn Crushinator has bamboozled everyone else here into playing it. Just ordered my new laptop online about two weeks ago, should be here by the end of the month. At the very least It'll be good to get back into Starcraft again, and I might give JP PSO2 a try.

To be fair to Crushinator, I did get in the alpha before him and was bamboozled by Square directly.

I can't blame anyone here since I haven't been around. I Actually had an urge to play ffxi again, but all my account info is gone; lost it years ago. I signed up for a free trial for the hell of it; Alyssa (daughter) wanted something other than WoW to mess around with. She's completely lost because she's so used to the user friendly UI of WoW. While I was doing that I came across ffxiv - a realm reborn. Though I dont even know if my computer will be able to run it. My laptop is acting kind of sluggish lately. Probably gonna need to have it looked at and see if it's worth upgrading; don't know if it can handle anything new.

I dont have the link handy since I typing from my phone, but go to massively.joystiq.com and scroll down to yesterday's news and there is a ffxiv article with a link to the benchmark test that should help you out. On another note, I got an emal from SE this morning


Edit- Opps it was a Kotaku article, but here's the direct link FFXIV Benchmark

I got a beta invite mail as well, so expect more pirate EULA breaking streams on my twitch channel!

Perhaps a thread in the ops forum, to avoid any NDA entanglements as well.

Thanks!

I got in too. I did the benchmark last night. . . I am officially on the hype train!

From the producer letters, it sounds like the phase one beta will be more or less the same as the alpha content (Gridania), but with all the races/classes (I think) available and no level cap. As the phases progress the other regions will become available.

Dammit, where's my email? :|

Spam folder?

But seriously if you are expecting one from being a legacy user or alpha tester, I saw reports (on the FFXIV forums) that Comcast was auto blocking email from Square flagging it as spam.

I didn't get an email either, I think it's because I didn't do the survey haha. My brother got in though, so there's that at least. The Benchmark got me pretty hype for the game honestly, so I'm eager to try it out!

i didnt get an invite either :(
but heres my benchmark results

1280x720? What is this, 2006?
I only got about 2500 score under 1920x1080, all settings maxed. Which according to the benchmark is "fairly high".

On the bright side I'm glad to see the graphics engine is way more optimized then v1.0 and the spells and special effects looked impressive.
Still... needs more subsurface scattering.

I signed up twice but forgot to do the survey on one email account. Looks like they were giving priority to legacy and alpha folks. I saw somewhere that everyone else that didn't fall under those categories has to wait until phase 3.

its because my monitor went kapoof. so im using a hdtv i had laying around until i repplace it. i does support 1080p but that made the text in pso 2 to small to read so i went to 720p

Hey if you have extra TVs just hanging around, how about you share the wealth?

I use an old HDTV for my PC. Works great!

Hell, even my samsung monitor is a hdtv too.

I got no email.

Fuck this game...

Tried using the benchmark....wont run. Keeps giving me a message that there's a file missing

Make sure to extract all files and sub folders to the same folder along with the .exe. if it says what file is missing you can try to google it.

It was a directX issue, was missing a dll file so I just reinstalled directX. Ran it on 1280x720 Medium and got a score of 3163 (fairly high), so it would be default settings for me. That leaves me hopeful though that I can at least play the game. This laptop is 5 years old anyway, already assumed it would be default settings; if anything.

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.

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.

You can get the first killing quests right away if you want and skip the ones in the town or if you wish forgo all the quests and just grind. The only important quests are the story ones for the city and your current's class's guild which have their own icon (fancy border around the !). I don't see how options are a turn off, but to each their own.

Yeah I am sure you can. But that is knowledge a new player does not have yet. A new player is collecting all the quests they see and doing them. Saying you can skip this and that because this and that is important is knowledge you have once you have played through multiple times already. The point of the introduction is to guide/teach new players the systems to play the game and hook them. The hook to nearly all MMO's is to get out into the world and kill things. That is fun or not based on combat/class mechanics and quests. Additional hooks are gathering and crafting things. That's the gameplay of MMORPGs.

Just like with v1.0, I know what new players expect. But if you have the mindset of a veteran, someone that has ton of experience playing the beta, or even a fan that was going play regardless, you ignore and overlook the flaws because you know where everything is. That's what happened with the developers on v1.0, they designed the game so "it must be fine" because they already have knowledge of the game. They selectively listened to feedback that praised the game by the folks that were fine with the game as is. While the rest of us who were pointing out the flaws got ignored and the game ended up being shit.

All that was required was stepping out the "all knowing" bubble and see the game through the eyes of a new player. That would of seen that v1.0 was a mess long before alpha and beta.


With that said the introduction has pacing problems. It's like the first thing that jumped out at me while playing through it.


How is a new player suppose to know they what they can skip, when in MMOs you get quest for an area and complete the chain until gives you quest to go to a new area? The quest flow in this game is the same as WoW. And that's a flow most people coming into this game will be used to. You get the kill quest, but there is more "!" on my map in town to do.

Seriously, typical new players don't skip quests that are marked on the map like that unless the conveyance and quest flow is shit (like warps you or leads to a very far off area). Whatever your opinions on WoW are, they have trained MMO players to talk to NPCs with "!" to accept quests. The fact the quest have level ranges further incentives the urgency to "get these done" in your quest log as they are near by on the map.

I never said options are a turn off. They I said Guild Wars 2 does this because because you have options and I will add it's clear from the start you can do whatever you want.

New players are not going to understand the symbols right away. They will see "turn-ins" and new quests "!" marked on their map and will inclined to do them.


I want this game to be good for new players, WoW players, Guild Wars 2 players, FFXI players, and anybody else. I am focused on the town introduction right now because everything else I played is good for the most part. That introduction is suppose to hook players. And I just don't see it happening with the current pacing. If WoW has issues hooking 70% of new players with it's pacing. What is this game going to do with it's much slower pacing? You know even Guild Wars 2 answer was to make a faster paced intro than WoW and they don't have the subscription model hanging over their heads.

Understand I am not speaking from a die hard fan perspective. A die hard will have knowledge of where the meat of the game is either through playing beta, or researching via forums and guides. They will know where the fun is and how to get to it quickly. But for a new player they are clueless as to where the game will take them next, and usually assume all starting quests are important to progression. So "you can skip it," when clearly it's there to lead new players, is not a fix.


Edit: I get the impression you think by me bringing up these issues I am asking for help or advice. Not the case, since I thoroughly go through everything and test multiple times with the time I have. The idea is to point out good points and flaws and find bugs. I never said I had issues finding the skip cutscene button or press ESC twice to get the dialogue box to skip; which by the way was bugged on some cutscenes. Again I test this content multiple times, going through watching all cutscenes, skipping cutscenes, and skipping some and not others to see if there is any weirdness. To get a feel what it's trying to convey to the player. That's how you test. Just noting that particular chunk of content is slow and needs to direct you into combat faster.

I'm ready I guess.

Are you posting this same feedback on the Beta forums? I know you want to make your point clear to Knightsword but its probably better served on the official forums.

I do agree that you should be "up and killing shit" within a few minutes of starting, I felt like this was a problem with the alpha too. You get all these in-town quests and it took me a good 30+ minutes to even figure out where the gate was to get outside and fight stuff. I think the ideal setting is starting you OUTSIDE the town and you have to fight your way "in" while being tutorialized, then the game can branch from there.

I agree with Crush about how a game should handle a starting Zone.

Ergo...

Fuck this game

My issue is every mmo starts off with combat, and frankly 6 of this then kill 6 of that right off the bat makes me think that they spent no time with world building and fleshing the npc's. FFXI was bad at this as that was the only way to gain anything was through combat, and even WoW quest's are little more then a text box that gets ignored for more killing. If a player can't make up their own mind and ignore the ! and turn around and walk out the gate. That's on the player, not the game. The diablo method of rpg's can be just as boring to people as classic rpg questing is to you guys.

Honestly, what else is there though? It's still "travel from point A to point B and slaughter x number of whateverine or bring back y number of whateverine penises" no matter how you gussy it up.

Well, at least I got into Phase 2. It apparently starts this weekend. Um... ballin?

Nice, we can all be man-cats together! Are they rolling out the PS3 version this weekend too?

Naw, next the next phase is for the Tr3y. If I get the opportunity to test both platforms, I definitely will haha.

Got my email for beta test this morning, yay!

Holy shit! I love it, and the homage to FF6's opening is fantastic.