BFF Report - Final Fantasy XIV

[vazhkatsi]

hell, if you remember back in the wow beta(and still in the manual cause they haven't updated their manual since beta) there was a similar system of fatigue to discourage players from playing for too long. it was the rested xp system we have today, except that when you'd played for (in the devs opinion) too long, you would start being tired and only gain 50% xp, then you would get exhausted and only gain 25% xp. and i think it was account wide. however they realized what a terrible system it was and took it out in the release.

I think the big thing that bothers me is that the FF14 beta isn't a beta, its just a free preview of the game, they don't want your feedback, and they are only changing what they want to. its just a free demo for everyone so that people can play it and like it so they buy the game. unfortunately its turning out to be as bad as maplestory, just in 3d. and of course without the ability to jump.

[Tomehere321]

I think that is gonna be the main problem with this game. The designers have a vision of how everything is gonna be, and for some reason they let people beta test this, without even acknowledging the feedback.

This game is going to turn out to be crap. There are just so many things in this game that the mmo community hate.

Of course, when it comes out its going to be huge. But even the biggest fans of FF are not going to keep wasting their time and money on something that has so many issues for long. While these things may not seem like issues to them, they are big problems to the players.

Its really sad to me, because i was hoping for something that I could play instead of wow from time to time, and im a huge fan of FF. But this is just garbage. The combat is garbage, the questing is garbage, and the design of the game world itself is garbage. It looks a bit smoother then wow, but as has been said before, you cannot copy and paste things around in a game where you want to have people playing several times a week indefinity. It is just complete and absolute garbage. I mean, really, the main thing that this game had going for it, (the landscaping) is just recycled trash.

I hate to sound like an angry fanboy, but you know what, I am.

[Darksend]

http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=23473

that OTHER guy from zam who does MMO reviews, good alternate perspective in comparing the way NA views MMOS compared to the asian markets in regards to especially questing and about the evolution of MMOs in general. I especially liked this section:

Changing Perspectives

I noted earlier that Final Fantasy XI was a unique MMORPG in the industry, and if I were ever to expand on that, I think I would ultimately say that Final Fantasy XIV is, like its predecessor, a "lifestyle" MMORPG. What I mean by this is that it seems as though Square Enix has set out to create an MMO where players can simply exist and enjoy themselves freely. When it comes to North American MMORPGs, one mindset that players like to get into is to focus almost entirely upon grinding their way to endgame, where they can then get the best equipment possible and move on from there. In Final Fantasy XIV, however, it feels as though there is a great deal of emphasis being placed on the journey; with the hope that players will learn to integrate and immerse themselves into the game. Unfortunately, for players who don't want to take the time to really get into their server's community (sometimes it can get rather time consuming), they may be missing out on everything that FFXIV has to offer.

And before you start spouting fanboi fanboi, he gives his review an honest assessment of all the games flaws.

[Fatetaker]

Someone from SE registered to defend their horrible game?

Your tears haha, hey saw the next tier armor sets for cata. ROFL, wow Blizzard really went all out for the xpac...lol tears nom nom

Pretty much. All I read were pretty much the standard, blind fanboy argument.

I swear, there must be a FFXIV forum post somewhere that they all copypasta this from.

Did I hear subject less fanboi retort #2 nom nom nom. You can call similar experiences in game play copy pasta all you want, but all your doing is denying that there is now a launch title out setting the tone for the next gen MMOs. It's not perfect, it needs improvement but there hasn't been an MMO that is AAA content that has had a perfect launch. It's okay, I used to be blinded by my ignorance once too, I didn't clamor to WoW when it was first gaining popularity, I held out. More out of ignorance and spite that it defamed my precious vanilla EQ, it took over a year for me to finally realize I was being a over zealous fanboi. When I finally caved I got to enjoy what a next gen MMO of the time felt like, I will not blind myself again as I missed much of true experience due to my hubris.

I welcome the challenge of a new unpolished AAA title, I welcome the time table for fixes to some of its rough features. It offers all the current core amenities of any other AAA title with a few new amenities. If it fails to adapt there are other alternatives approach such as Tera. Fanboi argument is way overused....sigh

[Spiritus]

Unfortunately for FF14, a game that is supposedly built more around experience and lifestyle, fails at both. Communication between players in game is tedious. Terrain pathing is very limited. Combat is not fluid.

The only folks that will gain a positive "experience and lifestyle" perspectives are, in fact, true fans of the FF series. Again, nothing wrong with that, but to say the game is just "different" is overlooking huge design flaws.

[Kahmal]

Lol damn, I was expecting lousy review but jeez! Doesn't it normally take longer before official ones come out when it comes to MMOs? Some crap about it taking awhile for reviewers to get an established view on the game. I guess they ran out of patience.

[Viertel]

Your tears haha, hey saw the next tier armor sets for cata. ROFL, wow Blizzard really went all out for the xpac...lol tears nom nom



Did I hear subject less fanboi retort #2 nom nom nom. You can call similar experiences in game play copy pasta all you want, but all your doing is denying that there is now a launch title out setting the tone for the next gen MMOs. It's not perfect, it needs improvement but there hasn't been an MMO that is AAA content that has had a perfect launch. It's okay, I used to be blinded by my ignorance once too, I didn't clamor to WoW when it was first gaining popularity, I held out. More out of ignorance and spite that it defamed my precious vanilla EQ, it took over a year for me to finally realize I was being a over zealous fanboi. When I finally caved I got to enjoy what a next gen MMO of the time felt like, I will not blind myself again as I missed much of true experience due to my hubris.

I welcome the challenge of a new unpolished AAA title, I welcome the time table for fixes to some of its rough features. It offers all the current core amenities of any other AAA title with a few new amenities. If it fails to adapt there are other alternatives approach such as Tera. Fanboi argument is way overused....sigh

I'm assuming that gibberish is English, because I didn't get any sense in it. Instead, I'll just link this. It's a review (whether you like the site or not is irrelevant) from a gaming site that SE pays for advertising.

And it's probably one of the harshest I've seen in a long damn time.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/final...opslot;title;1

Hide your head in the sands and call people "FF haters" and "WoW fanbois" all you want. These are real problems, and not imaginary ones.

[Kazeyonoma]

lets keep the personal attacks and fanboy/anti-fanboy-ism out of this thread.

[Darksend]

While you are at it kaz, can you remind people that this was recorded at least 4-5 weeks probably in the 6-7week range before the game went live, and that even in the 2 weeks I was in open beta I saw huge changes, especially to the UI lag and player accuracy.

[Darksend]

I'm assuming that gibberish is English, because I didn't get any sense in it. Instead, I'll just link this. It's a review (whether you like the site or not is irrelevant) from a gaming site that SE pays for advertising.

And it's probably one of the harshest I've seen in a long damn time.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/final...opslot;title;1

Hide your head in the sands and call people "FF haters" and "WoW fanbois" all you want. These are real problems, and not imaginary ones.

something to remember: FFXI was so bad at launch, it did not come out in the US UNTIL THERE WAS ALREADY AN EXPANSION RELEASED IN JAPAN. That is how long SE took to get things right in its last MMO, and is probably the most successful MMO out there besides WoW. Right now, myself, and everyone I am playing with, understand this about SE. We realize we are paying to play the PS3 FFXIV beta. I plan on getting my main combat class to 50 and taking a break from it to level in Cata while SE gets there endgame content in (which will not be before the PS3 launch)

1) setting up your account is stupid, and I played FFXI for a year through playonline. The crysta method is a step back from playonline, which I would have thought was impossible.

2) having to log out to adjust the settings is only a problem once, because honestly once you set your settings how often are you going to change them, never.

3) The complaints about the lack of direction in the initial main quest are valid for an MMO, but as they pointed out, this is a story-driven MMO. In a single player RPG it is not uncommon to have a "go talk to 10 people around town and one of them will randomly tell you what to do" quest. Simply talking to the 3-4 npcs you spawn next to (which your journal tells you to do) will get you headed in the right direction. This shows me the reviewer was just trying to get things done as quickly as possible and probably skipped some of the cutscenes that tell you where to go next.

4) map complaints are somewhat legit. Using the keyboard to scroll is pretty lame but everything of interest is labeled rather clearly, be it with the guild icon, red dots for merchant allies, green arrows for zone changes, and yellow circles for quest objective areas.

5) I cannot understand how after running a console/computer based MMO for the past however many years, SE could not figure out how to have 2 versions of the game that are compatible, one with a computer interface and one with a controller interface. 2 things I find absolutely mind blowing, a) THE PS3 VERSION IS COMING OUT SECOND and it is the platform the game was designed for, if the computer version came out 6 months after the PS3 version because they wanted to completely redo the interface that makes sense, but not the other way around. b) most people playing on the PS3 will be using a keyboard instead of a controller anyway!!!!

That said everything in that paragraph under the blind chicks picture is 100% accurate, but is nothing you are not used to if you had played FFXI for any length of time, so it does not bother me (well maybe the crafting and selling items to vendors) because if you are a crafter and you go to someone's bazzar to repair an item for them, the repair screen only shows items used for repairs. That tells me that system is in the game to show only the items for x slot when you click on slot x, they just had bigger bugs to work out that would affect gameplay not just make it take slightly longer to equip something and they will get it in soon.

Why can't I just drag and drop my skills and spells into the quickslots I want them to fill?"

That on the other hand is completely unbelievable that the reviewer would ask that. Because of the class system, you can in theory have every single class to 50, and thus the game needs a system to limit which abilities you can use. Every ability has an AP cost associated with it and you are actually able to swap out abilities rather quickly once you get used to it.

6) merchants are all labeled on your map, but the lack of indication as to what each sells is legit. Fortunately almost everything from the vendors are so overpriced you really only use them for selling (other then the once in your guild hall which only sell profession specific mats)

7) pretty sure the market wards are being patched as I type this (since the server is down for maint) and the new ones are a lot better.

8) The game is balanced around leveling in 2-man groups it seems, which also means so is anima regen. I think they expect you to find a pocket healer or a DD carry in town, one of you port there, the other port back, and both be even by the end of the day. This really needs to be faster but walking is not as bad as they say. What is really annoying is that you get rooted in place when you browse someones bazzar so if you are in a hurry you cannot check the people walking past you.

9) lightning may be good, but the rain is TERRIBLE!

10) there is a reason no one goes to gridaina, narrow halls in MMOs just do not work!

11) leves are actually a terrible way to level up, you only do them for money.

12) tab targeting does target friends which is idiotic, and the not being able to click on people to heal them is not really a big deal because every spell in the game is AOE (which you can toggle the aoe on and off). Also there is an autofollow.

13) "FFXIV and FFXI are bad because they call guilds linkshells instead of guilds" SERIOUSLY?! /sigh

14)

Final Fantasy XIV is a notable entry to the genre but only for what it lacks. It lacks character; bare-bones quests and audiovisual repetition fail to instill a sense of fantasy wonder.

Quests in FFXI never provided EXP, they were used as a means of getting reputation with the various cities (and sometimes an item or gil). Something tells me we will see more quests when they work out some kind of reputation system.

It lacks cohesion; communication failures, economic oddities, and stringent limitations leave you constantly directionless.

this shows a serious problem with gamers mentality, unless they see a big shiny symbol over someones head, they will not talk to NPCs. AH, quest-givers, trainers, and repair/vendor; how often in wow do you talk to the people around dalaran who are just walking around to walk around and are never part of a quest and dont act as vendors. I said this before, with FFXIV, if you get lost on a quest TALK TO THE NPCS around you one of them will always tell you where to go.

As for communication failures, the reliance on the combat log means when fighting you cannot keep up with conversions in guild chat, and crafting/gathering mini-games cancel out your chat once you complete an action (barely enough time to type 3 words between actions). The later needs to be addressed, the first can be solved by letting us separate the 2 logs they already have in game in tabs.

p.s. I love the lack of an AH

And it lacks joy; the abysmal interface and boring monsters make it a struggle to stay invested.

I love the fact that every time I enter combat it is a struggle, you can fight 50+mobs in a row in wow and never needto stop for health or mana, that is no fun. I like having to use all my short cooldowns every fight and having to execute perfectly to win against green and up (blue mobs are weaker then green mobs). When every fight is an "OMG I MIGHT DIE I REALLY NEED TO FOCUS" moment, I find it extremely easy to stay invested. That said out of combat regen can be slightly faster (which it is while standing still which people do not seem to realize I have noticed).

The open-ended classes, the stunning graphics engine, the focus on story--these elements deserve rightful praise. It's a shame they weren't put to use in a game worthy of the Final Fantasy brand. Certainly, Final Fantasy XIV will improve as features are added, yet the failures go beyond the superficial. Updates may address a multitude of flaws, but "fun" is not a feature that can be added with a simple patch.

I beg to differ that "fun" cannot simply be patched in. Other then the terrain, there is NOTHING that cannot be patched in. We are playing the PS3 beta of FFXIV on computers right now, and once the PS3 launch happens, expect to see MASSIVE CHANGES. The difference between myself and those playing with me compared to the people bashing the games flaws is those people have no faith in SE as a company, where as I do and when the PS3 patch hits and completely changes the game I for one will be glad I already have a level 50 class.

BTW Viertel did you read the other review, the one from zam I linked earlier, you know, the guy who works for the same guys as fony? I would love to see a point by point review/counterpoint from someone of the zam review like I did for the gamespot one.

[Krenian]

Darksend, you need to realize something:

This game is not for everyone. There are some people who are going to be adamant about it being a great game and all, such as yourself.

And there are some people like Viertel that will be against the game because it doesn't fit their style.

Arguing about the game and how people view things and how biased people are is silly. Everyone will have opinions. Heck, just look at Fony and look at the guy you linked from Zam and read their interviews. You can see the difference and both work. It is all a matter of opinion when it comes to this game.

For me, I'm still actually playing the free 30 days and I found that if you play the game extremely casual, and just do your guildleves and do a bit of crafting and you don't go hellbent on the game...well it's not as unbearable as I first thought. I'm actually enjoying a real relaxed and laid back way of playing the game, playing only every two days to finish my guildleves and whatnot. Granted I'm not leveling very fast (Just hit rank 12 gladiator), but I'm enjoying myself.

This game definitely has it's flaws, and I will fully disagree with you: No AH, no Search option, is retarded. I'm not going to spend a half hour looking through each retainer to get an item. I've so far bought most of my gear through the npcs (I've spent nearly 150k gil because of that) and I'm not going to do anything else until they fix or implement some sort of search function; It's not worth the hassle. I play to play the game, not browse an NPC for items.

[Darksend]

no one uses the market wards, but people in my guild are 25+ crafting and are selling items for 300K through "/sh WTS". Part of it is people are to lazy in this game to walk from one town to another. So if the crafting guild for that profession is in that city, the items made by that profession sell for 1/3 of what they do in the other 3 cities. That is the biggest reason I am in favor of the lack of fast transit and AH, it was the same way in FFXI, each city had a vastly different economy. For example last night right before the server went down someone was selling canvases for 20K in /shout, within seconds 3 different weavers all said "go back to uldha they sell for 30K here in LL"

[Krenian]

You seem to forget that not everyone is privileged to having a bunch of crafters in their guild. I have a LS of four people. That's it. Some people also don't play as hardcore as you do and don't have as much time.

You, my friend, are seeing it from your eyes and being able to push as hard as you can. Some people don't have that luxury. And for those people, the Retainer system is a timesink that is very annoying and very silly. They need to fix the search option for a retainer system.

[Viertel]

And there are some people like Viertel that will be against the game because it doesn't fit their style.

I'm only against the game in its current state. If they were to just shove Tanaka off to a side-project that no one cares about (so he can't do any more damage) and clean up all of the moronic design decisions, I'd definitely try it out. I was really excited for it in the alpha phase as it looked really promising and even moreso when the battle shifted to stamina drain after the first phase of beta.

I'm tired of WoW, and was hoping that this would be a game that would at least give me a reason to spend more than a week on it. Right now, FFXIV isn't that game and is a disgrace to the genre for its massive amounts of stepping backwards in time in terms of features and functionality.

[Krenian]

I'm only against the game in its current state. If they were to just shove Tanaka off to a side-project that no one cares about (so he can't do any more damage) and clean up all of the moronic design decisions, I'd definitely try it out. I was really excited for it in the alpha phase as it looked really promising and even moreso when the battle shifted to stamina drain after the first phase of beta.

I'm tired of WoW, and was hoping that this would be a game that would at least give me a reason to spend more than a week on it. Right now, FFXIV isn't that game and is a disgrace to the genre for its massive amounts of stepping backwards in time in terms of features and functionality.

I think we can all agree on the fact that the game was hyped up and we all hoped that they learned things from FF11 that they wouldn't repeat. It just seems to me that they are trying something completely different but screwing up STILL on the fundamentals of a good MMO. But again, a good mmo is in the eye of the beholder and an opinion held by a player.

Trust me, I so wanted this game to be the next game I can shove WoW aside for. Unfortunately it's not polished and refined enough for that. I'll play on my offtimes but it's going to be very hard for me to resign for another month of payments if they really don't do anything. I'll catch up to it when the PS3 releases and maybe it'll have gotten better. Or I just might bite the bullet and just play very casually.

Right now however, Cataclysm is seemingly an option that I will have to choose instead.

[Darksend]

party SP has finally been fixed!!!!! which thankfully makes it impossible to level solo, which is the best thing they could have done for the game. It is amazing how much more fun the game got with this one simple change. We were grinding level 25ish mobs with me 25, a 24 healer, an 18 pug and a 16 marauder, and we were all getting 150-200 SP per kill. It was such a change of pace that it felt like a completely different game.

I cannot stress how strongly this change is going to impact leveling.

[Viertel]

I think we can all agree on the fact that the game was hyped up and we all hoped that they learned things from FF11 that they wouldn't repeat.

The biggest problem with that is Tanaka. He has admitted himself that he's never bothered to play any other MMO aside from FFXI and doesn't want to. He'll kill their own game because he's never looked to see what the other games have to offer beyond FFXI that players enjoy. A lot of people thought it was arrogance when he stated "We've learned nothing from World of Warcraft or other MMOs." when he was stating the truth: they've learned nothing because they never bothered to TRY to see what other companies -- their competitors -- are offering.

Consequently, it's also why FFXI's own playerbase is getting happier now that they've gotten a new game director and staff. Unlike Tanaka, who never listened to players, the new team listened about the problems of leveling with certain classes and came up with a brilliant solution -- level in a small group, full group, or 'raid' and you all get the same amount per kill. Larger groups can kill faster for more experience, but now everyone can level on easier monsters for enjoyment. They released a set of gear per level cap increase that helps to bridge the gap between the old 'endgame gear' and new players, so people are on equal footing again.

Honestly, Tanaka being removed from FFXI is the best decision for the game in terms of keeping players (and subscriptions) happy.

The biggest problem with the game, though, was faulty priorities. Put simply, they spent too much damn time working on the graphical engine. They spent way too much time -- years -- working on Crystal Tools for this generation of games. It's still not that great, is horribly inefficient, but they wanted to use it so that they can do whatever the hell they want with it. They designed it for the PS2 platform and then scrapped it and started over once they realized that it wasn't worth time pursuing such a venture as the PS3 was around the corner. Now they're scrambling for time, time they don't have anymore, for FFXIV after the volatile reaction towards the content-less filled FFXIII and the sad launch status of the next entry.

If FFXIV was truly in development for those five years, I'm pretty damn sure that four of them was just working on the engine. Obvious reasons aside, I can't logically think of anything else that would explain how terrible the state of the game currently is (aside from Tanaka's ego and lack of reality check/market awareness). If they really took five years to make what you have now on retail then we're in an even worse situation; think of how much longer it'll take to get the game into a workable, universally enjoyable state if it took them this long to get to what we have now?

Management is to blame heavily for the state of the game (as well as marketing for pushing such a release date with too little testing time). Depending on who gave the order, some of the blame also falls to the development team for spending so much time on Crystal Tools and even moreso if designing the engine was their idea alone.

It's a modern Diakatana.

party SP has finally been fixed!!!!! which thankfully makes it impossible to level solo, which is the best thing they could have done for the game.

No, that isn't a good thing at all. This is 2010, where there are more casual gamers than 'hardcore'. Not everyone wants to do every single thing in a group. A lot of people play MMOs for the social aspects that come along and not necessarily because they're forced to go to the bathroom in groups of people.

Rendering solo leveling virtually impossible will kill the game. To think otherwise in this day and age is foolish.

[Krenian]

party SP has finally been fixed!!!!! which thankfully makes it impossible to level solo, which is the best thing they could have done for the game. It is amazing how much more fun the game got with this one simple change. We were grinding level 25ish mobs with me 25, a 24 healer, an 18 pug and a 16 marauder, and we were all getting 150-200 SP per kill. It was such a change of pace that it felt like a completely different game.

I cannot stress how strongly this change is going to impact leveling.

If they killed solo grinding, they have officially alienated me from the game. The only reason I was playing was to enjoy what time I had and not have to deal with people going "LAWL GLAD DEEPS! PUT SHIELDZ ON N00B!". I rather not go through that and just play the way I wanna play. Which Gladiators are fully capable of being good DPS.

I'm not at home so I will see and evaluate when I get back home and do my guildleves but if they made it impossible to solo, I'll be very very annoyed.