You've only got a few more days to explore, grind, and die.
Final Fantasy XIV's open beta is nearly over. Square Enix has announced that the beta will end on September 19, a whopping three days before collector's edition owners get their official pre-release head start on those who plan to buy and play the game the old-fashioned way on its official launch date of September 30.
You can still register for the aforementioned beta on the same official webspace that alerted us last week to critical bugs that caused the open beta's original launch date delay. If you get in, keep in mind that you only have six more days to test the full game before it ends, so dodo-grinding should probably take a backseat to exploration and experimentation.
Massively, in its report about the beta's end date, notes that Square Enix has been keeping pace with user complaints to some degree throughout this beta period, releasing a stream of patches to fix what is found to be broken. It's doubtful, but as a result of this support, we might finally see a clean MMO launch. Might.
Have you been checking out the the beta? Any impressions you'd like to share? Has it convinced any of you to purchase the full game or cancel a pre-order?
Watching the opening movie convinced me to play Final Fantasy XIV. Looking at the price of a computer that could really actually play XIV made me decide not to.
From the videos I've watched, the combat looks slow, chunky, and boring. I don't care for how the japs can turn something simple into such a complicated mess.
I was able to play this game for about an hour before I could not take it. I am not sure if it was a fault of it or mine, but I don't think this will be an MMO I get into.
It's tough, they desperately need some of the WoW crowd to take a look (and get hooked before Cataclysm) just for the sheer financial benefit and to recoup dev costs. However, it still has to feel enough like "good" Final Fantasy to appeal to their main fan base. So the interface is dumbed-down but the gameplay, mechanics, characters and story still as obtuse and archaic as the PS games.
I want a game that is challenging but that at least rewards me for the effort. I don't want to be penalised for playing how I want to. Unless people start coming back with some good experiences, I'll wait until Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR.
If you are an ATI user you need to upgrade to the newest ATI drivers for the game to be stable.
Proper in-game explainations and tutorials to help completely new players are very needed in this game. NPCs are not marked, that is to say, a vendor is not marked with (Armor Vendor) beneath its name - which could be rather helpful. And the UI is completely stuck in the gamepad system, which should be a no-no for a keyboard and mouse PC MMO. To me it seems that they did not have design manager that realised that.
" I can't believe no one is talking about how you can only play the game for like 8 hours a week, then they castrate your character with a culminative XP penalty until you just stop earning XP. That's all I have heard about this game. Oh, and them apparently copy and pasting parts of the game over and over again. Assuming where I read those things was telling the truth, I don't know why anyone would want to buy this game. "
So you visit Sankaku Complex too? XD But what I heard is that there are two "types" of leveling up, and the other one, the most important to keep the flow of the game, does not have any restrictions. But I didn't play it yet. It's installing right now, it's been installing for the last 20 minutes. Seriously. 20 minutes and it's at 65%. WTF. "
I believe you and everyone else should watch this video about the "Fatigue System" to get an In-depth look of this innovative mechanic.
Apart from the horrible issues of the beta, which may or may not be fixed, the game seems decent enough. Needs more tutorials though, though i guess it's much better than EVE, not that that says much.
Hopefully their servers can handle the load at launch. Beta servers were absolute crap.
@crusader8463: This deserves clarification, because it's been repeated in many places and it's not 100% accurate.
As you continue to play the same class, you start to suffer XP penalties after 8 hours as the same class, this is true. The penalties slowly increase as you spend more time past that 8 hour threshold. However, as soon as you switch to a different class, this penalty starts to decrease for the class you were levelling. This means if you start to do crafting (which is a different 'class') or even gathering (another 'class') your penalty for that Disciple of War class you've been levelling will immediately start to decrease. With how easy it is to switch classes (change weapons) the penalty should rarely ever be an issue, unless you engage in a really epic grind session with one class.
The '8 hours per week' rumour is just because there is a hard set timer that resets every week. At the end of the week, no matter how much fatigue you have developed on your classes, it all resets back to 0.
But as long as you are playing the game by multiclassing at least a couple of classes, you will rarely if ever experience the penalty. Which you should be doing, because you will actually be more gimped as a character if you focus on one class to the exclusion of others.
It's an admittedly a slightly odd way to encourage multi-classing, but otherwise people would probably complain that their class is weak, because they are only focusing on one class from level 1 to cap. Played properly, you should never encounter the penalty, or at least not in any significant form.
ATI user here and the performance is fine for me. I have every setting at max except for depth of field and ambient occlusion which are turned off and my frame rate is smooth.
No matter what you think of the game, playing it with a controller will make it twice as good. Menu clunkyness goes away, movement is better (combat takes a small time to get used to on the controller, but since you are limited to how much can be on your bars it ends up working decently). So get that 360 or PS3 controller first.
Beside the controls, this game seems to have a steeeeeeep learning curve. Almost no guidance on the multi-class system (which seems to be the core feature of this game), hard to find merchants who sell the items you need to change classes, forming parties takes way more effort than it should, and macros...ugh the macros.
For those that don't know, when you change classes it resets your action bar. There is no reason the game couldn't remember that. So you are forced to create a swap macro for each class type to include actions and what equipment to wear.
It is unfortunate, because I think underneath the clunky UI, lack of tutorials, and seemingly no instructions there looks to be a pretty nice FF MMO. This is one I will take another look at some time next year to see how it has progressed. But hey, at least there isn't a server swap ticket system!
" But I think fans of Final Fantasy will like this game. The story aspects of the game are great. But once you get to the end game there might not be much reason to keep playing. "
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Being a big FF fan myself (including having played XI for two years +), I can safely say this game does not scratch that FF itch like others in the franchise do.
I'm sure there will be some fans who do enjoy it -- those with the ability to overlook the plethora of flaws this game suffers from at the moment, for example. But I don't think the name alone will keep most interested.
I did enjoy the cutscenes I got to see while playing the beta; they actually made me feel like an important character and not just some tag along that goes and does fetch quests for every NPC around. But unfortunately that wasn't enough for the lack of early game guidance, the horrendous menu system, the clunky combat (and yes I used a 360 controller which has it's own issues, eg. targetting or having to put it down ever 10 seconds to type to people in LS or party), or the strange questing system (if you fail you can't try again for 24 hours or something? It never did explain that. And if you do it in a group only the person who started gets credit even if everyone has the quest...?)
I really wanted to like this game. A group of us Final Fantasy nuts were excited to jump in together and were dying for the chance at the beta since April or so. None of us got the chance to play till the open beta and it really is too bad that none of us enjoyed it. Maybe some of the issues will be fixed by the PS3 release, but I'm not holding my breath.
@NeoGamer: Heh, ya. That has been the only site that I have even heard acknowledge the game exists. Hearing that, combined with playing the first one for a month and hating every second of it, just can't get me interested in this game. Judging from the posts below it's not very good ether.
" I can't believe no one is talking about how you can only play the game for like 8 hours a week, then they castrate your character with a culminative XP penalty until you just stop earning XP. That's all I have heard about this game. Oh, and them apparently copy and pasting parts of the game over and over again. Assuming where I read those things was telling the truth, I don't know why anyone would want to buy this game. "
So you visit Sankaku Complex too? XD But what I heard is that there are two "types" of leveling up, and the other one, the most important to keep the flow of the game, does not have any restrictions. But I didn't play it yet. It's installing right now, it's been installing for the last 20 minutes. Seriously. 20 minutes and it's at 65%. WTF.
I can't believe no one is talking about how you can only play the game for like 8 hours a week, then they castrate your character with a culminative XP penalty until you just stop earning XP. That's all I have heard about this game. Oh, and them apparently copy and pasting parts of the game over and over again.
Assuming where I read those things was telling the truth, I don't know why anyone would want to buy this game.
I've played the beta a little, and watched and learned from my brother playing the beta a lot. I played FF11 for a few years and really enjoyed it. It was a very "hardcore" MMO. Then I went on the play WOW on and off for almost 5 years now. I can safely say that FF14 will not appeal to players looking for a WOW experience. But I for one am glad of it. A change of pace is just what the doctor ordered.
I can see this game having a smaller, close knit and more mature community. The interface for the game is nothing like WOW and will probably turn off a lot of people. But I think fans of Final Fantasy will like this game. The story aspects of the game are great. But once you get to the end game there might not be much reason to keep playing.
Yeah. As a former FFXI player, this beta has way too many issues right now. After being so perplexed by the ridiculously complicated UI, I reactivated a WoW trial and was shocked at how playable it was in comparison.
It's a pity, because if SE had paid attention to any of the gameplay advancements made in the MMO genre in the last seven years, this coulda been awesome. Instead, they've managed to raise the barrier to entry even higher and alienate potential players, myself included.
Beta was bad. Performance,design and everything was just out of date and under developed. Some things I like,like the cut scenes but the way the story is presented to you and the quest along with the steep difficulty curve make this I giant no.
This game is pretty atrocious, and I say that as a fan of both Final Fantasy XI as well as the current generation of post- World of Warcraft massively multiplayer titles. They could not have been more wrong about what people consider to be "fun" in this type of game, and I have little doubt that some people's jobs are going to be on the line once the three-month-onward subscription numbers come out.
The reviews for this game won't be pretty. The game is def. NOT a step up from the current MMO's available or coming out. It caters to its crowd and doesn't venture far from that. It has a lot of good from my beta experience, enough so that I will get the CE edition and play the game for a good long while, but it is a technical mess in so many ways.
From user interface problems, to a LOT of missing explanations, and a VERY steep hurdle to get over when you start it just won't be reaching the same accessibility and popularity as WoW or even its predecessor FFXI did. There's a chance though that when the PS3 version launches many issues that will hamper this game now will be addressed, and it's at that point the game will be worth looking at for a mass appeal. Right now it's just going to leave a lot of people disappointed.
From what I've played it's been pretty broken so far. Most times when I attack a mob the connection rate drops to 0, and since you have to hit the attack button every time to attack, you sit there while it murders you. Any time that I actually manage to kill something, the connection fails altogether and I get booted (note, it's not my internet.)
This was incredibly broken and clunky even for a beta. I won't be wasting any more time on it until there have been massive improvements to UI and optimization, among other things.
@ShadowSkill11: They may be outdated, but the UI suits console controller perfectly. I'm using Xbox360 controller on this game, and it's working like a champ. I'd argue that the designers built the UI with console users in mind from the beginning.
And I haven't had any problem with questing (or...levequesting..?) due to lack of mobs. It always displays more than one spots to do quests, and has high rate of spawning. But it seems like mobs are universally semi-aggressive...? Seems to get attacked whenever I'm just standing around near a mob.
I'm considering getting this game and at least play through the main quest storyline. Feel like it's a lot like normal FF games, complete with cut scenes and quirky acting, voice acting, and everything. lol
In contrast to most of the opinions here.. I love this freakin game. I've played for quite a few days so far and am loving almost every minute of it.
Yeah the menus are slow to deal with and the game has its problems, but I'm sure those will be ironed out soon enough. I use to crash frequently in the game and now I might crash once the entire time I'm on. The game itself is the most addictive MMO experience I've played.. the people in my linkshell aka guild are really friendly and we've been learning a ton about the game.
If you're into MMORPGs.. definitely give this one a shot. Remember though, that you'll have a to have a pretty decent rig to run it. I'm running a Core 2 Duo 3 GHz with 4GB RAM and a geforce 9800 GTX+ and I'm able to run it smoothly at fairly low settings.
I was semi-excited to play this game but after playing the beta for a few hours I think I actually hate it now. The major offender is the clunky, outdated, in-efficient interface. Hunting in starter areas is next to impossible due to the lack of MOBS that haven't been engaged by other players... etc. After playing other MMO's at PAX Prime I think I am sold on Guild Wars 2 and The Old Republic. Sigh... I really wanted to like FF11 but it just sucks ass.
As someone who played FFXI for a year and half, then moved on to WoW, I was super excited for this. But after pumping at least 10 hours into the beta I can safely say I never want to play this game again. As amazing as the character animations and cutscene integration is, the interface and menus are proportionately abysmal. I didn't think it could get more clunky than FFXI, but having to open up the main menu and click a tiny button in order to interact with ANYTHING in the environment is just... what? How do you design a game like that today?
I know it's a beta, so I won't fault the combat for being unresponsive and the action bar for randomly clearing all my buttons. But when I realized I had to go through at least 3 different menu systems and 10 confirmation screens to craft goddamn orange juice, I knew this game wasn't for me. I'll be trying out Vindictus on the 15th, instead.
I chuckled at the "keeping pace with user complaints" part. Wouldn't recommend anyone pick this up day one, I'm giving the game six months and checking on it again when the PS3 version releases. If the client they put into open beta is any indication, the retail release is really looking like open beta round two.
Eh. My wife and I tried to get in, got in, but then found out the 12 GB download wasn't going to fit into my windows partian and it wouldnt' let me install to my gaming external firewire drive like everything else so I passed. Her computer didn't have Service pack 3 and with that one hiccup she gave up. :p
So yeah. No go for me. Waiting on Terra or Vindictus I suppose. Playing World of Tanks for now and loving it!
Well, I would say so far, that FF14 is better than Aion was at this same stage in life... and I see it progressively getting better at a rate faster than Aion did. So, that's at least something. It's not going to compare or compete with WoW, but I don't think anyone ever expected that. I'm still on the fence over whether I want to play it when it goes live. I would probably be dropping my Ragnarok online subscription if i did play FF14. So that's where I'm at, gotta decide if I like it more than RO.
" It's slow, obtuse, and for the visual fidelity it provides, it runs like garbage. I'm not sure how much of that can be fixed before release, or ever. "
not to mention it lacks any sense of community that 11 had. might be because everyone constantly crashes out of game every 15 minutes.
I really wanted to check this out, and I played it for a few hours, but with all the issues I was having with performance (yet another Nvidia user with shit FPS) I fell away from it.
There was another update for it, but since Square decided to go with torrents and to distribute it, I didn't want to deal with the hassle of waiting two days for the damn thing to download.
So sad, because it looks like it could be a cool game if that's your sort of thing.
If anything at least I can get that hard drive space back.
Final Fantasy XIV's open beta is nearly over. Square Enix has announced that the beta will end on September 19, a whopping three days before collector's edition owners get their official pre-release head start on those who plan to buy and play the game the old-fashioned way on its official launch date of September 30.
You can still register for the aforementioned beta on the same official webspace that alerted us last week to critical bugs that caused the open beta's original launch date delay. If you get in, keep in mind that you only have six more days to test the full game before it ends, so dodo-grinding should probably take a backseat to exploration and experimentation.
Massively, in its report about the beta's end date, notes that Square Enix has been keeping pace with user complaints to some degree throughout this beta period, releasing a stream of patches to fix what is found to be broken. It's doubtful, but as a result of this support, we might finally see a clean MMO launch. Might.
Have you been checking out the the beta? Any impressions you'd like to share? Has it convinced any of you to purchase the full game or cancel a pre-order?
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