Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Malkav_sl said:

Mainly Archer. Dabbled in Lancer/Glad with the lvl to 15 NPC. Gladiator was a bit better.

Don't know if I can state my complaints clearly with the NDA and shit.

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Yeah, I'm trying to be pretty vague. I think it's too soon to write the combat system off, it's more fun the higher you get and the more stuff you can use + using other classes abilities that you unlock. Plus the advanced class jobs should add a lot to it.

And Limit Breaks and multiplayer combos aren't in yet either.

This is going to destroy your diet Sean!

Lost Ranger_sl said:

This is going to destroy your diet Sean!

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Oh that's already destroyed. I've been really sick and falling apart.

Try to remember the combat of FFXI. It was extremely slow. This feels like an improvement upon it to me anyways. You melee classes should feel privileged that you have anything more than autoattack by now

This may be a repost, but if anyone wants to see what PS3 version will look like, here is a comparison video between PC and PS3. This is fairly early beta too still so I'm sure it will be optimized more before launch, but the PS3 version doesn't look too shabby really.

Heh, those PS3 videos are running at like 15-20 fps, tops.

Sean_sl said:

Heh, those PS3 videos are running at like 15-20 fps, tops.

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Any announcement on whether they plan to throttle the game's framerate across the platforms like they did with FFXI? 30FPS was pretty unforgiving in certain events with rooms full of people, voke bots, and JP latency advantages.

I refuse to believe the PS3 version is going to run like that.

I doubt they will cap the PC's frame rate, they haven't yet and the game looks great at high frame rates.

Grizzlebeard_sl said:

Any announcement on whether they plan to throttle the game's framerate across the platforms like they did with FFXI? 30FPS was pretty unforgiving in certain events with rooms full of people, voke bots, and JP latency advantages.

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The beta wasn't capped and there were options to leave it uncapped or cap it at 60 or 30.

Man, the PS3 version looks unplayable almost. Tons of lag in some of those areas. I don't care how much they try to "optimize" it, this game is going to fail hard when it comes to high activity events / crowds on the PS3.

Do I need to roll fisher in this game to fish? It was a starting job choice in vanilla, didn't see a way to train it in beta.

Hatorade_sl said:

Do I need to roll fisher in this game to fish? It was a starting job choice in vanilla, didn't see a way to train it in beta.

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Yes and I think the only disciple of land and disciple of hand skills you can pick up right now are carpentry, botany, and leather working.

Not trying to defend SE here, and I don't own a PS3 so it doesn't matter to me, but that video is 2 months old, and from what I've been told, SE made a lot of engine/fps improvements for PC between phase 1 and 2 which also happened in the last 2 months. And I would imagine SE could tone down PS3 view distance or whatnot to up the FPS too. Regardless I doubt they will leave that at such low fps. Raids would crawl. Real test will be in Phase 3 when PS3 users get to play too.

I'd say that you want the combat to have some gapping for a solo player, not like FFXI that was too much, but without gapping there is no group based chains that make organizational sense. Nothing personal, but being able to chat while playing is a nice feature for a game that has being social and cooperative as a goal. Having to hammer a 8 key rotation every time you want to fight anything in a group with no breaks is garbage for what I want out of an mmo. If you expect some kind of hardcore APM there are plenty of other genres of game to find that.

Part of what made grouping in XI so fun, was skill chaining, magic bursting, and organizing your 3-5 minute special skills to maximize success through xp chains. A completely isolated and frenetic combat system makes this impossible to do right if the benefit of the chains isn't absolutely massive. People will just begin to opt for skill spamming instead.

Controller option for PC play?

Fully supported, version 1.0 was unplayable without one.

Wall of text incoming, if it's too long I can edit and spoiler it.

Info can be kind of hard to find all in 1 spot on the internet so I am compiling a small list here. If they can pull all this stuff off, this game will be epic. Totally out of the left field. This is pretty much a totally new game, and Yoshi-P (the new lead dev) seems pretty enthusiastic about it and has played pretty much all MMO's ever released, and is really trying to take the best from all of them and spin them into the Final Fantasy world. Yeah most dev's talk bullshit, but it seems like we are getting an MMO made by a MMO player and enthusiast. I am hoping SE stockholders are keeping their hands out of it after the debacle that was 1.0. Hopefully they realize to just let the devs do their thing. Considering it was considered a failure, and this is a last ditch effort to redeem itself.

Here is a Non-NDA breaking compilation of info from these 2 vids and a few other public sources. This guy has tracked down tons of info from interviews, etc, and compiled them into these videos. Here is a summary of some highlights. Again all non NDA breaking info.

-PVP
4v4's, 8v8's, etc
Siege BG's
BG finder
Ability to spectate other players from their PoV for PVP (They are planning to copyright this, so assuming making a big deal out of competitive pvp?)
PVP Gear
Seperate PVP/PVE skillsets

-Combat
Combat supposedly gets much more advanced at 30+
Gradual increase in strategy
Will get longer cooldowns on higher level abilities
Will be limit breaks and group combo abilities
Will be debuffs, buffs, etc, and other non-damage abilities to balance into your rotation
Slower combat to allow for more party interaction/chat

-Housing
3 Sizes of houses
Guild and Personal houses
TONS of decorations, everything up to hottubs even
Can put raid bosses (ifrit's) head on your wall
Bonuses to your character like xp, crafting bonuses, etc, based on decorations
Can invite friends to houses
Can share houses
Can buy/sell houses
Instanced housing so it's not limited amount
Able to farm/garden outside your house?

-Raids
All 1.x raids, plus new 2+ new raids
Crystal tower, gauntlet type raid, with tons of levels with bosses every level, harder every floor
World bosses
World boss primals like Garuda, Ifrit, Titan, Leviathan, Odin, Shiva, Garland, Bahamut, Moogles, Ramuh, Fenrir, Cait Sith, etc
Some World Bosses are instanced?
Guilds can capture some primals and resummon them onto the world as bosses again(and unleash in pvp?)
Some capturable primals? (For Summoner class?)
16+ Dungeons at release including dungeon finder
FATE system kind of like Rifts/public quests

-Crafting
Crafter armor sets
Some rare recipes from raids

-UI
Modifiable UI, can move all windows around
UI just like your typical MMO, not console garbage
Can use a gamepad

-Classes
Plan to add new classes/jobs down the road, and possibly multiple job options/paths for a class
Producer said he would like to add thief, ninja, blue mage, red mage, dark knight, and samurai at some point
Class quest chain unique for every class

-Items
Tons of new items and armor sets
Can save items to "classes" so it doesn't take up all your bag slots
Materia system (like gem system in wow)
Players have elemental resistances, possible resist gear?

-Guilds
Guilds called free companies
Also can join multiple linkshells, these are like alliance/chat rooms for players to get invited to, can have more than one
Guild housing
Can customize your free companies crest
Fill a gauge? (Guild XP?)
Guild can summon raid bosses (and unleash in pvp?)

-Engine
All new graphics engine
New character creation
DX11 features coming
Ability to jump

-World
Entirely new handcrafted world, no copy/paste
Every zone is redone other than cities
Tons of new zones including snow areas
Holiday events and items
Mail System
Auction house

-Chocobos
Players can breed chocobos
Chocobos can be used as mounts and combat companions
Can level/spec and gear your chocobo with armor sets
Can make them healers, tanks, dps, etc
Vanity Chocobo items

-Misc
Magitech mounts
Can get credit for helping other people kill a mob
NM's (rares) spawn in the FATE system, and everyone that helps kill it gets a chance at loot (Similar to WoW LFR loot system)
Achievements
Vanity slots
Vanity pets
Gold Saucer (From FF7) coming after release. Will be a minigame/amusement park area with tons of stuff to do.
Reputations/ranks with each city called Grand Companies, with item rewards, etc