Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Vorph_sl said:

Because they have jack for Mind and MP, and even Cure I takes 2 seconds to cast. If you try it while something is beating on you as a dps, you'll lose a lot more hp than you heal, and probably get interrupted anyway. It's only useful for out of combat healing unless you are a THM. That said, it only takes CNJ 2 to get it, so you might as well grab it just in case.

There's a 15% heal at PUG 8 on a 2 minute cooldown which is much more useful for physical dps.

Click to expand...

Yep, and you can only use it on the base classes. The "jobs" have a much more restrictive set of subclass skills. Currently, THM is the only other class who can fill in as a healer - at 35 it takes almost half my MP to cast Protect (scales with level, no ranks) and I don't even have enough to cast Raise.

That said, you can do a fair number of the leveling instances with sub-optimal groups. I've done a couple of the 15 dungeons and Ifrit with no healer and healed Halatali on CNJ with a Pugilist tanking.

Ut - you have a low threshold for bullshit and even though the guy in charge now has tried to make the game have as little as possible after the initial disaster of a release it still contains some of the Japan/S-E tunnel vision mentioned by Kruegen. Even without seeing if the game is finished (this is TBD but I'd lean towards a no) it's worth $22 to me but Phase 4 (we have one or two more weeks of Phase 3?) is supposed to be an Open Beta if you'd rather wait. It does look fantastic and runs very well.

Utnayan_sl said:

So, I have not been following this game at all. A while back I received a beta code, but it didn't work for whatever reason. Then I poked my head into the thread and see Sean playing an MMORPG again and posting about it. The graphical eye candy looks pretty amazing. How is the game thus far overall? And is it worth a GMG buy at 22 bucks?

Click to expand...

People have on rose-tinted glasses when it comes to anything new that isn't WoW. My honest opinion is it is a decent game but it has a lot of things that could go wrong. Let's not forget here that this game was a steaming pile of Vanguard right out of the gate. A lot of people are putting their full trust in SE's hands now, hoping for the best.

The questing system is equal to or worse than WoW. The beginning is filled with "Go talk to Xhjhf'jk Fhjks and bring him this bundle of poops". Seriously, the NPC's are named like that. The quests outdoors are more of the kill quests and some fedex quests. Obviously there is an over-arching storyline, and it's not bad. SE is great at telling a story, and if you played FFXI at all you'll know that they are masters at this. Whether or not they can strike gold twice with the story is to be seen.

Combat isn't bad. It's a mix of WoW and FFXI. You don't get a shit ton of abilities like EQ2 or WoW, but they at least give you an action bar this time around. It's slow-casting, hope for the best type of combat - much like FFXI - except it is a bit faster-paced and more solo-friendly. Instances are what you'd expect from WoW, albeit a little less inspired.

Crafting. I don't craft, but I wouldn't be surprised if they followed a more modern WoW approach. Crafting in FFXI was brutal as FUCK. Seriously, capitalized "fuck" for that. If you made it high enough you were a goddamn millionaire and people would suck you off while you were killing monsters and shit. Not sure they will do it the same.

Classes. We're being kept in the dark a little bit here. They sound cool, and we hope they'll add more.. but I can't help but feel like we're still going to be beta testing a game here. A lot of the cooler classes from FFXI aren't in this (NIN, DRK, SAM, etc), but some still sound cool. I'll be interested in seeing how the balance turns out.

Graphics. Nothing to say about this. Absolutely the best looking game of this generation hands down, and it runs really great. Someone at SE worked some black fucking magic on optimization and deserves a medal and seventy virgins to carry him home. Nothing looks bad. Some environments are a little uninspired, but they still look great.

Gameplay. Right now I'm leaning towards 6/10 overall myself. I'm still on the fence if I'll buy it, but I feel like I'm the minority here. It may be worth the $22 to try it out if they give you a free month, but if you can get into beta phase 4 you'll be able to decide rather quickly if you'll like it.

I'm still worried that after a month everyone is going to be content-starved. So we'll see. And this post is coming from an FF fanatic. Not Sean level fanatic, but right below him.

The only thing really keeping me from playing this game is that it has a very old 2? 2.5? second GCD with normal hotbar/tab target style combat that is very slow. The rest is easy enough to expect. The game runs smooth and is good looking, at least in the noob area.

Utnayan_sl said:

So, I have not been following this game at all. A while back I received a beta code, but it didn't work for whatever reason. Then I poked my head into the thread and see Sean playing an MMORPG again and posting about it. The graphical eye candy looks pretty amazing. How is the game thus far overall? And is it worth a GMG buy at 22 bucks?

Click to expand...

The game in a lot of ways is using old vanilla-WoW esque formulas, but the thing it does differently in a sense is it's level of polish. The game has an extreme level of polish that really hasn't been seen *since* vanilla WoW, and it's put into a world that a lot of people feel a connection to (as opposed to Rift-esque generic fantasy with no tie ins). On top of that, it throws in enough changes/improvements to the original WoW formula that the game as a whole feels newer than it otherwise would. Stuff like an extremely liberal open world travel system and automatic looting goes a long, long way in alleviating potential genre fatigue.

The best comparison I can make right now is that the game is almost like SWTOR with all of SWTOR's negatives removed. SWTOR had a shitty UI customization system, FFXIV's is state of the art. SWTOR had terrible performance, FFXIV has flawless performance (on all levels, including loading times). SWTOR bloated every quest with storyline cutscene stuff, whereas FFXIV saves it for the main story only and makes it more epic.

The end game situation remains to be seen however. Probably the biggest stumbling block the game could hit at this point.

edit: If you check your pms, i sent you something that gives you a better view of the game.

I preordered it, as I loved FFXI, and am actually enjoying an MMO for the first time in a long time. It really is enjoyable and relaxing to play. It's not a WoW killer, but I think it will be like FFXI where it will have its solid chunk of subs. The combat may not be the best out there, and the endgame may or may not be great out the gates, but it's something for me to play and enjoy and just explore and do the storyline, and level up multiple jobs, tradeskills, etc. Something for me to piddle around on in my free time, other than BF3. The world feels alive, unlike the static sterile worlds of SWToR, etc. The best way I can put it is if EQ was 1.0, FFXI was EQ 1.5, WoW was 2.0, then this game is like WoW 2.5. Like a mid-generation game until the next real next-gen MMO comes out (EQNext? Titan? Unsure?). I really do think that Yoshi P knows what it takes to make a good MMO from a players perspective as he was a super hardcore MMO player, and I find it unfathomable that he would take all this time and successfully turn around a trainwreck that FFXIV was before, and then make the same mistake as all the other MMO's that flopped, and ignore end-game. He has played like every US launched MMO worth playing, as a player/raider. Hes like the asian Tigole or Furor that isn't a Korean. And from what has been said, it sounds like we will be getting Behemoth's labrynth, Crystal Tower, and multiple primal fights (Ifrit, Garuda, Odin, Titan, etc) at launch. And if history is any indication, Yoshi P will listen to player feedback and get shit done ASAP if there are endgame/class problems, etc.

Best advice I can give ya, try it out in open beta, get past level 15 or so when the game really gets legs and gets out of the newbie quest bear ass stuff and you start grouping, and see what you think. Honestly for $22 bucks it's a steal, considering most MMO's come out 50-60 new and suck/are buggy as hell. Shit, most people buy new single player Final Fantasys for 60 bucks, and would jump on it in a heartbeat at $22 based on name alone, so what makes an MMO different. That shows they are more confident they can recoup 2x dev expenses, with monthly subs rather than box sales, because their game is good enough to keep subs. Basically if you enjoyed FFXI, you will probably enjoy this game.

Probably the best way I can put it is that for years everyone said all an MMO needed to do to be successful was to release with a similar level of polish that WoW released with. Then Rift came out. I got in the beta and played it to 20...and could not stand it. The game had no soul. I didn't care about the world. I didn't care about my character. I didn't care about any of the game mechanics.

Regardless, it appears it still did fairly well despite ultimately ending up in the f2p bin.

This game is polished AND has a soul. That's enough for me to overlook the GCD bullshit for a little while.

I dont mind the slower paced comabt with the GCD changes. Just wish I could actually play. Anyone got a beta code they might be able to toss my way?

tower_sl said:

Probably the best way I can put it is that for years everyone said all an MMO needed to do to be successful was to release with a similar level of polish that WoW released with. Then Rift came out. I got in the beta and played it to 20...and could not stand it. The game had no soul. I didn't care about the world. I didn't care about my character. I didn't care about any of the game mechanics.

Regardless, it appears it still did fairly well despite ultimately ending up in the f2p bin.

This game is polished AND has a soul. That's enough for me to overlook the GCD bullshit for a little while.

Click to expand...

This. Absolutely this. I remember trying to play Rift back when it came out, and I simply couldn't. It was generic and there was literally nothing in the game I gave a shit about. There's something to be said about the FF mythos and how it adds life to the game.

Thinking it over, I don't think it's just the FF Mythos either. FFXIV has hands down thebestsoundtrack for an MMO since original WoW. I think it's easy for people to overlook, but WoW really set a fantastic atmosphere with it's early zone themes. Music does wonders for hooking people into your game when they're not sure if they really like it or not.

I want to play this game but wish it was B2P.

As far as the tradeskills go, is it worth spending this coming weekend familiarizing myself with them, or will a guide pretty much cover everything I need without having to do it in beta?

Merrith_sl said:

As far as the tradeskills go, is it worth spending this coming weekend familiarizing myself with them, or will a guide pretty much cover everything I need without having to do it in beta?

Click to expand...

It's fed to you at a pretty slow pace. If you read the tooltips, crafting guild quest texts, and tutorial popups thoroughly, it explains it pretty well.

Fletch101_sl said:

It's fed to you at a pretty slow pace. If you read the tooltips, crafting guild quest texts, and tutorial popups thoroughly, it explains it pretty well.

Click to expand...

Thanks, pretty much the only thing I wanted to flesh out still. P4 can't come soon enough.

Preliminary crafting guide:http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=2482

I have never had a harder time, in any mmo, trying to decide which class/job I wanna level up first. They all pique my interest to varying degrees. I cannot even narrow down which role I wanna play. I tend to stick with dps, but healing in eq/eq2 was the most fun I have ever had in an mmo. Then there is a part of me that wants to take up tanking and try something newish (tanked on alts mostly succesfully).

Really dieing to get my THM to 30 so I can beta buff the various classed to 15 and get a better idea of my options but Sunday is my best time to play during the weekends.

Assuming we get a forum guild going I may just pick whatever is in the highest demand. Needless to say I am excited for this game.

StoiCynic the best and most innovative thing about both FFXI and FFXIV is the class system. Being able to switch jobs on the fly so you only need one character is the single greatest ideology a gaming company has come up with for MMOs. Truly surprised other companies don't use this.

Utnayan_sl said:

Thanks all for the great posts and advice. I think it looks like it should be worth checking out. Hell it's only $22.00 on GMG so it's worth a month. I did like FFXI until the only thing I was doing was killing crabs all day, so hopefully there is more variety in the mob structure. I agreed on Rift comments where it felt soulless, because that is exactly how I felt with that game. I didn't care about the world, there was no story, and about the only thing that I ended up liking was that there was so much to do and it was all accessible, but it seemed fruitless in the end because I could have really cared about being in the world to begin with.

Click to expand...

Well one thing to note then, is there is tons of mob variety in this game. I've probably counted 50 or so different kinds just from 1-20. I was even fighting cactuars at level 3. After 20 I'm sure some is reused, but I have also seen many higher level unique mobs just running around. Anyways, there is definitely is a very large variety, like WoW, totally not like FFXI in that regards.

I learned years later that the reason FFXI had like 10 mobs in the entire game was due to PS2 limitations. This one is still limited in a few areas due to the PS3 but it hides it much better.

Noodleface_sl said:

The questing system is equal to or worse than WoW. The beginning is filled with "Go talk to Xhjhf'jk Fhjks and bring him this bundle of poops". Seriously, the NPC's are named like that. The quests outdoors are more of the kill quests and some fedex quests. Obviously there is an over-arching storyline, and it's not bad. SE is great at telling a story, and if you played FFXI at all you'll know that they are masters at this. Whether or not they can strike gold twice with the story is to be seen.

Combat isn't bad. It's a mix of WoW and FFXI. You don't get a shit ton of abilities like EQ2 or WoW, but they at least give you an action bar this time around. It's slow-casting, hope for the best type of combat - much like FFXI - except it is a bit faster-paced and more solo-friendly. Instances are what you'd expect from WoW, albeit a little less inspired.

Crafting. I don't craft, but I wouldn't be surprised if they followed a more modern WoW approach. Crafting in FFXI was brutal as FUCK. Seriously, capitalized "fuck" for that. If you made it high enough you were a goddamn millionaire and people would suck you off while you were killing monsters and shit. Not sure they will do it the same.

Classes. We're being kept in the dark a little bit here. They sound cool, and we hope they'll add more.. but I can't help but feel like we're still going to be beta testing a game here. A lot of the cooler classes from FFXI aren't in this (NIN, DRK, SAM, etc), but some still sound cool. I'll be interested in seeing how the balance turns out.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't hold your breath for more classes. Remember that Summoner, Dragoon, Ninja and Samurai (What else am I missing) were additions in Rise of Kunark which was the first expansions.

We live in America, it was Rise of the Zilart! Just kidding.

I remember, and I would be pissed if I had to play FFXI with just BLM, WHM, MNK, WAR, THF, and RDM. Although, the 3 classes I had at 75 were all starting jobs (BLM, WHM, WAR).