I can't wait until someone finally gets the brilliant idea to create an MMORPG that rewards players for exploration and skill instead of clicking your mouse button a million times and collecting x amount of items.
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So, a friend and I have rolled up characters on Wutai. We are just duoing, putzing about and such at the moment. He is Bohyun Frost and I am Pymello Pontouf - though I seriously regret not going with Wise Baby. Seek me out, if for no other reason than to bask in the light of my mustache.
We are in Gridania and I'm not sure if this was a good choice. I was originally thinking GLA/MIN/BSM&ARM so I could make my own stuff, but then I couldn't find a goddamned bone chip to make a bronze gladius and swapped to LNC/CRP, and was at least able to make a bronze spear. Still unsure what support the guilds are providing me, if any - can I get recipes anywhere other than Leves and google? Feels like the CRP guild should help with that somehow.
I'm ultimately running into the same problem again with progression though - out of area components and no economy to speak of. Am I missing something or should it be impossible for me to craft basic weapons? Similarly: what should I be wearing? Even googling through some ARM and LTW recipes I haven't seen anything for LNC 13 better than the starter crap I've got plus sundry bits I've sprung for.
Finally: is Conjuror busted good? My friend seems to trade little survivability for excellent damage compared to me. It's early enough that I can still swap to w/e, or even reroll as Wise Baby.
e~ Also, I died on the L13 quest where you have to fight the spirit thing (when Khrimm does the thing) and Apo-apsi or w/e is gone so I can't re-attempt... will he eventually come back?
For gear: Look in the lancer guild, there is a guy who sells lower level gear. Also a lot of leves usually give me gear, so maybe you just haven't had much luck yet?
As for low level crafting... Well, thats just how Square seems to do it, sadly. You don't really level crafting as you level and hope to supply your own stuff, or at least I've had barely any success with that until around the 20s wherein I can start affording to really burn through stuff.
Still, you can just take the airship to Uldah and such to take part in their vastly better market wards. (The main quest eventually shunts everyone to Uldah, so the other two cities are kind of boned in that regard.)
Been playing this again the last week. Big fan of the updates. The fact that you can seek repairs on items you are wearing is a big step up from before. The new (self) combo system goes a long way to improve magical combat, but I suspect it might help out War classes even more. It bodes well for whatwever they end up putting in as a skillchain analoge.
Also ran some quests between leves, I enjoyed the story they toss out there about the little cave to the SE of Limsa. It led to a pretty great non-instanced dungeon for level 16-20ish. My only regret is that no one was around to explore it.
Just hit 25, so about to join a Grand Company. The opening quest seemed interesting (Immortal Flames).
I will admit, I felt a cheap thrill as I crushed some old gear into materia.
Just playing the game makes me very excited about the places it is going, and, for know, I am enjoying the present as well.
So now that I've returned from winter adventures I intend to sign up for a month and check out the state of things. Sadly though I'm still waiting for them to supply a (safe) method of handing them my money.
Hell considering click n pay or whatever requires you signing up for things like securekey and such, I'd say its one of the safest methods I've seen online. Shame I forgot my secure key pin thing five seconds after finishing the signup.
I'm still having fun in FFXIV. After taking a 2 week break I came back and finished off the Moogle fight and got the Mog wand. I killed Ifrit over and over and got only DM before so I am pretty happy. Hopefully my sister will be back soon and we can play together again.
There is still a lot in the game I have yet to do and 1.21 should be out next month with even more to do.
There are still some problems but it certainly seems to be heading in the right direction.
I need to find myself some kind of shell so I have people to do stuff with. I think I'm slow to level because I don't know anyone endgame-like so I wouldn't really be able to do the content once I got there. Which would be sad. I really need to get on that though.
So, now that the billing has gone through, how are server populations?
I'm curious because I've almost beaten ffxi (once I see all of the story missions I'm declaring victory), so I'll probably cancel my accounts and migrate back to 14 to see that story next.
Joined the Immortal Flames last night, and unlocked the level 25 dungeon.
Where's the best place to round up a party? Is shouting in Ul'Dah the XIV equivalent to froming up in Jueno, or are there some PA peeps on Wutai interested in level 25 action tonight?
So to echo the earlier question, how much of an impact on the population did the fee have?
I'm curious if this'll be the thing that kills the game, or if the kind of people left have already been through enough it's not a big deal comparitively.
I still see a good number of people in Ul'dah and the surrounding aetherite (up to level 26). I have had difficulty getting anyone to go into the level 25 dungeon, but that might be due to a lack of players around that level.
The billing did impact the game some, I think I read the number 13% somewhere but nothing official. I think those who want to play are going to pay the $8 a month. There are those who want to pay but are having problems with click and buy and other issues.
Some servers are pretty empty, others like mine are still ok but not crowded. I think there were 625 on one day this weekend when I looked.
You may have problems finding people to do things with at low/mid level as many people have the classes they are interested already to 50. I do go help people with 25 Ifrit and Toto-rak once and awhile if I see a shout in Ul'dah or a LS message. I really wish I had gotten to try that stuff with parties of the appropriate level and not a bunch of 50's.
My advice for finding parties is join a few linkshells, set yourself up in the seeking party system, shout in Ul'dah some.
It took some shopping around, but it looks like I was able to find a site that will foot the bill on subscription fees for this game. The plan is to write a weekly article detailing the changes, improvements, and/or things still in need of ironing out.
I was also offered free subscriptions for TOR and WoW. I'd like to say I could juggle those three games at once, but that's a special kind of madness I don't think I'd like to attempt. Plus I'd have to buy TOR anyway at full price.
So right now I'm going to stick with FFXIV, because I'm really curious how the game stands right now (plus, if all goes well, I'll be future-proofed for 2.0).
I hope to join your guild in Wutai once I do so, and would also kindly request your assistance in gaining information on what's changed since the beta, as well as stuff I could try at different levels.
Created a new character in Wutai, name is Jorginus Freelancer. Eating now so I won't actually be on until an hour or two.
So....the mouse movement is awful. I know people mentioned that before, but yeah...this is the worst I've ever seen.
Unless there's no way to fix it, I think I'll stick to gamepad. Problem is, I still need a keyboard to chat.
So to that end, would anyone happen to know of a good iPad app that lets me use it like a virtual keyboard?
Edit: Came back, turns out they have a hardware mouse option in the config. Guess that was something new, since Google didn't mention it.
I'm going to try that booster program in the OP too.
Meanwhile, is anyone going to be on tonight that could invite me to the group?
Edit: Okay, some impressions:
The game runs better: Aside from the hardware mouse (which makes little difference as it's still recommended to play the game with a gamepad), the game runs far better than I had expected. Turns out leaving Depth of Field checked results in a massive performance chug, but turning it off makes everything smoother.
The tutorial is still pretty bad: It's been several hours and so far any fights I've had have been one-hit battles against mice and flies. And I've fought maybe 10 of them total. The game starts off ridiculously slow, making you go to this place, that place, talk to this person twice, and so on. I've done one guildleve (quest) and I can't seem to do anything else before advancing the story further). Escorting Sissypuss or whatever isn't difficult, it's just boring. Really, really boring.
The music is good: Not that that's ever been an issue. What's that vocal song playing in the beginning cutscene?
The dialog is good: There's a lot of variety and well-written stuff in the dialog. Quite a lot of lines involving whores, balls asses, too. It kind of overdoes it with the pirate-speak, but it's far better than the drivel found in FFXIII and FFXIII-2.
Very little voice acting: To the point that there might as well not be any. So many of these walls of text are begging to be spoken aloud, and oftentimes it cuts off before I can read the whole thing.
A lot of characters are assholes to your character: At least it feels that way so far. Most of the NPCs insult you on the spot based on first-glances, claiming your not worth adventuring with them. The Chocobo lady is also incredibly condescending even though the arrival of Chocobos was supposed to be a big positive.
"When you dismount a Chocobo, you can't ride it again. What, that isn't fair? Too bad!"
"If you run out of time on a Chocobo, it'll drop you on the spot. And if you're surrounded by monsters ready to kill you? Oh well, it's your own fault."
I mean, she isn't wrong, but she doesn't have to be such a bitch about it....
The map is still terrible: Can't believe they didn't fix this yet. The game points to you where to go on each quest, but only if you open up the map through your quest journal. It won't show up on your main map, and it doesn't show up on your mini-map until you're within the vicinity. For first-timers, it's a lot of guesswork on where you need to go. This is stupid.
Attacking enemies is still a chore: I still can't just double click an enemy to attack it. Instead, I have to target it, unsheathe my weapon, and then target it again to start the battle. This is stupider
It keeps crashing on me: At first I thought it was the Priority Booster on the opening, but the game has crashed at least four times for me so far, with a message that it "cannot detect DirectX in system". Is there a fix to this?
I also really wish the Battle and Field message boxes would disappear when they aren't being used.
That Direct X thing is the generic error when you try and alt-tab out. Not sure about that priority booster thing, I just run it stock.
As for the message boxes, yeah, I miss the format they had in XI. Would like to see that back as an option.
EDIT: Hey, the map is better than it was, at least now it shows party members on it, as well as icons for things (merchants, achievement NPCs, leves, etc.).
That's the leading cause I keep reading in Google, but I've never tried to alt-tab out. It just happens random when I'm playing with a gamepad on fullscreen.
Anyway, I really want to join the group as soon as possible. At least at the time I was playing last night, the area was really barren with only one or two other characters running around. :?
Maybe some other program is trying to grab your screen...?
I have teamed up with a few random peeps through the search feature at level 25, it's very FFXI in that regard.
*pull up search menu*
*throw some tells, maybe get a group going*
*do some leves*
It actually feels like constructing a party again. Whether or not that is a weakness or a strength is up to debate...
I kind of like the idea of building my friends list with strangers that were cool, but, to be honest, some days it is a bit more work than I want to put into it.
That video is still my main frame of reference in determining how much better things have gotten since, and what's still bad.
So far the tutorial system is as bad as listed there. Sometimes the game spells out what to do (open this menu!), sometimes it doesn't (do an emote! go on! emote!).
I'm really hoping job switching/job fatigue still isn't as bad as it is shown there.
I can't watch the vid right now, but what is the issue with job switching? It's far better than in XI, you can do it anywhere.
EDIT: Oh, is it about resetting skills and stuff? All that changed with 1.2, it remembers what you had for each class the last time you loaded it up, and the interface is far more streamlined.
For me it was having to find a job-specific item to equip in order to change jobs, which wouldn't be so bad if the inventory system wasn't terrible (at least in the beta...I haven't actually opened my inventory yet because I haven't gotten a single piece of equipment yet).
What about adding friends? Surely they don't still need to be both online and in the same vicinity as you....right?
But my biggest gripe among all others is attacking. I don't understand why it couldn't be as simple as FFXI...or every other game...and just let you double-click something. I've already forgotten multiple times to target something, unsheathe my weapon, and target it again to start a fight.
This should have been one of the first things to get changed. How is this still around?
Edit: Also, is there still no way to make the UI and menu boxes bigger when playing on a big TV? There's a thing in the configs about using Windows font, so I was wondering if that was related.
This is, of course, another major peeve I had in the beta that still seems not to be addressed.
Ahh, they added vendors to the starting area (in Ul'dah I think it is in the inn with the Guildleve NPC) with all the starting job gear.
Inventory is...better? It is way faster anyway. I don't remember if you could click on a slot on the "gear" page and have it just bring up applicable stuff or not in the beta, but that is how it works now.
As for the friend thing, I know you have to type in the first and last character name, but I don't know if they have to be online or not.
I'm still trying to figure out how to fix these crashes I keep getting. Aside from maybe lowering graphic settings further, I'm out of ideas.
Also, is there a way to fix the dead zone when using a controller? My left and right sticks keep veering to the left.
Lastly, again, this game is really really terrible at explaining basic things for you.
So I was able to figure out that to do a quest, first you have to sign up for it at, then travel (or teleport) to the location and crystal in order to actually start the quest. I would ask why I can't just go to the location first and choose the quest from there, but I'm still in the beginner stages so maybe I don't "get it" yet.
I started the "Meet the Flint Stones" quest, which tells me to use the "Lay of the Land" ability to search for flint.
Okay, so how do I use Lay of the Land?
(clicks help)
"The Lay of the Land ability is very helpful in finding items!"
:?
Edit: Google says you have to target yourself and select the ability.
Posts
Is this game good yet?
Recent posts indicate "maybe not!"
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We are in Gridania and I'm not sure if this was a good choice. I was originally thinking GLA/MIN/BSM&ARM so I could make my own stuff, but then I couldn't find a goddamned bone chip to make a bronze gladius and swapped to LNC/CRP, and was at least able to make a bronze spear. Still unsure what support the guilds are providing me, if any - can I get recipes anywhere other than Leves and google? Feels like the CRP guild should help with that somehow.
I'm ultimately running into the same problem again with progression though - out of area components and no economy to speak of. Am I missing something or should it be impossible for me to craft basic weapons? Similarly: what should I be wearing? Even googling through some ARM and LTW recipes I haven't seen anything for LNC 13 better than the starter crap I've got plus sundry bits I've sprung for.
Finally: is Conjuror busted good? My friend seems to trade little survivability for excellent damage compared to me. It's early enough that I can still swap to w/e, or even reroll as Wise Baby.
e~ Also, I died on the L13 quest where you have to fight the spirit thing (when Khrimm does the thing) and Apo-apsi or w/e is gone so I can't re-attempt... will he eventually come back?
As for low level crafting... Well, thats just how Square seems to do it, sadly. You don't really level crafting as you level and hope to supply your own stuff, or at least I've had barely any success with that until around the 20s wherein I can start affording to really burn through stuff.
Still, you can just take the airship to Uldah and such to take part in their vastly better market wards. (The main quest eventually shunts everyone to Uldah, so the other two cities are kind of boned in that regard.)
Wait, I can get on the airship? Right now? Is it terribly expensive?
Any ideas on the failed quest? I'm pretty sure it's part of the main Gridania Q line.
Uhm... Go to the Archer's guild I think, Nonolato? I believe, will send you back to the instance.
Also ran some quests between leves, I enjoyed the story they toss out there about the little cave to the SE of Limsa. It led to a pretty great non-instanced dungeon for level 16-20ish. My only regret is that no one was around to explore it.
Just hit 25, so about to join a Grand Company. The opening quest seemed interesting (Immortal Flames).
I will admit, I felt a cheap thrill as I crushed some old gear into materia.
Just playing the game makes me very excited about the places it is going, and, for know, I am enjoying the present as well.
Why don't they want my money!?
There is still a lot in the game I have yet to do and 1.21 should be out next month with even more to do.
There are still some problems but it certainly seems to be heading in the right direction.
I'm curious because I've almost beaten ffxi (once I see all of the story missions I'm declaring victory), so I'll probably cancel my accounts and migrate back to 14 to see that story next.
Where's the best place to round up a party? Is shouting in Ul'Dah the XIV equivalent to froming up in Jueno, or are there some PA peeps on Wutai interested in level 25 action tonight?
I'm curious if this'll be the thing that kills the game, or if the kind of people left have already been through enough it's not a big deal comparitively.
Some servers are pretty empty, others like mine are still ok but not crowded. I think there were 625 on one day this weekend when I looked.
You may have problems finding people to do things with at low/mid level as many people have the classes they are interested already to 50. I do go help people with 25 Ifrit and Toto-rak once and awhile if I see a shout in Ul'dah or a LS message. I really wish I had gotten to try that stuff with parties of the appropriate level and not a bunch of 50's.
My advice for finding parties is join a few linkshells, set yourself up in the seeking party system, shout in Ul'dah some.
I was also offered free subscriptions for TOR and WoW. I'd like to say I could juggle those three games at once, but that's a special kind of madness I don't think I'd like to attempt. Plus I'd have to buy TOR anyway at full price.
So right now I'm going to stick with FFXIV, because I'm really curious how the game stands right now (plus, if all goes well, I'll be future-proofed for 2.0).
I hope to join your guild in Wutai once I do so, and would also kindly request your assistance in gaining information on what's changed since the beta, as well as stuff I could try at different levels.
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Let the madness begin!
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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/140
And before I forget, are there any configurations or tweaks to optimize the game?
It ran like rancid dog shit during the beta, but I can't imagine performance would improve that much at this point.
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At least you could enjoy Spirits Within, and there's still a divisive case for FFXIII.
FFXIV probably has a 99% ratio of pure hatred from everyone.
But I also want to see what they've managed to improve so far. That Ifrit fight better not be some bullshit level, though.
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So....the mouse movement is awful. I know people mentioned that before, but yeah...this is the worst I've ever seen.
Unless there's no way to fix it, I think I'll stick to gamepad. Problem is, I still need a keyboard to chat.
So to that end, would anyone happen to know of a good iPad app that lets me use it like a virtual keyboard?
Edit: Came back, turns out they have a hardware mouse option in the config. Guess that was something new, since Google didn't mention it.
I'm going to try that booster program in the OP too.
Meanwhile, is anyone going to be on tonight that could invite me to the group?
Edit: Okay, some impressions:
The game runs better: Aside from the hardware mouse (which makes little difference as it's still recommended to play the game with a gamepad), the game runs far better than I had expected. Turns out leaving Depth of Field checked results in a massive performance chug, but turning it off makes everything smoother.
The tutorial is still pretty bad: It's been several hours and so far any fights I've had have been one-hit battles against mice and flies. And I've fought maybe 10 of them total. The game starts off ridiculously slow, making you go to this place, that place, talk to this person twice, and so on. I've done one guildleve (quest) and I can't seem to do anything else before advancing the story further). Escorting Sissypuss or whatever isn't difficult, it's just boring. Really, really boring.
The music is good: Not that that's ever been an issue. What's that vocal song playing in the beginning cutscene?
The dialog is good: There's a lot of variety and well-written stuff in the dialog. Quite a lot of lines involving whores, balls asses, too. It kind of overdoes it with the pirate-speak, but it's far better than the drivel found in FFXIII and FFXIII-2.
Very little voice acting: To the point that there might as well not be any. So many of these walls of text are begging to be spoken aloud, and oftentimes it cuts off before I can read the whole thing.
A lot of characters are assholes to your character: At least it feels that way so far. Most of the NPCs insult you on the spot based on first-glances, claiming your not worth adventuring with them. The Chocobo lady is also incredibly condescending even though the arrival of Chocobos was supposed to be a big positive.
"When you dismount a Chocobo, you can't ride it again. What, that isn't fair? Too bad!"
"If you run out of time on a Chocobo, it'll drop you on the spot. And if you're surrounded by monsters ready to kill you? Oh well, it's your own fault."
I mean, she isn't wrong, but she doesn't have to be such a bitch about it....
The map is still terrible: Can't believe they didn't fix this yet. The game points to you where to go on each quest, but only if you open up the map through your quest journal. It won't show up on your main map, and it doesn't show up on your mini-map until you're within the vicinity. For first-timers, it's a lot of guesswork on where you need to go. This is stupid.
Attacking enemies is still a chore: I still can't just double click an enemy to attack it. Instead, I have to target it, unsheathe my weapon, and then target it again to start the battle. This is stupider
It keeps crashing on me: At first I thought it was the Priority Booster on the opening, but the game has crashed at least four times for me so far, with a message that it "cannot detect DirectX in system". Is there a fix to this?
I also really wish the Battle and Field message boxes would disappear when they aren't being used.
Still got a ways to go.
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As for the message boxes, yeah, I miss the format they had in XI. Would like to see that back as an option.
EDIT: Hey, the map is better than it was, at least now it shows party members on it, as well as icons for things (merchants, achievement NPCs, leves, etc.).
Anyway, I really want to join the group as soon as possible. At least at the time I was playing last night, the area was really barren with only one or two other characters running around. :?
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I have teamed up with a few random peeps through the search feature at level 25, it's very FFXI in that regard.
*pull up search menu*
*throw some tells, maybe get a group going*
*do some leves*
It actually feels like constructing a party again. Whether or not that is a weakness or a strength is up to debate...
I kind of like the idea of building my friends list with strangers that were cool, but, to be honest, some days it is a bit more work than I want to put into it.
I'm not sure what that might be....I use GameBooster to kill most processes when I run a game. Any potential programs you think it could be?
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-final-fantasy/705893
That video is still my main frame of reference in determining how much better things have gotten since, and what's still bad.
So far the tutorial system is as bad as listed there. Sometimes the game spells out what to do (open this menu!), sometimes it doesn't (do an emote! go on! emote!).
I'm really hoping job switching/job fatigue still isn't as bad as it is shown there.
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I can't watch the vid right now, but what is the issue with job switching? It's far better than in XI, you can do it anywhere.
EDIT: Oh, is it about resetting skills and stuff? All that changed with 1.2, it remembers what you had for each class the last time you loaded it up, and the interface is far more streamlined.
What about adding friends? Surely they don't still need to be both online and in the same vicinity as you....right?
But my biggest gripe among all others is attacking. I don't understand why it couldn't be as simple as FFXI...or every other game...and just let you double-click something. I've already forgotten multiple times to target something, unsheathe my weapon, and target it again to start a fight.
This should have been one of the first things to get changed. How is this still around?
Edit: Also, is there still no way to make the UI and menu boxes bigger when playing on a big TV? There's a thing in the configs about using Windows font, so I was wondering if that was related.
This is, of course, another major peeve I had in the beta that still seems not to be addressed.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
Inventory is...better? It is way faster anyway. I don't remember if you could click on a slot on the "gear" page and have it just bring up applicable stuff or not in the beta, but that is how it works now.
As for the friend thing, I know you have to type in the first and last character name, but I don't know if they have to be online or not.
Try me: Seorn Sar'a'mel
Or Saramel if there are no apostrophies.
Also, is there a way to fix the dead zone when using a controller? My left and right sticks keep veering to the left.
Lastly, again, this game is really really terrible at explaining basic things for you.
So I was able to figure out that to do a quest, first you have to sign up for it at, then travel (or teleport) to the location and crystal in order to actually start the quest. I would ask why I can't just go to the location first and choose the quest from there, but I'm still in the beginner stages so maybe I don't "get it" yet.
I started the "Meet the Flint Stones" quest, which tells me to use the "Lay of the Land" ability to search for flint.
Okay, so how do I use Lay of the Land?
(clicks help)
"The Lay of the Land ability is very helpful in finding items!"
:?
Edit: Google says you have to target yourself and select the ability.
I...I would have never figured that out. Oy...
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