First Impressions

goldenkey

Well I thought I would chime in here sense every other beta tester is speaking up. I am not a former FFXI player I like many others come from the world of the WOW clone.  I have played WOW, AOC, and LORTO along with many other F2P games and Betas.

 

Things I like about the game is the sand box feel it has the game doesn’t lead you around from quest to quest you have to put effort into exploring and finding things. The depth the crafting/jobs system is also very nice and again you are going to have to do your homework if you are going to get anywhere. Next the game has very good graphics so the exploring and finding stuff is fun sense you have a lot of beautiful things to look at. While I have only been through the first part of the story line that seems to be very well done as well on par with LORTO IMO.

 

Now the not so good. Well like so many others I find the interface to be a pain in the ass. I do not agree with the argument that having a difficult interface adds to the challenge of playing the game. What it does is add to the frustration of playing the game. Adding hard to kill mobs hard to find NPC's or challenging traps add to the challenge of playing the game not the damm interface. So I find that interfacing with things in the game through the right mouse click to be more immersive than through a menu. Then I had problems figuring out the escort quest where you have to stay within the blue and red circles  on the mini map or get kicked from the instance and have to restart was somewhat frustrating.  The emote quest needs better discriptions of the emotes they are looking for this might just be a language issue translating from Japanese and could be corrected fairly quickly.

 

Over all the game has a lot of promise I can tell it's not for the easy mode mmo player that's for sure which is a good thing we have enough of those as it is. I would suggest they have a lot of in game help in the form of GM's standing in major cities ready to help people with UI problems and anything else that might come up people are going to need some hand holding for the first month or two. If the developer doesn't step up and help players with the UI people are going to quit after the first month in droves. Maybe they could partner with Logitech and sell a FFXIV game controller in the FFXIV store I hear the controllers make the UI much easier to navigate.