I could use a chocobo now but not at that start i'm not that lazy :P. besides you know they not gonna be free ^^ you would be broke before level 10 if you could ride those that early. this game does does have the effect of love & hate. I was 1 shotted an by the higher level ants from the exits of the noob zones. from Gridania to Ul'dah. respawned a zone away an these zones are HUGE biggest I've seen ever in mmoprg. the Noob zone alone is bigger than the 1st 1-3 zones in diff games lol, an the zones after that well... not that high yet XD. I get scared when i saw a Ogre in the cave, an down the ramp was a GRENADE!!!... i think ill leave an go back to where i belong to my zone :P
I completely disagree with anyone calling this game "old school" it's simply an unfinished piece of garbage. Missing features having a poor interface and lack of content does not make it "old school". The hook of the older games was often in the difficulty they presented. This game does not require a group to do basic quests, does not have the old corpse runs (let alone any death penalty) or roll you back w/ debt for sucking. This game is only difficult because the design is flawed and makes it such. Requiring random high level crafting components, having a limited number of quests, and poor controls/UI is all part of failed planning.
I completely disagree with anyone calling this game "old school" it's simply an unfinished piece of garbage. Missing features having a poor interface and lack of content does not make it "old school". The hook of the older games was often in the difficulty they presented. This game does not require a group to do basic quests, does not have the old corpse runs (let alone any death penalty) or roll you back w/ debt for sucking. This game is only difficult because the design is flawed and makes it such. Requiring random high level crafting components, having a limited number of quests, and poor controls/UI is all part of failed planning.
"Would I have loved for it to have a more intuitive UI? You betcha boots. But is it a worse game for having to actually learn the system? I would say not, but would appeal..."
This is what I don't understand. I was planning on getting this game, but after the reviews, have decided to stay away. I don't mind a differnt UI, and I have played all the games some people like to refer here as "old school"... but my question is, what's the POINT of having such a different UI? I've been reading posts on this site almost every day since launch, and I've yet to see one person explain why this UI is superior... I just don't get it... I saw many people complain about this hardcore in beta, and even complain about this in FFXI, so WHY is the UI this way??? What makes it superior to other UI's? Can someone explain why this is better than our "standard/new school" UI's?
I had hoped this game was going to be good, as I was looking forward to experiencing it, but I just can't pull the trigger on this game. The people who give constructive criticism for this game sound reasonably sound of mind, while the ones who defend it generally boil down to "Meh, yeah, we know, but it's just the way it is for this series. You just have to get used to it". Can someone who plays this series explain why this UI system gives a better gaming experience?
It's designed for consoles - so you need to be able to navigate it with a controller. That's about it, I guess. Not sure why they couldn't be bothered to have an UI optimized for PC, but guess that's just one shortcoming of the game by what has been reported so far.
why would a company design a MMO for the console yet release it for the PC a year or more before its planned to be released for said console. doesnt that just scream paid beta to anyone else? i mean if it was truly desgned for the ps3 then they purposefuly released the game knowing it was not ready for their targeted audience.
why would a company design a MMO for the console yet release it for the PC a year or more before its planned to be released for said console. doesnt that just scream paid beta to anyone else? i mean if it was truly desgned for the ps3 then they purposefuly released the game knowing it was not ready for their targeted audience.
I've said something similar before. My guess is indeed that the PC is somewhat beta for the PS3 release, because most likely the smaller PS3 versions won't be able to hold all the updates done if it's released now. With that, I think it's hard to find a (closed) beta audience for the PS3 while it's a lot easier for the PC...
why would a company design a MMO for the console yet release it for the PC a year or more before its planned to be released for said console. doesnt that just scream paid beta to anyone else? i mean if it was truly desgned for the ps3 then they purposefuly released the game knowing it was not ready for their targeted audience.
I've said something similar before. My guess is indeed that the PC is somewhat beta for the PS3 release, because most likely the smaller PS3 versions won't be able to hold all the updates done if it's released now. With that, I think it's hard to find a (closed) beta audience for the PS3 while it's a lot easier for the PC...
that may be true but it certainly doesnt justify asking the PC beta testers to pay for finishing a product not designed primarily for us PC users.
hmm makes me want to try this even more than all the negativity...I like a challange
While I don't play the game I have seen three other posts like this in the last few weeks .. of the two that responded they regretted it. Fro what I can gather it's not really a challenge and has little to good with picturesque "old school" gaming (I loved pre and even post POP EQ) and mnore to do with lack of effort on the publisher's part. Then again it's your dollar mate
I tested the CB and I must say, it was the worst mmorpg I played in a long time. There is no excuse to make it this bad I agree... and the lag was there since CB ^^ So this game will be dead within the year hehe ^^ Anyone wanna bet ? ^^
Ofc the FF lovers will play this game no matter how bad it is and influence there objective judgement but meh... " /care "
First off, I don't play this game, but I have very close friends that are avid Final Fantasy players.
Both of them just stopped playing the game after about two weeks and went back to the prior game. They love the new graphics, but that is about it. Don't have to list all the problems as they have been repetitively listed by many of the prior posts on this thread.
Any developer that puts individual player shops in a new game deserves condemnation. The lag that this one item generates is just inexcusable. Then they released without an AH on top of that.
I feel sorry for anyone playing this game as they are being gouged for basically an Alpha release. You can't consider it Beta yet as it is missing so many pieces.
Giving this game anything over a 4 or 5 is a laugh, it just makes a laughing stock out of your scale.
"I had run into the same sort of issues, getting so lost in the dark elf town of Neriak I deleted and created a new character, getting killed by a bat because I was a mage and kept getting interrupted trying to kill it using spells instead of a dagger."
Oh dear.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
A fair and honest review in my opinion. And heyy, not biased.
Quote:
"This is a “First Look” at the game which really is a reviewer’s first impression of the game after a few hours of play."
Where's the "review" part? I'll wait for when she gets past that "first look".
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
This is the point where you should be thinking will I buy it? For those who preordered or bought it on launch day when will you learn? It is preorders and the desire to be ’playing it first’ which allows gaming companies to release unfinished products. I understand Square Enix asked gaming mags to give them a month before they reviewed it for heavens sake.
Everyone in the world is playing on servers in Japan, there are some good advantages to that but lag is the hit the MMO takes for that decision. Even with just East Coast US or UK servers the MMO would run a lot smother.
I think FFIV looks like it could have potential but the comments I'm reading in various forums make me realise how wise my let the game be out at least 6 months before buying is . Unless theres a real chorous of approval upon release and then I may get it within the first month . I've enjoyed most of the mmos I've tried such as AOC , Warhammer , DDO and Lotro but by the time I've picked them up many of the issues they had in the initial months had been sorted out . I'm currently thinking of looking at Aion in the next few months so proberbly will think about final fantasy sometime next year . Unless theres a chorous of approval for Tera , Guild Wars 2 or KOTOR . I'm sure FFIV will do fine as a niche game in the long term .Sometimes these niche games are a far more plesant gaming experiance than popular games like WoW .
I think the problem here (that gets ignored by those that accept the issues this game has) is it's not like Square is a newcomer to the MMO landscape. I could excuse alot of the garbage they have shoveled out with this release if this was a 1st time entry into MMORPG's. But that's not true. They've been doing this for at least 7 years and you're telling me that they still don't understand how to properly launch a title? And the fans somehow give them a pass on this. It makes no sense, this isn't 2003 anymore, you can't launch a title with the kind of hype that FFXIV had and expect to not get absolutely roasted when it's launched in the state that it's in. 1st impressions are everything in this genre, if you don't come out gangbusters right out of the gate, don't expect people to flood back into your game when you patch it 1 year later.
How MMO developers haven't learned this lesson by now is beyond me.
I kinda feel like mmorpg.com maybe took a bribe to write this review for the following reasons. It takes 45 min to watch all the cutscenes or longer including the time it took to make your char. Also if you try to run out of the wrong gate you have to turn around and idk if oyu fanboys have even tried to play the game yet but thats a 25 min walk. This review was supposed to be a first impression, I'm sorry but he didnt find out all of that crap in just a couple hours. Also anyone who gives the graphic score over a 7.0 isnt that smart considering every stone ground textile matches and all the copy pasting of the terrain and heightmap. It might look great but its still copy and paste world. I did play the alpha, beta 2, and open beta couldnt get into closed beta 1. So i can tell you from onhand experience when this game launched from open beta nothing changed at all. Now im not saying this is the worst game i ever played since i did play "face of manking and ragnarok online 2 before the remake" I am saying thou that square had alot of promises they didnt keep like when they said the game was aimed at the western market when clearly noone that works wants to come home and unwind from a day at work by busting there butt working on ff14. When the game launched we lost all of the guides that was on the open beta site so everything i didnt know right offhand had to be looked up like i was in college studing for and exam. Also I didn't knwo some of the quests were spelled wrong so like an idiot i was running around looking for thing that didn't exist. Also square said the game would have a ff12 feel so it would start off slow and get faster"it does not at char lvl 20" its still slow. If I were a consumer i would not buy this game right now or when it launches for ps3 untell i was very sure that some of the problems were ironed out because when it takes 20 seconds to initiate combat on a rat and it takes a lvl 1 1:15sec lance user to kill the rat. With walking distance to 5 rates your talking about a good 30 min quest no lies. So unless you really have a lot of time a patience this isnt the game for you. Also it is not fun it is work.
Thank you for actually taking the time to play the game, instead of rushing though everything and expecting to have everything handed to you. You need to work towards goals in FFXIV, and if you are looking for a game that doesn't reward you instantly constantly you will be plently happy with it. I've never experienced lag personally, but I've noticed that some people lag when they have graphical settings higher then their computer can handle. FFXIV is a wonderful game, and will only get better with time. People need to learn to enjoy what the game is instead of crying about what is not in the game, or what they think should be in the game.
I also find the UI fine, and don't understand why so many people have an issue with it. You press one botton, and everything is neatly listed on the side of your screen. Don't need any the menu at the moment? It's out of site and not cluttering your screen with garbage.
So I played in the open beta and have a good enough system to enjoy the graphics and scenery. The thing I think is funny is that if this game was branded as "Anything else MMO" instead of an FF game it would be utterly ripped to shreds by everyone.
I can read that some of the challenges faced in open beta are actually game play design and part of the product (lack of obvious instructions on getting started).
Anyway, I did not hate the game at all. It was really nice visually and has unique features. If some of those features had appeared in AOC for instance the funcom hate would have been that much stronger. Since it is FF well, it acceptable cause its FF.
either you must have some awesome computer / connection to not experience any lag whatsoever. or just a blind fanboi to accept any flaws to your beloved game.
notice how to OP didnt say anything about how clunky the ui. but hey its a job after all and they need to bring in the bacon.
The original was a "failure" as in that it never achieved the results that its FF heritage should have given it. Part of the problem was the non-action initially on gil-trading but also the fact the game, for the PC, had an interface from hell.
The fans liked it. Almost any game has its fans, and the more they are attacked, the more they dig in. After all if you payed and player a game for a year, and everyone says only an idiot could love it, and you are not an idiot of course then they must be wrong.
FFXIV is much the same game. The interface is still bad for a PC game. Better then the original to be sure but still not what a PC user expects. Interfaces are NOT new, games have been around for decades now and NOBODY else does it like this. EVERYBODY else can't be wrong.
For the rest, the game is different. To some, this is just plain wrong. They want everything to be a clone of their favorite game, dare I say WoW? But to some, who like games that try something unique, the unique attemps by SE are just not working.
Even if you don't think every restaurant has to be a McDonalds, doesn't mean you have to praise a restaurant that serves ground class and rat poison. Being different does NOT automatically mean it is good. Be careful when you rally against the WoW-lover that you do not become a FFXIV-lover simply because you hate WoW. Judge the game on its own merits.
IS the leave system a good questing system? I think not. But then, I do not like the korean MMORPG design in general. I prefer story driven quest chains. Lotro, EQ2 and probably SWTOR. SWG style I like even more BUT that is not what FFXIV offers either.
The game at the moment to me is unplayable even on the lowest settings. What kind of machine is needed anyway? The combat is simplistic, the chat system needlessly complex. It feels like someone wrote a MMORPG without ever having played one.
It doesn't matter wether I run Windows, OSX, Gnome or KDE. The buttons for closing a window are a the top. Left or right do not matter. The close button is NOT hidden in a menu or detached or god knows what solution. The steering wheel in a car might be in the left, the right or even the center BUT it is in the FRONT. Not in the rear trunk. Having basic game settings that affect the performance of the game so much in a seperate program that I have to login and out for testing performance over and over again, that just isn't the sign of a program being produced by a company in 2010 that has a clue. This is NOT the dark ages of 1985 anymore. What next, do I need to edit ini files? Load modules for DOS?
FFXIV has some intresting ideas and god knows this industry needs those. But in design you must also be willing to copy what works rather then try to be different for the sake of being different.
FFXIV fails as a western MMO. We have come to expect certain things. A tutorial that actually explains things, auction houses, basic chat, keyboard shortcuts, settings in game etc etc.
I MIGHT be willing to one day try roast grashoppers. It is different but I might be willing to try it. BUT if you served me uncooked grasshopper with a petrol dressing to be eaten upside down with a chainsaw while being buggered by a rabid wolverine, I just say no.
You can then say that I am not willing to try anything new, anything different. And you would be bloody right.
I might be willing to try the leave system and the crafting and the combat, if only the rest worked smoothly. It doesn't. Subscription cancelled. Will not recommend the game.
either you must have some awesome computer / connection to not experience any lag whatsoever. or just a blind fanboi to accept any flaws to your beloved game.
notice how to OP didnt say anything about how clunky the ui. but hey its a job after all and they need to bring in the bacon.
Try and lower your graphics settings. I love that becuse I don't have any lag I'm a blind fanboi, rofl.
Comments
I could use a chocobo now but not at that start i'm not that lazy :P. besides you know they not gonna be free ^^ you would be broke before level 10 if you could ride those that early. this game does does have the effect of love & hate. I was 1 shotted an by the higher level ants from the exits of the noob zones. from Gridania to Ul'dah. respawned a zone away an these zones are HUGE biggest I've seen ever in mmoprg. the Noob zone alone is bigger than the 1st 1-3 zones in diff games lol, an the zones after that well... not that high yet XD. I get scared when i saw a Ogre in the cave, an down the ramp was a GRENADE!!!... i think ill leave an go back to where i belong to my zone :P
I completely disagree with anyone calling this game "old school" it's simply an unfinished piece of garbage. Missing features having a poor interface and lack of content does not make it "old school". The hook of the older games was often in the difficulty they presented. This game does not require a group to do basic quests, does not have the old corpse runs (let alone any death penalty) or roll you back w/ debt for sucking. This game is only difficult because the design is flawed and makes it such. Requiring random high level crafting components, having a limited number of quests, and poor controls/UI is all part of failed planning.
Great points.
After i read the First look, and ALL the comments above, there is finally one sure thing:
FFXIV is another MMO that should still be in beta state.
Released too early, maybe 6 months when i read all complaints!
There is also, maybe, some bad ideas deep in development strategy:
Crafting, market, all pj interactions, zones and landscapes.
Well, finally, i'm really happy i decided not to preorder.
But, will follow he patchlogs for the next 6 months.
Maybe they will do something great of this game?
"Would I have loved for it to have a more intuitive UI? You betcha boots. But is it a worse game for having to actually learn the system? I would say not, but would appeal..."
This is what I don't understand. I was planning on getting this game, but after the reviews, have decided to stay away. I don't mind a differnt UI, and I have played all the games some people like to refer here as "old school"... but my question is, what's the POINT of having such a different UI? I've been reading posts on this site almost every day since launch, and I've yet to see one person explain why this UI is superior... I just don't get it... I saw many people complain about this hardcore in beta, and even complain about this in FFXI, so WHY is the UI this way??? What makes it superior to other UI's? Can someone explain why this is better than our "standard/new school" UI's?
I had hoped this game was going to be good, as I was looking forward to experiencing it, but I just can't pull the trigger on this game. The people who give constructive criticism for this game sound reasonably sound of mind, while the ones who defend it generally boil down to "Meh, yeah, we know, but it's just the way it is for this series. You just have to get used to it". Can someone who plays this series explain why this UI system gives a better gaming experience?
It's designed for consoles - so you need to be able to navigate it with a controller. That's about it, I guess. Not sure why they couldn't be bothered to have an UI optimized for PC, but guess that's just one shortcoming of the game by what has been reported so far.
why would a company design a MMO for the console yet release it for the PC a year or more before its planned to be released for said console. doesnt that just scream paid beta to anyone else? i mean if it was truly desgned for the ps3 then they purposefuly released the game knowing it was not ready for their targeted audience.
I've said something similar before. My guess is indeed that the PC is somewhat beta for the PS3 release, because most likely the smaller PS3 versions won't be able to hold all the updates done if it's released now. With that, I think it's hard to find a (closed) beta audience for the PS3 while it's a lot easier for the PC...
that may be true but it certainly doesnt justify asking the PC beta testers to pay for finishing a product not designed primarily for us PC users.
While I don't play the game I have seen three other posts like this in the last few weeks .. of the two that responded they regretted it. Fro what I can gather it's not really a challenge and has little to good with picturesque "old school" gaming (I loved pre and even post POP EQ) and mnore to do with lack of effort on the publisher's part. Then again it's your dollar mate
I tested the CB and I must say, it was the worst mmorpg I played in a long time. There is no excuse to make it this bad I agree... and the lag was there since CB ^^ So this game will be dead within the year hehe ^^ Anyone wanna bet ? ^^
Ofc the FF lovers will play this game no matter how bad it is and influence there objective judgement but meh... " /care "
I throwed my 2 cents
First off, I don't play this game, but I have very close friends that are avid Final Fantasy players.
Both of them just stopped playing the game after about two weeks and went back to the prior game. They love the new graphics, but that is about it. Don't have to list all the problems as they have been repetitively listed by many of the prior posts on this thread.
Any developer that puts individual player shops in a new game deserves condemnation. The lag that this one item generates is just inexcusable. Then they released without an AH on top of that.
I feel sorry for anyone playing this game as they are being gouged for basically an Alpha release. You can't consider it Beta yet as it is missing so many pieces.
Giving this game anything over a 4 or 5 is a laugh, it just makes a laughing stock out of your scale.
"I had run into the same sort of issues, getting so lost in the dark elf town of Neriak I deleted and created a new character, getting killed by a bat because I was a mage and kept getting interrupted trying to kill it using spells instead of a dagger."
Oh dear.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
A fair and honest review in my opinion. And heyy, not biased.
WOA-CB-Tester
Quote:
"This is a “First Look” at the game which really is a reviewer’s first impression of the game after a few hours of play."
Where's the "review" part? I'll wait for when she gets past that "first look".
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
This is the point where you should be thinking will I buy it? For those who preordered or bought it on launch day when will you learn? It is preorders and the desire to be ’playing it first’ which allows gaming companies to release unfinished products. I understand Square Enix asked gaming mags to give them a month before they reviewed it for heavens sake.
Everyone in the world is playing on servers in Japan, there are some good advantages to that but lag is the hit the MMO takes for that decision. Even with just East Coast US or UK servers the MMO would run a lot smother.
I think FFIV looks like it could have potential but the comments I'm reading in various forums make me realise how wise my let the game be out at least 6 months before buying is . Unless theres a real chorous of approval upon release and then I may get it within the first month . I've enjoyed most of the mmos I've tried such as AOC , Warhammer , DDO and Lotro but by the time I've picked them up many of the issues they had in the initial months had been sorted out . I'm currently thinking of looking at Aion in the next few months so proberbly will think about final fantasy sometime next year . Unless theres a chorous of approval for Tera , Guild Wars 2 or KOTOR . I'm sure FFIV will do fine as a niche game in the long term .Sometimes these niche games are a far more plesant gaming experiance than popular games like WoW .
I think the problem here (that gets ignored by those that accept the issues this game has) is it's not like Square is a newcomer to the MMO landscape. I could excuse alot of the garbage they have shoveled out with this release if this was a 1st time entry into MMORPG's. But that's not true. They've been doing this for at least 7 years and you're telling me that they still don't understand how to properly launch a title? And the fans somehow give them a pass on this. It makes no sense, this isn't 2003 anymore, you can't launch a title with the kind of hype that FFXIV had and expect to not get absolutely roasted when it's launched in the state that it's in. 1st impressions are everything in this genre, if you don't come out gangbusters right out of the gate, don't expect people to flood back into your game when you patch it 1 year later.
How MMO developers haven't learned this lesson by now is beyond me.
I kinda feel like mmorpg.com maybe took a bribe to write this review for the following reasons. It takes 45 min to watch all the cutscenes or longer including the time it took to make your char. Also if you try to run out of the wrong gate you have to turn around and idk if oyu fanboys have even tried to play the game yet but thats a 25 min walk. This review was supposed to be a first impression, I'm sorry but he didnt find out all of that crap in just a couple hours. Also anyone who gives the graphic score over a 7.0 isnt that smart considering every stone ground textile matches and all the copy pasting of the terrain and heightmap. It might look great but its still copy and paste world. I did play the alpha, beta 2, and open beta couldnt get into closed beta 1. So i can tell you from onhand experience when this game launched from open beta nothing changed at all. Now im not saying this is the worst game i ever played since i did play "face of manking and ragnarok online 2 before the remake" I am saying thou that square had alot of promises they didnt keep like when they said the game was aimed at the western market when clearly noone that works wants to come home and unwind from a day at work by busting there butt working on ff14. When the game launched we lost all of the guides that was on the open beta site so everything i didnt know right offhand had to be looked up like i was in college studing for and exam. Also I didn't knwo some of the quests were spelled wrong so like an idiot i was running around looking for thing that didn't exist. Also square said the game would have a ff12 feel so it would start off slow and get faster"it does not at char lvl 20" its still slow. If I were a consumer i would not buy this game right now or when it launches for ps3 untell i was very sure that some of the problems were ironed out because when it takes 20 seconds to initiate combat on a rat and it takes a lvl 1 1:15sec lance user to kill the rat. With walking distance to 5 rates your talking about a good 30 min quest no lies. So unless you really have a lot of time a patience this isnt the game for you. Also it is not fun it is work.
Thank you for actually taking the time to play the game, instead of rushing though everything and expecting to have everything handed to you. You need to work towards goals in FFXIV, and if you are looking for a game that doesn't reward you instantly constantly you will be plently happy with it. I've never experienced lag personally, but I've noticed that some people lag when they have graphical settings higher then their computer can handle. FFXIV is a wonderful game, and will only get better with time. People need to learn to enjoy what the game is instead of crying about what is not in the game, or what they think should be in the game.
I also find the UI fine, and don't understand why so many people have an issue with it. You press one botton, and everything is neatly listed on the side of your screen. Don't need any the menu at the moment? It's out of site and not cluttering your screen with garbage.
A first look at the picture of that character they use for this, he don't look to happy.
So I played in the open beta and have a good enough system to enjoy the graphics and scenery. The thing I think is funny is that if this game was branded as "Anything else MMO" instead of an FF game it would be utterly ripped to shreds by everyone.
I can read that some of the challenges faced in open beta are actually game play design and part of the product (lack of obvious instructions on getting started).
Anyway, I did not hate the game at all. It was really nice visually and has unique features. If some of those features had appeared in AOC for instance the funcom hate would have been that much stronger. Since it is FF well, it acceptable cause its FF.
enix1 -
either you must have some awesome computer / connection to not experience any lag whatsoever. or just a blind fanboi to accept any flaws to your beloved game.
notice how to OP didnt say anything about how clunky the ui. but hey its a job after all and they need to bring in the bacon.
This is the same game as the original.
The original was a "failure" as in that it never achieved the results that its FF heritage should have given it. Part of the problem was the non-action initially on gil-trading but also the fact the game, for the PC, had an interface from hell.
The fans liked it. Almost any game has its fans, and the more they are attacked, the more they dig in. After all if you payed and player a game for a year, and everyone says only an idiot could love it, and you are not an idiot of course then they must be wrong.
FFXIV is much the same game. The interface is still bad for a PC game. Better then the original to be sure but still not what a PC user expects. Interfaces are NOT new, games have been around for decades now and NOBODY else does it like this. EVERYBODY else can't be wrong.
For the rest, the game is different. To some, this is just plain wrong. They want everything to be a clone of their favorite game, dare I say WoW? But to some, who like games that try something unique, the unique attemps by SE are just not working.
Even if you don't think every restaurant has to be a McDonalds, doesn't mean you have to praise a restaurant that serves ground class and rat poison. Being different does NOT automatically mean it is good. Be careful when you rally against the WoW-lover that you do not become a FFXIV-lover simply because you hate WoW. Judge the game on its own merits.
IS the leave system a good questing system? I think not. But then, I do not like the korean MMORPG design in general. I prefer story driven quest chains. Lotro, EQ2 and probably SWTOR. SWG style I like even more BUT that is not what FFXIV offers either.
The game at the moment to me is unplayable even on the lowest settings. What kind of machine is needed anyway? The combat is simplistic, the chat system needlessly complex. It feels like someone wrote a MMORPG without ever having played one.
It doesn't matter wether I run Windows, OSX, Gnome or KDE. The buttons for closing a window are a the top. Left or right do not matter. The close button is NOT hidden in a menu or detached or god knows what solution. The steering wheel in a car might be in the left, the right or even the center BUT it is in the FRONT. Not in the rear trunk. Having basic game settings that affect the performance of the game so much in a seperate program that I have to login and out for testing performance over and over again, that just isn't the sign of a program being produced by a company in 2010 that has a clue. This is NOT the dark ages of 1985 anymore. What next, do I need to edit ini files? Load modules for DOS?
FFXIV has some intresting ideas and god knows this industry needs those. But in design you must also be willing to copy what works rather then try to be different for the sake of being different.
FFXIV fails as a western MMO. We have come to expect certain things. A tutorial that actually explains things, auction houses, basic chat, keyboard shortcuts, settings in game etc etc.
I MIGHT be willing to one day try roast grashoppers. It is different but I might be willing to try it. BUT if you served me uncooked grasshopper with a petrol dressing to be eaten upside down with a chainsaw while being buggered by a rabid wolverine, I just say no.
You can then say that I am not willing to try anything new, anything different. And you would be bloody right.
I might be willing to try the leave system and the crafting and the combat, if only the rest worked smoothly. It doesn't. Subscription cancelled. Will not recommend the game.
Try and lower your graphics settings. I love that becuse I don't have any lag I'm a blind fanboi, rofl.
These forums are rich!