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@ MMO Vets... plain and simple... its a damn good game.
tristanryan
Member Posts: 233
If you haven't tried it yet and are on the fence, you should definitely try it. Its only 30.00$ USD.
Mini review incoming;
Pros;
-Amazing graphics for a MMO. I play on a PC, i cant comment on PS3. The foliage. The fauna. Water and ripple effects. Night skies. Cities. Armors. Weapons and spell effects. The godrays of sunshine. Day/night cycles. Your robe blowing in the wind. The sparks flying off of ore when mining, splinters off trees... etc etc. Spell effects are quite impressive. Its polished, immersive... and... its optimized.
-Music. Its immersive, and fitting. Its not constant, but there when needed. Its pretty clear they put effort into it. The different lands have different tunes and i like it. Its one of the few games i wont turn the sound off after a couple of hours to play my own, which is rare. I like it.
-Controls are tight and responsive. This is one of the things that i really like. I don't get any lag or delay.. ever. Its akin to WoW. When i jump my character jumps. Not .006 seconds later, its now. When i cast, my cast bar is up, right away. Melee is also just as responsive in dungeons or open world, even while neat effects are going on, there isn't that millisecond delay I have become accustomed to with so many recent games.
-The GCD. Its 2-2.5 seconds. At first you might feel this is a detriment and amateur like i did, but it isn't. It makes the game feel more old school. Your brain has time to process what you are doing and what you want to do. You aren't just spamming buttons because you can. You make use of every GCD and if you don't you can feel it, and it shows as well.
-The Crafting. Just... wow. I'm still wrapping my head around it. If you include gathering (i do) its not just an afterthought. It adds another game within the game. Its not quick and its not brain dead easy. Any one who says it is already gave up and doesn't understand the underlying mechanics and how everything fits together. To give an example, I have met more than one player thats a crafter, and crafter alone. Some people seem to have zero interest in the combat side of the game, quite a few actually.
-Defined Roles with developer pre determined approved cross class skills. This is another thing i really enjoy. I like working on another class (on the same character) to see just how well "that skill" would work for my playstyle.
-Population. There are *a lot* of people playing and enjoying the game. I like this. Im tired of dead worlds after the first 2-4 weeks.
-Pre determined rulesets. You can't just mail your alt gil. You can't just mail your alt items and armor. I was told they did this because of RMT. I despised it at first with the impression of "wow, what a misplaced oversight". But after a bit, it adds more value and commitment to my character.. which strangely is appealing to me. Of course you can have multiple accounts, or if you are a high rank in your FC you can add items to the vault and remove on another character, but... the barrier is definitely felt, imo.
-Teamwork. Without teamwork and communication in these dungeons you aren't going anywhere. Don't let the 13 year old elitist "mmo vet" sway your judgement. The higher you go, the more fun and involved it gets. At max there is definitely an "elitist" attitude going around, with small groups of hardcore players even *selling* runs for harder content.
-Economy.
-The Market. Its a feeling of accomplishment when you sell something and make a profit. Gil (gold) doesn't fall out of the sky here. Even the gold sellers are a bit more expensive in their advertising than what I have seen in the last several games over the years. I like playing the market and making money. Even purchasing items off of select NPCs and replacing on the market board can yield a profit sometimes... 
-Cheap purchase and cheap subscription.
-Pet System. Your chocobo can be more than just amount. Highly recommend you read up on this.. And not just that, but with their own form of advancement that the player chooses. As well as upcoming content that includes chocobo breeding etc. There are other mounts as well.
-Upcoming PvP and Player Housing, as well as more end game content. I look forward to all of this stuff.
Cons;
-A growing elitist community at max. This can also be seen as a positive aspect. Even if you don't agree with certain attitudes or playstyles it still makes competitiveness in the community which is absolutely needed in an MMO.
-Possible Confusion. For someone like myself that hasn't played FF games before (correct me if im wrong) you might find the class systems or even crafting commitment daunting or even a turn off at first without further research or reading.
-The Map and layout. This can be confusing at first as well...
-The GCD. This i listed as a Pro. But at first, many will absolutely not agree.
-Apparently low end systems can struggle in certain environments...?
-Gil Sellers. Its so bad you will quickly learn to ignore the chat box completely. Its... pretty obvious these guys are desperate for a sale, even more than usual. These same individuals also seem to be able to "hack" the game and travel underground from point to point to harvest and gather. Why they do this im unsure because someone else tapping the same node you do has no effect on you or yours, but its definitely happening. SE is clearly working on a fix. They seem to take a strong handed ban now and explain later state of mind, which im perfectly ok with.
-Limited customer service.
Conclusion;
Buy it.
Comments
No, not really.
Confusing is not the same a deep, slow is not the same as thoughtful.
This game is to MMORPG's what Calculon (futurama) is to acting.
It heard auto-attack and twitch is bad so it makes you slowly hit the same key over and over again.
For far to long you only got 2 attacks, a very slow recharging not so special one and a slow recharging main attack that can't be queued. So it is 2... 1... 1... 1... 1... TAB 2... 1... 1... 1... TAB etc etc That is not deep.
[mod edit]
As for graphics, when it first launched it looked good. Now? Its showing its age, the pixellation even on max settings is high, low res textures abound. And for far to long everyone is running the same outfits in the same color.
Cons:
No cosmetic gear.
No simply dye system.
Very few gear choices/everyone looks the same for to long.
Map system designed by someone who never ever saw a map.
Generic mobs that spawn around you and just stand there as if it is 1999.
I would only recommend this game to people who:
A. REALLY like Final Fantasy and I mean really LIKE!
B. Who look at modern MMO's and think "Wow this is just to refined and userfriendly and well designed, I long back for the days when the user interface was where the challenge was at!"
Everyone else, cat girls are just not enough to carry a game who is at least half a decade out of date. The world moved on, Square Enix has not.
Asian WOW&GW2 "wanna be" with nothing new. Played the game and I had moments of joy in it but on the other side i never saw dumbest quest like in this game. On every step you see how dev`s were struggling to make something in what they are so not good at.
If you exclude crafting and leveling some of the other classes there is only HC PvE with zero option for casual players.
Guess they forgot that HC MMO`s are not the way to go no more.
After less then a month of playing I already saw ppl in full top tier set and that is basicly GAME OVER.
I'd like to thank the Academy, my agent and most of all, my operating system, Windows Vista, for everything it-- [crashes] [mechanic voice] System error.
No matter how "good" an mmorpg is. It will never evolve or get better than the rest while the developers keep adding all the garbage filler side quests that make no sense in the game in order to help the player level up.
Filler side quests need to die. The main story quest and main job quest line is fantastic, every other side quest is garbage. Just like every otehr mmorpg need to let them die. Replace sidequests with giving experience by doing other things outside of "questing and fates". The most ridiculous thing in the world is when the game treats you as a Hero who saved the world but you have to kill ten rats because the guards dont want to do their duties.
OP
As you can already see, the biggest flaw in your post is that you are trying to convince someone (an MMO vet) that a post-2000 MMORPG can be good.
I hope you will learn from this and understand that what you were trying to do is impossible.
With a concrete example like that, now it's just up to the devs to change it!
The same way that GW2 gives experience by doing anything, that is a good way to replace side quests. Any player activity they can come up with that doesnt involve questing can earn experience and effectively replace the nonsensical side quests.
Do these activities flesh out the lore? They must if they want to properly "replace" sidequests as an activity.
Granted, "anything" is just as vague as before. ARR, too, gives experience by for example doing the hunting log.
They should focus more on levequests and guildheists in my opinion. Increase the number of people, rare drops, tough and illusive boss enemies, waves of mobs for more xp, etc.
A cost effective way for them to get content out quicker since the system is set in place and no new zones or dungeons with npc's need to be created. This is mostly to give more options for grinding xp.
Yeah i meant to say anything that actually makes sense in the game and the story. Otherwise it would be another nonsensical filler. Thanks for pointing that out.
EDIT: the hunting logs give a lot of EXP which is good, but they also feel like without purpose since all you do is go out on a rampage killing stuff. Hunting logs would be more fun if you had a bigger purpose for killing the animals. For example, hunting events where players would gather and kill the animals to get their logs and exp and at the end of the event whoever gets the "biggest" trophy gets a bonus reward.
Guildhests are obviously a tutorial with very good rewards for doing them... I don't think they need to be any more important than they are.
Leves on the other hand, I agree. They are also a decent source of income for the battle classes. But as it stands they need to be buffed.
These are also something that ARR does outside FATEs and quests that give exp.
I don't see how there is any more purpose in what you're proposing aside from just giving more rewards. It is merely the same system fleshed out further. Of course SE can and perhaps will flesh out the system but this much is what they got out in the dev time they had.
MMORPG's are THE most content-intensive games in the industry in the first place, there is simply so much content the devs can put out in a few years. It's the reality and it's not going anywhere no matter how many times people say they "should" do more or better.
>>Wow, an ad hominem attack. Enjoy whatever disciplinary action comes your way pal.<<
Sometimes it's worth any "disciplinary action" to call a spade a spade and an idiot an idiot. But this is not the case. It wasn't a personal attack, which is forbiden, but a generalisation - "everyone who does X, in this case finds it intellectually challenging to play the combat up to level 25, is intellectually disadvantaged", which is perfectly okay on this site (just open any thread where proponents of P2P discuss people who play F2P games).
Admittedly, you may, indeed, indeed, be a member of that general "intellectually disadvantaged" crowd, but still it's not a personal attack and thus no "disciplinary action" is forthcoming.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Got warning for saying i dislike this game, so will go into detail why, other then just saying no !
1. Gold spamers
2. No end game
3. No Pvp
4. Server lag issues with aoe, or Dodge the red dots problem.
5. smal zones, invis walls all over.
6. Leves = more solo instance.
7. not 1 open world dungeon all instanced.
8. Loot seems bland, not many options even the unique gear out the dungeons, just not many items.
9. after 3 weeks, had hard time even wanting to log back into game, donated my gil to the guild, and didn't reup my monthly.
50 WHM, Crafting 50 Alch with lots of other clases lvled some, was going to max Paladin but just got boring lvled up my glad to 22.
Got pulled into the hype, was it worth 30$ myb.
As good as it is,the game still is not as good as FFXI,i cannot pry myself from FFXI to play FFXIV just yet.
The game does deserve some credit,it is well done but not as in depth as i would like it.It is still a VERY early game and already has more going for it than some games that have been around for years.I expect the ideas and content to grow decently over the coming years.This game unfortunately had to spend the last year fixing and tweaking the existing game for the relaunch,so the team has not been able to move forward just yet.
My feeling is they made a mistake on the core design when comes to combat/class and going for solo/group content.There is too much push on solo,FFXI was better served with zero solo content,no questing xp,no dailies or this FATE system.As soon as Square started to get greedy and try and copy other games,it started down the wrong path.You retain longevity with a niche game,not a mainstream game.Wow is ALWAYS a bad example to compare,that game garnered brand new gamer's,it was their first mmorpg ever,so to them it was different than anything they ever played.That will never happen again,so you need to be different.
I guess for those that never played FFFXI,they will never see the comparison,in those cases FFXIV definitely can be seen as a rally good game and a much better looking game as well.It is that core design however that i feel will bottleneck this game from improving to where i want to see it go.I never got to higher levels to see if it reaches that pinnacle but when i play FFXI ,i actually have more fun at lower levels,i don't like to wait to have fun.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
That will happen everytime. You really think the MMO userbase is made of the same group of people that started 10-15 years ago.
There are continuously new people approaching MMOs for the first time. That wasn't unique to WoW so it wasn't what made it popular. Hell I'm seeing a lot of players in FFXIV that are new to this genre.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.