Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
FFIX review
Mattpbm
Member Posts: 13
Before I write this let me just say that I am by no means a published game reviewer. I am an experienced mmo player with several titles under my belt. So you can take my review for whatever its worth be it gold or a grain of salt.
I began playing FF14 on the day the issued open beta keys and today I have deleted the game.
Leveling:
I tried out several different ways to level my GLD rank. I did the regional lvl quests and then waited for them to become availble again. I travelled to the 2 other main towns and used my teleport to get those quests, only to find out that my anima soon ran out and did not replish quickly enough to keep this option possible. Combine these two with the fact that regional lvl quests dont refresh for some time 30+hours and I was forced to do painfull grinding. There is a difference between grinding that is ok and grinding that is mind numbing on the level of drinking straight everclear...FF14 is the later. The fact that regional quests are on a ridiclously long timer adds to the frustration. You are almost punished for being in a party when u go out grinding as you get less hits in on an NPC and thus less chance to gain skill. This is an MMO you are suppose to form teams to accomplish in game results.
Grade: F
Crafting:
I rather enjoy the crafting system in the game. Not only can you take up numerous professions but whlie crafting you can determine the qulity of your items. One of the things I disliked about WoW was its vanila crafting. Here you can make a high or low quality item based solo on you skill during the crafting process. The one thing I disliked about the crating processs is you have no recipe book on you displaying the recipes that you learn along with their required mateials. I enjoyed the Local Level quests which introduced you to the crafting system and helped level your skill. I think there needs to be a better tutorial for each profession and a personal recipe book but thats about it.
Grade: B+
PVE content:
Here is where we are going to get into a very subjective matter for me. I live for pve content esspecially party based quests/missions like the dungeon based instances in WoW. After grinding to lvl 10 I would have hoped there would have been at the very least lvl 10 group quests that were part of the story line quest you had to do at the begining. But there was none and no instances either. It was more of the same FAIL leveling. To make maters worse the pve regional quests where the same every time they became availble. There is no intro help what so ever in this game. From the outset you have no real idea where to go so you are left with just going around, talking to NPCs, and eventually bumping into what you need to do.
Grade: F
PVP contnet:
There is none...fine by me I am PVEer anyway.
Grade: not applicable
Economy:
Normally I wouldn't even comment here because it is in beta phase and the economy isn't even deveolped but I will because their system is a FAIL system. Instead of an AH or some other centralized market place you have a half ass instance where you place a retainer, the retainer the sells your items you wish to sell. If you wish to buy something you have to go to one of the instances with retainers (there are several) and check each and every retainer looking for what you want to buy like a needle in a hay stack. There is no way you can price your items if you wish to sell because you cant check the market cause there is none and if you want to buy there is no way you can check every retainer and thus even if you manage to find what you want whos to say you bought the item that was priced the lowest.
Grade: F
Interface:
Complete and uter fail. Your mouse moves slow. Tab targeting is less efficent then pointing with you mouse. Vendors are so slow. To equip, craft, or view an item you have to jump through so many windows and they take a long time to load. If you want to trade with someone count on a simple transaction taking about 5 min. In order to private message someon you must type out their entire name, first and last (last name lol fail), everytime...it takes forever. One thing that is very annoying is there is no clear way to invite someone to party unless they are standing right in front of you.
Grade: F
Sumation:
The game is bad plain and simple. To all of you (very few I think) who love this game and rip on people like me by saying "You just want a simple game with shallow character development" I have this to say. In several interviews the Developers of this title say they wanted to make this game playable for the more casual gamer. They have failed completly at this thus the game is a failure of a product. The amount of effort that is required here is beyond a casual gamer. Combine that with a lack of overall fun while playing, long travel times, bad, UI, and poor grinding and the game is a fail product. I forget how many years it was in development 5, 6 or more. But after all that time and millions of dollars spent the lead developers should not have a job in a few months.
Looking forward to SWTOR....laters!
Comments
I agree with you on most shit except the interface is pretty $$$.
I was never big on the whole "you have to have a controller to play a pc game" shit but this game has a really polished feeling camera and controls when you play with an actual controller as opposed to a mouse. If you'd played with a controller instead of a mouse, you would have seen that the interface was actually very slick and easy to navigate.
Anyone defending FF14 at this point is a troll from FF11.Yes its kinda pretty when you have a 480gtx like me but other then that its just a huge mess.A friend hooked me up and let me play on his alpha account a month or 2 back and since then till now ive played about 20 hours total.To be honest i had more fun playing anarchy online back in 2001 at launch then i did in those 20 hours spent.The amount of grinding in this game is enough to make any korean dev blush and say "thats a little to far".Top that off with combat so boring it can on be compared to square-enixs last "meh" mmo and you got a game that only apeals to only the most hardcore of people still playing FF11.If your that person that cant wait for the live servers to come up becuase you truly like what you see "i dont know you and i dont wanna know you".
Thought I'd point out your topic roman numerals were off.
IX=9
XIV=14
My Two Cents:
Other than that. To each his own. I rather enjoyed the open beta. It was much more geared towards casual players than FFXI (FF11). I'm also willing to accept that it is a beta not a finished product. FFXI we got in NA after it had been going on in japan for some odd years, so it was rather a polished product. I noticed many things that were off or I wasn't pleased with. However I'm more than happy to give it a fair chance. Figure some snide comment on trolling FFXI player will come. I'm not trolling just wanted to throw my two cents in after reading the post. Which I would of not come in if the title had been off, so maybe it's a good thing. Heh
Economy:
That all being said, I do hope they give more to buying/selling when it's out or after a period of time. Going through the many market wards was rather tedious.
UI:
I didn't mind the controls much myself what I didn't like I changed in the options. However I noticed I had to open the option menu each time I logged in to have them load and be able to use them. I'm sure they'll figure that out after awhile. Was a tad annoyed I was unable to report bugs since I was not in alpha.
Non-POL Client Update Downloader:
The update client itself was horrible and I was often unable to finish my update for hours on end. (I would get stuck at 98% for a day or so.) Leaving me rather annoyed. I hope they fix that as well.
Crafting!:
The crafting was a suprise I liked. I also liked that when you failed it did not destroy all the items (leaving you to wander the market wards or fight mobs for item drops.)
Beta On A Whole:
Although graphically beautiful I wonder if they are letting us play most of what they will release or if what you see is (for the most part) what you get. I believe people who are upset with the beta of FFXIV are upset that there "isn't more" (leveling and the whole shebang.) I personally have some faith (and hope) they are not letting us play the best parts. Chocobos, most of the story line (which again I'm-assuming a bit-would probably appeal to the people with more time to be hardcore about gaming), not to mention being able to keep what work you've done on your character (beta-erase).
Grading on Grader:
C+
Although I agree with you on most points. I personally feel much more willing to give them time to fix and adjust to their player bases. I'm also personally happy they are attempting to make a game more casual player based. I have children and a life and it's nice to not have to sit through 4+hours of Dynamis to attempt to get some nicer endgame gear. I just think it's a bit early to be calling it a fail.
Also looking forward to SWTOR.