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FFXIV - Review in Progress
Hello All!
After reading a good bit of the vitriol-laced back and forth about FFXIV, looking at their website, and searching fruitlessly for a new MMO to hold my attention, I decided to give FFXIV a shot. I know that sounds crazy - reading all the bad compared to very little good and THEN buying the game, but the MMO landscape is so devoid of life at the moment I figured that at worst I'm out $50. I know the unwashed masses will berate me for providing SE money for releasing an unfinished game, and I partly agree with that sentiment (tangent: what MMO released since 2004 has released "finished?"). Nonetheless, we bravely trudge onward.
Just to give you a brief background of where I'm coming from, the only Final Fantasy experience I have is the original NES Final Fantasy. Between the Nintendo Power Final Fantasy strategy guide and three good friends taking turns playing, that was hours of fun...when I was 9. No FFXI, no FFVII on the Playstation, none of that. So I am no SE or FF fanboi.
In regard to MMO's, I started with UO back in 1997, played a little EQ, but never got into it. Really started enjoying MMOs with SWG in 2003, as much as for the fact I played with a group of RL friends than the sandbox setting. The fact it was Star Wars held a lot of sway. From there I played WoW on and off for years, sometimes it was fun, like the day the Honor System went live pre-battlegrounds. Since then I've tried Age of Conan, Darkfall, Warhammer Online, Fallen Earth, Allods, APB, and probably more I'm forgetting.
Fallen Earth has been my favorite, Conan a close second. There's just nothing to do at 50 in Fallen Earth and Conan - meh - seems to be in slow decline. Greatly looking forward to SWTOR and Warhammer 40k Online. This thread isn't about that though, just some general info so you know in what state of mind I currently exist.
Thusly, and without further verbosity, newly loyal reader, I find myself here; installing XIV, using a semicolon semi-correctly and interested in seeing what all the fuss is about (good and bad).
More to follow in due time...
Comments
Meh@preview to a review.
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
I'm confused...this seems far more like a "hey guys what's up?" than a review.
Meh, next time, just post the preview/review, no need to give your life story, especially when you aren't even going to say anything about the game in the same post.
Alltern8 Blog | Star Wars Space Combat and The Old Republic | Cryptic Studios - A Pre Post-Mortem | Klingon Preview, STO's Monster Play
Hence the title, "review in progress." Reading is fundamental, if not essential.
Installed and patched the game, a process that took about 20 minutes all told. Not a bad amount of time considering the amount of time some games take to patch. The account creation process for XIV is a slow thing. Multiple steps that actually resulted in a flag for suspicious activity on one of my cards - something I've never run into before in signing up for a MMO.
As part of the sign up process, I noticed you have to pay for each individual character slot. $12.99 for one character slot per month. I understand with the mechanics of the game the need for alts is lessened, but still, that's not getting the most bang for your buck there. Disappointing.
The game itself opens in a windowed mode. Can you run full screen? If you can I haven't figured out how. After some tweaking I settled on a good resolution, a process that took about another five minutes of mild experimentation.
The character creation process is neatly organized. Certainly not a great deal of customization options available but enough to make you feel like you're not going to look exactly like everyone else in the world. A lot of choices with hair style and color. Some of the more intricate facial custom options were hard for me to notice and I had to click through them a few times, closely watching the avatar to see what exactly they did. The creation process could do with a few more tooltips, especially in regard to what difference setting your characters birthdate and guardian deity make. Not sure what those did exactly.
Finally chose Marauder as my starting class and entered the game in Ul'dah. You're treated to a nice intro movie that does little more than show you how you enter the city, and plops you into an alleyway, basically. First thing you'll notice is how good the game looks. I'm fortunate enough to be able to run FFXIV on the highest settings, and it looks incredible. I haven't bothered to turn the game down to default settings to see how it looks, but will definitely do so.
No floating yellow exclamation points, no come here talk to me quest indicators, no basic keyboard function tutorial either. The movement is standard WASD, and you can adjust the camera angle form behind your character with right mouse button. Getting around is easy enough, although slightly jerky. If I had not been to the Lodestone site, I would've been quite frustrated with the rest of the interface.
The interface in FFXIV is not intuitive. Your action bar does not appear always the bottom of the screen, nor top, nor side, like most of us are used to. You have to pull it up, done by clicking "1." Then there's switching between active and passive mode, done by clicking "F." To interact with world objects, you'll either have to bring up your main menu or click on an icon that appears at the top of the screen. To talk to NPCs, it's basically a double click. There does appear to be some interface lag that gets annoying. You'll hit a button and the pop up, action, menu bar, does not appear instantly like we all think it should. Between that and the amount of clicking you have to do to interact - it is annoying.
All that being said, the cries of utter despair at how horrible the interface is are overwrought. It takes all of three minutes of getting used to before you've got it figured out. I know they're working on a new, more PC friendly interface that will be welcome - as is though, it's not THAT bad.
The gameplay itself is smooth, even if it's not always clear where you should go. You'll do a lot of opening your quest journal and reading quest text to know who to talk to next. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I understand a vast majority of gamers are used to hitting "M" and seeing a neat dotted line leading to exactly where to go, but that isn't part of XIV at the moment. If you read the quest text, however, you'll be fine.
I got to play a little bit with the Guildleve system, combat, and very little crafting.
The leve system is simple enough, especially the regional leves. You pick one up, go here, kill X, and return to Y. I have no doubt the group aspect of leves is more challegning, but I haven't yet done group ones. The local crafting leves are just as easy. Go talk to person X, they give you material Z, you craft items Y, and return to person X. The only hiccup there is you have to purchase the main crafting tool for whatever profession. Something not explicitly stated. Nor do you actually know which tool you need: main hand or off hand. I've used main hand so far, worked fine.
Combat is your standard point attack with hotbar moves - at least so far in solo combat. I've read a lot of about combat lag but in the little bit I've gotten to play so far, all my animations fired at the right time, I saw damage done, etc.
Anyway, as I said in the first post, this is merely a review in progress from an impartial new player. More info to come as I progress further into the game (and keep better notes to remind me what to post).
1. Open the folder you installed FFXIV into, there will be a program called FFXIVConfig (might be in start menu also) You can toggle fullscreen there. Note if you run fullscreen you cannot alt-tab.
2. A.The UI is unnecessarily cumbersome. Until the update, the simplest tasks take far far too many clicks. For example, try getting a piece of gear repaired by a player. Try to figure out what gear is damaged.
B. I. The UI has lag. Lag when dealing with items (buying, selling, placing in retainer, selecting for crafting.)
II. The UI has a delay. Selecting and ability and having it go off has a delay. When an ability appears to be useable again, it isn't...
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
Thanks for the info on the config. I found that folder to adjust the resolution, and must have just missed the full screen option. As is I have it running in a window that fill up my screen. Six of one, half dozen of the other I guess.
I do agree the UI is cumbersome (clunky is what I thought originally) when interacting with objects. For example, the aetheryte at Camp Black Brush: first instinct is to click on the object, which did nothing really. Right click? Nothing. Hmm. Finally I opened the main menu and saw the interact icon there. Click, click, click, click, clickity click click. That definitely needs to be streamlined, and I hope the update will do so. That being said, to me at least, it's not a problem that would force me to throw my hands up in the air sometime, sayin hey-oh, gotta let go.
The UI lag is obvious too. Most obvious to me when pressing "F" to switch modes. Seems to literally take three seconds to occur. Now, is that a long time? No. Is it long in regards to keeping up the flow of the game? Absolutely. In that regard I have run into the delay, especially in moving from active to passive. Having to slow down to let the game catch up is annoying.
I suppose, based on the general feel around the FFXIV forums here, I expected an unmanageable, odious, UI. It is not those things, although the need for improvement is obvious. I'm not defening the current UI at all, though I find much of the complaints hyperbolic.
I would love to see some tutorial/tooltip information like most of us are familiar with in other MMOs. That is sorely lacking from XIV.
I've only been able to play for about 5 hours so far, so this is a very shallow look at the game so far. As the weekend approaches though hopefully I'll be able to speak more cogently about the various guildleves, leveling speed, and so forth!
Review in progress would imply that the first part of your post would have actually made some progress on that review but it didn't so you are really not in a position to insult people about their reading skills. Further, to do so as early as your second post with this login only makes you come across as a condescending ass with an over developed sense of self importance. So far you haven't given me much confidence in your posts being useful and worth the time to read.
All die, so die well.
^This.
Kotaku also does "reviews in progress" but they don't spend their opening post yaking about nothing. They actually you know...talk about the game. So while reading may be fundamental, comprehension is key.
Alltern8 Blog | Star Wars Space Combat and The Old Republic | Cryptic Studios - A Pre Post-Mortem | Klingon Preview, STO's Monster Play