Your thoughts on the beta!

[Krashna]

Overall with the beta, I'm satisfied, but just BARELY.

It still has alot of things that could be done with it in order to make it a little more user friendly.

First off, the User Interface is a total pain to use, having to go through 3-4 separate windows to equip gear, and unless you use a macro you have to re-equip all of your class abilities to the action bar. Kind of retarded that one. The interface has a certain degree of lag of course, but I'm attributing that fact to all of the servers being in Japan right now, not fond of the signal travel time.

Crafting! Completely unfriendly. Sure you can sit and make stuff, and I rather enjoy the fact that it's more involving, and you actually have to craft along with the materials to make something. However, do we honestly need to take 5 minutes or more to craft a single item? You have to kneel first, then select the items from your entire inventory menu and put them in one by one, to select an item to create, then to apply shards or crystals to it! On more that one occasion I got all the items in there, just to realize that I didn't have the required shards, and just ended up wasting my time.

Visually the game is stunning, my computer can't handle it very well, but that's a given with it being a laptop.

The targetting system is bogus, I've died countless times because I couldn't target the mobs that were attacking me and they killed me because I took too long trying to get them, again I'm attributing that to my crappy computer, but it still seems rather TOO difficult.

Tutorials. What tutorials? Just kind of plops you out there like a naked baby in the woods and just kinda points you in a vague direction and you have to figure it all out from there.


Overall, the game shows promise, but there are some HUGE design flaws which I think need to be redone.

Share your thoughts an' ideas! Love to hear some discussion on this!

[coreno]

It seems, at least initially, solo-able and more casual friendly than XI. I'm still unsure if I really want to, and have time to, get this game.

I do agree with all your negative points though... UI sucks, Targeting sucks.

[Tanat]

I agree with all the points you made about it. It's like they aimed to make it more for the casual gamer but failed to make it access easy, if you know what I mean. The flaws in FFXI are STILL THERE! I know they don't want to be like Blizzard but Hell, Blizzard pretty much set the foundation for gaming.

[Krashna]

I'm in full support of making the game more solo friendly, however, that brings me to another of the issues that I forgot to mention in the previous post: Monster Placement!

Running out as a rank 6 Marauder to solo a group of 3 mobs or so, wasn't very difficult. The axe attacks that hit multiple mobs pretty much mowed them down no problem, kudos to them to making it doable. Killed them no problemo. Now, the hard part was running back AFTER the mobs were killed. Using the same pathway that I used to get out there, there happened to be a Lone Wolf standing right in the middle of the pathway intersection that lead back to Camp Emerald Moss. Me being the courageous individual that I was, decided that it needed to not be there anymore, and since it was around the mobs which I so easily solo'd not 5 minutes prior, it would most certainly provide similar results! WRONG! That damned thing two-shot me, and there I was, just staring blankly at my empty health bar, wondering what the hell just happened.

[Missrox]

it honestly just doesn't fill my cup for me, looks amazing but it's just lacking awesomeness. don't know if i will purchase or not... with games like halo, cod , fable 3 and diablo 3 in future ffxiv 14 is too meh.

[theRefused]

I'm glad I sat out of the FFXIV beta and stuck with Starcraft 2. I've enjoyed it (about 200 games played) and now I'm getting bored with the monotony. Thus, I've decided to finally check and see how the FFXIV beta is moving along, or how it isn't. I'm disappointed but thankful at the same time. I know I never have time for these damn games, but hell I unfortunately make the time. It sounds like it would be work to figure this game out, and I'm not looking for more work as I already have enough.

I think with the quality of FFXIII and the major FFXI issues that are still visible in FFXIV, I've lost faith in Square Enix to produce high-caliber games. If FFXIV does see any success, its numbers will drop dramatically at the release of Diablo 3. I don't think there is a single game that people long for more than D3. I started warning my wife two years ago that whenever it comes out, I'll be "gone" for some time, WoW-style. 

What are all of you guys doing with your lives right now? I enjoy hearing positive things!

[Krashna]

Currently, aside from being just that awesome, I'm working as a children's photographer at a nearby picture studio. It's alot of fun, and I meet new people every day. I grew up around alot of kids, so I know how to handle most of them, but every now and then you get a tough one. Or a parent who knows better than me apparently.

It's life as usual for me, just chuggin' along til the next paycheck and so on.

[omnibahumut]

The game still feels incomplete to me, and overall I was unimpressed. Square had a chance to really treat this like a real demo, but treated it like a closed beta test. The concepts in the game are strong, and thats about it

[tenka]

hm there are definitely flaws and bugs but overall I am actually pretty satisfied.. I managed to get around with most of the flaws with macros.. i agree the inventory / equipment management and the software mouse is just way too slow for that to be close to manageable but you could definitely get around with it by setting a macro for each job and set actions.. which in turns made it actually fun to keep switching jobs: I see a tree I change to botanist to chop it.. then a low lvl mob I change to a low lvl job to kill it then higher lvl mob I change to a higher lvl job to kill it..

Also, levequests make leveling so much easier.. the exp points they give are enough to lvl you up after around 10 leve quests.. this makes crafting much easier to lvl as well especially you don't need any materials for synthesis levequests.. hence you don't really have to farm to level crafting, if you've travelled to all three cities like me.. you can teleport from one to another and do 6 crafting levequests at a time..<-- that I like.

I don't, however, understand how you can change from melee to magic class, and vice versa, with all your physical points dedicated to certain attributes. I did find out tho when you level up and allocate your points there is an option "Reassign" which gives you certain amount of points back to redistribute, but definitely not alot.. (like 30points)

I do have faith that it will improve.. like FFXI has come far.. and I know it will just get better. I am also excited about the new jobs that they haven't shown yet.. this game definitely has potential and I am giving it the benefit of the doubt.. it's just too bad the open beta cannot be more complete. So I will still buy the game.. I already ordered the collectors edition.. simply I think I can manage to play this casually and it's still worth it... and I'll stick with the CE because it gives a free 30days subscription, which is $13 right there so the extra $25 for the CE isn't that much... I really hope you guys would play tho.. it really defeats the purpose of online game if all my friends aren't there

[Krashna]

I'll probably pick it up eventually, however I'm going to wait for some feedback on how the game changes from now til launch.

Yes, FFXI has come a long way in... oh... what, 6-7 years? It's good now, but to me it seems like they're making all of the mistakes they made at the beginning of FFXI all over again! Didn't they learn anything?

Just disappointed with what I've been shown thus far, I expected alot more out of it.

[Tanat]

Debating whether to remove a pre-order for a game is an unhealthy sign. The balance is leaning a little to the good side I think.