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Final Fantasy XIV Alpha Discussion

notworksafe

Member
Yeah not a big deal, just curious. I figured that the downloads were more then GAF could do by themselves.

EDIT: 1 hour 30 mins to go!
 
I'll party if I can log in. I'll give it a shot but if the server issues persist I'm not gonna keep at it, I need to finish this paper tonight.
 

notworksafe

Member
I hear you, Pai. I crammed in all my schoolwork over the weekend to make time for tonight. I'll be trying out the controller as well so hopefully my vids have less of me going the wrong direction with the camera.

EDIT: Do I have to keep the FFXIV Config open to use a controller? Just wondering cause it has a "Run in Backround" button on the controller screen.
 
Yeah I thought he said 5-8 pages. Turns out it's 12-14 so I've got an extra night's work to put into it. :lol If the connection is alright I don't mind playing for a few hours now, I'm about finished.
 
Pai Pai Master said:
Yeah I thought he said 5-8 pages. Turns out it's 12-14 so I've got an extra night's work to put into it. :lol If the connection is alright I don't mind playing for a few hours now, I'm about finished.

If the connection problems persist, I'll be happy to try logging in for you :lol
 

Kandinsky

Member
notworksafe said:
That's not me. I was a male Thaumaturge and Marauder.

Also you guys still want to party up? My plan is to make my Gladiator, get some leves, and GTFO the city ASAP because that's where all of my crashes and framerate issues happened.
Check his other videos.

notworksafe said:
EDIT: Do I have to keep the FFXIV Config open to use a controller? Just wondering cause it has a "Run in Backround" button on the controller screen.
No you dont.

And yeah probably gonna give up if its like last week :/
 
Nah, there's really not much that can be done. If they want to limit the server to such a small amount of players, that's how it should go; it's unlikely the servers can even handle a whole lot at this point. It's only the second day of testing.

I'm just not sure why they bothered to invite so many people if barely anyone can play. :lol What's the server limit, like 10? It was overloaded as soon as the clock struck 9pm.
 

Nakazato

Member
Pai Pai Master said:
Nah, there's really not much that can be done. If they want to limit the server to such a small amount of players, that's how it should go; it's unlikely the servers can even handle a whole lot at this point. It's only the second day of testing.

I'm just not sure why they bothered to invite so many people if barely anyone can play. :lol What's the server limit, like 10? It was overloaded as soon as the clock struck 9pm.
ill take your place till the beta >_> :lol
but people a slowly getting keep trying :)
 
Yeah, no server queue and the fact that you have to relog in entirely every time is pretty damn annoying. I feel bad for my security token battery.
 

notworksafe

Member
It makes sense. The Vista problem got fixed so now even more people are pounding on the server.

EDIT: I could remove shadows to increase performance, but then I'd have to quit the game. Decisions, decisions.
 

Nakazato

Member
notworksafe said:
It makes sense. The Vista problem got fixed so now even more people are pounding on the server.

EDIT: I could remove shadows to increase performance, but then I'd have to quit the game. Decisions, decisions.
keep going if you get dc'd then fix things

edit:damn you pai pai :p

Rumor has it SLI is crashing 14 @_@
 

notworksafe

Member
And I crashed! Time to tweak settings.

EDIT: A crash on the loading screen hurts the most, I think.
EDIT 2: Again! I keep crashing on the loading screen to get into the game.
 
They want us to provide feedback on the combat system and controls...half of us can't log in, the other half can't find mobs to fight. :p

More disappointed about tonight than I was last week. I figured since they went ahead and scheduled 3 test days this week, it'd at least be playable by now. Not sure how they can benefit from barely anyone being able to play properly enough to provide input.
 

notworksafe

Member
Pai Pai Master said:
Apparently NPCs and monsters aren't even spawning for most of the people who got in. :lol
That'd be me. I'm in but nothing has spawned...again. Looks like no movies tonight if this keeps up.
 
Pai Pai Master said:
They want us to provide feedback on the combat system and controls...half of us can't log in, the other half can't find mobs to fight. :p

More disappointed about tonight than I was last week. I figured since they went ahead and scheduled 3 test days this week, it'd at least be playable by now. Not sure how they can benefit from barely anyone being able to play properly enough to provide input.

You're testing potential customer frustration level at having to re-enter your key token over and over again as you fail to log in.

In all seriousness, it sounds like they should be running this more than just on select days and hours.. it obviously needs a lot more work.
 

notworksafe

Member
Well I'm done for the day. Pretty much a giant waste of time. I grabbed a vid of the inventory and of the quest log. Other then that there was nothing to do.
 

Kandinsky

Member
k3q0lv.jpg
 

gillty

Banned
The server was much more stable this time, unfortunately the servers had other issues like players desyncing, players somehow in separate instances (grey names like in a separate area), no mobs, and of course the nagging problem of limited capacity. Unlike last time I was pretty much in the entire time just walking around taking in the sights.
 
Did some more of the Treasures of the Main quest but got disconnected before I could make it outside to fight stuff. That's probably it for tonight -.-
 

notworksafe

Member
So I think the "no mobs" thing is just zoning lag. The whole time I was in the field, I kept hearing the town music. Right before I gave up, the music switched to the field music and the game crashed. After that I got an error when trying to log in and the game closed. Something tells me my character won't be around next week. :lol

I'm converting the vids and sending them off to Gromph. Nothing too impressive but it's something!
 
notworksafe said:
So I think the "no mobs" thing is just zoning lag. The whole time I was in the field, I kept hearing the town music. Right before I gave up, the music switched to the field music and the game crashed. After that I got an error when trying to log in and the game closed. Something tells me my character won't be around next week. :lol

I'm converting the vids and sending them off to Gromph. Nothing too impressive but it's something!

Last week I had a couple of errors where I could hear the music and people running past what I assume was my character, but I never got past the loading screen.

Anywho, seems like you all had a wonderful night! Glad I decided to skip out. I'll continue waiting until a session gets more positive feedback.
 

notworksafe

Member
Kandinsky said:
I didnt even bother getting videos:lol
I just took a video of me looking at all my equipment, checking out the quest log, and looking at abilities. I would have gotten some exploration vids but I was getting 7-10 FPS. Much worse then last week.

Kandinsky, did you actually find a mob? I'm in amazement!
 

gillty

Banned
I was playing while talking with some fellow testers on mumble, a few of them were able to see mobs and the atherite crystal at the camps.

Sever stability wise it was better, as in I wasn't kicked off a hundred times like last time and I was still connected to the chat server, the biggest problem was with players ending up no longer in sync from the server. I've experienced this type of thing in EVE mainly, unlike in EVE my character never came back into sync with the server. They still need to solve the issues with the capacity, but I honestly think performance was worse because you had hundreds of players in a small area. GPU usage was up from 30% to 55% and my 4890 definitely had to work harder tonight.
 

LaneDS

Member
So leveling your physical level grants you higher HP/MP and points to drop into stats, while leveling particular jobs I assume just unlocks more abilities in that particular job? Is that right?

Mostly unrelated, but I'll be amazed if Square really allows full stat customization at launch... that seems so far at odds with the more user-friendly approach they talked about. Hopefully redoing points won't be much of a pain if they do go through with it.
 

Gromph

This tag is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance...
Staff Member
notworksafe said:
That's why they were edited. :lol I figured as much though. Last I saw they were at more then 7500 downloads. Where are people posting...I assume BG?

I see Italian forums on the referrer.
 

Xux

Member
LaneDS said:
So leveling your physical level grants you higher HP/MP and points to drop into stats, while leveling particular jobs I assume just unlocks more abilities in that particular job? Is that right?

Mostly unrelated, but I'll be amazed if Square really allows full stat customization at launch... that seems so far at odds with the more user-friendly approach they talked about. Hopefully redoing points won't be much of a pain if they do go through with it.

You use the points to level HP and MP just like all of the other stats.
 

Jinko

Member
Seems everyone had a bad time staying on and lagging, the japanese where making comments like "Japanese are the Guinea pigs" and "Lets go back to FF11"

Kind of expected from an Alpha to be honest, although I do think they should try and split the 3 regions into another 3 and have less people trying to get online on any given day.

It seems SE were running behind from the March 11th date and still haven't sorted things properly, seems like a rush job and they have too many testers.
 

Jinko

Member
Copying from BG as this is decent info.

Sorry i've been playing, TESTING so i havent had a minute to write. but while i wait for this 5 min load screen as i warp, i'll write up my alpha test 2 experience as a conj.

I learned an ability at level 2, no TP cost no MP cost no cool down.
Its a chant move. - Makes the next cast have a lower inturruption rate. (1 action point cost)

Learned an ability at level 4.

Cure - 12 MP, 0 TP. Requires either war or magic class. aka can not be equipped on a crafting class. Requires 1 action point.

Everytime i got phyiscal level up, i was awarded 75 attribute points. At first each stat requires 2 attribute points to raise the stat 1 point. HP however costs 3 points, and MP costs 8 points.

After a certain amount of upgrades, the amount of attribute points required to up a skill was 3 instead of 2.

The difference in damage between a skill cast at 1 notch on the effect gauge vs 3 was about 20 damage.

Following the story line quests, i had to do an escort quest of sorts. I had to follow this NPC around, occassionally stopping and a mob would appear and i couldnt proceed until it was dead. There was a circle around the NPC on the mini map, if u walked outside of this circle a message would appear in the log "you are now leaving the instance" unless u ran back in.

I got some guild leves, i was able to accept all 3 of the battle leves, each had a different reward (200~700 gil, 2 of the leves had item rewards as well, armor)

Armor pieces had evasion ratings, critical resistance ratings. Staff had magical potency # and magic acc. #

After starting a leve, the mini map would have arrows pointing you to a zone on the map that had the targets you were looking for. U had to find them within that zone and kill them.

After the leve was complete, the portal appears which u click to go back to camp and you're awarded for completing it.

After going back to the guild leve place to select more, 3 more leves appeared under the battle category. 2 of the leaves were the same as 2 i just did, with a different gil reward and different item (roughly same value of reward). There was 1 new guild leve available that wasnt there before.

After i selected one of the leves, it brought up a list of the 3 i had just completed. In the list was the name, and a number of stars. 2 of the leves had the number 0, one of them had the number 1. The NPC told me to trade in the leves for an enhanced reward on my next leve. After selecting all 3, the reward on the guild leve i just selected went from 400gil to 715 gil.

I accepted all 3 and am teleporting back to camp, but the now loading screen has been on since the beginning of this post, so i probably have to relog.

I havent had a chance to get any new weapons yet. I was in a party but didnt get to do a battle regime before i got disconnected. However whenever the party leader tried to warp, it also asked me if i wanted to warp as well.

I'll report back with more in a little bit.

test phase was just over. i was able to test my mauruder (sp?) with conj. skills, and level up. im about to edit the pics for name blockage, upload them, and then write up explainations and post. eta probably 30~45min.

A tidbit of info tho while you wait:

When i switched to an axe, all the spells i couldnt wear at the moment automatically came unequipped. with an axe i had a skill "Hack" which is mauruder skill only. all my elemental skills were still equipped (fire, aero, etc)

my chant spell i learned at lv 2 came off, as did cure that i learned at level 4.

when i dinged level 2 with axe, a new skill became available called trunksplitter, it takes 1000 TP, increases attack power and does slashing damage. attack power is increased further against seedkin.

Whats interesting is, when I dinged lvl 2 with axe, i was able to equip the conj spell i learned @ lvl 2, trance chant. i could be wrong, but as a conj, trance chant had no recast that i remember seeing. when its equipped with an axe, it has a 120sec recast.

Given that, we can assume that when i get to level 4 with an axe, i can then equip cure, which i learned on conj @ level 4.

anyway, gonna work on those pics now.

edit: learned cure @ 4 not 2
 

Jinko

Member
More info

I'm too lazy to write a whole lot, i highlighted all the good stuff and commented directly on the pictures to show the importance of the screens.

IMAGE GALLERY - http://img341.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=20286201.jpg

Things i found that arn't explained in the pics:

The check system for monsters i think is flawed at the moment.
A single mob by itself, if its easy, will have a blueish icon next to it.
but if 2 mobs of the same difficulty are in a party, they both show a red icon. Even tho its red, the mobs themselves are weak and i could easily kill 2. even more so as a conj because the elemental spells are AoE. It only took 2 casts to kill them both.

Which brings me to my point on elemental spell effectiveness vs magic dart.
Dart and ele spells do roughly the same amount of damage.
Dart requires no tp, no MP, 2 sec cast, single target
Ele spells cost MP, 2 sec cast, but are AoE

So when fighting mobs that are close together, the elemental spells are much more efficient. The MP cost is low as well, out of my entire day i never had to use my mp restoration spell. HP/MP is restored upon completing guild leves and/or examining aethreyite crystals(sp)

Also, if you look @ pic #8, that gray icon next to the mobs name signifies that its a leve target. I noticed once another party claim the leve target i was targeting (but had not yet attacked or claimed). I was able to find more of the mob without problems.

During my quest instance earlier, i noticed another player in my instance.. i know he was doing the same quest as me. i thought it odd though to see another player in my instance area. who knows if it was a bug or normal functionality.

Most of the leves i did were go kill x monster, which involved following the arrows on the mini map to the designated location, killing the mob (which then that location dissappeared from the map) and moving to a new location to kill more.
On one leve i did, i went to a location and killed a mob, which then spawned another mob, which when killed then spawned a party of 2 mobs. i.e. i didnt have to run to different locations. The monsters auto aggroed me when they spawned.

During the middle of my leve, i got a party invite from 2 people doing the same leve. For some reason it appeared i was unable to attack their leve mob. They were already half way done with their leve, as was i.

I can't think of anything else of importance that isn't self explanatory from the pics. lemmie know if u have any questions.

(F) Elezen Archer boat fight http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VEAWO87D
 
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