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Final Fantasy XIV Beta Discussion + Media
- Thread starter notworksafe
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Kagari said:
Something probably just screwed up with the servers. I'm sure stuff like this has happened with other MMOs and even happens with Steam, PSN, and XBL servers from time to time.
Plus there were never any weekend tests (was supposed to be some maintenance period), so it's not that big a deal.
If anything i'd expect an update with a decent amount of fixes by the end of the week.
LaneDS said:
I don't understand.
Why would SE release a ton of content for a beta test. They just want to make sure the game is working right. If they released more content, what would there be to look forward to on release day?
Also why would they give us a lot of content in beta when we are playing the game for free?
notworksafe
Member
To test class balance, content difficultly and balance, and for bugs related to quests/cutscenes/instances/etc so they don't have to do it after launch.Londa said:
HappyBivouac
Member
Kagari said:
We really don't know how far along they are in certain areas. The version we've been playing in beta is likely (and definitely, in some ways) not nearly as far along as they have the entire game at this point. Obviously the server issues seen today are something to deal with, but neither you nor I know how much work it's going to take to get that all ironed out.
I'm not too worried.
Really it's best for this to happen now then at release. If they don't learn from it and avoid it happening again in September, then it will be incredibly annoying.
I'm not really worried about the content though, I assume there will be enough to do. Especially with regards to the Leve's seeing as I can't see them being too much of an effort to create.
Even the complaints about the controls wouldn't really be too hard to fix if they'd just add the camera to the arrow keys/shift+arrow keys when navigating menus. Mouse control could use some work as well, but I'm not going to be using it regardless.
Menu's require the most work really, at the moment they are pretty hard to follow. The Abilities and Traits and Equipment sections require a lot of work.
In Abilities and Traits, the drop down menu needs to default to the weapon you are currently holding. It's pretty frustrating and confusing not seeing anything there when you first enter the menu.
It's also pretty important that it saves the action bar every time you switch weapons so that when you return you don't need to set it all up again.
Also, they really need to make it so that you don't have to be in passive mode to add something to that bar. Or at least make it clear that you do. I was finding it incredibly frustrating when I couldn't work out why the ability wouldn't go into the bar.
Finally they need to make it clear what slot on the action bar you are highlighting right now.
The Equipment section is a complete mess. It's almost impossible to work out what is what. At the very least though they need to make it easier to compare two pieces of equipment. I can't for the life of me work out what changes a new piece will make without taking note of all the stats on both pieces and working it out manually. It gets pretty frustrating when you're comparing more then two items.
It would also be helpful if they made it easier to navigate with the keyboard. I really don't want to have to grab the mouse for this particular menu.
Of course, stability is also something that needs to be worked on, but I figured there would be problems with that in the beta. Today, while the servers were up, the game was already running a lot better then on Tuesday, so I'm not worried about that much at all. Of course, congested areas are incredibly laggy still, but hopefully, either the seperation of people between starting areas, or further work on SE's part will fix this issue. Although, if they can't work out the cause of lag causing fps issues, it's going to be painful.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the beta right now. Hopefully things can be sorted out in a swift manor. lol
I'm not really worried about the content though, I assume there will be enough to do. Especially with regards to the Leve's seeing as I can't see them being too much of an effort to create.
Even the complaints about the controls wouldn't really be too hard to fix if they'd just add the camera to the arrow keys/shift+arrow keys when navigating menus. Mouse control could use some work as well, but I'm not going to be using it regardless.
Menu's require the most work really, at the moment they are pretty hard to follow. The Abilities and Traits and Equipment sections require a lot of work.
In Abilities and Traits, the drop down menu needs to default to the weapon you are currently holding. It's pretty frustrating and confusing not seeing anything there when you first enter the menu.
It's also pretty important that it saves the action bar every time you switch weapons so that when you return you don't need to set it all up again.
Also, they really need to make it so that you don't have to be in passive mode to add something to that bar. Or at least make it clear that you do. I was finding it incredibly frustrating when I couldn't work out why the ability wouldn't go into the bar.
Finally they need to make it clear what slot on the action bar you are highlighting right now.
The Equipment section is a complete mess. It's almost impossible to work out what is what. At the very least though they need to make it easier to compare two pieces of equipment. I can't for the life of me work out what changes a new piece will make without taking note of all the stats on both pieces and working it out manually. It gets pretty frustrating when you're comparing more then two items.
It would also be helpful if they made it easier to navigate with the keyboard. I really don't want to have to grab the mouse for this particular menu.
Of course, stability is also something that needs to be worked on, but I figured there would be problems with that in the beta. Today, while the servers were up, the game was already running a lot better then on Tuesday, so I'm not worried about that much at all. Of course, congested areas are incredibly laggy still, but hopefully, either the seperation of people between starting areas, or further work on SE's part will fix this issue. Although, if they can't work out the cause of lag causing fps issues, it's going to be painful.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the beta right now. Hopefully things can be sorted out in a swift manor. lol
Ronok said:Menu's require the most work really, at the moment they are pretty hard to follow. The Abilities and Traits and Equipment sections require a lot of work.
In Abilities and Traits, the drop down menu needs to default to the weapon you are currently holding. It's pretty frustrating and confusing not seeing anything there when you first enter the menu.
It's also pretty important that it saves the action bar every time you switch weapons so that when you return you don't need to set it all up again.
Also, they really need to make it so that you don't have to be in passive mode to add something to that bar. Or at least make it clear that you do. I was finding it incredibly frustrating when I couldn't work out why the ability wouldn't go into the bar.
Finally they need to make it clear what slot on the action bar you are highlighting right now.
The Equipment section is a complete mess. It's almost impossible to work out what is what. At the very least though they need to make it easier to compare two pieces of equipment. I can't for the life of me work out what changes a new piece will make without taking note of all the stats on both pieces and working it out manually. It gets pretty frustrating when you're comparing more then two items.
It would also be helpful if they made it easier to navigate with the keyboard. I really don't want to have to grab the mouse for this particular menu.
Hope you already sent some reports with all this, and sent multiple times.
Im still wondering about the Armory system as far as abilities go, not weapon skills.
Take pugilist's blindside, chakra, and featherfoot abilities. Once you learn those, are there no restrictions to using them with another class? I guess it sorta balances out since everything (other than normal light and heavy attacks) has an action point cost to set.
I forget who mentioned the "create a class" focus awhile back, but I guess thats what it balances out to.
Take pugilist's blindside, chakra, and featherfoot abilities. Once you learn those, are there no restrictions to using them with another class? I guess it sorta balances out since everything (other than normal light and heavy attacks) has an action point cost to set.
I forget who mentioned the "create a class" focus awhile back, but I guess thats what it balances out to.
Corran Horn
May the Schwartz be with you
All the sudden the SC2 beta feels like its running much smoother :lol
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Wait--what?Teknoman said:
Is this like in the old FF games where you could select one or two abilities from any job you learned while you're playing as a different job? Like you could take "double cast" from your RDM and equip it to your summoner?
Or is it a free for all where you can take ALL of your abilities all of the time?
Actually, wasn't that in FFXI? (Or was that system you could use your subjob's abilities, but only at the subjob level (so max 50% of your current main level)?)
Like how the community ran with the Ninja job in FFXI, totally straying away from how the job was intended to play (as well as other jobs like RDM solo, etc) I can anticipate some crazy shit with the amount of freedom this system has.
It's like FFXI's sub job system except you're not restricted to one sub job's abilities.
SnakeswithLasers said:
It's like FFXI's sub job system except you're not restricted to one sub job's abilities.
I don't really get why SE would need to release 80% of the content for a beta test. I actually think its impractical. All they need to release is a couple of examples of what they plan to have on release.
About the guildleves, there was more leves in Alpha from what I remember. So apon release there will be much more.
About the guildleves, there was more leves in Alpha from what I remember. So apon release there will be much more.
Mister Zimbu
Member
Londa said:
One could argue that the purpose of a beta test is to test the game.
jersoc said:
It is a test... it isn't suppose to be 100% fun.
I wonder how many people complaining about no content just log out and never give feed back in the beta forums... Those people shouldn't even be testing. It's not a free trail of the game. Its to help SE make the game fun. Because right now it isn't, it's in testing for goodness sake...
Londa said:
If you think they don't have to test all this content they're withholding, you'd be wrong.
Nobody is saying it has to be 100% fun. But being critical of the game (again, not on this forum, but directly to Square) is the only way we, as consumers, can have any effect over it's quality.
The most successful MMO of all time had tons more content many, many months before it launched at retail, and, well... it went on to become one of gaming's biggest success stories. Whether or not you like WoW has no relevance on this argument, but what is important is that giving beta testers plenty of content to test, for free, is not guaranteed to hurt the performance of a game in the least.
In my opinion, it'd be in Square's best interests to get as fun and complete of a beta out there, so people are talking about how great the game is before it launches instead of how unfinished it is.
desa said:
As long as I dont get walled into a corner/stuck being forced to use the same set of abilities as everyone else. Of course some abilities will probably be better paired with certain weapon skills (not just TP attack abilities like in XI) than others, so it wont be too much of a free for all.
MiloFoxburr
Member
Palmer_v1 said:
I got the impression that we are just there for Stress Testing and Feedback on Gameplay.
LaneDS said:
Ok, i see a problem here.
Blizzard offer like the 90% of content every beta/ptr, and the problem there is after they launch, people dont enjoy the game, only rush to the end. Trust me i was in Apha F&F and Beta of WoW.
Yo test the beta/feedback the beta, but you also learn all the content on the beta... so when it come to release you allready know it, except a 10%.
Sincerly i preffer a 20% oer 10% content beta, testing the mechanics, the core, and enjoying the game at release.
Salaadin said:Right. I also hope that every job has a place everywhere. I hated in XI when some groups will basically just say "we cant do this unless we have this job" and never try to think outside of the box and roll with what they had.
As a PUP, nobody ever wanted me
That shouldnt happen the way the game is built...but then again MMO communities can get really picky at times. I think the problem with XI is that things would get so challenging at times because of the way the battles worked, once someone found an easy way to do it, no one wanted to try anything else. Other thing that sucked was how you always had to go to the wiki to find out anything. Fortunately, XIV seems to be progressing in the right direction as far as info goes. Now we just need synth hints and a synth journal.
Also remember that abilities are the only things that can be swapped between professions, so you wont see any spell casting marauders.
I'd agree with that Gromph. But I think there's a balance they can (and probably will, in time) strike between "here's everything" and "here's practically nothing". Especially when they're limiting the hours people can test, you should at least be able to put in enough content that lasts a player more than four to six hours to complete. In MMO terms, that should be practically nothing. And yet, that's what we have, being generous.
Mister Zimbu
Member
Londa said:
I'm not expecting a completely 100% full game here, nor should anyone. But from what I'm hearing here (as the game isn't actually playable on ATI cards yet), it's not even close; I'd say we have less than 5 percent.
Beta tends to imply complete or near-complete. Most of the MMOs that I've beta tested fall into this as well. This is ESPECIALLY important in an MMO (as opposed to an FPS or pretty much any other genre, where "beta" has become synonymous with "demo" over the past few years), due to all the custom scripting and balance issues that can arise with content, and the infinite amount of ways it can all go wrong and interact poorly with each other.
If it was earlier in the product cycle I could understand this amount of content, but with less than two months until release, if they're intentionally holding back such a large amount of content in an MMO from testing then I'm definitely very concerned about how stable the untested content will be at release.
Gromph said:Ok, i see a problem here.
Blizzard offer like the 90% of content every beta/ptr, and the problem there is after they launch, people dont enjoy the game, only rush to the end. Trust me i was in Apha F&F and Beta of WoW.
Yo test the beta/feedback the beta, but you also learn all the content on the beta... so when it come to release you allready know it, except a 10%.
Sincerly i preffer a 20% oer 10% content beta, testing the mechanics, the core, and enjoying the game at release.
This is different in that WoW's PTRs are completely open betas - if you sign up, you're in, no questions asked.
If you're limiting the player base and making a closed beta as this is (at this point), you run significantly less risk of burning people out.
Nose Master
Member
T_________T I can't pay til next week Tuesday now? This is herecy!
LaneDS said:
Well i think they need to get the servers up for more than 2 hours
And yeah, i agree with you too. For example people dont know taht "Teasures of the Main" updates at level 10, also updates too at level 20.
I think they basically are testing core classes (Unballanced), a giant quest chain (Teasures of the Main), and Guildleves.
At some point of the beta, they need to add Companies, and mroe stuff, enough to test the rest of the "core".
This is in the things to do list I believe.
I think its pretty clear that the majority of content is being tested internally and they are witholding it probably not to spoil the experience for the testers.
This could cause problems later down the road with small glitches, but they may open the whole game up for a couple weeks prior to release.
Content is the least of the worries at this point, game controls, hate mechanics, party system, UI and menu's all need attention first.
I agree that they need to make it clear that Treasure of the Main has been updated, they will probably add text via the linkshell in time hopefully, but they need to get those walls of text out of the chat log and into something akin to a quest window like WoW/Aion.
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