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[falastini]

You are playing at noob levels. What do you expect? To me exping off of the final boss?

I'm curious.. What's your experience with MMOs? You come off as someone who's experience starts and ends with FFXI. You can do a lot more these days then grind crabs with a few quests sprinkled in. I didn't expect WoW level content, not many devs have the manpower to make that much content, but I was hoping for more then 4 leves a day then grinding.

ffs... warhammer online, with all it's problems, let you take part in some pretty epic senarios, and you could take part even at noob levels.

They still have time to add more things to the guildleve system, but everything so far is kill/fetch quests (correct me if I'm wrong). And based on their recent comments about sharing being necessary, it sounds like they plan to recycle a lot of content.

I hope I get into beta soon so I can get my own impressions, Despite all this nagging, I had really been looking forward to this for a long while. I want to see it succeed.


Maybe some of you beta testers can enlighten me on some of my concerns...

-ui/controls... I've resigned to the fact that they'll never implement proper mouse controls bc they don't want a PC advantage over consoles. Still sucks though

-guildleves... Limited to 8 every 2 days? What other alternatives are there to leveling? It sounds like they expect the same old grind.

-are the 5-6 abilities listed on various sites all the abilities each class gets in the game? I hope it's not like FFXI where you'd get a handful of useful abilities, then nothing to look forward to for the rest of the game.

-combat system... Looks interesting, but it seems all fighter classes play similarly. I guess it's an upgrade to FFXI's autoattack, but I was hoping for more unique mechanics to each class aside from different abilities. I worry that, since we're mixing and matching abilities, most classes are going to be homogenized versions of one another.

 

[notworksafe]

ffs... warhammer online, with all it's problems, let you take part in some pretty epic senarios, and you could take part even at noob levels.

Tier 1 Warhammer is the best early game in any MMO. If anyone here is looking to see what noob levels should be like, check that out. WAR has an unlimited time free trial for Tier 1 (both Mac and Windows) so you got no excuse!

 

[Jinko]

They'll be a different color though.

Or will they !

WAR was a brilliant game spoiled by PVP lol.

 

[Khrno]

Reading someone whining about the lack of content in the beta is the best way to wake up (at 5:00pm).

 

[notworksafe]

WAR was a brilliant game spoiled by PVP lol.

I thought the PVP was the only good part, really. It was interesting to see how they brought PVE mechanics (tanking, objectives, NPCs, etc) into a PVP scenario. Plus some healers having to DPS to heal is a really cool idea and should be in more games.

Reading someone whining about the lack of content in the beta is the best way to wake up (at 5:00pm).

Yep. Lack of content is the only complaint. It is a valid one, though. Considering the problems that have been found with just the current content, I'm wary of letting SQE's internal QA handle the testing for the rest of the content alone.

 

[LaneDS]

One thing is for sure, come September 22nd, there will be a lot of crow eating one way or another. I personally hope to be on the crow eating side, as a staunch "This game needs lots of work" person, I'd love to be proven wrong.

 

[notworksafe]

One thing is for sure, come September 22nd, there will be a lot of crow eating one way or another. I personally hope to be on the crow eating side, as a staunch "This game needs lots of work" person, I'd love to be proven wrong.

Same here. I've got release date delivery for the normal version and I hope to be treated to a a big change on the 30th. I'll still play every new Beta build though. I want to keep up with what is changing as the release date gets closer.

 

[Munba]

I loved war for the first months. After those, the game apparently was left to its destiny.. without a real desire by the development team to make it a blast during its life. Still today no other cities except the human/chaos ones is a perfect example. A raw gem (and a MASSIVE brand) thrown in the rubbish. Bah.

 

[Khrno]

Yep. Lack of content is the only complaint. It is a valid one, though. Considering the problems that have been found with just the current content, I'm wary of letting SQE's internal QA handle the testing for the rest of the content alone.

I share the comments about the other problems, but not about the content size at this time when we are dealing with a incomplete and limited build.

 

[notworksafe]

Yeah, that's the issue. The limited build is a problem with how soon launch is coming. At this stage we shouldn't be testing something so limited and just handling server stress issues.

 

[Londa]

Agree we need linkshells , am 18/21 GLD/PHY in Casseopia killing puks welcome to join me , my character name is Lima Gor.

I'm only level rank 6 . I'll try to catch up to you over the weekend.

Not towards Jinko:
I should have know that exp off the final boss comment would get so much hate. :lol

 

[Kuraine]

What I'm fairly concerned about, from a test perspective, is whether or not the rest of the game world will be ready server-wise if they're not going to be including it in the beta.

Think for a moment: Everything currently in beta is taking place on the smallest landmass in the game, a series of islands off the coast of the mainland of Eorzea. As far as most people have explored, there haven't been any major zoning points within the island, but I would imagine there needs to be in order to reach the mainland.

There are going to be a lot of people, on launch day, that start in the city they want to hole up in, realize that their friends are in another city, and make a brave journey to meet them. Is this going to work? What kind of stress will the server load across the world be subject to?

While it's understandable to do a significant stress test on one region of the game to start with, I'm hoping that the other regions are similarly ready if they're not included within the beta content.

 

[Jinko]

Content has never been a concern to me, what is worrying me is that there are still mobs that con as yellow and can kick your ass, and red ones that can't.

Party battle is lop sided, I was partying earlier with a lvl 21 Thaumaturge he had no problem maintaining his MP as he had both a skill which allowed him to absorb MP when he hit and one when he took damage. (for this reason he asked me not to use provoke)

But at what point should a mage be taking damage during party to maintain his MP lol, plus towards the end he was getting no skill points at all, a glitch ? I duno but it still seemed odd, he eventually got pissed off (understandably) and ended up soloing.

There is also a general sense of non cooperation, many people don't want to party, many don't want to share leves either.

@ Londa can always switch to another class, drop me a message in game.

 

[Londa]

if anyone wants to play in a party, I'm online. send me a pm I'll tell you my name

Gromph repaired my weapon.

Thank for party Gromph and Jinko.

 

[Jinko]

Ok played a bit of Conjurer and as others have said there is something very wrong with them, most fights you don't get any skill points and obviously mana is a big problem aswell, hopefully they will have sorted mages out in the next phase.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

You are playing at noob levels. What do you expect? To me exping off of the final boss?

WoW TBC starting zones for the new races had you fighting back undead invasion for the blood elves, and draenei had you fighting off blood elf spies (i didn't go much further than that)

WAR had you pvping at level 3 and had a whole host of enemies for the different races to fight. (empire had you killing chaos giants and blowing up hell cannons etc, greenskins had you sabotaging dwarven ships)

AoC had you killing picts, exploring a massive ruin and killing obsidian men (for me that was cool 'cos they were in the books)

Looks like cata weill actually have you fighting raid boss style mobs with other NPC's.

Sorry, but rats and moles are archaic.

I share the comments about the other problems, but not about the content size at this time when we are dealing with a incomplete and limited build.

WAR had the whole limited build thing too, we found out why soon after release, the "end game" was totally broken and a pile of shit.

 

[Chris R]

Also, anyone know what the endgame will be like? Hoping for something a little more robust than what FFXI had to offer.

 

[Khrno]

Also, anyone know what the endgame will be like? Hoping for something a little more robust than what FFXI had to offer.

lol endgame, we don't even know what midgame will be like :lol

 

[Teknoman]

No one knows anything past whats been seen for now (and maybe less than that, since most people had no idea about the other story quests that unlock after a certain point). Im guessing they are keeping most of that a secret since some may be story related.

We havent seen anything from the Garlean empire or the other Beastman tribes either. Not to mention they change up the starting area monster arrangement with each phase. Remember those alpha videos and screenshots with those crystal shelled monsters that had long stalk projected eyes? No one has seen any of those in beta, yet the dodo population drastically increased.

The only reason why people exped off smaller monsters in XI is because they were "easy", In XIV they seem to be trying to fix that (to a certain extent so far) by making everything give a decent amount of exp and skill points, as well making it so that there are many different types of monsters/enemies in one area. Theres also a fair amount of human enemies near bloodshore, and undead/demons (vilekin? Or were those bugs?) in underground areas. Akapallus at the beach too.

Hopefully we'll really see how much further they've come with this in beta phase 3. I really want them to succeed in making it closer to the offline games than anything, where its not really lucrative to exp off the same enemy types 24/7.

 

[carlo6529]

I have a few of questions I was hoping to get answered about the character names.

Spoiler

I'm sorry if this has been asked already.

How do the names work in the game exactly?

I remember reading in an interview a long time ago about the last name being your true name and every character you make will have the same last name but your first name will be different.

Also, when your whispering/telling to someone, do you have to type their whole name?

Finally, do you need a first and last name or is one fine?

 

[DrDogg]

I have not gotten a beta invite, but even with all this complaining, I'm not worried about the final product. I honestly don't expect S-E to have a good beta. Does anyone know what the FFXI beta was like so we can get a comparison?

I'm a little concerned about mages at launch, but I have confidence that S-E will fix them to at least what they were in FFXI, which is all I care about. I plan to tank, but only after I've leveled some mages classes.

I do think the launch will be slightly less than stellar, but not to the point some people are worried about. I expect things to be significantly better by the PS3 release, and I have no problems playing with what's available during that 6 month time period. However, I was also a fan of FFXI grinding and I was one of the few that had no issues with finding/making a party so...

Speaking of partying. I don't really like the fact that you can kind of auto-join parties. It will be nice at first, but after awhile I can see people getting booted from parties because the leader wants to play with someone better or someone they know. So essentially you'd join a party and get booted immediately. Hopefully you can make private parties or use a system similar to FFXI if you so choose.

 

[Teknoman]

The way the search system is now, im guessing its something they are still working on. That and the way tell current works. It displays your name when you send a reply, instead of the person you're sending it to.

 

[Londa]

I'm back online, Jinko I see you in my party but the game won't let me send you a /tell.

Anyone want to party anything close to rank 8?

If anyone needs their weapon back to 100%:

Just walk to the blacksmith guild and put in /say "I need my "name of weapon" repair! please help" someone will examine you can got into your bazaar and repair it.

 

[Jinko]

I had a nice surprise wheni checked my retainer today, I had 5k gil waiting for me

Sadly both my inventory and my retainers inventory is full with gathered mats, hope they give us an AH in phase 3.

FWIW there is a restriction of 10 bazaars at one time, so if the AH does come back expect the same shitty 7 auctions at one time.

 

[Teknoman]

How does the seeking item option work in your bazaar? Also I think custom house = new auction house. It's got the same logo and everything.

 

[Khrno]

I remember reading in an interview a long time ago about the last name being your true name and every character you make will have the same last name but your first name will be different.

Also, when your whispering/telling to someone, do you have to type their whole name?

Finally, do you need a first and last name or is one fine?

I don't know about that first part.

The chat will be adjusted for the next update (phase 3 most likely), because right now there's no ctrl+t function for example, and if you want to /t someone, you have to type the whole name. But I don't doubt they will sort that out soon. Same as the party/search functions as DrDogg mentioned.

And you do need first and last name, at least 3 characters long each name.

Speaking of partying. I don't really like the fact that you can kind of auto-join parties. It will be nice at first, but after awhile I can see people getting booted from parties because the leader wants to play with someone better or someone they know. So essentially you'd join a party and get booted immediately. Hopefully you can make private parties or use a system similar to FFXI if you so choose.

Yeah, that auto-join really sucks, either for someone making a party and getting some random dude they didn't like, or job they didn't want. It's best to just see the people LFP and ask them to join. They could as well have a flag up for leaders looking for members, so people interested can find them in a search and ask them to join, not just randomly /telling party leaders in exp areas offering your services like in XI, I always received so many random tells like that when I was leading a party doing whatever but exping :lol

 

[Londa]

anyone want to party or need gear repaired? I can repair stuff made from clothcraft.

 

[Haint]

Guys, I'm trying to build a PC basically just to play FFXIV on.

I'm planning to OC, so how well do you think this setup would run the game?


Sharkoon Seraphim Black ATX Case

Coolermaster GX Series 650 Watt PSU

Asus P7H55-V

Intel Core i5 760 2.8 Ghz

Glacialtech F101 Silent Heatpipe Cooler

Transcend 4 Gb DDR 3 1333mhz

Ati Radeon HD 5850 1Gb

WD Caviar Black 500Gb


Any input from someone with a similar rig would be greatly appreciated.

I just built a similar system also primiarly for FFXIV:

i5 760
Hyper 212+
Asus P7P55D-E
1GB GTX460
4GB DDR3
Samsung F3 HDD

Run a full time OC on the CPU and GPU to 3.66 and 830/1660 at stock voltages. It runs the Beta full speed at 1080p, highest shadows, and 4x MSAA. All else enabled, save for Ambient Occlusion and DoF (I've never even tried these, based on reports AO destroys performance). It only scores low 3000's on the unmodded High Res benchmark.

 

[Jinko]

I quite like the idea of the auto invite, if you get a party and then instantly booted then so be it, join up and look for another one.

There will always be pricks in the game can't odds that, I wonder if the Japanese will get an option to invite Japanese only though

 

[Osaka]

My future FFXIV rig

Waiting for it to arrive~

 

[Mister Zimbu]

More observations / whining:

It may just be me, or I may be doing things wrong, but it seems to me that it's counterproductive to group up to do... anything. In a group you get about 250 experience for a kill, versus solo where you get 1010 experience. Though groups do kill mobs faster than solo, they don't kill them 4-5 times faster. As a conjurer, I definitely get less skill points while in a group, especially if I focus on healing the group (as I usually do).

Grouping for levequests has a (slightly) better benefit (gold for doing other peoples' quests). However, the gold reward for doing higher difficulty quests is negligible.

The levequest in Bloodshore with the rebels is wildly imbalanced compared with the other quests in the area.

All in all I think they need to do away with the "abilities in combat are what gives you skill points" mechanic. It's a lot more difficult to balance, too random, and changes groups from a cooperative ("let's work together to get this mob down fast!") to a competitive ("i have to use X Y and Z to do the most damage and therefore get the most skill points, thereby depriving my teammates of those skill points") experience.

Noone actually parties in this game, the above seems to be a reason why.

My conjurer rotation seems to be:

• Tank gets hit hard
• I heal tank
• I stay in "healing mode" while the tank doesnt get hit again (since it takes about 30 seconds to swtich from "dps" to "heal" mode using the gamepad)
• Sit idle for awhile because there's noone to heal
• Get impatient because since I'm getting their idle I'm not getting skill points for the fight
• Switch the DPS mode to do some damage
• Tank gets hit, dies.

My conclusion on this one that they really need to set up keyboard shortcuts for targeting party members.

A really simple thing they need to add to the interface is a LFG flag like FFXI had.

SE, in their infinite MMO wisdom, has decided that it should not be possible to look at other players' stats, gear, or classes whatsoever. Clearly an MMO should not allow you to look at people you'll potentially group with. (Actually, considering how ridiculous shit like GearScore has infiltrated WoW in the past year, I can't say I fault them for this).

For some reason, "how to emote" needs an extensive tutorial, but "unintuitive but core Battle Regimen mechanic" does not.

"Pressing windows-key crashes the game" is an issue most other PC developers figured out how to fix in 1999.

 

[carlo6529]

I want to overclock my Q8200 but I've never done it before. I found a youtube video showing some guy overclocking his Q8200 from 2.33 ghz to 3.3 ghz. I'm not sure I want to overclock it that high but I wanted to bring it up to 2.8 or something just to meet the recommended specs.

To everyone over clocking, are you installing extra cooling fans? I'm just wondering if I need to; I don't want my pc to fry.

Edit~ @ Mister Zimbu, did you voice those opinions on the ffxiv beta forum?

 

[Mister Zimbu]

Edit~ @ Mister Zimbu, did you voice those opinions on the ffxiv beta forum?

Working on it. Have to figure out which ones are valid complaints and which ones may just be baseless whining. And rephrase everything to be more... civil .

 

[Jinko]

Agree with pretty much all you say Mister Zimbu, if they expect players to pick up and play mage classes at release they better fix that quick smart.

Komoto did post a message on the forum last week I think suggesting they needed to tune party play further, so hopefully in phase 3 they will have sorted that out.

There is so much that needs to be fixed before/after phase 3 they have their work cut out, each day I play I see more and more small bugs and balance issues that I didn't before.

They deffinately need to sort the desync with guildleves when you DC aswell, thats just annoying.

Edit:- Oh yea anima needs fixing not been able to teleport for 24 hours.

 

[Mister Zimbu]

Agree with pretty much all you say Mister Zimbu, if they expect players to pick up and play mage classes at release they better fix that quick smart.

Komoto did post a message on the forum last week I think suggesting they needed to tune party play further, so hopefully in phase 3 they will have sorted that out.

There is so much that needs to be fixed before/after phase 3 they have their work cut out, each day I play I see more and more small bugs and balance issues that I didn't before.

They deffinately need to sort the desync with guildleves when you DC aswell, thats just annoying.

Edit:- Oh yea anima needs fixing not been able to teleport for 24 hours.

Yeah, they definitely need to up the anima regen. If they're worried about people porting around *too* much, a good solution might be to up the regen, but also have more things you can spend anima on (spend 2 anima to clear your rez sickness immediately, etc.)

 

[DrDogg]

Party / Mage issues

If party play is as bad as it sounds, that's definitely a concern for me. I can't stand soloing, but I can get in a good party and stay there for hours on end... probably because of my BRD merit parties in FFXI. :lol

I understand people will want to solo, but there needs to be a decent benefit to partying.

Since I plan on playing mages classes at first, why does it take 30 seconds to switch from healing to DPS? I'm not big on doing damage as a healer, but without having played FFXIV I don't know if that will be something I look into (it wasn't really an option in FFXI unless you had really solid DD gear).

 

[Mister Zimbu]

If party play is as bad as it sounds, that's definitely a concern for me. I can't stand soloing, but I can get in a good party and stay there for hours on end... probably because of my BRD merit parties in FFXI. :lol

I understand people will want to solo, but there needs to be a decent benefit to partying.

Since I plan on playing mages classes at first, why does it take 30 seconds to switch from healing to DPS? I'm not big on doing damage as a healer, but without having played FFXIV I don't know if that will be something I look into (it wasn't really an option in FFXI unless you had really solid DD gear).

I'm guessing party play will be fixed in the next phase of the beta.

There's no real healing or DPS "mode" in the game. The interface itself is so poorly designed, and there's so much lag, and the targeting itself so horrendous, that it takes 20-30 seconds to change from casting Aero on an enemy mob, to casting Cure on a friendly target.

 

[Jinko]

Currently whilst a mage is targeting an enemy they can't cast healing magic and vice versa.

There are several reasons this is a hassle.

1 You can't lock on whilst playing a mage incase you need to quickly switch to heal a party member.

2. There is currently no quick keys for targetnig party members. ie F1-F6 in FF11, you have to either tab, mouse click (mouse is crap) or if your on a pad use the target scroll button.

3. When you select a spell you have to follow it up and reconfirm the target.

This is easily addressed by allowing to either cast cures and buffs on the monster (which is in the centre of the party normally), or when you select cure a second target reticle pops out and allows you to scroll through friendly targets only.

If they haven't fixed mages by the end of phase 3 then I will be canceling my pre-order.

 

[RuGalz]

And cure worked perfectly in the alpha:lol

 

[DrDogg]

I don't understand why they didn't just keep Cure and spellcasting in general like it is in FFXI... -_-

How was it in the Alpha?

 

[RuGalz]

I don't understand why they didn't just keep Cure and spellcasting in general like it is in FFXI... -_-

How was it in the Alpha?

Exactly like FFXI subtarget and all.

 

[carlo6529]

I'm sure they will fix them by the launch. Still though, it is kind of worrysome.

I plan on playing as a conjurer. I would like to play it like a blm though. Is conjurer currently the only class that can heal? Because if that is the case, people are going to expect you to mainly heal, with the occasional damage spell. It will just encourage more soloing for a lot of conjurers.

 

[Teknoman]

Is normal cure still area of effect? Also once they work out the targeting with ally based spells, it should be easier on healers, especially since Gladiators (when tanking) can control when they block.

One thing I think they really need to drive home is attack range. I've seen too many mages, rangers, and lancers (especially in parties) attacking point blank.

You guys have the advantage of getting in hit from a further range, use it :lol I can understand the enemy closing in on you solo, but in a party, dont bunch up around the enemy.

EDIT: I know this is pretty much common knowledge by this point, but just make sure you report all complaints/suggestions whenever you can.

 

[Jinko]

I'm sure they will fix them by the launch. Still though, it is kind of worrysome.

I plan on playing as a conjurer. I would like to play it like a blm though. Is conjurer currently the only class that can heal? Because if that is the case, people are going to expect you to mainly heal, with the occasional damage spell. It will just encourage more soloing for a lot of conjurers.

A Thuamaturge I was playing with had AoE regen which healed for a set amount and then healed over time, not sure if this was subbed from a conjurer though.

 

[hgplayer1]

A Thuamaturge I was playing with had AoE regen which healed for a set amount and then healed over time, not sure if this was subbed from a conjurer though.

no its Thuamaturge. I got it sometime before level 10.

 

[DrDogg]

Exactly like FFXI subtarget and all.

I have to say... it's a bit worrisome that they would change it to something so bad after already having it the way it should be in the alpha.

A Thuamaturge I was playing with had AoE regen which healed for a set amount and then healed over time, not sure if this was subbed from a conjurer though.

This is another worry I expressed a few days ago. In order to be the best healer it looks like you need Cure from Conjurer and Regen from Thaumaturge. Even if Conjurer ends up getting Regen at a later level, it's best to have it as early as possible, so you're pretty much forced to level both to get the healing spells you need to be the best.

I'm concerned that the "freedom" you have in using the abilities of any other class you have leveled will just cause people to have almost identical setups in order to maximize healing, tanking, DDing or whatever their priority is. Seems like a lot more work just to get the same results as say... WHM/SCH in FFXI.

 

[MomoPufflet]

You get 4x the xp per kill solo than in a party? Yeah, that's not going to last. :lol

 

[carlo6529]

A Thuamaturge I was playing with had AoE regen which healed for a set amount and then healed over time, not sure if this was subbed from a conjurer though.

I can see Thaumaturge party's happening already; 5 thaumaturge and a tank or something.

 

[MomoPufflet]

SE, in their infinite MMO wisdom, has decided that it should not be possible to look at other players' stats, gear, or classes whatsoever. Clearly an MMO should not allow you to look at people you'll potentially group with. (Actually, considering how ridiculous shit like GearScore has infiltrated WoW in the past year, I can't say I fault them for this).

This worries me, assuming I'm reading correctly. So there is no way at all to view the gear of others, even friends or people that "allow" you to? This seems like a total pander to JP sensibilities (which I guess I can't totally blame them for, but it's still disappointing). I know there was talk about the checking dilemma many months ago by S-E, and the possibility of being able to approve certain people to check you-- is that out the window? Playing FFXI since launch I've acquired a certain "checking etiquette" (ask people if you can check them unless you know them), but I do not like the idea of altogether not being able to do it under any circumstances. This isn't a PvP game.

And for the record I'm not the type to anal-retentively check my entire party and report bad gear to my LS, but I at least want to be able to see what my friends are wearing. Being able to see the gear of others was a significant part of the FFXI experience.

 

[Teknoman]

Its probably just something thats going to be added in before retail.