Support NeoGAF

[Khrno]

Fuck yeah!

Cavalry Haubergeon

Strength: +7
Dexterity: +4


I already want the high level untradable version, hope this time isn't blurple.

 

[Burli]

What's the next Quest after Treasures of Main?

Also - anyone around who can give me a linkpearl on Shadowlord? Name is Burli Saurus.

 

[Kintaro]

What's the next Quest after Treasures of Main?

Also - anyone around who can give me a linkpearl on Shadowlord? Name is Burli Saurus.

Be class rank 10 then talk to the contact at the bar in Limsa. Opens up Treasures Adrift.

You know, I hope SE opens up an AH. Market wards only is such a bad idea...

 

[Burli]

Thanks!

I haven't been playing for about a week - but what the heck did they do with the exp?

At one point it seemed ridiculously high (I gained about 3 levels killing two mobs) - now it seems a lot lower than it was in Beta 2. Killing a 'Yellow' mob only gets me around 500exp, where as in Beta 2 it would have netted me about 1200.

 

[Velion]

Thanks!

I haven't been playing for about a week - but what the heck did they do with the exp?

At one point it seemed ridiculously high (I gained about 3 levels killing two mobs) - now it seems a lot lower than it was in Beta 2. Killing a 'Yellow' mob only gets me around 500exp, where as in Beta 2 it would have netted me about 1200.

Simple, some people whined about exp being too fast in feedback forums. So SE nerfed it so now we have to grind even more in the beta.

 

[Kintaro]

Simple, some people whined about exp being too fast in feedback forums. So SE nerfed it so now we have to grind even more in the beta.

Pretty much this. However, I think SE was going to bring it down to this level for retail anyway...

 

[Burli]

Ehh, to be honest I'd quite like to be able to level up faster than this (in the beta)- was hoping to be able to experience more in the beta so I could give more feedback, at the moment all I can tell them is that grinding is pretty... grindy.

 

[Salaadin]

I dont really mind the solo XP cut as long as they provide monsters that are decent enough to kill at all levels solo. Right now the ACC seems screwed so it takes ages to fight the stuff that gives us the best XP. If they fix that shit up, I wont have too many issues.

They really, really need to work on party XP though.

 

[Burli]

I dont really mind the solo XP cut as long as they provide monsters that are decent enough to kill at all levels solo. Right now the ACC seems screwed so it takes ages to fight the stuff that gives us the best XP. If they fix that shit up, I wont have too many issues.

They really, really need to work on party XP though.

It seemed okay in Beta 2. Mobs that were pretty easy gave enough exp, and ones that were tougher gave enough exp to justify the longer fights, now it's just low for everything, and I spend most of my time missing the higher level mobs usually leading to fights where I have to run-away because I'm not hitting enough.

 

[falastini]

So, I finally got my hands on a key.

Why are some features in the character creation only available to preset faces? If I want a certain mustache or beard, I can only choose a particular face? Where's the customization in that? Also, I noticed that flipping through the female hume faces caused their breast sizes to change :lol .

My performance is better then the benchmark would have lead me to believe.
E8400
4GB
4850
playing at 1440x900 on 1080 screen (windowed, so I can tab out)

pretty much everything on high, 2 x MSAA, AO and DoF disabled
I get 30-60 when I'm running around doing stuff on my own, 20-30 in town or around a camp with other people, and <20 in the real congested areas.

I'll refrain from nitpicking all the problems I have with the game, until open beta is released. I'm sure they'll do a lot of tweaking then. I like the concepts of the combat/harvesting/crafting systems. There's a few tweaks I would do here and there, but overall I think they have a good thing going on that front.

I will say, however, that the market system just fucking sucks. Get rid of it. I have no idea why eastern MMOs love the bazaar system. All it does is make looking for items 10x harder then a proper Auction House. I saw the pics of the AH symbol. I only hope it's going to be in for release. Also, the interface lag is horrible. Just trying to empty my bags to a vendor, took like 15 minutes.

That's my problem-- the concept art was awesome, but the execution is bland. There's no color or real texture like in the concept art. It looks lifeless. Where are the golden spires, colorful fabric, and expensive architecture? Everything is brown and flat like Whitegate 1.5. On the other hand the Limsa and Gridania concept art is much closer to the real thing. Gridania blows the others away in terms of attention to detail, which irritates me. I will still probably start in Ul'dah though because EVERYONE is going to be going to Gridania.

I am a little disappointed with the execution as well. I was hoping for a more colorful desert fortress, instead the walls look like Jeuno. I'll still probably be Ul'dah. I'm sure everybody's going to be Gridania and all the pirate text in Limsa makes me want to punch my monitor.

 

[Kintaro]

I'm sure everybody's going to be Gridania and all the pirate text in Limsa makes me want to punch my monitor.

Thank you.

I want to murder every NPC that talks this way.

 

[LeMaximilian]

I'm having the hardest time hitting class rank 20 on Gladiator with this surplus crap...and I'm currently 19. Anyone got any recommendations on how to hit 20 before the leves open up tonight?

 

[Mister Zimbu]

I'm having the hardest time hitting class rank 20 on Gladiator with this surplus crap...and I'm currently 19. Anyone got any recommendations on how to hit 20 before the leves open up tonight?

Has anyone actually confirmed that "surplus rank points" are actually reducing the amount of rank you get?

I haven't read into it much, but it doesn't make sense to me:

- The numbers you get during combat add up to the total (before surplus) that you get at the end of the fight (e.g., if you get 4 "25" ranks during the fight, it will report that you get 100 rank at the end).

- Then there's additional "surplus" rank points of 10% of that total you get at the end (you'll get the 100 rank, and 10 surplus rank)

- You actually have a surplus rank itself - it's possible to reach "Surplus Rank 2", "Surplus Rank 3", etc... My conjurer is something like Rank 17 / Surplus Rank 4. This is the biggest indication to me that it's not a rank point penalty of any sort.

My read into it is that surplus is nothing like WoW's rested XP or XP penalties or anything like that. My best guess is that "surplus rank" may be like subjob stat bonuses - if you're R17 / SR4 as a Conjurer, you would get stat bonuses of a Rank 17 when you're playing conjurer class, but stat bonuses of a Rank 4 conjurer when playing any other class.

That's just a wild guess though. Just the claim that it's any sort of penalty doesn't make sense to me.

edit: then again i'm a conjurer so it's not like i'm getting enough rank points to notice a difference anyway

 

[Zomba13]

Thank you.

I want to murder every NPC that talks this way.

Same. I can stand them speaking it but reading it does my head in.

 

[Mister Zimbu]

Same. I can stand them speaking it but reading it does my head in.

Another +1 to this. I've skipped the NPC text thus far because it's even more indecipherable than pubbie player chat.

Perhaps I'll submit feedback to Square that these NPCs should be using the new auto-translation function.

 

[notworksafe]

For those that don't check the other thread, FFXIV Core has an interview with Square up. Some of the content is a bit of a bummer but at least someone is asking good questions!

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/11066-gamescom-2010-coverage/

Are we going to see tutorials and gametips being added for the new players to assist them better?

We do have a tutorial ingame but we understand that it's not enough, so we will improve it. We hope you're going to find out through the storyline to find out what's going on and how to use things. Also when you reach a certain level we hope you get into towns to talk to other players. Also at the beginning us game developers usually provide the basic information but fansites always make better guides regardless. So it might be difficult for the time of the launch but we're going to try to talk to fansites so they'll post detailed information regarding on how the game works.


Regarding auctionhouses:

Regarding Final Fantasy XIV and the market battle system is something we would like to consider the equilevent to the auction house we had in Final Fantasy XI. Only that you'll also be able to fix your equipment and things like that. It is something we really want people to enjoy. Also after the release of the game we will see how it goes and for example find out what kind of search options players will want and need and improve the situation. We don't really want to introduce the auctionhouse from the beginning because that is going to determine the economy system. So we want to improve it slowly and adjust it accordingly.


When do we get to see the PS3 version and when is the PS3 beta?

Even when we're here at Gamescom in Germany the development team back in Japan is working on the Playstation 3 version. Probably this week or very soon we're having an internal meeting to discuss the revealing of the Playstation 3 version status of Final Fantasy XIV. So as soon we're comfortable with announcing more information about this we will do it.


Will endgame be in the game on release?

Factionleves is something that we're trying to implement at the moment. And you might soon see some part of it in the beta test that is going on at the moment. It is something you can acquire by collecting action points in the game and by doing Levequests. We are going to add more and more of this type of leve in the game to make it quite challenging. As for the launch however we want to make sure that the game is easy and accessable for casual players. Throughout version updates we're going to introduce more hardcore content so even both casual and hardcore players alike will enjoy the game.


Will we get any sort of mana regeneration abilities and/or items?

We're still working on this so we will make some small updates and improvements in the future, but at the same time we think managing mana should be difficult and a challenge to the players.


Concerning the current UI, there is a noticeable lag between changing menu's and interaction between players and NPC's. Can we look forward to a revamp of the UI prior to release?

We're currently in phase three of our beta test and you're going to see several improvements being made to this. we're working on it, please look forward to how it's going to be in the final product. These issues are also because of some bugs we know about which we're going to fix.


Concerning the mouse function. There is an obviously lag currently even with the improvements towards the mouse; in particular it seems that the software mouse speed is tied to the FPS on your computer -- so if you have less FPS, then the mouse is laggier. Can we expect an implementation of hardware mouse prior to release?

We're aware of it and hardware mouse is something we're still looking into currently. At the moment we dont have any plans for the hardware mouse but will continue to improve the situation before the game is out and also after.


Concerning the direction of this game; is Guildleve's the standard to level in regards to FFXIV? It was heavily advertised in several locations and there seems to be an overall disgruntled feeling towards its 48 hour cooldown. Is this part of the limit implemented for the beta, or is this intention for the release? Is straight-mob grinding going to the primary source of experience gains for FFXIV?

One of the reasons for the current design is that it's fine if you're playing solo. If you have more time however, we feel that there's a lot of guildleves to experience with other people in groups, while yourself might not have the guildleve, you can still join other peoples guildleves. Currently though most feel there's not enough benefit to group up and as such do the guildleves solo instead. We are working on adressing that so group play will be more encouraged, so maybe either you get more skillpoints for example. Basically we're trying to adjust it so that people do guildleves with other people.


But the 48 hours cooldown is going to stay?

Yes that is the current plan. In the future we might adjust it but we want to make it in such a way that the 48 hours cooldown makes sense, so currently we're focusing on adjusting it in that way.


There is a mixed feeling in regards to computer requirements on the game. Despite the minimum requirements listed, players are having a hard time running this game even on fairly decent rigs. Is the game expected to go through further optimization prior to release?

For the betaversion it might be because we have several check routines in the game that might be causing some of the performance-related issues. This should be improved when the game is released. It also could be something specific to the persons PC setup. THere's a lot of different graphics cards among other things so we're trying to solve it one by one.

Finally, the Square Enix team would like to say that they really appreciate the support from fans in the western region and want everyone to enjoy Final Fantasy XIV as it's going gold.

 

[Mister Zimbu]

For those that don't check the other thread, FFXIV Core has an interview with Square up. Some of the content is a bit of a bummer but at least someone is asking good questions!

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/11066-gamescom-2010-coverage/

Yeah, most of this is pretty disappointing.

The lack of an auction house is pretty gamebreaking at this point - retainers are a completely useless and horrible approach towards an economy. When you think about it, it's the same exact concept of an auction house (all the items you can find in one place) while being completely unusable due to the lack of any searchability whatsoever. If I want a new staff, does Square really expect me to run to the market wards and talk to 500 random NPCs and sift through unsorted lists, most of which are selling Earth Crystals and Mole Meat, until I find something somewhat related to what I want?

I mean, look how the beta is going currently for an example of this-- Almost everyone is running around in their level 1 gear except for what they were able to manage to randomly get from leves. The lack of this gear makes fighting any higher-level mobs in groups impossible.

Also disappointing that they say "casters have to manage their mana" when
1) Melee don't have to manage anything whatsoever
2) It's simply not possible to do this in a group. Radiance / Damnation is good for managing mana when solo, but not feasible in a party due to the lack of any TP gain whatsoever.

This is all showing SE is pretty much out of touch with the game and the players at this point.

 

[Jinko]

No Auction House at launch, they can go fuck themselves.

 

[notworksafe]

To be fair, I wouldn't mind the retainer system as much if there was a search function. But then why not just make an auction house? I don't even understand their reasoning. Why will prices be more reasonable on retainers than on an AH?

 

[Burli]

They're making a lot of decisions which really make no sense.

 

[Mister Zimbu]

To be fair, I wouldn't mind the retainer system as much if there was a search function. But then why not just make an auction house? I don't even understand their reasoning. Why will prices be more reasonable on retainers than on an AH?

I wouldn't mind retainers nearly as much if the market wards were organized by category of some sort (so you would go to the Weapons market ward instead of the "East Market Ward District").

Even then it's still stupid though.

 

[Zomba13]

No auction house at launch. Fuck SE. Why not? Why punish players by making them have to check each and every individual retainer throughout all the market stall zones. I love the idea of the maket zones being a version of rolanmart or something. Thats great being able to pop in there for the non auctionable items or something but it's so much ebtter and easier to be able to serach for what you want using an auction house system. I want a new hat so I look in the head slot list, sort it by rank and start bidding on what I want. Easy. I don't want to spend hours looking through bazaars to find a hat then looking through more to see if it's cheaper anywhere.

MP being a challenge. Again, fuck SE. Oh, you want to play a mage? Sorry, you get put on hard mode. Run out of mana and your ability that gives back 100mp isn't done? Go hike back to the crystal, I'm sure your party will wait for you (lol). They've had plenty of feedback from people saying they want MP to regen better (but also a lot of people saying keep it the way it is, mostly melee players who don't care about mages)

Still not happy about 8 leves every 48 hours. I could understand 24 hours though, making them like daily quests in other MMOs, a nice change to the normal grind you can do solo or with a team every day. I could understand he 48 hour cooldown if the exp given was still very high as then there would be a reason for the time gap, they give a lot of xp, but with them giving what they do now (which SE will more than likely stay with or maybe even lower again) they make no sense for being 48hour apart from not wanting people to get the rewards.

 

[bloodforge]

They're making a lot of decisions which really make no sense.

I think the biggest problem with the game is that they are trying to appeal to FFXI players when they should have been focusing more on trying to get people who dislike XI to want to play XIV.

I keep trying to play the beta but end up just being bored. And the Guildleve system is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. I like that they are trying to be different but the end result is just not appealing.

 

[notworksafe]

Still not happy about 8 leves every 48 hours. I could understand 24 hours though, making them like daily quests in other MMOs, a nice change to the normal grind you can do solo or with a team every day. I could understand he 48 hour cooldown if the exp given was still very high as then there would be a reason for the time gap, they give a lot of xp, but with them giving what they do now (which SE will more than likely stay with or maybe even lower again) they make no sense for being 48hour apart from not wanting people to get the rewards.

Is it 8 total for sure? I thought that it was going to be each leve had a 48hr cooldown but you can take as many as you want.

 

[Mister Zimbu]

I think the biggest problem with the game is that they are trying to appeal to FFXI players when they should have been focusing more on trying to get people who dislike XI to want to play XIV.

I keep trying to play the beta but end up just being bored. And the Guildleve system is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. I like that they are trying to be different but the end result is just not appealing.

You nailed it. They're seemingly doing random terrible things just to be different, instead of making competent design decisions.

This pretty much confirms that we won't get any revolutionary changes for release. Just the same shit we have now, with more zones.

 

[bloodforge]

Is it 8 total for sure? I thought that it was going to be each leve had a 48hr cooldown but you can take as many as you want.

Nope you can only have 8 at a time, then you have to wait 48 hours before you can get more. The rest of the time I guess you're just supposed to grind mobs all day.

 

[Khrno]

I think the biggest problem with the game is that they are trying to appeal to FFXI players when they should have been focusing more on trying to get people who dislike XI to want to play XIV.

That's not quite true. It's true they want to cater to XI's players with keeping the same type of avatars, but with all the things they are doing (and not doing), they are far from appealing to them. 2010 FFXI is clearly a much more polished product (while keeping the obvious differences) than what XIV.

It's actually like SE didn't look at what they currently have and have done with XI, to put the best of it in practice for XIV. They clearly started from scratch trying to appeal some other group of people, dunno who, but certainly not recent years-FFXI players.

 

[notworksafe]

Nope you can only have 8 at a time, then you have to wait 48 hours before you can get more. The rest of the time I guess you're just supposed to grind mobs all day.

Christ, that is just stupid. It would be less stupid if the grouping system worked better, though.

 

[Teknoman]

Even less stupid when the NPCs actually get gear to level up and use.

Seriously, lack of an AH at the beginning sucks (then again they might add it in the beginning anyway), but if anyone thinks retail wont have NPCs that sell at least up to Rank 25-30 equipment...well i just dont know what to say.

 

[Munba]

If they would implement a good item search among markets, i don't think the lack of AH will'be a tragedy, for the first months. I think they want to make crafters to create the economy in the beginning.

For the guildleve limit, if the party system will work properly and in an intelligent manner i think will be ok. And i hope they'll implement other forms of gameplay (minigames and so on) aside GL.

 

[Teknoman]

If they would implement a good item search among markets, i don't think the lack of AH will'be a tragedy, for the first months. I think they want to make crafters to create the economy in the beginning.

For the guildleve limit, if the party system will work properly and in an intelligent manner i think will be ok. And i hope they'll implement other forms of gameplay (minigames and so on) aside GL.

Exactly. Probably trying to avoid what happened to the economy in FFXI at the beginning. Not sure if its the best way to go about this, but as long as I can get stuff from NPCs, guildleves, random treasure chests that spawn, and enemies, i'm cool.

I think thats why people are currently up in arms about guildleve time limit...lack of proper equipment makes some enemies seem stronger than they actually are. That and boosting of skill points and physical exp when in a party of decent rank/level range.

 

[RuGalz]

Lol at the new info. They should consider making this a Free to Play game then maybe there would be less complains. lmao

 

[Mandoric]

Exactly. Probably trying to avoid what happened to the economy in FFXI at the beginning. Not sure if its the best way to go about this, but as long as I can get stuff from NPCs, guildleves, random treasure chests that spawn, and enemies, i'm cool.

Auctions were a post-launch add in FFXI, too. Frankly, it's probably a kinda dumb way to force people to interact and establish their own systems around the different wards, the kind of thing that sounds good on paper until you remember that no one wants a virtual world as dumb as the real world.

Anyone on I can grab a linkpearl from, btw?

 

[Teknoman]

Lol at the new info. They should consider making this a Free to Play game then maybe there would be less complains. lmao

Its not much thats lol worthy aside from the auction house stuff.

 

[notworksafe]

Its not much thats lol worthy aside from the auction house stuff.

And the mouse. Not being able to get a mouse cursor to work properly in a PC game is beyond hilarious. :lol

 

[Londa]

Lol at the new info. They should consider making this a Free to Play game then maybe there would be less complains. lmao

how more extreme could this reaction get? Saying they should make it it free to play just because it doesn't have features you like. How about don't play it if you dislike it. They should get paid for their hard work. Just because you dislike the out come of their hard work doesn't mean others won't.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Is the chat, trade and UI system in a good enough state to support player bartering? i've not bought much stuff (only a head item)

No AH means a lot of crafter spam and the current chat is the barest of barebones.

The models in this game are extremely high quality, loads of people in a town square buying and selling shit=potential computer chuggage.

 

[notworksafe]

The chat system could use some work. If it could be more customized with filters and tabs, that'd be much better...especially for trading.

 

[Teknoman]

And the mouse. Not being able to get a mouse cursor to work properly in a PC game is beyond hilarious. :lol

Didnt see the hardware mouse comment. Thats kinda strange.

 

[notworksafe]

I can only assume they are making it a software cursor so PC mouse users have no advantage over the PS3 mouse users. Still, pretty damn lame Square.

 

[Kandinsky]

Its not much thats lol worthy aside from the auction house stuff.

.......

 

[jiggle]

can anyone direct me to an up to date recipes list?
preferably by level?

the ones at eorzeapedia is all out of order and seems in complete

 

[carlo6529]

I wouldn't mind retainers nearly as much if the market wards were organized by category of some sort (so you would go to the Weapons market ward instead of the "East Market Ward District").

Even then it's still stupid though.

This will slowly happen on its own. Players will clue in as to where to park their asses to sell certain things.

 

[falastini]

Even less stupid when the NPCs actually get gear to level up and use.

Seriously, lack of an AH at the beginning sucks (then again they might add it in the beginning anyway), but if anyone thinks retail wont have NPCs that sell at least up to Rank 25-30 equipment...well i just dont know what to say.

Are you sure that's the case? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the majority of leveling gear in FFXI player-made? The stuff sold at vendors was usually ridiculously priced and weaker in comparison. And with FFXIV seemingly putting a great emphasis on the crafting classes, I'm going to assume that a lot of the gear will be player-made again. (btw despite the crafting being a little too unforgiving, it's one of the things I enjoyed about FFXI... that its crafting actually mattered unlike say... WoW were you only maxed crafting for the bonuses).

That's why the no AH is such a big deal to me. The other issues I could kinda overlook.

the mouse controls - i expected it. i've been convinced that they don't want PC users to have an advantage over consoles

no end game - i didn't expect much here either. though their answer of "more leves are on the way" is disappointing

48hr leves - this could turn out to be not a big a deal if they change a few things... like make partying more accessible/better.... make grinding solo/party more accessible/better... separate the leve limits between the different types (say I wanted to do 8 battle leves and 8 local leves etc..)

 

[Atrus]

Beastcoins already dropped in beta though (saw in the bazaar):

All 3 tiers of beastcoins or others not listed in the database?

FFXI unified all beastcoin currency under bronze, silver, mythril, gold, and platinum but given that each beastman in FFXIV has a unique item ID, this will likely mean that each item has different properties in relation to each other.

 

[Teknoman]

Are you sure that's the case? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the majority of leveling gear in FFXI player-made? The stuff sold at vendors was usually ridiculously priced and weaker in comparison. And with FFXIV seemingly putting a great emphasis on the crafting classes, I'm going to assume that a lot of the gear will be player-made again. (btw despite the crafting being a little too unforgiving, it's one of the things I enjoyed about FFXI... that its crafting actually mattered unlike say... WoW were you only maxed crafting for the bonuses).

That's why the no AH is such a big deal to me. The other issues I could kinda overlook.

the mouse controls - i expected it. i've been convinced that they don't want PC users to have an advantage over consoles

no end game - i didn't expect much here either. though their answer of "more leves are on the way" is disappointing

48hr leves - this could turn out to be not a big a deal if they change a few things... like make partying more accessible/better.... make grinding solo/party more accessible/better... separate the leve limits between the different types (say I wanted to do 8 battle leves and 8 local leves etc..)

Sure the majority was crafted or dropped, but you could still buy a decent amount of standard stuff in the city shops.

 

[Mandoric]

Are you sure that's the case? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the majority of leveling gear in FFXI player-made? The stuff sold at vendors was usually ridiculously priced and weaker in comparison. And with FFXIV seemingly putting a great emphasis on the crafting classes, I'm going to assume that a lot of the gear will be player-made again. (btw despite the crafting being a little too unforgiving, it's one of the things I enjoyed about FFXI... that its crafting actually mattered unlike say... WoW were you only maxed crafting for the bonuses).

It depends on when. 14 is going to go through the same inflaton-bust cycle as 11, as it's an inherent part of the system. First there are no high-level crafters and everyone uses NPC gear, then there are a few high-level crafters/rare drop hunters making bank while the majority of the playerbase relies on low-level crafters undercutting NPCs on the same items, then HQ crafts/rare drops get common enough to be cheaper than NPC gear and everyone uses them.
This will not change unless they actively rip the repair system out of the game and items just break when they hit 0, which won't happen because the negative effects on subscriber base of a wonky econ are nothing compared to those of needing to continually grind cash to stay in the same place gearwise.

 

[Husker86]

Still can't find the damn Blacksmith tools...they aren't in hawker's alley or the guild.

edit: Nevermind

 

[Shouta]

Sure the majority was crafted or dropped, but you could still buy a decent amount of standard stuff in the city shops.

That was pretty useful until 11 or so. Shops in town didn't sell gear beyond that and didn't sell them for prices that were reasonable.

Lack of AH is a big no-no especially with the crafting system they want to use. Forcing players to search bazaars in the wards is outright dumb and a pain in the ass for the player. Plus the wards are cramped and tiny, too much trouble.

Plus the AH provides a decent in-game resource, an itemization list. We'll get to see what items are available to us in the game by using that (assuming it's the same style as FFXI). Otherwise, we'd have to rely on the fansites since they don't seem to want to add recipe books.

 

[Teknoman]

That was pretty useful until 11 or so. Shops in town didn't sell gear beyond that and didn't sell them for prices that were reasonable.

Lack of AH is a big no-no especially with the crafting system they want to use. Forcing players to search bazaars in the wards is outright dumb and a pain in the ass for the player. Plus the wards are cramped and tiny, too much trouble.

Plus the AH provides a decent in-game resource, an itemization list. We'll get to see what items are available to us in the game by using that (assuming it's the same style as FFXI). Otherwise, we'd have to rely on the fansites since they don't seem to want to add recipe books.

I would say guildmark books should work the same as recipe books, but some of those might be too high level for people just starting crafting (not really sure since I havent looked at the rank levels).

Weren't NPC prices also raised/lowered depending on certain factors? Maybe things will be different in XIV with NPC shops...but either way, i'm sure the AH will either be added shortly after launch, or maybe day 1 standard PC launch.

One thing i've always wondered, how did people figure out how much an item should go for on the AH?