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Final Fantasy XIV |OT| ARR: Alpha Closed. Beta mid-Feb

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Z

zulfate

Member
so i was watching some videos of alpha and i think this game is really shaping up. at first glance the UI looks clunky but then i dont know there is something really nice about it, it looks meaty but i have yet to play it so ill make a final judgment when i do.
 
M

Mastamind

Member
Midou said:
System I'm most disappointed they kept is enemies running away during guildleves. Even with my Lancer's 'slow' and me hitting an enemy, I haven't seen a way to kill it before it reaches its allies. Sometimes they run off at 90% life. If anything, they should run away when they have 1 or 2 hits left to die, so you actually have some chance to kill them before they reach their allies. Worst part is, if you were running away from the creature the same way it runs from you, it would totally be hitting you the whole time, you need to be in range to attack, but enemies never seem to feel that way.
Click to expand...

As archer they never got away. But the debuff you're looking for is heavy to slow movement speed. Slow only reduces the frequency of their attacks. You'll also get a spear throw or something like that as well.
 
J

Jinko

Member
I'm guessing its news only for JP lodestone, thanks for the heads up will bookmark the page. (wonder why the are using nico and not youtube)

Would be nice to see the Beta client running :D
 
J

Jijidasu

Member
God, what I wouldn't give to see some beta footage or at least something that isn't Gridania.

Given that the alpha is near its end, and the original FFXIV servers are being taken down just over a week they're going to need to haul ass with the PR to keep people interested for the duration up until beta (1 month and a half or so?)
 
A

Allard

Member
Jijidasu said:
God, what I wouldn't give to see some beta footage or at least something that isn't Gridania.

Given that the alpha is near its end, and the original FFXIV servers are being taken down just over a week they're going to need to haul ass with the PR to keep people interested for the duration up until beta (1 month and a half or so?)
Click to expand...

We are supposed to get a new 2013 Road Map soon, for all we know it will show up at the end of the week since it seems it was completed last week and its just going through the normal QA/PR/Lawyer referrals needed to post it in all regions. We got the new Nico stream announced today for Japan which will have a small talk with Yoshida on the final of Alpha testing and even word on when we can expect beta. We are likely due for a new producer letter and on top of all this a new benchmark should come out soon (maybe it will come out after Alpha closes) which looks to show off New Ul'dah and maybe even a little of Limsa (judging by the 'leaked' pictures). If anything the lack of an Alpha test going on should make them more likely to post on the normal forums again with new stuff since they have been so focused on watching tester comments and a lot of the new 'info' has been coming mainly from the alpha forums since they constantly talk about what is changing in beta or will be changed by launch.
 
J

Jijidasu

Member
Allard said:
We are supposed to get a new 2013 Road Map soon, for all we know it will show up at the end of the week since it seems it was completed last week and its just going through the normal QA/PR/Lawyer referrals needed to post it in all regions. We got the new Nico stream announced today for Japan which will have a small talk with Yoshida on the final of Alpha testing and even word on when we can expect beta. We are likely due for a new producer letter and on top of all this a new benchmark should come out soon (maybe it will come out after Alpha closes) which looks to show off New Ul'dah and maybe even a little of Limsa (judging by the 'leaked' pictures). If anything the lack of an Alpha test going on should make them more likely to post on the normal forums again with new stuff since they have been so focused on watching tester comments and a lot of the new 'info' has been coming mainly from the alpha forums since they constantly talk about what is changing in beta or will be changed by launch.
Click to expand...


Speaking of that roadmap, so much for that "last 10 days of Nov/first 10 of Dec" business, lol. I love Yoshida and his team for all the effort they've put in but damn I wish they'd throw us a bone with a bit of meat on it.

I'd like to see the benchmark turn up soon too, hopefully they'll let it out following Yoshida's niconama appearance.
 
M

Meicyn

Gold Member
That party combat section of the video reminded me: I really hope they change things up so enemies don't restart the flinch animation from every single hit they take. It looks terrible watching them twitch non-stop. They should just let the flinch animation play through completely and only be interrupted when the enemy is performing an action.
 
R

Robobandit

Member
Dullahan fight is not in the alpha.. and the only adamantoise I've seen are lv 31-32 .. they didn't record that on the live server I don't think.
 
D

Darryl

Banned
I couldn't put my finger on what my problem was with those fights but I think it might be the twitching. It looks terrible. The fight itself also just looks plain boring. I'm assuming these are boss fights?
 
J

Jinko

Member
ZiZ said:
new vid is up:
Levequests and Party Combat
http://youtu.be/rSO4DgXzeTs

edit: is that Dullahan fight in the alpha?
Click to expand...

:O the music is good.

I'm slightly confused, so are lvl 20 mobs like bosses ? cause they are taking forever to kill even though everyone in the party is the same level. (Forced partying please tell me its not true), maybe its a FATE boss, but there is no boss icon :S

Flinch animation on those enemies is way over the top, looks like its having a fit, plus no special moves which makes it look boring and there doesn't seem to be any danger.

One other thing is that I can't select skills as fast as that, guess there is lag that I'm not aware of /shrugs

Edit:- Never mind I just noticed the NM icon on the minimap. (still boring though)
 
E

ebil

Member
The Dullahan and Adamantoise look just like the lv20 ones they popped for stress testing (ie they were tweaked so that they had huge HP pools and hit quite hard but didn't do much).

They need to show some beta footage now, they're running dry on things to show. Hopefully with alpha gone at the end of next week, they'll focus on showing the next build.
 
Skyfireblaze

Skyfireblaze

Member
Say if a friend of mine would buy one of the old FF XIV boxes right now will she still be able to register a account in preparation for ARR? She could get one for about 8 pounds right now.
 
R

Robobandit

Member
Skyfireblaze said:
Say if a friend of mine would buy one of the old FF XIV boxes right now will she still be able to register a account in preparation for ARR? She could get one for about 8 pounds right now.
Click to expand...

registration of accounts is closed right now. We don't know if those keys will be valid or not when ARR launches
 
D

DrDogg

Member
ZiZ said:
new vid is up:
Levequests and Party Combat
http://youtu.be/rSO4DgXzeTs

edit: is that Dullahan fight in the alpha?
Click to expand...

I haven't been keeping track of anything, so forgive me if this has already been brought up...

Watching this video, all I see the "white mages" doing is casting Cure and Curaga. I don't see any buffs, defuffs, or enfeebling spells being cast. Protect is already on the party, and it looks like the DD attacks are enfeebling the mob.

I compare this to the support classes in FFXI and this looks boring as sin. I want that experience as RDM when I had to be on point with Refresh and various enfeebling spells; when I played BRD and was running between the mages and DDs constantly (I won't even get into merit party BRD). Even as WHM in FFXI, I had to do more than just spam Cure and Curaga.

Am I missing something here?
 
A

Akuosa

Member
DrDogg said:
I haven't been keeping track of anything, so forgive me if this has already been brought up...

Watching this video, all I see the "white mages" doing is casting Cure and Curaga. I don't see any buffs, defuffs, or enfeebling spells being cast. Protect is already on the party, and it looks like the DD attacks are enfeebling the mob.

I compare this to the support classes in FFXI and this looks boring as sin. I want that experience as RDM when I had to be on point with Refresh and various enfeebling spells; when I played BRD and was running between the mages and DDs constantly (I won't even get into merit party BRD). Even as WHM in FFXI, I had to do more than just spam Cure and Curaga.

Am I missing something here?
Click to expand...
Not at level 20 you hadn't...

Not to say that the combat doesn't look too button mashing to me, but... they're level 20. The conjurers casted protect, they nuke from time to time and mostly cast cures because yeah, I guess that's the most usefull thing they can be doing all in all, especially when the other only classes fighting are lancers and archers. Not a whole lot of things to do for anyone at that level, I think.
 
E

ebil

Member
DrDogg said:
I haven't been keeping track of anything, so forgive me if this has already been brought up...

Watching this video, all I see the "white mages" doing is casting Cure and Curaga. I don't see any buffs, defuffs, or enfeebling spells being cast. Protect is already on the party, and it looks like the DD attacks are enfeebling the mob.

I compare this to the support classes in FFXI and this looks boring as sin. I want that experience as RDM when I had to be on point with Refresh and various enfeebling spells; when I played BRD and was running between the mages and DDs constantly (I won't even get into merit party BRD). Even as WHM in FFXI, I had to do more than just spam Cure and Curaga.

Am I missing something here?
Click to expand...

If you're strictly talking about enfeeblings, in FFXIV they're tied to regular spells/WS (that was the case in V1 post Tanaka and if Alpha is of any indication, will be the case for ARR as well). For instance, archer's Gloom Arrow can inflict Blind, Stone would reduce Magic Evasion, Aero and Flare had their own separate DoTs etc.

As for buffs, there are less of them but they're more potent: Conjurers gain a trait at level 20 which enhances Protect, essentially giving it an added Shell effect (thus removing the need of adding Shell to spell list). You later gained a few more enhancing spells such as Stoneskin and Regen (while WHM).

All in all, WHMs, at least in V1, played differently from their FFXI counterpart: they weren't bad at nuking at all and I would often switch from a more agressive role (using Cleric Stance which would enhance my damage output while reducing my healing potency) to a purely healing role. From what we know so far, this won't be very different in V2.

But yeah, video's boring because you don't have many tools available at level 20 at all, there are only 3 classes and only one Disciple of Magic (so CNJs get the short hand of the stick with additional abilities) to choose from and so on.
 
L

Lumpy Onion

Member
I put in a couple of hours on alpha today and I am really digging it. Only a LV7 Lancer, but so far it just feels a lot more intuitive than XIV. Eliminating the empty tunnel before the Gridania field was so needed, same goes for other long useless tunnels that didn't help anything. I like how the monster placement on the field doesn't feel like some random mess. Leaving town and seeing tons of people fighting low lv mobs brought back memories of FF XI. The combat is pretty fun so far as well. Overall, I am already sold on the game and eagerly await the beta. This feels like the kind of online Final Fantasy I want to play.

Out of curiosity how much content is in this alpha?
 
R

Robobandit

Member
Quests up through about lv 13 and a dungeon with a 15-20 lv range..

level cap is 20..

not a ton of content, but enough to keep you occupied for a while.
 
Munba

Munba

Member
About damage animation:

Greetings!

In regards to all of the comments about how the enemies visibly react to player attacks, we'll be adjusting these animations around the time the Beta Test begins.

Specifically we are looking into addressing it in the following ways:

Vary the damage animation according to the amount of damage inflicted.
Tone down the damage animation for large monsters.
Click to expand...


Nice to hear.
 
D

DrDogg

Member
Akuosa said:
Not at level 20 you hadn't...

Not to say that the combat doesn't look too button mashing to me, but... they're level 20. The conjurers casted protect, they nuke from time to time and mostly cast cures because yeah, I guess that's the most usefull thing they can be doing all in all, especially when the other only classes fighting are lancers and archers. Not a whole lot of things to do for anyone at that level, I think.
Click to expand...

ebil said:
But yeah, video's boring because you don't have many tools available at level 20 at all, there are only 3 classes and only one Disciple of Magic (so CNJs get the short hand of the stick with additional abilities) to choose from and so on.
Click to expand...

I played XIV for as long as I could stand it (a few months). I'm a huge fan of XI (before they raised the cap above 75) because it was a challenge to play the support jobs well. One of the main issues I had with XIV is that everything seemed way too easy.

I admit, I didn't pay attention to the level of the party. But even at lower levels in XI, you had to worry about hate control. You couldn't just spam Cure and Curaga, which is pretty much what it looks like these mages are doing.

It just doesn't look like there's much strategy to be had during the battle, which is disappointing (even at level 20).
 
E

ebil

Member
DrDogg said:
I played XIV for as long as I could stand it (a few months). I'm a huge fan of XI (before they raised the cap above 75) because it was a challenge to play the support jobs well. One of the main issues I had with XIV is that everything seemed way too easy.

I admit, I didn't pay attention to the level of the party. But even at lower levels in XI, you had to worry about hate control. You couldn't just spam Cure and Curaga, which is pretty much what it looks like these mages are doing.

It just doesn't look like there's much strategy to be had during the battle, which is disappointing (even at level 20).
Click to expand...
For what it's worth, they made huge changes to the battle system (to the point I just prefered starting over when I came back last June since it played nothing like 1.0), and combat definitely felt fun to me in the end. Still clunky and laggy because of the terrible engine and UI, but enjoyable nonetheless - some of the latest and more challenging battles such as Darnus or Garuda were very well done, so I wouldn't dismiss their ability to design good fights just yet.

That said, and having played XI for years myself (primary jobs were RDM, BRD and COR so I've been there too), I can safely say this will never be like XI and I really see some XI-lovers be upset or straight-up hating its battle system (and you don't have to be any genius for that either, as most of the vocal complainers on the Official and Alpha forums tend to be "FFXI vets")
It's different, has potential to be way less static than XI's (which is why that 3 classes tank & spank video looked terrible to me), but it's definitely not XI where every single battle in the game felt significant from level 10 on because you had to throw everything to every single mob you were fighting as a party. Doesn't mean there isn't a challenge, though!
 
D

DrDogg

Member
ebil said:
For what it's worth, they made huge changes to the battle system (to the point I just prefered starting over when I came back last June since it played nothing like 1.0), and combat definitely felt fun to me in the end. Still clunky and laggy because of the terrible engine and UI, but enjoyable nonetheless - some of the latest and more challenging battles such as Darnus or Garuda were very well done, so I wouldn't dismiss their ability to design good fights just yet.

That said, and having played XI for years myself (primary jobs were RDM, BRD and COR so I've been there too), I can safely say this will never be like XI and I really see some XI-lovers be upset or straight-up hating its battle system (and you don't have to be any genius for that either, as most of the vocal complainers on the Official and Alpha forums tend to be "FFXI vets")
It's different, has potential to be way less static than XI's (which is why that 3 classes tank & spank video looked terrible to me), but it's definitely not XI where every single battle in the game felt significant from level 10 on because you had to throw everything to every single mob you were fighting as a party. Doesn't mean there isn't a challenge, though!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I know I'm one of the few who liked the challenge of XI (all the way through, not just the boss fights). I don't expect XI-2, but I hope ARR at least provides some challenge for individual classes. I don't want to be able to solo my way to cap and I don't want xp/leve parties to be a walk in the park.

Either way, I'll be trying out ARR.
 
T

Tomodachi

Member
Played like an hour the alpha, wow, really digging it overall and the UI is plain AWESOME. Already thought so but playing it first hand confirmed everything and then some. Slick, modern, easy to use, everything is at its perfect place, customizable: I love it.
Game runs really good as well, so much better then FFXIV. It really looks another MMORPG altogether tbh.
 
J

Jinko

Member
DrDogg said:
I played XIV for as long as I could stand it (a few months). I'm a huge fan of XI (before they raised the cap above 75) because it was a challenge to play the support jobs well. One of the main issues I had with XIV is that everything seemed way too easy.

I admit, I didn't pay attention to the level of the party. But even at lower levels in XI, you had to worry about hate control. You couldn't just spam Cure and Curaga, which is pretty much what it looks like these mages are doing.

It just doesn't look like there's much strategy to be had during the battle, which is disappointing (even at level 20).
Click to expand...

From what I remember you quit before 1.19 which was the major battle system changes, as with any RPG you can't really see the enjoyment from a third perspective, end game in ffxiv was light years ahead of xi's.

Fights like king mog whm would generally start off as Dps and switch to healing later on for example.

What with animation lock being remove, them adding jump we should get some seriously well designed battles now, that video done exactly what I expected it to, which was put people off, 1 step forward 2 steps BackK SE
 
R

Robobandit

Member
Not to mention the niconico video thing will be a gameplay demonstration of the alpha version..

Which I think is a horrible mistake.

They should shut up until they're ready to show something from beta..
 
R

Relaxed Muscle

Member
Robobandit said:
Not to mention the niconico video thing will be a gameplay demonstration of the alpha version..

Which I think is a horrible mistake.

They should shut up until they're ready to show something from beta..
Click to expand...

Seriously, they admitted the battle will recive great changes in the Beta also only 4 jobs to show and only lvl 20.

Right now battle is the last thing they should show, is really barebones right now. I admit it has great potential, but it shouldn't be show right now.
 
R

Robobandit

Member
Granted, I don't think it will do that much damage..

If there's yoshi-p and developer commentary about what will be different and details about the upcoming beta version.. it may be worth it.
 
Xux

Xux

Member
The Male Mi'qote in Buscaroon's Druthers looks pretty cool. Probably gonna be a pretty big male mi'qote bandwagon but I might just have to jump on.
 
Xux

Xux

Member
The part of me that likes to conform to non-conformity kinda wants to be a Roegadyn come ARR. I just...really want a tail. :(

Also, finally did Tam-Tara tonight, lol. Kept pulling hate as an ARC from the two LNC and the CNJ kept dieing from spamming Curaga but it was pretty fun. Pretty neat design and enemies. Maybe I will try out the whole raid thing after all.
 
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