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Final Fantasy XIV |OT2| ARR: Phase 4 August.

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T

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Maybe I'm part of the problem, but I'm really loving the game.
 
R

Robobandit

Member
BlackJace said:
Preeeetty sure the mainline quests will be more fleshed out.
Click to expand...

even the fetch quests and kill quests are fleshed out with dialog that is enjoyable (imo) and they give me a decent reason to go perform task X for npc Y.

For some people, though.. the issue is that they are doing those kinds of things. For them, they want to be thrown into a story from the outset without going through the whole "You're a new adventurer, prove yourself before we let you do anything important" phase of a game.

Those people will probably be bored to tears regardless of how well written the quests are because what they're actually doing isn't fun to them.
 
G

guybrushfreeman

Unconfirmed Member
So my experience with the beta was alright but overall very shallow. Hopefully it's just because it's only phase two I guess. Combat was very shallow to the point that not only were there far too few skills but even the ones that were there felt pointless (didn't play every available class though). Every encounter was the same and I got by with no more than two skills every time. Some classes felt like even that wasn't needed. I didn't encounter any story or quest text that seemed even remotely interesting and the locations were pretty bland (there were hints the high level stuff was more interesting though. We'll see how much the next phase adds but it'll have to be a pretty big upgrade I think. Still I really enjoyed the music and the game could be quite pretty at times so I'm pretty hopeful for the next phase.
 
Riposte

Riposte

Member
As someone who was really into quests for what they were in 1.0 (though obviously would want something much better), I was pretty disappointed with what I found in the Alpha. I think it makes it worse if there are a bunch of quests to not care about. Devalues them. That's always been a huge difference between FFXI and other MMOs I've noticed. Now quests feel more like a means to an ends (and an uninteresting end at that: a little bit of exp). From what I could tell they took the guildleves of 1.0, with their comparatively dull quest text blocks, and turned them into quests. There are quests with cutscenes and stuff (though the cutscenes were cut out), but the game has done a successful job at teaching me "quests = throw away garbage". The best case scenario is that I will have to deal with a lot of filler between what I want, as someone who is quest-centric.
 
Q

Qvoth

Member
server's been down since yesterday brah
only 2 days
hopefully this week will have another run
to those complaining about battle system, limit break starts on phase 3 i think, so you should really wait until you try that out
 
B

BlackJace

Member
Qvoth said:
server's been down since yesterday brah
only 2 days
hopefully this week will have another run
to those complaining about battle system, limit break starts on phase 3 i think, so you should really wait until you try that out
Click to expand...

Oh I thought it ended on tuesday...
 
Lord Phol

Lord Phol

Member
I feel this game could be fun, but I'm having some lag and it kind of makes the combat feel off and meh atm. Are there any good servers for EU/nordic people?

I also hope it gets better optimized, I feel like I should get better fps with my 680GTX and 3,4GHZ 3570 i5. The different graphical settings doesn't seem to affect the fps much either.

Lumine said:
Game starts stupidly slow though, throwing way too much (uninteresting) text at me. So many written lines and yet so little actual story. I was already playing for an hour, reaching level 3 and unlocking skills before I ever saw a single enemy to kill. I'm now level 8, finished plenty of quests but I still have no idea what is going on in the world because it's so uninteresting. It all revolves around you being an adventurer helping NPC's out with tedious chores.
Click to expand...

I'll have to agree with this as well, the beginning really is boring even for an RPG.
 
LowParry

LowParry

Member
Lord Phol said:
I feel this game could be fun, but I'm having some lag and it kind of makes the combat feel off and meh atm. Are there any good servers for EU/nordic people?
Click to expand...

All the servers now for Phase 2 are in Japan only but will get shifted over into different territories in Phase 3.
 
A

accx

Member
Lord Phol said:
I also hope it gets better optimized, I feel like I should get better fps with my 680GTX and 3,4GHZ 3570 i5. The different graphical settings doesn't seem to affect the fps much either.
Click to expand...

I was running it pretty much maxed out (a side from shadows and other stuff i can't remember) with a GTX 670 and an Core2Duo E8500@4,2ghz without any fps issues.
Well apart from severely crowded places, which is to be expected.

Even though it's closed beta the client runs remarkably well. Insanely well when comparing to the first FFXIV closed beta launch :p

I ran the Benchmark and topped out at about 6000 with everything maxed except SSAO off, AA off and Radial Blur off (god damnit i hate blur in games).
 
Lord Phol

Lord Phol

Member
accx said:
I was running it pretty much maxed out (a side from shadows and other stuff i can't remember) with a GTX 670 and an Core2Duo E8500@4,2ghz without any fps issues.
Well apart from severely crowded places, which is to be expected.

Even though it's closed beta the client runs remarkably well. Insanely well when comparing to the first FFXIV closed beta launch :p

I ran the Benchmark and topped out at about 6000 with everything maxed except SSAO off, AA off and Radial Blur off (god damnit i hate blur in games).
Click to expand...

Huh, well I do get 60 fps when Im alone with some NPCs but whenever other players show up it's anything from 20-40 fps. Maybe I need to tweak my pc some, or my CPU is the bottleneck. I've heard most MMOs only use two of ur cores oO.
 
F

fuzzyreactor

Banned
strange ppl are having issues with performance. My rig is becoming obsolete and i still got decent performance. 30fps with a few drops to 25.
5770
955 phenom II x4
4 gb ram.
 
D

desu

Member
I can only guess the game just doesn't like some hardware configurations. Got 2600k, 670 GTX, 16GB Ram and the game ran OK in 1200p, but to be honest not that much better than 1.x did (and I had a 570 GTX then). Wonder how the frame rate would be in something similiar to the getting the whole wolf camp from 1.x :D.
 
B

BlackJace

Member
I averaged upper 30s, with some spikes to 40ish in wide open areas.

Lowest I dropped to was 15-19 when I was near the epicenter where the giant Waypoint Crystal was. Tons of players were crowding there so it was expected.

All on a HD 6850 with 4GB of ram.
 
C

cpp_is_king

Member
accx said:
I was running it pretty much maxed out (a side from shadows and other stuff i can't remember) with a GTX 670 and an Core2Duo E8500@4,2ghz without any fps issues.
Well apart from severely crowded places, which is to be expected.

Even though it's closed beta the client runs remarkably well. Insanely well when comparing to the first FFXIV closed beta launch :p

I ran the Benchmark and topped out at about 6000 with everything maxed except SSAO off, AA off and Radial Blur off (god damnit i hate blur in games).
Click to expand...

I think you had FPS issues and you just didn't notice. Run the Benchmark again and have FRAPS on and watch your FPS. Guarantee you will get down below 25 in some places. That is exactly the problem, it should never be below 60, and probably not even below 75 with those specs. My benchmark score was 8500 with everything fully maxed and I still dropped down to 25 FPS in a few places during the benchmark.

Number of playres should be completely irrelevant, we're not talking about game lag, we're talking about FPS. FPS should not drop significantly due to the need to render a few additional characters on the screen.

When people are saying the game had FPS problems, I doesn't mean the game runs bad, it means it runs bad considering the hardware it's being run on. I can run Crysis 3 at 1440p with all settings at max and get 80fps, and you're telling me I can't get 60 in this game? Sorry, but that's a problem with the game, plain and simple.
 
A

accx

Member
cpp_is_king said:
I think you had FPS issues and you just didn't notice. Run the Benchmark again and have FRAPS on and watch your FPS. Guarantee you will get down below 25 in some places. That is exactly the problem, it should never be below 60, and probably not even below 75 with those specs. My benchmark score was 8500 with everything fully maxed and I still dropped down to 25 FPS in a few places during the benchmark.

Number of playres should be completely irrelevant, we're not talking about game lag, we're talking about FPS. FPS should not drop significantly due to the need to render a few additional characters on the screen.

When people are saying the game had FPS problems, I doesn't mean the game runs bad, it means it runs bad considering the hardware it's being run on. I can run Crysis 3 at 1440p with all settings at max and get 80fps, and you're telling me I can't get 60 in this game? Sorry, but that's a problem with the game, plain and simple.
Click to expand...

The first bolded may be true. I did not expect 60 fps at all times since that's not something you usually see in any mmorpg (you'll always have dips, even in something like wow).

And to the second bolded, well it does. It's common in all mmos because of unloading and reloading character assets depending on how many are on the screen.
I agree that it didnt ran as smooth as i would like it to be, but saying it has serious performance issues (seemingly without regards to being a closed beta) just doesn't seem fair.
I'm also not neglecting the fact that improvements and stability issues can and will become better with time. For someone that's been in several closed betas for the last 15 years i did however find the stability to be very satisfactory and everything relatively bug free (although i never ventured into any high levels areas).
 
C

cpp_is_king

Member
accx said:
The first bolded may be true. I did not expect 60 fps at all times since that's not something you usually see in any mmorpg (you'll always have dips, even in something like wow).

And to the second bolded, well it does. It's common in all mmos because of unloading and reloading character assets depending on how many are on the screen.
Click to expand...

I would still characterize that as an issue with the game. i have 4GB of video mem and 32GB of system RAM. And less than half was in use. If that were the issue, it should have loaded more. But that probably wasnt the issue, because only 3 classes are unlocked and almost everyone has the same gear.

As someone who has worked on an MMO, i still think they can do much better here.
 
J

Jijidasu

Member
Apparently a German site that is giving away keys has information direct from SE that phase 2 is going on until the 28th of April.

I imagine they're trying to buy time for phase 3 - they're probably shitting themselves because of the NDA being thrown open.
 
A

accx

Member
cpp_is_king said:
I would still characterize that as an issue with the game. i have 4GB of video mem and 32GB of system RAM. And less than half was in use. If that were the issue, it should have loaded more. But that probably wasnt the issue, because only 3 classes are unlocked and almost everyone has the same gear.

As someone who has worked on an MMO, i still think they can do much better here.
Click to expand...

Yea i agree.
Since i had lowered expectations, seeing as i'm on a way out dated cpu, i suppose i was more happily surprised it actually ran fine.

I can understand people seeing it as a problem with high end gear not working as intended, because of badly written clients.

I also have zero to none faith in Japanese developers on PC so i always go in with a sort of "if i can at least rotate my camera without any serious hiccups, it's fine" type of mentality.
With lowered expectations comes lowered disappointment :p
 
J

Jinko

Member
Jijidasu said:
Apparently a German site that is giving away keys has information direct from SE that phase 2 is going on until the 28th of April.

I imagine they're trying to buy time for phase 3 - they're probably shitting themselves because of the NDA being thrown open.
Click to expand...

Well they only have themselves to blame for that, especially if they aren't ready lol.
 
R

Robobandit

Member
Jinko said:
Well they only have themselves to blame for that, especially if they aren't ready lol.
Click to expand...

It's not like they couldn't change that provision of the plan anytime they wanted.


also, having played TERA for the better part of 2012, the performance of the engine in ARR is remarkable in comparison.

Part of that may be that UE 3 is a shitty engine to use for mmos.. but my frame rate frequently dropped below 15 fps during the "nexus" events with a over a hundred people on screen, and that's on an i7 3770k @ 4.3Ghz w/ a GTX 670 gpu

For me, ARR is usually above 40 fps even in a crowd of players.
 
P

pablito

Member
my only issue is hair options. i want a cornrow cat lol.

anybody know how the stats will scale? i noticed highlander had the most str during 1.0, and also had higher str than some other races/clans i tried for beta, but only only by a few. if it's only a few then i won't pick based on race, but if the gap gets bigger than i probably will.
 
M

Mandoric

Banned
pablito said:
my only issue is hair options. i want a cornrow cat lol.

anybody know how the stats will scale? i noticed highlander had the most str during 1.0, and also had higher str than some other races/clans i tried for beta, but only only by a few. if it's only a few then i won't pick based on race, but if the gap gets bigger than i probably will.
Click to expand...

FFXI scaled lightly--7-8-9 at lv1 to 58-64-69 at level 75, for example. I don't see this differing that much because it's still built around the idea of you having one character who can take on any role "well enough".
 
E

ebil

Member
pablito said:
my only issue is hair options. i want a cornrow cat lol.

anybody know how the stats will scale? i noticed highlander had the most str during 1.0, and also had higher str than some other races/clans i tried for beta, but only only by a few. if it's only a few then i won't pick based on race, but if the gap gets bigger than i probably will.
Click to expand...

Mandoric said:
FFXI scaled lightly--7-8-9 at lv1 to 58-64-69 at level 75, for example. I don't see this differing that much because it's still built around the idea of you having one character who can take on any role "well enough".
Click to expand...
They said the racial stat differences will remain minimal, I think I've even read that the gap will not get bigger as you level up. Phase 3 will let us compare raw stats at level 50 when they transfer legacy characters, anyway.
 
M

Murder. She Wrote

Member
The game ran pretty well on med-high settings on my measly HD 4800. Of course, I'm not as fps sensitive as most people on gaf :p

I can't wait for Phase 3, it'll be the most important part of beta.
 
Munba

Munba

Member
644183_440685192687201_1193399982_n.jpg


552619_440685202687200_989830396_n.jpg



Sunset on la noscea seems more sweet than gridania one. Like if there are different colors depend on the region.
 
J

Jinko

Member
Robobandit said:
It's not like they couldn't change that provision of the plan anytime they wanted.


also, having played TERA for the better part of 2012, the performance of the engine in ARR is remarkable in comparison.

Part of that may be that UE 3 is a shitty engine to use for mmos.. but my frame rate frequently dropped below 15 fps during the "nexus" events with a over a hundred people on screen, and that's on an i7 3770k @ 4.3Ghz w/ a GTX 670 gpu

For me, ARR is usually above 40 fps even in a crowd of players.
Click to expand...

Agree, Tera runs really bad for me also, I think people don't realise how much more processing it takes to run an MMO, comparing it to Crysis is silly IMO.

Even WoW an 8 year old game runs shit considering its age.

Why would they bring back Collibri the one thing that broke FFXI, hopefully they dont' have that annoying mimic.
 
B

Blitzhex

Member
Upcoming Beta Test Schedule:
- Apr. 19th 2:00 a.m. to Apr. 21st 2:00 a.m. (PDT) / Apr. 19th 9:00 to Apr. 21st 9:00 (GMT)

From the forums.
 
C

Caffer

Neo Member
I still don't understand why they start it on friday, when everyone works, and close it at 9am on sunday when everyone could play it..
 
R

raven777

Member
I was wondering why I started getting the beta emails so I checked my email and I realized I received the invitation code on April 1.
 
T

TheMink

Member
I just got an email about beta testing, this is for the ps3 too? Or just PC still?

Kinda confused.

Edit:

Also, the email i just recieved did not include a registration code, but the beta sign up is asking for one.

Is it barried in my emails?
Nvm found it.
 
E

ebil

Member
desu said:
Better starting times for japanese players ;).
Click to expand...
While this is true...

Caffer said:
I still don't understand why they start it on friday, when everyone works, and close it at 9am on sunday when everyone could play it..
Click to expand...
... There are people working on the game (ie monitoring, hotfixing, checking and ensuring server stability), in Japan, over the Beta weekends. Since they are already working on coding from monday morning to friday night, it's just easier and more efficient for them to operate on this schedule.
 
M

Mandoric

Banned
Caffer said:
I still don't understand why they start it on friday, when everyone works, and close it at 9am on sunday when everyone could play it..
Click to expand...

If they flip the timing by 12 hours, it's starting at 6AM Saturday and ending at 6AM Monday, which sucks pretty hard for the Japanese that have to be at work Monday morning.

Especially the ones who have to be back at work patching all the bug reports that Monday morning.

Sadly, no matter when they do it, one region's gonna lose half a day or so of beta time.
 
R

Robobandit

Member
The only true solution to the problem is leaving the servers open 24/7 and not having them monitored in real time by their server team.

Which is what I'm hoping they will do in phase 3, considering the amount of content to be tested...
 
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