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November Megapatch Impressions
geldonyetich
Member Posts: 1,340
Final Fantasy XIV is attempting to recover the lost ground of its largely lackluster release by releasing a couple of hefty megapatches while extending the free trial a couple months. Having given the November Megapatch a spin, I see it was mostly Graphical User Interface related.
The GUI is your portal into the game, and with its optimization the game feels much more accessible. For example:
It now seems to present a lot more information up front rather than forcing you to go a screen or two further to find it.
Many unnecessary pop-up confirmation prompts have been removed.
Customization is easier as well: I was able quickly reorganize the central GUI controls to feel more compact and present information where I wanted it.
The GUI feels a lot quicker and more responsive in most places - there's still a necessity for server updates but the impact is greatly mitigated now.
You can actually autosort your inventory (and retainer's inventory) into categories now!
To play Final Fantasy XIV now, it feels very much as though a formidable barrier between me and the game has been obliterated. However, the GUI is only skin deep. I feel more keenly than ever now what is in the game is lacking, what turned me off from the game in the first place, is the content, or rather the lack thereof.
Right now, the whole of the player's available activities could be summed up like this:
Perform main quests at combat job rank 1, 10, 15, 20. Different quests available for different cities of origin, but that requires starting new characters, and each character carries an expense of time and money.
As you earn combat job ranks through combat with monsters, you're going to need to upgrade your equipment.
You can craft your own equipment, which involves dabbling with the rather extensive player economy. The greater bulk of existing content can be found here, as there's over 2500 things to craft, contrast against a rough guess of 75 different kinds of attackable mobs in the game (allowing for upgraded versions of the same mob) and it's clear that there's a ton more crafting content than adventuring content.
You can buy equipment from other players, which mostly comes from earning gil, which mostly comes from performing Guildleves or selling what you find.
Guildleves are likely to be your main activity.
You can do 8 "local" guildleves every 36 hours. These involve crafting something.
You can do 8 "regional" guildleves every 36 hours. These involve either collecting resources or defeating monsters.
Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of variety to the guildleves, and so you will be repeating this same task often.
Behests are started at the top of every real life hour in camps and up to 15 players (a full party in FFXIV) can participate. This is basically a hunting guildleve involving a reasonably large number of mobs followed by a stronger "boss" encounter.
Outside of that, you can certainly just go out and hunt stuff, but there's no real context to it.
The main trouble is that the only genuinely interesting thing to do in Final Fantasy XIV is the main quests because this is the only part of the game that really tells a story. The narrative contrast between this and the other activities is so great that these sub-activities feel like artificial and unnecessary toil.
Unfortunately, the pacing to reach the narrative content of the game is way off. It will take you many, many hours (perhaps days or weeks) to attain the necessary combat ranks to unlock the next main quest. Each leg of the main quest itself can be resolved very quickly, in a matter of an hour or two. So, for the most part, you're left with the activities in Final Fantasy XIV that leave it feeling like a story-barren grind.
The December mega-patch should help as it promises to introduce more quests (including "class" quests) and guildleves. However, time will tell if this will really inject adequate soul into the game.
Comments
You forgot 1 thing every hour (Real time) an npc (Battlewarden) will appear in every camp and people can accept a quest to hunt some monsters.
With nov patch the exp/sp reward got boosted so now it's a good, easy and fast way to earn some exp/sp.
It's better if you party with the people who are going to do the quest (Icon shows near their names that they are on quest) because everyone shares the same quest and if x and y are not in the same group they kill same monsters and ALL count but you don't get exp/sp from the ones killed from people not in your group.
You're right, of course, that's a good catch.
Even this activity can get boring in time, though. It's essentially a sort of Guildleve with better grouping potential.
I formally declare Final Fantasy XIV the bestest no contest MMO ever in the history of MMORPGs.
Congrats FFXIV, you beat everyone.
SP system is broken, and makes playing past level 20 torture in a party, and even solo, you are going to be grinding like you are playing something from Korea.
They made improvements on some things and nerfed others, like running is now slower... Ultimately, when you try to progress past lvl 20 you will find yourself in a world of hell.
BTW: You said everything in your OP that Im too tired and fed up to write.
I love snails.
I love every kinda snail.
I just want to hug them all, but I cant.
Cant hug every snail.
I remember someone saying something to the effect that you shoudl play the game not as if it were a game, but as if you were an inhabitant of the world. Unfortunately even that fails as you can't acquire a house or build or any such jargon.
The UI and SP gain were two of my biggest concerns when I played the game. It's good that they are working on it, modifying it, but even once that's fixed...there is still the lack of content..for now.
I still stick to my guns. This game isn't ready for consumption till it's released for PS3.
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
hehe take it as being tiny about stuff geldon but aside of the Story Quests are the Guild quests as well. I know it still makes not up that much additional content, but the Guild quests have a lot of interresting story aspects and the one from the Thaumathurgs is just creepy.
Edit:
People that did that one sure know what I mean.
Nice patch, but it came along with a few new problems of course. Nothing too major from what I heard.
But the game is still a boring, bare bone of a game. The main storylines may be some of the best narrative stories in all of MMO history, but it'll be completely sullied by the fact that the rest of the game is as mundane as a generic F2P Korean MMO.
People who want to enjoy the game while journeying to end game...I would suggest waiting another month, or even until the PS3 launch. As it stands, it's boring. Completely, utterly boring. Better with the latest patch, but it still didn't fix fun.
I'm not disagreeing with you mind you if there was more stuff to do for people that like to battle not crafting (Like me) it would be better for me.
Say I wish they implement a card game ingame were you can collect cards and play against other people and maybe even some tournaments.
Personally I don't believe FF XIV has the best story in MMO history, since the ridiculous amount of cutscenes (non-vocal cutscenes) breaks the immersion factor of the story quest. I guess you can say the story has a good narrative, even if you're not much of an important part of said story. However come next year we'll have a good number of MMOs putting a huge focus on story & lore (SW:TOR, GW2, DC Universe, etc.) that FF XIV will no longer be able to claim the title of having one of the best story narratives in all of MMO history.
Which is a damn shame, because that & the graphics are the only things FF XIV have going for it so far; seeing how this November patch only fixed things that shouldn't have been around at launch or this long after launch.
Well I wonder how much story content SE can patch into the game, before the PS3 release, because it sounds like they need 3 times as much to even reach the "subscription-based MMO standard" (just made that up).
Not too important at this point, really.
The game needs content of course, but story content is there and just needs to be better paced. What is missing are milestones, as in things you look forward to and the reason to progress.
Not to say other games are doing exceptionally well at this, but XI had quite some milestones to aim towards at all times.
That's what they should focus on.
As far as this impression goes, it's a bit dumb to take a content approach on it when the patch wasn't mean to add any content in the first place. That patch is saved for December.
Not that I expect too much from that patch content wise either.
You can now invite people from anywhere in the world.
/pcmd add <player name>
Example: /pcmd add Frank Thomas
this is awesome
is soloing past lvl 30 still way to slow or is soloing for xp viable now?
Currently leves and soloing are currently the better option compared to groups to gain Skillpoint. Probably tehre is soon some adjustement in the direction or tehy just want people to motivate to build groups for doing leves instead of mindless Mobcamping.
There also seem to be a lower return in SP in levequest at 20 but I can be wrong since I can do thanks to my higehr experience level my rank 10 leves all with five or four stars even as the class I use is only around rank 12- 14.
Generally you get around 100 skillpoints for Monsters around your level outside of leves. Oddly enough it sort of seem to count for quite stronger monsters too, so I guess tehre will be some adjustement.
Anyway it is nice to get kind of constant Skillpoints now as a caster.
I just don't like the entire design/approach of the game however..........
To be fair to FXIV,having to do quests/Leves whatever is really as much TOTAL content other games have,so even if they never added a single thing beyond,it will still be on even terms with other games.
If everyone is happy playing Wow where by ALL you do is wander from quest to quest,why is it not satisfactory content for FFXIV?
BTW about every third quiest in Wow is a goto the next npc quest to continue doing the same boring quests.Every once in a while you run into a good quest,no different here in FFXIV.People in Wow are using custom addo ns,so again the game is not worthy of having a good UI,so if this is all good and well for Wow ,why not for FFXIV?
The point is that this mega patch is not going to Wow the very few possible gamers it can attract.
I feel Square needed to keep the FFXI game ideas in tact only EXPAND and IMPROVE on them,this would have at least kept all the ffXI players and still add a few more because of nicer graphics.Removing something like the AH is not improve it is changing what didn't need to be fixed.IMRPOVE their game economy design.IMPROVE the mechanics[not add more tedious menus].Patch after patch will not save this game,that is my opinion anyhow.It will have to remain a small population game and hopefully keep those followers happy,they need to keep them just to hope break even a few years from now.
I know it is not fair,but my firm belief is that Blizzard could release a far inferior product and still have millions of followers,i think most share the same opinion as i do?Square remains a bit of a small entity over here in NA.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The people actually playing this game are really enjoying the patch.
There is now reason to do guildleves in groups. Which was not there before in fact before patch it was better to solo guildleves to maxamize any skillgain you might get low or otherwise.
Now with each member in the leve within the alotted level difference from you gives you a 50% bonus on sp gain. Also leve linking gives you 100% bonus to skillgain. Add that with guardians diety and you can get 400-700 sp per mob from leve mobs. And remember you can now lower the difficuly of leves so always try to get the mobs con level either yellow or orange for best sp gain. And remember mobs have higher HP now but miss more. And everyone in group gets constant sp gain regardless if they hit the mob so if there are 3 red mobs you can split dps amongst the 3 and not worry about not getting sp for the ones your not hitting. BTW this is all from me and my ls mates testing last few days. Im unsure what the max bonus is from members proper level in your party or what the max sp gain might be from a certain con monster. All this stuff will be found in time, but it far from the ugly picture some of the above posters make it out to be.
This game was never intended to be a solo grind. Its meant to be played with friends and in groups. They just wanted to make soloing more possible then it was in 11. So if your now getting constant 70-120 soloing out of a leve, thats more then likely right where they want it.
As far as crafting, harvesting and wards. The faster UI and less options to do and start things really helps the retainers and crafting. They added rank 20/30/40 harvesting quests to all 3 regions now so no traveling to a specific area to do them.
I can really go on and on about how this patch has helped me enjoy the game more then before. But everyone has an opinion so take mine for what it is, just my opinion.
This is the truth, I reached level 42 and stopped playing. Was tired of griding every night for 6-8hrs just to level. Battle leves don't scale with your level, if you're a casual player good luck leveling just off battle leves. I'd still be playing if this wasn't the main problem that ate at me. I had to grind in FFXI I get that but this is a new game you'd think they would have learned from the last one (about the grind).
Also for the poster above me, we all know how the LFG system is. No one really uses it so if you're a casual player good luck finding a party. I was lucky enough to have a static, which I felt bad leaving...but was over it. I'll finish by saying if you force people to group together from 20-50 you'll have a lot of people quit, I thought they were going to make it more casual in that way and even if some people might deny it, I know a lot of people probably stopped playing because of this reason. You can't give people 8 battle leves every 36hrs (with SP that doesn't do anything for you past level 20, ya good luck leveling off leves at level 40) and hope they grind to level. If they fixed that I'd come back in an instant.
Because "grouping" just can't mean "casual" at the same time, duh!
Those who like to group together won't leave. Those who do, weren't part of the game's main demographic in the first place. Nothing lost.
It has nothing to do with "casuals" and "hardcore".
I don't think you get what I'm saying. You CAN group with people as a casual player BUT you're not going to level unless you grind 6-8hrs a days which CASUAL players don't have time to do. So mostly hardcore gamers will level and casual players wont. The SP is broken for those people that don't have a lot of time to group for a grinding party for good SP since that's the ONLY way to get good SP atm. No one can deny SP is broken in this game, if you wish to solo kill mobs or do battle leves you will not level past level 20+ getting 100sp a kill.
Of course I haven't played in a while so perhaps everything has changed for the better but it does sound like there still isn't enough to do. Now that doesn't mean that their needs to be a string a quests leading you by the nose from one area to the next. There is nothing wrong with presenting players with a list of possible activities and allowing them to go work on what ever they feel like. EvE does this. You want to work on missions to make some money? Great go pick up a mission. You want to work on mining materials for your crafting? Fit you ship for it and head to an asteroid belt. Or you could sell the ore that you mine. Or you could do exploration missions. The big difference is that they don't put up artificial limits on how much of what you can do. If all you feel like doing is ratting you can do that for days non-stop. It is really up to you. THAT is a sandbox.
FFXIV needs to do the same. Do you feel like doing a missions to gain cash and sp? Why can't battle based leves be just that. "kill me 5 of these and I will give you this much gil" But get rid of the 8 leve limit. That is simply stupid. If that is what a person wants to do then let them. Want to go hunt something specific because you need a certain type of crystal or some other drop from a mob for your crafting? First, create lots of hunting areas with lots of mobs of various types but similar levels of difficulty. Second, create NPCs that will let you ask them what you need and they will tell you, in game, "oh lighning crystals? you want to go over here and hunt wisps"
Don't want to do the hunting yourself? Create a reverse auction system, that is, create a work order list where people can request certain items. Make it really easy to search. This would make it easy for me to sell the items I have and get them into the hands of people who need them to make things. This would drive the economy forward. But if I want to make more money I can put my items on a retainer and see if they sell. Generally though, crafting mats will probably sell on this reverse auction and Finished, more expensive items will probably sell more on retainers. Another reason to make the list? It will give people something to do. "Hmm, dude is looking for 80 of these and is paying well. I will go hunt them down for him." Player generated quests if you will.
If FFXIV wants to be a story driven game then it needs to keep the story going. This is usually done with directed quests but I am sure you could push a story other ways. If, on the other hand, they want to be an undirected sandbox game, then they need to give you 5-10 "things" to do at any given time and let you do as much of each as you care to do. Crafting, hunting, gathering, kill missions, exploration missions, delivery missions and so on. Don't limit the behests to each hour, Why not allow them to be started whenever but perhaps limit them to only being given to groups of 5 or more. Don't limit leves but perhaps have them give diminishing rewards in gil after doing 8 in less than so many hours.
Quit limiting fun.
All die, so die well.
VikingGamer -- An articulate post that sums up the core 'issues' with FFXIV (for me at least). Thanks, I couldn't have said it better.
It doesn't really work that way.