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How is the game as it stands Today?
Warsaurus
Member Posts: 37
The game has been destroyed by the press and players for a terrible launch, and for some time after has gotten very negative reviews. That said, I've heard that there have been patches, adjustments and still has a development team working on the game as well. People have said the UI is cluncky and un-intuitive. That the game runs poorly even on good systems and that the questing system and basic gameplay was bland and uninspired.
Having said that, all of those things are in the past. As a player looking for a new MMO, I'm curious as to how the game is today. Obviously a bad launch shouldn't be forgotten, but I also don't believe that it should forever taint a game into triviality or be common thought that a 'bad launch means a bad game.'
How is the gameplay? Is the combat interesting, fluid, and have a weight to it? Is the crafting system, and with it, the economy working as intended, or faltering*? Does the world seem 'alive' and immersive? How is the end-game handled? Is the community helpful, friendly? In short, does it have the basic features of an MMO, and implement them in a fun, and well thought out fashion?
Having not found a home in any MMO since WoW-BC, I've given some looks at FFXIV, but always dismissed it because of the poor reviews. But now, a long way from it's release, I'm starting to research it some more. All I've found are early reviews, screaming at bugs, and performance, and under-developed ideals and systems. But these are the things that an MMO can repair within the timespan of FFXIV's lifetime, and so I'm here asking if it has or not.
So, in wrap-up, how is FFXIV as a game, today? If you could only judge the game for what it is with this patch, with no prior knowledge of it's failures (Or successes if you want to be positive), how would you score the game?
* The lack of AH in my opinion, is actually an interesting idea. It adds some depth to the vendors and etc. I have no firsthand knowledge, just hearsay, however the lack of such a system doesn't strike me as a 'con' as much as a feature (for good or worse) that is intended in the gameplay. As long as it IS working, and working as it is intended, I find it hard to bring it as a negative in itself.*
Comments
if you were ever a subber, you can simply go and look for free for yourself, since the game's sill open to everyone with no sub fee ffor the time being (until the ff team deems it worthy of 12.99 a month again)
if you want my opinion it's a damn lot better but still needs work. it's basically at the point now where, if i was playing it in beta, i'd be mad psyched for launch.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
Yeah, unfortunatly for me personally, having never been a subber, I'm in a bit of a bind. I have the spare cash for about 1 game right now, hopefully one I can sink a lot of time into. So, that's why I'm curious, because I see potential in this game, I just am dealing with what seems like a lack of information regarding where the game has gone in the past several months.
The crafting/economic system interests me, as it seems like you can craft fairly high-end gear. I heard that most of the gear is in fact crafted, but I'm not sure. Of course any raiding would be interesting, and pvp is always fun in moderation. I just like the idea of a large world, with an in-depth crafting system.
The game is better than it was, but it's still pretty bad. There has been one significant patch released so far that has taken the game in the right direction, with two more equally significant ones coming very soon (one of them coming next week, the other one is tba).
As of right now, the game is still devoid of any meaningful/long-lasting content (still lacking any kind of end-game), the combat mechanics are barebones/still a work in-progress right now since they're in the process of revamping it from what it once was (they changed the combat system from active button-mashing to the traditional system used in most other MMOs), the crafting is still bad and the economy is still nonexistant, the community is pretty dead (most people will suggest getting into a linkshell, but finding one with constantly active members is pretty difficult), the UI has been improved responsiveness-wise but still needs some work (it still has a 2-3 second delay), and the game is still heavily unoptimized (just generally runs poor along with basic things like SLI being really unpredictable in the way it'll affect your frames).
About a year has passed since the game was released, but a lot of time was wasted switching out the old development team for a new one. So the game still hasn't improved a whole lot. Like you said though, there's potential here, but it won't be realized for a long while. I'd recommend saving your money for another game and come back in about another year or so. By then, all of the major patches planned for the game to take it in the direction that the new development team wants will have been released and the game will be in a much better shape.
Just an fyi though, I purchased a second collectors edition of this game off ebay for $20 about a week ago. I'm not sure how much you have to work with, but it isn't all that expensive anymore, especially if you get the standard edition (should only cost $10-$15). Plus they've indefinitely stopped the monthly fee for the game until they feel it's in a good enough shape to charge for. So if the game interests you enough, you could probably just try it out for yourself and see if you like it since you wouldn't have a whole lot to lose if you didn't.
What the poster above said, you could find some standard edition for cheaps now and try it for yourself. But so far you mentioned nothing about your prefered gameplay.
My only gripe with FF14 is that it is a vast neverending open space without landmarks. This is why people said it looked rather "bland".
It's a construction yard.
We're looking at probably next Summer for everything to be completed (Battle system overhaul, UI overhaul, server & engine repairs, zone redesign, job system). Right now the combat system overhaul is underway, with overhauls to claiming and engaging, how stats and other algorithms (like enmity) function, animations, actions(classes), battle regimens and so on.
Since you mentioned crafting, that system is about to go through a lot of adjustments along with the rest of the economy. Crafting will still be an important part of the game, but no longer mandatory for everyone to take part in.
It's bland because the world is extremely tiled. You can see the same types of areas repeated over and over if you pay attention. This isn't something you generally see in MMOs.
- To the OP. FFXIV is very much the same as when it launched. None of the fundamental issues have really been addressed. You still have the cap on leves (they all have a timer to prevent grinding), There is more content now, though. But, it's stil the same game.
To put it in perspective, the new team has been working on the game for about 6months. The amount of work they have to do is almost equivelant to remaking the entire game (they can keep the artwork, but the coding / design all needs a major overhaul). To have enough time to really see much of a difference in that regard, you'll have to wait probably another 6months to a year to see all the changes.
They are supposedly adding new jobs, airships, chocobos, etc. soon though. It sounds like they are trying to bring it closer to what FFXI was (which is a good thing), but whether or not people want to wait that long is another matter entirely.
You're saying this as if "waiting" required actual effort from your end?
I would not recommend it to any friend for sure. Maybe in one more year.
Ah Hyanmen, good to see you still here pimping FF XIV
No seriously, holding to your guns is somerthing to respect - salute sir.
Going to ask you, in context of this thread of course, is it worth 30 bucks to pick up FFXIV?
I really, really, really want to try this game because I love the Final Fantasy series and the characters and stories and style etc. but I've just heard this game is.. just... so... bad?
I know they have done a lot of work since launch, and yeah almost a year now....
Is it as group dependant as FFXI? I mean, I prefer group/guild activities but like to be able to solo effectively too.
I've heard the learning curve is very steep, like to do anything you have to have the Wikki open on the other screen etc. True?
I mean I've been playing MMOs for like 12 years (and I'm a genius) so I'm pretty sure I could "figure it out" but is it rewarding to figure these things out or just frustrating?
Is the combat as slow as FFXI? And if it is slower, is it at least involved and tactical or just straight up slow?
Is it laggy? Server stability good? Reponse between client/server good? UI I have read/heard is one of the worst parts, what is really so bad about it? Just poorly designed or unintuitive?
And please tell me there is NO PlayNC crap or any other weird registration junk?
I can reply straight. Cant answer all things tho.
s it as group dependant as FFXI? I mean, I prefer group/guild activities but like to be able to solo effectively too.
It is semi-group dependant. Yes in most of cases.
I've heard the learning curve is very steep, like to do anything you have to have the Wikki open on the other screen etc. True?
You need websites for crafting purpose, everything else is in the game.
I mean I've been playing MMOs for like 12 years (and I'm a genius) so I'm pretty sure I could "figure it out" but is it rewarding to figure these things out or just frustrating?
Sorry, my English isn't so good to figure out the answer.
Is the combat as slow as FFXI? And if it is slower, is it at least involved and tactical or just straight up slow?
It is slow and not dynamic. You don't need tactic other than AA, skill, cure, AA, AA (Auto-Attack).... Slow combat.
It requires tactic only in large group and difficult enemy.
Is it laggy? Server stability good? Reponse between client/server good? UI I have read/heard is one of the worst parts, what is really so bad about it? Just poorly designed or unintuitive?
It is very laggy in cities, when client loads more ppl. Once it is done, its playable. No stressing lags outside in the world.
Server stability is very good.
Response betwen client and server isn't so good. UI has got slow latency.
There were some minor improvements to the UI and will be in the future. To this date, it is not very good in general. Really, it is poorly designed.
And please tell me there is NO PlayNC crap or any other weird registration junk?
Not sure about this, I registered via http://www.playspan.com/ to buy crystas. Its free now however.
I speak English so I gave a different set of answers.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
it's not worth 30, simply because you can get it for 15 if you search a bit
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
Actually waiting can requere a lot of effort especially mentally. While this might not be that true for a game, I would figure that in a year people "Moved on" to other games in with they have a lot more faith and are more stable.
I saw this game for £4 on UK Amazon site for anyone looking to pick it up cheap and try it out.
To give you an idea, XIV is undergoing fundamental changes that would be considered design document level. Things that should have been decided in pre-production. They are rebuilding the entire game. The way players progress with Skill Points has changed a few times. Crafting and repairs of armor are drastically changing. The entire class system is changing. The entire battle system is being revamped. The way quests are distributed is being changed, and the list goes on. What should you take away from this, OP? The game is being rebuilt, and it's going to take a long time.
If you don't mind spending 20 bucks for a game that isn't even close to finished, then you may enjoy FFXIV. On its own merits, FFXIV isn't a very fun MMO to play, and if you want to gain any semblance of enjoyment then a great community of fellow players is mandatory.
The concept and visual production is great, but there are just so many holes, that it'd be insane to recommend the game. The core flexibility in class choice and the world itself are great, but its the seams that are poorly stitched together. There is an inane grind that will have you wandering from your computer after a while when it comes to combat. The UI delay is a nuisance and kills most of the enjoyable momentum while playing. Crafting, while a solid concept, is hampered by an overly complex system that breeds frustration with lack of information and consistency.
Honestly, one of the biggest problems with the game is the community. The majority of the community is sticking with the game right now because they are attached to the mind-numbing grinding and equating that with depth and difficulty. If you decide to try it out, be prepared to handle the attitudes of many long-time players as apologetic (for Square, oddly enough) and masochistic. Throughout the forums you'll see a divided approach to FF14. You'll see the people constantly telling you the game is improving and its great and worth your time, and of course you'll see the realists saying that the game is a big timesink that doesn't flow well enough to be entertaining to the majority. You'll always have people who enjoy the grind, but the fact of the matter is: the grind does not contribute to gameplay and it detracts from the immersion and flow.
There is a major patch coming out that adds a few new things and revamps some major flags in the gameplay, so we'll see how that plays out. The pace of updating is ridiculous, however, and their focus has been on filling holes in content instead of core mechanics. The core mechanics are being worked on, but let us be honest that a year out from launch, gameplay should be refined much more than what it is now. Minor decreases in UI latency and auto-attack are not major enhancements.
I would suggest giving the game another four months or so to release 1.19 and 1.20 to properly evaluate the upcoming changes. Crafting is getting an overhaul, the combat system is getting enhanced, and they're adding content. IMO, the lack of content is primarily a concern for people who have been playing for some time. The glaring issue in attracting more in terms of playerbase is refining the core mechanics that enhance the amazing possibilities this game has.
Patch 1.19 really is the patch that should've risen from beta. It just goes to show how completely out of whack SEs priorities were when at that stage.
Though with history shown, keeping a MMO afloat of trying to revive it yields very poor results. SE should've swallowed their pride and just moved on. This game will never reach its potential, no matter what the player base says.
So Saith RYKIM!!
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
Every since FF7, this franchise has had the naysayers saying the brand is dying or is bad. But it keeps selling more than copies than any other console rpg out there most of the time, if you exclude Dragon quests or Zelda.
One thing they didn't learn from XI was releasing too early, lack of content, and unpolished. It took one of the most dismal launches in mmo history to beat it into their brains. But the lesson is learned and their commitment to XIV shows that. It is a fact that most mmos who come out of the gate badly never recover more than just staying alive.
But please take into account two things:
1.These are usually pc only mmos.
2.The branding or company isn't hugely well known usually.
If Square keeps polishing and adding content and never letting up. This game can recover and even do better than XI did. But it is going to have to grow beyond your typical hamster wheel dungeon grinder. Which judging from the latest live letter and other patches seem to be the direction. Remember most casuals don't usually follow mmos as much as they do other mainstream genres.
My next argument is going to either make you laugh or make you think. Let's just suppose XIV releases on PS3, fully featured, polished, and has loads of content with all the past year of work that has gone into it. Suppose the game were to score a 8.0 or higher on reviews. If the ps3 version has a good payment model or superb free trial mode. They have a chance to draw in many console players into an mmo, especially fans of Final Fantasy. Sadly, I don't think they will get back more than 10% of the old pc players who left due to first launch. I also don't believe all of them left solely due to bad launch. I think many bought a pc, and their pc was just too weaksauce to play it. But after the ps3 release, if the pc got a non biased re-review from major gaming websites. That could influence some original players who left or new pc players to take that journey.
Completely off topic. But I notice that on forums across the web. Many gamers hate on the gaming giants just for the sake of wanting to be different or spark controversy. World of Warcraft is cartoony, Dark Souls will eat Skyrim's face, Final Fantasy is a movie more than a game, etc, etc.
As the founder of one of the best guilds still holding strong on Mysidia I can not recommend this game to anyone. Maybe in another year?
My theme song.
I preordered the collector's edition of this game a year ago, and I played it for less than a month. I am still looking for that same feeling I had when I first logged into final fantasy xi--the feeling like I was literally off on some adventure. After reading the patch notes for 1.19, i want to delete my old characters and give this game another try. Can anyone recommend a server with the highest population?
OMFD!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS THE GAME U'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO LOVE!!!!!
TRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Selbina.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
OP, I didn't read through the thread, so others may have covered this:
Patch 1.19 just went live, and made some significant changes. Imo, most of them were a huge step back, unfortunately.
They did not fix the combat issues a lot of players have complained about. Instead, they actually made it worse, simply because an ability must finish completly now, before you are able to start using another.
They removed the "overall level" (sorry, forgot what they called it). Earlier you could level either your job/class, or one or more crafting professtions, which increased the mentioned level. This again gave you points to distribute to different atributes, ie strenght, vitality, etc. This is removed, and your attributes only increase when your job/class levels up. An example of how this affects things, is that my newly created toon, who's been mostly crafting, had a drop in HP from 560 to 151...
Also, they made leves harder. This is a great change for those who wants a more challenging game, but the result is that it's scaring away more players, and the realms will undoubtly be emptier after ppl are done testing the changes. I'm a member of a quite small linkshell, we lost 7 members just today...
Crafting is a chore, as it was before the patch. First of all, it takes a lot of time, due to stupid and unnecessary animations and minigames (last applies for gathering). Secondly, parts of it is completely idiotic. For example, you set off to mine some ore, hoping for copper, and what do you end up with? Bloodworms, used as fish bait... And that's after spending a good 5 mins on a single resource. Another idiotic thing: when you try to chop away on a tree to get some wood, you'll likely find feathers instead, and get comments like "you sense "type x" wood above/below you", while you're staring at the whole damned tree...
The world is beautiful, no doubt about that. But there are enormous zones with nothing in it except a couple of camps where you do leves.
And talking about leves: they're just repeatable and extremely boring quests, which you do over and over again. New leves means new stuff to craft or new mobs to kill, but still it's all the same. Variations doesn't exist.
I cannot confirm this, but I heard they're adding auction houses sometime in the future. If true, then the economy will change, right now it's a bloody mess.
Unless you're a member of a linkshell, don't expect to communicate much with other players. This is beyond doubt the most silent community I've ever experienced. And I play on Cornelia, one of the most populated servers.
I see you've heard about the horrible UI of this game. Well, what you've heard is true. Navigating through this crap is a nightmare, you will never ever find a game with a worse UI, that's a promise.
I won't play more until next patch hits the servers, the game isn't worth bothering with at all now. I doubt it will ever become a good game, because just about everything needs to change dramatically for that to happen.
Not scared off yet? Well, buy this game and try for yourself. There's currently no monthly fees, though you must have a credit card to play (you need to register some sort of seperate payment account). The game is only 6 Euro at play.com, and a lot of other sites are almost giving it away too.
@ OP
Game is even worse than at release.
The market wards still crash every 5 minutes, the UI is still "clunky". There have been a lot of improvements, but for every improvement there has been a concomitant unimprovement.
Basically the game has absolutely no direction besides "copy WoW as much as possible without infringing on copyright". They have pretty much ruined all the redeeming qualities the game launched with, and fixed only a handful of the glaring issues the game launched with.
So, in my opinion, game is worse.
At least the original FFXIV had POTENTIAL. Ever since the dev team rearrangement, the game has only lost potential.
I've played ever since release. After patch 1.18, combat became really boring and I honestly barely touched combat classes except to get the new gear and try the dungeons.
Ever since release I have always crafted. Crafting was one of the best things about FFXIV. no other game had a crafting system as good as FFXIV. But I honestly don't even want to craft anymore. it's so awful now.
The "materia system" they added has made the game 100% more grindy than it was at release. It takes a while to go into detail, but basically the system hasn't added any depth, and it won't stimulate the economy. Basically all the materia system has done is make grinding compulsory and also it has justified the destruction of a perfectly good crafting system.
Honestly, stay away from FFXIV.
Maybe it would be better to play FFXIV if you had never played it in its glory days, so you wouldn't know what you're missing, but I'd recommend staying away anyway, just out of principle. They don't deserve your money. Not one bit.