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FF14: We spent all the development time on graphics. Oh &*!@, we only have 1/18th of a zone. It's cool, just copy and paste the area a few times, no one will know.
Uh, @NyteShady, almost noone in this topic was raging at Fonys review. FF14 really does look like crap.
i love your reports :) i do not like this game either, i think it looks kinda boring. even tho the graphics are great, and i just do not like the walks... i wouldnt make it to lvl 3 without falling asleep
Quite a good episode there. And i agree with the copied terrain. I pity the poor ppl who get lost. "Hmm, am i been here before?" "Yes....and...no."Also, about the first items that players get in the game as they start FFXIV.3 words: need more hit.
My review of the game for anyone that wants it:Pros: Graphics, soundCons: Everything elseI wanted to like this game. I've been waiting for years for the next SE MMO, since I first heard they were working on one. There was a lot about FFXI that I loved but even more I hated. If SE could take the good and get rid of the bad, no doubt they would have the best MMO currently available. They did not do so. In fact, they got rid of some of the things I liked about FFXI and kept a lot of what I hated. I'll even get a little specific.I liked FFXI combat. It was too slow, which was a problem, but overall it wasn't bad. The combat in FFXIV is worse. It may be faster, but it's just awful. A lot of people complain about combat in WoW being monotonous and boring. I suggest trying FFXIV combat. You just may realize how good you have it.I loved the deep crafting system in FFXI. However, in FFXIV, you have to completely change your job to craft and then go through this annoying little minigame. It's not that I mind having to complete a minigame, but what they implemented is just awful. Not only did they ruin crafting, but they made gathering even worse. When you are out in the field and see a node to gather, that's right, you have to switch jobs. You then have to go through a minigame (again just awful) and it takes forever. There's nothing quite like completely breaking up the flow of the game to grab some beehive chips. It's asinine.And this brings me to the job system. It's not nearly as compelling as the system FFXI used. I can't really describe it, but the jobs just feel generic. Add to that the fact that any job can use any skill (at a cost) and you have a system where you will be required to get certain skills from certain classes depending on what role you want to play. I'm not sure how this will turn out in the end, but I can say that in my opinion, this system is far inferior to FFXI and does not interest me in the slightest. This game will end up far more homogenized than even WoW, and WoW is very homogenized compared to FFXI.The world design is terrible. I didn't watch the video, but from the comments you seem to have a good idea of the design. The area around Gridania is so terrible I can't even describe it. It's like walking down a street in a city, only you can't go in any of the buildings. You have to stay on this designated path with walls on either side. Keep in mind you are out in a forest. It's solid stone walls on either side of the path. This would be fine if they paths were windy and had lots of clearings. However, the map is a grid. A perfectly square grid with very few clearings, all of which are perfectly square. Add to this the fact that there is very little variation inside a zone and you possibly have one of the most boring games ever to move around in. By very little variation, I mean you literally would get lost in Gridania were it not for the maps. No landmarks, no difference of any kind between one path and the next. The other zones aren't really much better either.Sadly, I think many of the problems stem from this being a console game. SE is a console developer and designed this game to be played primarily on the PS3. PC functionality seems to be tacked on, and even though controls and UI lag are supposed to be fixed, the UI will still make this game an exercise in patience. I think all of the problems I've mentioned above truly do have console design to blame. The one issue I have with this is that even with the console restrictions, the game could have been designed better.I enjoyed the beta at first. Even though I had been down on the game before the open beta hit, I gave it a try and it vastly renewed my interest. I couldn't stop playing, even though I found it frustrating and poorly designed. I was able to look past all of that and enjoy the game. Unfortunately, after a few days, I couldn't find a reason to pick the game up again. I realized that the freshness of a new game had worn off. Once it had, I saw the game for the horrendously boring shell of a game it is. The problem lies at the heart of the game design though, so it's not like it can be fixed.I will certainly revisit the game sometime around the PS3 launch. I will see how it's doing, but I am 99.9% certain I will never want to play this game. This saddens me. I had really high hopes for this game.Edit: Wanted to apologize for the TLDR. Basically, I'm a huge FF fanboy. I've been playing since the first. In fact, the original FF was the first game I knew I wanted to get before the game even released. I was 9 at the time. Anyhow, for MANY reasons, I cannot play this game. I want to like it, but...it's just not possible. Trust me, I've tried.
Awesome BFF report. I'm a big fan of pretty much all of Square Enix's games, and this sure looks and feels like Final Fantasy. Don't think the style of the RPG games, the slow tempo, is really cut out for the online world though.As said before, thanks for an awesome review!
FFXI was my 1st mmo game and looking back at it, I got no regrets. I had fun with a some of the stuff in the game, long walks have never bothered me and at times I found it enjoyable, so I couldnt care any less about the QQ for the long walks. Having to switch to a different class with the same character was always a big pro over WoW. In FFXI, you can have as many craftskills you wanted. But only one you of them you can get to 100 and the rest 60 cap. I would like it if We had that kind of thing with the crafting but then again it might be a bad idea to do so. Also, the bazaar system was really nice in FFXI and I think it would work great in WoW. Id also like to point out that FFXI really like to test you if you liked fishing cuz it toke a LONG time to skill up.FFXI also did a better job making you feel that YOU were part of the story. Where in WoW, you're nothing more then a background character. But ever since WotLK they have done a better job making you feel you're apart of the story a little and after seeing Cata, it will get alot better.Also when it came to events like Christmas, Halloween, ect. FFXI did a better job making the events different each year, Every Halloween event in FFXI it was always different and would actually have a new story to the event each year and have new quest to go along with them. Halloween in WoW, I'm going to be putting out fires, killing the headless horseman, again. Also gank Alliance players when they try to go to kill the headless horseman (which never gets old =) lol)Now for FFXIV, I like what I see so far. Combat system looks ok to me for the most part, if I can enjoy FFXI combat system I'm pretty sure FFXIV wont be any different. Everything looks gorgeous to look at and as for the whole "copy paste" thing, I watched alot of FFXIV videos and I never really notice some of the terrain looking the same but I'm sure I wont be too bothered by this. WoW might not do the same thing with there terrain but they are guilty of using the same models and re-skinning them, I have always never been bothered by this but for the rest you always seem to give Blizz alot of grief about this.In the end, I faith that I will like FFXIV but I'm pretty sure Ill like WoW better mostly cuz love WoW's PvP system alot. But Ill have a soft spot FFXIV cuz Ill always like Japanese ideology over Western. To me Western ideology always catered to the stupid, the kind of ppl who always want things easy and given to them now and never want to work hard for it in the long run. Also Square enix has done some great games this years. FFXIV might not be one of them but KH: birth by sleep is a great game. FFXIII was great too, and FF versus XII is looking to be a great game. So I don't know where you ppl get of saying Square hasn't done any good games in a long time.Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read this my grammar might not be the best but I really felt this is something I really wanted to type down. Again thank you
I don't know, Final Fantasy XIV is really dependent on role-playing and communicating with people for information, just as it was in XI. This review doesn't bring that to justice.It's a completely different culture that this game is aiming for, and personally I enjoy it as much as I enjoy Warcraft's. Travel is bad, and combat is slow, but the overall immersion is great.Admittedly, however, it's really, really badly localized. Final Fantasy XI English was far superior to XIV's, exhibiting some impressive uses of the language that you'd expect from an English professional.
I'll be honest. More than anything, reading this actually disappoints me. Not that I was planning on ditching WoW or anything like that, but I was really thinking of sinking a bit of time into this, as the setting and ambience really intrigued me. I get what Fury is saying in that you create the immersion yourself and the game just gives you the tools to do it, but unfortunately I'm not that into Roleplaying, and I can think of plenty of great games that give you that immersion through gameplay, and don't rely on you to create it.A bit disappointed, but I'll pay attention to its progress to see if any of that gets improved.
Thanks Mike, probably the most fun i've had doing anything related to FFVIX.Saw it coming - didn't want it then, don't want it now. If they expect community to be a driving force in the game's immersion, they're going to need to do a hell of a lot better than what they did in FFXI. You think trying to talk to the other faction in wow is annoying, try playing a game with people who will ignore you and use language as a barrier when they're taught English as a 2nd language in school. Oh, and you still can't jump. PS: No, it's fairly evident to me that FFXIV should be compared to WoW no more than an Action-rpg should be compared to a jrpg. Especially when two different cultures are involved.