Final Fantasy XIV Free Trial Period (Extended [again...])

[Ddz]

Happy for another free month here. I hope it continues to be free until all of the issues have been addressed, but I don't expect it. Way I see it, shit might suck a little right now, but by the time everything is done, I won't be just starting out. Right now is just building the base of your game career, anyway. Not a big deal, will continue to play and grow with the game.

[Lucavi]

Not going to argue that you couldn't smelling the writing on the wall, but to outright say that everyone should have a crystal ball or a spy in SE headquarters to have been able to know what retail was going to be like purely from what we saw in beta is trolling. There were hardly and changes after the alpha combat change, to think that they were just sitting on their hands or just fixing some bugs is silly. Unless you honestly believe that the only change from OB to retail that SE was going to do was a hardware mouse.

Its not trolling; its foresight. If you didn't know that retail was going to suck about a week before retail actually launched, something is/was wrong with you. It was all so obvious.

[Shaskoru]

Its not trolling; its foresight. If you didn't know that retail was going to suck about a week after the first beta launched, something is/was wrong with you. It was all so obvious.

Fixed. And lol at Mio saying someone else had a misconception.

[Lucavi]

Eh, Alpha to Beta wasn't that bad, and it was too early for me, personally, to call it. I didn't start grumbling until P2's lack of changes, and by OB, I was just hoping for the best.

[Khamsin]

I think there's a little of both worlds here. There was a clear progression from a barely playable game when the alpha first started, with severe structural issues and most of the retail features disabled, up to a somewhat stable but still very laggy and unresponsive game by the end of open beta. It was logical to assume that the game itself wouldn't play any more smoothly in retail than it did in beta, since the point of beta was to try to iron out some of those things (and they did nail quite a few things during the alpha/beta stages, but obviously hadn't come close to getting it all). The performance of the game during beta wasn't going to suddenly improve at retail, as if all SE had to do was flip a switch. What you saw was the best they could do at the moment.

On the other hand, SE was able to hold back actual content until retail, and they literally did just flip a switch for that. However, what qualifies as 'content' is debatable, as is the assumption whether we could have expected much content at launch anyways.

Bottom line is, playability and basic fundamental gameplay mechanics was unlikely to change from beta to retail and it would have been naive to assume it would. However, it was every bit reasonable to assume more content would open up and be accessible at retail.

Since then, the game has indeed become a lot more playable and a bit smoother, and I think those kinds of improvements will not be the "big patch day" content, but rather things that get adjusted at regular intervals until SE has sufficiently optimized the game behind the scenes, and is finally happy with the gameplay mechanics (skill points, party dynamics, mob distribution, etc). The big patch day content will be actual content (hopefully) and give us something to do. Nonetheless, they've been making progress and haven't been charging us for the wait, and I'm confident they will polish things up, so I can't really complain... a little, yes, but not too much.

[Hyan]

I'm just hoping they can get where they want to go through this detour. There's no need to make the game like XI as that game is doing well enough. There's no need to make the game like WoW as that (and many other games) are already taking care of that audience just fine.

There is, however, a need to make basic things identical with these games, which they most likely learned through this little experiment, but I hope they can still find their "ideal" way of doing things through other means and keep trying to be 'innovative', just not the way they've done it so far. People need a reason to play -this game- instead of the other existing and upcoming games.

I think better than trying to think up something completely new, they should just try to apply single player game features not yet seen in MMO's into XIV. Also experiment with content.. but unlike early XI, not leave them as is and go back to adjust them afterwards when needed.

[Sagacious Sundi]

Walk free, walk free
For like 90 days.

[Gokulo]

Good one

[Cooleko]

+1 - had to share his wisdom with everyone around me

[jenasu]

A free 90 days is win. Haterz can eat multiple dicks.