FINAL FANTASY XIV Welcome Back Campaign Kicks Off!

[Madeline]

I really hope I have fairly decent luck with finding a group. I'd hate to get frustrated and just end up leaving again 'cause everyone's already done with everything.

It's something I remember about this game fairly well. People blow through content and it's difficult to find help doing anything if you aren't there doing it the day it's released. But with the server merges and the way linkshells seem to be on my server, I have some hope.

[Clash Perez]

I really want to like this game, but I'm afraid that it'll turn FFXI-esque given enough time. I really like the world and the character options and the job system, but I'll be damned if I end up dealing with FFXI-type 'baransu' bullshit again.

There is no perfect MMO, but I'm reasonably happy playing WoW in super casual mode and still being able to experience a pretty large amount of the current content. I'd be happily surprised if FFXIV eventually had that mode, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'll play for a few days, and perhaps give it another shot come 2.0.

[Aratharn]

If you haven't played in awhile, it's worth using the free few days to see how far it's come in the last few updates.

[Corrderio]

I really hope I have fairly decent luck with finding a group. I'd hate to get frustrated and just end up leaving again 'cause everyone's already done with everything.

It's something I remember about this game fairly well. People blow through content and it's difficult to find help doing anything if you aren't there doing it the day it's released. But with the server merges and the way linkshells seem to be on my server, I have some hope.

Well I wish you luck. Took me over an hour just to get 7 people for my BRD AF fight.

[Raldo]

Well I wish you luck. Took me over an hour just to get 7 people for my BRD AF fight.

I'm not sure if you're posting 1 hour as a good or bad gather time, but that sounds pretty good to me because I HATE THAT FIGHT ARGH!

[Patriarch]

I was going to respond as a joke with what Raldo said, then you said it was "one of the reasons" and now I'm genuinely confused. One of the reasons you quit this game was because me and 3 friends burned all the job quests in 3 days? wat

I was using a generalization, and you know this. I am not referring to merely you, and your party. I am referring to so many groups. I burned AF in 4 days, which took longer than most. I leveled MRD from 1-50 in 2 days. The ease, and lack of proper effort in this game is "One of the reasons" that I no longer play.

Any new player could join, and have a max level job, and burn through every endgame raid in FFXIV in a week, if he/she has friends in any decent shell. This is pending that said player has copious amounts of playtime.

[Kaisha]

Few Qs about XIV, that'll determine if I even bother trying this out.

1) Does it still rev your fans on high for no fucking reason, even in an empty location?
2) Does it still use that abyssmal P2P client updater that essentially demands you DL files via a dedicated torrent client?
3) Did they package the game files yet? My HD can't keep up with seeking out hundreds of thousands of individual files. The game was super-stuttery for me back a couple months before they went Pay2Play.

I'll likely give it a shot come the free month for 2.0 though if they really are tossing a new engine at it that doesn't make my PC scream for rendering basic locations.

[TacoTaru]

1) No idea, I have my fans hooked right into my power supply so it's noisy all the time.
2) Yes, but I never have any long update times unless it's patch day and even then I don't wait more than an hour and a half usually.
3) I still get a stutter depending on the area, but it's not terrible. For whatever reason adjusting the camera angle fixes it 99% of the time, although we may be talking about different stutters.

[Raldo]

Since my answer for this one is different:

2) Yes. If your experience isn't like TacoTaru above, then use a dedicated torrent client. His may work, but mine sure as hell doesn't.

If the patch is anything more than 50MB, then I can expect it to download at an absolute crawl. To be more accurate, it's downloading is more like a stutter, downloading properly on occasion, but spending most of it's time not downloading anything making it appear frozen at various progress levels. The lettered patches, being smaller, I can usually have downloaded through the official patcher in little time.

Bonus! Downloading using a dedicated torrent client allows you to keep your patch file (FFXIV will delete them after it's used them). If you have multiple computers, this comes in handy.

[Corrderio]

I'm not sure if you're posting 1 hour as a good or bad gather time, but that sounds pretty good to me because I HATE THAT FIGHT ARGH!

Kinda both. Still sucks it took longer to find people than the actual fight was, but considering how annoying that f*cking NM was out of the group.... tough call.

[Egon]

Few Qs about XIV, that'll determine if I even bother trying this out.

1) Does it still rev your fans on high for no fucking reason, even in an empty location?
2) Does it still use that abyssmal P2P client updater that essentially demands you DL files via a dedicated torrent client?
3) Did they package the game files yet? My HD can't keep up with seeking out hundreds of thousands of individual files. The game was super-stuttery for me back a couple months before they went Pay2Play.

I'll likely give it a shot come the free month for 2.0 though if they really are tossing a new engine at it that doesn't make my PC scream for rendering basic locations.

I think the answer to these questions lies in one other question, "Is your PC gimp?"

[Madeline]

3) Did they package the game files yet? My HD can't keep up with seeking out hundreds of thousands of individual files. The game was super-stuttery for me back a couple months before they went Pay2Play.

This line makes me wonder if my upgrade to an SSD is going to help my performance at all. The game always stuttered for me on my old drive and it wasn't my card. Even more excited to get in and give it a go now.

[Alkar]

Yesterday and day before I spent 2 hours in TERAs magical instance matching system just to find no parties. Give me a fuckin break. Other MMOs have plenty of same problems. Not to mention the fact that once someone done their quests in the area there is no fuckin way in hell they going to help you. It's way easier to actually find some help in XIV.
Here's the deal. SE gave you guys 10 days to check out the current version, take it or leave it. There's bunch of bitching in this thread from people who haven't even played.
Game still has ton of problems but at this point it can be enjoyable if you just let yourself enjoy it. But instead it's "zomg, Elder Scrolls will kill it, GW2 will kill it, Farmvillle will kill it, blah,blah,blah."
If you dont want to play it now, dont do it. If you want to wait for trial of 2.0 than wait. At this point bunch of you are just trolling and talking about shit you have no idea about.

Anyways, I'm on Gungnir and usually on in the evening if anyone needs some help/gear, etc, hit me up.

Simply this. I'm sick of all the negativity at this point. Either try out the game and see for yourself or just don't post at all.
Some issues are here to stay until 2.0 because the previous team messed up and they had to rebuild everything. You either deal with it or you wait.
Either way if someone ends up in Excalbur just send a tell if I'm online and I'll gladly help if I'm able to. I'm usually exping so there's no problem.
And honestly... if someone thinks that any new MMO is going to have content that requires "effort" right away he/she better quit playing MMOs altogether.
AF weapons will require some kind of effort apparently so there you go.
And I honestly hope Bethesda isn't making any kind of MMO anytime soon considering how unplayable Skyrim was for quite a while.

[Madeline]

And I honestly hope Bethesda isn't making any kind of MMO anytime soon considering how unplayable Skyrim was for quite a while.

Did they not just recently announce an MMO or am I thinking of something else?

[Clash Perez]

Did they not just recently announce an MMO or am I thinking of something else?

DERPEDIT: Zenimax owns Bethesda, nevermind.

Few Qs about XIV, that'll determine if I even bother trying this out.
2) Does it still use that abyssmal P2P client updater that essentially demands you DL files via a dedicated torrent client?

I just updated from a fresh DVD install, and the provided torrent client is still terrible. Switched to my normal client and it breezed right through it.

[Cichy]

Did they not just recently announce an MMO or am I thinking of something else?

I guess they did and we already having retards in here saying how it's gonna kill other games just like Rift and Star Wars did....

[Kurokikaze]

This line makes me wonder if my upgrade to an SSD is going to help my performance at all. The game always stuttered for me on my old drive and it wasn't my card. Even more excited to get in and give it a go now.

I'm running the game on two SATA3 SSDs in RAID0 and there is a lot less stuttering when loading models in Ul'Dah, though it still occurs. Character models load up significantly faster along with loading screens (as should be expected).

[Madeline]

I'd say overall the day went well. I enjoyed it. My old LS is surprisingly..still around, so we took our a set of WHM AF for three of our guys. It was pretty fun going back and seeing places like Dzemael. Can't wait to do the rest of 'em. Running Dzemael with 4 people was pretty fun as well honestly, lol. Killing me having to wait to try the newer dungeons due to catchup duty.

Oh, and Goobbue mounts? Unbelievable win.

As for the game itself and the state it's in, it's very playable and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mind you some things felt wonky to me. The action menu and inability to cast while running around is a bit strange, but I'm sure it'll grow on me with time.

My only real bitch: The UI is still batshit slow after you've been on for a while. But I don't guess there's much that can be done before 2.0 hits.

Think I'm in for the run.

Spoiler: show

http://www.gwcdn.com/albums/images/4...4c09001903.jpg
http://www.gwcdn.com/albums/images/4...4c0a001c50.jpg
Feels good!

As for the HD/SSD thing, yeah. I run this game a hell of a lot better now and that's the only change I've really made.

[Katlan]

Is the combat still terrible? I'm talking about having to fight the UI in regards to the action bar constantly dropping? If so, then I won't bother because I hated fighting w/the UI just to do anything.

[Gokulo]

You can have the action bar on at all the times now.