Beta 3 impressions and general discussion

[Headspace]

So I got two jobs to 35. Once you run out of quests, and you've used up the good xp of guildhests, it really sucks. Would be nice if DF let you redo dungeons or do other dungeons with the same group of people, especially if you find a good group. The second job I leveled, I had a personal CNJ so DF queues weren't too long, but as a group of two DD or just a single DD, re-queueing for DF and waiting 10-15 minutes per run is pretty awful way to gain XP.

[Cantih]

just started Copperbell as Beta was ending! noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

So, the final day, 24 hours remain, was madcap.

Going in, I know I need to finish out my gladiator and company hunting logs, and manage to do so. The time it took for the levequest mobs would bite me in the ass later.
As I'm doing all this, I spend time hanging around East Shroud, hitting Lazy Laurence for 10k a pop every time it's up (along with other fates), lining up guildhests in the duty finder for every single bit of exp I can get my hands on so I can hit 32 for Brayflox.
Once I clear my logs and get the last two level 30 guildhests, I start grinding Haukke like mad for the 45k each run nets (also got me a Waning Sun Pelta, and saw a Tidesplitter for LNC and Charred Axe for MRD).

It's now 1 AM, and I'm still 40k shy of 32. Another Haukke run takes at least 40 minutes, so that's no good. I look at my 4th Gladiator Hunting Log, and see 9 sandworms will get me 10k, so I hit up the far south Southern Thanalan desert, and lo and behold the camp sandworm fate is running, so I get 17k once that's cleared (About 15 minutes because it was just me and the NPCs). Still short. I run mack to Little Ala Mhigo, hit up my newly unlocked flame sergeant company leve giver, and see that each one will give me 5k. So I load all of them up, and each takes about 3 minutes, I hit level 32 at 1:30. I pop back to Ul'dah, see I'm one leve and ~200 seals short of my L30 sword, but I already have some of the supply items to trade in. I'm throwing my HQ materiaed crafting gear into the hole for some seals (cause hey, I ain't using it in the next half hour.) Grab the sword, and throw up Brayflox on the duty finder. (I had gone around to the entrances days earlier, MGSing is fun.)

And I sit there, either the instance servers are down, or nobody is biting for Brayflox. Dejected, because I'll end beta never having gone in, I head to The Ul'dah market and clean out my retainer, selling every bit of material and gear that isn't on my back to see how much it'd be (96k, the last few days of using the teleports fucked me out of 100!) Then, just as I finish selling everything, I'm looking at the maintenance shutdown message, and boom, the duty finder brings back a party for Brayflox, 2 AM on the dot.

I jump in, the game's still not down, the area loads, the party is there.
I'd like to say the instance stayed up until were were done, would be a wonderful end to this tale, but it's sadly not the case.

But what we did do, is kill every damn thing we could as long as we could, and rode the mother fucker down to the ground. It didn't come full stop though. One by one a member disappeared as the server reached them and pulled them out. The Archer goes just as we reach the goblin, the Conjurer goes just as we open the gate. It's just me and a Lancer left as we see the pelican. We go at the bastard, I flash and throw up all my defenses and cure for as long as I can, and the lancer DPSes to his utmost.
We wipe though, and as we go back to the start the Lancer says. "Well that was fun, I guess I'll log", and before he can even kneel the server pulls 'em.
And that's how I became the Fresh Prince of Bel AirBrayflox.
(The server shut me down a minute later.)

[Rocl]

before he can even kneel the server pulls 'em.

cool story bro but that's not how you log out in XIV !!!!!!!!!!

[Cantih]

Well, I wasn't paying too close attention when I logged out over the beta, but I do know that outside a sanctuary, a logout isn't instant.
It seriously looked like he barely hit enter before he went poof.

[popsiclestix]

My experience of duty finder: I would say probably 75% of legacy players who were wearing full 50 gear on their bard or paladin were complete trash players. I don't know if they are lazy, gear doesn't scale, or stupid, but they were trash. They would attack slept mobs. Never kill the adds for the Pelican part of Brayflox, took too much damage in their 50 gear, bitch about curing, etc. But if I played with other beta non legacy people, I NEVER HAD AN ISSUE.

Was it that much easier in legacy? Were party dynamics that much different? Was it because I wasn't a WHM but a CNJ?

Failed 4 times on the Pelican miniboss with a bard and paladin. They were mind blown that I could run out of mp while spam curing the tank because the bard and LNC were attacking the boss and ignoring the adds.

Many other times were the same situation but mostly with the Non-JP players that were doing DF. When I changed up my languages on the DF, I ran into less English speakers and had a better time.

[Skai]

Now that phase 3 is over and we're waiting for phase 4, good time for some people to go through the feedback list again. http://forum.square-enix.com/ARR-Test/threads/36485

Highlighted some topics that were discussed before and some stuff I found interesting. Spoiler for loooooooooooooooooong.

Spoiler: show

[popsiclestix]

Already suffering from withdrawls and missing my Beta 3 Mi'qote...

And complain that you couldn't sit on the chairs in Hauke Manor like Beta 2.... I dont know where "this" image came from

http://i.imgflip.com/2fh26.gif

[Kiarax]

My experience of duty finder: I would say probably 75% of legacy players who were wearing full 50 gear on their bard or paladin were complete trash players. I don't know if they are lazy, gear doesn't scale, or stupid, but they were trash. They would attack slept mobs. Never kill the adds for the Pelican part of Brayflox, took too much damage in their 50 gear, bitch about curing, etc. But if I played with other beta non legacy people, I NEVER HAD AN ISSUE.

Was it that much easier in legacy? Were party dynamics that much different? Was it because I wasn't a WHM but a CNJ?

Failed 4 times on the Pelican miniboss with a bard and paladin. They were mind blown that I could run out of mp while spam curing the tank because the bard and LNC were attacking the boss and ignoring the adds.

Many other times were the same situation but mostly with the Non-JP players that were doing DF. When I changed up my languages on the DF, I ran into less English speakers and had a better time.

I only got matched with 1 legacy player and he was great. But just think back to how many horrible players got to 75 in FFXI back when leveling actually took time. In XIV you could power to 50 in a day, then they have to adjust to ARRs new combat whilst they have 20 skills they don't know how to use. Either way, bads gonna bad. The last day we played we spammed DF (as 2x DPS 1x Healer) just to see how bad DF tanks were and we saw some hilarious shit, all new non-legacy players.

[popsiclestix]

I had 1 bard who stated that it was his first time playing bard on BLFS. How is this possible? He had all level 50 gear and was a bard.... but played like shit. I know when I am on my ARC, I am fighting to stay at high 2 and not wanting to fall to 3, but 4 on hate?! Blasphemy should I be below the healer on mob hate! Granted there were some crap players who were just regular, but I had an over whelming bad experience with legacy players. Maybe they stand out more with their unique gear...... I felt that they were just plain lazy.

[Sylvrdragon]

The World Map sucked... I never knew the names of all the starting cities, or where they were located, so when I decided "Hey, I wanna go visit the other cities before the servers go down so I know where they are and how to get to them", I literally had to just pick a direction and hope that I ran into one. I started in Ul'dah, and eventually did make my way to that Gridania. I was level 15, so it was kinda fun dodging all the level 42+ mobs on the way. It reminded me of my first trip to Jueno, though much easier with the Sprint function. I went miles out of my way once or twice, but at least I got to see a lot of zones outside of the newbie areas. Eventually, once I started learning some of the zone names and patterns, I gave the map another crack and figured out that Thanalan, The Black Shroud, and the other one that I can't remember... are actually Region names in which the 3 Cities were in... I EVENTUALLY figured out that you could only get to the 3rd one via a Ferry that wasn't working (or that I couldn't afford), or through progressing through the story quest to a certain point, which I didn't have time to do in my final moments of playing.

But yeah, they need to communicate where I am, and where things are in relation to me on a large scale. I at least want to know what general direction the other cities are. The World Map was absolutely worthless. The cities were labeled in some made-up language, and the emblems for the cities weren't very well advertised, because I didn't know which blob on the world map represented Ul'dah. Hell, I didn't even know the NAMES of the other cities before I struck out. I only learned about Gridania when I fucking got there!

TL;DR

FFXI had a region map that you could interact with and use to learn the names of places. FFXIV needs something similar, because the World Map literally serves no purpose since it has neither readable labels, nor markers of zones, or even your own location.

[Raldo]

Yeah, the "region map" is garbage. You could follow the connections to eventually figure out where you want to go, but it's really not very helpful.

[MoogleAura]

My experience of duty finder: I would say probably 75% of legacy players who were wearing full 50 gear on their bard or paladin were complete trash players. I don't know if they are lazy, gear doesn't scale, or stupid, but they were trash. They would attack slept mobs. Never kill the adds for the Pelican part of Brayflox, took too much damage in their 50 gear, bitch about curing, etc. But if I played with other beta non legacy people, I NEVER HAD AN ISSUE.

Was it that much easier in legacy? Were party dynamics that much different? Was it because I wasn't a WHM but a CNJ?

Failed 4 times on the Pelican miniboss with a bard and paladin. They were mind blown that I could run out of mp while spam curing the tank because the bard and LNC were attacking the boss and ignoring the adds.

Many other times were the same situation but mostly with the Non-JP players that were doing DF. When I changed up my languages on the DF, I ran into less English speakers and had a better time.

Exact same thing happened to me. 2 Legacy players in my party were blaming me for not keeping the tank alive despite him taking 400-500 dmg per attack from the pelican. He left, we got a new tank who was also a beta player and his defence wasn't paper thin like the previous guy and it was no problem healing. I think there is some issue where the level sync'd Legacy player armour isn't scaling properly.

That Garuda Bow the Legacy Archer had was just gorgeous though.

[Eanae]

So I got two jobs to 35. Once you run out of quests, and you've used up the good xp of guildhests, it really sucks. Would be nice if DF let you redo dungeons or do other dungeons with the same group of people, especially if you find a good group. The second job I leveled, I had a personal CNJ so DF queues weren't too long, but as a group of two DD or just a single DD, re-queueing for DF and waiting 10-15 minutes per run is pretty awful way to gain XP.

Well the bonus exp after first 50 isn't in the game yet so I imagine it'd be kind of sluggish. It still may be depending on how much they make the bonus out to be how bad it'll be though.

[popsiclestix]

Exact same thing happened to me. 2 Legacy players in my party were blaming me for not keeping the tank alive despite him taking 400-500 dmg per attack from the pelican. He left, we got a new tank who was also a beta player and his defence wasn't paper thin like the previous guy and it was no problem healing. I think there is some issue where the level sync'd Legacy player armour isn't scaling properly.

That Garuda Bow the Legacy Archer had was just gorgeous though.

Well it confirms that people who play legacy are probably less capable players. I mean, WHO WOULD STICK AROUND TO PAY AND PLAY FFXIV pre ARR. It was horrible. And yes, even my 50+ year old dad paid and played FFXIV despite me quitting when they started demanding money.

I'm going to reroll server to Tonberry. Beta players were a better lot than these legacy ones.

Well the bonus exp after first 50 isn't in the game yet so I imagine it'd be kind of sluggish. It still may be depending on how much they make the bonus out to be how bad it'll be though.

Rerunning Dungeons as an option would be nice. Sometimes there were awesome groups that made me happy that DF existed. . .

[Gulkeeva]

Sounds about right, I've had some bad experiences with some herp derp legacy players. BLM that just cures (no idea why the CNJ did fine), a WHM that cures people when their nearly dead, a PLD using a low level caster shield, drg's that just hits everything that moves and randomly jumps mobs we haven't pulled yet. War that spams his aoe on everything and gets threat, people standing in poison, and more...!

Got to love that pelican though in the Lv32 instance, at least it added a bit of challenging for me to heal, as it tends to require you to Cure1 bomb the tank for them to live, the add poison adds a bit more challenge to tank healing!

[Ratatapa]

Guess you guys were unlucky? I had more problems with new players then Legacy, aka a tank that never flashed in Haukke's Manon and his answer was I never bought the scroll


Kinda hope he was trolling, but I dunno, he also just used Fast Blade over and over

[Carraway]

There's no great mystery here: 99% of people are bad.

[Raldo]

Speaking of shitty duty finder experiences, did anyone check that 'Join Party In Progress' button? Thought I'd try that to get some groups and/or boss loot faster. Fucking worthless every time.

Joined an in-progress party as DD: No healer. Waited 10 minutes, still nothing, we left.
Joined an in-progress party as DD: Dungeon was devoid of any party members whatsoever?!
Joined an in-progress party as DD: No tank. Waited 10 minutes, still nothing, we left.
Joined an in-progress party as DD: Just me and another DD in there. I left immediately.
Joined an in-progress party as DD: Literally the same instance and person as above, I left immediately again.
Joined an in-progress party as DD: No healer. We proceeded through the manor anyway. I quickly found out why the healer had left. The tank literally did nothing but spam Rage of Halone. I, as a DRG, would quickly pull hate, and the THM (who was both sleeping and healing) would have to deal with everything else. We got to that hallway pull with four monsters and bad parties end up with two of those floating manor lady adds, soon as he pulled I bailed the fuck out of there.
Joined an in-progress party as DD: No tank, and the 4th slot was occupied by someone who had DC'd. Due to the DC bug with the duty finder, it was impossible to get a replacement.

Not ONCE did I ever get in an in-progress party that was actually able to accomplish anything.


On the flip side of that coin...

Had a THM who wouldn't follow the group and get himself killed trying to solo groups of monsters by spamming Bliz2. He left after dying twice and being called a moron. Flagged for replacements... got the same fucking THM.

[Madeline]

There's no great mystery here: 99% of people are bad.

lol this. I don't know why people are throwing around the term Legacy like that has anything to do with it.

[MoogleAura]

I've been playing on Tonberry server which has been a great experience overall, but so many of my friends are going to Balmung (Legacy) server. Ughh, I really don't want to go to a Legacy server. I hope they add a feature to the duty finder that allows you to create parties with cross-server friends.