Beta 3 impressions and general discussion

[Headspace]

I only played for 6h on Saturday but everything felt great. It's really nice watching my PGL animations go off, very top-of-the-line work done there. The monster design is also great. One thing I liked is how some mobs make you move a bit to avoid their ws (goblins and their AoE ws comes to mind). Its not totally pointless either since the ws's can do a lot of damage. Being able to see the AoE range is very handy.

I liked the fact I always felt like I had enough money to go on and buy all the stuff I needed to progress or to upgrade my equipment.

Imo the 1.0 intro cs's were more exciting than ARR's but the story is more coherent and easier to follow. The start is a bit slow, takes a while before you get to smack stuff in the face if you follow the main questline and do the sidequests along the way.

The Ul'dah day city theme becomes annoying after a while. The night theme is soo much better.

The difficulty so far has been good enough in my opinion. They can't make it too hard but it's not like I've never had to pop a potion or watch my hp so far.

I understand that quest items shouldn't need to be traded, but right now it's a matter of pressing right mouse button, left button, complete. If people can't handle these two extra steps until Yoshi-P has had enough of his small brainfart and changes the system, I really don't know what to say.

I didn't like the Uldah day theme after a while, but then I went to Gridania. Holy fuck that's some terrible music

[Elcura]

I didn't like any of the town day music, night music (except for Grid, what a shithole) was far superior. LL and Uldah night music is fucking fantastic.

[ArchDizzle]

After spending 20 minute fiddling around with the options to turn off the battle numbers, I gave up. Character options and system options should just be merged into one "Configuration Options."

I 100% agree with you the actual settings menus need to be revamped they aren't set up well.

And Fuck all Ya'll Grid night them is Sex.

[Sephiroth]

So I've been putting together skill lists today and it seems archer still doesn't have any combos. That is disappointing.

[Gulkeeva]

As a THM, I absolutely love Blizzard 2. When people in CM finally realized I could spam that nonstop, they led all the huge groups of soft mobs to me and I would just continually spam it. fuck yo lag son

I didn't like fire2/ice2... fire2 was somewhat pointless unless there are 3+ mobs (and holy shit did it get aggro), and ice 2 was more of a ... "LETS JUMP AROUND FATE MASS CLAIMING MOBS AOE SPAM *5 thm's spamming aoe ice nonstop*"
I got my 1000 points for my chocobo in about 4 fates because I just ran around spamming that aoe.

The damage of it soorta sucks , the bind is ncie if your kiting or holding stuff off though, but mobs become somewhat resistant to it after 3 times. Fire 2 was pretty sexy for aoe damage when you got the 2 stack fire buff thing.

I'm curious as to how the JPN players are reacting to phase 3.

Very good, the 2hcna image boards are flooding with funny/sexy/awesome screenshots, over 600images in 5 hourish of the weekend test finishing.

[Sephiroth]

I could never target Blizzard 2 over a mob, it would always go off on top of me so I had to run in there. Was I using it wrong?

[Gulkeeva]

I could never target Blizzard 2 over a mob, it would always go off on top of me so I had to run in there. Was I using it wrong?

thats how it works, fire 2 is the "target a mob and aoe around that mob" move.

[Headspace]

I guess I liked Bliz2 in CM, with the blob. It would dmg the bomb enough to force self destruct and bind both the blob and bomb so the tank could move out of radius easier.

[miokomioko]

Can someone outline what Behests consist of? I didn't get a chance to try that out~

[ArchDizzle]

The mechanic where when you party up and kill quest/normal mobs it will link an extra enemy since you are no longer solo was cool until I was level 8 helping wife catch up on her lvl 7 THM and a level 17 Genbu linked to a level 6 Coblyn. -.-

[Ratatapa]

The mechanic where when you party up and kill quest/normal mobs it will link an extra enemy since you are no longer solo was cool until I was level 8 helping wife catch up on her lvl 7 THM and a level 17 Genbu linked to a level 6 Coblyn. -.-

Lolgenbu

[Scythiroth]

Really enjoyed playing this game. For a beta, there really wasn't too much that I noticed being broken/bad/etc. I can definitely see why they got rid of most of the NDA this time around. Some of the solo instanced missions had loading issues due to congestion, but that was really the worst thing I encountered. Besides that, the only real complaint I had was the classes being linked to certain starting cities. However, I think in open beta/launch I will just end up leveling Conjurer with friends leveling it as well since it seemed to be really nice to have cure/protect for the solo missions on my Thaumaturge.

Definitely looking forward to future testing and launch after being highly skeptical of this game after its past release. Really surprised me with how much more fun I had this time around. Will this game change MMOs forever? Most likely not. But, I definitely had a great time and can't wait to play it more.

edit: I didn't get a chance to try the instances yet though. Was mostly just leveling stuff this past weekend. I'll most likely try them out next test.

[Lucavi]

BETA forums are bullshit. 750 character limit. 1 post every 15 minutes and only one new thread a day. Here's my impressions.

Spoiler: show

So, after coming back to Final Fantasy 14 after two years (I quit within three months of launch, I hated the Fatigue system), here are some of my impressions.

The Good:
Final Fantasy 14 actually feels like a Final Fantasy game now. The initial combat music, the opening cutscene, jobs being added, and the background music all invoke nostalgia. Main story quest and even side quest all feel very "Final Fantasy"-like. The quest don't pull up random windows with text in them with rewards displayed at the bottom as others do. I do like the sense of personalization that each quest bring. This game definitely feels like an online Final Fantasy game and succeeds at this with flying colors. The graphics, the environment, and the level of detail is great.

The Bad:
There are a few things I dislike about the game, which while I can get over, do bother me. First off, the running animation feels fake. Your character is just gliding along the road without really making an impact. Even turning your character another direction feels artificial and as if your character is on a spinning plate. This breaks immersion immensely for me and would be fantastic if fixed. Secondly, the combat "feels" slow. Coming from other MMOs, where the global cooldown for some classes are 1 second, and others 1.5 seconds; a 2.5 second global cooldown does take some getting used to. Sure, you can lower it with gear and food, but at such a low level those options aren't available yet. Lastly, the lack of leveling options. I'm level 18 Pugilist and wondering how I'm going to level the other classes. I switch to the job and notice that the only way I can level is by grinding out mobs for hunts, doing class quest, doing FATE events, and dungeons later on in the process. Since I've completed all the side-quest with my initial class, the leveling of the next few jobs I suspect will be slower. I wouldn't mind if I was allowed to redo the quest just for the exp, with gil and items not available after the first turn in, assuming you aren't on a class that already completed it.

The Ugly:
While Final Fantasy 14 does feel like a true Final Fantasy game finally, it does not feel like a great MMO. There are many features missing that just seem standard in any other MMO. Features such as linking things into chat, brackets around [Name] of the person speaking so the chat doesn't look like one big paragraph of chat, and even chat defaulting to /say every single time you input a text; all just make it feel like a substandard MMO. I can't tone down the effects of spells so it doesn't seem as hectic inside of FATE events, I can't turn off the 3D battle numbers that pop up when I'm running past random people in battle, and I can't even put in map markers as I could in FFXI. More character creation customization options never hurt either.

Overall, here's a list of things that I need to have:
-Linking items in chat/Linking skills in chat/Linking map locations in chat
-Map markers. Either permanent markers like Final Fantasy 11 had, or temporary waypoints like other MMOs.
-Scrolling over an item on the map and a help menu pops up telling me what that icon is. Either that or an icon key that I can toggle.
-Scrolling over anything in my character sheet and it telling me what it does. Seriously, there is no in-game verification on what DEX or STR does for any profession. Yes, I would assume STR increases attack, but how about DEX? Does that increase accuracy or critical hit rate? I don't know.
-When I scroll over a menu item, I want it to pop up what hotkey is currently assigned to it. Like Inventory[I], which means I press "I" to get to the inventory. Or Armory[CTRL+I] when I scroll over the armory icon. I had to go into key binds to figure out which key was bound to what.
-Options to turn off effects. I don't want to see Joe Randomperson's battle chat when I walk past them. I also don't want to feel like I set off a fireworks factory when I do a FATE event.
-Clarity on skills. What is the difference between 150 potency and 120? We shouldn't really have to experiment and pull out spread sheets in any game that isn't EVE.
-Trading key items. This shouldn't exist. If it's a key item, why do I need to trade it? Might as well as call them quest items or change the way we turn in quest.
-Fixing the chat issues I have above. While you're at it, region chat would be nice. It made talking to people in FFXI a lot more reasonable and help with finding people to do things.
-Guesting, while not completely necessary, would greatly increase my liking to the game. I could play with friends on different servers and would be an excellent addition to the game.

That's about it. I played Final Fantasy 11 for 4 years and Final Fantasy 14 for 3 months. I've been playing Rift and Guild Wars 2 on and off for a few years and that's about my entire MMO experience. I really hope that this game can be my subscription game in the future as I fell in love with Final Fantasy 11 and hope to do the same for 14.

P.S. Controller was hard to use.

You speak like you have some sense about you. I appreciate that.

I've changed my minsdset on MMOs greatly as the years have gone by, and by that, I mean that I've taken them less serious in terms of what I'll nitpick over and what I won't. The core things, like freedom of movement, weight and restrictions (invisible walls, unpassable terrain still existing in the middle of a zone) I will not relent on, but I'll let the lesser stuff slide nowadays. Based on this weekend, the game has my money. There's enough "fun" there to balance out whatever niggling frustrations or inconveniences I'm loosing in this game compared to another, especially as much can be adjusted.

Things I want off the top of my head:

-Descriptions for exactly what stats do and by how much (One point of Str = 2 attack power or something)
-Streamlined chat
-Ability to link items in chat
-Faster/more accurate server/client response to things, like falling damage and AOE damage

Those are my biggest things at the moment, though I agree with much of what you said. I'm more than willing to wait on the combat speed because I feel that its going to get faster as we gain levels. I'm willing to wait on dungeon tutorials because I'm a bastard and really don't care about the plight of the n00b or the XI-fanboy who never played anything outside of XI. They can rot in hell for being close-minded for all i care.

Oh, I would like an option to have less lights and flash for some abilities. I get annoyed when I can't see all the badass Pug animations for buffs because my character is glowing and sparkling like a Sailor Moon super Sentai warrior. My guy is pulling off some Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon moves and all I see is flash and dazzle. Cut that shit down a bit.

Nice post, though.

[Iremire]

I wish they would let us adjust our UI without the HUD layout mode I can't really tell where things are gonna sit with just boxes as a guide. Not that I need to move too much around everything is basically where i would put it anyway, Had a lot of fun on Mrd was just hard to do that dungeon there when it was an island full of mrd's. I don't know if I like that you choose your nation by the class you pick, it make sense how they did it, but limsa was just mrd's everywhere and no heals in sight early on.

Edit: A better way to compare gear would be nice or just being able to open your Profile / Armory / Inventory when you are picking quest rewards.

Regardless this game has had my money since July last year I'm just tired of the anticipation.

[Elcura]

Sailor Moon super Sentai warrior.

That would be awesome.

[miokomioko]

Oh, I would like an option to have less lights and flash for some abilities. I get annoyed when I can't see all the badass Pug animations for buffs because my character is glowing and sparkling like a Sailor Moon super Sentai warrior. My guy is pulling off some Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon moves and all I see is flash and dazzle. Cut that shit down a bit.

I agree with this. I was so happy with the direction they went with the hand-to-hand weaponskill animations (actually monk-like), but every time I tried to show my friend how cool they looked, it was concealed by flashes and bullshit (Greased Lightning effect is a bit meh). It's probably partly because the 2nd half of the animation is just as cool and happens during the effect from the hit.

[ArchDizzle]

Does turning battle effects down from all to some on yourself help the issue you guys are having? I left me on all and everyone else on off and party member at some so i'm not sure if "some" will still let you see all of the skill with just less flash or a shortened version of the whole thing.

[Sigmakan]

Please rename Greased Lightning.

[Rocl]

Please rename Greased Lightning.

Please don't

[Lucavi]

Please rename Greased Lightning.

Fly like a butterfly, sting like a BEE!

That'd be a bit too long, but no less awesome.