FFXIV Closed Alpha/Beta Discussion (Cancelled for this week)

[Azurewrath]

Guys, calm down, put the claws away.

If you think the games going to suck, simply get the fuck out of here. Nobody cares, and I'm sure SE doesnt care about one customer either. Writing 18 paragraphs on how you think it sucks and you don't want certain parts to carry through, do you think that'll change it? No, what'll happen will happen, and you discussing your opinion with some random nerd online who has absolutely no say in how the game is going to develop isn't doing shit all, so you're just wasting your time. Go outside.

Who the hell spends their time posting on a forum for a game they think will suck? Seriously come on now.

[Lunarhawk]

So what do you guys think of the fact that beta 2 is starting to sound like a pure open beta we might all get a chance to play?

[Cairthenn]

Starting to sound like? That was always been the case. Before the game launch, there will be a brief open beta. I can't see it lasting more than a month.

[rufus9]

FF11 was great.
FF14 will be great.
End of discussion.

[bluefan]

So what do you guys think of the fact that beta 2 is starting to sound like a pure open beta we might all get a chance to play?

I don't think it is. They said beta 2 will be the phase when they're going to be introducing a lot of changes, specifically from alpha feedback. That's going to lead to a lot of downtime, random restarts and wipes etc... Not the way to go for open beta.

[Lunarhawk]

Starting to sound like? That was always been the case. Before the game launch, there will be a brief open beta. I can't see it lasting more than a month.

How has it always been the case? Most MMOs I can think of that had "open betas" before launch were only like pre-order things where you got to start one week early or something.

[Fawkes]

Man, it was so Alpha that most people couldn't even stay on for more than 5 minutes at a time. You are judging the entire concept of a game on a very, very Alpha stage.

ftfy

[Shaskoru]

Guys, calm down, put the claws away.

If you think the games going to suck, simply get the fuck out of here. Nobody cares, and I'm sure SE doesnt care about one customer either. Writing 18 paragraphs on how you think it sucks and you don't want certain parts to carry through, do you think that'll change it? No, what'll happen will happen, and you discussing your opinion with some random nerd online who has absolutely no say in how the game is going to develop isn't doing shit all, so you're just wasting your time. Go outside.

Who the hell spends their time posting on a forum for a game they think will suck? Seriously come on now.

I want to be cool like you when I grow up!

I actually took that last comment out before you posted because it was an exaggeration on my part, so for that I'm sorry. But I'm curious, what dumb mistakes do you personally think SE is making right now?

There are many aspects in FFXI which are absurdly unnecessary or promote unfair gameplay. I know that quite a few of those are being corrected in FFXIV (thank god for instancing), but some decisions still show that SE did not notice their shortcomings in FFXI.

I'm going to start with a nit-pit, not because it's actually a huge issue but more because I cannot even fathom why they would keep it in:

- Invites being limited by a certain range (Unknown at this time, correct?)

Assuming they do a global lookup on the player to check conditionals for other issues, it's actually more code to make sure the person is close to you in order to form a party. This is something small that I'm hoping they will change, but I'm not holding my breath considering it was never changed in FFXI.

- NMs and HNMs:

While being fairly unique for its time, and fun at that, it's a really bad system. Even if they correctly implement instancing, there is still the issue with spawn timers and drop rates. And that is assuming they do instance boss type fights. As of right now, it's probably one of the worst systems of FFXI and I don't think any amount of complaining will be able convey it more than it already has been, so I'll leave it at that.

- Crafting:

I haven't read up on crafting in FFXIV, so I'll leave this one to FFXI exclusively. Crafting should not ever be something you do on the side of a game, it should be part of the game. It was impossible to level crafts while playing the game since crafting became the game for crafters. And as with the other systems, people cheated with it as well. I don't want it to be dumbed down or anything, but I should expect results if I pump a ton of money and time into it rather than some leftover fire crystals from breaks and about 10 skill levels (at a low level, lol at 10 skill levels higher up!).

- Job Balancing:

Everyone remembers rangers and every other class that has been nerfed and buffed to hell and back. As I have said, SE does not like to change things, and job balancing is part of their list of bad things that happened which went ignored. I don't even want to make a list of jobs that suffered due to overnerfing or jobs that excelled needlessly due to overbuffing. I don't expect for every job to be on the exact same level, but is it really hard to spreadsheet and forecast some results to fix issues that were left untouched for years? This directly ties into my next issue, since players had solutions to job problems long before SE made up their own which did not help most of the time:

- Developer/Customer Feedback:

Can anyone compare the FFXI alpha/beta feedback to the current alpha/beta feedback? That would be great - mainly because I'm really hoping their communication not only stays but improves, as it is vitally important in today's mmorpg. Most of the issues above could have been fixed by listening to the suggestions that players gave to them for years, and yet they went ignored. This also bleeds into customer service, and I can't help but feel like SE is late to the party when it comes to standards.

I would keep on writing, but I'm sure you get the point by now. I'm also fully expecting for someone to write up how x system is great and I'm just too casual, since some people actually believe that. If you are one of those people who think FFXI is the pinnacle of mmorpg excellence, please look at another mmorpg. Even on most of the newer mmorpgs which have failed, you will notice that their systems are much more optimized. I can promise you that FFXIV will go the same way as age of conan and warhammer unless SE learns from their mistakes entirely. Implementation can still fail if they do it poorly.

TLDR: SE makes bad decisions

[Jinko]

Starting to sound like? That was always been the case. Before the game launch, there will be a brief open beta. I can't see it lasting more than a month.

Nope they pretty much confirmed in one ofthe interviews that beta 1 will be pretty much identical to Alpha but with more worlds, beta 2 will take all the input from alpha + beta 1 and will include PS3 users.

Beta 2 will be 24 hours where as Beta 1 won't.

Heres the link again http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/201...beta_schedule/

[Tomino]

I fear some of you will end up disliking FF14 as much as they hate FF11 as of today, especially when the main argument ends up being "SE is stupid and can't do things the way I see they should be done".

While I found myself victim of SE poor customer service many times, like maintenances always on my prime time and so on, I still find hard to believe they're simply.. "stupid".

Yes, other companies pratically sit next to you and listen to all you have to say, carefully tuning the system on your requests but you honestly believe SE is uncapable of doing so for some serious intellectual deficit?
I tend to believe SE simply follows other ways and, given each path has its own downsides, SE considers some issues better than others.

[GRT]

Guys, calm down, put the claws away.

If you think the games going to suck, simply get the fuck out of here. Nobody cares, and I'm sure SE doesnt care about one customer either. Writing 18 paragraphs on how you think it sucks and you don't want certain parts to carry through, do you think that'll change it? No, what'll happen will happen, and you discussing your opinion with some random nerd online who has absolutely no say in how the game is going to develop isn't doing shit all, so you're just wasting your time. Go outside.

Who the hell spends their time posting on a forum for a game they think will suck? Seriously come on now.

What a great way to calm the mob.

[iceynutz69]

So you are complaining about SE's methodology but at the same time you're not complaining because of the sarcasm you used to make your point across? That is just brilliant.

You do win indeed, the "wtf award" of the year. And it's only April...

I never said I was complaining, you are correct in that aspect but your I use sarcasm to bring light to a problem... just like newspapers use sarcasm to convent harsh points about what's going on in the world. Can you figure out what my point is? Come on even with your limited number of braincells you can deuce what I'm trying to convey.

And you win the dumbest douchbag on this forum award so congrats to you.

[Ryuushin]

Pretty ignorant to generalize that all FF11 players are hyped up for this game. I have many people on my friends list on FF11 that won't play this game because they still enjoy FF11. I'm also playing AION and people on there that have never played FF11 will be playing FF14.. so should I make a blanket statement about who is hyped up about FF14? No and neither should anyone else.

[Xavier]

Agree with pretty much everything Shaskoru just said. But I think communication is one area that Square has improved dramatically in over the past few years. They're nowhere close to the openness of Blizzard, but it has been getting better.

[Murdock]

FF11 was great.
FF14 will be great.
End of discussion.

what a crew.

[Mytiwar]

This thread makes for some excellent entertainment, albeit there's a decent lack of information transpiring from the last couple pages.

[Kirb]

- Invites being limited by a certain range (Unknown at this time, correct?)

Assuming they do a global lookup on the player to check conditionals for other issues, it's actually more code to make sure the person is close to you in order to form a party. This is something small that I'm hoping they will change, but I'm not holding my breath considering it was never changed in FFXI.

I'm assuming it's regional invite range, but I dunno, this has never really actually bothered me. But at least we won't be spammed with cross-world RMT invites.

I'm looking at the rest of these, but come on, man. Everyone knows that some bad decisions were made in XI. Nobody's really contesting that. If you check the Alpha manual floating around, crafting in XIV looks pretty deep and significantly more skilled-based, and it honestly looks like all of the significant problems with XI have been negated with play mechanics in XIV. Instanced guildleves, high level of appearance customization, stat allocation, etc.

HM/NMs, I actually did enjoy, to a point. It was a love/hate kind of thing. If they're simply an alternative to getting gear, I don't see much of a problem, and over the past few years SE had been taking large steps towards correcting the HM/NM problem (for people who weren't especially fond of them) in XI. It's hard to fix a somewhat broken system except for rehauling it completely, which they've had the chance to in XIV. A lot of people did enjoy them, so I don't really think taking them out would be the best idea. A lot of people also relish the sort of competition in HM/NM hunting, and instancing them entirely would honestly ruin that.

Job balancing is a notorious problem with all MMO, so it's kind of strange to point it out. The biggest problem with XI was that physical damage dealers were spread too thin across too many jobs, making it very easy to find who the best one is and just sticking with that one job, something remedied with these more multi-purpose class systems. And then there's the obvious mage problems, in terms of MP and efficiency. I do agree that job fixes should come more promptly in the future, but I'm honestly willing to give them another chance, especially since classes in XIV seem much more flexible in their roles, with abilities that fix problems so prevalent in XI.

The only thing I'm actually worried about is customer service, but I never had problems with them in XI and had to go off of second-hand stories, so I'm personally willing to give them a chance.

You're allowed to judge XIV off of bad decisions made in XI, but I personally don't think it's necessarily wise to. I'm a pretty firm believer in that if you go in expecting or wanting something to be bad, it's all you'll see regardless of the good that might be in it. Call me an optimist.

Starting to sound like? That was always been the case. Before the game launch, there will be a brief open beta. I can't see it lasting more than a month.

Undoubtedly, if even that. I'm pretty sure a majority of the people that wanted to get into phase 2 beta will probably get in, though.

They're nowhere close to the openness of Blizzard, but it has been getting better.

I might be a minority here, but I think Blizzard is actually way too influenced by the complaints of their fanbase. Casual gamers tend to demand things to be simpler and it's kind of streamlined their game into mush over the past few years. I won't deny that this got them the majority of the casual gamers, but at the cost of losing players like me. I know they don't really care, and I don't blame them in the least. Money is money, after all. I'm just hoping that XIV fills the same sort of niche that I belong to. SE has a long way to go in terms of customer service, but I think there's a happy medium between sticking to your guns no matter what[SE] and letting your playerbase tell you what to do.[Blizzard]

[bluefan]

- Invites being limited by a certain range (Unknown at this time, correct?)

Assuming they do a global lookup on the player to check conditionals for other issues, it's actually more code to make sure the person is close to you in order to form a party. This is something small that I'm hoping they will change, but I'm not holding my breath considering it was never changed in FFXI.

This one is most likely due the limited test time that they have for alpha. Why would they want people to wait for someone to run along to them, wasting time when they could just invite someone in the immediate area?

- NMs and HNMs:

While being fairly unique for its time, and fun at that, it's a really bad system. Even if they correctly implement instancing, there is still the issue with spawn timers and drop rates. And that is assuming they do instance boss type fights. As of right now, it's probably one of the worst systems of FFXI and I don't think any amount of complaining will be able convey it more than it already has been, so I'll leave it at that.

Wouldn't say that. XI came well before WoW and its instancing system. MMOs pre-XI had similar systems as well. SE was just going along with the flow.

- Crafting:

I haven't read up on crafting in FFXIV, so I'll leave this one to FFXI exclusively. Crafting should not ever be something you do on the side of a game, it should be part of the game. It was impossible to level crafts while playing the game since crafting became the game for crafters. And as with the other systems, people cheated with it as well. I don't want it to be dumbed down or anything, but I should expect results if I pump a ton of money and time into it rather than some leftover fire crystals from breaks and about 10 skill levels (at a low level, lol at 10 skill levels higher up!).

This is a purely opinionated topic, crafting. One hand, crafting could've been a bit more engaging and not as frustrating, but I would take it over WoWs anyday.

- Job Balancing:

Everyone remembers rangers and every other class that has been nerfed and buffed to hell and back. As I have said, SE does not like to change things, and job balancing is part of their list of bad things that happened which went ignored. I don't even want to make a list of jobs that suffered due to overnerfing or jobs that excelled needlessly due to overbuffing. I don't expect for every job to be on the exact same level, but is it really hard to spreadsheet and forecast some results to fix issues that were left untouched for years? This directly ties into my next issue, since players had solutions to job problems long before SE made up their own which did not help most of the time:

SE isn't the only developer to have issue with class/job balancing. It's something to be expected from every MMO. Especially when you have as many class/job combinations like XI. Blizzard still can't seem to get it right. Have you read some of the changes planned for Cataclysm? I didn't think Blizzard could keep making silly decisions, but they keep on trucking...

- Developer/Customer Feedback:

Can anyone compare the FFXI alpha/beta feedback to the current alpha/beta feedback? That would be great - mainly because I'm really hoping their communication not only stays but improves, as it is vitally important in today's mmorpg. Most of the issues above could have been fixed by listening to the suggestions that players gave to them for years, and yet they went ignored. This also bleeds into customer service, and I can't help but feel like SE is late to the party when it comes to standards.

I would keep on writing, but I'm sure you get the point by now. I'm also fully expecting for someone to write up how x system is great and I'm just too casual, since some people actually believe that. If you are one of those people who think FFXI is the pinnacle of mmorpg excellence, please look at another mmorpg. Even on most of the newer mmorpgs which have failed, you will notice that their systems are much more optimized. I can promise you that FFXIV will go the same way as age of conan and warhammer unless SE learns from their mistakes entirely. Implementation can still fail if they do it poorly.

I don't necessarily think a lot of comments went ignored, but more the lines of SE were hand tied about it. Remember the reason why POL was created...it was because the lack of features the PS2 had for the MMO games.

TLDR: SE makes bad decisions

They're not the only ones lol. I've seen plenty over the years that made bigger blunders then SE ever did.

[Lunarhawk]

for phase 1 beta they should just let all the alpha people invite in 3 friends
and then for phase 2 let all the beta 1 players bring in 5

imagine how crazy that would be

[BRP]

FFXIV has already more press attention than FFXI ever did in its entire life time(maybe excluding the last year or two). This might be because we are in the "Kotaku" era of game news these days.

EDIT: Also rant posts like Shaskoru, and the responses they get, ruin threads. Make a rant thread, pal.