FFXIV Random Speculation/Question thread III: Where's my beta invite?

[Mooshywooshy]

Hiya, sorry if this has been hashed out before, but have they talked at all about official Voice Chat support or anything?

[Worutaa]

Hiya, sorry if this has been hashed out before, but have they talked at all about official Voice Chat support or anything?

They did talk about it, and they said no. Would be too problematic betwen PC and PS3 and there are too many instances of cross-language barriers that are better left to text.

Paraphrasing of course.

[Lucavi]

Yeah, no integrated voicechat, although I've never personally known anyone to use any form of integrated voicechat in a MMO - its typically vent or no-go.

[Worutaa]

WoW's wouldn't have been half bad if it weren't so shitty

[Lucavi]

They're just unnecessary with Vent being as good as it is.

[Reiryuu]

Another factor in crafting prices is the availability of materials. I mean, take a look at some of the more expensive things to buy that are regularly bought:

Sushi-- requires Tarutaru rice (cheap) various fish (fished-- pain in the ass to level skill), vinegar (merchant bought and not cheap), and kelp (fished, common, pretty easy to get).

Kabobs, etc-- ever try farming those cockatrice, raptors, etc without at least TH1? Yeah...

Goldsmithing-- hell, leveling goldsmithing took a TON of cash because mining was so random as to what you got and the pickaxes broke constantly. Beastcoins as an alternative for some levels worked, but even they were hard to come by in the vast quantities you needed them in.

Then there's the HQ factor... if making food you might make 2 or 3 pieces per item, but if you were really lucky and the stars aligned on the right day at the right time during the right phase of the moon when the Gods were smiling down upon you and you faced a certain direction.... you might get 6-12 pieces of that item instead... or that +1 for armors\weapons...

Availability and difficulty in hitting those HQs will be a major factor in the cost of the end items.

[Lucavi]

It all depends on how accessible they want crafting to be. I'd hope that their logic would be to make it pretty easy to get into and relatively easy to find mats for crafts, especially considering how they're trying to push this complete freedom schpeal.

Edit: I have no idea how to use Phalanx - is it right after a shield block, a parry or what? Every time I try to do it after a block it says its unusable.

[Draconix]

I don't know how many people in here have been a crafter on SWG which had a very rigorous crafting setup. Here was a basic day for an SWG crafter:

As soon as you login, you checked your mail to see what requests were made, sometimes you would get an order to make a 100 pieces of ohhh say furniture from 1 person then 50 from another and so on. Well after that you would check to see if you had the materials for it and if you didn't have a enough materials. You might spend about a good hour planet hopping to find material with the highest stats, once you found one with the highest stats, you prolly spent another hour or so trying to find a good spawn of that resource if it wasnt already taken.

Once you found a high concentration spawn point, you would put down the harvester, then you had to figure out how much energy you wanted to put in so that way you don't come back to a non running harvester. Once thats done you head back to your place and crank out other items and then put them on your vendor and plus check to see what needed to be restocked again. After you have done all that you would go check your harvesters on various planets to see how the output was doing, then head to town, and advertise your shop for a good 30 mins using your barker droid. If your an excellent high end crafter, there is no need for the barker droid. I may have left out a few details here and there but I digress.

So if you have been a SWG crafter, a few repairs isn't gonna be much of a hassle.

[Lucavi]

SWG died a horrible MMO death. I wouldn't compare SWG to any MMO that actually wants to survive.

[Loaar]

A few things:

Spoiler: show

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/5830/e3gearmenu.jpg

Pic is from Eorzeapedia.

There are 22 gear slots, and the stats are now STR, VIT, DEX, INT, MND and Piety.

Also, some body item visual comparisons for a medium armour class in the alpha. Items are various levels from starter gear to level 20 stuff.

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/5118/body2df.jpg
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/5912/body3m.jpg
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5291/body4o.jpg
http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/1064/body5.jpg
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/5400/body6o.jpg
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/434/body7.jpg
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8441/body1b.jpg

[Kaylia]

Luck and charisma are gone? Sweet. I guess luck became piety...which is fine since it has better ring to it. Also, being able to see every battle stats is nice, I was scared they would end up doing like FFXI and hide half of them for no reason.

I prefered the alpha UI for gears, but this one look less confusing. I guess it's better this way.

[Kurokikaze]

As long as its faster to navigate I'm all for it.

+1 to being able to see your ACC. That is win.

[Vitglance]

Can we nickname piety PIE? :3

I wonder what a magic offhand weapon is?

[Draconix]

SWG died a horrible MMO death. I wouldn't compare SWG to any MMO that actually wants to survive.

I wasnt comparing and SWG died a horrible mmo death due to Julio Torres yanking out 32 proffessions and whittling it down to 9, so I yet to see what that has to do with what I was discussing. I was explaining that repairing items is rather small compared to the crafting process that SWG went through.

[Cureslime]

If I were designing that system I would say INT = direct damage spell potency, MND = enfeeble and buff potency, and PIE = healing potency. They said that they're still working on the attribute system so who knows. No visible crit? No visible parry? Will these be linked to attributes of the weapons only?

Also, what is in that slot to the right of waist?

[AshTS]

No Agility either... hmmm.

Also, if everything close to SWG dies, then saying BioWareAustin's SWTOR being headed by the manager/exec producer of SWG is not a good thing, huh... ><;

He also was the exe producer of TSO, and no one probably knows WTF that stands for.

Back on point, yeah, Piety can't be the name for Luck, maybe something to do with how strong an effect your diety has on you?

[Ramsey]

SWG died a horrible MMO death. I wouldn't compare SWG to any MMO that actually wants to survive.

That doesn't mean parts of the system weren't good. In fact the idea that you could play that game and get just as much (albeit not that much) enjoyment out of it as a non combat profession, was interesting to say the least. In fact having played it, I enjoyed the non combat more.

And while the game may have failed, that definitely wasn't the reason, and if anything SWG has a legacy of being a game where the noncombat was interesting, and attracted a reasonable audience of people who may not normally play MMOS, or when they do, they just begrudgingly do the combat stuff, because that is all there really is.

Back on point, yeah, Piety can't be the name for Luck, maybe something to do with how strong an effect your diety has on you?

Yeah I mentioned this immediately following the first discussion of this here and elsewhere, I'd say it's a safe bet, there's not much else it could be, especially seeing as Mind hasn't evacuated the premises.

[Kaylia]

In fact having played it, I enjoyed the non combat more.

The combat system was so unbalanced it was more fun to mess around with the rest. I'm not sure it's a good thing though.

I do kinda miss open world mmo like ultima and swg, but I dont think that's what FF is trying to be. Even the good part of SWG wouldn't fit well in a game like FFXI or IV imo.

Back on point, yeah, Piety can't be the name for Luck, maybe something to do with how strong an effect your diety has on you?

Well, I said this because diety are often associated with thing like fortune. It seems like a stats that could influence crafting results like luck was probably going to be.

But yeah, it will obviously be related directly to the diety, I'm just trying to figure out where the diety could come into play for most jobs.

[Ramsey]

I do kinda miss open world mmo like ultima and swg, but I dont think that's what FF is trying to be. Even the good part of SWG wouldn't fit well in a game like FFXI or IV imo.


Well, I said this because diety are often associated with thing like fortune. It seems like a stats that could influence crafting results like luck was probably going to be.

I didn't say anything about open world, but yes they are trying to implement crafting and non combat as an alternative play style to combat, this isn't up for debate, it came right out of their own mouths.

And this is the one thing if any that SWG did right. I'm just saying, don't disregard a game just because it was a commercial flop.

Also, I have a strong feeling piety will have nothing to do with crafting, seeing as crafting doesn't raise your physical level, it would be absurdly stupid if you had to allocate stats to be better at crafting.

[Hyan]

That doesn't mean parts of the system weren't good. In fact the idea that you could play that game and get just as much (albeit not that much) enjoyment out of it as a non combat profession, was interesting to say the least. In fact having played it, I enjoyed the non combat more.

And while the game may have failed, that definitely wasn't the reason, and if anything SWG has a legacy of being a game where the noncombat was interesting, and attracted a reasonable audience of people who may not normally play MMOS, or when they do, they just begrudgingly do the combat stuff, because that is all there really is.

I think SWG just tried to do too much which in turn made everything very lackluster.

I think trying to regain some of the "freedom" that was present when playing SWG is not a bad idea, but it shouldn't come with the expense of gameplay. Some kind of middle road is definitely possible.