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

[Zumi]

So happy I don't even care about the slight. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to speak Japanese and not be able to input characters? I'm very happy about this, and was very frustrated that it was perfectly easy for Japanese players to input Roman characters (obviously it makes no sense if they can't ) and yet impossible for us to input Japanese characters.

This was my question during E3 that didn't get answered, and this to me is a huge deal, that just got confirmed via that post, so yeah I'm excited!

I wouldn't count anything in beta as confirmed. Until you see it in the final release I wouldn't get so happy. SE could not want to pay the licensing fee for IME for the NA version just like they did in FFXI, it could exist in beta because they haven't disabled it yet.

[Zimbabwe Justice]

I'm curious how many archers there are in comparison to the other classes, as well as the cost of its equipment compared to the others.

Also what do you do when you start as a hand or land disciple? Do you just harvest or craft things? What's your starting equipment? Starting as one of them seems like it wouldn't be terribly fun. How does the level up portion of it work?

[Biggie]

h t t p://w w w.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wv0eJNQwh4

heres what i came up with for the hell of it :D

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[Calemero]

Some of the updated shop gear from today

[Metafox]

Can anyone say for sure whether or not your hp and mp are reduced when you switch to a lower level weapon? And can anyone say for sure whether or not your base stats are reduced as well?

[Zer0]

removed

dammit hate youtube :<

[Ramsey]

I wouldn't count anything in beta as confirmed. Until you see it in the final release I wouldn't get so happy. SE could not want to pay the licensing fee for IME for the NA version just like they did in FFXI, it could exist in beta because they haven't disabled it yet.

DON'T CRUSH MY DREAMS! ; ;

Seriously, I'm aware of this, but still very.... hopeful to say the least. As far as I am aware it wasn't available in the XI beta, but you're right, they could take it out. If I was in the beta myself I'd post and try to get confirmation or at least petition that the feature stays in.

Heck I'd pay 150$ for a "Super Collector's Edition" that featured NA menus/dialog and JP input support. Because in the long run, that'd save me money from not having to buy and upgrade the Japanese version as well.

[Loaar]

Some of the updated shop gear from today

The earring there says "Slot cost: 3".

Any idea what that is?

Does equipping gear cost points of some kind?

[Gethsemane]

dammit hate youtube :<

The suspense is killing me. Anyone find any posted videos of beta footage yet I've been looking but I don't know the dark alleys and stuff most of you guys seem to stroll down without dying

You must have removed the video on accident.

[HumsterMKII]

The suspense is killing me. Anyone find any posted videos of beta footage yet I've been looking but I don't know the dark alleys and stuff most of you guys seem to stroll down without dying

You must have removed the video on accident.

Probably have to wait for Ghost to do his stuff.

[Kurokikaze]

Encoding takes forever.

[Kachi]

First of all, holy hell the game is gorgeous and so much more polished and fun than the alpha. I was not that optimistic after the alpha, but having seen all of the adjustments, I'm pretty effing excited for this game.

Spent a couple of hours just playing with the character creator. Some of the face types don't seem that different at first, but the ones that look the same have completely different facial features (lips, nose, eyes). You have to look carefully at each feature because they aren't hugely different.

What else... played with the Retainers for a bit. They march out several prenamed NPCs for you to choose from, don't yet know the limits on these or if they're completely randomized. I picked the sixth one or so they showed me and had to give her a unique name. Unfortunately, didn't have anything to give her at the time.

I haven't seen many people crafting; hell, I don't even know where to go to find the blacksmith hammer.

I did a little logging, but the process is the definition of tedium - a very slow process that involves a hot-and-cold-esque mini game to "find the hidden dot" within 3 swings to get the loot. I was 1/3, and got a willow log. Mining looks even stranger, but if it stops RMT, more power to it.

What happened to all the evil plants and jellyfish? The only thing for low levels to swing at are rats and moles.

]

You won't see many people crafting because they had to temporarily disable the crafting levequests, which basically allow you to level your crafting for free. That's what most people who crafted in the alpha did. Without it, most people don't have the means to craft this early in the game.

As for the mobs, I'm glad and was expecting them to make some serious adjustments to mob placement. It seemed like they had just scattered them here and there with no real rhyme. Made the environment seem kind of thoughtless.

Anyone else get some general movement lag and a really floaty cursor? It made it hard to play and accurate fight.

Didn't stop me from getting 8 Physical and 4 Lance/3 Pugalist though.

Fought through it.

I had a lot of movement lag. This may have been due to the fact that I was running the highest settings on what is a modest rig (Phenom X4 2.5 ghz, Radeon 5750), or I might have been having connectivity issues (not sure if that would be the culprit, but my connection teetered between yellow and green a lot). I also had some pretty bad lag and poor FPS in general. It was playable but just barely. I actually had no problems during CSs though (except the opening; it was fuzzy for some reason at first). They looked amazing.

Might switch to low res and see how I like that. Apparently the ambient occlusion setting is a hog, but I absolutely love it-- makes the environments feel so much more real and alive. Hopefully it won't bastardize my rig so badly once its optimized.

Loving all of the new effects really-- weather, lighting, shadows-- gorgeous. The only weird thing is that bright golden glow on white textures that you seem to get a lot (as seen in some of the screenshots). Seems like that needs to be tuned down a bit.

I'm curious how many archers there are in comparison to the other classes, as well as the cost of its equipment compared to the others.

Also what do you do when you start as a hand or land disciple? Do you just harvest or craft things? What's your starting equipment? Starting as one of them seems like it wouldn't be terribly fun. How does the level up portion of it work?

You get basic equipment that's different for each class. They're all still very minigame-esque, and no, I can't imagine many people will "main" land or hand classes. Better than XI by a long shot, but the crafts are essentially the same, much as they were in XI. Big potential problem with land classes is that I don't think they gain physical levels at all, so you'll want to level a combat class eventually.

I don't think the hand/land classes are going to be as fleshed out as SE intended, not in the way that people will seriously consider them equal to combat classes. It's the same stuff as XI but dressed up and more involved... people will do those things mainly to make money. Making money should be more fun.

By the way, I'm on Garland now should anyone wish to hook up.

[Kachi]

Oh yeah, also the tutorial stuff is much more extensive for those that don't RTFM. The starting quest actually sends you outside (pretty sure it didn't at first), they give instructions in the opening CS and the first levequest, they have tutorial levequests, and generally lots of places to find information (NPCs, Aetheryte).

Think I found the Behest NPC outside of Camp Beardrock too, but they didn't offer anything yet.

[kyosak]

Japanese input from the English client works with Windows IME for Japanese enabled:

http://i32.tinypic.com/3130hw1.jpg

This is great news...
They'd better keep this feature for the retail version.

[Ramsey]

I don't think the hand/land classes are going to be as fleshed out as SE intended, not in the way that people will seriously consider them equal to combat classes. It's the same stuff as XI but dressed up and more involved... people will do those things mainly to make money. Making money should be more fun.

By the way, I'm on Garland now should anyone wish to hook up.

I'm hoping to see some big revisions that make this statement untrue, but I'm fairly certain there won't be. I was optimistic when the design team was first talking about how they wanted to offer gameplay just as exciting for DoH and DoL, and that one could potentially play a non-combatant character and get just as much fun and content out of someone who played only combat, but that seems to be a distant memory and unlikely to come true.

If they added a lot of interesting traveling and narrative quests for these classes, and fleshed out some of the systems more, like made you gain physical levels for raising DoH and/or DoL (At least DoL) and made it possible for players to issue "Leves" to eachother, in the sense that, a DoL could hire a DoW or DoM as an escort, go out farm stuff, and their escorts could earn some EXP as well as whatever reward they offered. That'd be great, something really interesting and unique, and promoting that dynamic relationship between the disciplines they're always talking about.

As it is now, I have a sneaking suspicion that the idea of hiring a DoW to escort you isn't going to fly very well, because I doubt you'll ever be able to provide the adequate gil for it to be worth their while, when they could just do guildleves and get exp as well.

Edit: They could also spice up DoH with the new Company system they're talking about so much, they mentioned the possibility of company and player housing etc. Allow DoH to build buildings, upgrade facilities etc. Down the road expand end game by allowing Companies to build and construct (or purchase) parts for boats and airships and construct those. Offer high level end game guildleves that companies can embark on to fight sea monsters and enemies in the sky.

This is really the solution to having crafters left out of end game. If the blacksmiths and carpenters constructed the hull for your airship, and the alchemists and the goldsmiths calibrated and constructed your instruments, and they're responsible for the maintenance of this thing between battles, they're going to feel like a part of the group even if they're not fighting the dragon themselves. Figure out some way of allowing them to come along for the ride, or even participate by manning the facilities on the boat/airship. Any way they can possibly make the system work as intended, where DoH and DoL are legit equally fun to play as DoW and DoM I absolutely support.

[Kurokikaze]

We need to get a thread going with who is on what servers.

[Kachi]

I'm hoping to see some big revisions that make this statement untrue, but I'm fairly certain there won't be. I was optimistic when the design team was first talking about how they wanted to offer gameplay just as exciting for DoH and DoL, and that one could potentially play a non-combatant character and get just as much fun and content out of someone who played only combat, but that seems to be a distant memory and unlikely to come true.

If they added a lot of interesting traveling and narrative quests for these classes, and fleshed out some of the systems more, like made you gain physical levels for raising DoH and/or DoL (At least DoL) and made it possible for players to issue "Leves" to eachother, in the sense that, a DoL could hire a DoW or DoM as an escort, go out farm stuff, and their escorts could earn some EXP as well as whatever reward they offered. That'd be great, something really interesting and unique, and promoting that dynamic relationship between the disciplines they're always talking about.

As it is now, I have a sneaking suspicion that the idea of hiring a DoW to escort you isn't going to fly very well, because I doubt you'll ever be able to provide the adequate gil for it to be worth their while, when they could just do guildleves and get exp as well.

I'll be submitting feedback, for sure. I agree that DoL are going to need physical levels most likely, even if they don't get them nearly as quickly. But if you really think about it, it's just not realistic to think that a combat class, a relatively complicated class with dozens of abilities traits, and lots of customization options that can be put against a multitude of mobs in varied situations can be emulated by a simple minigame. A minigame can be plenty of fun, but it's not going to compare.

Probably also need to include low combat abilities (beyond throwing rocks and one or two other trinket abilities).

Repairs and retainers will probably make these activities more sustainable, but unless crafting and gathering are comparable to facing a challenging opponent, there's just no way it's going to rival the depth of the combat classes.

[Cichy]

It's going to be a while before you see people with high lvl gear.
It's now harder to get gil and lvl up. NPC's do sell alot more mats and the are not very expensive but still I dint even run into any recipes.

[Kachi]

Oh man, how could I forget this... I looked in the Party feature about three hours in, and like in other screenshots, it said "World: 150ish" suggesting that there were only about 150 PCs on the server. Not that this is something easy to eyeball, but that seemed like a fair estimate.

That actually worried me in light of the lag I was having (also PCs and NPCs had a very delayed loading-- had to look in their direction for a second for them to appear) considering the servers will surely be far busier than that.

[Akiyama]

First off, some awesome stuff through here. Love how the JP IME and what not are all in the beta, and I wouldn't worry about it not being in the retail. Dunno why they'd have it in a NA Beta if it weren't going to be, after all. Well.. I guess there's the Asians in NA, but meh! Sue me.

Anyway.. I'm guessing money will be way easier to come by when you can do a shit ton of quests and what not. Think your typical Korean MMO grindfest in terms of cash. Slow to get at the start, but rolls in later on.