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

[Zer0]

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.

nah i removed it cause friends couldnt even watch it

uploaded to a different media site shit quality but meh better then nothing lol

h ttp://w ww.vimeo.com/13240604

[Loaar]

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.

I doubt there was only 150 on the server. Maybe only 150 people seeking? Or someone earlier thought the party search might only be showing your local area.

[Kachi]

Actually there are two numbers, and I can't remember if the second is how many are seeking, or how many are in your region (or how many in your region are seeking). Kind of hard to say at this point, but I did see a screenshot somewhere that shows the menu. My impression at the time was that it was how many players were in the whole world, though.

[LD]

I kinda like the new stat system. Making it only Att/Def/Acc & Matt/Mdef/Macc simplifies point allocation. AGI going away sounded weird, but it's actually better now that all defensive procs are controlled entirely by gear and JAs. Instead of dumping stat points into what is essentially a RNG, you can just equip the right gear or JAs and keep putting points into offense or straight defense.

I just hope they don't make it too easy to change it. Bringing gear swaps back and having frequent stat changes creates a min-maxing, bean counting hell I had hoped I'd never even conceive of.

[Hyan]

Did anyone help someone do a leve to see what are the rewards for helping him out?

[Calemero]

Did anyone help someone do a leve to see what are the rewards for helping him out?

You receive Gil rewards but not gear rewards. Also you do not receive Bonus gil for completion or time bonus.

:/

[Hyan]

Hmm that doesn't sound too bad honestly.. since you can do higher star leve and rewards get even better. Hopefully it scales like that.

Nice way to make gil and progress at the same time I guess?

[Cayos]

Was anyone able to make any decent amount of gil? I only made about 300 gil from doing the initial 3 levequests that are available. There didn't seem to be any others that I could do after I had completed those. Though I did notice that the level 10 quests rewarded about 1k gil.

[Fawkes]

Parts of Treasures of the Main gave me some decent gil. I think going to the culinarians/musketeers gave 1000, and I think after escorting Sisipu and going back to town I got another 2000.

[Celeras]

So was nobody able to locate Behest npcs? All I could find were guards that said 'alls well blah blah'

[Hyan]

Parts of Treasures of the Main gave me some decent gil. I think going to the culinarians/musketeers gave 1000, and I think after escorting Sisipu and going back to town I got another 2000.

Does it continue from there?

[Kurokikaze]

Was anyone able to play around with Battle Regimen? Dont remember if it was supposed to be working now.

Also got two vids up on youtube. Encoding some more over night.

[YukonWildAss]

So from what I can see it looks like your Stamina starts around half full when you engage a mob? Do you guys think it's going to stay this way past Beta? I was kinda under the impression/hoping that you'd start each fight with a full Stamina bar.

[Fawkes]

So was nobody able to locate Behest npcs? All I could find were guards that said 'alls well blah blah'

I saw one but by the time I got close it depoped or something. Maybe instead of camping NMs we get to camp the NPCs?

Does it continue from there?

Yeah, I think treasures of the main was completable in alpha and there was another quest after it. That's just all I got to tonight.

[brand]

Well, that was interesting.

With lowish settings, my FPS was decent. Didn't parse it, but it was much better than Alpha. Slight chop in groups, but nothing close to the hit I'd get before. Looks pretty, caught details, saw flying airships. Despite low specs, more than runnable.

Character creation got decently close to my actual face. I think my cheekbones are higher and my eyes more listless than what the game allows. Guardians have the wrong number month in a few places.

Questing much simpler, though admittedly improved due to prior experience. Opening much more interesting and epic with the music. After the boat, still somewhat boring, but as a starting chain, serves its purpose.

Was a Midlander PUG. Light Strike/Heavy Strike made defense/offense active instead of passive. Once I hit 4, actually got Haymaker to work regularly. Didn't have time to try other jobs, probably won't for a while. Surprised Action points so low, but seemed to go up with level.

Leves, in and of themselves, pretty much the same. Couldn't get Guardian's Favor to work or was some passive effect I didn't notice. Never lost points, so betting on the former.

Just like in the Alpha, normal mobs are better than leves for leveling up, but much less safe. Wharf Rats were the mob of choice at 1 and up, but few in number. Hoping to upgrade by Tuesday.

Got Retainer, unloaded one thing, didn't activate bazaar. Seemed pointless this early.

Mob placement drastically different, addition of new mobs not mentioned in articles surprising. Needs more low level mobs new entrance of Limsa and surrounding areas in a large radius.

Overall, looking forward to Tuesday and more abilities to test.

Great. Now that things are done, I'm just going to copy paste what I wrote before for battle stuff, and I'm glad to see someone close my own observations.

Spoiler: show

First thing is first. How many points each rank takes is now outright told to you in the UI. This is a good thing.

Skill point gains, however, have dropped to something near a fifth of their old values. I never noticed it in alpha before, but looking over my photos it seems like the system has not changed. All those little messages that spam you after every strike about gaining proficiency, those get added up, and when you successfully kill a mob, awarded to you in a lump sum, perplexingly re-labeled as skill points.

Anyhow, what was coming in in bursts of up to 300 points per skill up proc, usually averaging 150, is now coming in in 30s and 70s, averaging about 50 points per proc. This means that instead of gaining some avg 800 points per fight, you are getting about 150. EXP however, has not changed, and thus your physical ranks level close to twice as fast as your skill ranks.

Alongside that change, physical bonus points have done the Jenny Craig also. Instead of 75/100 points and a scaling point cost to up stats, you get 4-6 points that increase an attribute at a 1:1 ratio. I tried reassigning my points once because I foolishly wasn't paying attention and put my points into Vit instead of Dex (AND confirming it), and it warned me there was a time limit on it. It however did not hassle me and allowed me to restat my points.

Now battle itself. The attack values don't seem to have changed much, but I have little less than an hour's observation in a field infested with other players. My capable deduction skills tell me that my Pugilist from Alpha was far more accurate in these low levels than my Pugilist in Beta. Either that or that seemingly bugged case where missing a punch could proc another chance at a punch really mitigated this point. Similarly, because of the stamina gauge change, each attack only generates about 250 TP instead of the previous 500.

Now, Pugilist-specific, Haymaker is 8x easier to use because of the design of the stamina bar. It's about half the cost in stamina as a regular strike, so you are practically guaranteed to be able to hit it once you evade. Likewise, the message for evade is much clearer now due to the floating combat text, which will flash an "Evade!" over you. Other notifiers include the skill name on the Stamina Bar going white instead of gray (unusable), and of course the newly filtered chat window. Dodge rate also seems to be base higher than it was in alpha. Haymaker's animation also got an update, and is no longer a yellow version of Concussive Blow. It's now more like a vertical cat swipe.

Also, Light Strike has a defense/evasion bonus attached to it. Using it once buffs you for like 8 seconds, and is nothing like the sliding dps<->tank system I was previously led to believe. In fact, the message that you could get in Alpha, under mysterious circumstances, about maximizing your defense stance has yet to appear for me in Beta.

Finally, the check system. I don't know why, but it was always the assumption that easier mobs gave less bonuses, and in alpha, this was true to various extents. It was most obvious in the amount of EXP rewarded, a small blue dot mob gave less exp than a medium light blue dot mob gave less than a medium yellow dot mob. I'm sure the same was true of the skill points, though I didn't make that observation, probably in the form of less proficiency skill up procs (though still for high values when it did).

In the last 30 minutes of today's test, I most certainly was making the same amount of skill points from both a small blue dot and a medium yellow dot; the difference in exp was about 150 (800 and 1000 respectively). Nothing near the drastic differences in alpha whereby a small blue gave something like 2-300 exp, and a yellow 1000.

My advice to others, is to stay on rats, at least up to skill rank 5/physical rank 8 as there is very little difference in risk/reward between rats and beetles. Beetles are actually more dangerous as half the beetle population are protected by Roselings, which by some act of cruelty are now closer together. I can't tell you how many people I watched die trying to nip a beetle between two Roselings. Chigoes actually hit for a sizable amount, and I couldn't find Colburans, probably because I stayed south of the camp as I didn't expect the skill rank to rise so slowly, and was trying to predict moving to aurelias and dodos near Cedarwood within an hour.

[e]Haymaker

[e2] per sticky request, photo removed.

[Kurokikaze]

So from what I can see it looks like your Stamina starts around half full when you engage a mob? Do you guys think it's going to stay this way past Beta? I was kinda under the impression/hoping that you'd start each fight with a full Stamina bar.

Starting with a full stamina bar every time you engage a mob would be a little overpowered especially on Archer. Thats like 3-4 shots right off the bat. Starting on empty would be too slow. Half way just seems to be the best balance at the moment. If you really want to start with a full bar though... just go into Active Mode and wait for it to fill lol.

[Hyan]

Starting with a full stamina bar every time you engage a mob would be a little overpowered especially on Archer. Thats like 3-4 shots right off the bat. Starting on empty would be too slow. Half way just seems to be the best balance at the moment. If you really want to start with a full bar though... just go into Active Mode and wait for it to fill lol.

You got any PUG footage from today? :D

[makgen]

I wasn't able to log on for this test (on the other side of the country), did anyone learn what the "certain amount of time" was for reallocating stats?

I think it was around 30min didn't get an exact time. Also it does not reallocate all your stats it only take out 12 points split evenly from anything you've put stuff into. Base is 15 of each stat if your 30:15:15:15:15:15 you'll lose the 12 points from the 30 putting you at 18:15:15:15:15:15 but say your 20:20:20:20:20:20 you'll lose 2 from each stat making you 18:18:18:18:18:18 Which mean you could be losing up to half the allocation points putting it back into the stats you actually wanted to keep. The current reallocation system seems pretty lame to me atm.

So from what I can see it looks like your Stamina starts around half full when you engage a mob? Do you guys think it's going to stay this way past Beta? I was kinda under the impression/hoping that you'd start each fight with a full Stamina bar.

I think this is to prevent people from leaving combat and reengaging the mob with a full bar of stamina.

Edit: The amount of points you get might scale with your level I only tested it while I was the same level when I had to afk for a little bit.

[Kurokikaze]

You got any PUG footage from today? :D

Yep yep. Putting Archer, Lancer, Pug and Thaumaturge in one vid.

[Gokulo]

Yep yep. Putting Archer, Lancer, Pug and Thaumaturge in one vid.

Mind uploading it to some place like megaupload beside yt?