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

[Kurokikaze]

Dude, I'm almost positive they meant to make the Guildleve CD 2 game days and not earth days. There really was no way to exp solo, with the lack of mobs, after you finished up all the leves.

Least thats what I keep hoping. :X

[ascalon]

If you are rewarded the same amount of gil by helping other people with their leves, wouldn't that be a viable method of farming/making progress?

Not right now that people are still learning, but wouldn't that sound like a good idea in the future?

Oh definitely. In order to do that, though, they need to make the Party Search function actually work. I tried it last night. I knew my friend was online, but couldn't search for him. There's also no Friendlist or anything right now and you'd think that, this being an MMO, stuff like a communication platform would be an essential part of the design ethos and philosophy from the start.

To be honest I was lagging so badly during yesterday's beta that I didn't get a chance to try partying with anybody properly, and my friend kept crashing out to desktop.

Hopefully Tuesday will go smoother -- especially now I don't have to use an hour or so of time to recreate my character over and over to get on his server xD

[ascalon]

Dude, I'm almost positive they meant to make the Guildleve CD 2 game days and not earth days. There really was no way to exp solo, with the lack of mobs, after you finished up all the leves.

Least thats what I keep hoping. :X

Yeah, it was 2 gamedays in alpha. Which I thought worked perfectly. People who can't play less are ALWAYS gonna have leves available. People who play hardcore will have to grind/party/craft/farm inbetween. And that's fine as far as I'm concerned!

[Omniyoji]

Spoiler: show

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/648...0710145059.jpg

So that's why Rafa isn't really playing in the Davis Cup... also what a n00b lol

[Zubis]

Dude, I'm almost positive they meant to make the Guildleve CD 2 game days and not earth days. There really was no way to exp solo, with the lack of mobs, after you finished up all the leves.

Least thats what I keep hoping. :X

I didn't have much issues finding mobs and I reached Lv8 Pugilist and Lv10 Physical in about 2½ hours of doing the initial leves and grinding. The problem was that I couldn't upgrade my gear since there was nothing to buy and I simply couldn't kill harder stuff unless I wanted alot of downtime. Second Wind saved my ass a bunch of times when I attempted to kill harder monsters like Roselings and Puk Hatchlings.

[Kuya]

The differences in some of the character creation options such as eye shape and iris size are too subtle to notice. Kind of a waste of options really.

[Ramsey]

I can see the guildleves staying the way they currently are, It makes sense than come release the game should be more difficult, most of the money made in FF11 was through farming and crafting.

It seems to me the Alpha testers have had it so easy and now they have had the carpet pulled from under them.

I think once things kick off with people selling stuff on retainers and the crafting leves being added it won't seem so bad.

I strongly disagree with this. The thing is SE was selling guildleves as the big thing for FFXIV, you can log in do some guildleves and log out, or spend your day doing them. They're great casual and hardcore content, they're what they show, and talk about the most.

Having them on a 48 hour cooldown in the retail version wouldn't just be ridiculous, it'd be downright suicidal. Hell Fields of Valor in FFXI is on a 1 in game day cooldown, and this is supposed to be a step forward. I expect to see this changed by final release.

I definitely agree with encouraging party play, crafting and the like. But that shouldn't be done by making the bread and butter game content on a two day cooldown.

[Naos]

General question I'm not sure has been answered... does armor really have any stats or anything?

[Sephiroth]

It sounds like to me that the leves are more for the casual gamer than the hardcore. At least the ones that are intended to be done solo/small groups.

[ascalon]

General question I'm not sure has been answered... does armor really have any stats or anything?

In alpha it provided Defense, Evasion, Magic Defence, stuff like that. There were also a couple of pieces (mostly mage stuff) that offered mage-related stats like +1MND -1INT or something like that.

[Zubis]

General question I'm not sure has been answered... does armor really have any stats or anything?

Aside from the defensive stats (evasion, defense, m. defense) my Hempen Beret that I got from a leve gave me +4HP.

edit: Got some chest piece that gave me +7HP iirc as well. I guess that's a start.

[Naos]

Cool thanks you guys. Since it so far appears like there's no gear swap a la FFXI I kind of wonder what role armor will play.

[mastamind]

Aside from the defensive stats (evasion, defense, m. defense) my Hempen Beret that I got from a leve gave me +4HP.

edit: Got some chest piece that gave me +7HP iirc as well. I guess that's a start.

As archer my starter chest piece had dex+1, and pants or shoes had +hp

[omegaB]

Yeah armor is definately a way bigger deal now than in alpha, in alpha it was mostly just defense, but from some leves i got gear that was +11mp and 4 mind and one peice that i think claimed to have +15dex and said something about increasing output and control. This was just low level gears, so i imagine higher gears give some really big bonuses, and that may be why the half gear function on switching will be such a big penalty.

I can understand having leves on long cooldown if its supposed to appeal to casual gamers, basically if you can do it a whole lot, then the money rewards it gives would be worthless by comparison, unless everything is at npc, and doing a quick glance i only saw weapons at npc. but for being two day cool down, the leves could be longer or more involved. maybe they need to have like a easy/low rank leves that cool down fast, and more diffficult/profitable ones that have a longer cooldown.
Prollem is, leves are kind of entertaining and feel less grindy its a fun mechanic that i dunno if should be on such a long cooldown, maybe the yellowjacket thing is a means of getting free leve like quests if your lucky, but they wouldnt talk to me about killing stuff when i saw them.

oh yeah the treasure chest on leves is a nice bonus, i wonder if thats a source of rare gears, i think but am not 100% sure that i got some actual gear in one, i think i saw 2 chests one had money and i think the other had money and an item.

[tkonpk]

Is the beta still under NDA? I want to show some footage to some friends.

[aalryn]

Is the beta still under NDA? I want to show some footage to some friends.

yes it is. section 2.6 of ULA

[ascalon]

The treasure chests are openable by anyone, incidentally. I came across four of them during yesterday's test. They contained small amounts of gil. One also had a hempen hat (which I was able to equip at rank 2, despite it saying rank 6 on the item ><)

[HumsterMKII]

Is the beta still under NDA? I want to show some footage to some friends.

Turns into a miniature devil and whispers into tkonpk's left ear...

"It ain't illegal if you don;t get caught"

[Lucavi]

Alright, one day after and I've had everything sink in from last night. I'll start with the good, and then the bad. Everything I've listed here has been posted on the beta forums in their respected categories:

The good:

1) Battle speed. Its faster, provided you engage the mob with weapon drawn from range and run into the mob. Standing next to a mob engaged is to your disadvantage, as you'll only get a few its in before you become tired, and then the battle speed slows down to a crawl. This also makes it very tough to chain mobs, when combined with the awkward camera targeting (corpses come first before live mobs). The speed isn't bad, but its best to party if you want to mass chain so that everyone only has to land a few initial strikes, and can spend the time moving to the next mob to stay in active mode and recharge. Its probably too soon to worry about end-game, since we'll be stringing in skills that raise TP and hopefully stamina, but for longer low level fights, you better hope your defense is high or you don't have hate.

Graphics: What can I say? Gorgeous. Kuya is right with some of the facial options not showing up very well, and I think some of that is because of the soft shaders and lighting options SE employs. Some of the eye and nose shapes are going to be hard to see from a distance, and I wish they'd upgrade the facial hair for the men (looks like it was painted on), but my Hyur looked damned good in cutscenes with his piercing, empty stare, so I won't hate on it.

Environment: I was able to fall down some taller rocks and whatnot this time around, compared to Alpha, so that was a relief. I didn't spend a lot of time just auto-running to see what kind of crap would trip me up, but I'll do that when I'm at a higher level with some armor and don't have to worry about some insane crab chewing my face off. A lot of shit out there, real close to town can one-shot your face off: far more than FFXI. I don't know if its just a Beta thing; them wanting us to see a wide variety of mobs and test them, but jesus fuck.

Guildelves: I hope they do a mix of Alpha and Beta here. The timer is too punishing, combined with the lack of crafting leves avaliable. There just isn't anything to do other than spend your precious few gold (you'll have, at best, 4k when you finish the quest chain, and at least 1k of that will go towards buying starter weapons for other classes), and cash comes very slowly, at least initially. I'm sure some people are going to say that Alpha was "EZ-mode" and will hail the return of our grinding overlords, but it was nice to be able to put in a good day's work and afford a new piece of armor for my Lancer in Alpha. I looked at some of the rewards for the level 10 leves and saw one that was worth 1,100 gil, so I'm going to push to hit lancer level 10 so I can get started on those and hopefully find some armor to upgrade so I'm not getting 3-shot.

Crafting: I worked with botany and mining. Botany is kind of fun, but slow right now, although I don't know if its server lag or just that classic FFXI slow. I'm guessing the latter, considering so many other maneuvers were quick, especially the opening flurry of hits in combat. The actual task of "hot-and-cold" on the tree is a little annoying, but nice when you win, although I'd like more lumber and less water shards, but that's neither here nor there. Gathering from the ground is much better, IMO, because you simply click and pray for the goods, then sprint off to the next one. If they stick with how slow the process is with in Beta for launch, RMT won't be having a lot of fun, that's for sure. They also need to do a better job of integrating both the mini-map and the full-scale map with the botanist abilities. The abilities claim to tell you the general direction of the next tree, but I didn't see anything but my pretty little recast timer come up, although I did get my flee speed from my second ability. Perhaps using the arrows or the orange circle that comes with a leve would be a solution.

Now for some of the bad:

Movement: God. Awful, and I'm not just talking about what they did to the direction keys. My biggest gripe is the flawed targeting and lock on feature that was ripped right from the entrails of FFXI (just for you, Hyan). Sure, rotating around a locked on mob with the cool heroic sidestep is great and all, but what if that mob hits you once for a third of your life, and you realize its time to roll out? Better not try to disengage to get your speed back. The odds of you hitting it more than once due to server lag and seeing the delay on the feedback message is extremely high, and each time you do it, you come to a COMPLETE stop. Meanwhile the mobs in this game are equipped with close range and long range abilities, so you're either getting tailed or pelted. You finally disengage your lock and start running, but the camera sits on your chest and presto, you've not run into a cliff wall without actually being able to see it. Using the first-person view isn't much better because of the combination of the changed movement controls and the fact that the camera pans slowly to the direction you eventually want to face.

Its like SE considered having to escape from battles as an afterthought. Many games give you abilities to allow you to escape, but unless FFXIV employs some crazy forms of crowd control or hate-shedding, I can't see much escape with this current system. The masses of corpses I saw on my server strewn about seem to emphasize that point. This is one place where the controls are just too similar to an outdated FFXI movement system, especially in battle.

I'll do more later - this post is long enough as is.

[Jinko]

I strongly disagree with this. The thing is SE was selling guildleves as the big thing for FFXIV, you can log in do some guildleves and log out, or spend your day doing them. They're great casual and hardcore content, they're what they show, and talk about the most.

Having them on a 48 hour cooldown in the retail version wouldn't just be ridiculous, it'd be downright suicidal. Hell Fields of Valor in FFXI is on a 1 in game day cooldown, and this is supposed to be a step forward. I expect to see this changed by final release.

I definitely agree with encouraging party play, crafting and the like. But that shouldn't be done by making the bread and butter game content on a two day cooldown.

There's nothing to say how many leve's they have planned, you also have to factor into the starting leves at Gridania and Ul'dah (assuming you can get there at low level).

I think its too soon to say what direction they are heading in, it could just be they have done this for beta reason's to encourage people to do other things than spam guildleves non stop.