FFXIV Random Speculation/Question thread VI: Phase 3, FFXIV is still on the rag!

[Hyan]

It will fall into the Surplus hole. After reading that interview it's obvious there is no "secret magic retail build". We're playing the game minus the other starting areas.

It's safe to say surplus is here to stay. They just admitted they have no endgame content. They NEED to keep people from reaching the cap.

I don't think so. There'll be things to do as long as you don't have all classes at rank 50.

It'll give them breathing room as far as endgame goes. Also, if you planned to rush to the endgame in the first place you're retarded. It's never a good idea, in any MMO.

If you don't want to be bored waiting for updates that is...

[Lordender]

LMFAO @ that interview, it's 2010 not 2003 SE.

[Ramsey]

At least they made it cheaper to play FFXI while we play FFXIV... Scars of Abyssea anyone? I saw AF3...

Ahem. But seriously, I'm thinking that is going to be my approach, play both games until FFXIV has enough content to make me not want to play FFXI anymore. Those new screenshots got me excited though, I'm happy to finally see Ul'Dah. I'm honestly not too upset at a lack of "end game" content, because I feel they'll raise the cap a few times before they implement that.

I am a bit upset at the lack of things to do other than level and guildleve. I'm hoping there is more storyline quests than they're letting on. And I'm hoping they quickly implement other things to do, like instanced dungeons, chocobo raising/racing, and other little mini-game style activities, perhaps gambling, the Colosseum in Ul'Dah etc etc. Something tells me the gambling and Colosseum they mention in Ul'dah will remain a flavor/storyline concept, and never actually materialize into content, which is what I was hoping for. (Hi2u Whitegate Colosseum.)

I think my biggest issue with most MMOs is that the only content is "leveling" and "end game." FFXI actually was one of the best MMOs when it came to this I feel, the variety of crap to do was nice, even in end game there were a lot of choices depending on how much time/effort/people you wanted to throw at an event. I'm just hoping this time around there are more casual style fun things to do, some things maybe that don't even involve combat. Golden Saucer where are you?

[Meko]

28% install?? Do you mean download? =\ Whats your computer specs?

Well, the "updates" are @ 28%. I guess I'll try and check the firewall settings but I have no other issues with any other downloads. The torrents were pretty quick although they are not apparently working. I have a decent PC.

Athlon X2 3 gigs of ram.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Whenever I gain surplus (usually on my glad since that's highest level), and I switch to another class ranked much lower, the surplus goes away after a few kills.

[Lucavi]

Wait why is a plate mage stupid? You're sacrificing magic power for survivability, this is supposed to be a game about customizing your character.

I'm going to assume it was sarcasm because it reads like it so don't take it as a response just to you but...

I think opening up all armor to all classes in P3 was my favorite change, as long as the stats match the armor type, most people are going to stick to an armor type that benefits them the most. A plate wearing mage is only going to be doing that for solo, or perhaps if they somehow have such strong magic that they end up pulling hate/threat regardless of the fact that they're wearing non-magic enhancing gear.

Right now the biggest issue for being a hybrid is the stat distribution, and the reduced potency on cross-class spells. Hoping that armor ends up making up for a lot of this, and we see some interesting hybrid armor as well.

Plate mage would only work if armor had stat requirements, which it currently does not. A plate mage in this game only loses the +mp +int stats on mage gear, and gains a metric ton of survivability. That's far too big of a pro for the con in place. Besides, I'll believe that they're keeping this as such when they show screen renders of a mage in full platemail with a surcoat and mage hat at the same time.

And in case you didn't know, all gear for all classes has been around since at least P1 beta.

And I may be the only person that didn't think FFXI had a "slew" of mid-game content. Nobody did garrison, nobody did escorts, nobody did early level BCNMs because the droprates were garbage (save for a few of the nice level 40 ones), barely anyone did BCNMs, nobody could really do promys, ect.

It was grind to end-game for your next job because you want a slot in the main alliance, or take it slow and enjoy the leveling experience, but still grind on crabs and beetles. I loved leveling in FFXI, especially non-drg jobs because the drg bias was fully in place when I was taking up my drg. I remember Pld and War being an absolute JOY to level up, especially during the ToAU days, and towards the beginning of WoTG with Scholars and Dancers.

When I think about how much fun I had outside of leveling (read: grinding, but it was FUN grinding with friends and kickass JPs), my personal enjoyment factor fell off a bit. I disliked NM camping, I disliked the fact that nobody PVPed, I disliked solo farming after spending the entirety of summer 2004 farming tiger fangs for my spectacles/assault gorget/earrings combo for drg, and I disliked the fact that nobody really did anything else. There were options, yes, but many of those options came LONG after the NA launch, and some were so poorly optimized that nobody did them, like garrison. It could have been a great event, but it was hard as hell, and you got crap for rewards.

Again, doing things just to do things isn't the best route to take when designing a game that's based around sucking people into obsession to keep paying $15 a month. If FFXI had a token system that allowed you to redeem points/tokens from those mid-level events for mid-level food/gear/pots, or even plain gil, it would have been more successful.

[Alderaan]

The games been in development since '06? I think that was when we first saw that screenshot of Rapture. My question is, what the fuck have they been doing, besides closing themselves off to how the genre has evolved of course?

[Brodan]

How do I canceled my preorder???
*poooopsssssss* twas' the sound of "magical release build" hope going away.

[Grey Jorildyn]

It's not so odd in my brain to allow any class to equip any item. If they do leave it the way it is I would personally love to see one a few things:

1. arcane spell failure rate
2. guarenteed casts for mages in plate, but with lower potency on dmg/heals
3. slower movement speed / increased casting time for atypical class armor usage
4. guildmark buyable traits like "plate armor proficiency" to lower or reduce any of the above

I am a bit crazy however.

[Tomino]

It's amusing to see two different games growing in such different ways because of different starting points.

I see Guild Wars 2 struggling with such enormous design / art efforts, reworking itself and taking the MMO concept to different paths, in hope to catch the players' attention and become someone.

I see FF14 building itself over its own colossal brand value, only enhancing visuals and voice overs, in hope to keep enough users to keep being someone...


As much as I can appreciate JRPGs I must admit their latest designs are unbelievably stagnant. Not just FF14 actually, I guess this is what floats their boats

[Ramsey]

Plate mage would only work if armor had stat requirements, which it currently does not. A plate mage in this game only loses the +mp +int stats on mage gear, and gains a metric ton of survivability. That's far too big of a pro for the con in place. Besides, I'll believe that they're keeping this as such when they show screen renders of a mage in full platemail with a surcoat and mage hat at the same time.

And in case you didn't know, all gear for all classes has been around since at least P1 beta.

Um? I'm 100% positive that the plate armor available in P1 from the vendors said "Discipline of War" and as soon as my friend equipped a staff it all was immediately unequipped. I wasn't in P1, but I watched a friend play quite a bit.

Anyways, why would they change it for P3 (and possibly P2) only to take it back out in retail? Also, most of the gear we have access to now is low level, I'm sure the stats differences will be more noticeable later on. Think about it this way, if in FFXI a black mage could equip the entire Aurum set, they would loose so much in the way of damage in a lot of scenarios that it wouldn't be worth the additional DEF value (well that's more of a discussion for how DEF in FFXI is meaningless most of the time so let's just imagine for the sake of argument that it's not, as in XIV it seems to be worth a bit more.)

I mean, obviously they need to balance it, which I hope they plan to do, and add more stats+ to gear, so that your base stats hopefully aren't so important. It would be nice if switching between classes, changing my gear was enough for most things, and I didn't have to reassign all my points every time. If they make this the case, I think being able to wear gear outside your class is perfectly 100% fine. I know as a traveling Armorsmith I'd appreciate being able to wear my wares incase of being attacked, and not be forced to travel in crafting gear with negligible defense ratings.

[Hyan]

As much as I can appreciate JRPGs I must admit their latest designs are unbelievably stagnant. Not just FF14 actually, I guess this is what floats their boats

You're talking like it doesn't apply to the whole genre. GW2 is the only exception here and the sad thing is that game will get boring after few months and meet the same fate as any other MMO did in the past. Only not because of it's flaws, but because of it's basic design, which is a shame.

The whole genre is in a sad state, and isn't going to get any better...

[Cureslime]

Fixing weapons with bone stuff is goldsmithing btw. Tried it out a few days ago on mah Bone Hora.

I'm back on the fence about the game again. Do I play the game while it is still awful, knowing that it will improve a year or two down the road and potentially be epic? There are plenty of other games I could be playing.

As for no story questlines outside of the main line...is this true? I would be very disappointed if that were the case. That was one of the main things I was looking forward to...

[Ramsey]

Fixing weapons with bone stuff is goldsmithing btw. Tried it out a few days ago on mah Bone Hora.

I'm back on the fence about the game again. Do I play the game while it is still awful, knowing that it will improve a year or two down the road and potentially be epic? There are plenty of other games I could be playing.

As for no story questlines outside of the main line...is this true? I would be very disappointed if that were the case. That was one of the main things I was looking forward to...

I have a hard time believing this based on the various categories tabs under your journal, I just think they haven't showed much off beside the starting quests because their perogative is always to keep people guessing about the stroyline (which is the one thing I like to be kept guessing about.)

[omegaB]

Fixing weapons with bone stuff is goldsmithing btw. Tried it out a few days ago on mah Bone Hora.

I'm back on the fence about the game again. Do I play the game while it is still awful, knowing that it will improve a year or two down the road and potentially be epic? There are plenty of other games I could be playing.

As for no story questlines outside of the main line...is this true? I would be very disappointed if that were the case. That was one of the main things I was looking forward to...

Pretty sure that was just a lot of doom saying, i saw nothing about that in the actual article.

[Alderaan]

Companies are exploiting the fact that players don't like to be behind other players and therefore will pre-order an unfinished game rather than wait 6 months and see what fixes are implemented.

I'm typically one of those people but this may just have to be where i draw the line. Unfortunately waiting 6 months will take me entirely out of this game and into Rift, so fuck it maybe?

[Hyan]

Companies are exploiting the fact that players don't like to be behind other players and therefore will pre-order an unfinished game rather than wait 6 months and see what fixes are implemented.

I'm typically one of those people but this may just have to be where i draw the line. Unfortunately waiting 6 months will take me entirely out of this game and into Rift, so fuck it maybe?

Yeah, why not? If Rift sucks or you get bored of it it's more fun to jump into XIV at that point, than play it when it's still unfinished which will pretty much ruin the whole experience even if you decide to come back later.

The first impression is what matters, but we have the choice to determine when to make that first impression. I will wait.

[ayjis]

I'm very close to canceling my pre-order after reading this interview, it's just sad and disappointing. I was very excited about this game and even spent a fortune upgrading my PC for it, but it doesn't sound worth playing anymore.

Guess I still have a month to mull it over, but... ugh.

[Celeras]

Working correctly now I think? Would explain why it went away with the patch, yet came back again for some people.

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/1747/surplus1.jpg

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/2650/surplus2.jpg

[ascalon]

Ah, so it really does seem to be tied to your weapon's durability?

If that's the case, I can work with that kind of system. Mind you, it'd be nice if it was clearer in the inventory pane when stuff was broken. Turn the icon red or something.