FFXIV Random Speculation/Question thread VIII: Alpha Was The Best Beta v2 -_-;

[TStupified]

Random rant warning.

So yeah, I did 3 battlecraft leves in both Ul'dah and Limsa Lominsa and then I was stupid and decided to do the last remaining ones in Gridania, these being the level 10 ones naturally.

And yeah, again, even though I had my hopes up, both of the leves had their targets between the fucking wolves. I know, everyone is bitching about this and it's nothing new, nothing new for me either, but seriously, what, just WHAT were SE thinking when they put those wolves there, that's what I'd like to know. I don't even know why I'm going back there time after time, maybe there's a little masochist in me. But in all seriousness, I don't have a fucking clue about what they've had in their minds when they designed the leves for that area. Everytime I go there I just end up staring at the wolves, thinking "what the fuck?", sometimes even saying it out of loud.. I think this is going to lead into some mental ilness soon.

[avelle]

I'm assuming you're only thinking about Tranquility/Exaltation (in your example you're switching classes to replenish MP for some unknown reason) which you wouldn't be able to use anyways, since after switching classes and equipping these abilities, they'd be on a ten minute cooldown.

The SJ comparison was for abilities like Siphon MP, Damnation/Radiance or Stygian Spikes which can all be used by any class. If you want to use abilities that use MP often, you'll probably want to level other classes for their abilities to recover MP, and equip them on your class. The SJ comparison is perfectly valid.

I'll have to look into those abilities. The MP thing is what restricts me from using Red Lotus and Cure regularly. Though Cure on anything other than Conjurer is pretty meh.

[Drako]

my fps lowered significantly with todays patch.. yesterday i was playing with 25-40 in city or crowed places 1440x900 2x AA , 60 capped outside.. today i just cant get over 30 no matter where, i even turned off AA..

[person2007]

All the "they won't listen boo hoo"s need to sit down and have a talk with any game developer that works for a huge company or a company owned by an even larger corporation. You will learn the woes of what they can do, what they want to do, what they are told to do, and how none of those three things ever overlap.

Well they better start listening to their playerbase soon, if they want to keep their subs. No timer on guildleves, change the UI, optimize the game better and have an auction house would make this game 10x better. inb4 "they will do it" because launch is the most important part of any MMO, not 10 weeks after people start playing and realise the problems

[miokomioko]

You know, I have XIVconfig's AA turned on as well as my ATI cards' AA all the way up. I'm not seeing any anti-aliasing. Shit's pixelly-jagged.

[Frein]

Well they better start listening to their playerbase soon, if they want to keep their subs. No timer on guildleves, change the UI, optimize the game better and have an auction house would make this game 10x better. inb4 "they will do it" because launch is the most important part of any MMO, not 10 weeks after people start playing and realise the problems

They really can't remove the leve timer as long as they award gil. The high level leves would simply spam the economy with so much gil out of thin air our purchasing power would deteriorate incredibly rapidly. 50% weekly inflation is baaaad~

[mythrillboots]

I plan on creating a personal document with all the NPC sell/buy prices, position, and other related info for Gridania Friday if none exists. (Would rather contribute to an existing database though)

Has the BG community picked an unofficial-official wiki-site for everyone to collaborate on like:
http://www.eorzeapedia.com/wiki/en/Main_Page
http://ffxiv.wikia.com/wiki/FFXIV_Wiki
http://ffxiv.zam.com/
and so on.

Don't get me wrong I enjoy exploring the world and finding things on my own but that only lasts so long.

I would rather have a great number of people contribute to one site than have to hunt down existing information across multiple sites or spending umpteen game hours finding a NPC that sells a craft item I'm looking for.

Everyone likes to experience new MMO's differently so i understand if people wish not to collaborate their findings with others off the start.

idk mod i though bout making a new thread, getting some ideas of sites and possibly voting or w/e but i dislike making threads.

[miokomioko]

I wanted to start some databases (fishing, for example) but I'm going to wait until release. I've seen too many adjustments to want to bother yet.

[Takiwaki]

You know, I have XIVconfig's AA turned on as well as my ATI cards' AA all the way up. I'm not seeing any anti-aliasing. Shit's pixelly-jagged.

if you have AI off so that you get good fps it will not produce AA even if its on in the FFxiv config. which also sucks cus with AA you get a nice drop in fps . its not ati friendly at all

[Ksandra]

They really can't remove the leve timer as long as they award gil. The high level leves would simply spam the economy with so much gil out of thin air our purchasing power would deteriorate incredibly rapidly. 50% weekly inflation is baaaad~

OR they could reduce the gil and increase things like armor repairs to balance out the gil. There are many things they could do to make it possible.

[Vuitton]

Level Conjurer or Thaumaturge up to level 10 to unlock their weapon skills that give back a small amount of MP (I think its a % of the damage done by the WS is converted into MP, maybe 5%?), equip that and alternate it with your mana based attack. That should allow you regain enough MP to keep using your MP ability without returning to camp.

[Anton]

Level Conjurer or Thaumaturge up to level 10 to unlock their weapon skills that give back a small amount of MP (I think its a % of the damage done by the WS is converted into MP, maybe 5%?), equip that and alternate it with your mana based attack. That should allow you regain enough MP to keep using your MP ability without returning to camp.

And then take archer to 4 for raging strike, lancer to 4 for ferocity, and pug to 6 for second wind and be a baller. The game is about being flexible, which means Red lotus will probably continue to have its mp cost :/

[Null]

I LOVE how much better the NPC repair is. Makes me so flipping happy.

[miokomioko]

Completing a leve at a distant camp needs to regenerate an Anima or two...

[Elcura]

Anima just needs to recover quicker in general.

[niwaar]

1) The director and tanaka already brought this up in one of the interviews, but it's not high on their priority list because there is already a workaround and to make it work they need to make the actual guildleve design work first... which they are trying to adjust in every patch.
2) They did not basically revamp the way camera is controlled by using the mouse, huh?! Hardware mouse is almost ready. There's no reason to believe they won't adjust it further.
3) They changed the UI, and tried to listen, but failed. In several interviews they have said that they are working hard on it.
4) Search has seen changes, and will see changes. The game is not ready, remember? The beta continues past release, and this isn't something the developers get to decide but the higher-ups who want to make money.
5) We got an option to rebind our keys, and again there is no reason to assume we wouldn't see further improvements.

You are basically mixing "they don't listen" with "they are releasing an unfinished game". Yes, shit isn't ready, and no, they do listen. That still doesn't help if their UI designers are incompetent.

1) The design itself does work, they guildleves are functional. There are 3 parts of guildleves that do NOT work 1) the aforementioned failures do to DC/Crash, 2) 8/48 is not good enough if this is our main way of leveling. 5/24 would be a much better model. 3) There is no real incentive to do these with a group other than people leeching other's guildleves. Its fine to want to fix something before you repair something else, but we are 2 weeks from release, this particular problem should have been fixed in Alpha, not still be here now.

2) They did a basic revamp and yes hardware mouse looks to be an eventual addition, even though they have said repeatedly in interviews that they wish to solve the problems players have with it by NOT turning that option on. The mouse issue is far more than simply a hardware mouse issue. Its a lack of functionality compared to other MMOs and even compared to FFXI. Which is more my real issue with it. I can deal with the sluggish mouse until they fix it, or I use the hack to enable it. Its having a near functionless mouse that is bothersome.

3) Yes they changed the UI, but in the end it was a failure. Its pretty and glossy, but the UI is not all about how it looks, its how it functions. The simple fact that I can not target things like doors, lifts triggers, and other things and have to rely on a generic ! mark popping up is idiocy. Why over complicate shit that has worked for 8+ years in their former game?

4) Search has seen minor changes, which have done NOTHING to make this function usable. The system as it is needs to be scrapped and paired down to the simplest terms. Other games use extremely streamlined search functions, with the blueprint of these belonging to XI. Why do they need to over complicate shit?

5) Yes we got an option to rebind out keys but we can't use the keys we want to? They are locked out and prevented from being used? Um, this option may as well not be there if the keys that players want to use are used by another function and they can not be rebound to allow use. Yes, this may be a temporary thing, but it really irks me why they would even tease us like that.

As for me mixing "they don't listen" with "they are releasing an unfinished game". Yes, I am. I am also mixing in "they have their heads up their ass" and "they need to communicate better". I am tired of people saying "well they said in this interview". Sure there are no official forums for this game. They are adamant about using the non official fansites (including this one) as their way of hearing the community. Yet they DO have an official beta site where they are posting information about their game. Why should we be relying on the odd interview where developers and translators are routinely caught off guard about what questions are being asked? Why are we not seeing well translated and specific statements about what is going through their heads? We don't need much, but we do deserve a bit of "we are working on this, we hope you like what we end up with".

[Null]

The rate sucks, but its a luxury that you need to plan out ahead of time. And not blaze through 100 a day. What would end up being the use of airships if you can just teleport your happy ass across the Continent. Same with Chocobos.

[miokomioko]

Airships will definitely relieve a lot of the Anima stress regarding guild visits and doing different cities' leves. Not to mention, I'm not sure everyone realizes that teleporting includes your entire party. So, you could hitch rides and/or share the teleporting costs if, you're teleporting more than once, amongst your party members.

It's just that every two days, at higher ranks, you're doing a number of Rank~20+ leves that are a pain to walk to and you could easily be spending 8~16 Anima per 8 leves. Something needs to be adjusted a little bit here when doing what they want you to do ends up costing you Anima at, at least, double the rate that you regenerate it.

[Tahona]

since this is a random thread....

I'm debating between archer and lancer and having a hard time finding information so i'm not really sure what the pros and cons are of each right now.. if anyone could tell me their experiences that would be awesome

[Null]

Archer at later levels became a power house for me. I feel like I hit crits 70% of the time, but thats of course a side effect from stacking dex. With the same dex stacked though my Lancer freaking wifs like shit. Lancer is by far not a bad job. It gets some kick ass skills. But its hard to compare the two since they are nowhere a like. One is a Damage Dealer. While the other is like a mix of everything.