Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

[Sign]

Rank 20 cooking leves in Ul'dah and Gridania: why guild facilities required?

Almost as bad are the leves that require a sub-craft but there is no indication of that until you have already accepted and started the leve.

[Purrrfect]

Is crafting even going to be useful for anything other than repairs? There are SOOOO many people that make shit now as seph pointed to I think. This is way more oversaturated than XI was, and harder to get your shit to the people that will buy it.

[miokomioko]

Is crafting even going to be useful for anything other than repairs? There are SOOOO many people that make shit now as seph pointed to I think. This is way more oversaturated than XI was, and harder to get your shit to the people that will buy it.

Crafting is currently, easy, cheap, new, etc. There is no "end-game" gear that HQs will matter for yet. There are infinite ways they can make crafting more profitable for only those who are dedicated to it.

Making some kind of decision/foretelling about crafting/economy/etc. at this stage is so fucking ridiculous.

[Crizto]

Yeah, can't make conclusions this early

[Cureslime]

In reality crafting can never be "fixed" for rank 1-49. It's broken forever and it's far too late to do anything about it. That's just the way it is. They have two big issues they need to overcome for ranks 50+:
1. Making sure mats are scarce while still allowing people to rank up their crafting jobs
2. Providing incentive for people to rank up their jobs to 50+ so they can actually use the items crafters want to make them

1 is easy. 2 they're going to have to put in overtime for the next few years to achieve.

[miokomioko]

Once the level cap goes up once, having a crafting class at rank-50 is not going to be special or beneficial for anything but self/friend repairs. There's too many things to count that they can do to increase the difficulty and/or time-sink of crafting at ranks 50+ to weed out anyone who isn't committed.

We're basically looking at a time like when XI's top-end and hardest-to-craft gear was Wool Hose and Shinobi Gi. It's laughable as soon as we get to move on and sell that shit. Everyone and their mother was flooding the market with their Leather/Scale/Chainmail shit until they lost interest in grinding expensive materials into the 60s and on.

[Sign]

You guys are still looking at crafting in XI terms (or any other MMO for that matter) where it is something you do on the side. In this game DoH is just another class to play. I don't think they aren't going to make it harder than any other class to level and I definitely don't see them restricting the leveling of them like in XI unless they all of a sudden restrict the other Disciplines as well.

[booly]

WTF
http://i52.tinypic.com/16m4d5.jpg

[Falisa]

The current community is very depressing. Ive actually been trying to log on and start up some parties to atleast have some interaction with people and get some skill points while not being bored out of my mind grinding solo. Yet every person I whisper for a party, I get a no to. Haven't been able to start a single party because no one wants to group up.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Sadly the same phenomenon has hit my linkshell as well. Everyone is in Ul'dah playing Final Fantasy XIV: Crafting Edition. We have a player who's a 48 marauder, and he has 0 drive to go out and level to 50. He's been mining instead. The same holds true for those 30-40 as well (which we have a few of mind you). We just craft, craft, craft. The only activity on the IG forums are the wishlists (people requesting mats) and the rift beta threads lol.

It's not quite "dead game" stuff, but it's pretty bad. I really thought FFXIV was going to be this sandbox MMO, but all it's got is a few sandbox elements (cross-classing skills for example), and the rest is a construction site. You can do whatever you want as long as you stay in their tiny little box. You can't level the way you want to, you can't do leves when you want to (hi2u lockout on quests... wtf), and you certainly can't coax people into helping you get anything done. It's just all so bad, even with the UI changes, which did not impress me because every game has a functional UI at launch and FFXIV's is still behind the curve.

Entirely depressing. I feel ya Falisa. And if your peeps are all gone, drop us an application. I'm sure we'll give you a home to build castles in.

[Meko]

Two of my biggest complaints about FF14 currently is that the community and world is almost empty and the actual zones feel too small or closed off. I started in Gridania and it's basically just a series of pathways with no open feel to it. I don't play a lot because I don't have a shell and I don't really feel the itch to play like I did in XI. I log on to do the leves and I think the leves are pretty cool actually for the common/casual player because you can log in a couple times a week and make a little progress with the leves for gil or exp. Sure, it's not going to get you to the end game in a hurry but I think it helps promote grouping. I still prefer a more traditional MMO with actual partying as a means of leveling. I'm over the quest grind to level cap game. I'm holding out for the miracle patch this month but I'm more concerned than hopeful that it will not be enough to keep me wanting to play.

[Yoli]

I don't really feel the itch to play like I did in XI.

That sounds about right. I log in and play still, but mostly just to do something rather than because I'm particularly excited to. Which is a pretty bad reason to play a game, and I'm not sure how long it will hold up.

Partying: XI had parties I enjoyed. Each job was really different (speaking of jobs, they felt more fluid too... and had much nicer animations. imo. which is sad). Everyone was looking for parties. 14 has parties I don't enjoy, when I'm even able to get them. Prior to the patch it was just too many people poking black efts mindlessly. I haven't had the chance to do it since the patch. Will try some smaller parties but... not counting on much. Surprised to keep running into people who don't even know 14 has a party search function.

Solo: It was hard to solo in XI. I did it on drg/whm for laughs, and to enjoy the misery. You can solo easily in 14, but that same misery isn't all that far removed. And it's not great when I have to run out to camp nine ivies to turn something in every 36 hours, if I didn't decide to do it for laughs out of some bad sense of humor in the first place. If you want games to solo, I can think of much better ones. WoW lets you solo, gives you different things to do solo (easy seek to jump into instances, easy ways to jump into PvP battle grounds, quests to do while grinding that are monotonous but - at least - different and have stories to them if you feel like reading. Heck, you can even go around trying to tick of things on the stupid achievement list if that's your thing, like :: hugging :: all the wildlife). I get that wow's an unfair comparison, since it's been out forever. But still, that game's combat seems to "flow" better too, compared to 14, if you have games where you're going to be heavily involved in tapping keys on your action bar.

14 really doesn't have much keeping me there right now, other than the fact that I'm there. Content's about to be added, and will continue to be added. But I'm really not all that interested in repeatedly killing a wolf in instanced leves to get tokens that trade in for gear - especially if the fights play out like harder versions of the ones that are currently out there when you /do/ get the chance to party. SE is good with stories, and I like what I've seen there, but you can't really keep people playing for 12-18 months or w/e with one single good story that takes little total time to go through (beyond the time involved in hitting level "X" to access the next bit of it, but hitting level "X" hasn't been all that enjoyable for me here).

And yeah. I'd second what's been said about grid. just being tunnels and stuff.

[Cureslime]

Solo combat is very fluid and enjoyable as a basic process now. If there were strategies involved in fighting anything and if the grind was less grindy at rank 20+ it would be enough to tide most people over til actual content is released in December. Mob AI is constant across all mob types pretty much so there's no thought involved at all. The actual solo grind is pretty pleasant up to rank 20. Then you inevitably reach a breaking point where you get tired and just quit altogether. Happens to most crafters too. And no that's not really a fix to the crafting economy <_<

I think that if the PC release was pushed back to the PS3 release date people would be singing a far different tune about the game. It's too late though. If they can clear house of all their retarded execs before FFXVIII they will have another chance in 8 years or so to compete again.

On a random complaint note: why the fuck are there so many bots and 15 man conjurer RMT packs? Who is buying enough gil to pay for their subs? To not have enough gil you'd either have to 1) never do leves ever or 2) throw away everything in your bag and crystal bag while grinding.

[miokomioko]

Who is buying enough gil to pay for their subs?

Probably not RMT-related, but there's someone on Palamecia that has a good 8~10 or so Retainers (all named Bomb-something-or-other) that are all Galkas and constantly stocked with the highest-rank weapons and tools. Always stocked and always the best stuff. Overpriced, yeah, but still.

Am I just late to the game and they allowed multiple retainer purchasing or does this person have a dozen characters and uses a middle-man or 2nd account to transfer all his shit between them and then distribute out to his retainers? Not to mention crafting the highest-rank shit constantly. Pretty gnarly.

[Crizto]

Probably not RMT-related, but there's someone on Palamecia that has a good 8~10 or so Retainers (all named Bomb-something-or-other) that are all Galkas and constantly stocked with the highest-rank weapons and tools. Always stocked and always the best stuff. Overpriced, yeah, but still.

Am I just late to the game and they allowed multiple retainer purchasing or does this person have a dozen characters and uses a middle-man or 2nd account to transfer all his shit between them and then distribute out to his retainers? Not to mention crafting the highest-rank shit constantly. Pretty gnarly.

Coolest guy ever right there

[sruon]

Probably not RMT-related, but there's someone on Palamecia that has a good 8~10 or so Retainers (all named Bomb-something-or-other) that are all Galkas and constantly stocked with the highest-rank weapons and tools. Always stocked and always the best stuff. Overpriced, yeah, but still.

Am I just late to the game and they allowed multiple retainer purchasing or does this person have a dozen characters and uses a middle-man or 2nd account to transfer all his shit between them and then distribute out to his retainers? Not to mention crafting the highest-rank shit constantly. Pretty gnarly.

You can create 8 characters on a single account and if you registred at the right time or buddy pass'd you have it free until late January, been using 3 retainers myself to stockpile my materials.

[miokomioko]

Last off-topic thing, but how do you transfer items between you and your other characters without either selling them dirt-cheap via retainer (risky) or asking someone to be the middle-man?

[sruon]

Buddy pass is probably the best way.

[Cureslime]

Yeah Air Bomb is the crafting king of Palamecia. I don't think a human could play that much...I bet it's multiple people who share that character. He made me my first million near launch by buying all my wind shards.

[CasualPlayer]

Air Bomb is rmt and so are all his xxxx Bomb family members.

Had a conversation one day with him in plain fluent English. A few days later he couldn't understand basic words and was asking me to use the translator. Who else but rmt could level up multiple crafts across chars the way he/they have?

Of course like already mentioned rmt doesn't matter in 14 anyway (as of yet).