Final Fantasy XIV General Discussion Thread

It doesn’t look like we have a general thread about FF14, just one about the beta signup.

The launch dates have been announced: September 30, 2010 for PC, with Collector’s Edition access on September 22. PS3 availability TBA. There is official information on the Japanese and North American FF14 sites:

http://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/#/about/game_info, if you can read it. :)

Edit: They’ve updated the NA site, too. The main page has been totally redesigned, but here’s the link to the NA availability and pricing information:

I have to admit that this is rather earlier than I expected to see this happen. The beta is reportedly only starting soon. And why, oh why does this have to launch so close to Civilization V? :P

I hope it’s global launch unlike FF11.

Every single video i’ve seen of the combat has been horrible, to the degree that square keeps on saying “no that is an early beta and we changed, we can change!” every time a new video comes out. Seriously square, how can you make combat that looks so much worse than the previous ff online and wow and expect it to compete? Not even the final fantasy brand is that strong!

I don’t think the suits running swkotor are shaking in their expensive shoes in the least.

Are there going to be actual North American Servers this time? Will the game actually be playable with a mouse and keyboard? Can I actually play in a resolution higher then like 1024x768 or whatever the hell the other one was coded for. What about alt tab did they fix that?

I really don’t have much faith in SE when it comes to their PC ports.

I did actually play ffxi with mouse/keyboard, but yes, it was CLEARLY designed to be played with a gamepad and not that much work had been spent on making it work WELL with mouse/keyboard.

I actually tried to play it again a while ago after noticing it had gone freemium (or maybe it was a trial, the effect was the same) and the control system was just REALLY hard to get in to again after playing modern mmorpgs. Square sometimes likes to be unique for the sole sense of being unique, not because it is an actual improvement. The control system is one of those times.

I played it with a M/KB for about a week before I bought a PS2 USB adapter and it was much more enjoyable.

It is going to be a global launch (JP, NA, EU)… unless you only have a PS3 and are left out in the cold until… whenever. A lot of people in that situation are not feeling very happy right now, judging by the reaction on places like Zam.com and NeoGAF.

I do not expect that there will be separate North American servers, but I’m only voicing a hunch.

As for resolution, there is an official benchmark application using the game’s graphics engine that you can download and run. It offers a choice of two test resolutions: 1280x720 and 1920x1080. Whether the game client will ultimately offer other resolutions, I don’t know at this point.

Keeping my fingers crossed both for this being good and for it having a 360 release, but that release date is kind of a surprise… a friend of mine is in the beta, and from what little I’ve heard from him, it sure didn’t sound like it was three months from releasing.

SE already said they can’t resolve issue with microsoft, so they don’t have any plans to release a 360 version.

Well that blows. I guess I might as well officially stop caring, then.

I really adore Final Fantasy games, so I want this to be good, but after trying and failing to play XI, I’m very dubious.

Well, I’ve been playing FFXI since shortly after NA launch, so I’m hardly an objective advisor in this case. :) Everything I’ve read about FF14 indicates that S-E is trying to target a variety of play styles, including casual and solo players, but ranging all the way up to large groups.

I hate almost every single-player FF and I liked FFXI, so I’d say there’s not necessarily much of a correlation there.

Well, if they implemented something along the general lines of FFXI with more quests and less stringent combat gameplay that lets people play with fewer than 6 perfectly skilled players (they promised the latter anyway), I’d be pretty happy.

FFXI didn’t have great graphics when it came out; but they were good enough for me. The economy was beautifully designed with crafting strongly integrated in a superior manner to any other game I know of. The item and character development systems were fine.

The real problem was the punitive grind of the gameplay. After a certain low level, you really couldn’t progress without being in the perfect group killing the same monster over and over again hundreds of times, hoping that some idiot didn’t train something on you or you’d lose 8 hours of work in a single death.

Then too, they had those abominable long-timer rare spawns that could only be camped by Japanese Rangers – Rangers because they had the special detection ability, and Japanese because of faster response from the server.

That bad stuff was all evidence of real old-school design, and if they’ve seriously learned from it and moved on, that’s fine. If they’re only making a token gesture to less hard-core players and are really trying to appeal to the same people who hit the cap in the first game, then I’m afraid I won’t be playing.

Trying to target is one thing, successfully reaching is another. Based on SE’s track record of missing goals in FFXI and never fessing up to and correcting those missteps, the accessibility of FFXIV definitely remains to be seen.

That almost goes without saying. My #2 job is Summoner, which has been busted since it first appeared (and is still busted, despite occasional attempts to make it better.) And I don’t mean that it’s overpowered. I’ve pretty much given up on it. :-/

That said, the general accessibility of FFXI itself has improved over the years (though not radically), so perhaps there is cause for cautious optimism.

Semantics and all that, but the tests that have occurred thus far have been for the alpha (which is now concluded); there are a great deal of changes being made for the beta and I don’t believe the next test session has been announced yet.

FFXI is freemium now i believe. I tried it out recently. The (mouse/kb) controls are still half assed and way different than every other mmorpg (not just modern ones) for no obvious gain.

I was a red mage, but never maxed out. Was a fun game shitty controls aside. Just makes you wander why they made the combat look so much worse than the previous game. I personally thought ffxi looked quite good on release, although obviously graphics have advanced a lot since then…

one of the big annoyances was how rampant gold farmers destroyed the economies and rare spawns. Many rare monsters spawned in static locations and every single one of them that was worth a damn was camped 24/7 by fold farmers just sitting there for month after release.

anyway, if anyone still doesn’t know, there are about 5-6 videos floating about of ff14 gameplay. If you’re a fan, might be best not to watch them and instead have faith.

FFXI still has a monthly fee and, in addition, has been selling miniature expansions for $10 a pop (think of them like EQ2’s adventure packs, though not nearly as content-rich unfortunately).

I’d ignore the videos too; I believe combat is one of the big things getting overhauled between alpha and beta, though I’m not sure it will necessarily be good even with the changes. Given how SE has treated FFXI lately I’m not sure I have it in me to play another one of their MMOs, but maybe they’ll do better by their customers for XIV.

Oh ok. That’s encouraging, because I thought it was a beta and when he described it to me I immediately thought that it sounded more like an alpha build.