FATE’s are where the real xp is, if you want to level fast / other classes.
I keep looking at this and wondering. Is this work picking up? I never get much into MMO titles, except WOW a few years back, and I did enjoy Guild Wars 2 (for about 30-something levels), and I do really like Final Fantasy (well, not so much 13, but I like the franchise, mostly).
How is the combat? Character progression? Single player content? What are some of the games strengths and some weaknesses new players should be aware of?
Just musing aloud…
Strength:
- nice graphics
- “Cute” art style (http://i.imgur.com/xHshzFD.jpg)
- Quite a long storyline to follow, but I suppose some of the quests may take some “effort” to get into unless you are a FF Fan.
- unlocking character features through storyline
- “FATES” or Public Quests as they are called in other games
- “Open” tagging so you get contribution and loot even if someone else attacked first
- Scaling of char level to match FATE / Dungeon Level
- User Interface can be reorganized
- Slowly opening up with more abilities/etc… to let you learn them at a leisurely phase
- Being able to have every class/trade on a single character
- Quite good image quality on armor pieces. A lot of dye options for customization
Weakness:
- No LOTRO/RIFT style “Wardrobe” feature that lets you pick a “Display” equipment and a “Stat” equipment independent of each other
- “Cute” art Style (http://i.imgur.com/xHshzFD.jpg)
- Scaling of Level in Dungeons means you can not ‘power’ someone through the content
- “FATE” groups are not automatic
- Storyline forces you to do dungeons to continue.
- Unlocking “bank” and “Mount” requires you to follow through alot of storyline content (I am 23 now and still haven’t gotten my mount that would’ve been available at level 20 due to not doing the storyline)
- Not enough UI Modifications possible, Rescale individual components, Alpha, Addons, etc
- The slow opening might be an issue if you want to create an alt
- Multiclassing the same character does not mean you get access to more quests, so you will at some point have to ‘grind’ FATE/Dungeons to level
And a lot more I am sure, but I am only level 23/11/10/8/5 on my main char. :)
That’s a lot of great info there, thanks a ton! It’s on my list of games I want to check out before the deluge of big titles hits in early 2014, and it seems from your list of strengths like something I might enjoy enough to get $40 worth out of it.
This link shows the “Main Storyline” and how it branches:
http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Category:Main_Scenario_Quest
Just a note that in the HUD Layout mode, Ctrl-Home cycles the currently-selected element through available preset sizes. This isn’t as flexible as arbitrary scaling, but you can at least have larger or smaller hotbars, for example, to better suit your display resolution. Also, pressing Shift after beginning to drag an UI element causes it to the snap to the grid. And I think Ctrl activates a mode where elements snap to the edges of other elements. There’s been a Reddit or two about this, like this one:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1n43n4/fyi_in_hud_layout_after_grabbing_the_object_you/
Ah, cheers. Didn’t know that. :)
So. Got the level 20 Storyline quest now and ran into a pretty idiotic design choice Square Enix made.
I previously stated, and others have said, that there are forced grouping quests to advance your storyline. Much like how a lot of the books in LOTRO were forced groups until they changed the quest design.
I now find myself in a cave with another tank and a healer. The other guys have waited for 15 minutes for DPS to join so they could advance their quest (yes, weird). So we figure, I’ll join them and we’ll only need 1 more.
Except for the wonderous fact that the game does not allow me to group with another tank character - even though I would probably do enough DPS to clear the dungeon with them.
So – No mount for me until I can find a group to do a instance, and no quest advancement either…
Fantastic.
Edit: Oh yes, there is a pool of water inside this cave, but if I switch to fisherman to fish it while waiting for a dungeon group, it will fail as I have the wrong class ‘equipped’ compared to what I ‘queued’ for.
I expected that ‘eastern style’ mmos would be a ‘tad’ different to how they do it in the west – but this is just idiotic.
Waited 40 minutes until a healer appeared — then a dps declined so back in queue again.
There is a lot of bad design choices and the flaws become more apparent as you level up.
Was the group you’re trying to join on your local server? I believe you should be able to make any kind of random party you want, just not through duty finder where it will restrict jobs and classes to their roles.
It was a storyline dungeon that opened up for this quest: http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Lord_of_the_Inferno
Took 55 minutes of waiting til I got a group.
Edit: At least Turbine wisened up with their “6 man” Epic Quest Group choices for the main book storyline (and moved them to Epilogue quests) so you do them solo if you couldn’t find a group and at least continue with your “Epic Journey”.
Ah, okay I remember that. Yea, that was stupid since I thought you couldn’t leave the cave or do anything. There is a spot there where you can “escape” the cave and go about doing other stuff instead of just waiting in there doing nothing. I didn’t know about it till a friend told me cause I was pretty annoyed since I was seemingly stuck unable to do anything but wait.
Also when you switch classes while queue for a dungeon, you will still be queued as the class you were on. You’ll need to switch back to that class to be able to enter the dungeon. Like you can queue for that dungeon as a Lancer. Switch to fisherman and fish while waiting. When it says the dungeon is ready, you have to switch your gear back to Lancer and it will let you in. I personally find that kind of annoying since when I had my AF, I wanted to fish as a badass Bard as that is part of my character, a fisherman bard guy. So pretty much when I fished, I just fished naked since I didn’t care to look like a poor broke fisherman.
Anyways, in your character menu there is a way to make equipment sets for these situations. Where you can assign your current gear you’re wearing as a set and then switch weapons and other armor and make that a new set. So you can then queue up as one class, hit a button to switch to another class to level that up while waiting in queue. When that pops up, you go back to that menu and hit the button to switch to the class you were queue as and enter. So you don’t have to bother reequipping every item manually.
Also, unless I’m forgetting, you could just teleport out of that cave, and sign up for that quest anytime you feel through the duty finder.
I keep reading this thread as a Fantasy General thread…
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I figured it might have been possible to teleport outside, but didn’t want to risk it. The other tanks who were idling there (3, and 2 dps, but no healers) didn’t teleport out either.
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The one time I was in another ‘spec’ than the one I queued for, and the dungeon popped, it immediately got cancelled and I was informed I was in the wrong spec, so haven’t tried it since. But I guess I can retry it.
Purchased this for 15 bucks on an Amazon sale yesterday. Trying to create a Square-Enix account and the confirmation e-mail has yet arrive, ten hours and multiple attempts later. Everything on my end is fine…and of course I can’t engage support without a Square-Enix account. Other than not playing I’m really enjoying the game.
Edit: Seconds after posting this, it arrived. Thanks Qt3!
:-) Enjoy.
I think the “current” event is still ongoing, so maybe I can hit 26 tonight and get the second phase done. Unfortunately had to be 40-something to do all 4 phases, which sucks a bit, I suppose.
Enjoy the game. It has a lot of nice features, although I am starting to feel some fatigue from the travel time. I think they game could really have used some Arena PVP available from level 1 as an alternate means of leveling up, a bit like how Warhammer was (awesome).
Is anyone giving the PS4 beta a try this week? I’ve read that they put a lot of work into the remote play ui… Think I will give it a go. I also just read you can import your pc/ps3 characters into the beta.
I think I’m going to mess around with this on PS4 a little here and there. Anyone playing it on PS4?
I played the demo on PS4, and it was solid… I’m having trouble getting into MMO’s lately, but out of the ones I’ve piddled with I thought FFXIV was the most fun. Also, if you have a Vita you are going to like the remote play. During the demo, the only issue I had was the extremely small font size, which I am assuming was fixed.
I mostly got this because of the remote play, so I’m pretty interested in how it works.