Final Fantasy XIV General Discussion Thread

How do the graphics compare to Aion? Aion looked great and ran well on average machines. I suppose the combat is nothing like the fast paced Aion combat?

I got a key as well. Now to wait for the client to download at 819b/s. Note the lack of a k or m before the b.

That’s 819b/s more than I’m getting. Worst open beta ever.

let’s see

my first hour of beta impression.

  1. took me 30 minutes to find camp bentbranch where I have to go for my first tutorial quest, no marker, doesn’t show up on map unless you enter the right zone.

  2. took me another 15 minutes to figure out how to use the glowing crystal.

  3. took me 5 minutes to finish the first guildleave quest, YEAH profit…

  4. game crash and I gave up after trying to patch for 10 minutes.

Control pretty much sucks. after you kill something, the game auto loot for you, but the loot doesn’t actually go into your inventory, it’s under a loot button under your inventory menu, so in order to loot something, after a kill, you have to manually open your inventory(I mean you click on this button on bottom right corner, then click on inventory in a list of menu, I can’t find the hotkey for inventory) click on loot, click on the item, click on yes. haven’t found any keyboard shortcut to open the bag yet.

basically this game is made for console.

I found the solution. Go into your Documents/My Games/Final blah blah/whatever folder and look for the actual torrent files and then use a competent torrent client to download them.

I’m not that far yet. I’m still in the tutorial as I had to run out. But right upon stepping into the boat, I thought the controls and I wouldn’t get along. So I plugged in my 360 gamepad and used the config software to enable it.

I now have it roughly as follows:

  • Left pad = movement
  • Right pad = camera
  • D-Pad = navigate menu options (and about everything you access is a menu, like in the single player FF games) or cycle through targets (up to target myself)
  • Left and Right shoulder buttons = Spell bar 1 and 2
  • Y, B, A, X, Back, start = the usual console selection of interact, cancel, options, mode, map, …

And once you enable that and re-enter the tutorial, the game is suddenly much more familiar. Like playing a FF character on the console.

Not sure that’s what you want for a MMO. And I think this is going to become aggravating when I want to chat as I play (will have to drop the pad). But it’s certainly more comforting that the keyboard and mouse option.

So yeah. It does feel like Square Enix is still strongly targetting console ergonomics.

Wendelius

Not sure that’s what you want for a MMO.

I want a MMO that’s available for PC to implement UI that actually support mouse and keyboard.

it’s as if the people over at SE never heard of right mouse button…

is it really too much to ask for either B or I to be the inventory hotkey, and when you right click on a body you either get to loot corpse or a loot menu pop up.

Or better yet when you right click on an interactive item, default is interact instead have a tiny popup on top of my screen where I have to click on it then it opens the "big menu of everythingness"™, and then select one of the options in there.

Oh oh, how about hardware mouse support, which games doesn’t support hardware mouse now??

Totally agree. I just can’t play with what they think of as a keyboard + mouse UI. It’s too clunky and non standard for that.

But gosh isn’t that intro scene on the deck of the boat pretty? Yeah for in-game cut scenes featuring your high detail character. That’s about the best thing I have to say about the game so far.

Now, I’m about to go take my first quest. Let’s see if it gets better or worse from here.

Wendelius

[ol]
[li]Downloaded installer[/li][li]setup completed fine[/li][li]executed ffxivboot.exe[/li][li]Program has stopped working (ie it crashes)[/li][li]Saw it was a decently common problem from googling and was unable to find people who knew a solution[/li][li]realized why the beta was delayed[/li][/ol]

At least it didn’t make me download 12gb first. I will try updating my video card drivers later, but still leaves a bad taste in my mouth and doesn’t give me a ton of confidence.

FYI, on the loot. After combat it does go in that other bag, but if you ignore that and are solo it will eventually time-out and drop into your regular inventory. (I spent the first 2 days in beta 3 wondering why there was “severe loot lag” - not my brightest moment). In a group I assume that allows you to distribute loot to party members. Why they inflict it on you solo (???) …

If your beta acct is active you can log into the beta boards:
https://dev-na.ffxiv.com/
Read-only now. But on the left side is a panel labeled “Menu” and the fourth item down is “controls”, that is default.

New for Open Beta (this wasn’t in B3 so I haven’t played with it yet) if you go to the main menu (keypad-minus) the second from the bottom is “Configuration” open that up. One button is labeled “Keyboard Settings” - theoretically you can customize away.

I got a key this AM, but haven’t had time to play much. Though UI lag (esp. using a retainer to store items) is sooooo much better than closed beta.

I’m waiting for everyone to hit the “I’m out of leve quests.” and then the “I have to wait 2 days to get more?!?” stage. That should be interesting.

New for Open Beta (this wasn’t in B3 so I haven’t played with it yet) if you go to the main menu (keypad-minus) the second from the bottom is “Configuration” open that up. One button is labeled “Keyboard Settings” - theoretically you can customize away.

they locked it for beta, no keybinding, right now lag is horrible, I was grouping with one of my friend doing 5 star guildleave, it takes 4 seconds to take out a weapon, combat take forever because of the lag.

Why does the fucking client downloader saturate my dual core CPU? Thanks for the torrent tip at least…

because of the cool music, seriously whomever designed some of system need to get a clue.

if you going for the cheap way IE torrent update, make sure it’s a lightweight one without a music player build in.

I get the feeling the downloader is a crappy torrent client literally built in to the game’s 3D engine. And now that I’m using utorrent I can see the official tracker refuses to accept any connections from me. All the peers I can see are through DHT.

Still being refused a key here, guess I missed the window.

Maybe is unintended, his server a outdated bittorrent too. Are you using encripted bt?

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity,

I have had the area around the very first quest hub crash my game twice now. There are so many people if I run into the area quickly my card just barfs when it starts to draw them all.

Stress Test: check.

Bummer that the keyboard config is still not configurable yet.

I want to like this game but it is determined to frustrate the hell out of me. I assume the manual will be friggin’ huge because the game seems to assume that you’ve learned to play it somewhere else. This link helped quite a bit when I was just getting started and so did the FFXIV forums. Maybe I’m a lot dumber than I think I am. I mean I’m sure I’m at least a little dumber than I think I am but this game makes me feel like an idiot.

I made a cat girl archer in the tree town and ran through the intro quest line. The story stuff was pretty cool, I did like how they put you right into the story from the beginning. There were some problems going from one quest to the next where I couldn’t find the markers on my map or didn’t realize that I was supposed to be looking at a different map but I did some exploring and found my way without too much trouble. Unfortunately once the intro quest line ends things just kind of stop and you’re left standing in the inn thinking “Uh, ok, what happens now?”

As far as I can tell, the answer is “you go grind”. I’m not sure when the next quest chain starts up (I’d love to know if anyone here has got that far) but in the meantime it seems like the only other solo content is the bi-daily “guildleves”. I really don’t know why but that word annoys the shit out of me. Guildleves seem to be quests of the ‘kill x somethings’ variety with a timer on them. Rewards seem to be money and an item, I’m not sure if there is an additional xp reward for quests or if it’s just the xp from whatever you kill. I think you can do 8 of them every 2 days if you’re just playing solo, you can do more if you group up.

I suppose at this point I could put up with some grind but it’s just a very bad sign if I’m grinding at level 5. I could probably grind to level 8 or so but based on the xp curve posted at FFXIV if I was say level 25 and needed to grind to level 28 to get a new quest, well, that is going to be one long ass grind. Boo.

Let’s see, other stuff for absolute noobies. Before you fire up the game for the first time check the install directory and look for the config program. Run that first if you want to set the game to full screen mode. It defaults to windowed. You also want to use that program to set up a controller. I hear you can plug in a PS3 controller but I actually dug up my old PS2 to USB adapter and used that. As other people have mentioned it’s easier to play this with kbm than FFXI was but it still sucks. You want a controller.

So is the assumption that the more advanced classes won’t be available until an expansion? I guess that’s what happened with FFXI but since the expansion was out when it was released in NA it didn’t feel that way.

I think I could deal with the awkward combat if I understood two things. First of all, sometimes I’ll start shooting at an enemy and it just sits there until it’s half dead and only then does it run up and start attacking me. That’s a bug, right? I mean it’s great for my archer and all but it seems weird. Secondly, I wish there was some kind of on screen indicator for the global cooldown. I have no idea how long I’m supposed to wait before trying another attack so I end up just spamming the button until it takes. Also it’s hard to tell if it even did take because you get no feedback on that for several seconds. So that blows.

Also, why are there crafting classes in the character creation menu? That seems weird. Are they assuming you will make alts that just craft? I can still craft and fish with my fighter, right? Or is it somehow gimpy to do that and I’m expected to make a character just for crafts?

Oh one other question, is it possible to join any of the in game guilds besides the adventurer’s guild? I went to the archer’s guild and they told me to decide if I want to join or not but I didn’t see anywhere to actually join. I was hoping I could join and maybe there’d be some guild quests to do. Is there a level requirement before you can join?

I’m told another part of the quest chain opens up when you have a L10 job. Not sure. Also, SE has said they have most of the storyline turned off for beta.

I’m wondering the same thing on guilds. There were no guild-based quests in beta 3. The benefit of the guild location seem to be the NPC that sell the extra abilities bought with “guild marks”, another level reward in addition to coin and equipment you start getting on some later leves. It can matter what weapon you have equipped when asking for regular leves that give guild mark rewards. I was hoping they’d offer guild-based leve’s rewarding guild marks (seems like that would make sense) in open beta. Not high enough to know if it opens at say, 10. But right now I see no reason to start in the city of your main class’s guild, you won’t have enough marks to buy an ability until in your teens, and other players report travel to other towns is not too hard. Of course, mob spawns may change in release. /shrug

On leve’s if you activate “Guardian’s Favor” you get a very large boost to class exp gained and temporary boost in class effectiveness for the kills/harvests done as part of the leve. You can run through that though if you are sharing leves, it should replenish over time.

Life after Leve’s, mmm yes. There are also dynamic kill quests given at regular intervals by an NPC specific to each camp. Name should be “<Camp Name> BattleWarden”. When they are in camp they offer a kill quest, join, then follow them to a spot and kill the spawns with others.

I find this fansite http://www.ffxivcore.com/ fairly helpful too. Though your starter link was great for beta 3 and a quick start.