Doh, I actually meant to link the FFXIV Core forum and instead linked the one from FFXIV Origin that was less helpful. Thanks.
Well here’s a tip: don’t let the game crash during leves or you can’t finish them when you log back in and you don’t get to start them again for two days :( Looks like there is a server downtime until 2PM EST but once it’s back up I might try the remaining leve with a difficulty of 2 or 3. The couple that I did at one star difficulty were really easy, I was one shotting quest mobs.
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.
that’s the lag. often time monster will be down to 0 health and refuse to die.
Wow, this game is TERRIBLE for new players. I have NO idea what to do when a cut scene ends, who I need to talk to, where I need to go. Now I’m told to head out to “Black Brush Camp” but it’s not on the map (or it’s not on the part of the map I can see, and I can’t seem to scroll the map around at all) and I have no idea how to get there.
I’ve been playing for almost an hour and outside of a fight after a cut scene, I’ve not been able to actually DO anything. Frustrating. It’s like they decided to go the OPPOSITE route WoW did and make a game that’s just STUBORNLY obtuse.
You can scroll the map with IJKL, someone had to tell me too.
NOT that it will help you getting to that first camp, it is on another map. They did put it on your map - of that area - which you can’t see. You have to exit the town via the gate out which shows with an arrow pointing north off the map in a location somewhat north of the starting pub. That camp us the Uldah starter one. Oh and you can’t go straight out the gate, the big door there is closed. You have to take a side passage to the outer ring on the map then go east or west to the gate. Then turn and exit out the gate. It will be a desert area. Zoning is seamless there so you can pull up the new map once you stand on desert outside.
The gate name was mentioned in the quest text, but again, the map text is obtuse (good word). That is English. It looks like someone wrote it in English with a quickly scrawled print, a toddler came a long and smudged it, then an artist rendered the smudges in calligraphic style as a font. Once you know what the name is, you can kinda see it in the font on the map.
So now, if you find the gate, and zone out, you can scroll the map and see the camp was marked.
Its level of accessibility is comparable to MUDs from the early 90s.
I did end up finding it eventually. Here is what I wrote elsewhere:
It’s a very interesting game, though it’s also VERY confusing. Not much info is given to new players until you get to the adventure guild, and it takes some cut scenes and stuff before that happens. Once I got there, I was told where to go next, but not HOW to get there. I just picked a direction and started walking and got lucky, to be honest. Combat is confusing, I seem to have to click and hit enter (a combination of those two, not kidding) to get my Scourge spell to go off, and I have no idea what I’m doing once I’m in a battle. There is a lot of systems here, from setting up shop to sell your wares you’ve found/created to swapping classes, and there is a LOT of ground to cover. The adventure guild has some in-game information on how to do all this, but I don’t feel like dealing with the lag right now, so I’ll try again later.
It’s a really pretty game though, but the servers are PACKED and the lag is pretty noticeable.
Wow, this sounds like Final Fantasy XI all over again. No map markers, not being told where to go, etc. FFXI was all just a grind, you didn’t get xp from any quests, except the Eco-Warrior and a few like that. It sounds like this is different and you do receive quests and xp? Also has anybody group together with other players and how has that gone?
I had a chance to play a bit finally. It’s really bad. Perhaps it would work better with a gamepad but I can’t seem to find my wireless adapter for the 360 controller and apparently you can’t buy them standalone anymore.
Or use a gamepad and then simply use one of the sticks to scroll around.
Obtuse is definitely the word I’d use to describe the game. Along with “stubbornly unhelpful”. The combination of the 2 makes one wish for some WoW accessibility and hand holding.
I played last night with a standard 360 controller, need to bind your own keys on the controller, but there isn’t enough key on 360 for all the keybindings.
it plays better than k+m, but doesn’t really help the gameplay/lag much.
The most frustrating thing about the mouse is that it’s not responsive at all. If I move the mouse, and the cursor takes a moment or two to follow, there is something horribly wrong.
Inaccessibly bad. Really makes you wonder when was the last time the dev team sat someone completely unfamiliar with the game and watched them play the first 30 minutes.
I’m trying to stick with it since after level 10 in FFXI is when the game actually got interesting, but so far I’ve seen no indication that this is the case here. It’s like nothing was learned from FFXI in terms of interface, and that the combat got worse.
And this is excluding the half-assed attempt at the patching client.
The thing I find most amusing is pretty much what you mentioned: the game’s UI practically seems to be designed to get in your way as much as possible, and yet they’re trying to target a more casual audience. Good luck with that!
(sorry if I come across as particularly hateful right now, just had a friendly argument about the game with a friend earlier)
Today’s patch actually did make combat a little more responsive so I’m hoping the input lag will get a lot better before launch. It kind of has to, right?
I was harvesting trees tonight and got up to rank 4 in botany. It’s torturous. You walk up to a tree and hit the logging button. I swear it’s like 20 seconds later the character pulls out an axe and the game tells me I’m about ready to harvest. Then there’s this little mini game where you pick a height and an angle to chop at and then you wait about ten seconds before they actually do the chopping and then you wait another five seconds to see the result.
The mini game is fine. I mean, whatever, it’s not the best mini game ever. If it just moved at a normal pace and reacted when I hit the buttons I think I’d be ok with it, though. It’s kind of how I feel about the whole game.
The world is cool, the characters and their gear look great and I was actually enjoying the story quest stuff while it lasted. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone who hadn’t played FFXI a lot but if they can clear up the input lag, keep the game soloable till the level cap for all classes and provide a decent amount of quest content I would probably buy it. Yeah it’s grindy and you basically need help from web forums to understand even simple things but I’d probably put up with a dumb learning curve if I felt like I could make progress at a decent rate on my own. That’s a lot of ifs, though.
I don’t remember what all the button numbers mean, but here are my mappings:
I don’t play enough on my console to effortlessly devise a standards control scheme but it seems reasonable enough and I don’t see any button repetition. So all the controls fit for me.
Thinking about it, I think “View status Effects” might be the right trigger. One or the other anyway. Haven’t played enough to memorise them all yet.
If anyone has more effective mappings to suggest, I’d be happy to hear about them.
