Final Fantasy XIV BETA

[Peveus]

Oh yeah the reason I never came back to post impressions is because I think this games sucks.

And I'm a big RPG and long time Final Fantasy fan.

Apart from the visuals which are great, this game is terrible in every way. Slow, clunky everything. Yuck!
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Currently Playing: Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)

[shadeslayer]

@ittekimasu: I personally find the pad to be a lot easier for moving around and controlling the camera, but controlling actions is a bit annoying.

Mind you I've only played about 2hrs

@cyph: It's good, but best of luck getting it running on ati cards, it's only worked at 2 of the 4 machines i've tried it on.
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[Cyph]

Impressions time.
Firstly, the game ran fine on my computer; E8500 running at 3.16Ghz, 4 Gbs and a Radeon HD 5850. Performance wise the game ran exactly the same at 2560x1440 with 2x AA as it did in 1900x1200 with no AA; somewhat smooth, probably a better word would be consistent, with some tearing and framerate hiccups along the way. Cosmetically the game is quite attractive, however, I did expect more framerate wise considering the draw distance and lack of on screen activity, the world seems fairly stagnant. All in all, the visuals are a thumbs up.

Likewise with the sound effects and music. The usual sword and magic sound effects but they sound nice and are fitting. The music is also what you come to expect from a Final Fantasy/JRPG 'AAA" release, it's good. I was disappointed that the initial cutscene in the game has voice acting but the rest of the game did not.

The first experience with the game is sure to impressive, a robust character creation wizard and introduction with all the pretty graphics and sounds will instantly win your heart. Well, it did mine. For the first one hour, I was sold - pre-order was becoming a sure thing. Until... I started to see through the polish.

The much talked about UI is cumbersome and clunky. Windows and menus seem to have a delay when opened and closed and the mouse cursor is laggy and stuttery. The simple process of opening your inventory or journal can take a couple to a few mouse clicks, which doesn't sound bad until you realise the process is frustrating due to the aforementioned.
The game lacks any useful guild or tutorial; I felt that I was wandering aimlessly with no goal or purpose. The 'main' storyline doesn't seem to exist, I was unable to feel connected with this world as the game gives no explanation to the world or why the player should even care. Once again, I felt lost and aimless. I also had difficulty identifying merchants and the sort or what they would be selling. I thought something so integral and paramount would be a given in such a game.
The combat mechanisms seemed like much of the same MMO staple but the character customisation spices it up. You can level any class, providing you have the appropriate weapon equipped for that class, as well as being able to mix up class skills in your action bar. It reminded me of Guild Wars but having access to any class, not just two. Unfortunately, once again, after a few hours, the combat also grew monotonous.
I experienced some strange bugs (a quest involving emotes where the NPCs wouldn't perform the emotes), text issues (i.e. Japanese text being displayed instead of English, typos, etc) and the ALT-TAB crash bug (simply not acceptable in my book). Apart from the last issue, there was nothing game breaking but it did take away from the experience.
But I think the thing that really disappointed me is that the game didn't feel like an MMO; there was no social interaction. Other players would run by and go along their business, but it felt like there was no reason to group with anyone nor was it encouraged. I would try sparking up a conversation but people just went on their way. Worse yet is that quests are instance, further encouraging people to solo. If I wanted a single player game I would play one but what I wanted, or was expecting from FFXIV, was a MMO with social interactions. I felt nothing of the sort.

FFXIV has the trappings to be a good game, even a great game, if Square can figure out how to make it fun.

[mantra79]

I really wanted to like this, i'm afried i agree with Peveus it is terrible. The fact that a mmo on a pc is better played with a gamepad is just fail, poor social interaction on an mmo double fail. One good thing about the open beta was it saved me from buying the game bring on Guild Wars 2.
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PSN: cjdavis
360: mantra79
Steam: mantra79

[Pagan's Mind]

I completely agree with a lot of what Cyph said. I played the beta for about 10 or so hours and not once would anyone talk to me or even agree to party up.

[Cyph]

I'm not purposely trying to drive this game into the ground, but I feel this guy has it spot on as well;
http://babo-monkey.blogspot.com/2010/09/final-fantasy-xiv-open-beta-impressions.html

[Marka]

[Cyph]

Maybe it's a condition of later MMOs but I never had a problem sparking up conversation or groups in multiplayer centric MMos (such as EQ, DAOC).

[shadeslayer]

I pretty much agree with all of this. Especially the lack of direction. I ended up wondering just killing things with my hardcore lag (it takes 5secs to switch from active to passive, and back again).

EDIT: So Suming up I think i wasted part of my life and, my download quota.
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[Cyph]

Yeh, I had the same issue shadeslayer.

It's a shame really as I wanted to enjoy this game

[Dradknight]

Hmm i might wait a couple weeks to see how this pans out, i'm not in the beta, but some things you guys are saying don't sound very good.