"Oh btw, FFXIV Online in 2010"

[Ard]

FFXIVcore claims to have confirmed it.

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/10311-sharing-beta-experience-and-ss-is-ok-open-beta-soon/

Probably a post about it in the actual beta forums as well, but that's something I can't see personally.  Given that fileplanet is giving away keys now, it's probably true though.

That said, spill it.  I need a source of info on the game from someone I actually trust.  Don't make me start shaking my tiny impotent fist at those of you who have actually seen the game.

[Shatter]

Id like to hear more about the following:

1)  Forced grouping still or ok to solo?  Are there penalties for soloing vs grouping like shittier / slower xp gain?
2)  Controls and UI.  Can you now play with standard keyboard/mouse controls like any other typical MMO setup?
3)  Graphics / FPS?  Good performance or still sucky?
4)  Grind?  Does any part of the game feel grindy? 
5)  Combat speed, how improved is it?

[Zetor]

Hm, this post isn't too conclusive. It says it's ok to post screenshots, but I didn't find any information about whether it's ok to post about impressions / etc.

Anyway, once that's confirmed I'll spill some beans too!

[Ard]

I can answer a couple of those Shatter, based on what I've read elsewhere.  I'm not in the beta, so grain of salt and all that.

1)  Grouping is encouraged by the leve system, since you get more xp from those than grinding, but can only pull a certain number of them yourself every two days.  You can however share in someone else's and get rewards that way.

2) The UI isn't final from everything I've seen.  It looks like only the main menu revamp made it into the current beta phase.

1/4)  Xp is pretty clearly accelerated right now, so you probably won't see the true rate until launch.  This might affect if people group or solo also and change how things are happening in the beta right now.  Also, the vast majority of the game content, like 90% of it I think is what Square said, isn't in the beta, so you're stuck doing what is.

5)  I've read that it's significantly faster than FF11 but slower than WoW, at least for button spam.  Not sure on actual length of combat.

[Cadaverine]

Combat is somewhat slow, but I didn't find it to be that bad.  More of a function of not having that many abilities to begin with than anything.  Might not appeal to bunny-hopping spastics, though.

I never made it all that far level wise, as the amount of lag in the starter area got on my nerves.  When it wasn't lagging, however, it ran smoothly on my pc(AMD 64X2 4800, 4 gigs ram, GeForce 8800 GTS 512).  The environments are really well done.  Character models are standard FF fare

The leve system is a bit annoying, but it has some interesting touches.  You get leves from the leve merchant for whatever quest hub.  You then go to said hub, and activate the leve(s).  As I understand it, the leve then creates a phase, or instance, just for you, or your party.  For example, one of your first leves is to kill 10 rats.  Once you activate the leve, you have 30 minutes, or whatever, to kill said rats.  Only you, or your party, can see those rats, though.  Your specific rats will have a red name, where the regular rats in the area have white names.  Killing regular rats didn't advance the kill count, iirc.  If you get disconnected, the leve fails.  At least it used to.  They may have changed that, as well as the refresh time on leves, which was like 8 hours.  There are different difficulty levels associated with leves, from solo to small group, group, raid, whatever.  I stuck with solo leves, but on the forums, some people said they could solo the small group/group leves.  There's also some sort of deal where you can delete completed leves, and that will increase the reward for the new leve you're taking.  It didn't make much sense to me, and when I tried doing it, I didn't see any difference in the reward on the new leve, so who knows.  There's a lot of other stuff surrounding leves, like gaining faction with certain groups, buffs you can get from your patron deity, and whatnot.

I didn't do any grouping, so I don't know if the xp gets split between the party, or everyone gets the same amount.

The UI, when last I played, wasn't very good with a keyboard and mouse.  It's workable, but very awkward.  Might be better after remapping the keys, which I was admittedly to lazy to do.  Get a game pad, and use vent to talk to your friends.

[Rendakor]

The leves are now on a 48 hour cooldown. And as of Beta 2 (not sure if they fixed it with this latest round) you couldn't rebind keys at all.

[Zetor]

I mostly agree with what has been said so far; I have no previous FF11 experience, so I was playing 'in a vacuum', sorta. As a preface, I didn't really get too far past the newbie quests due to performance, see below.

Performance was bad, especially where multi-level buildings were involved. My PC is not top-of-the-line and it's due for an upgrade soon (AMD x2 3800, 4 gig ram, radeon 4850hd), but it runs everything else well, at relatively-high quality settings even.... except for FF14, where it was chugging very badly even in the tutorial area. This and the interface were the biggest drawbacks for me; in fact, I didn't play too much past the newbie area since the game was running at ~1 fps or less a lot of the time. UI was... weak and not configurable (not just keybinding, but also the entire menu/etc setup screamed 'console', it was clunky as heck), but I haven't played during the 3rd beta phase so I don't know how they improved it (if they did).

Getting through the tutorial was more involved than "talk to 4 dudes with exclamation mark above their heads conveniently located near the quest area, kill 10 rats, return", but it was also more annoying in places. I liked the emote-fight with one of the questgivers. :p

The very first non-tutorial quest had me escort a NPC which was kind of odd: the escort path was overlaid a normal zone, but it was in its own instance; I also had to stay relatively close to the escortee (shown by a radius-circle n the minimap) or I'd get dumped out of the escort instance and into the normal zone.

Combat was a bit slower paced than I was used to, but showed some potential (especially with the party combo attacks and positionals). Well ok, all mobs in the tutorial quests were 1-shottable, but that doesn't count! I also found it weird how hp/mana didn't regenerate automatically: I had to leave combat mode to regen hp and use my evocate skill to regen mana.

Graphics were really impressive, though!

[LK]

Escort mission that is a phased instance around a quest giver is actually pretty cool. That's how sandbox games work.

[Velorath]

I think fileplanet still has some beta keys left for subscribers.

Edit: Nevermind, all gone now.

[LK]

I've got a bad feeling I won't be able to run this game as beautifully as it can support.

[Segoris]

Chances are slim on anything but a top of the line system, but even with not so top of the line it will still be damn pretty.

Also, I'm torn in opinion on the "rite of passage" for collectors edition. The hermes shoes are cool for subscribers to ffxi though.

[Velorath]

FFXIVcore claims to have confirmed it.

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/10311-sharing-beta-experience-and-ss-is-ok-open-beta-soon/

Probably a post about it in the actual beta forums as well, but that's something I can't see personally.  Given that fileplanet is giving away keys now, it's probably true though.

That said, spill it.  I need a source of info on the game from someone I actually trust.  Don't make me start shaking my tiny impotent fist at those of you who have actually seen the game.

I got in through fileplanet, so I've only had a few days to play.  I've been a little hesitant to say anything since all this stuff about the NDA being relaxed has been coming from fan sites rather than directly from the mouths of anyone over at SE.  I suppose they would have said something by now though if all their fansites (and various MMO news sites) were falsely spreading this news, and FFXIVcore.com claims to have had it confirmed directly through SE

I find it hard to say a lot though beyond what the news sites and fansites have already said.  There's still a shit ton of things that aren't implemented in beta yet (the other two starting cities, anything beyond the first area or two, a lot of the crafting stuff).  It's hard to tell what isn't in the game yet because SE just doesn't want to show it off yet because they're just testing for specific things, and what isn't in the game because it isn't finished.  The f13 cynic would say that of course that stuff is all unfinished and broken, and it's all going to be a massive trainwreck come launch.  The overly trusting and naive person would say that there's no way that SE would go through with a launch in a month if this much of the game wasn't ready, and that they couldn't have spent this much time in development and only had what amounts to the starter areas of an MMO completed. 

Open beta is supposed to open up the other two starting cities, and they've shown them off at some press events.  Hopefully they can get some more crafting and quest stuff in there also.  I liked the opening quest line though (although it really reinforced my opinion that SWTOR and AoC are right in having voice overs), but after it wrapped up the game felt a little directionless, with no clue on when or where I would be picking up the plot threads introduced.  Combat wasn't bad if you've played a lot of old school JRPG's I guess.  Beyond that whether or not I'll pick this up is largely going to ride on the last week or so of beta.  It'll also help if there are some other people here who plan on at least playing it for a month or two.  I'm sure there's probably better games to devote my time to (Civ V), but I always find that I can't help but give each new FF game a chance, despite a long string of disappointments.

[01101010]

Early September is Open Beta followed quickly with release. I won't step on the NDA line until then but I can say, the game is a mess and makes me sad. I'll describe the hows and whys later.

[Shatter]

I'm quite happy I canceled my pre-order.  While I had issues with certain aspects of the game I was almost inclined to still play but their lack of communication pretty much killed that.  Im not sure if like NCSoft they have anyone in NA or westerners that have any say in the NA version of their game.  From what I can tell the answer to that is no.  If they do then they do not have anyone in NA from what I can tell that is allowed to communicate with the fanbase regularly.  Silence this close to launch is never a +

[Outlawedprod]

I'm noticing some wailing and gnashing of teeth about this game over the last couple days.  Something about a fatigue system and a 0% xp penalty.  Can anyone explain or summarize this?

[LK]

My desire to pick up another MMO would be in direct opposition to other goals, like, dropping these last pounds and learning to roller skate. I may have to pass on this one, at least for a bit.

[fuser]

Lots of "experience sharing" around on fan forums but haven't seen confirmation yet from SE that the NDA is relaxed.

I may have to pass on this one, at least for a bit.

Same, passing on this and preorder cancelled.

[Outlawedprod]

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/11248-famitsu-gamewatch-gamescom-interview/

F: Tell why you decided to implement Fatigue and Latency (note: I really don't know how to translate that, but it's something in-game to keep you from playing too long at a time on one class).
DK: We'd like you to think of it as a reward to those players who don't have much time to commit to the game. Those hardcore players out there might think it's a little unfair, but the main concept behind it is that you don't need to put in massive amounts of time to enjoy the game.

F: Still though, there are a lot of disgruntled looks coming from those hardcore gamers.
DK: For those who have more time on their hands, they'll be able to try out all the various classes. Fatigue doesn't carry over when you change weapons, so we hope that they'll try out not just battle-oriented classes but maybe some crafting or gathering ones as well. So for those who end up with many high-level classes, they'll have more choices when it comes to any situation, whether solo or party play.

F: Will there be a change to the two-day cooldown on guildleves?
DK: There's been a lot of debate over this even among the development staff, so it may or may not. We decided on the current set-up to allow those who only have an hour a day to play to be able to progress only via guildleves, so balance does become an issue. We want to encourage people who've completed their leves to group up and help others, but currently there isn't enough benefit to forming leve parties.

F: So soloing will be the basis of the game?
DK: Yes. More than a one-man army, it's more of a slow-and-steady kind of thing. In FFXI many things weren't possible solo, so we'd like to avoid that from developing this time around.

[Mrbloodworth]

guildleves?

[01101010]

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/11248-famitsu-gamewatch-gamescom-interview/

F: Tell why you decided to implement Fatigue and Latency (note: I really don't know how to translate that, but it's something in-game to keep you from playing too long at a time on one class).
DK: We'd like you to think of it as a reward to those players who don't have much time to commit to the game. Those hardcore players out there might think it's a little unfair, but the main concept behind it is that you don't need to put in massive amounts of time to enjoy the game.

F: Still though, there are a lot of disgruntled looks coming from those hardcore gamers.
DK: For those who have more time on their hands, they'll be able to try out all the various classes. Fatigue doesn't carry over when you change weapons, so we hope that they'll try out not just battle-oriented classes but maybe some crafting or gathering ones as well. So for those who end up with many high-level classes, they'll have more choices when it comes to any situation, whether solo or party play.

F: Will there be a change to the two-day cooldown on guildleves?
DK: There's been a lot of debate over this even among the development staff, so it may or may not. We decided on the current set-up to allow those who only have an hour a day to play to be able to progress only via guildleves, so balance does become an issue. We want to encourage people who've completed their leves to group up and help others, but currently there isn't enough benefit to forming leve parties.

F: So soloing will be the basis of the game?
DK: Yes. More than a one-man army, it's more of a slow-and-steady kind of thing. In FFXI many things weren't possible solo, so we'd like to avoid that from developing this time around.

Again I will only comment on that article rather than give Trippy a reason to cut me. The short version of that article is, "we are going to limit your access to later stages of the game by basically making it impossible to earn xp toward your chosen class and overall physical level so you continue playing for as long as possible." You are going to be forced to level other classes (weapons) when one class is deemed too high in level. Want to be a certain class and only focus on that? You can only do so for a certain amount of time, then you get no more xp towards that or anything else (main level) till you change to something else. It is quite possibly one of the biggest cockblocks I have ever witnessed in my small list of MMOs that I have played. SE has actually flipped off the map on this one. They want to be casual friendly by restricting the players' gameplay to an hour or two a day, regardless if you have more time to spend playing or not. So in essence, if you are hardcore - you will have a ton of classes leveled up to say 20, whereas a casual player will only have one or two - but you'll be the same level though! Oh and don't go off and think you can just go craft for a bit because that locks up too if you play too much unless you want to do every single craft. /fuckoff

I did alpha and beta phases to the latest but I'll be damned if I log in again.

And guildleves ~ dailies, but only every 48hours when it was originally much shorter.

[Reg]

Maybe they can get away with this kind of bullshit in Japan. I don't think it's going to work in North America though.  That's too bad. I was expecting to try this one.

[Lantyssa]

And it's on their time, not yours.  So if you get one day a week to play, you're out of luck.

[Shatter]

http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-08-25/now_ffxiv_director_tells_you_how_long_you_can_play_per_week.shtml

Within the first eight hours of play, you can earn 100% experience. The seven hour period following will see your possible experience gradually approach zero. This system is on a weekly timer. After a week has passed since you began skilling that particular weapon, the timer will reset. It will start anew when you skill up again. Any experience earned past that point is saved as "surplus." There is surplus for each class, and if you begin to see it please consider playing another class and adjust accordingly. However, experience points are not specific to any class and therefore the decrease in experience points is not affected by changing classes. That's how the system stands as of right now.

So you can play 15 hours a week max and get XP which is about 2 hours per day, then you have to switch classes. 

[Lantyssa]

Well, at least they changed it to per week instead of daily.

It will start anew when you skill up again.

That makes it sound like you have to stop for a week or else you reset yourself.  This has pretty much single-handedly made me decide to not buy until later in the game's life, when I can get it cheaply and they hopefully changed the system.

[Murgos]

The only way I could possibly get more than 15 hrs a week game time in is if I got fired or my girlfriend left me.

So, if it's fun I would still consider getting FFXIV, plus being able to openly multi-class every class in the game sounds like a good thing to me.

Can you use skills from other classes while playing your current class?

[Shatter]

Yeah but considering its 8 hours of 100% xp, then it starts to degrade you might actually only get 10 hours of playtime thats actually worth while per week.  That last 7 hours xp degrades so after only 2/7 hours you might want to just logoff cause the xp is so bad.  At 15 hours you will be getting 0 xp so at 10 hours you may be getting 80% of the initial 100%.  Are you going to keep playing until you hit 0%? 

[Cyrrex]

Yeah, but this is all for a specific weapon, no?  Or is it the general xp monitor?

[Lantyssa]

Each class has a level and then there is a physical level which everything contributes to.  From the information we're hearing, both have their own timers.

[Rendakor]

Class level determines HP, MP and abilities. Physical level grants you attribute increases (Str, Agi, etc).

[Ard]

There was a retranslation of the press release.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/97835-Komoto-s-Official-Explanation-of-Surplus

The FFXVIcore one turns out to be pretty sloppy and leaves out some key facts, like that it regens in downtime.  To me it looks like it'll probably only ever be seen by bot accounts, and was an accident it ever even showed up in beta due to thresholds not having been changed.  I've seen more than a few ancedotal posts from people who claim to have binge played during beta and never saw surplus at all.  No reason to panic, move along.

[Reg]

I don't know. It sounds like another overly complicated system like the many overcomplicated systems in FFXI. And no matter how obnoxious it may be you know that it's the pet of one of the developers and they'll resist changing it.

If they want to be kind to casual gamers they should just use rest experience like everyone else does.

[Velorath]

There was a retranslation of the press release.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/97835-Komoto-s-Official-Explanation-of-Surplus

The FFXVIcore one turns out to be pretty sloppy and leaves out some key facts, like that it regens in downtime.  To me it looks like it'll probably only ever be seen by bot accounts, and was an accident it ever even showed up in beta due to thresholds not having been changed.  I've seen more than a few ancedotal posts from people who claim to have binge played during beta and never saw surplus at all.  No reason to panic, move along.

Yeah, reading the details it doesn't seem to be a huge deal (although there is really no reason for them to implement this in the first place).  I'd certainly say that there are much bigger potential issues than not being able to spend more than 8 hours in a week grinding one skill.

[Hawkbit]

The bigger issue will be two years down the road when they're trying to get new blood into the game.  A person that has played since launch will have to wait (literally wait) weeks/months for a friend that just started to get up to level to be able to play together.  I think WoW has it figured out, but this FF system seems a step in the wrong direction. 

[dusematic]

Worrying about a current unreleased system two years from now in regards to XP gain is sort of trivial.  It's the easiest thing in the world to change the values.  It's not like they have to generate new art or redesign the game.  It's just math really.  They can easily change it as they see fit. 

[Velorath]

Open beta set for Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT).