"Oh btw, FFXIV Online in 2010"

[Mrbloodworth]

Nice.  The patch is at 99.9% downloading and won't finish.  But it's continuing to upload. 

Fuckers.

I highly recomend palmer_eldritch method, use the torrent files in another app.

[NiX]

So, anyone have any idea when they'll open up applications again? Or is it just a complete write off?

[Ginaz]

If you play the game, do yourself a favor and plug in a 360 controller or find the drivers and use a PS3 gamepad.  I cannot imagine trying to play either of the FF games without one.  It's madness.

Making a pc game where you can't use a mouse/keyboard effectively???  BRILLIANT!!!

[Hawkbit]

So, anyone have any idea when they'll open up applications again? Or is it just a complete write off?

I got in yesterday's batch, which opened up around 10-11am EST.  Seems pretty random when they're opening them up.

[Mrbloodworth]

I find the video options lacking, i cant seem to not play in window mode, did I miss something?

[tmp]

I find the video options lacking, i cant seem to not play in window mode, did I miss something?

In the config utility which is separate application from the game itself.

Video Settings tab, second drop-down from the top is "Display Mode", it should have options for "Windowed" and "Full Screen".

[Mrbloodworth]

Ah, thanks.

[NiX]

Making a pc game where you can't use a mouse/keyboard effectively???  BRILLIANT!!!

History repeating. The amount of surprise surrounding how the game plays is.. sad.

[tmp]

Honestly can't understand why a game made in 2010 doesn't utilize hardware mouse cursor. I mean, holy shit.

And yeah, can't imagine playing this without gamepad. Though that isn't much of issue, even my pretty ancient Logitech seems to cope.

edit: hmm, i got to create a char yesterday and then servers seemingly came down when i was few minutes into the introduction sequence. Today the game just keeps crashing hard trying to read memory it should't every time it reaches character selection screen right after pressing "start".

edit 2: and since they disabled registrations for the beta forums, i can't even check its content for possible solutions. Brilliant.

edit 3: solved it. Deleting "user" folder from My Documents/My Games/FF14 helped.

[Mrbloodworth]

I am almost certain most of the design decisions, and tech decisions has everything to do with consoles. As in, transferring the game to.

[tmp]

I understand the design decisions, but it's not like they're using the very same code for all platforms so doing things like mouse support (which i doubt is present for consoles) in half-assed way rather than properly when they have to do it anyway... it just makes zero sense.

[tmp]

Hmm unless i'm missing something, picking crafter as your starting class is entirely awesome way to cockpunch oneself. You start with no money so you can't actually use crafting facilities to do the crafting quests (they have a fee for that) and you can't kill stuff for money because you only get a rock throw attack that damages common rat for 2 points when the rat hits you for ~50 per swing. And the rat has at least as much HP as the starter character does, by the looks of it 

[01101010]

Hmm unless i'm missing something, picking crafter as your starting class is entirely awesome way to cockpunch oneself. You start with no money so you can't actually use crafting facilities to do the crafting quests (they have a fee for that) and you can't kill stuff for money because you only get a rock throw attack that damages common rat for 2 points when the rat hits you for ~50 per swing. And the rat has at least as much HP as the starter character does, by the looks of it 

You can do the first quest sequence all the way through for ~3k gil which is enough to get a foothold, but yes... your point still stands, starting as a crafter is nothing but a way to fuck yourself from the gate.

[Velorath]

Hmm unless i'm missing something, picking crafter as your starting class is entirely awesome way to cockpunch oneself. You start with no money so you can't actually use crafting facilities to do the crafting quests (they have a fee for that) and you can't kill stuff for money because you only get a rock throw attack that damages common rat for 2 points when the rat hits you for ~50 per swing. And the rat has at least as much HP as the starter character does, by the looks of it 

Starter quest chain gives you 10,000 gil (or whatever the currency is) partway through, and 20,000 at the end.  Think it only requires combat in one part, and I think the mobs are 1 hit kills but I could be wrong.  Anyway, that should give you more than enough to buy some weapons.

[tmp]

You can do the first quest sequence all the way through for ~3k gil which is enough to get a foothold, but yes... your point still stands, starting as a crafter is nothing but a way to fuck yourself from the gate.

Well, the starting chain send me to camp outside town and then gave me quest to craft a sword which is according to descripition designed for lvl.5 blacksmith. Somehow i don't myself succeeding, will see what happens then.

Also figured out the local quests are actually possible to do without the facilities and for free... it was just a manner of finding NPC who --as the game helpfully suggested-- was somewhere in Upper Docks (which was as helpful as telling to find someone in say, Bronx). The guy asked for 2 ingots and handed me components for 3 crafting attempts which i then promptly botched because the game never explains how crafting works. So i was kinda sitting there looking at progress bar and clicking buttons randomly until it told me i failed.

Gonna see if they give me another craft quest after that performance  

edit: update, figured out how it works. There's "durability" gauge that goes down with each crafting action you pick, and the progress bar which grows with each action, plus 'quality' which grows or decreases depending how good roll you get. You pick whether you focus on progress per turn, the quality gain at expense of slower progress or a in-between. If you have enough skill to succeed the progress grows pretty fast, if you fail the gain is slow and durability hit is bigger. Since my skill at the moment is abysmall i focused on hammering the shit out of stuff as fast as possible and actually managed to fill the bar before durability got to 0. The sword quality is kinda awful but hey, it's not me who's going to try and poke stuff with it. Me, i got a level gain out of it.

[Rasix]

I think I need a new PC to play this. 

What I did play was pretty miserable though (including a crash at the end).  So, I'm not sure I'm going to try again.  Is there any info on what the stats in this game actually do?

[Cyrrex]

I think it's cute the way you're all pretending that you're actually playing the game.  As if it's possible to even get past 94.8% with the patcher!  Ha!

[Velorath]

I think it's cute the way you're all pretending that you're actually playing the game.  As if it's possible to even get past 94.8% with the patcher!  Ha!

That's why you use your own torrent application to download the file.

[Cyrrex]

I think it's cute the way you're all pretending that you're actually playing the game.  As if it's possible to even get past 94.8% with the patcher!  Ha!

That's why you use your own torrent application to download the file.

Yeah, I know...I don't really want to play it THAT badly.  It's more just a commentary on how atrocious their patching process is.

[palmer_eldritch]

I think I need a new PC to play this. 

What I did play was pretty miserable though (including a crash at the end).  So, I'm not sure I'm going to try again.  Is there any info on what the stats in this game actually do?

Try here: http://www.ffxivcore.com/wiki/Category:Attributes

[tmp]

I think I need a new PC to play this. 

What I did play was pretty miserable though (including a crash at the end).  So, I'm not sure I'm going to try again.  Is there any info on what the stats in this game actually do?

When you're nearby one of these bind point crystals, in the menu which opens when you access them is option to read "adventurer's guide" or something like that. It has explanation what the attributes do but it's buried in like, 3rd sub-menu from the main topic list. Under "character advancement" if i recall right.

For performance one thing which seems to make noticeable difference for me is the "ambient occlusion" switch in the config program.

[Margalis]

So when I go to the beta account registration page it says that signups have been temporarily suspended. How are all you folks getting in?

[Mrbloodworth]

So when I go to the beta account registration page it says that signups have been temporarily suspended. How are all you folks getting in?

Sadly, there are windows in witch its open.

[Trippy]

So when I go to the beta account registration page it says that signups have been temporarily suspended. How are all you folks getting in?

[Lantyssa]

So when I go to the beta account registration page it says that signups have been temporarily suspended. How are all you folks getting in?

I sacrificed a moogle.

[Draegan]

I find it cute you guys don't think this game is clownshoes.

[Quinton]

So, anyone have any idea when they'll open up applications again? Or is it just a complete write off?

I got in yesterday's batch, which opened up around 10-11am EST.  Seems pretty random when they're opening them up.

Just got my code at 9:50pm PST tonight.  Now watching the version updater sit at 99.9% done, wondering when it'll finish.

[Rasix]

I find it cute you guys don't think this game is clownshoes.

I'm pretty sure it's terrible schlock, but it's a bit hasty to throw that out there after an hour.  Also my perceptions are somewhat colored by how much of a dog this one is on my aging machine.

It's making me want to play WoW again.  While not a necessarily a sign of a bad MMO, it's a sign of one that isn't right for me.

edit: Too long of waits, too much lag.   

[Quinton]

For all its warts, FFXI was the MMO I played for the longest (nearly 3 years, compared to a couple months with most others) and had the most fun in.  I kinda hope FFXIV will provide at least some fun, but I think a combination of it being really rough around the edges and me no longer having the patience and time I once did may defeat that...

[Margalis]

Just got my code at 9:50pm PST tonight.  Now watching the version updater sit at 99.9% done, wondering when it'll finish.

http://tehkrizz.net/downloads.asp
http://tehkrizz.net/guide.asp

It seems like the updater can get stuck after downloading all the relevant files. Mine was stuck on the last one, downloaded it from the link above. Even though it was the exact same size as the one the updater downloaded it worked while the previous one didn't. Seems like some weird error where the updater doesn't realize it has finished or something.

[Quinton]

Okay, I enjoyed the little Gridania intro cutscene thing...

The interface is going to drive me crazy.  Everything's laggy (trying a gamepad and it's still laggy but at least I see how they expect you to use it).  No keybinds for anything useful (inventory? journal? etc... guess you pull up the main menu and cursor through it... ye gods).

Having to completely exit the game (logout menu is not working, so I ctrl-esc to crash the client x.x) to change settings for graphics or keypad is nuts.

It looks very nice, but the UI/UX is awful.

EDIT: Wish I could get it to run well at 1920x1200 without being laggy/choppy.  This is a pretty beefy machine but the game is hell on it.

There's definitely some potential here, but my got the UI drives me nuts... and I generally was okay with FFXI's quirky UI. 

[Ard]

I don't find the game to be complete clownshoes, and it's exactly the game I expected it to be, given the press and having played FFXI for quite a long time.  The UI is abysmal, but I more or less expected that going in.

I do like where this game is going though.  The main aim, after a few days mucking with it, is pretty clearly to give you a huge bang of xp in an extermely short period of time every other day or so, with the guild leves and the guardians favor and whatnot, allowing you to get our xping done in a few hours, and then move on and do whatever. 

I also like that pretty much everything scales up to literally any party size up to the max of like 15, so you play with what you have with you, and not what the standard party size is.  I like that concept a lot, and I wish more games would go that route instead of having a static 5 or 6 man party that has to be completely filled or fail.

The game has a lot of issues, but a decent chunk of them right now are due to a) content being withheld for launch and b) probably 10x the number of players they expected signing up and flooding the servers.  Because of those, I'm withholding any sort of final judgement about the lack of things to do or how broken things are until launch.

[Velorath]

I find it cute you guys don't think this game is clownshoes.

I don't think there are a lot of people here heaping praise on the game.  I'm don't even really buy the "they're just holding back content" stuff at this point, simply due to the fact that even the content they're showing off right now is incomplete.  There are still parts in some of the cutscenes in the two new starter cities where some of the text was in Japanese.  The quest chain in Gridania has a part where some kids are teaching you a dance and you're supposed to go to each one and do the emote they want you to do, but all the kids do the same stock emote and the text of what they're telling you to do doesn't match up with the emote you need to use.  When I was doing it, everybody was just cycling through all the emotes until they got the right one, then moved onto the next kid.  If the starter quests aren't even completely finished this soon before launch, I have a hard time believing that they have a bunch more ready and just aren't showing it off.

That said, just calling a game clownshoes and calling it a day isn't very useful commentary either.  There are things I like about the game, just like there were things I liked about Warhammer, even if overall neither of them is worth playing.  If it weren't for the fact that Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR are both likely to come out next year, I'd have probably checked FFXIV out again for the PS3 launch since I think they might have an ok game by that point.

[Numtini]

I guess on second thought, it is pretty much the game I would have expected.

What I didn't expect is how low my tolerance would be for a 2003 era product in the 2010 marketplace.

[Draegan]

I find it cute you guys don't think this game is clownshoes.

I don't think there are a lot of people here heaping praise on the game.  I'm don't even really buy the "they're just holding back content" stuff at this point, simply due to the fact that even the content they're showing off right now is incomplete.  There are still parts in some of the cutscenes in the two new starter cities where some of the text was in Japanese.  The quest chain in Gridania has a part where some kids are teaching you a dance and you're supposed to go to each one and do the emote they want you to do, but all the kids do the same stock emote and the text of what they're telling you to do doesn't match up with the emote you need to use.  When I was doing it, everybody was just cycling through all the emotes until they got the right one, then moved onto the next kid.  If the starter quests aren't even completely finished this soon before launch, I have a hard time believing that they have a bunch more ready and just aren't showing it off.

That said, just calling a game clownshoes and calling it a day isn't very useful commentary either.  There are things I like about the game, just like there were things I liked about Warhammer, even if overall neither of them is worth playing.  If it weren't for the fact that Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR are both likely to come out next year, I'd have probably checked FFXIV out again for the PS3 launch since I think they might have an ok game by that point.

I couldn't get passed playing this game for more than 15-20 minutes.  When I have to fight the UI for everything I do and the mouse is unusable and you have to key press 5x before you do anything is the definition of clownshoes to me.  That's as useful commentary that I can give.