So. Yeah. Final Fantasy XIV, then.

[EricKei]

My apologies in advance for the double-post, but the second one will be a monster ^_^

Got into the most recent beta weekend, and I like. Just curious if anyone else will be playing in the game proper. If you are, I'll be in a Free Company on the Sargatanas server, and I'll be happy to set up a Linkshell (social group) for CS'ers. Will be running a Taru-...er, Lalafell Thaumaturge as my main. If anyone wishes to do so, I can just draft you into the Free Company, instead.

For those who are unfamiliar:

Linskhell = social group. you can have 8 or 10 of those at once, all on separate chat tabs, if ye like. Effectively just an invite-only chat channel. Also useful for things like setting up a temporary channel for Raids and the like.

Free Company = Guild w/built-in DKP/AA/points/etc...I think. Points are used for bonuses and goodies that are likely unavailable elsewhere. One per character. Features beyond chat aren't in there yet, but it seems that FC-specific quests and abilities will come into play. Also gets a dedicated section on the FFXIV forums.

Grand Company = Larger Guild run by the system itself, rather than by players. Represents allegiance to one of the three major good guy factions/nations; not restricted by your characters home town. Basically a Free Company on a grander scale, tho it appears to lack a chat option, as it's meant to be a storyline/Faction thing. Affects a special line of missions and your perspective on the overall storyline. You can switch to another GC at any time, losing your rank and any points earned in the old one. They also have their own Hunting Logs (generally, "kill 5 of <minor enemy> or one of <boss-class enemy>" for a nice chunk of EXP), in addition to the ones your Classes provide.

See next post for a long-winded "preview" of the game -- allowable now because the NDA has been relaxed somewhat.

Note -- those who preorder will get "early access", i.e., you can play when Beta4/the 2-3 weeks prior to release, with (hopefully) no data wipe after; official release is Aug27

[EricKei]

My impressions of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, as of Beta 3 (I didn't get into it during the prior, terribly f'd up version):

Classes--
Having the ability to change your Class on the fly (rather than at home) is quite nice (All weapons are restricted to a class/job, so equipping a wand switches you to Thaumaturge/Blackmage, a pair of cesti (fist weapons) turns you into a Pugilist/Monk, a pickaxe switches you to Miner, etc))...Each class has its own EXP bar, too. The existence of gear swap sets to account for this is a wonderful addition, and necessary to avoid people tearing out their hair every time they swap. Note that switching mid-mission/dungeon will cause penalties.

The Job system is an interesting way to handle things -- "Classes" are your base...well,...classes, like Thaumaturge (glass cannon), Pugilist (fist fighter), Archer, etc. A "Job" becomes unlockable once you hit 30 on a Class and 15 in a related(?) class, and is accessed via a "Soul Gem". The Jobs are additions to, not replacements for, Classes, and stack with them.

E.g.: Thaumaturge is your offensive magical DD class. It has its own spells and passives all the way up to the cap, level 50, just like the others; it establishes all of the basic mechanics of the class. At lv30 w/lv15 Pugilist, you can get a Black Mage Gem. Equip it and you have access to all of your unlocked powers from both Thaumaturge and BlackMage (which is basically bigger, badder magical DD), adding 5 new spells (no new passives), up to and including one that is basically an endgame nuke that drains your entire manapool at once.

You can also "borrow" spells/skills (not passives) from other Classes once you've leveled them. For instance, on my Thaumatuge, I could bring in Cure (healing), Protect, Aero (DoT), and Raise as extra spells. The limit is currently 10 of these at max level, tho having a Job equipped uses up 5 of those slots.

Visuals and music -- This is Squeenix, people. Nobody does it better. Even on my (now-ancient) graphics card, I was able to maintain 30ish+ FPS on "high quality with frills toned down" settings in combat, and 45ish in town/low population areas. The servers in the US & Europe are apparently in Montreal, and I have 90 or so ping to them all, despite being in the Deep South.

Story -- Damn good for an MMO, so far, and not bad at all for an RPG in general.

Quests --
So far, so good.

"Kill monsters for X" quests are present, but most have you kill maybe 4-5 mobs, tops. Take out another 1-2 and your Hunting Log entry for that mob is filled, granting you considerable extra EXP on the spot for doing a quest (exp from the actual kills is relatively low, presumably to discourage players from just grinding all day).

There are 3 primary questlines I've seen so far -- one for the main story, one for leveling each of your Classes, and one for the Grand Company you eventually join (this branches off from the main storyline). You also get "Leve" quests (think dailies, but you get 3 per day, and they accumulate if you don't use them) and Guildhests (no limit, but they require a party (which the game assembles for you if you prefer)). Note that the overwhelming majority of content is soloable.

FATE encounters are also nice, and take the place of grinding -- All are random fights that just show up in the wilderness, you can either join in or just walk away, they happen quite frequently, and are worth much more than just grinding on the mobs themselves. Some are defense missions, but most are single boss fights or "kill a bunch of mobs" fights, and anyone who happens by can join in or leave at their leisure. They award EXP and money only, no items.

Claiming system -- I gotta admit, this is different, in a good way. The person who first claims a mob (HP bar shows in red) is the only one entitled to full rewards from a kill. Anyone else who helps out gets a proportional EXP/money reward, but CANNOT get any non-Key items or other rewards, tho they do count towards kill counts for quest fulfillment. Helpers do get the "Key" item drops as usual (non-sellable quest items). As an aside, Key items drop 100% of the time on 95+% of the quest mobs. The worst drop rate I've encountered so far is 50/50, and these are from easy kills.

Random -- Many, many shout-outs, both to other games and tv shows, as well as the expected ones to other FF games. Many well-known FF monsters and the like show up, including (obviously) a bunch from FFXI, just much much prettier.

They got the Loot system right, too. It's Need/Greed/Pass, but Need is only enabled if the toon you're running on has a class and level appropriate for whatever item is up for loot rolls.



FWIW -- Benchmark here if you wanna see how it looks and/or would run on your rig. Even at the lowest preset ("Medium"), it looks pretty nice. http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/benchmark/

"Score" translation: 2000 or less = Drop those graphics settings or just get a better card. 4000 = Not bad at all. 8000+ = crank those bitches up, your card can handle it.

Just to give you a vague idea of requirements...With my dinosaur of a video card, a GeForce GT240 (1GB), on Win7 64bit (8GB), @ 1680x1050, I got scores of 3680 on medium and 1600 on maximum.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

Already gonna be rocking it out on Gilgamesh server, fresh start. If I roll onto multiple servers (miiighhtt?) I'll definitely keep that server in mind!

[Bardmaiden]

I was in the V1 Beta and everyone and his brother told Square that it was bad and that it wouldn't work.

What I've been hearing this beta (in from stage 2) is When is the game going live I wanna play!

[Lady Legira]

Can't wait for the open beta (been part of the closed since stage 2) and it is just lovely to play. My boyfriend who's been a total WoW addict is converted too.

Already migrated my V.1 toons

The one thing I've been hearing on this beta is 'When is it coming out, can't wait to play this on live, I so want this to come out already.' Which has been so good to hear after the last beta for V.1 when it was clear that it was nowhere near ready for release.

[EricKei]

I'd say it's good to go as-is. I've seen MMO's in FAR , far worse shape than this at the point they were already charging the monthly fee.

Beta 3 was basically for cleanups and adding FATEs, as well as tweaking. They anticipate 2ish weeks of crunch time working on bugs (I only encountered 2 or 3, and they were all purely visual -- tooltips not appearing when they should, tooltips staying onscreen after you no longer had the quest item, and the exp bar disappearing after one specific quest from one specific NPC -- all were fixed if you got into a fight, zoned, or entered a cutscene).

They did include limited auto-leveling for beta 3 purposes only: You could jump from lv26~29 by talking to a Minstrel, because the storyline quests stopped short of that (you need lv30 in a class and 15 in another to unlock a Job); for a similar reason, there are scattered Minstrels who could each level Classes to 15 instantly, as long as you had already joined a Grand Company on one of them (lv20~22, required as part of the storyline). For those in need of one, the first thing the GC recruiter tells you to do is to go earn GC Seals (points) to buy a chocobo license with ^^ The 26-29 autolevel was definitely beta 3 only; unsure about the other, but I suspect that either it, too, will be gone, or that it will require some actual effort/a special quest for each of those NPC's in order to level the other Classes. You can also take the miniquest to learn how to break gear down into Materia once you join a GC. Max level in 3 was 35, I think it will be 50 for initial launch.

After the bugfix time is open beta/phase 4/"early access" time for pre-order and legacy peeps; it will last until the official release (August 27) or the day before. They say that, barring major unforeseen issues, there will be NO character wipes after beta 4.

PS if you saved your character's appearance/customization data, it will still be available. It's stored locally.

We can either post toon names/servers in here or a new thread when the time comes. I bet y'all can't guess what my toon's first name will be... >_> Never ever ever.

[EricKei]

I am curious about the upcoming Classes/jobs, tho --

A trailer from SE shows the Arcanist -- which I assume is the base Class because the Guild for it already exists; it also shows the Summoner and Scholar, which appear to be Jobs. All of them use Books as weapons, so I am assuming that both branch off from Arcanist. Any other info on this that you guys have seen?

Also...No Thief? I can understand no Samurai, at least not for now, as this game is actually soloable aside from dungeons and hests, placing much less emphasis on the FFXI "party or GTFO" mentality (for better or for worse). Thief uses the Pugilist/monk melee philosophy of "weak, more frequent attacks", and I could see it being useful in parties for aggro control as a Job -- I'm guessing that parties become more important at higher levels.

Ninja could also be useful as another type of tank, which is badly needed. Red Mage could be useful, as well, as a debuffer (a role which had been covered by BlackMage, from what I had heard, at one point...?). Yes, even tho BLM has Convert now. It would also server as another healer-type, which the game is also lacking, even though I would imaging that most players will slot either the Puglilist self-heal or the best cure spell they have access to when maining anything other than CNJ.

[Aethian]

I know I'm going to miss the class of the Red Mage. What I really hope is that this will be console good because I like playing that way over playing on the computer.

[EricKei]

Well, you can always hook a controller up to your comp ^_^ Even on the PC version, the UI has a "cross hotbar" (presumably for use with same, as "cross" is technically how the X button on a PS-style controller is said; it could also be referring to the directional buttons), and the hotkey & control setup screens have a keyboard/controller toggle.

[Aethian]

Well I also dont think this laptop could handle it. Plus for some reason I just like playing console. I know, I know, pc is better to a lot of people...but...I dunno.

[EricKei]

Hey, to each their own. ^_^ That's why the option exists. I would think that the console edition would be more viable in Japan, in any case, as the predecessor, FF11, was originally PS2-only, and many Japanese players stuck with it. This was also their supposed excuse for not making the PC version prettier (tho there were .ini file tricks you could use to improve the look, such as doubling the pixel density (which was fine) or by replacing the character models by futzing with the data files (which was a TOS violation -- I did the former)).

The PC version of 14, on the other hand, is O_O oooooo, pretty...even on my ancient card. The PS3 version can turn a few heads, too, so you can't go wrong either way.

edit to avoid yet another doublepost: It's also the first game I've encountered that offers you a TON of inventory space from the outset -- 4 tabs of 25(?) slots each that can be used for anything, plus a Key Items tab and a Crystals tab, as well as another tab of 25 for each Equipment type...And then, once you join a GC, you get 2 retainers that each can hold 175 MORE items o_O At some point (not usable in b3), you also get the Armory Chest in your Inn room, but, afaik, dropping stuff in there resets its Spiritbond level to zero. At the same time, you gain the abilty to break gear down into Materia, freeing up more slots. I only came close to running out of room (pre-Retainers) because I went and unlocked every job and craft, then went on a crafting spree

[AmbrosiaWriter]

Side note;

Summoner and Scholar are the jobs that branch off Arcanist.

They've completely reworked how Summoner is going to work in FF14.

In 11, you had uber summons just kind of hanging out and melee'ing things, which was often just strange to watch for those of us who grew up with FF and knew that Fenrir and Shiva were supposed to be AWESOME (they were SUMMONS!! GUARDIAN FORCES!!)

In 14, they've switched the main "pet summon" to be your elementals. Then your big, flashy, WE DO DAMAAAAGGGEEEE are the bigger summons (the "guardian forces" as we remember them.)

I'm so happy they did this, too. It was always just weird when Shiva was hanging out next to me like "Yo. I'mma smack d'is beech."

Then again, watching Carbuncle headbutt things repeatedly was always entertaining.

I think you may start off with Carbuncle summon as an Arcanist though... not sure.

[EricKei]

Well, you COULD use the little elementals as Summons in 11 if you liked...but nobody ever did; the one exception I saw -- and that only rarely -- Was the Light Spirit at really high levels, as it could cast good Cures and, iirc, it was smart enough to Magic Burst the occasional Holy. The enemy elementals in 14 look like high-res, prettier versions of the Spirits.

And yes, I would think the nuclear rat is likely to be the first Summon, at least for Summoner -- I dunno about Arcanist. The others, I would imagine, will be unlocked by killing Primals, as it was in 11 (in lieu of getting loot for that fight). The cutscene after killing the one available Primal thus far certainly suggests that you want to collect their "crystals"...

Part of my confusion is, why give the NEW base class 2 branches when all of the others have only one? Why not fork the others first -- e.g., the obvious one being Ranger for Archer (Bard from that?? WTF?)? As long as they're adding classes & jobs, why not Thief as a Class and Ninja as a fork (not sure where else to go from there, aside from a more powerful equivalent to Thief, like Treasure Hunter or Corsair or something)? Blue Mage will obviously be on the "want list", too. And speaking of pets, what about Beastmaster? I will admit that the need for the latter is reduced in 14, as all classes can effectively solo the bulk of the content anyway, unlike the way it was in 11.

So much nostalgia ^_^ Hell, I was hanging out near Horizon when i came across one of the old standbys..."There's a crab for every level". Then I saw the new version of Bubbly Bernie. Dude's been working out o_O

edit: Some info on the PS3 control scheme and playability: http://www.gameskinny.com/b8o2d/ffxi...ly-easy-to-use

edit2: Natch. After I speculate about Arcanist and its forks I find this... http://www.gameskinny.com/g4sxq/ffxi...-1-the-reveals

[Aethian]

edit: Some info on the PS3 control scheme and playability: http://www.gameskinny.com/b8o2d/ffxi...ly-easy-to-use

Awww just for me Eric?

[EricKei]

Hey, we mods are here to help, in our own wonderfully twisted way ^_^

Besides, there may be people reading the thread who are on the fence, on both systems -- that's who the OP pair of posts, in particular, are aimed at (as well as those of us who have already jumped in head first)

OK. I'll admit I'd not seen this vid before; I'd only heard of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j5v8jlndM -- Who else but Square not only admits "Yep, we dun f@#&ed up," but produces a video this nice to make it abundantly clear that they are serious about nuking the place from (low) orbit and starting fresh?

SE: We'd like you to meet our little friend...

said friend: F@#& you people, and the planet you rode in on.

PS -- They're selling preorders for the soundtrack...for $50 bucks, on blu-ray only (Region-free, but it's a Japanese release). 5+ hours, including music from both ARR and the original game. Thoughts?

edit: PPS: Ooooooooooo... Endgame content -- The guy who does that vid has a bunch of useful info to kill time with. Note -- As of the time he made most of the vids, the NDA allowed screenies but not ingame video.

EDIT2: Good info source, and the guy who makes these plays on Sarg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1lGDIZKeZA

From there -- confirmed. Phase 4 is Fri~Fri, Starting August 9. Early Access is Tues~Mon, Starting a week before release (will be 3-4 days in between). Still not clear if we need to "sign up" for b4 (does not apply to legacies, I presume), but it can't hurt to try.