I played the beta and hated it. But I'm not an expert reviewer. Wasn't my cup of tea

Sounds like it's pretty universal that Square Enix REALLY dropped the ball on this one...

To be honest, it is not that bad of a game for a early launch title. By comparison to other major releases like EQ, WoW, DAOC, and even FFXI the game is far more stable and the servers are more stable. There are fewer in game bugs comparably speaking to when those titles were released at launch. The overal level of content within the game is somewhat debatable, since SE offers it up in bites over time and the game its self doesn't show you the entire entre of what is available all at once. Although this is by design and makes the game feel a bit more limiting, yet it does also encourage traveling in at the same time. It wasn't that long ago when the plot quests beyond job level 10 were opened up.
 
The game does need more work, but i'd say if it was finished to the level of a 7-10 year released game i'd argue that it more telling of those older games than the relative content and finish of the new one.
 
Things they really do need to work on in FFXIV to improve the game experience look something like the following:
 
1. Finish the in game content areas. There are areas and features blocked off currently ala EQ style. I have walked just about everywhere you can actually walk in the game and there are zone points and other features within the game simply not activated yet. There are lots of places you simply can't walk to as well and have other requirements to get there, chocobo services for example. Some of those locations are in areas I wouldn't be able to complete yet regardless, but that is another story.
 
2. Reinstate the FFXI search engine to assist party formation. It simply makes absolutely no sense to leave this out of the current game design.
 
3. Place NPCs in the home cities next to the guild leave issuers. Have those NPC coordinate the time and locations for the events. I am fairly positive that 99% of the game population is wholly unaware that they exist and where they occur at.
 
4. Rework the retainer system and the bazar zones. I am fairly positive that most people simply do not go into the bazar zones, as i have sold all of my items off of my person in camp sites and i have sold none of the same items off the retainer. Give more detail as to how the retainers level up and how to acquire more, in addition to what benefits will be gained through that process. 
 
5. Give better instruction about how battle regimes work and refine how they are initiated. The short explanation of this is a series of attacks performed in sequence initiated by the players creating a combo with additional effects. This is not automatic like in FFXI weapon skill combinations and requires additional setup that isn't very clear.
 
6. Fix the macro associations with items with a bonus modifier on them.
 
7. Add more logical progression in the crafting system. It makes little sense to have a step crafting component be harder to make than the finished item, otherwise offer more of those base components for sale via npc merchants at more reasonable prices. Money is fairly easy to come by in the game, but needing 18k to buy a flower you need 4 of to make a base material is a bit excessive, especially if it is "easily" harvested by a level 15 character.
 
8. Add more in game information related to the companion gained via the level 20 storyline quest.
 
9. Give an in game listing for all known recipies learned through the guild leave process. It makes no sense to have to reference a 3rd party source or write down those items manually when all the information is already stored server side. Also add more information as to the purpose and function of the "touch up" feature on items for which the character actually knows the recipies for.
10. Unless the bazar system is revamped, reintroduce the auction house from FFXI. Difficult to sell items is an understatement unless you managed to craft something universally needed and not given via quest reward.
 
11. Eliminate the quest rewards that give basic craft items to players. It makes no sense for the crafting jobs to go 15+ levels in multiple jobs before they can make something other people need or want and can't get the same item as a quest reward. People get rather generous money rewards already, let them use it instead of hoard it causing long term inflation for mid to end game items.
 
12. Make crystal aquisition easier. It is fairly silly to be sitting on raw materials for over 10 levels that can't be used simply because they require a crystal instead of shards to be crafted. For minerals it goes like this raw material + crystal-> metal nuggets + small number of shards -> base material or item part(s) + moderate to high number of shards-> finished product. Timber products work differently needing only shards by comparison until higher level items are required.
 
13. Streamline the server interactions for npc exchanges. This is particularly noticable when interacting with venders or retainers.
 
14. Fix the door interactions, as they don't always trigger automatically like they should.
 
15. Populate the world with the missing crafting components in the alchemy lines. Currently there are some alchemy combinations that can't be done due to the fish not existing in the world required in the synth. 
16. Gear can be equipped on classes not listed on the item and appear to receive the benefits from the item. Either revamp the equipment system or give better explanation towards its overal intended purpose.

Overal many of these items are just little things, but can add up and annoy someone with certain expectations. This does not mean that the game isn't "bad", but it does mean that the game is also not 7+ years old already.

I agree, the game is far more finished than FFXI was when it was released. That doesn't mean it is a total waste and many reviews are being overly harsh on it.
 
Hell i hear people complain that the game is too pretty causing their system to lag of all things. Although the black screen DXD loading failure is something else entirely...
 
You are right in that i should post there, i just cant get there from where i am at currently.

I hate this game for all of the reasons everyone has mentioned. Currently I play it about 4 hours a day.  Cant get enough.

hoserx

I hate this game for all of the reasons everyone has mentioned. Currently I play it about 4 hours a day.  Cant get enough.

Do you also stab pencils into your eyes for fun...?

Does anybody get horizontal lines going across the screen. I am not experiencing tearing. More like a ripple, you know how when a Tape in a VCR isn't aligned on the head, how it distorts the picture. That is more or less what I get when I am running around, standing still I'm fine. I have tried turning certain things off in the setting before going into the game with no effect, only thing I can think of is because I am playing on a TV and not a normal Computer Monitor, but I have never had this issue before in other games. Only thing I have yet to try is stock clocks on the 470.
I max the game out as far as FPS goes. Unless you turn Ambient Occlusion on, then it goes from 60FPS to 30FPS max. Crowded areas I experience the same as everyone else. I played FFXI for 5 years, was great when you had a group of friends, this is more for the casual player it seems. I enjoy it as I do not have a Linkshell and I have yet to find a reason to have one. Once they work the bugs out and enable SLI officialy everything will run smoother, but so far, I think most are being to harsh on a "New Release". So far I have crashed only once, In Gridania when I had to escort the kids in the woods. That is much better than when I was in the open Beta and just crashing walking around.
 
Edit-Fixed the ripple thing I was asking about, Had to put the game into Windowed Mode which I don't care for. I may just put up with it, eventually I'll get used to it and no longer notice.

I was hugely involved in FFXI. With that said I I left XI a while back, pre ordered my CE of XIV, and played the open beta. I hate it.
 
I don't think I even logged on a week after CE was released. I am sure they will add content etc but for now, no thanks.

MaelstromOC

Yeah this game is a big pile right now, filled completely with absolutely ridiculous obstacles in every manner and every way. Even travel is annoying as you must run VERY VERY VERY FAR on foot to avoid spending precious anima teleporting since there's no other way to travel as Chocobos aren't even enabled yet.

It's nothing short of the largest time sink for nothing that I've ever seen and I'm greatly disappointed :( I was really looking forward to this game for quite some time.

The rate at which anima recovers is relatively slow, but comparable to other mechanics in different games. Although there is no player castable spell which allows for such travel.
 
The chocobo enablement was to be expected and will be in the game and will have a quest requirement. Airships will also be in the game, they already have the damn world constructions with the ports in the home cities. They also will have quests requirements for use.
 
As far as complaining about having to walk to get somewhere, i think you are just finding an excuse to complain about something. In every game you have to walk to get to an objective and mounts are simply not given to the player to speed this process along. Even so, you could level a harvesting job a few levels and obtain a run speed boost, which is a fairly signifigant run increase over a decent duration. Even more than that, the home cities are rediculously close together compared to any other game i have played excluding EQ1. On top of that the camps mark the mid way points between locations, excluding the high level camps. Now i'll be the first to admit that if you took a quest that told you to go to camp blue fog, well you are boned, but you only have to do that run one time due to the anima system in the game. For anywhere else, you can get there in under 30 minutes unless traveling between thanlaan and the forest home city or have to wait awhile for the boat heading out to the island... It takes longer than that for most locations in WoW... >.>  <.<
 
Would it be nice to be on the chocobos already? Sure. But i honestly see no real need for them unless you need to "play" around in moh dahna regularly, but even then why arent you able to save up 12 anima and do what you need to do and return to where you came from in the span of 24 hours? (short answer would be yes by default on the regen times for anima)
 
Sure there is stuff wrong in the game, but at least be somewhat objective about it.

With how close together the 3 main cities are, the world does feel very small. Even the 4th city up north past all the fire drakes (currently blocked off) is relatively close all things considered assuming you could run in a straight line anyhow...
 
My combat jobs aren't as high as yours. I was wondering though, have you participated in any of the battlewarden field events yet? Also, how as the gear upgrade over the mid teens treated you? I see a wide variety in what people are actually able to manufacture in the brass to iron range lately, but haven't noticed too many finished products overal.
 
The guy with the body level in the 40s probably has done multiple jobs. I doubt his job levels are quite that high. From what i have noticed and experienced it is very easy to get higher body levels, but a bit longer of a process to get job levels unless you are also an alchemist...

So far I've done only battlecraft leve quests.  I have done all main story line quests up to rank 20 which I just finished.  But how I leveled up was like this - I have 2 other buddies that play the game.  With 3 cities, we would get 6 battlecraft leve quests from each city normally 3 rank 10 and 3 rank 20 ones.  1 guy would pick all 6 more 1 city and the other would pick 6 from another city.  So in about 1 day we do a total of 18 quests with everyone in a party.  Since I'm a high Conjurer, my job is to nuke and heal.  And we crank up the difficulty of each quest depending on the mobs we will be fighting but normally 3-4 star difficult (out of 5) on rank 10 quests and 1-2 star difficult on rank 20.  We do this each time when we are on.  When I'm soloing I would grind out my Conjurer because I wanted to do the main story quest and because I wanted to join the Conjurer Guild in Gridania.  Now that I have done those things, I will be leveling up my Thaumaturge, who is currently rank 11.  There is a fatigue system in the game but I don't really feel the affects of it.  Basically SE limits you on how much you can level per week.  Once you hit a certain level you will no longer be able to level that rank.  You will hit low numbers and the numbers will fall to 0.  Never happened to me before.  But I've earned like 1 skill point sometimes when I hit mobs.  But they were low leveled mobs that I can take out with 1 or 2 hits.

i had the official 258 driver installed.  ran the benchmark with 1 480 and i got around 4500+ and when i enabled SLI (480x2) i got like 5000+.  so i guess SLI does provide some sort of boost?

phades

arcticreaver

So far I've done only battlecraft leve quests.  I have done all main story line quests up to rank 20 which I just finished.  But how I leveled up was like this - I have 2 other buddies that play the game.  With 3 cities, we would get 6 battlecraft leve quests from each city normally 3 rank 10 and 3 rank 20 ones.  1 guy would pick all 6 more 1 city and the other would pick 6 from another city.  So in about 1 day we do a total of 18 quests with everyone in a party.  Since I'm a high Conjurer, my job is to nuke and heal.  And we crank up the difficulty of each quest depending on the mobs we will be fighting but normally 3-4 star difficult (out of 5) on rank 10 quests and 1-2 star difficult on rank 20.  We do this each time when we are on.  When I'm soloing I would grind out my Conjurer because I wanted to do the main story quest and because I wanted to join the Conjurer Guild in Gridania.  Now that I have done those things, I will be leveling up my Thaumaturge, who is currently rank 11.  There is a fatigue system in the game but I don't really feel the affects of it.  Basically SE limits you on how much you can level per week.  Once you hit a certain level you will no longer be able to level that rank.  You will hit low numbers and the numbers will fall to 0.  Never happened to me before.  But I've earned like 1 skill point sometimes when I hit mobs.  But they were low leveled mobs that I can take out with 1 or 2 hits.

That is a pretty smart way to go about it. I've been fairly spaztic by comparison in how i've been leveling the jobs. I'm only breaking into the mid teens with most of my jobs, but my body level is in the mid 20s. The fatigue system works to a degree, but it is not an absolute wall. The higher end JP players that spend all day crafting i see chug down distilled water for hours on end doing the same crafting synth over and over. This leads me to believe that there is a way around the fatigue system, but i have no evidence of this. Getting exp grinding or via lower end battle leaves is rather forgiving. The fact the game gives out anything for such weak encounters is rather surprising to be honest. I personally have never really noticed much of an adjustment with the fatigue system, since i rotate rather often what i am doing. I have seen anywhere from a 100-200 exp hit when doing one crafting job too long and about 200-400 exp to body. The game is definately geared to be casually played at the low end and not powered through.

 
I believe the way the fatigue system works is that when you are in a particular rank and you see your exp drop down dramatically, switch to a different rank and level that rank for a while.  After that switch back to the rank you were leveling.

I'm very open minded about it all, but when there is nothing in game as far as quests go aside from the main story line, which is cool and I liked it, the game isn't finished. In WoW (and I'm NOT a wow fan mind you) at least when you're traveling it's through flightpaths once you've reached them the first time and along the first walk, you're busy doing things that lead you in that direction at small subcamps and quest hubs, etc. In FF there is NOTHING outside of the crystal camps, nothing... The mob layout is ridiculous too, here's this thing that I can kill in a few hits, and right next to it is a mob that I can't kill for another 30 levels... and that doesn't even include the fact that a level 1 crafting quest will have you attempt to travel to a lvl 30+ camp that's littered with small corridors (so much for an open world as well btw) and mobs that one shot you no matter what you try to do.
 
Surely you see my point, it's far from balanced at all, travel is a joke, saving up 12 anima takes 3 entire real life days...
 
I guess I just have better things to do than spend about 45 minutes minimum to do 3 leves that take less than 10 minutes to complete IN TOTAL, then spend the next hour running to the next city to rinse and repeat. Yeah, I know you can grind on mobs etc etc etc, I really wanted to like this game, but it's far from where it should have been for release. Maybe in another 6 months I'll enjoy playing it.