Great Graphics, Great Music, Terrible Gameplay!

epoq

The FFXIV open beta is nothing more than a decent benchmark for newer PCs.  I'm glad that I didn't actually spend money on this game, I had intended to pre-order it, but after actually playing it for the past 8 or so hours, Square Enix will not be receiving a dollar of my hard earned money.  It seems to me like the company put all of its time, money, and effort into the visually appealing aspects of a game.  The textures are great, the scenery is beautiful, and the music is on par with FF games.  That being said....the gameplay...

 

Combat is SO SLOW. Especially at peak playing hours.  I have gone into combat with mobs and sat there trying to attack while the UI frustratingly told me I was unable to hit my mob for SOME reason.  It was my Levequest mob..I was close enough..and yet I've had random times where I could not attack at all, had to sheath my weapon (which takes forever and you cant move while doing so), and then run away until mobs stop chasing me and come back and try again.  Some of my lower level quests actually almost took me the entire 30 minutes to complete (when my objective is only to kill 6 or so mobs).  I am no noob, I have played most all MMOs starting with Everquest in 1999.  It's very silly how long combat can take, and if by chance your levequest mobs are grouped together, and you are playing solo, you basically have to stand there and wait until they run around and arent close enough to eachother to where they will gang up on you (because you WILL die).  

 

Levequests in general are boring, I did some of the Battle ones, as well as a few of the Crafting ones (Mining).  Kill x mobs or mine x kind of ore, blah blah, very boring, very simple.  NPCs are also very odd in this game, as you have NO IDEA if they are worth talking to unless you talk to every single one.  I'm all for realism, but come on, the UI is slow to scroll through text and keep moving, so I definitely do not want to talk to every NPC in the game to see if they have anything for me.  I've also seen nothing beyond the intro quest and Levequests either.  In the beginning of a game, I feel like you should be doing quests for the greater good of the world that you live in, things that will begin to shape what turmoil is plaguing the land.  Levequests are absolutely pointless and have nothing to do with any kind of backstory.

 

Not sure on the storyline, because I'm currently only rank 9 physical rank 7 of my main class (Lancer). The intro has a story to it, but afterwards I have just been able to do Levequests and I havent seen anything else yet related to the intro story.  

 

There is very little info on crafting and gear upgrading.  I ran around to shops, didn't see any gear that I could buy for my class to upgrade his newb armor, after completing most of the intro and a few levequests, have about 40,000gil or so to spend, but no idea what to do with it.  I had to go online to find the most BASIC crafting recipes for blacksmithing, because from the looks of things, the game doesn't tell you how to do much in that regard.  Everyone is running around in the basic newbie equipment with a few random pieces from levequests that they've done.  I haven't seen anyone cool looking yet.

 

All in all, this game needs SO much work to be a stable MMO.  I'm not asking for a carebear game, but FFXIV has no direction from the beginning and is not helpful in most ways, even when it comes to the most simple things.  It needs massive amounts of tutorials, crafting recipes need to be added, and a lot of polish in combat needs to be added, before its any semblance of a TRUE MMORPG. AND - even with all of this, its so different from your mainstream MMO, I'm still not sure if I could get into it.  I'm all about bringing new ideas to the table, but I also believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  There are plenty of ways to re-invent the MMO wheel without totally destroying the way games like EQ and WoW are set up.  They worked for a reason, because they are easier to get into, they give you some direction, and they just make sense in general.  Thus far, FFXIV has shown me none of these things.  It's just been a good benchmark for my new 4 series GeForce. It looks great on max settings, and doesn't overload my GPU or CPU to the point that they melt, which is great.  I think Square Enix should stick to single player games, honestly.  You can tell its an SE game from the graphics and music, but the gameplay makes it look like it was developed by a start-up indie company that had no idea what it was doing.

yoyoyoblaka

I actually think the gameplay is relevant to the final fantasy series, once you realize that you realize this isn't your typical mmo as far as gameplay. 

I'll 100% agree with you on the tutorials though, you get a bunch of tutorials after about 2 hours of frustrating gameplay.