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A real.... informed.... review, about the interface/game engine.
stormseekaz
Member UncommonPosts: 168
Ok, so I heard that FFXIV came out about a week ago, and I spent the next few days reading up reviews on the game and forum posts on mmorpg.com and the majority of them said, "stay away from this game."
I took these reviews and forum posts with some skepticism for a few reasons:
1. The players who hate the game are going to complain on forums about how bad it is. But the players who like the game, are going to be busy playing it, and may not take the time to post their opinions. So the forum post quantity will be skewed in favor of the haters, not the lovers.
2. No interface could ever be as bad as Darkfalls. And I had a blast during the 6 months or so I played Darkfall. Its a Square Enix game, I can't imagine their interface would be so bad from a company with such a successful franchise.
3. I got FFXI for christmas from my parents when it came out. I installed it, played it for 5 minutes, hated it, and put it on the shelf. Years later I came to find from my guildmates in several different MMORPGs that they looked back on FFXI with fondness and thought it was a great game with good pve and grouping etc. I never gave FFXI a chance and I feel like I missed out because of that.
4. There is NO way this game is worse than the game I'm currently playing. A week ago I was finishing up my 7th week or so of playing a game called T4C (The fourth coming). I had played this game in the past about 7-8 years ago, and I went back to playing it for nostalgia reasons mainly. It was fun for a while, but I kept thinking about FFXIV at work and I thought, there is no way FFXIV can suck as much as this 8 year old T4C game im playing.
So those were my reasons for givnig FFXIV a chance. I went out and bought it yesterday after work. And I must say, the game is not as bad as people are making it out to be.
Heres the big thing people need to know before they buy this and review it. THE GAME WAS MADE, FOR PS3. This is a solid fact. The interface is clearly made for a controller with 2 joysticks, a directional pad etc etc. Hell, the default keyboard layout has ASWD for movement, and IJKL for camera movement, its to simulate the 2 joysticks. You can easily play this game without your mouse and just your keyboard. This game was not a PC game that is being adapted to fit to PS3. It is a PS3 game that was adapted to fit onto PC.
Most of what you need to know is in the instructions manual, and the starting tutorial guide thing. Yes there is a starting tutorial, but you have to actually go past the beginning cut scene areas to get to it. People talked about "there are red circles I cannot cross beyond, and I keep hitting them and im so confused, I played EQ1 so Im not dumb." I was expecting it to be very difficult when I started because of these posts. It was not that difficult. It actually reminded me alot of FFIX / FFX type gameplay. Your in an area, you need to talk to an npc, theres 5-10 npcs or so, you find the one you need to talk to and you talk to him. Thats how most FF games were/are and thats how these starting areas are.
ZOMG I HAD TO TALK TO 5 NPC'S TO FIGURE OUT WHERE TO GO. Hello welcome to single player RPGs, where there are npcs that talk for no reason.... its called Lore, it enriches the game. Honestly, I was inconvenienced for about 60 seconds before figuring what to do to get past the starting cutscene areas.
The character creation section is a bit confusing I will admit, regardless of which beginning character "look" you choose, you can edit them to end up creating the same looking character. They are really just starting default looks as a template to begin from. This portion of the step by step menu could be eliminated. I am pretty anal when it comes to how my character looks and will spend a good 30-120 minutes perfecting the look. I think this character creation system is adequate enough to give u decently different looks, but its nothing like Aion or any games like that, you pretty much just adjust all facial features, height, skin color, and voice. There is no editing of body parts / proportions etc. One thing that I missed out on in the beginning but later found was, in character creation you can use J and L to rotate the camera around your face to see how nose/hair/jaw looks from the sides.
And lastly, the graphics. I read someone say the graphics engine sucks and is not optimized. This is another thing Im anal about. I spent a good 4-6 hours tweaking my graphics settings and overclocking my new GPU to optimize it for the game. The game has extremely high res textures, for every single object. There is no candle or boulder or anything you will walk up to where a low res texture was stretched out over a rock or something and it ended up looking blurry if you check it out point blank. The game's graphics IMO are like all the best features of Age of Conan, and all the best features of LOTR wrapped into one. The grass, bushes, and trees are all very high polygon count models and have very good textures, even if you get up point blank to the bushes they will not look bad. I just bought a GTX460 768 mb yesterday to replace my 9800 GT 1GB and I can easily put all texture graphic options on max without an FPS loss. The sky and greenery all look very good. In order to adjust the graphic settings you need to go to the FFXIV config file in the games directory.
Ok so, to wrap this post up, I want to give one of my final reasons for why I am not unhappy I bought the game. Because it is a final fantasy game, and there are many asian players who will stick with it for years, and because the servers are international, this game will never lose enough players to where it will be shut down or lose development team size. This is a good thing for the future of an MMO. Many MMO's coming out now have so much competition that if it fails hard enough, there is a risk of it getting shut down completely (ex. Tabula Rasa). I do not have this fear with FFXIV, which is a very good thing.
P.S. for people who may question my experience or whatever, here is a list of my MMORPG's ive played (for last 13 years):
Nexus:TK, UO, EQ1, T4C, DAoC, EVE, SWG, EQ2, WOW, Guild Wars, Slayers (Taewool), ROSE online,Vanguard, Scions of Fate, LOTROnline, CABAL online, Age of Conan, Requiem: Bloodmare, Warhammer Online, Nostale, City of Heroes/Villians, Champions Onine, Fallen Earth, Aion, Global Agenda, Darkfall, Earth&Beyond, Entropia Universe
There are some other free games I've downloaded and tried but I played them too little time to count them.
Oh and I rolled my char on the Besaid (unofficial RP) server on FFXIV, and I haven't run into the "crippling lag" every spoke of.
hope this helps anyone who might of been on the fence about buying it or not
Comments
Give it more than 1 day. I actually found it a bit charming after the first day. It took time for me to realize what this game was.
I think you wrote a pretty fair review. Although, knowing this place can be rather a hotbed for debate, I imagine you're going to attract wrath from both sides of the matter for being relatively middle-of-the-road. (Mostly those who disliked the game as they've successfully driven off the majority of those who like the game.)
So... accept that the control interface is a crappy port and that PC gamers were never REALLY intended to play this game... oh and spend "5-6 hours(!!!!)" tweaking your video settings and, oh yeah, overclocking your video card. And then you can play.
That about it then?
Glad you and others are able to deal with it and enjoy it, but come on, your post doesn't exactly refute the naysayers.
Eh, you actually don't have to worry about FFXIV being shut down.
If it were an NC Soft game then yeah, people might start sweating (Auto Assualt, Tabula Rasa...)
Other than that, yeah the graphics in FFXIV are mind numbingly amazing, and largely due to the lighting engine (leaving a cave and getting that eyes adjusting to the sunlight effect as an example)
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
On the fence:
Well I am happy that you are happy playing the game however, your review is more like a reall...bais...one way report. The many OB and release reports here combined with two site reviews leaves me to hold onto my cash and see if the sites, plalyers fourms and others are haters. You have not mentioned any of the real issues regarding the game, leading me to beleive that perhaps all those who wrote information regarding the game may, in fact, be correct in their observations. Oh sure, I have not forgotten the "get EA" conspiracy theory where an un-named game company had went out and payed these two sites and everyone who posts less than postive information. Sure, all these people could be lieing just to "get EA" but the probiblity of such a secret agreement is not very high. Or , they all can be haters with the intent to put out negative and incorrect information regarding FFXIV...figure the odds.
The good thing about being "on the fence" with FFXIV is that if all these "haters" have been putting out incorrect information then no loss will be expreinced. The system is set so that no one gets any further than anyone and I will be able to catch up with the content in no time. However, until I see a couple of more game site reviews I will hang onto the money, continue to research the game and see if your report is anywhere "real" and "informative".
seabeast if you are interested in the game but worried I would honestly recommend waiting. As even those of who like it knows it needs a lot still.
Just like any MMO(well in most cases not every I guess) they aren't to amazing at release and get better as time goes on.
Rather than writing a lengthy reply.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(making_excuses)
This is quite possibly the thinnest review I've ever read.
Like a poster said prior to this, if non-MMO games are going to get chastized for their inability to successfully port their mechanics and UI from console to computer, then FFXIV will most definately get the same treatment. It is TORTURE to try to get around the mechanics/UI...
In one sentence I will say the same thing you did in many paragraphs...
The UI sucks, graphics are amazing and I like a city full of people and will soon come to wonder why I have to walk around an entire area with 0 NPC's around.
Tip to the fanboys and those that still hold hope for this game: All the doubters know the graphics are great, that will not go disputed, but a pretty plate of $hit is still a filthy pile of crap.....
SE is known to be good at polishing a game as time passes by, like FFIX for example. So I would they this game has a bright future and most haters will probably flock back to playing this game sooner.
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tzu, Art of War
How about ... no.
I like the game becuase of the complexity. I don't feel like I am at the age of ten playing it. I actually had to figure out a few things and talk to several, UNMARKED, npc's to get places. The game is extremly populated with one of the best cultires I have seen sense DAoC. Can't wait for the updates. I'll keep playing. And, I agree with the OP. I think, because of the population, and how long people can play in this game, they won't be spending time on the forums talking it up. Why? Becuase they want to play. *shrug*
They never polished FFXI, the only thing they fixed was the way "tab" worked lol.
I'm sorry, how is this reveiew real and informed relative to any other "review" given?
There are mostly opinions stated in the post about things. Great job on your opinions though!
So.. you bought the game the day before.. Then spent time on creating a character roaming aound the starter area and adjusting the graphics and you write a review? Please...
I've been uplinked and downloaded, I've been inputted and outsourced. I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading.
I'm a high-tech low-life. A cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, bi-coastal multi-tasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.
I'm new-wave, but I'm old-school; and my inner child is outward-bound.
I'm a hot-wired, heat-seeking, warm-hearted cool customer; voice-activated and bio-degradable.
RIP George Carlin.
Shhhhhhh. That's even less time then some of the real review sites spent reviewing the game!
I'll save you some time, OP, it's not that there are hate threads it's the quantity and quality of hate threads that allow you to know if the hate actually holds weight. So to say.
Welcome to the internets!
1. There is no emperical backing for this statement whatsoever.. Try looking in to basic survey-based research methods before making a silly claim.
2. This is your opinion. Not to say that it means anything less, rather, I wouldn't operationize it as "informned"
3. A good reason for you personally to give FF14 a good try!
4. see #2 above
5. Though you stop numbering your post at this point, you make a lot of conjectute and assumptions (e.g. Asain players will stick with the game for years... erm yeah mate, I lived in Japan for 10 years and have seen the reaction of Japanese players and fans to the game. Then again that is anicdotal). But hey (no ill will meant) if you are enjoying the game keep on doing so! But MMORPGS are preachy and fun with only half the righteous conviction of organized religion (and evangelical atheists).
play for 2 weeks at least up to lvl 20 then come back and read your own review just for the fun of it.
This is where the problem exists ...
If you condense all the negative criticisms into 1 major complaint it would be: the game is not ready, released way to soon.
Will SE polish it and get it up to par over time ... they most probably will.
But by then most players will have moved on. Some pretty impressive titles are coming over the horizon.
In this day and age you get 1 shot, you screw it up ... you're out!
So no ... the "haters" as you so eliquantly put it, will not be back, they will be playing the horizon.
And another thng most defenders tend to forget ... a lot of FFXIV players will also try out the new games ...
Don't you think some of them will move over to?
I see hard times for SE and they better hurry up the polishing process, because time is running out ... fast!
the way i see it, its not that the game wasn't ready - it probably isnt but the problems that are bothering most people are the interface itself, and no amount of patching is really going to help there.. the game was designed with the limitations inherent in a gamepad - in order to make it useable on a ps3 a certain amount of 'usability' that is usually taken as standard in modern MMO's was sacrificed, as a result, people find the user interface clunky and hard to use, if not obstructive. this will not change in the future, its an inherent game design flaw. even using a gamepad on a pc doesnt make it any easier to play, its a shame really, as graphically the game has a lot going for it, although.. cutscenes.. i still think that cutscenes belong in single player games, and not MMO's..
Okay, wait. So even though it mentioned everything from graphics to gameplay, the gamespot review wasn't "good enough" for you, but this guy comes in with NOTHING in his "review" other than "I tweaked the graphics herp-a-derp" and said NOTHING about the gameplay at all, and he gets a "You wrote a pretty fair review."?
Seriously, do you NOT see why noone takes your opinion of FFXIV seriously any more?
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
It's a fair review because it talks about the interface and game engine and totally skips over the other several-dozen issues the game has.
Once you mention the other issues, you are no longer playing nice and are instead biased, unobjective, cruel, unprofessional and out for blood.
If your review points out any of the issues/short comings you are a heretic spewing blasphemy.
If you ignore said issues and short comings, or just gloss over them and rate the game on how 'pretty' it is, you are a saint and will probably get an ingame holiday in your honor.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Okay, wait. So even though it mentioned everything from graphics to gameplay, the gamespot review wasn't "good enough" for you, but this guy comes in with NOTHING in his "review" other than "I tweaked the graphics herp-a-derp" and said NOTHING about the gameplay at all, and he gets a "You wrote a pretty fair review."?
Seriously, do you NOT see why noone takes your opinion of FFXIV seriously any more?
The gamespot review basically said, "i'm ( the reviewer) a person i need the game to told me all that i need to do and what to do and how i need to do it in every moment because i could not do it myself, so this game is bad because i need to figure it myself". So for me it have no value other that to know that the reviewer and me dont share the same values on a gameCould you found it there or do i need to post the actual words from him?
Yeah, you need to post the actual words since your interpretation of the Gamespot reviewers words is ridiculous.
Actually I think what the reviewer basically said was "Seriously? You call this release ready? Come on SE! You should know better! It's 2010 ffs! This might have flew oh, 8 years ago, but seriously?! Half this stuff doesn't even work and what does work is made frustrating due to poor design decisions.... Did you bother testing? At all?! Are you *trying* to piss off your customers?"
And yeah, I know a few people who play the game feel hurt by the review given, but come on.... Square knew that the game was going to be slammed due to the state it was in that they sent out letters to reviewer asking them to hold off reviews for 30 days so they could net as much sales as possible as well as get time to do what should have been done in beta; fix the issues.
If this were any other game, you and many others who defend this game and cry foul over the poor reviews would suddenly be cheering the reviewer and bashing the company for doing *exactly* what SE did with FFXIV.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"