Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, The "Who Designed This?!"....Review
BearKnight
Member CommonPosts: 461
So, disclaimer, I'm a hardcore Sandbox player at heart. Soooo if you like games like WoW or RIFT, you most likely will disagree with everything I say (or a little bit?)
------------------------------------------[The Good]------------------------------------------
-The game definitely feels like a Final Fantasy game! Something that is pretty hard to pull off, but I feel is primarily due to their avid use of sounds for almost every action (that little arrow thing pointing to an action from a player or npc is a nice touch).
-The Audio is very well done and, again, just screams Final Fantasy.
-The "Art Style" definitely fits the overall atmosphere of the game. It isn't "Cartoony" or "Realistic", but a proper balance between the two. The Art Director obviously knew what they were doing.
-The "Graphics" are very nice, but the textures are low quality compared to what we KNOW exists. Most likely an issue with it being only weeks after launch?
-Multiple Avenues of Advancement!!! Don't like questing like me? Do Fates, or get a kill-chain exp group and grind mobs. Don't like any of that? Quest!
-Crafting is reasonably engaging, and i've been told is addicting as heck. I know people who meant to play as Bards or Black Mages but got engulfed by crafting from Day-One.
-The Lore and Story is good for an MMO, much better than other games that have come out in the past 5years.
-The races to choose from are diverse and offer many choices as well as personalities to shine through.
-The class system is a welcomed change from the "Alt Grind" of other MMOs. The fact that you can literally level any class is a breath of fresh air (a better implementation of FF11's job system).
-The class-switching system is completely redesigned from FF11's system. Instead of going to an NPC to setup your job and subjobs, you just switch to a class specific weapon, bam.
-Gear Sets for quick swaps between classes at the drop of a hat for the need of a group/raid encounter.
-CHOCOBOS!
-Experience bonus for subjobs below your maximum leveled job. In other words, if I have a level 50 Gladiator, and I level an Arcanist, said Arcanist will have +50% exp to ALL experience from EVERYTHING until level 50.
-The lighting system will "shock" you, pun intended. The first time you see a thunderstorm in Gridania will make you go squeee!
------------------------------------------[The Bad]------------------------------------------
-Forced single-player storyline that makes you choke on your own blood in order to unlock core-gameplay features. (REALLY? Forcing me to do some stupid quest-line in order to unlock Dungeons, or go to other Cities to play with friends?!)
-Gear system is basic, and unintuitive. Crafted gear isn't any better than drop/quest gear. Limited choices of gear throughout the levels.
-Dungeons aren't worth doing more than once until you're level 50. The loot is pathetic, and the exp is even worse for more than your first time. Due to the scarcity of gear drops in Dungeons, you'll out level ANYTHING that drops in them until level 50 faster than doing a couple dungeon runs in a day. You could get a 1/5th of a level doing a 60minute dungeon and probably get zero loot/gil, or you can do 60minutes of Fates for 2000gil and a level at level 30. Really??!?!
-Trials are fun, and epic, but aren't worth doing more than once. Worthless XP, no Gil, No LOOT!!! All of them are story-blockers, and require quick-thinking groups. In other words, Pubby-Hell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-You can AOE-Ability spam your way through FATES in order to go from 1 to 50 in a week, and that's without the sub-job exp bonus of +50%.
-Gathering resources for Crafting can be the most frustrating thing in the entire game in terms of progression.
-Many pet commands don't work anymore since BETA. You cannot macro "/pet attack" style macros anymore, and most seem to be unaware of the newer system that has ZERO documentation from SquareEnix. In other words, most Arcanist/Summoners are manually clicking pet attack unlike what other classes can do with Macros.
-Gladiators/Paladins primarily use crappy Daggers/Short Swords. Ruins the whole "Tank" feeling of the class (personal gripe).
-Limited number of skills per class makes the entire system feel watered down despite the limited number of cross-class skill usage that is possible. Unfortunately, MOST cross-class skills are pathetic at best, but at worst they're just worthless (looking you at Thaumaturge cross-class skills!).
-Most classes are underpowered, or completely unbalanced. Developers remaining silent about the whole thing has community constantly spamming their forum about obvious issues.
-The language barrier between [Insert Any Other Language other than Japanese Here] -> Japanese Developers is frustratingly obvious on the forums. Feels as if the Developers aren't even taking input from non-Japanese forums sections.
-Digital sales are still locked down despite many key-resellers still selling keys left and right. SE shooting themselves in the foot on a daily basis.
-Character Creation on 90% of current servers are still locked down. New players cannot play with friends, but are burning "Free" time given to them by their registered purchase of the game.
-Client is heavily unoptimized still.
-Yoshi P, director or FFXIV, refuses to unleash his grip on the Video Settings for FFXIV claiming that going any lower than they allow would "Break the original spirit intended to be experienced by the player". I'm looking at you, inability to disable Shadows-On-Everything Option. (Seriously, shadows are the MOST cpu-intensive option ever, and is ALWAYS disable-able).
-Almost ALL skills are on a Server-Timed Global Cooldown. This makes combat highly clunky and unresponsive/buggy at times. A lazy method for developers to reduce server load, but is known in the MMO industry as "How novice game developers solve network traffic problems".
-No "Social Equipment" tab, meaning you're forced to look like a vagabond that stole equipment from different fashion outlets.
------------------------------------------[The Ugly]------------------------------------------
-Anti-Social clowns are prolific within this game. Ask for a rez after a FATE because some jerk moved 10+ frontal-aoe mobs ontop of you during the FATE, and you're called a noob and ignored by the zerg moving on to the next FATE.
-Tanks thinking they're DPS
-DPS thinking they're healers
-Healers spamming CureII until they're OOM within the first 1/3rd of a Boss fight, and then blaming the tank for having crap gear.
-The Main Storyline's tie-in by locking core gameplay mechanics (mentioned in "[The Bad]", but bears repeating here).
-Dungeons do NOT sync you properly to their level if you're a higher level. You essentially have any ability above said level range locked from you messing up your hotbar/rotations/etc completely. Gear doesn't scale well, if at all, either and can cause proficient end-game tanks to become squishy novices in lower level dungeons to help friends/FC/etc.
-The Storyline actually locks friends out of helping you with main story battles. This can cause issues for classes such as WhiteMage (healers) whom run out of power mid-fight and then wipe because they can't meet a timed event based on damage, or just can't heal themselves any more.
-Lack of a decent Auto-Attack means everything is active-skill based. Healers and Mages beware!!!
-Almost no class differentiation by end-game save for Warrior vs Paladin, or WhiteMage vs Scholar. Everyone else essentially does the same DPS end-game. (hopefully changes with the first content update!!!)
-Lego style shadow settings in order to bring the game down to playable FPS.
-Summoner pets are disappointing. The tank pet looks like a giant floating chicken-nugget, and the "DPS" mini-ifrit pet does so little damage you might as well be auto-attacking the mob.
-The /teleport command making the game feel like a tiny mini-inclosed hand-held GameBoy product.
-Gil, aka: Gold, is almost impossible to gain prior to level 50. Even then, gil gain is so pathetic people are creating petitions to fix how the economy works. People have stopped doing end-game dungeons due to repair costs vs gil income.
---------------------------------------[Ending Thoughts]---------------------------------------
I'm sure there's more that I forgot to mention or missed, but I'm sure you get the overall point by now 
!
I'd give the game a solid 7 Bears out of a possibility of 10.
Needs improvement, and obviously the developers are novices when it comes to online gaming development. MANY mistakes being made that FF11 developers discovered, and fixed, a long time ago. Makes you wonder if FF11 developers are even on the FFXIV team.
Overall however, promises to be a solid Themepark title.
Regards,
-Bear
Comments
I tried this game during open beta and did not make it past lvl 10.. I seriously got up like 10 times to do other stuff... So I uninstalled it.
But after reading how many people "Love it" I thought about giving it another chance.
But after hearing how much problems they continue to have and reading your review I think I will pass again lol.
Thanks for the review, very indept.
------------------------------
You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Wait a month and come back to give it another shot. FFXIV wreaks of novice online developers throughout the product. However, it oozes professional quality for everything else that you'd see in any other Final Fantasy single-player title.
Mixed bag for sure, thanks for reading
!
I may bench the game for a while after my free month is up.
After hearing I get the PS4 version for free as a PS3 owner, I may bench ARR until Feb/Mar 2014 whenever it is the PS4 version comes out, give them time to patch up and add to the game, and then come back on PS4 with updated graphics, and hopefully many of the bugs worked out.
I'm hearing that quite a bit actually. People frustrated at the current state that aren't going to renew after the free month is up in order to wait for patches. Seems to be mostly console players saying that I've seen though. The PS4 announcement was probably an incentive for this decision for most people you think?
I understand those are you opinions and you are more than entitled to have them, however a lot of your points just do not match my experiences with the game. That to is to be expected. Anyone reading the OP's opinion please do realize experiences vary and no review can be consider 100% factual except in regards to the poster who wrote it.
I encourage everyone who loves Final Fantasy and well polished, fun game play to give FF14 ARR a chance i the next few months. Things will be ironed out and settle down and SE will start fixing the small things and adding more greater thing as anyone who has played ff11 can attest too.
It just makes sense.
I mean:
1. No additional cost
2. Better graphics / interface (controller)
3. Months of content updates + patches
It's not like it takes very long to level up the game, so if you are buying a PS4 and own FFXIV for PS3... it makes a lot of sense to use up the free month (through early October) and then wait till PS4 version release.
I mean, plenty of new PS4 games to play between now and then.
On the whole a pretty fair list.
-Almost ALL skills are on a Server-Timed Global Cooldown. This makes combat highly clunky and unresponsive/buggy at times. A lazy method for developers to reduce server load, but is known in the MMO industry as "How novice game developers solve network traffic problems".
Bares repeating. Combat would be so much more fun if it was crisp and precise.
While I respect your opinion as this is simply you're review. You have A LOT of mis-leading information going on in this post. I will only respond to things I specifically disagree with, and again this is just from my experience.
Dungeons/Guildhests - are great exp, and are meant to teach the FF crowd a lot of the basics of how a group should go. I'd say over 50% of the FF crowd are not hardcore MMO players and are unaware of how some things should work. All of the guildhests explain to you the mechanics of the fight and how you should react. Not to mention, dungeons take less than 30 mins on average. Guildhest are less than 5/10 mins. Not until late 30's does a dungeon not give you at least 75% of a level.
Gil - is so easy to get. After my first level 50 I had over 300k just from questing, and leveling up doing fates/dungeons/guildhests. I still have well over 200k and nothing to spend it on.
Trials are meant to give you an idea, and again teach you how that fight will work on Hard Mode. Which everyone will have to do if they wish to progress farther into the game and acquire their class weapon and eventually raiding.
GLD/PLD only use daggers early on. Late game(40+) all of their weapons are huge 1 hand neat looking weapons.
Some of the cross class skills are totally essential for your main job. If you're a healer. You HAVE to have fast cast from Thaumaturge. The PGL/MNK Heal is great for melee, the Marauder Mercy Stroke is great for leveling melee alts. TONS of good cross class skills.
I have a system that was HIGH END 5 years ago.. I can run this game at max settings with no issues. I only dip to about 30 frames in the middle of major cities/quest hubs. Shadows in this game are not that intense.
The complaint about tanks thinking they're dps, is somewhat true. A lot of warriors in FFXI were a dps class, even though they COULD tank if they used ninja as a subjob. Any other subjob and that warrior was considered DPS. And usually a very good dps too. That is not the case in this game, but most of the warrior skills in FFXIV are built around the idea of doing a lot of dmg, to heal yourself.
I'm not going to nit pick all of the review, but these are some of the major things that stuck out to me as being wholly inaccurate. I have a few 30s, a 50, so I've seen a fair amount of the game.
I wish more of the professional write-ups from fansites were as detailed and objective as this one.
Thanks for taking the time to compile this for us, BearKnight. Going to give this a couple months to bake before checking it out.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I like the game and it will keep my attention for a few more months until Landmark drops. You make some good points and some points I don't agree with. I do agree, that for a Themepark, they are doing quite a bit right and have a lot of room to be even better. I'm looking forward to the housing, minigames, and PVP that are slated "soon"
"The Other Game" > AKA WOW, AKA World of Warcraft, AKA My least favorite game on the market.
Raquelis in various games
Played: Everything
Playing: Nioh 2, Civ6
Wants: The World
Anticipating: Everquest Next Crowfall, Pantheon, Elden Ring
A LOT of misleading and false info on the OP review. It feels like someone didn't get very far in the game with a lot of this info...almost too much to even attempt to straighten out there.
First of all, If you think Dragoon, Monk, Black Mage, and Bard all play the same...you either haven't gotten very far in the game or couldn't bother to look up what endgame is like. They all play drastically different.
You don't really seem to know how fates work, or why people farm them. You CAN farm fates non stop all day and bypass all the content, if you want, not the most fun way to play the game, and there are other options that are fun and not as quick.
Teleport command is optional, you can run across the world if you want. IMO it feels that your gripes with fates and teleports is more of a "I don't want to play the game in a manner that's fun" kind of complaint. If you don't like teleports don't use them, its simple and a LOT cheaper. You don't like grinding fates to level up...then don't...
Then there is the GIL complaint. Seems its based off a SE forum post where the OP of the said thread has no concept of economy or making GIL.
GIL is valuable in the game...that is good...they do not hand you wealth on a silver platter. You want gil? Stop fate farming, stop wasting gil on teleports, pick up crafting which you mention as something the game does good. You will not hit endgame and be swimming in a pool of money...you will need to play other aspects of the game OR play the market with stuff you find in the world to have a lot of GIL...
Dungeons are not worth doing more than once? Well if you don't want rare gear...and if you are level 40 and are not running dungeons you are missing out on gear and tombs needed for endgame...might want to take a break from that fate farming you hate so much and actually run some dungeons. Agree, low level dungeons you just do for the story, you CAN farm for gear if you want though.
And yes, they lock content to the story...since they clearly haven't designed the game to be played simply fate farming...in fact fate farming doesn't make sense until 40+ and even then its just for the seals, if you want to buy GC stuff.
Again, it really seems like a review made by someone who doesn't have a full understanding of the game, which makes a lot of the endgame commentary seem strange (seems assumed tbh) However, a lot of people on this site really want to see a review that basically states the game suck...and this does deliver. I just wish there wasn't a lot of misinformation on the game buried within the crowd pleasing negative review.
Also you suggest to wait a month on the game? The systems you complain about are not going to go away. They were designed for a reason, and when played right, they add to the game not ruin it. Yeah I know "I can play any way I want" but its a themepark not a sandbox, they designed the game to be played a certain way, and if you don't enjoy the game playing it in a manner that wasn't intended...the simple solution would be to enjoy the story line, not race to endgame, take up crafting and use that to make money, and use teleports only when necessary (like you want to go from one main city to the other and don't have time to run)
Looks like a pretty fair review to me, having not played the game as yet though.
But OP put +/- both and said disclaimers of what types of games he likes and why people may disagree. Honestly far more fair a review than I see happen most of the time. Usually someone is 100% omfg this is the greatest game ever that has 0% wrong with it or they are like omfg this is the worst game in history, it is so horrible, you are stupid if you play it!!
Good post, liked reading it OP.
OP is wrong on a few things. But other than that, good review. I think there are too many reviews where information is based on hearsay rather than personal experience. You're more than welcome to call it "Drawn conclusions based on things I've read or been told about", but a review? Probably not the best format.
Thanks
!
Yea, I tried to just list everything based on my experience with them, as well as what I see other people completely raging about all the time. I'd then try to experience said rage to see if I shared said opinion.
What points am I wrong about
? Everything I posted was from personal hands on experience. I don't believe it can be called a "Review" if you don't experience it yourself.
Yup! Tonight's maintenance is adding in even more servers, more capacity per server, splitting up duty finder even more, and fixing some other major issues.
Also, it should be said that I've gotten to level 43 by multiboxing 4 accounts (Pal / BLM / BLM/ WHM). I find, even when efficiently running my WHM, that she runs oom quite a lot...or risks running oom. I'm thinking I need to switch out BLM's for Bards to be honest. Apparently, bards are more mobile and are only slightly less dps, but can give group MP refreshes that can keep healers in good power.
Thanks for the replies gang :]!
Crafted gear is better than their looted/quest reward counterparts.
Gladiators primary weapon is a long sword, daggers are peppered in low levels.
Cross class skill are highly useful. Take a conjurer to 15. You get a heal, armor buff, and a rez.
You aren't forced to look like a vagabond. You can create your own makeshift appearance tab and you can dye your clothing to match whatever you want.
Gathering is actually a lot more interactive than typical node farming.
The rest is basically your opinion, which isnt wrong, but I respectfully disagree with.
How do you manage to control 4 accounts at once?
Is there some sort of "follow" command? Otherwise how do you manually move them from one location to another?
/// Called a Hardcore Game dude.. The Dungeons are awesome and provide hard content.. this is not wow or any other mmo where u can complete a raid in 1 hour or dungeons in 10-20min... FFXIV is hard and keep being hard since Enix never want to make the game easy.
-Gear system is basic, and unintuitive. Crafted gear isn't any better than drop/quest gear. Limited choices of gear throughout the levels. >>>>>>> Nope.. all games got a crafting system almost and crafted gear is never better then dungeon gear..
instead of me telling everything u said in Bad and ugly is pretty much wrong..
Dedicated people like myself tank as a propper tank..
healers i play with are great and do not go Oom unless heavyli needed.
basicly this game is great no problems
-Client is heavily unoptimized still. lol NO client is well made and is still abit unoptimized but that is decent the game works fine, and the Engine is better then alot of the mmo we have.
if u have AMD card Update to 13.8 V2 and u get quite a huge Boost.
Nvidia well dont know yet but i guess the same
i have a 7870 and i max out everything in FFXIV with a stable 40fps in fates with people up to 100..
i got about 60fps stable around the world.
in general i got 40-60 avg fps
I use ISBoxer, and their in-game /follow system is AMAZING. It literally records the path the person being followed walked. So you almost never have to worry about alts getting stuck on geometry. I asked a CSR what SquareEnix's policy was on multiboxing and they said "As long as nothing is being automated, such as attacks, targeting, etc, and your alts are only acting based on your input it's completely allowed within FFXIV." I then asked about ISBoxer, explained it, and sent video links, and they accepted that it was allowed and completely Legit
!
Responses in red.Pfft .. A P2P title with cash cows all over the place, still not porting over to the xbox. It can't get more greedy than that. And no I doubt anyone is forcing them to do shit. SE has cross-platform games all over their portfolio
First PC Game: Pool of Radiance July 10th, 1990. First MMO: Everquest April 23, 1999
-Cheers
My biggest problem by FAR is the interupts. 2.5 GC & the AOE lag has just killed it. If I want to interupt a baddie I cannot go through my rotation and wait till the AOE pops up. I have to have my finger hovering over shield bash because due to the GC and the AOE lag I will inevitably miss the chance. Utterly annoying as hell.
Other gripes include invisible walls. They are EVERYWHERE, in dungeons, cities, and the world. It makes the world feel superficial.
The game feels tiny, although it's a medium sized MMO. It's full of narrow valleys unclimbable hills.
No real point in crafting despite it being well done.
Combat for melee classes feels slow.
The starting areas and cities are too bland.