Hydaelyn Role-Players

So, the NDA has been lifted... since the other forums seems to be full of crying, what do our fellow beta testers here have to say?

Crying? Why? :S

If SE is reading this:

1. Make Guild inviting possible remotely, I do not want to travel the world as a level 1 Archer and pass out pearls because you didn't put in something that simple!

2. /wave /happy /cheer /emote please.

3. Fix your nVidia crap, my computer is bogging down.

4. I love the game but seriously, you act like you've never done this before <,<

Kashemia Wrote:Crying? Why? :S

Seems mainly because people are misinformed and spreading false rumors or still don't get that it's still beta. Like the AH and menu.

Core and Eorzeapedia have a couple threads going if you wish to read them, but be warned. ;P

Nah, I don't think I want to. I know how people are. I just hope SE didn't fall in the trap of releasing a non-finished game, but in general, I try to stay optimistic until some time after launch. A beta will always have flaws.

My thoughts on the beta thus far:

We have definitely come a long way since the first alpha tests, when all most of us tested out was how many times we could enter our username and password within a two hour span.

The good:
GORGEOUS atmosphere. Really, the game is stunning. Wandering around La Noscea, looking up at the star-filled night sky, noticing an airship floating past you out of the corner of your eye, it's all really impressive. I love that there are sound effects of waves lapping at rocks and seagulls in the air when you're near the beach.

The ok-but-needs-work:
Character customization:

Guildleves:

Crafting jobs:

The absolute crap

Linkshells
The tester community

I don't want to end this on such a negative note, so I will say that this game shows a lot of promise. Do I think it's going to be ready by release date? No, not really. Will they probably push it out anyway and give us patches galore in the first few weeks? More than likely, yes. A lot of stuff has not been tested and probably never will be before release.

Square-Enix took out all the armor and weapons from vendors with the idea that we were to craft our own gear. Except.. crafting was broken. And there was a glitch that allowed us to wear any level armor on any job. So what ended up happening was you'd see level 15-20 players running around in level 25-30 basic chainmail or whatnot, wielding broken level 16 weapons because you could never find someone to repair your gear. We have no idea how balanced party play actually is at the moment, especially beyond level 20.

However, the two storyline quests they put into the game show promise for an engaging storyline, and the world is fantastically enormous. I have faith that at the very least, we will have a lot of places to explore and a lot of NPC quests to fulfill while our leves are on cooldown. Also there is cornbread. :approve:

Well, that's a bit of a downer. I really hoped SE had learned something from the game-flops the past couple of years. If they do get most of it fixed within the first month, I'll probably stick it out, but I guess we'll see.

It's still beta, so I'm gonna stay optimistic and hope they get most of the stuff somewhat fixed before launch though. But I am a bit disappointed about especially what you say about the linkshell systems and the guildleves. Are guildleves really the only type of "quests"? I can barely believe that they would feel it is ok to only allow you to do 4 quests every other day, that seems redicilous.


About the community, well... That's just the gamer community. I think it's like that in every game. By now, I try to avoid reading it too much.


I still have faith that this can be an awesome game, so despite the sort of bad news, I'm gonna stay positive for now It's just a shame really, that companies keep pushing out games before they're ready.

Aveline Wrote:My thoughts on the beta thus far:

Thank you for this review. I have almost no free time to sift through the amazing amount of feedback that's been posted on other forums since yesterday and it is so difficult to find constructive and honest feedback that isn't overly judgemental at such an early phase. So again, thank you for being so objective and giving a good wrap-up on each point!

I really try to avoid official/unofficial forums like the plague. There is always so much negativity and the MMO vultures tend to come swooping down on anything new, complain, rant, finish content quickly, say 'it's not like WoW' (grumble... grrrrrr), then move on to the next thing, leaving a meagre assortment of pickings behind. I was in the queue for the post office yesterday and saw a gaming magazine (I think it was gamesTM) on the shelf with a FFXIV preview and the tagline was something like: will it compete with rival WoW? Sigh... 5+ years later and some people still don't get it.

ArmachiA Wrote:1. Make Guild inviting possible remotely, I do not want to travel the world as a level 1 Archer and pass out pearls because you didn't put in something that simple!

2. /wave /happy /cheer /emote please.

Wow, I find it surprising that your points 1 and 2 aren't already incorporated!

Trust me I was shocked too. While the latter is actually going in soon, nothing is being said about the former, which is a bigger deal than people think it is. This game is massive, trying to run to get everyone an LS invite is going to be difficult. As the holder of the RPC LS, I pretty much spend the majority of my time trying to find people who want a pearl, and that's just in Limsa Lominsa. Add Three huge cities? It's barely gonna be possible.

I'll take ugly guild crests over that pain in the ass anyday.

That's really surprising to me as well, and very old fashioned for an MMO. I really hope they change that!

The mouse controls are laggy as hell too. That needs fixed...

I do want to state though that the game is fun, immersive, and huge and they have already said there will be a lot of stuff in release we just don't get to see in Beta. I have a lot of fun on my Archer, even though I've no idea what I'm doing 98% of the time. I also played fisherman, which is really fun but kind of broken. The game is glitchy but by no means unplayable. I already enjoy it more than Aion.

In Alpha the Guild Leves were every 4 hours, I THINK they made it 48 in Beta to promote partying and test it out. You'll probably see a big drop in time once release hits.

Oh, thanks for that note, ArmaichA. I enjoyed Aion for a while, so if it's better than that, it should be ok, at least long enough for them to fix some stuff ^^

I'm still looking a lot forward to playing it!

I like reading the constructive critisism.

I am not worried about what the Masses think really. In general the Gaming community is never pleased. You could give them gold on a stick and they'd complain about the stick.

Or the gold. In their defense gold really isn't supposed to tarnish. Who gave you this gold...wait...is that? YES! It's better than gold! It's chocolate wrapped in gold colored foil!

On a serious note, thanks for the objective thoughts. It's really hard to find on the zam or eorzea boards. I'm beginning to think it's a waste of time going to those forums, but I'll keep going anyway.

Yeah, I'm avoiding the other boards and deliberately NOT reading the information posted. Screenshots, yes. Opinions, no. I remember the FFXI community. I was part of the Warhammer Online beta. I remember those communities. I have therefore installed a mental filter that exchanges the text of anyone involved with the beta who I don't already trust the opinion of (i.e. the members of the RPC) with this:


I wouldn't worry too much at this point. Even if they do push things not totally ready and give us patches up the arse in the first few weeks, it could be a lot worse. I point to the example of Warhammer Online. We were promised independent cities for each faction, we were promised massive, world-spanning events...we got two cities. The other four got cut with the promise of "we'll add them in later". They didn't. Ever. SE are going to leave in some stuff that pisses us the hell off. The linkshell thing will probably remain. I see them taking an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality here and from all the FFXI feedback I saw developers get through Q&A sessions I don't remember it ever coming up. So they probably didn't rate it as a high priority to change. For better or worse, SE seem to be ignoring what a lot of other MMOs have done in favor of learning from their own past experiences with FFXI. How effective that strategy is remains to be seen.

I also don't think it's fair to evaluate everything as a package. Granted, I've not been in the beta myself but the few snippets I've picked up as well as some of the earlier comments in this thread make it sound like SE tested one area, then shut it back down in order to test another. This makes sense to me. Evaluate the different pieces separately in closed beta, work on the issues then test them as a more complete package in open beta. Arma's point about the difference in Guildleve cooldown between Alpha and Beta is a good example of this.

Bottom line, don't get disheartened. Because at the end of the day, all the other stuff is just gravy. We're not like most of the people who will be playing this game. How many of us would have stuck out FFXI as long as we did without the RP communities we were parts of? There will be aggravations within FFXIV, but all I've seen thus far indicates it's by and large significantly improved over FFXI. And thanks to the efforts here (and largely thanks to Castiel), we've managed to vastly improve the one thing in FFXI that really kept most of us coming back. The RP community. That's there and rocking.

Who's awesome?

You're awesome.

I'm awesome.

We're all awesome.