More FFXIV
So... I'm nearing the end of my "trial" period and there's probably more I can say. It took just over three weeks of regular play for me to hit level 50 with dragoon/lancer (which includes 15 levels of marauder), which So... I'm nearing the end of my "trial" period and there's probably more I can say. It took just over three weeks of regular play for me to hit level 50 with dragoon/lancer (which includes 15 levels of marauder), which stands as the current cap. The leveling experience wasn't quite as smooth as ideal, but it wasn't too painful to push through the "dead" spots.
The main storyline has been reasonably solid. The player character is given an important, but not quite unique, role in events. Being gifted with the "Echo" is a clear story benefit in connecting with the beast tribes and resisting the primals, but an NPC has the same ability and there's nothing that precludes other "adventurers" from having it as well. Obviously, all the PCs are playing basically the same story, but nothing much calls that fact out. There's your empire and your manipulative evil mages, magic and magitek, the Lifestream - all fairly standard FF stuff. It works well enough. The story also has some good tie-ins with the original version of the game, though it's hard to tell how much of that is there without reading a summary.
Voice is used fairly rarely in the cut scenes, and I find myself missing the lack these days even though some of the voice work is not so good. The PC is silent, but that doesn't bug me as much as in The Secret World because he/she at least responds and reacts. It's just rather than getting into hard dialog most of the time, it's sort of like telling the GM at an RPG table, "My character tells them what happened."
The story puts you through some mandatory instances. I believe there are three required primal fights - 4-person (light party) single-boss encounters. Then there are six required light party dungeons. There's one 8-person (full party) single-boss trial and two full party... dungeons? Raids? I think. I haven't done those last two yet, and they stand at the end of the main story, but I believe they are distinctly longer. The game also has 24-person instances and hard/extreme modes of many of the earlier instances, not to mention several non-mandatory instances. Party breakdown is 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 DPS in ratio. I'm not sure if that really is any better or worse than the five-man parties in other games. While leveling, I've sat in the duty finder queue for 20-60 minutes as a solo DPS, which... sort of sucks, but isn't really surprising to me. Random party finding is always harder as DPS, and the game's at a point where the majority of the population probably is focusing more on level 50 content. I find some inconvenience to the system in that I can't queue with my chocobo summoned as an ally, so I can't do quite the same stuff while I'm waiting, and I did miss notice to join a couple times because I finally got up after waiting around a while.
The social experience has been mixed. In fairness, this may be the first time I've leveled through an MMO without being part of a guild... er... Free Company. In my travels, I've received a lot of gold-selling tells. I don't remember as many in any other game, to be honest, though that might be because I often shut down public channels in WoW and there were some channel restrictions on low-level characters there. Even sneaker were a few that sent a friend request along with the tell, which adds several steps to any attempt to blacklist the character (and I haven't seen an easy reporting function). I've also gotten a lot of random Free Company invites - those were annoying. Some people offered a FC invite, which wasn't annoying, though I passed on a number of them that were polite at least. One stands out as respectful and thoughtful - that made a good enough impression that I might sign up if I feel the need to join one at all. People in instance groups were a mixed bag. I had a silent and ineffective tank in one run alongside a confident healer who didn't mind carrying the weight "eh, I can tank this if he can't, no big deal." I've seen a few real nice people, and a couple real vocal asses insulting "noobs" for taking the time to watch the cut scenes. So ups and downs there, I suppose that's not abnormal.
Mechanically, it's been a bit odd going back to what is largely a cooldown-based system rather than my GW2 thief, which is resource-based. Getting scaled down in level can be jarring too, because you get locked out of abilities gained at higher levels, which can change your whole rotation. You gain the ability to summon your chocobo mount as a combat ally, which make for a nice benefit. And you can switch classes easily, potentially leveling them all to max in time. Most maps have one or two aethercite crystals for fast travel. Only healer classes can easily resurrect people in the field. Items take damage in use and have to be repaired. They also become "soulbonded" with use, at which point you can convert them to materia to put in other items - something I haven't done much with yet.
My only real solid mechanical complaint however is the delay in visual effects. There's so much flash to abilties, which looks great, but it may take a 2-second (or so) cooldown before your attack completes on screen, which makes the timing of off-cooldown abilities (like interrupting stuns) very... odd. I'm still not sure if they take effect immediately or only after the current move finishes. Likewise, enemies have a casting bar for abilities and a ground highlight (in most cases), but it's the former that matters. A move "cast" might finish a full second or two before the enemy actually finishes the move and slams the ground (or whatever), leading to cases where it looks like you move clear, but then you take damage. I think the timing is something a player can get used to, but I really wish it all synced up better.
Visuals, as said before, are good with a lot of classic Final Fantasy influence. I wasn't real drawn to the dragoon class armor, but after getting it, I actually quite like the look. Part of that may be because you can open the visor - I like seeing my character's face in cut scenes.
Verticality in maps isn't well conveyed, though it's only an issue in a few places. Weather is nice. The landscapes are pretty well done. There are some invisible walls in the geography, though, which put me off a bit. I mean, it's nice to not fall off the edge of the world (like back in Outland), but it's also jarring to me not to be able to jump down some areas - that's not as bad here as in Guild Wars (1), but I sort of expect a bit more freedom these days.
All in all, it's really a pretty solid MMORPG. I'm giving serious thought to subbing for another month, though I have some concern that as the emphasis shifts to more instances, I might find the lack of dedicated time and a ready group to work with a major drawback.
The main storyline has been reasonably solid. The player character is given an important, but not quite unique, role in events. Being gifted with the "Echo" is a clear story benefit in connecting with the beast tribes and resisting the primals, but an NPC has the same ability and there's nothing that precludes other "adventurers" from having it as well. Obviously, all the PCs are playing basically the same story, but nothing much calls that fact out. There's your empire and your manipulative evil mages, magic and magitek, the Lifestream - all fairly standard FF stuff. It works well enough. The story also has some good tie-ins with the original version of the game, though it's hard to tell how much of that is there without reading a summary.
Voice is used fairly rarely in the cut scenes, and I find myself missing the lack these days even though some of the voice work is not so good. The PC is silent, but that doesn't bug me as much as in The Secret World because he/she at least responds and reacts. It's just rather than getting into hard dialog most of the time, it's sort of like telling the GM at an RPG table, "My character tells them what happened."
The story puts you through some mandatory instances. I believe there are three required primal fights - 4-person (light party) single-boss encounters. Then there are six required light party dungeons. There's one 8-person (full party) single-boss trial and two full party... dungeons? Raids? I think. I haven't done those last two yet, and they stand at the end of the main story, but I believe they are distinctly longer. The game also has 24-person instances and hard/extreme modes of many of the earlier instances, not to mention several non-mandatory instances. Party breakdown is 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 DPS in ratio. I'm not sure if that really is any better or worse than the five-man parties in other games. While leveling, I've sat in the duty finder queue for 20-60 minutes as a solo DPS, which... sort of sucks, but isn't really surprising to me. Random party finding is always harder as DPS, and the game's at a point where the majority of the population probably is focusing more on level 50 content. I find some inconvenience to the system in that I can't queue with my chocobo summoned as an ally, so I can't do quite the same stuff while I'm waiting, and I did miss notice to join a couple times because I finally got up after waiting around a while.
The social experience has been mixed. In fairness, this may be the first time I've leveled through an MMO without being part of a guild... er... Free Company. In my travels, I've received a lot of gold-selling tells. I don't remember as many in any other game, to be honest, though that might be because I often shut down public channels in WoW and there were some channel restrictions on low-level characters there. Even sneaker were a few that sent a friend request along with the tell, which adds several steps to any attempt to blacklist the character (and I haven't seen an easy reporting function). I've also gotten a lot of random Free Company invites - those were annoying. Some people offered a FC invite, which wasn't annoying, though I passed on a number of them that were polite at least. One stands out as respectful and thoughtful - that made a good enough impression that I might sign up if I feel the need to join one at all. People in instance groups were a mixed bag. I had a silent and ineffective tank in one run alongside a confident healer who didn't mind carrying the weight "eh, I can tank this if he can't, no big deal." I've seen a few real nice people, and a couple real vocal asses insulting "noobs" for taking the time to watch the cut scenes. So ups and downs there, I suppose that's not abnormal.
Mechanically, it's been a bit odd going back to what is largely a cooldown-based system rather than my GW2 thief, which is resource-based. Getting scaled down in level can be jarring too, because you get locked out of abilities gained at higher levels, which can change your whole rotation. You gain the ability to summon your chocobo mount as a combat ally, which make for a nice benefit. And you can switch classes easily, potentially leveling them all to max in time. Most maps have one or two aethercite crystals for fast travel. Only healer classes can easily resurrect people in the field. Items take damage in use and have to be repaired. They also become "soulbonded" with use, at which point you can convert them to materia to put in other items - something I haven't done much with yet.
My only real solid mechanical complaint however is the delay in visual effects. There's so much flash to abilties, which looks great, but it may take a 2-second (or so) cooldown before your attack completes on screen, which makes the timing of off-cooldown abilities (like interrupting stuns) very... odd. I'm still not sure if they take effect immediately or only after the current move finishes. Likewise, enemies have a casting bar for abilities and a ground highlight (in most cases), but it's the former that matters. A move "cast" might finish a full second or two before the enemy actually finishes the move and slams the ground (or whatever), leading to cases where it looks like you move clear, but then you take damage. I think the timing is something a player can get used to, but I really wish it all synced up better.
Visuals, as said before, are good with a lot of classic Final Fantasy influence. I wasn't real drawn to the dragoon class armor, but after getting it, I actually quite like the look. Part of that may be because you can open the visor - I like seeing my character's face in cut scenes.
Verticality in maps isn't well conveyed, though it's only an issue in a few places. Weather is nice. The landscapes are pretty well done. There are some invisible walls in the geography, though, which put me off a bit. I mean, it's nice to not fall off the edge of the world (like back in Outland), but it's also jarring to me not to be able to jump down some areas - that's not as bad here as in Guild Wars (1), but I sort of expect a bit more freedom these days.
All in all, it's really a pretty solid MMORPG. I'm giving serious thought to subbing for another month, though I have some concern that as the emphasis shifts to more instances, I might find the lack of dedicated time and a ready group to work with a major drawback.
I wish I could have experienced enough of the game to reach level 10, let alone 50. I may have actually enjoyed it instead of being frustrated and my free time running out. Sadly, as it uses a subscription model, it's not something I can just play for a few hours now and then as whim takes me. The 4 person dynamic seems to be more prevalent in MMOs than the 5, I have noticed.
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