FFXIV: catch all

Solid advice AnimeJ, I just tried it again and I'm starting to think menu oriented instead of common sense oriented.

Is there a class that people would recommend for experiencing gameplay the fastest? I tried a carpenter and couldn't figure out what to do, I tried a lancer and couldn't get out of the city(desert city). I'm thinking fisherman in the coastal town for my final attempt.

Elliottx wrote:

Solid advice AnimeJ, I just tried it again and I'm starting to think menu oriented instead of common sense oriented.

Is there a class that people would recommend for experiencing gameplay the fastest? I tried a carpenter and couldn't figure out what to do, I tried a lancer and couldn't get out of the city(desert city). I'm thinking fisherman in the coastal town for my final attempt.

There really isn't anything fast about Final Fantasy Online either. I played FFXI for a couple years, tallyed up some 400 days /played and never actually hit level cap. Very, very slow game. The best advice is to just kind of stick it out if you think you like it, but don't sweat it if it's not for you.

Dear SE, please make your downloader better. 16 hours of DL and we are only at 40%....le sigh. So when i do finally get on the game I"ll make some grand post about it....maybe. Well back to FFXI in the mean time. Need to prep for level cap increase next week to 85.

Devmani wrote:

Dear SE, please make your downloader better. 16 hours of DL and we are only at 40%....le sigh. So when i do finally get on the game I"ll make some grand post about it....maybe. Well back to FFXI in the mean time. Need to prep for level cap increase next week to 85.

Just out of curiosity, did you open the proper ports? I had a simliar issue with the initial install. For those having similar slow download issues, open the following on your router:

TCP/UDP: 55296-55551
UDP: 443

Gave me a huge boost in download speed.

With that said, there's an issue with today's patch(5 Sept) stalling out at around 95%. I'm stuck at 94.6%; Tobold is stuck at 94.8%.

I know it's a 'PC thing', but can I just say if your game needs the player to mess around with opening ports manually for basic functionality, it's either not ready, or not going to attract and hold a significant audience. I guess it's one of those things that works fine for most people, but this really shouldn't be a feature of a top flight game in this day and age.

Quite why they didn't use some off-the-shelf patcher for their game that doesn't work in some esoteric way, I don't know. Just distribute a 5 gig FF14setup.exe and let people do a normal torrent of it, and patch from there.

AnimeJ wrote:

With that said, there's an issue with today's patch(5 Sept) stalling out at around 95%. I'm stuck at 94.6%; Tobold is stuck at 94.8%.

I've been having this issue with nearly every patch so far. I have the ports opened up, and get great download speeds when it's working, but nearly every patch seems to stall in the last 5% or so. It eventually finishes, but takes forever getting there.

:tin foil hat:
I'm wondering if they don't have some sort of mechanism in place that intentionally stalls the patch download in order to give the client time to upload pieces to others that are patching.
:/tin foil hat:

Scratched wrote:

I know it's a 'PC thing', but can I just say if your game needs the player to mess around with opening ports manually for basic functionality, it's either not ready, or not going to attract and hold a significant audience. I guess it's one of those things that works fine for most people, but this really shouldn't be a feature of a top flight game in this day and age.

Quite why they didn't use some off-the-shelf patcher for their game that doesn't work in some esoteric way, I don't know. Just distribute a 5 gig FF14setup.exe and let people do a normal torrent of it, and patch from there.

Japanese developers avoid PCs for a reason: they aren't very good at working with the shiz non-Japanese people make. Online functionality at all, really. See Metal Gear Solid Online, Smash Bros. Brawl, et al. The original game was wonky as hell, but definitely functional. Unless I'm mistaken it was also not available for download until something like 2008, a good 5-6 years after release. Patches were also quite amusing. While the audience never reached WoW totals (I think 2mil or so was the max), the million or so people that played regularly were effing hardcore. As soon as an update went live the servers would be absolutely slammed and sometimes drop for 6-12 hours at a time.

So it sucks, but it shouldn't be shocking. If I were buying the retail game, I'd definitely buy the boxed version.

I skipped all the bull and went to my other stomping ground and they have a much better solution to the whole issue.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/98118-How-To-Update-FFXIV-Client-Via-Torrents

So I've been updated by getting the files off a torrent and then insertin em manually and running the client. This is also how I get around patching in FFXI and waiting forever.

Blind_Evil wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I know it's a 'PC thing', but can I just say if your game needs the player to mess around with opening ports manually for basic functionality, it's either not ready, or not going to attract and hold a significant audience. I guess it's one of those things that works fine for most people, but this really shouldn't be a feature of a top flight game in this day and age.

Quite why they didn't use some off-the-shelf patcher for their game that doesn't work in some esoteric way, I don't know. Just distribute a 5 gig FF14setup.exe and let people do a normal torrent of it, and patch from there.

Japanese developers avoid PCs for a reason: they aren't very good at working with the shiz non-Japanese people make. Online functionality at all, really. See Metal Gear Solid Online, Smash Bros. Brawl, et al. The original game was wonky as hell, but definitely functional. Unless I'm mistaken it was also not available for download until something like 2008, a good 5-6 years after release. Patches were also quite amusing. While the audience never reached WoW totals (I think 2mil or so was the max), the million or so people that played regularly were effing hardcore. As soon as an update went live the servers would be absolutely slammed and sometimes drop for 6-12 hours at a time.

So it sucks, but it shouldn't be shocking. If I were buying the retail game, I'd definitely buy the boxed version.

Well, the difference between WoW and FFXI is that FFXI was a direct download from their servers; it's a large portion of why Blizzard chose to use a BT solution. Which is also presumably why FFXIV is using a BT style solution. The issue, however is that there are definitely folks having issues with their BT solution. I'm not sure that it's to keep people on though, because even when it's stalled at 95%, I'm not uploading *or* downloading.

I've patched and downloaded *every* single patch using that uTorrent method Devmani posted above. First time using the official patcher I had those same problems so I just use uTorrent now and it is so much quicker and problem free.

Yep, this game doesn't feel like it is ready for launch in a couple weeks. I've experienced this in pretty much every MMO I've beta tested, but here seems a bit worse. I played the game for about 4 hours and I think I did all the questing content the game has to offer at this point. I rolled alts on the other 2 starting cities and the experience was the same. I really hope they are holding off on a bunch of content for release, because if the game is just this, they are shipping just the bare bones so they can build on it later through content patches.

KillTrash wrote:

I've patched and downloaded *every* single patch using that uTorrent method Devmani posted above. First time using the official patcher I had those same problems so I just use uTorrent now and it is so much quicker and problem free.

Yep, this game doesn't feel like it is ready for launch in a couple weeks. I've experienced this in pretty much every MMO I've beta tested, but here seems a bit worse. I played the game for about 4 hours and I think I did all the questing content the game has to offer at this point. I rolled alts on the other 2 starting cities and the experience was the same. I really hope they are holding off on a bunch of content for release, because if the game is just this, they are shipping just the bare bones so they can build on it later through content patches.

SE is known for holding cards close to the chest. IT not their style to provide information in the same way Blizzard does. I figured that the game won't be at it's best for another 3 months which could be enough time to finish FFXI's level cap updates and maybe have a new xpac announced for that game. Once XIV is running at 100% it's gonna cannibalize XI's player base I would assume.

Man is this frustrating without a hardware mouse. There is a fan made plugin for it but its not supported, and will fail every time there is an update. Hopefully SE corrects this.

Yep, but the key thing to remember is this: FFO is not a KB/M game. It's a controller game, and if you want to be stubborn(like me) and use a kb/m, be prepared to suffer for it.

I sooooo want to like this game but I don't. Got mining, armorsmithing and marauder to 10. Tried battle and crafting leves. The storyline and cutscenes are cool. Other than that it just feels like I'm going through the paces. I don't much care to pay a monthly fee to be bored, heh.

BishopRS wrote:

I sooooo want to like this game but I don't. Got mining, armorsmithing and marauder to 10. Tried battle and crafting leves. The storyline and cutscenes are cool. Other than that it just feels like I'm going through the paces. I don't much care to pay a monthly fee to be bored, heh.

This is where I'm at with it. I'd sooner resub FFXI and deal with the grind there than this trash. I'll admit freely that my MMO worldview has been heavily tainted by WoW, but I definitely still recall fondly that FFXI made sense. The cities were easier to navigate, controls were smoother, and you just walked out the gates and killed stuff.

AnimeJ wrote:
BishopRS wrote:

I sooooo want to like this game but I don't. Got mining, armorsmithing and marauder to 10. Tried battle and crafting leves. The storyline and cutscenes are cool. Other than that it just feels like I'm going through the paces. I don't much care to pay a monthly fee to be bored, heh.

This is where I'm at with it. I'd sooner resub FFXI and deal with the grind there than this trash. I'll admit freely that my MMO worldview has been heavily tainted by WoW, but I definitely still recall fondly that FFXI made sense. The cities were easier to navigate, controls were smoother, and you just walked out the gates and killed stuff.

Pretty much my view as well. I like the FF world and very interested in seeing a new story play out in that setting. But that desire is beaten down by all the sh*t you have to put up with to experience it.

Pretty much my view as well. I like the FF world and very interested in seeing a new story play out in that setting. But that desire is beaten down by all the sh*t you have to put up with to experience it.

Ditto.

Well, this game is beautiful. So beautiful I really really want to play it. Sadly. I fail at gaming and I can't figure out how to.

I know this is a beta and all, but are there any instructions on setting up a game controller? I've got a PS3 style USB game pad attached and for the life of me see no button or options anywhere to enable / configure it. So I'm left with the Horrible Horrible keyboard / mouse to try and navigate the world. On top of that. I manage to make it out of the Character creation first battle, yay you are lvl 2. and get to a town.

Then I'm stuck. I reach boundries then keep getting warped back to the middle. I've tried talking to most of the NPCs in the area but I'm sure I'm just missing something obvious. I'm not looking for a big yellow ! or anything, but unless its a meta game to keep the rest of the servers player free I'm sure that I'm not the only one stuck like this.

Each time I work up the gumption to try and get out of that zone again, there are at least 5 or 6 other people that I see running aimlessly around for about the same length of time it takes for me to give up and quit the game again.

I'm in the same boat as many of you as far as being put off by the beta. It's a clunky frustrating experience to be so close to release that's just not very fun to me. I think I may wait until spring and the PS3 release to dip my toe in again. Maybe by then the true beta will be over.

There's plenty of other games out there to keep me busy for now.

fangblackbone wrote:
Pretty much my view as well. I like the FF world and very interested in seeing a new story play out in that setting. But that desire is beaten down by all the sh*t you have to put up with to experience it.

Ditto.

Count me in on this too. Finally tried it yesterday and damn... I really didn't think the interface/UI could manage to be worse than FFXI's, but it is.

Farscry wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:
Pretty much my view as well. I like the FF world and very interested in seeing a new story play out in that setting. But that desire is beaten down by all the sh*t you have to put up with to experience it.

Ditto.

Count me in on this too. Finally tried it yesterday and damn... I really didn't think the interface/UI could manage to be worse than FFXI's, but it is.

I remember FFXI interface starting off rough too, but i dont think it was this bad.

I didn't like the interface at first but as you play around with it it's not too bad. My only concern is that they decided to go so far from XI when that really isn't needed.

Yep, but the key thing to remember is this: FFO is not a KB/M game. It's a controller game, and if you want to be stubborn(like me) and use a kb/m, be prepared to suffer for it.

I wouldn't say you need a controller, but you definitely need to ditch the mouse. All keyboard works great. In fact one of my biggest gripes about wow was that I couldn't just use the keyboard.

That said the game is a mess right now. Hopefully it will get a lot better by release, but this close it's hard to imagine they can polish it as much as they need to.

I honestly don't believe that there's a way for Squeenix to save this game before it launches. The interface is horribly laggy and floaty with a mouse, and as bad as FFXI was and is compared to newer MMOs, I don't think that it will do well in the west. Back east will almost certainly be a different story, however, as this style of MMO is really more the norm.

With all that said, however, I think that FFXIV will do fairly well when it launches on PS3 next year.

I cancelled my pre order and ordered a wheel for GT5 instead. I just can't see myself playing it, I don't think it's really my speed.

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/13...
This has made keyboard/mouse completely viable for me. I have a controller and have been using that too but if I can have a normal mouse interface, I'll be perfectly happy with that.
I'm still getting used to the controls since I did not play FFXI and played WoW from day 1 until about 6 months ago. So there's a little bit of adjustment going on but I'm very optimistic. Also, the difference in server stability from day one of open beta to now has given me real hope that I'll be able to actually play this on early-release day!

Also thank dog for macros! For how often I've been switching classes, I can't imagine manually swapping out main hand, offhand, ammo, armors, abilities, traits....
http://www.ffxivblog.com/content.php...

For what it's worth I have been playing in the beta a few days now and can see the potential for a great game. Yes the keyboard layout fiasco is abismal, but getting through that mess there really is a cool game here. I guess I am drawn in by the no hand holding, figure it out, and read quest thing because this feels like one of my favorite MMO's dark age of camelot. Heck in that game you didn't even get a quest until you hit max level at 50 and had to grind the entire way to 50 but the game truely kept me entertained and I am hoping that square can pull off the same in game feeling. I tried XI and didnt care much for it so here's hoping for a better ending this time around.

I'll be honest; if you didn't care for XI, don't expect much to change. At the core XIV is very much the same as XI was. Square's made some changes, but by and large they're the same game. Grindy, Japanese and death is painful.

Personally, I'm done with it. I uninstalled today, and if I'd preordered it'd be cancelled. Performance for XIV is pretty much garbage, and the game itself isn't anywhere near as good as XI was.

There has been a rather large release of info regarding the game and the information has been positive for the most part. It's a shame that we have people here that are done before it really began. I'd suggest to those that you should wait a few months and then try it again. I'm sure there will be growing pains with the game in the first month for sure.

But those that didn't enjoy XI you are most likely right in the fact that you won't like XIV. As it does seem to be more of the same.

Devmani wrote:

There has been a rather large release of info regarding the game and the information has been positive for the most part. It's a shame that we have people here that are done before it really began. I'd suggest to those that you should wait a few months and then try it again. I'm sure there will be growing pains with the game in the first month for sure.

But those that didn't enjoy XI you are most likely right in the fact that you won't like XIV. As it does seem to be more of the same.

I loved FFXI. But given that FFXIV barely runs on my rig, I have little reason to give it a chance until I can upgrade, which won't be for a while. There's a ton of potential there, but as near as I can tell, it's just not executed as well as XI was, or at least as well as it was through my nostalgia colored glasses.

What's really crazy is that I'm not sure if the performance issues are entirely due to my computer being oldish; lower population(less chocobos?) realms give me markedly better performance than higher pop, even at higher graphics settings than I was using on Figaro.