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Post by Norfy the Walrus on Aug 31, 2010 10:36:01 GMT -5
I got one too so I will be checking it out after work today.
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Post by UltimateCloud on Aug 31, 2010 12:03:59 GMT -5
Well, open beta has been delayed. Apparently, there are "critical" errors or something... so I guess I won't get to try this out tomo.
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Post by UltimateCloud on Sept 3, 2010 15:28:27 GMT -5
Well, got the open beta.. working... if you can call it that. >.> First thing: The fucking lag. Unbelievable how bad this is at the minute. Maybe it's my connection? But I doubt it seeing as I'm able to play fast paced fighting games on my PS3 with no lag at all, but damn. Shopping is a pain in the ass and going anywhere crowded (like the first quest area) screws the game over. Also, it literally took me about 3 minutes just to equip my new ability I learned and it errored once while trying to it, so... not good. Second thing: My new computer got a decent benchmark score of over 5500 on high settings. So, you would naturally assume the game would play well, right? WRONG. It plays like shit. I've had to lower my settings significantly to get this game at a decent FPS. The screen tearing is absolutely horrible too and no matter what I do I can't seem to fix this. Maybe these are problems that are only visible in the beta and will be fixed for retail? I hope so 'cause I'm not really sure if I wanna log back in at the minute. I've never done a beta test before so I don't really know if this is standard (and everywhere you go there's fighting in the community about if this is likely to change, so who knows). As for the actual gameplay.... eh. That's pretty much the summary. I chose Archer to start with and the battle system is odd. There's no way to auto shoot as far as I could tell. The monsters outside the starting area were raping me pretty hard too (the dodo pretty much one shotted me, which was the first enemy I encountered - stupid me for thinking I could take it on, yeah?) Also, the servers are way overcrowded. There isn't much choice of servers at the minute, but I still picked one of the least populated and this was still packed. People are camping everything in the starting area which is making levelling an even longer process. Oh and the first quest to kill a couple of rats? Yeah, that's not happening when you have to compete with 20 other people for the pitiful TWO rats that spawn. >.> I haven't really gone into much detail but just from the night of playing so far... I'm left with the feeling that I'm not really sure if I want to play this game. It feels very unpolished and sluggish. The battle system hasn't really wowed me either so far. I dunno, maybe it's just the beta experience? I'm gunna try it over the next few days and see if I can get anywhere or if it improves. But, just off the couple of hours I've played tonight... I'm bloody glad I haven't pre-ordered yet. :/
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Post by Yvondith on Sept 3, 2010 15:38:17 GMT -5
Wow. That sucks ass. How do they expect to release the game if it's that bad right now? I did feel bad because I wanted the game at PC release. But, if it's that bad currently, I'm glad I'm waiting a while. Thank god the WoW Cata beta isn't that bad. But then again, it's closed beta.
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Post by Caller on Sept 3, 2010 17:01:53 GMT -5
You see? I TOLD you picking up and playing the game upon release will be bad. I'm fairly confident they'll fix some of the technical issues, but don't you hold your breath they'll adjust the quests to be fair for everyone. They haven't in, what, 7 years? I'm going to register my preorder so that my account has the sunglasses and then won't play until it's out on PS3. Or maybe a little after to allow the PS3 crowd to whittle down a bit.
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Post by dejibo on Sept 3, 2010 17:24:48 GMT -5
I have a quad core processor, and blah blah huge fast machine, and it SUCKS ASS on FFXIV. huge monster lag! its massive! its worse than any besieged you were ever near with a room full of ninjas, and bards all singing at once! its horrible, to the point of even when you turn stuff way way down, you still cant play. I am NOT going to get in the middle of a gaggle of teenage boys to fight for a mob. nope, not me! I cant figure out who I ordered this from. Thought it was amazon, but thus far, no order can be found on their system. I am hoping i missed a confirmation email or something and it will slide by without arrival. I tried to sign on today and my character stood in the same position forever, when the lag caught up, I was smacked into a wall on the other side of the room, and then stuck again. I cant equip or unequp anything, because the sub menu takes so long to load. forget shopping, I have no money, and cant figure out how to sell what items I do have. I am level 3 in beta world, but i know the instant the clock strikes Sept 22 all will be stripped and everyone will go level one again. Please do yourself a favor, and save your money for now. pick an old PS2 fav and play away till they fix this.
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Post by Norfy the Walrus on Sept 3, 2010 18:30:56 GMT -5
Doesn't sound too great. I will download it tonight and give it a shot cause I'm still interested but damn, that sounds like some horrible shit.
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Post by Office Ninja on Sept 4, 2010 1:11:34 GMT -5
These things should be fixed for an open beta... Open beta typically uses the client they are printing on the discs... You know cause they have to have the discs ready like a month in advance in order to print them.
Sounds like a terrible state of the game right now.
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Post by UltimateCloud on Sept 4, 2010 10:46:59 GMT -5
Tried playing it again today... it's fucking awful.
The lag was no better. In fact, I disconnected about 5 times trying to accept a quest. The great thing about disconnecting though? It doesn't actually boot you from the game client. So you're still in the world, just you can't do anything. So I have to force exit. What's even better? The client won't start again unless I restart the entire computer. Awesome.
Amazing SE, fucking amazing. If Kik's right and THIS is what's being printed on the discs then fuck me is this a steaming pile of shit.
I'm praying this is all beta problems and that connections will at least be more stable on release. But this is SE we're talking about here. How long (if ever) did it take them to fix problems in FFXI?
As for the actual game play... it continues to get worse. I accept a special guild leve quest or whatever the hell they're called and had to kill six little bug things. Sounds easy enough. Well, they come in groups of two scattered across the map. First two went done fine, no problem. One hit kills.
Second two... dunno what it was but my attack button magically stopped working after the first attack (which didn't kill them this time). Nice. Other abilities? Yeah, they won't work either. Try running? Well, it's FFXI all over again and there's no escaping things.
So I die. Checked all my equipment as I thought maybe I was out of arrows but that wasn't the case. The next fight went absolutely fine, so I have no idea what happened. A total what the hell moment that I'm 100% positive WILL happen again.
Oh, and the best part was I killed the 6th bug finishing the quest. A little pop up came up which I was taking my time to read. Then, while reading, FOR NO APPARENT REASON MY CHARACTER DROPPED DOWN DEAD. There were no monsters nearby, nothing. So, WTF happened?! I still have no clue.
At that point I returned to your home point type thing and disconnected again, which is when I gave up.
Other little things that are annoying:
1. The camera is zoomed in way to close. Even if you change the options so it's zoomed out max, it's STILL way too close. You can zoom it out even further using the scroll wheel which does take it back to a nice position. However, trying to move the camera from this position (either with mouse or controller) and it defaults back to the more zoomed in position.
It's kinda hard to explain on here, but the camera works the same as in FFXI. It's just way too close. I'm playing at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 too.
2. Chat window is very small and it's easy to miss things. I couldn't find an option for font colours either, which is shit as all NPC talk and PC talk is the same colour. A message box does appear dedicated for NPCs when talking to them but it's hard to distinguish when you look back on logs. Especially as character names are now in a first name + last name structure, so I have no idea who's who sometimes.
Also, there's no way to open up logs using the controller. In XI you could do this by double tapping triangle. This doesn't work and I can't find a way to set this up. Maybe I've missed an option for this somewhere though.
3. Shop lag is awful. I've avoided shops so far because they take so long to load up. Oh and selling something is a 20 minute job. Seriously. First off, you click on your inventory to see a list of items you can sell. Except, there are no prices so you have no idea how much things sell for. You then click on an item to sell. It then takes (no word of a lie here) 40 SECONDS for another box to show up and display how much this items sells for. IF you decide to sell you select the amount to sell and then click sell. Wait ANOTHER 40 SECONDS and finally you get your money.
Considering I have an 80 slot inventory filled with stuff to sell and you can see why this is big issue.
I haven't even tried out the notorious market spots that have already taken a harsh beating of complaints, so I'm not looking forward to buying things in this game. As it stands there is no auction house in this game and I'm sure SE said somewhere there are no plans for one either. There's no way to search for specific items to buy either, so you've got to manually check each and every shop... So yeah, buying and selling in this game is a whole load of fun.
4. No tutorials or help at all. This might be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. But to be honest, in this day and age, it just feels ridiculous. Not that it would affect anyone here, but if you haven't played FFXI at all then you're seriously screwed.
Those are my top issues so far. The much detested UI is bad, but playable with a controller. If you're using keyboard / mouse then I feel sorry for you as once again SE has basically said fuck you. The mouse lag isn't that bad but it is VERY noticeable compared to a game like WoW. (I did a trial of WoW for shits and giggles a month or so ago the difference between UI's and response is unbelievable). So, for you guys coming from WoW... I hope you still have your controllers. >.>
My two posts so far haven't been very positive, but I seriously am considering skipping this game with how it is at the minute. As it stands, I'm not getting the collectors edition. I'm waiting until that comes out and if there's any difference between retain and open beta. If there is (and it's a significant improvement) I *might* get the normal version. But if there's no change then fuck it, I won't get it until it's playable.
I'm not sure if I'm gunna bother trying the open beta again, I'll let you know if I do.
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Post by dejibo on Sept 4, 2010 11:06:24 GMT -5
I cancelled my CE FFXIV After doing beta tester stuff. I am NOT wasting my money on a game that does nothing but piss me off. There are no guides, instructions, or way to figure out what you are doing. SE has far to go before they will get me to re order this. Maybe when the PS3 version comes out, they will have this fixed, but till then I highly reccomend that everyone save their money till this shit is fixed.
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Post by Norfy the Walrus on Sept 4, 2010 11:31:46 GMT -5
Looks like I missed my chance for beta. NA applications have been temp suspended. I'll check again later. As bad as it sounds by what you're saying I still wanna give it a shot.
I think all MMOs need tutorials. Its so easy to get lost when you're first starting out. It was a huge problem I had with 11 back in the day. When I first started WoW I was pleased with the little pop up info that you would get when first starting out. Why can't SE do something like that?
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Post by Caller on Sept 4, 2010 21:55:45 GMT -5
Keep posting UC Because, one, I love SE bashing. And two, the more I know about the game the more convinced I am to wait until next year. I'm not gonna lie I know I'm gonna try it. But I'm surely not playing yet. Sounds like FFXI-2. Really.
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Post by Yvondith on Sept 4, 2010 23:49:17 GMT -5
Yes, indeed, keep posting. You have made me feel SO much better about not being able to get this immediately. Sounds like a friggin' nightmare!
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Post by UltimateCloud on Sept 5, 2010 4:23:42 GMT -5
Haha, I'll definitely keep posting. Since that post yesterday they've done some maintenance and applied an update. Out of sheer coincidence I logged on about 20 minutes after the maintenance ended and there was a good improvement in terms of lag. However, about 15 minutes after that things went back to normal and the mass disconnections started happening again. So, maybe my lag problems are down to the servers not being up to the job yet? Also, something worth noting, during the "good" period I got - it did NOT fix the menu or shop lag, this was as bad as ever. I'll probably play sometime today... I'm considering starting a new character in another city to see if the lag or anything is any different. I read something that some random poster on a forum said yesterday: "The PC version is just a paid beta so SE can make some money until the version they care about is released, i.e. the PS3 for Japan". I'd say this is pretty damn accurate. Edit: Okay, so I made a new character. I chose a Mithra (Miqo'te) and made her a Marauder (a Warrior, I guess. Uses a great axe). I chose the starting city of Gridania, which is like in the middle of a forest. There were MUCH less people here compared to where I started before, which made this place much more playable. You could actually leave the city and find things to fight! While the game still suffers from lag, it was much better for me in this spot. Graphic performance issues still remained though. I actually had quite a bit of fun with this character, so maybe I'm liking the class. After you've finished your Guildleves though, there isn't much to do other than fight. Shopping is still a mess and I've only found new equipment from quests. While all the issues in the above post still remain, I had a fair bit of fun with this new character and it felt very much like FFXI all over again. I'll probably keep playing her for at least a little bit. Still, it's not enough so far for me to pre-order unless there are significant improvements at launch. Later, later edit: It occurs to me that I haven't said anything positive yet. xD The world, as you'd expect, is beautiful. I haven't been able to take screen shots as I think they're disabled, but it looks fantastic. Both the intros are really cool too, the cutscenes are fully voiced and fantastic. They open with you in a mini "instance" and introduce you to combat (I'm guessing this is just for the fighting classes though). The Gridania intro was really cool. It wasn't over the top but I really liked it. However, there's a few fan service moments in it, which you guys will love to spot. The music is pretty cool too. Really, really reminds me of FFVI for some reason.
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Post by dejibo on Sept 5, 2010 7:26:35 GMT -5
I agree, its BEAUTIFUL! but, every single time I have "tried" to play this game its been a mess. 100% of everytime I have played, I have signed off in frustration, and anger.
I am going to wait for at least the PS3 version to come out. by then they will have worked thru their growing pains, and expansions, and updates.
FFXI was a mess when we started, but there were guides, and instructions available, and we were able to move about without d/cing or lag so bad that you couldnt move your character. Remember when Bard was introduced and everytime you were near a bard singing you got frozen in place or the lag became so bad, your character would move in hops and starts? make that x 100 and you are getting close to what happens in FFXIV now.
Save your money steph, dont fear missing out on a thing. #1 your computer would simply roll over and die on this game, and it would create such anger that you would use a bat or a hammer to fix it. You would be blaming your machine, and or your equipment and its NOT you, its them. SE really needs to step up and fix this. There is a mass movement right now of folks that borrowed beta testers accounts so they could see it for themselves, and tons of folks I know have cancelled their pre order for the CE box.
This game is currently UNplayable in its current condition.
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