Tag: Final Fantasy XIV

Am I liking Final Fantasy XIV?

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Collector’s Edition of Final Fantasy XIV arrived last Wednesday and I’ve been dabbling in it since. I’ve had a few people ask me what I thought of it. Figured it was time to dust off the blog to talk about it.

Caveats first. I played Closed and Open Beta, but in both cases very lightly. In the case of Closed I got in via winning a Fileplanet key on the last weekend Closed Beta was running, but I didn’t realize it was the last weekend so I didn’t play as heavily as I might have. By the time Open Beta arrived, launch was close enough that I didn’t want to be bored with early game content from having to re-roll, so again I didn’t play it much.

Second, FF XIV arrived the same week that Civ 5 did, and just a few days after the Sony Move, so my interests have certainly been divided lately.

So am I liking FF XIV? Yes, but conditionally. When I talked about the beta I said that it was like playing a single player RPG in a lot of ways. I no longer feel that way, really. This is more a sandbox game with some really engaging newbie quests, or so it seems. Maybe I’ll find more rich story-telling later but for now I’m in a sandbox game, for sure.

The only quests on my plate right now are the levequests, which you may as well read as leveling quests, in my limited experience. They kind of focus your sandboxing. Imagine if some said “Make a castle like this one!” and showed you a model (while you were playing in your sandbox). That’s what a levequest is. It has you doing the same things you were already doing, only with a specific goal.

I like this sandbox feel of “Go out and do whatever you feel like doing” but you have to make your own goals a lot of the time. I like that my one character can change to any class by changing tools. I like the look of the world. The graphics are beautiful to me, but that’s certainly subjective. I like that the game is so different that, for the first time in a while, I feel like I’m learning a new game, not a riff on all the games that came before it. There’s a lot of trial and error and/or web research. For me, as a change of pace, this is fun. I do wish the game had come with a thick manual though.

Sitting at the top of the list of things I don’t like: the payment system. First, the pricing. You pay $9.99 just to have an account, and then you pay $3/month per character, and that includes your first character. So an account with 1 character is $12.99/month. If you want two characters, it’s $15.99/month and so on. You can save if you sign up for 3 or 6 months at a time. Of course the good news is that you don’t really need more than 1 character and if you stick to just one then FF XIV is cheaper than most sub-based MMOs.

Worse is how you pay for your sub. You can’t just give them a credit card. Nope, you can either sign up for some third party service called ClickandBuy, register you credit card with them, and then use that account to pay, or you can buy Crysta, which are basically FF XIV points. These you can buy via PayPal or “Ultimate Gamer Cards” that you can pick up at Wal-Marts or certain drugstores or Gamestop. 1 Crysta = 1 cent. So a 1 month sub can be paid for with 1,299 Crysta. But guess what? You can purchase Crysta 500, 1000 or 2000 at a time. You can’t buy 1,299 Crysta so you’re going to have to have left-overs.

Remember Chronicles of Spellborn? We saw how well janky payment options worked for them.

Anyway enough ranting about the payment system. Let’s talk UI & controls. A lot of people hate the controls and the UI. They aren’t that much of an issue for me but if you expect to translate your WoW or Warhammer or EQ2 controls to FF XIV you’re going to be very disappointed. The good news is that they’ve improved the mouse cursor response rate in the launch version, but I still tend to jump from Gamepad to all-keyboard and don’t use the mouse much at all.

FFXIV supports macros and lots of / commands and you’re going to want to use both of these at certain times.

I guess this is long enough for now. If you jumped over the tl;dr stuff I’ll recap. I like the game, but I tend to play it for an hour here, an hour there. I don’t get sucked in and play it for hours straight. It’s a very casual game for me. I’m still dinking around with low-level jobs, seeing what they all feel like and getting a sense for what I’m going to want to do.

It has a player-driven economy from what I’ve seen, but sadly no housing. Somehow to me a sandbox game needs housing to feel complete. Housing gives crafters a lot of stuff to build, after all.

My guess is that I’ll keep playing for a month or two and then probably let it go and give it another try when it hits the PS3. It feels like a game that’ll be perfect to play when stretched out on a couch with a controller in my hand. The generally slow pace of the game just whispers “relax” in your ear every time you sit down to play. This is a game that’s going to drive power-leveling types mad since the pacing is so mellow in everything.

If you have specific questions feel free to ask them but keep in mind I’m playing at my own pace and Civ V keeps sucking up entire evenings of my playtime. 🙂

Update: Werit asks for more examples of how FF XIV is sandboxy. Hmm, maybe this is a definition thing. To me a game being a sandbox indicates more a lack of features than anything. There isn’t a lot of structure here. You can be whatever you want to be (well, once you buy the level 1 tool for that class) and from what I’ve read most of the good gear comes from crafters, so there’s a good amount of buying and selling raw materials and finished goods (though no central Auction House, which is a problem). At the moment I have 0 quests in my quest log. I don’t have NPC’s telling me where to go or what to do. I just have the ability to practice at any of the available jobs to get good enough to do whatever I feel like doing.

Hopefully that makes sense?

Update #2: One important point that I realized I left out of this post. While I’m liking FF XIV I wouldn’t recommend it in general terms to MMO players. I think some players will really love it but even more will really hate it, so I suggest doing a lot of research before buying.

A few more quick FF XIV tips

Posted on by Nimgimli

Server just crashed on me, figured I’d share a couple more things I’ve learned.

In case you missed it, there’s a separate configuration tool you can use to tweak graphics settings, gamepad bindings and so forth. Find it at something like “C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Version\ffxivconfig.exe”

It should be in your Start Menu too, under SQUARE ENIX -> Final Fantasy XIV Beta

I was able to set the game to full screen. Petter said he wasn’t given that choice. I’m not sure why one of us could and one couldn’t. I’ve had crash problems when Alt-Tabbing so went for a Windowed res anyway.

My Wired Xbox 360 controller wasn’t recognized by default. I hear a lot of people prefer playing with a controller. If you have one, that config tool should allow you to enable it, but you’ll have to bind commands yourself. I’m still futzing with that to get a good layout.

The IJKL keys move the camera. You can try using WSJL to move (W & S for forward & back, and J & L for turning). That can be a challenge but some folks swear by it.

Turns out you can pan the maps with IJKL too. That’ll make navigating much easier!

The following two images are copyright Square Enix… hopefully I won’t get thrown in jail for sharing them. My Open Beta account doesn’t seem to have access to the beta test site where these came from, and they can be pretty helpful:

Getting started in FF XIV

Posted on by Nimgimli

I thought I might share a few tips about Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV, now that it’s in Open Beta. I am NOT an expert on the game but I’ve played enough to figure out some of the frustrations newbies have.

First let’s talk about pacing. FF XIV is 1 part MMO, 1 part adventure game. The pace of it is pretty slow, there’s lots of text to read, lots of in-engine cut scenes to set the mood. Lots of conversations with NPCs, plenty of story to uncover. If you’re looking for a fast-paced game, FF XIV probably isn’t right for you. On the other hand, if you love single player Final Fantasy games, FF XIV will be right up your alley.

Second, interface. Hot topic. FF XIV uses its own interface. If you’re used to mouse-driven MMO’s you’ll hate the interface here. You will use the mouse, but the primary control device is the keyboard. Tab will select a target and Enter will interact with that target. (You can click on a target if you prefer.) To progress a conversation, hit Enter again. F toggles between fighting and passive stances. 1 on the numeric keypad toggles between walking and running. R toggles auto-run. – on the numeric keypad opens the main menu. Spacebar opens the chat input window. Basically it’s worth having a look at the keyboard bindings in the configuration menu.

The mouse is mostly used for camera control. At least, that’s how I’ve been playing.

[The following assumes you’ve started as an adventurer class, not a craftsperson.]

OK so you finally start the game, create a character, enter a city… the first bit you’ll go through is like a prolog that sets up how you’ve arrived at this new city. This is an instance and no other players are in it. It’ll end with a battle. Once you finish that you’ll zone out of the instance. There’ll be some NPCs nearby (green names). Talk to them. No, they won’t have ! over their heads. One will offer to escort you to the adventurer’s guild (I’ve done 2 of the 3 [?] starter cities and am assuming they all start the same.) Accept and a cut-scene will show you arriving at the destination.

Once you get to the Adventurer’s Guild, talk to the nearest NPC. He/she ought to give you the option of “Small Talk” (back story, basically) or a quest name. You can always open the main menu and check your Journal to find out who you need to talk to. Once you engage this person (and yeah, you might need to talk to a couple NPCs before you find the right one) s/he’ll chat you up and then send you out to a camp in the wilderness. This is the start of a chain of quests that teaches you the game.

Finding your way might not be easy. There’re two maps you can check. Hit M to see a generic map of the area, and check your quest journal to show a map localized on your destination. Step 1 is getting out of the city. I’ve been in two starting cities. The one that’s a port town was a bitch to get out of. The desert town was much easier. Anyway, finding your way around the city is part of the game; there’s not a lot of hand-holding here. Once you get outside it should be relatively easy to find the camp you’ve been directed to. Look at the Quest Journal’s map and compare the landmarks with your ‘big’ [M] map. Off you go.

When you get to the camp you’ll find a big crystal in the middle of it. When you get near it you’ll notice (or not) an icon floating near the top of your window. What I do at this point is open the main menu (- on the numpad, or click the icon) and at the top of the list you’ll see Aetheryte or whatever this crystal is called. At about the same time you contact from the Adventurer’s Guild will be talking to you via text chat.

Bottom line is, you’ll get a bunch of options off this crystal. First pick the Tome one…that’s a quickie user manual. Take the time to read it. Yeah I know, you want to kill. Read it anyway. Once that’s done, initiate the levequest from the crystal. You should be offered a buff. Accept that too. You’ll be prompted for a difficulty level. Pick Solo. The levequest will be to kill a few mobs…and now you’ll see a glowie arrow on the edge of your minimap. Follow that to the area where the mobs are. You’ll see them as pulsing orange circles on the mini map when you get near.

Time to fight! Target the mob, then hit F to go into Attack Mode. Right now you have 1 attack, bound to the 1 key. So hit it and you’ll attack the mob. Hit it again and again. You’ll see there’s a stamina meter that goes down but I’m not sure it’s possible to run out of stamina at this point. There is no auto-attack; you have to spam that 1 key. Position counts and if you really want the practice you can try to circle-strafe behind the baddie but it probably won’t be necessary.

Between fights if you need to heal, hit F to go out of attack mode.

If the mob drops loot it’ll go into your inventory. Don’t bother trying to click on the corpse. As far as I can tell that does nothing (maybe later you might be able to harvest from it?).

Once you’ve killed your requisite # of mobs a glowy spire will appear next to you. Interact with that (Main Menu, top choice) to reap the rewards of the levequest and teleport you back to camp.

OK you’re done here, time to run back to the city, to the adventurer’s guild. Your contact will tell you about actions. Yup, you weren’t paying attention but you earned some new skills.

Setting up skills is obtuse as hell.

1) Open the main menu, then Actions & Traits
2) On the right panel you’ll see an empty dropdown menu. Drop it down to reveal Sword, or Axe, or Bow, or whatever your weapon is.
3) Choose that weapon and you’ll see you’ve got 2 or 3 new skills that aren’t slotted
4) On the left side, click on the box next to your default skill. We’re going to bind a skill to the 2 key, that’s the second box
5) Now click the skill you want to bind over on the right side.
6) A pop-up window appeared, outside of the Actions & Traits panel. Awkward! Click “Equip in Main Hand” to bind the skill to the 2 key

Well, unless you have a shield skill or something, then I guess you’d equip it in your off hand.

Now talk to your Adventurer’s Guild contact, and s/he start you on a series of quests to explore the city.

I guess that’s enough for today. Hope this helps you get started and helps you avoid some of the frustrations that you might encounter.

Note: Final Fantasy XIV is not going to be for everybody. In fact, it isn’t going to be for most people. If you tried it and hated it, that’s fine, but don’t post a comment here. I’ll remove it if you do. There’re plenty of places on the web to bitch about how much FF XIV sucks.

I’m trying to put together a place where people (like me) who are enjoying the game, or are willing to give something different a try, can come and get a bit of help and/or ask questions. I don’t mean to come across as an ass but, well, I just want this to stay on topic, and the topic is helping other fans of the game learn to play.