Is FFXIV a spiritual succesor to FFXI? No, its FFXI's little, sickly, annoying, but incredibly handsome younger brother.
This is a Living Document so i'll keep updating as i find Bad, or not so bad things to report on.
The good:
Well, its pretty. Very very pretty. Everything looks great, the cities are lush and sharp, some very interesting design in some of the city states, some times you just wanna stop and look at things. Not just in the city, but in the fields, you might find a chasm or a quiet waterfall, some great eyecandy. But...you'll see the exact same eye candy not too far away >.> a shameful copy paste job it seems. Which kind of sucks the luster and shine out of the experience.
Combat, its fun. When your not lagging, which is all the time. So far i've played as a Marauder, a Lancer, a blacksmith (oh i'll go into that) and a Gladiator. Marauder was fun, probably my favorite atm, big axe, makes things get a nasty case of the dead =D I started out w/ a light attack, and quickly realized, that my accuracy sucked. That is until i moved behind/to the side of the mob and noticed my accuracy shot up. When i got my heavier skills (average light attack was 60ish heavier skills were near 200ish per hit) i would save up tp, move around the mob w/ some decent timing and Bam, Watched the HP bar fall. It was rather satisfying. I switched to lancer after getting my Marauder up to about Rank8, now i had a few skills extra to play with. Ok, sounds fun, Cant use 2 of my axe specific skills (wide damage for hitting multiple enemies)
Thats fine, i still get Bloodbath and a heavy hitting skill. Went into battle as a Lancer, tried keeping my distance since thats what the description if lancer says...and i still got hit. I don't know the distance of how far a Bug can hit you but it seems pretty damn far. So i said ok, screw it, i used a Lancer skill to bind the enemy, ran behind him popped Bloodlust and BAM, healed most of my hp and took the enemies Hp down quite far. I like it, its different than a Marauder and i can see how the two jobs would play differently in a party setting. So combat is alright, i like the system. Its certainly better than XI's, and i've played XI for about 5years on and off. (Got a few 85s now and still play regularly)
Crafting, the mini game is hard. I wont lie, I read up as much as i could before i jumped right in, and so i had a bit of a headsup on it. I still failed quite a few times but i could see how you could master it, or @ least maximize your luck. Made a Blacksmith, forged a few Guildleve items, and some materials i bought from an Npc for WAY more than their worth.... SE has once again made NPCs whose shops no one will ever be able to afford. They did the same in FFXI, trying to encourage items to be made by players instead of resorting to Npcs, but if thats the case why bother including the shops @ all then? Idk, i kind of enjoy going around w/ my Pick and searching for ore and what not, it adds to the experience imo. It certainly wouldn't be much of a game if i could just buy all my mats @ a store, level my crafting way up and then make tons of money. Thats like an Office job...except for the money part.
So i don't mind adventuring out and looking for ores and whatnot. Its time consuming, but thats what MMOs are, time sinks. Its an RPG at that, role playing, something games these days seem to forget exists. Playing a role, which is what your doing, you want to be a Blacksmith? well good, but your broke? Well go get a pick become a Miner and start getting mats. Or find a friend who does it and buy from him for cheap, its a better deal then making a shop in the market area...
So yes, i have no real qualm w/ role playing, i don't mind the extra time because its FUN. If your going to argue that its NOT fun, and that its boring you and u want action, and you want instant gratification go play WoW? Or how about an FPS? theres a million other games you could be playing. This cannot be judged on the same scale as other games. True, it takes a massive amount of time to get a lot done, but this incarnation of the game was geared toward casual players. W/ an emphasis on solo play and small bursts of gameplay. True not everyone enjoys that, and to an extent i don't always do either. I'm a college student, i have classes, responsibilities projects etc to be working on, so no i can't play all the time. Which actually works out quite well since theres a cooldown on Guild leve quests and whatnot. It works that i can't dedicate 10hours a day to Level up my craft so i can make a Rank7 hammer or something...
The bad...and oh is there so much of it.
Since its been said everywhere else in about just as much detail most of this list will be quick almost bulleted list. Except for the things i havent seen mentioned a lot.
* The UI is horrible, i used a controller so it made it slightly less awkward than controlling a character who is drunk 100% of the time. Im used to FFXI, so i was used to a controller. took 2 minutes to set up, and i knew i'd have to, so it wasn't an issue, but lag makes it still a little extra annoying. And theres extra menus for **** that doesn't really need extra menus.
* Very few quests, ::MAJOR EDIT:: Seems there are more quests, i just kind of wandered back into the story line now, guess i just needed to gain bout 10lvs, which i enjoyed through crafts and parties w/ a few friends i picked up the way. Still, not everyone can manage that...some ppl just love quests and the 36hour cooldown of Guild leves tends to suck for that. But if your creative, you can still have a lot of fun. i got 15k gil reward and ran out of story till im Stronger >.> Ok, not too bad, the story is getting very interesting @ least. So i'm content on lvling, im 20 now and lvling is quite fast thanks to crafting. But in physical lv 20, Lancer 12/Marauder 13, i can't hit for Sh*t on mobs i need to kill for drops for crafting >.>
Another thing about the guild leves, their extremely boring and repetitive. Every quest is basically identical. If its a battle leve, go here, kill X amount of monster Y. sometimes they change it up and a mob will flee and then when u corner it 2-3 extra pop out of no where and gang rape you.
If its a field leve go out here and Try ur hand @ mining or some crap >.>
If its a craft leve, go here and Craft X # of item Y. Yeah...real fun. And their ALL like this. There is nothing to keep u interested except for the promise of Gil @ the end. There are no Npcs who need help, or chain quests or anything remotely epic. This is the most basic of quests. Bread and butter really, and i dont mind basic quests to fill the time here and there but Only these type of quests? I should also mention its been a few more weeks and nothing has really improved.
* Too much Grind ~ ALL MMOS HAVE GRIND! stfu if u think they don't. Grind is what keeps people playing. If games had no grind they would be too short. If were paying 50bucks for the game and 10-13$ a month i want something to do. Yes we need MORE content but some grind is fine. Its not really that bad and goes pretty quick. Again im used to XI where soloing has and always will be a B*tch and they can try and alleviate it as much as they want, its still going to be worse than XIVs grind.
Mobs, even Easy preys are much easier to kill, and give way more experience per kill than easy preys in XI. I remember when XI's easy preys gave like 20exp and those easy preys could kill you. However now u may get 100 or so but need 100,000 exp to level up >.> so nothing improved over XI's launch exp rate.
HP regens at an extremely high rate in XIV. So i am happier than can be at this. When i got low on Hp 1st time i saw my hp regen by 7 and was like "Well this gonna take a long time" popped a movie into my Ps3 and sat down and my hp was full...i was like ok...let me try that again, got hurt and watched. And wow did it fill fast.So i'm very happy w/ that. You can also run your stupid ass away from things if u attack something too strong. (Most of the time) if u get hit way 2 hard and have the brain power to turn tail and BOOK it, u'll be fine usually. mobs give up after bout 10-20seconds.
Enviornments - Ok so yes most of them turn out to be kinda samey...lot of copy pastes, but it is pretty at least. Not like older games, but i digress. FFXI didn't have this problem really. Maybe 2 Chasms were similar but not the same.
Monsters- Eh, game just came out, lv 1-50 i think is cap and w/ no real content not many lv 50s gonna b around except the hardest of hardcore, and they seem to be the biggest whiners some times.So we haven't seen all there is too see. We don't even have chocobos or airships yet so yes gettin around sucks. This is SE fault, can't justify them not having f*cking chocobos in a FF game >.> Also, the fact that once you start exploring you can only go so far before you hit the wall of High level mobs (or a literal invisible wall). You'd think well maybe i can run past them, but then they hit you for 3.8k Damage, and u only have 700 hp. It gets annoying being trapped in a small area.
No AH - WTF? Fix this. Now. If they don't i dont see the game survivng long. EDIT: Ok they at least organized the market wards. Now there are distinct areas of where to sell stuff. But 9 times out of 10 if ur lookin for somethin u wont find it as u still have to click on every single Retainer to see what they have. U may be lookin for a weapon so u go to the battlecraft ward, and if u click ppl u might find, wood, leather, grass etc. Not weapons.. its 10/30/2010 and still no search function in the wards, its been promised for a late nov/dec patch....wow way to go SE u sad bastards.
Lag- Yeah its bad, i got a great computer, and more than enough power to play XIV on maximum settings...the servers just lag. Thats that. And it sucks. Oddly enough Dungeons/Caves/mineshafts have 0 Lag, the game runs super smooth, UI is fast and responsive and its great (Relatively)...now if they could make every other area like this that would rock.
Crafting - Oh didn't think id mention this as i praised it earlier. Well it sucks. The recipes are so goddamn strange and retarded I can't help but stick it here. So i have to be Rank 25 to make a Rank 7 item... a lv1 robe requires lv15ish level craft materials. Why can nothing be simple? Low levels, need Cheap, and easy synths. Not 9 expensive ass materiels from every other single f*cking Craft O.o Im a Blacksmith not a carpenter, leather worker and weaver. To make a spear, id need the blade which i make, wood for the pole from a carpenter, leather for the strap from a leather worker, cloth for the grip or some **** YES I GET IT!! its roleplaying and yes a spear would need these things but dont forget its a Mother F*cking GAME! games are supposed to be fun! so i have to do 8bajillion crafting quests to get my ranks high enough to make lv1-10 gear. But by then i'll b lv 30-40! And u cant mail items to other characters you have.
Another note, Each time u craft it takes like a minute- 1:30minutes, its a long time. so lets say u wanted to skill up from lv17-18 its about 18,000 exp or so. If you used cheap, affordable craft materials (aka lv1-5 stuff) you'd probably only get 100ish skill points per synth. so lets do the math. Ideally if it only took u like a minute (minimal fails + lag etc) for each synth it would take 3 hours of just constant crafting. Thats not including the downtime after u complete 1 craft, wait for the UI to pop up, reselect ur materials by lookin thru ur entire inventory... yeah...ur lookn @ like 4hours. And thats a massive amount of shards u'd need as well.
Of course, this system is meant to encourage trade and a strong economy between players. however w/o an AH and lag + clunky UI = browising a billion Bazaars WAY to hard, frustrating and just stupid.
Noooo that would be convenient and THIS ISN'T FFXI! well i get that but FFXI had an Auction house and mail system for the convenience of the players! WTF SE? You had like 7 c*nt gargling years to learn this crap!
Bazaars... only 10 items really? Why not 20 or 30? U know so we can set up shop overnight if we have to. Why must i fill my inventory/retainer w/ stuff i wanna sell if i can only sell 10 @ a time? If i craft 20 Copper barbuts and wanna have a sale I can only have 10 displayed @ a time?
UGH.... ok so In conclusion SE is stupid...they are lazy as sh*t, released a game when it wasnt finished to start making money, but in doing so are turning off 90% of their playerbase. FFXI is 15 bucks for the game and just about all the expansions, u get 30days free, its a lot easier to level up, there are easier soloing methods, you can party w/ Anyone thanks to level sync, Crafting is much easier, theres better and great ways to make gil, it has wonderful storylines and the community is usually very helpful...
Speaking of community FFXIV has none. No one freakin talks, Its so solo oriented no one bothers partying or recruiting for Linkshells or anything. You can argue "But im in a LS and its quite large!" well tell me, how many of them are former FFXI players who know what their doing? My guess, most of them.
Also the video review had 1 glaring flaw. Not knowing what to do? This game is 1000x better in informing you what to do than FFXI ever was. Who to talk to and everything is handed to you. I mean Did they skip the cinemas and dialogue? they tell you where to go or who to speak to, and you get an NPC linkshell which tells you where to go if u get lost. And a Journal w/ very detailed notes on what occured and what you SHOULD DO NEXT! it took me 1minute to figure this out "Hmm ok well, now im in the city, they said to meet X person. Ok where can i find him...hmm let me open my menu... Ah Journal lets see what this says.. hmm everything i need to know right there.
Anyway What do i think of FFXIV? Its bad...for now. Its new and incomplete. yes SE is to blame. Is it fun? It is, if your patient and just take your time. Can it keep u entertained for a 30 day free trial? maybe if your the kind of person who gets sucked into crafting it can. Or if u just wanna mix and match professions it can be fun. If your looking for tons of questing, group raids, epic loots, awesome graphics and a fast paced good time? Look else where. The graphics is the only part it can deliver on for now.
Although i think this game is worth checking out in a few months. When the Ps3 version comes out in march i expect there to already be a slew of new content by then and a ton of bug fixes and patches.
The game has a LOT of potential, the secrets are there, a combat system that w/ some polish could work really nicely, a crafting system which...imo needs some work, and a Massive world they could fill w/ Missions and quests and whatnot. Hopefully unique ones and not go to X location and kill Y amount of monster Z. Guild leves already do that -.-
Im sure theres more i could talk about but this is long enough already lol >.>;