The Final Fantasy XIV Thread [Dawntrail - 7.00]

[ForceStealer]

FFXIV gets a 4.2/10 on Gametrailers.
The ONLY good part of the game was the music, composed by Nobuo Uematsu.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-hd-final-fantasy/705893

I have never seen GT give such a low score.

I have. But still, that is one excoriating review, lol.
Even if it were a good MMO I wouldn't have played it, but this just furthers my point that the MMOs shouldn't be numbered entries.
I always felt that way just because it was an entirely different type of game. However the fact that XIV sucks so bad is another reason. And the series had been taking enough flak as it was anyway.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I have. But still, that is one excoriating review, lol.
Even if it were a good MMO I wouldn't have played it, but this just furthers my point that the MMOs shouldn't be numbered entries.
I always felt that way just because it was an entirely different type of game. However the fact that XIV sucks so bad is another reason. And the series had been taking enough flak as it was anyway.

Numbered entries shouldn't be steaming piles of Chinese developed dung.

I can't believe they wasted so much time. Seriously.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Numbered entries shouldn't be steaming piles of Chinese developed dung.

I can't believe they wasted so much time. Seriously.

Has Force's Asian hate rubbed off on you, Mako?

Anyway, yeah, XIV is the epic pile of fail we all knew it would be.

 

[Geostigma]

The funny thing is is that its probably just as "good" as any other mmorpg

 

[Lord Noctis]

The funny thing is is that its probably just as "good" as any other mmorpg

No. Just no.

 

[Winter]

That's two shitty FF's. Back to back.

Square-Enix is looking at a backlash here. They better wake the fuck up.

FFXIII was a perfectly good game compared to the steaming pile of shit that is FFXIV.

You can hate on XIII all you want, but at the end of the day it's mostly just your opinion. XIII got WAAAAY better reviews than XIV. And it wasn't made half-assedly in fucking China.

the sad thing here is that I don't even remember hearing about XIV being finished at all. Considering that I live near plenty of game stores, hang out on Final Fantasy forums, and browse /v/ regularly that's pretty fucking sad. I didn't think it was getting released for another year. Then I realized.... it was released, it's just that nobody cared.

I'm disappointed. I don't care about MMOs, I was never going to play this game anyways. I just... man it feels weird knowing that there's actually a Final Fantasy game in the man series that's genuinely a bad game. You've reached a new low, SE.

that being said I'm going back to bed to pretend that I live in a world where shitty numbered MMO final fantasies don't exist

 

[Shademp]

More rage.

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/25191-japanese-se-shareholder-sells-25000000-in-stocks/

 

[ForceStealer]

It is rumored this was due to a private stockholder selling all of his investment in SquareEnix -- approximately 1% of the entire company -- after citing profound disappointment over the failed release of FFXIV.

Damn Mako, selling your investment? You were serious.

Really though, that's interesting. I wonder if it will have any effect whatsoever on what Square's thinking. This is at least more effective than threatening Wada's life.

 

[Rinoa]

SEX reacted by extending the free period to 60 days and patching a few things. Still sucks.

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/pl/news/detail?newsId=60bd5ecff1b7645d4e1ead107941f0d8c4e88994

 

[ForceStealer]

I guess its better than no reaction at all. And maybe they'll even end up fixing a lot of crap, problem is, first impressions are important, and I'm not sure it could recover from the overwhelmingly negative response even if they did fix the problems.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Hopefully this will be the kick to the balls that makes S-E look real hard at themselves.

That's truly shameful. Now the shit's startin' to get serious.

 

[Alex]

Hopefully this will be the kick to the balls that makes S-E look real hard at themselves.

Oh Mako, ever the optimist.

 

[TheHammerOf...JUSTICE]

I'm loving this topic. More final fantasy fans need to enjoy Spoony and hate the shit Square Enix makes nowadays. And that's exactly what this topic delivers.

I've already had a knockdown drag out fight with my crazy ff11 friend on skype earlier this week on how shitty ff14 is. I hate 11 to which he hates me for. I have no idea why the hell I still talk to this guy sometimes. I swear I just enjoy watching him go all belligerent and call me a fag and the whole nine yards as if I insulted him personally by criticizing anything he likes.

 

[Russell]

So I saw this article on the Escapist, FFXIV is out for PC then?

The release of a major FF game was ground shaking once, now one gets released (on the 30 of September) and I’ve only just noticed?

True the game was built for the PS3 rather than PC and the main release (for the completed PS3 game) will be March 2011, but that says a lot about the game IMO. It’s release date came and went and no one seemed to care.



I haven’t played this game but after searching the interwebz I’ve found out the following facts:

• The general consensus of people who have played it say that it feels massively unfinished.
  
  Spoiler

  FFXIV is unfinished. It's not overly buggy or unstable, but there's definitely big gaping content holes and poorly-implemented interface features. The core mechanics, like combat and crafting, are playable and mostly well-designed, but ancillary features, like anything relating to the economy or to community interaction, are completely missing:
  -companies and shared banks
  -a mail system
  -player housing
  -the Auction House
  
  or are half-assed placeholders:
  -leaders can recruit people for parties but players can't declare themselves LFG
  -the unsorted, unorganized Market Wards
  -linkshell managers can't remove people from the shell unless they're online and within sight distance
  
  However, since we have a couple hundred people playing, some of the problems that would make the game intolerable for individual players aren't as much of an issue for us. Whether you'll enjoy playing will be a function of how much you like the content that's already available, whether you're willing to forgive missing functionality and how optimistic you are it'll be fixed in the near future.

• That the 30 day free period SE have given out is due more to desperation, they know the game has been received badly and want to keep people playing whilst they try to quickly finish/fix the games issues.
  
  Spoiler

  So obviously realising that the vast majority of people that have picked up their essentially broken MMO would cancel their subscription at the end of the free trial period, they've extended the trial period by 30 days for all people that sign up before Oct 25.
  
  Next time maybe Square Enix won't release a game that is clearly not finished, not by a long shot. The sad part is, that 30 days won't give them enough time to fix all the problems. The markets are broken, the questing isn't broken by wholey uninteresting, community features are non-existant, and the engine needs optimising.
  
  I bought it, and I was going to cut my losses at the end of the trial period because it's not a game worth a monthly subscription. Can they turn their game from shit to atleast pretty good in thirty days? Well that's what they're hoping, they're hyping a bunch of version updates in the next 30 days that will supposedly fix everything. Thing is that they've announced that they plan a big update in December and every three months onwards, and have had to bring a bunch of stuff planned for that update forward - to fall within the trial period.
  
  WoW Cataclysm launches at the start of December, FFXIV is fucked, they've missed their chance to establish a user base before it. Avoid.

• Gamespot says 4 out of 10: Poor.
  
  Spoiler

  The Good
  Impressive visual engine
  Flexible class system lets you be what you want, when you want.
  
  The Bad
  Absolutely miserable interface
  Does a poor job of communicating important information
  Limited questing means you're always looking for something fun to do
  Everything about the economy stinks
  Every aspect of the game is filled with dumb obstacles.

• Reception thus far has been negative.
  
  Spoiler

  Reception thus far has been negative. Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot gave the game a 4.0/10. IGN gave a 5.5/10 (mediocre).[42] He called the game a "step backward for the genre", citing a bad interface, quest restrictions, and numerous other problems upon release.[40] The game has a score of 54 out of 100 on the review aggregator site Metacritic, based on eleven reviews

• That the answer to life the universe and everything is:
  
  Spoiler

  42.

From these facts I conclude the following:
It was released to soon, before it was ready, however no one should write it off completely yet as it is no where near finished. (SE has 6 months to fix it up before it’s PS3 release.) A lot of people seem to be jumping on the ‘Screw SE’ bandwagon simply for the sake of levelling up then internet cocks.

Withhold judgement until it’s completed but if you have parted with money to buy a game so unfinished you can’t be blamed for wanting to fire the game into the sun & plot the brutal murder of top SE executives.

[/My Two Pennies]
(We don‘t have Cents in England )

 

[Splintered]

Withhold judgement until it’s completed

Are you kidding me? This is gaming fandom, we are suppose to hate everything. Right now. And call anyone who disagrees with us fags.

I laugh at anyone who even cares about this game. I hate MMORPGs and so the success or failure has no bearing on my life whatsoever. Next title please.

 

[Dana Scully]

Watching/reading the various reviews, I just can't understand how SE fucked this up so royally. Like, these are basics that they're missing; search function in their 'auction house', a reply function for tells, auto-attack, forcing players to walk everywhere through copy-pasta'd terrain (I'm aware there's some costly teleport function, but no mounts/flight paths/free teleport system of any sort is just irritating), etc. And - they did this in XIII as well - why are the (clopclopclopclop) footsteps so loud?

I'll say this much for FFXIV, though, it reminds me just how good a game WoW really is.

 

[Hisako]

A lot of people seem to be jumping on the ‘Screw SE’ bandwagon simply for the sake of levelling up then internet cocks.

As a wise Yahtzee once said, it's easier to assume everything is shit before figuring out whether it's got good substance or not.

Plus, with the track record that SE has it's easier these days for people to mercilessly rip the loving hell out of their bad products. I'm not excusing them for what they've done, but I think this should be a discussion about what they should be doing to fix it, rather than agreeing for the nth time how Square Enix sucks and how they're not doing anything decent these days.

I mean, guys, haven't we already established that?

 

[Makoeyes987]

To be honest, the game should've been fucking done, when it was released. What kind of fucktarded company tries to pawn off incomplete goods to their customers?

It's an insult to the loyal FF fanbase, that they'd try to market this game to us with a straight face.

I don't think people are jumping on a bandwagon here. The fans are tired of getting screwed up the ass by Yoichi Wada.

 

[Russell]

I want to remain unbiased on a game I haven’t played, but it’s becoming difficult as the evidence mounts....

It takes 3 minutes to sell 20 items in FFXIV, whilst in WoW it takes less than 10 seconds.

I'm not saying that every MMOG should copy World of Warcraft, but when a genre is taken backwards in the simplest of ways it's a real problem. In fact, it's sometimes frustration from the simple things that will make people quit playing MMOGs, or any game, because nobody wants to spend all day just trying to unload Chocobo beaks. Hopefully, Square Enix will somehow get it together and fix problems like this as soon as possible.

 

[Makoeyes987]

It's alright to call a turd, a turd, dude. Honest.

 

[Russell]

It's alright to call a turd, a turd, dude. Honest.

I can resist the tidel wave of "FFXIV are shit" evidence no longer.

Final Fantasy XIV is a notable entry to the genre but only for what it lacks. It lacks character; bare-bones quests and audiovisual repetition fail to instill a sense of fantasy wonder. It lacks cohesion; communication failures, economic oddities, and stringent limitations leave you constantly directionless. And it lacks joy; the abysmal interface and boring monsters make it a struggle to stay invested. The open-ended classes, the stunning graphics engine, the focus on story--these elements deserve rightful praise. It's a shame they weren't put to use in a game worthy of the Final Fantasy brand. Certainly, Final Fantasy XIV will improve as features are added, yet the failures go beyond the superficial. Updates may address a multitude of flaws, but "fun" is not a feature that can be added with a simple patch.

It might be a good game one day, (I doubt it) but right now it's not worth paying money for.
SE screwed up big time releasing a game that is so unfinished.

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

If it looks like shit, smells like shit and sounds like shit chances are it's FFXIV.

 

[Dana Scully]

Well it looks like SE is actually seriously working on fixing the fuckup that is XIV.

They've extended the free trial period an additional 30 days and are making several big changes, which include:

- search function for the market place
- better targeting
- more streamlined menus
- improved chat logs, including tabs and an instant reply function
- more monsters, thanks to additional servers being implemented
- greatly reduced teleportation costs
- multi-server load balancing for particularly laggy areas

Here's the full interview if anyone wants to read it themselves:

Game Dev interview

I think a lot of it will be too little too late, but it's nice to see that they've at least heard the complaints and are trying to fix what they can.

 

[ForceStealer]

Well they don't really have much of a choice, do they? FFXIII was polarizing, but so is EVERY FF release, and 13 still did well critically. FFXIV has just been absolute negativity.

It's not necessarily too little too late, though they should have just not released it yet, but if they actually fixed everything, sure, that would be damn impressive. But I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[Splintered]

FFXIV is a huge embarrassment.

That said, I don't know why they just didn't push back the release date like they do with every other title ever. They did it with the PS3 version, didn't they? It's not like we don't already wait half a decade for release of Squeenix games anyway.

Oh well, still not caring. Bring on 3rd Birthday.