Final Fantasy XIV – “Brief” First Impressions

I won’t go into a massive detail blitz. I will go over some of the highlights and the low-lights of my journey from Collectors Edition box to PC gameplay

(no videos for the time being — my stream is looking pretty simplistic and hard to read text right now, with no sound either, all of which I hope to remedy within the next few days .. also only one picture for now)

The Good

I’m entirely impressed with level progression so far. Square Enix didn’t go out of their way to make you group up to advance at a quicker pace in the early levels. Previous journeys through Final Fantasy XI saw me trying to solo sheep, having each kill a life and death struggle, with the most meager return rate. In FFXIV, so far at least, there are a healthy amount of mobs that are within appropriate levels on your character. With enough command of the gameplay, you’ll be able to blaze through several mobs in succession, before needing to mend your wounds for a small amount of time, which isn’t an overbearing experience.

Being a tank/melee focused MMORPG player, I went with the Gladiator class, which provided me with newbie gear and a newbie weapon. After about eight levels into my class (which was also eight levels into my physical character level), I decided to change things up a little. After aimlessly wandering my hometown to find a few locations to help me out (more on that in “The Bad”), I came across a Polearm. Switching out this weapon enabled me to switch to a new class — the Lancer. Immediately my class level resets to one while my physical level maintains the level eight status it was previously. After gaining a few levels with the Lancer class, I acquired a few new skills from that class to help dispatch foes in a more timely manner. Switching back to Gladiator, I noticed I was able to use these Lancer gained skills I gained with that particular class, while set to the Gladiator class. While it might not sound like a big deal, having the ability to use a more powerful piercing strike with my sword as opposed to an area effect swing on a power sword swipe, lets me take on enemies without the risk of aggroing unwanted attention. Equipping various items and/or weapons is supposed to lock you into a certain class, so there’s a lot of experimentation to be had, without the need to create numerous characters.

The opening CG by Square Enix (optional, though you’d be a fool to pass this up) is drop dead gorgeous, sporting some of the most quality laced CG I’ve seen in ages, especially considering the talent and quality behind Blizzard’s CG. Entering the game, you’ll immediately be impressed with how much better FFXIV looks compared to most other MMORPG on the market. With a decent high end computer, you can bump the quality up, from resolution to other toggles, and make a true visual feast to drool over, though there are a number of visual miscues as well.

One of the shunned aspects of FFXIV coming out of beta, the experience system (in which you can only gain a certain amount of experience in a set amount of time before returns start to dip off, then finally zeroing out) doesn’t seem to be apparent so far. Granted I’ve done about 75% combat and 25% exploration/dying/resting, experience growth has not bottomed out or detoured in any fashion. I might need more time and to read up more on the overall game though. To be honest, I installed, created a character, turned my stream on and went at it with a reckless abandon, without consulting the booklet for any queries.

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The Bad

It’s not all fun and games with FFXIV so far, though there’s not a whole lot holding it back so far when you get in game. The one thing that’s feeling convoluted is the navigation and camera for the map. I have not found a way of moving the map in such a way that it lets me view other places within the section. I have to physically move towards the direction I want to take a peek of, which isn’t that big of a hassle, other than the fact that I’d like to find another nearby town to shop in. The starting city I chose is pretty much a poorly laid out area, with no easy way of going about. Trying to find armor or weapons vendors just to purchase a temporary upgrade serves nigh impossible. I’ve yet to find any place selling an upgraded 1hs, or even adequate armor upgrades. My 1hs needs to be repaired, yet it’s trial by fire trying to find out how you can do this.

There’s a bit of a draw distance issue here and there, where things just randomly pop up at a moderate distance away from them, when they should be clearly visible from a much farther distance. Ground textures also look a bit flat, with a mostly painted on with sprinkles thrown on top feeling. These are the grassy ground features we’re talking about, as I’ve barely seen past those and the towns ground textures. Then there’s animation quirks, where you’ll perform an attack and the animation never comes out. In Everquest when using the classic models, animations would usually halt as you’re getting hit,or if you move forward mid animation. in FFXIV though, the attack would sometimes never animate, though the results will clearly be logged on whether you landed the attack or missed. There’s also some AI quirks, which I can’t quite lock down on whether they are intentionally done or lazy programming. Occasionally while fighting an enemy within reasonable level, they’ll dart between your legs and run off a short distance, or just dart towards any random direction for about ten paces. Catch up and attack again, and you’ll get a 50/50 chance of the same thing happening. Sometimes an enemy will just bolt between your legs and attack and then jump back as you’re turning to engage them. Again, maybe these are evasive maneuvers by the CPU enemies, or maybe it’s a protocol for certain enemies to run off when they are in trouble, however most of these quirks happen within the 90-65% area of the enemies health.

The biggest pain in the ass though will come before you even step foot within the lands of Erozea. It looks like Square Enix are using a bit torrent approach with patching, making the process a massive headache. This is really not the way to be doing such a system; any other means aside from bit torrent will be light years ahead in terms of access, speeds and, to be frank, intelligence. There were two batches of files to patch — one being a moderately small batch, while the other was quite sizable. The uploading and downloading of this final portion would rarely reach wanted speeds, with ports open and such.

Then there’s registration as a whole….it’s beyond idiotic. The amount of security Square Enix wants to put on their accounts is not really needed. Why must I have at least one letter, one number and one character in my password, while not having three of the same letter, number or character in succeeding order? It does give a broadened sense of security though, but with how brain dead some people are in general, clicking on those World of Warcraft phishing links in their email and all, does it matter? Why is having an account $9.99 a month, but you have to pay $3 per character on top of that? I know some of these things are failures from Final Fantasy XI, but after all this time, you still work with such a lowest common denominator?

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First 10 hours in a nutshell

This impressions piece went 900 words longer than I wanted it to, but in a nutshell, the first day of Final Fantasy XIV has been both a thrill and an annoyance. Most of the annoyances begin and end with the installation, patching and registration process, while entering the game begins to show off a good enough time to keep my attention. Server stability is here so far, which is a very positive sign for a brand new MMORPG, with quite a number of players already invading the lands. Granted it’s a very early and brief glimpse into this MMORPG, but so far, so good, especially with the whole rabid pitchfork wielding beta testers lambasting the game before it was even released.

For further analysis of Final Fantasy XIV, follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/Jas0nVelez and for live streaming of this MMORPG, head on over to http://bit.ly/JasonV between 3pm est and 12am est for the next several days. A word of warning about the stream — there’s no sound right now (working on that) and the quality is decent, though the text is impossible to read (working on that?) I plan on being in game throughout most of that allowed time for the next several days, though I may juts take off early, or in the middle of it all. But in any case, you have a clear and descriptive time frame in which you can watch me play through the world of Erozea. Any questions or comments please feel free to leave them below, on my Twitter account or via email GalarianValoran@clgamer.com