yeah its such a freakin mess.

If they can't get a downloader to work properly...

At this rate square enix won't be getting a subscription from me. Not very intuitive & so far the jittery mouse cursor does my head in. Not sure if I want to try with a controller any more now.

If your game chooses to do an Open Beta it is so important for the game to be in "showing off" stage. It's the chance to show off your game and pick up fringe subscribers like me who had no intention of playing FFXIV but with a good open beta experience, would be convinced to drop the money for the box and play a few months and possibly more.

This experience so far sure is driving me away.

This game sorta sucks... not going to lie. I was so excited to install and play, and have made a few different chars, tried different cities... they're huge, but after you figure out the lame leves quest at first camp or so it gets old really fast.

I haven't seen any skillchains or anything near it that made ffxi sorta fun... I don't like that I'm forced to use a type of weapon if I want to be a type of class. The combat is really blah to me, and nothing about the game really keeps me going back...

I hate saying it but yeah probably cancellation of pre - incoming.

MMO's have such high standards, arguebly the highest in the entire gaming biz

Well, this solves one problem: more time to play Civ V.

If you guys haven't found it yet...you can download the file and copy them to the right location with any torrent application like utorrent etc.

Really frustrated with the limitations on guildleves in a 48 hour period....and the fact that I feel like I have nothing to do once they are done.

You know you can do 8 for each city in the 48 hour period, right?

My god, the game design decisions they have made at the fundamental level are absolutely atrocious. I'm not talking about minor points. I'm talking about the basic control and interactions in the game.

Instead of clicking on the item in front of you that you want to interact with, you click on an icon at the top of the screen which pulls up your menu. Then you select the object on the right side of the screen from that menu, and THEN you get to select your choice from the object you interact with. That is the most ****ing ******ed thing I have ever seen in a MMORPG. It's like they have never seen one of these games before. The menu navigation in this game is by far the worst in any online RPG I have ever played. It makes every little thing you want to do an exercise in frustration. Want to buy a staff? It'll take no less than 5 screens of you clicking "buy". It's ridiculous.

Guildleves or whatever they are called is a horrible crippled system of questing. Instead of promoting world exploration, it ruins it.

The camera system is infuriating. You have to "lock on" to everyone you want to talk to, and every enemy you want to hit. Why they have decided that the player wants to lose control of the camera is baffling.

Combat just sucks. Targeting, locking on, entering and exiting battle stance, the whole thing feels like you're trying to knit with boxing gloves on.

Cities: You can't find anything and there's no chat channels that I've seen. Good call there. And the cities are huge. HUGE. You'll be lost. A lot. And the map is terrible.

If, like many others, you've been stonewalled by the downloader and can't play, save yourself the trouble and don't. It's horribad.

Pros: The graphics are pretty.

Guess I'll keep waiting for SW:TOR instead of playing this to pass the time.

BUT IT WILL KILL WOW!!!!!!

I smiled.

I wish I could say no your wrong quad give the game some more time to fix itself but I would just be stupid shame I was really excited for this one

not gonna 100% say i'm not gonna buy it but i is gonna read reviews and do my homework before I shell the $$$ out.

Yeah it's not buggy at all from what I can tell, it's just atrociously designed mechanics.

I'm not sure I have the time to start a mmo atm, but Japanese mmos are very diff to western.

Western mmo: Grind to max level> Raid/pvp.
Japanese mmo: Quest/grind with friends almost exclusively, world pvp with friends.... dkp/point systems..lol 1 leader, he says who gets what - but a guild isnt a bunch of randoms applying - it's like 5 groups of friends, so it works a bit differently.

I will say - I don't think FF14 is suited to a western style of audience.. at all, but that given the progress FF11 made from the start.. it is already halfway there, and within 12 months of release will be along way there.

It might actually be better if it avoids the horrible trend lately of "play the game for 3 months, it failed in someway, gg playerbase". ( hi warhammer, aion, STO, and a million others ).


PS3 release will be ~6months or later than the PC release so it will pickup a lot of subscribers after that ( and also explains the control system and the menu system ).

I think the devs have never played a newer western MMO like current day wow or warhammer and realised what our expectations are though - which is pretty silly "this is our vision, like it or...dont we dont care".

soooo you think it'll get better?

ffxi was a huge mess around the initial launch (which was japan only for a while) it finally got better and better to the point where I'd say the game is so much better now. It had the benefit of the FF name to keep people interested and build up a player base while it worked out a lot of the bugs. It was also never a very friendly (and still isn't that friendly) solo player game, and the menu systems/control scheme weren't much different/better than 14's currently are.

That being said even though I love ffxi (I love WoW too even though they're very different) I'm probably going to cancel my preorder for this game. The menu system is worse than ffxi, the interface is laggier/less intuitive, the controls are much worse. In ffxi the default control scheme was very similar and you'd use the number pad keys to control your character while leaving your thumb on the arrow keys to control the camera. Even though they claim they're adding support, at the moment you can't bind the arrow keys to anything. It also seems to require the mouse for some parts of the game. Maps are laggy, the cities are laggy, there doesn't seem to be anyone talking at all.

I don't even know what the deal is really, I just have no interest in playing a super unpolished game even if it is an ff game. This game needs at least another couple months before it doesn't just bomb at release (at least in the US).

I'll keep following the progress and see if they fix some of the issues I'm having and maybe pick it up in a few months. I want it to succeed but SE doesn't seem to care about releasing a good game or a user friendly game, they just want to release whatever they feel like. It's a frustrating attitude. I do think the PS3 release will give it a shot in the arm when it does come out, hopefully that version isn't such a mess by that time.

after the letdown that was FF13....this thread fully depresses me.......wtf happened to this amazing franchise.......sigh

Don't forget this:
The PC version was released in North America on October 28, 2003.

What wasn't even around for another full year? World of Warcraft.

The point: People have no patience anymore for "unfinished" games on release. (Warhammer, AoC, Vanguard, et al) There are a slew of other options available for your time and money. When your game hits the shelf (open beta counts as the shelf imo.) it better be good, or people will take one look, dismiss it as crap, and move back to a game they already enjoy.

I mean I think this game will still do well in Japan since they love FF games and will do ok in the US because of the label as well. FFXI also wasn't that buggy (at all really) at US release because it had been around for a few years in Japan. It wasn't half the game it is 7 years later, but that can basically be said of any MMO.

I do think this game is going to bomb with the general public, and I'm not sure how well it'll even do with the hardcore FF people. FFXI is still around after all and has a pretty big player base, I suspect a fair number of them will be waiting for PS3 release or try it/dismiss it and go back to their respective games.

In the interest of fairness, it was suggested to me to try using a gamepad for playing this game. After the initial "What the **** I'm not using a ****ing controller to play a MMO" reaction I set up and configured one. It plays better with a gamepad. It's still very bad though and wins the award for worst control I have ever seen in a MMORPG. Scrolling left or right to select abilities off your action bar in a real time battle? Oh please. Is this 2010 or 1994?

Was there a graphic "m'morpeger" before UO ?

I finally got this game set up on my computer and the girlfriends computer and played it today. It was a little laggy on both of our laptops (they are both fairly good laptops, both ran WoW perfectly), and we talked to some NPC's, went out and fought a few monsters and we are done.

This game just seems like another generic MMO except it has high system requirements. I didn't really see one thing I liked about the game. It is OK as far as MMO goes, but that isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

I'm not really a big fan of MMO, I did PvP a lot in the 20's 30's and 40's bracket on WoW w/ friends but I ended up quitting that one. This game was unable to hold my attention for more than 15 minutes which sucks considering I spent hours downloading and setting up the beta on 2 computers.

My biggest problem with the game was the system requirments, the graphics didn't even look all that good and yet I have to turn them down

My second really big problem is after playing for 15 minutes I don't know what I'm 'supposed' to do and there certainly is nothing I want to do in the game.

Time spent trying to download and patch game - 16 hours
Time spent waiting to actually get registered for open beta - 48 hours
Time spent in game before uninstalling -1 hour

It is certainly pretty though, I'll give it that.

I expect this to be the typical response to this game.