Random stuffs

So, if you caught one of my latest updates / tweets, you'd know that I apparently got in on the FFXIV beta testing. While I'm kind of happy, I'm also kind of sad. See, the game is beautiful, and I'd've thought that my card could handle it no problem. Unfortunately no matter what I set the settings to I get the same issue. Apparently it is a problem with the game itself having issues with some ATI cards. Guess what? I'm one of those ones with a vid card that doesn't mesh well with the game. Everything is hunky dory up until another player comes within my view 'bubble' at that time it stutters on the framerate. It'll stop for maybe 3 frames then go smooth... up until another person walks into the bubble ... doesn't matter if it's the same person walking out and then back into my view. I do hope that they fix that issue, as it is kind of hard to do some things with a choppy frame rate.

While the beta only just started this morning, I have gotten to have my hands on it for the last couple hours (was out wandering around with the family today). Things to note that are nice: Start a quest that is for killing some monsters? You get your OWN monsters on your screen to be able to kill for that quest. No-one else sees them. The graphics as I stated are very cool. ... granted that's all I've gathered so far...

Now, for the things that I'm upset with: It's no longer like FFXI ... granted that's expected... but in one regard I wish they'd have stuck with it. That of changing classes. You can not do it in FFXIV. This means you have limited character slots to try out one class, of a great deal of them. Now the beta we've got 3 character slots, but there's room for more, so I'm not sure if this means that when it goes live if you get default 3 character slots, or if they're just letting us have some extras to test things more. Next up: Combat. No more sitting and healing, heck, no more sitting whatsoever ... you are perpetually standing, unless you're dead, then you're face down or up depending on race I'd suppose. The "controls" page on the beta site has some (not so great) pictures of the keyboard with what buttons do what, but that's set in stone -.- . . . You can't attack a creature without being in "active" mode, so you either have to hit F on the keyboard to draw your weapon, or click on the active/passive button. Nice thing though, you don't have to have something targeted. Bad thing about it, you can't set / change skills when you get any while you're in "active" mode ... also you won't regenerate your HP while in that fighting stance.

You have two levels apparently that you raise up as you're going ... one of your ability as an adventurer, and one for that of your class ... I think that's how it is at least. It's rather confusing.

Other bad things include: Some chat for cut scenes / conversations over a mock linkshell scroll by so fast that you can't catch it, and you end up having to scroll back.... there are things that you can interact with as well, but the strangeness? you have to open the menu (either home key or - on the keypad) to then interact with it... you can't actually click on it or tab across it to interact with it. I can see the desire to have it this way (with 40 people crowding around something for a quest, it'd be hard to click on it) ... but you don't have the same option to speak to NPC's from what I've seen thus far. Timers: For those that used windower for FFXI, you'd have loved the timers in that... have fear though, as there still is no timer for any buff/debuff you may have on you. There are some things that I've seen that have random wear-off times ... notably: Weakness from rezzing, I've died 3 times, one time the sickness wore off in 5 minutes, while another time it took nearly 30... oh, and that's another thing ... once you die, you have to open the menu, and recall, then wait at least 30 seconds to get sent to your home point wherever it happened to be at.

Oh, a somewhat good thing I just thought of ... their update stuff uses a sharing system to help everyone update faster ... think "Torrent" if you know what that is :) . . . only bad part is that even if you quit out of the game, it still has your computer as a server sharing the update file(s), so you end up having your net going constantly. So if you're on a limited bandwidth plan, best watch out and make sure that you end the task so that you stop using bandwidth.

I'll post more about the game and stuff when I get the chance to play more ... I'm not really revealing anything directly about the game to you all, rather just sharing things that are gameplay related that are currently in play ... we all have to remember, that with these beta testings going on, ideas will be spurred forth, and changes may come down the line before it goes live.

right, anyway, PeAcE for now, catch ya'll later, and enjoy the game if you managed to get in the beta as well.