I'm done.
With FFXIV beta that is .... since my last writing, I've played 0, yes ZERO time on it. This is not because of getting absorbed into SC2 or anything else. This is simply because theres stuff that's still broken that they refuse to comment on, or fix.
Reasons NOT to play FFXIV:
1) You can't grind a single class up to wherever you want without interruption
Reason) Surplus. This stupidity has not been explained why it's there, or what it does. All the tester's have found out is that it's a method of them to slow down your leveling so you don't end up getting max level on day 1 of launch
2) Only 2 mage classes at start
Reason) As you may or may not know, as you level your physical level, you get stat points to distribute on your character. 3 of the different stats are made for melee classes (of which there's like 5), and the other 3 are for mages. Why is this bad? Because of surplus, the only way to smoothly level, is to then switch classes and level a different one for a while when you start getting surplus on one. With being able to hit surplus so easily (you can start getting it from new character / class within an hour), you have to swap jobs very often. With only two mage classes, you really shouldn't swap over to a melee class, as you have no stats for it. So you're semi-restricted to go to a gathering or crafting class.
3) Menu driven EVERYTHING.
Reason) Quests tell you 'go touch this'...first instinct in a mouse + keyboard game? Click! ... nope, you've gotta open the menu, then choose to interact with whatever it is you're supposed to do something with. Heck, there's an elevator in the starting town that we're able to start in in beta, you have to interact with it to use it. Doing so causes you to go into a cutscene of sorts to ride it up/down...the animation of which may take longer to load and play than it would be to just walk down the stairs nearby. The other reason this is bad? Because the menu is LAGGY AS ALL HELL. Hit menu, wait 2 FULL seconds for it to come up, choose something, wait another 2-5 seconds for the next screen to come up ... yea that gets annoying. No, this is not a graphical problem, this is the fact that the menus are displayed from the server. So when you hit an option, it sends a request to the server "hey I am opening this thing here, what do I see?" ... this goes over the net however slow it may be on the servers, then the server's gotta send back everything you see.
4) Solo Play Required
Reason) They say they want to push party-play, but it's just not conducive to the experience gain method they have currently. As you go around, the only way to gain skill points for combat classes, is to do an action while engaged in combat. This means, that for you to gain a level, you have to be in a fight. You get experience based on the difficulty of the fight granted, but that's another issue. So for those of us that enjoy playing mages, we don't get experience for healing that tank after the fight is over, even if it took us 5 casts to get them full.
5) Mages get more shafts than an archery contest target.
Reason) MP ... simply put ... MP ... that's the main thing. See, while out fighting, you have two modes (I've written about them before) ... active and passive. While in active mode you can cast spells and everything, but your HP doesn't regen. When you go into passive mode, your HP will start to naturally regen. This means that your 'resting' thing is actually just passive mode. While in passive mode though, your MP doesn't regen at all. The only way to regen your MP is to touch a crystal / node. So mages are pretty much bound around these crystals and nodes when they're out grinding. The fact that there's only 2 mage classes was described about above. The fact that even if damage is healed on someone, if our heal lands after the fight is over, we get no exp for it, or if we're being friendly and decide to heal someone while passing by ... yea we get nothing for helping them out. So, power-leveling is out of the question for sure, as mages get nothing for it. Oh, yea, both the mage classes? yea they're both considered healers. At level 5 you get a healing spell on both classes. Nuke class? yea both are nukers, but with the lack of MP regen, you're only spending your MP on heals, not nukes.
6) Active / Passive mode stupidities
Reason) Short but sweet, HP but not MP regen while in passive. TP that you gain in a fight will drain at a rate of 300 every 5 seconds while not actively engaged in a fight. Granted, TP is fairly easy to get, and you have a max of 3000, if you're at max, this means if you don't pick another fight within a minute, you're starting with 0 TP. Why so much TP? some moves are only 250 TP, while big hitters are 1k ... so meh.
7) Crafting stupidities
Reason) I hate crafting as it is, unless it's easy. I'd much rather be able to purchase a recipe from a shop and then just be able to pull up my 'menu' of recipes that I know, and be able to make something from that. As it stands now, that whole menu driven thing? Yea, it makes crafting near stupid seeing as each ingredient box acts just like the menu in when you click on that box, it query's the server for what you have in your inventory. Firstly, you have to know the recipe for something to make it. Recipes can consist of up to 8 items, much like FFXI. But this time you don't choose what crystal to craft with, this time you put in the ingredients, then hit craft, and if it's something that's in the system, it'll pull up a menu with what those ingredients could make. Yes, you read that right, COULD make. See, the same recipe of ingredients could actually be for 3 or 4 different things.
8) Inventory un-intuitiveness.
Reason) You've got your inventory right? equipped items still count towards your backpack limit, just like XI granted, but with other issues which I'll list next, it sucks. See, there is no sort method at all. Your inventory is populated in the order that things came into your inventory. So, you go out, start questing / killing, get drops, get into surplus, then go to town to sell (again, menu stupidity), and pick up a new main weapon/item to start leveling another class. That item you just purchased is now at the bottom of your list, with whatever you didn't sell in between your other equipment and the new stuff you purchased. Granted, I'm not sure if they've added a sort option in, I'm not going to go try and see, and with the way they've pushed patches out, I highly doubt it. While you're out killing things, you can barely see when something gets dropped, and that's not the only problem ... see when something drops, even while solo, it goes to a loot pool. Gradually it'll get to your inventory, but you won't know it until it may be too late... you may get some great item dropped off a mob, not notice it, then see a message saying "not enough room, item UberSexy lost" later on down the line. Oh, that loot pool? yea it's not a true pool. While partied up if you kill something, and it drops something, it's assigned to someone's pool, it may not be your pool, and when you go to look at the pool, you only see yours, not everyone that's in the party.
9) No safe
Yea, you read right, there's no house for you to go store your stuff you're not using right now. So if you're like me and like mages, you're then left with having to pick up a gathering class (again, menu driven to harvest nodes LOL). So, you gather all this nifty stuff! What are you going to do with it? Craft it up? Sell it on the AH ... no, you can't do that, they're not doing AH in this at all...more on this later. Well, you best craft with it, or sell it to a vendor, or find someone in your linkshell that is using that item and give/sell it to them. Oh, you could stick it on your rented retainer person to sell it, or hold it, but that's another issue LOL. With 80 slots in your backpack (at least in beta ... who's to know, that may be the max whenever you do quests to increase it's size) you run out of room real quickly.
10) Rented retainer
What's a retainer you may ask?? Well, in beta, they're free to 'rent', but in live I'm sure it'll cost some money. These retainers can hold a limited amount of items, and you can set up only 8 of those items to sell stuff for you. There's market wards (which is menu driven to get into from a specific part of the city) where your retainer can be summoned to give items to, and set up a bazaar. This is pretty much a money sink for you to just constantly have a money drain. If your stuff doesn't sell, you still have to pay for the retainer I'm sure.
11) No Auction House
Yea, no auction house, they're not interested in it. They said they'll possibly make an option to search the market ward's retainers that have bazaars, but that's not going to be very good. See, every item may have different materials that were used to make it ... so you may have a desire to get a woolen robe for it's stats, but there's going to be like 10+ versions of that same named robe, just because one may be a different color due to the materials that were used.
12) No inspect
Yea, that's another thing we can thank the JP's for. They considered 'inspecting' to be rude in their culture. So, rather than just take out the information sent to the player saying 'so and so is inspecting you', they took out the option to inspect all together. There were some people that were walking around in an awesome looking robe, but we had no idea what the name of it was, or where to get it ... and go figure, they were JP players, so they didn't understand our questions as to where to get one of our own.
13) Alpha goodness
What?!?!? See, the beta forums had in them the alpha version threads for issues. What was in them? many things that are still in being complained about. Of course, the menu-for-everything is top of the list for many. MP regen is another. Loot pool is yet another. AH is another. Crafting is another. Yea, pretty much everything I'm complaining about in this post? yea, it was bitched about in alpha. Other things: Mouse... it's software, so it's laggy as all heck. Keyboard? you can't configure it at all, so you're stuck with what they give you for layout. Got a controller? great, you can configure every button on that no problem.
With all these things, it's clear to see, that even though the game will be released by many months on the PC before they release it for the PS3, it is being made for the consoles, or they want you to go out and get a controller regardless. There are other issues that I have with the game, but I'm tired of complaining. So, on to good things?
Bah, I've not got any good things going on it seems... I mean, I just sat here for 5 minutes trying to think of something good that I could write about for a bit to counteract the rant above...Ok, perhaps just one thing: My gold-making skills in WoW have not decreased at all. I think I might make a blog post and tag it for people to see easily and make use of it. Yea, I think I'll do that tomorrow?
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