Friday Fantasy Alpha! – Logs from Eorzea Entry VI
Another day, another test, this week they posted the dates for the entire week in advance. Telling us one thing, we are in phase 2 and Beta is closer than we thought. With the new addition of servers, which we have 10 of now. The stability has improved greatly, very very smooth, almost a constant 30fps. Today's post, Alpha, Alpha 2, and your thoughts hopefully.
In my time with the Alpha 1 testing, I've seen very few bugs at all. Some graphical glitches such as floating boulders or NPC's. Even disappearing NPC's lol...But nothing at all major. Nothing at all. What is SE waiting for? Why prolong this testing for so long? Well, over the year's there has been thousands of complaints about FFXI and its short testing phase and lack of deep testing across multiple countries. SE is trying to move on the right foot, so not to upset their fans(hopefully). Yesterdays play, was just another play, there was nothing new yet, nothing exciting. We're limited to a few camps and quests.
They implimented something on the last test that I somehow missed. In the Battlecraft and Fieldcraft quests there are only 3 to choose from. Once you've got your three, you cannot get any new ones for 2 hours when the guild roster updates. This seems rather...well...stupid. Each guildleve gives you 30 mins to do each one. Yes, you can finish it much much faster at times but lets say you finish those 3, what do you do until the next guildleve update? Well, grind, do fieldcrafts, crafting in general? Lots of options but what if we don't want to do those things on that particular day or hour? What if we don't have the time for switching back and forth between our to-do list and only want to focus on one thing. Well, choose your fate Player, but SE is going to limit your leve activities regardless. For that, I say, if it wasn't for that meddling Square Enix, I would have been home free!
I don't know whats going on with tomorrow's would-be players of Final Fantasy 14. Constantly, I find them to act like typical WoW players. Arrogance, stupidity, and lack of passion for the game itself. Not that this wasn't also found in FFXI but we weeded them out fairly well. We pissed them off and sent them to WoW. What happened to people playing MMO's for the group quality, the story, the experience of doing something with others and becoming long time friends. Where did all that go. I am disappointed in the players who don't seem to understand this anymore. Worse off, some of the testers in the forums have gone so far as to establish a Ventrilo server!. Vent + FF = NO@! This is incorrect! This should not be. Why do they restrict themselves from interacting with others by language, and worst of all by using the English language. The AlphaVent testers claim that it's easier to talk and easier to interact with people. While that may be, I cannot throw away my career in FFXI and refusing ventrilo and its use, I cannot say this is okay. If you take away the immertion of the game with something like Ventrilo, you are raping yourself of the passion of the game, the deep meaning and connections you could make if only you weren't so busy talking on ventrilo about bullshit. I plan to dive into the ventrilo server tomorrow, and join in the chat. Consider it an experiment, like lion watching or something haha.
Now I must ask, what do you feel about ventrilo use? Do you support it? Agree with it? Or feel it should stay with the mediocre games and FPS's where its actually useful since story is non-existant. Why do you play RPG's or video games in general. Why do I play you might ask? Well..I play for the friends I can meet that are of like mind, that play for the same feelings that I get while playing. I play for the story, for the passion, for forgetting about the world around me and thinking of only the game I put myself in and the people I meet in there that I can take back into the real world to make it that much more tolerable.
Please use the template below to tell us in the comment box, or email me your form at wickedamu42@gmail.com and I'll post your response here on the comment box for you.
Name:
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Until next time, this is Wicked, and I look forward to your responses!
Square is limiting us the amount of guildleve? If i'm reading correct. It's still alpha. I'm sure there is going to be a ton to do with guildeves. I don't see them limiting us.
As far as world of warcraft? Stop botching a game that has broken record numbers. You can't deny that blizzard did something wrong when you have about 9.5 million people playing from FFXI ...what 1.5? WoW attracted alot of non MMO players into our world. I'm not just talking about NUMBERS here. They attracted a community of players that enjoyed the game...something about WoW made players come back for more! Whatever game comes after world of warcraft is going to fill some pretty big shoes. you have a pretty biased opinion. Group quality in WoW was good...granted sometimes I wish I could see more of a story line in WoW (aka cut scenes like FFXI). I mean you had "some" epic battles in FFXI but the majority of the time your were spent fighting a mob that was "knee" high for like 3 hours straight. Yep sure did have group quality when all you could do was chat while spamming a macro in FFXI. When in wow you had to worry about a certain amount of aspects of the game like placement. I have tons of friends from World of Warcraft and FFXI. I think FFXIV is going on the right foot here. I hope it keeps its hardcore edge but not to a point where its too dull. If some beef with WoW, which I do, IS the story line. They have a good background in lure but they don't seem to execute it well.
Vent is just another way of communicating. You have your own private server and your group of people that you talk to. Some people in WoW use vent just to "hear" ...you still have the option of staying silent...if you wish. Man and if you hear "bull shit" on vent. You can always turn it off or choose who you want to listen to. You making it sound like your being forced to use vent, lol! There are alot of great moments in Vent that I remember...just adds to the game play. Keep an open mind dude. When there is "oh shit moment" I don't want to have to type it out...I rather say it out loud.
Thank you for your comment chaos.
Numbers mean nothing in the grand scheme of things to gamers. What matters is the content and the community. In my opinion WoW brought in people to MMO's that I didn't want to meet. Arrogant, selfish, and foul mouthed children who should probably go back to Halo or something. This is just my opinion and my experience with WoW. Don't start assuming I get offended by any of it, I just don't think that gay, faggot, and noob should be every other word expressed in chat, public or not. I wish some of those people actually KNEW what the word noob stood for so they could stfu for once.
Yes, this was a biased post. From the beginning, I set out to make this blog unbiased, but if I don't give my opinion on things from both sides, then I'm just another tool for SE or whatever other game I may be reviewing or posting about. Apologies.
Vent is just another way of communicating. Your points are valid here, but I don't see a need for vent with an FF MMO. No I'm not being forced to use it, but if it catches wind like it did on WoW, we will be forced to use it if we ever wish to do whatever they may call "GroundKings" on FFXIV, or Sky runs for example. In my years of FFXI, if you didn't know your job and didn't know how to do it without being told, you didn't belong on the run, much less the party. Period.
The oh shit moment? yea...if you can't type it out fast enough, I'm sure vent would help you. But me? 145wpm average, 200+ when I was a teenager, hell, I could type it faster than most could think it. Lol. I'm sorry, but I come from a world where typing fast had meaning and I'm not going to let that go to waste just because the 'gamer' would rather have things easy for themselves. Oh shit moments in FPS games? sure, because in FPS, a fraction of a second could mean your life or the life of a teammate.
Again, thank you for your comment and be sure to tell your friends. :)
Honestly, all of your above comments are skewed and biased. I was a veteran EQ player of 6 years. I played FFXI, and I played WoW. Directly comparing games that are targeted to different player bases is both naive and ridiculous.
WoW caters to a very casual gamer and largely to US and Europeans. Compare this to any NCSoft game which caters to Koreans and you'll see a large difference in playstyle. The same goes for FFXI whose playerbase has and always will be highly Japanese. It's just not the same game.
As far as comments about Ventrilo go, I used to raid in Everquest back in the day where you had 72 man raids and Ventrilo/Teamspeak wasn't really en vogue, We had to set up multiple chat channels and delegate class leads, raid leads, and whatever else have you. At times it was sloppy, you were at the mercy of the chat servers. Ventrilo has revolutionized the approach to group communication, refusing to move ahead with the times is stubborn at best, and ignorant at worst. As far as immersion goes, there are several schools of thought, some go so far as to take roleplay into account, I've met people in my days in MMO's that would categorically refuse to group with someone of an opposing faction even when the option was readily available for the sake of immersion and roleplay. If you don't want to use Ventrilo that is your option, but be prepared to be left behind by better players who recognize that time spent typing things out is time taken away from actions that can be taken.
As far as guildleves go, it's alpha, wake up.
Oh, and if you're going to blog, the least you could do is use a spellcheck.
I'm going to keep this short and simple as I do not have the patience or will to care as of late for much of anything.
Yes, they are biased, I stated that.
I know of those uses of vent in EQ, I too played EQ, and still never used voice chat.
Blizzsoft caters to Koreans yes, in a way, but it's still WoW+abunchofothermmo's of the past.
I did accept being left behind because of my refusal to go with vent and all it's stupidity, long long ago. But I disagree that they are better players, in fact that is laughable in the experience I've had with voice users in FFXI/EQ/RO.
Wake up? wake up to what? Do you know realize what the title of my blog posts are hun?
Please point out the word which was misspelled as I do use spellcheck if needed. Mind you, that would be one word in the thousands I have typed thus far in the series of this blog.
Thank you for your comments, tell your friends, and please do stop by again.