Friday Fantasy Alpha! - Logs from Eorzea Entry V
Another test day, this time though...filled with many bad decisions. Today the new world launched, named Garland. Many were excited, many didn't care, and some were really confused. I was part of the latter group apperantly as I took it as Yay! New place to explore! Must go do more testing! More stuff to write about! ( - _ -) yea...that wasn't correct -.- I've played enough MMO's and know enough about their terminology that I shouldn't have let myself get so excited and stupid over a little announcement. In the end, I regretted it, I lost the work I put into the character and the friends I made. I made a new Lalafell and got her back up to a decent level. Tomorrow, I plan to grind back my levels properly so I can pick up where I left off. So for todays topic, rumors, suspicions, and idea's. So far concerning the leveling system, the party system, and the UI there are many changes to come. They won't say what will be changed, but they do say it will not be seen until Beta.
There has been a lot of talk in the forums concerning changing the leveling system completely. Some people want the PR(Physical rank) to be removed entirely and make it like FFXI, others want us to get attribute points based on which ARM(Class) we're leveling. These points have the ability to raise various things, elemental defense, HP, MP, the usual STR/VIT/IND/MND/DEX/LUK. It seems certain players just want to play FFXI with upgraded graphics and controls. That thought bothers me. If we were going to play FFXIV, I'd expect it to be different. If I wanted to play FFXI I'd keep playing FFXI, so why even make that an issue? I personally like the leveling system, I like that I have to make a decision on what I want to level for my character and how I want it to progress and grow. If I just dump all my points into INT and forget about everything else, I might nuke the living hell out of mobs but I won't be any good at all if I run out of MP and switch to Marauder or Gladiator and have no STR, much less HP/VIT. This is not WoW people, this is not RO either. You will not just min/max your way into Mordor(This is going on FB lol). Get off it, make a decision on how you want to play the game with your character. So far Square Enix has no opinion on how or what they will do to it. Feel free to continue speculating because thats all we have right now concerning that.
The party system, oh the joys! Battle Regimen? The thing that they've been talking about and say is all amazing? Well, I'm sure it is, if they told us how to use it. Lol. There is nothing in the manual concerning that. People have tried and tried, and I personally haven't met one that has succeeded in figuring it out. From what I do know, the party leader has to manage it, and we all know how non-amazing some party leaders have been on FFXI, so one can only hope that the leaders of parties in FFXIV will have some sense. What it is suppose to do is sort of stack up abilities, moves, to create combos(my word), or chains. It's very unclear but it kind of goes from the leader, to the next person and they each have to enter their move for that round, which will create something amazing. Yes there have been a lot of complaints/concerns on this, still there has been no explaination of what this “Precise Order” might be. Other than the Battle Regimen, it works great in my opinion, just a couple features are missing such as F1-F6 for party targetting and F8 for Selecting nearest target. As it stands, we use the tab or click on targets, even though the mouse moves as if you're using it on water rather than a firm surface.
Concerning the UI, there have been lots of changes to be made, but we won't be seeing them till Beta if anything. To quote a couple of the testers
“I really miss Macros. The Battle Menu feels more like playing Blue Mage in FFXI. Where you have to equip each spell seperatly. Also haveing to redistribute everything after a class change is really annoying.“
“I really hope there will be macros in ffxiv alongside the current system. I thought the macro system was a huge strength in ff11 “
I agree with this, the Macro system was great, as of right now, we have 2 macro like bars that you must hit T to bring up then down arrow or up arrow to switch between the 2. A total of 20 slots for spells, and abilities that we cannot customize at all. I think not SE, fix it now, or we will all be very angry. The minimap is also in question, you can't see your party members vividly enough, yes they are little blue dots, but they are little blue dots in a sea of yellow(Npcs) and white(players) dots. It is very difficult to distinguish at times and easily lose track of where the hell they might be. Oh and on the /m map? Forget it, no player icons there at all, nor a menu.
There is much work to be done with the UI, and the party system. The leveling system and Xping is fine. Leave it alone. I like it, you hear me Square Enix? I LIKE IT!
Tomorrow, is another test, and I will most likely miss it due to irl circumstances, but, if I get any time in it, I will be sure to tack on the bottom of this my current PR/AR for my new character. Thank you all for your continued support and as of right now all Alpha testers are moving forward into Beta. This will live on and continue until Retail Release :)
I'm still Wicked, crazy and opinionated as hell, signing off.
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