First ImpressionsFollow

Nothing prevents you from deleting your character and reloading it to start fresh. You can preserve your name just fine that way and nobody else is going to care. That's on you, not SE.

Edited, Jun 15th 2013 1:49pm by Hyrist

Um... no you seem to be mistaken.

VERY mistaken.

ANYONE can roll on a Legacy Server. Even you with a fresh and new character. Even a player who's never played FFXIV ARR Before.

Legacy Characters can't transfer to non-legacy servers.

So you pretty much have three options.

Keep your character as is.

or

Delete it and re-roll on the same servers and play with your friends as per normal.

or

Convince your friends all to start fresh on a new server.

Legacy Servers are only locked right now because Legacy Player's can't play on them either.


Edited, Jun 15th 2013 2:32pm by Hyrist

I agree.

But no, the only reason they're locked right now is because Legacy Characters aren't up yet. Once the Legacy Servers open, they open to everyone. 1.0 Characters and ARR characters. You're free to play as a fresh character with your friends.

It's the 'Fresh' servers that are locked away from Legacy Characters. Though a legacy player can roll a new character on the server (or up to eight.)

They don't want to segrigate the players from each other. They just want to give new players the opportunity to forge their own economy and world firsts if they wish.

Yeah I was wondering why you were objecting that SE diddn't do something you could do on your own. Some people might want to keep their old characters as is and not re-roll. So SE kept the characters.

They were caught in an awkward situation with ARR, but I think they provided the best solution possible to the situation.

Edited, Jun 15th 2013 2:38pm by Hyrist

Llester, he's quite capable of rolling a new character on an old server. I mean, it would be counterproductive not to allow fresh people in to those servers, after all. They'd just stagnate and die off otherwise.

There's no need to harp on someone who decided the previous version wasn't worth staying with either. Heck, I already think there's too many sour grapes who are ticked at the fact they didn't capitalize on the opportunity to get legacy status.

But yeah, fresh story meets old story, I like the concept of new adventurers meeting grizzled veterans with an actual tale to tell that can't simply be duplicated by going through the same quest line. There's an intangible value in something that is finite. But an experience missed shouldn't be forced on others as something their character experienced if they never did.

Well, now you can re-roll and regale the tale of a peaceful fisherman galvanized into the idea of adventuring by the Calamity - leaving Eorzea for five years train in the basics of [insert desired class here] and have just returned to make a name for yourself in this chaotic new era.

Well I played FFXI for years and played FFXIV at release and a few months down the road after a few updates.

I played a GLA in FFXIV and I chose the same for the ARR beta, so far things I really enjoy is the much more slick fluid UI its refreshing after slogging through FFXIV original release for sure. The graphics look really nice but thats not much of a change but the remapping of the outside area ( starting in Ul'dah ) is very nice no more bland everything looks the same. Theres almost maybe too much thrown in possibly but again better then copy/pasta. The game runs great for me with no lag when I can see tons of players and mobs on screen its nice.

Unfortunately my biggest complaint right now is the combat and thats kinda a big deal for me in any MMO I feel combat feel and fun are very important. So far and yes I'm only level 13 but I have so few abilities and the ones I do are just WS's. As far as I see I always start at 1000 TP? And my WS's are only 60 and 70 TP. So you can just spam them away.

I liked having to build TP and use it more wisely in 1.0 I actually enjoyed the combat in 1.0 and even when they later added auto-attack I thought it was still challenging. So far mobs offer no challenge and theres no variety in combat. I looked at all the skills GLA gets and I dont see a whole lot of interesting things there. I really enjoyed it in 1.0 and just feel something lacking. So I'm really hoping it gets better with level but I just get more of a WoW feeling with combat something I dont like.

The whole FATE thing just feels like more RIFT and GW2 dynamic events that didn't work well in those games, having 50 people spam a mob isn't very fun imo, most times there were so many effects going off I couldn't even see the mob. However people will love these for the easy XP. I would hope they get harder as well as they seemed to offer little challenge.

The whole quest line thing like WoW was never fun to me and feels equally grindy/boring here as well.

Still looking forward to trying out dungeon, leve quests and crafting which I really enjoyed before and hoping it gets better but if combat remains so stale I'm sadly fearing the game is just not for me. I would say anyone that enjoys WoW or the FF lore will prob like it.

Story: Still missing a major "hook" - a single character who pulls me in and makes me want to learn more about him or her. Thancred just doesn't do it for me. Closest so far is the plight of the NPCs over in Silver Bazaar, and their determination to keep their home. The gladiator storyline isn't as bittersweet as the CNJ storyline was - so far. 7/10

Quests: A lot of variety, but still a lot of "go kill four swarms of gnats" types. So far not too challenging (since I rolled on gladiator easy mode this go round.) I love how non-linear the majority of quests are, so you aren't locked into doing them in any particular order, and how turning one quest into an NPC suddenly unlocks a new quest from that same NPC (when there was none before.) It makes the introduction of your character to all the NPCs seem intuitive and natural. 8/10 here.

Combat: On GLA without rearranging any of the hotkeys combat goes "1, 3, 1, 3" although I've finally hit the point where I have to start ducking out of AOE attacks. 6/10 for now but I expect this score might increase if I get higher than level 11.

Visuals: 9/10 most gorgeous game I've ever played hands down. Would 10/10 this if my system could run it at max, but alas it cannot and keep 30+ FPS.

Accessibility: Incredibly easy for an MMO veteran to pick up, although since I've been playing since alpha, I'm probably not the right person to ask this question. Giving this an 8/10.

Good Tutorials: The double tutorials are getting annoying. Either have the green button for more info, or have the tutorial card. I don't need both. 5/10

Crafting: Haven't done this in phase 3 yet, but I had a good time in previous phases. I feel it has been very well implemented. Having to procure our own supplies is a bit of a pain compared to 1.0 but I think it's far more realistic. I also like how Hand and Land can go together - in phase 2, leveling botany alongside woodworking meant you never wanted for most raw crafting materials. 9/10

Pace of level progression: Levels 1-10 were fast and easy. I'm suspect that they wanted to have an inverse square of time per level. So, say, levels 1-10 require 4 hours of steady work (either through game quests or levequests for second jobs.) Levels 11-15 will require 4 hours of work. Levels 16-20 will require 8 hours of work. 21-25 will require 16 hours of work, and after that it's around 4 hours a level. That's solo progression - dungeons will speed that up tremendously. So it's like it was in FFXI. You can play alone at your own pace and go slow, or join and dungeon and go fast but have to be accountable to others. 10/10 for encouraging teamwork, -1 for making solo play onerous at later levels. So 9/10 so far.

FATES: Fun but with so many people on the screen, even if I'm not getting any visual lag I find myself with abilities queued up since the server isn't responding as quickly to my commands as I'd like. 8/10 here.

Fun: So far I've had a blast. Haven't made any new friends quite yet, but I haven't partied with anyone yet either. 9/10

Uniqueness of systems: The Japanese are not great innovators, they are great perfectors. When they try to innovate it doesn't always work out (see 1.0.) By taking existing mechanics, polishing them up and prettifying them, and giving them a FF flavor, they should make their mark in the MMO sphere. "Same but prettier" is a surprisingly good selling point for some PC gamers. WoW's graphics really feel dated these days, so offering a "World of Final Fantasy War" fusion with WoW mechanics and FF graphics was a good bid to lure away the WoW casual types. 7/10 here

Music: Gridania's daytime music is amazing. I'm not as impressed with Ul'Dah's music. I do like how the outdoor areas have music that gently fades in and out in the background, sometimes leaving you in the peace of nature. The battle music is okay (and trust me a vast improvement over the placeholder music in alpha, which was all.... Uematsu opera stuff. Egads that was awful and inappropriate. Could be epic in a late dungeon, though, but I don't need a chorus of women lamenting as I slaughter a ladybug.) 7/10

Overall rating: Exactly 7/10. Considering 1.23 was still sitting around a 5/10 for me that's a big improvement. What really dragged it down for me is that dumb green tutorial button. It needs to be someplace else besides smack dab in the middle of the screen. So damn annoying!

I believe there is a toggle for it, but I'm afraid to turn it off in case I miss something important.

Let me be clear, I don't like the idea of anyone who ever played being jammed into this new storyline, like it or not, just because the game failed at launch. I get that relaunching a game and allowing characters to remain intact without some form a reset will require some storylining to allow them to be there. I am perfectly fine with them making a storylined reason for the reboot. I think the choice should be there, as an option, so that if you simply want your name on the server you are currently on, you can just reset and experience it all fresh. I know you can delete and do that now, so really now it is a choice you can make.

I am cool with that choice, and I think anyone who played through the game enough to be legacy deserves the discounts and backstory they earned. I have done neither and would prefer to be like I was in 2010: A blundering little newbie wandering about in the world.

PS3, Ultros server, started as PUG (mainly to get WoW buddy into the game, he's into MNK stuff). The Cross Hotbar is simply amazing and lag free for me, even during FATE. Combat is super simplistic so far and it better get complex later, otherwise as fun as it is, it's way too easy.

And why can't you remap the PS3 buttons? Triangle as jump and Square for Map is DUMB. I went through every menu, nothing.

I'm curious about this too, a friend of mine does have both and says the PS3 lags quite a bit in terms of quests, FPS, everything compared to the PC. Though I'd rather hear the opinion of several people. That being said, I'll probably just wait for the PS4 release if that's the case.

Be fair, that's all you're generally doing anyway since most abilities in FFXI have 2-5 minute recasts. If you're a Ninja or Dancer, sure you're a little bit more busy but generally you auto-attack and wait for a bar to fill. I don't even bother mentioning casters because unless you like stabbing yourself in the stomach with rusty knives it's easier to just deal with a melee class you can stomach when it comes to random killing of things.

People try to herald FFXI as some mythical titan of combat when it was nothing more than "SWING AT THIS MOB UNTIL THIS BAR FILLS THEN PUSH THIS BUTTON! APPLY GEAR SWAPS FOR MAXIMUM EFFECTIVENESS AND SUM MOAR BUTTONS TO MAKE YOU THINK YOU'RE BUSY!".

Plus, anyone that mentions "spamming abilities like XXXX or YYYY" MMO generally aren't worth listening to because they're people that never played any class/job well at all anyway if that's all they did.

~~~

As far as what I've played of the beta so far, I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Combat is simple enough starting off that the newcomer isn't overwhelmed but it's fast enough that I can plow through things if I bother to dodge attacks and do the little combo with abilities. I absolutely *love* the Ice/Fire mechanics for a Thaum even though I'll be playing a PLD come live (I wanted to at least see what the casting felt like as in 1.0 it was awkward as hell).

There's virtually zero server latency issues and the graphical engine itself seems to be incredibly refined. Even during FATES where there's a ton of people and monsters the framerates barely budge at all and I'm hardly running a powerhouse (460 GTX here even if I am running a 3rd gen i5).

Tested out gathering to see if I could stomach it come live (I *abhored* it in 1.0) and I can seriously see myself propping up on the bed and spending a few hours just running around gathering mats and slowly getting experience. Crafting also seems fairly interesting and can at least realistically finally see myself getting a "craft" up to cap in a Final Fantasy MMO.

Music's been really pleasant so far and soothing. Battle music on trash monsters is interesting enough to hum along but not so in-your-face as to be distracting.

The game's art assets took a hit in the shift to 2.0, but considering how well it runs and how well the overall picture looks I'm satisfied with it. The environments look interesting and the "journey" will be infinitely more entertaining to me compared to what I stomached from 1.0 and that's all that matters.

To be honest, after a few hours of testing out Gladiator, Thaumaturge, Miner, and Goldsmithing I had to force myself to step away because I was putting "live" work into a character that's not going to last --- and to me that's probably the greatest feeling to me.