While there's a lot to consider when building your ideal class, there's far too little interesting structured content to chew on, resulting in an experience that quickly grows tedious and tiresome.
Extended stretches of confused incredulity, punctuated now and then by bursts of intense anger. And yeah -- I just equated FFXIV with a filthy bathroom.
It's a travesty to release an already mediocre game before ironing out all the kinks in its broken interface and having enough content to keep it interesting. It honestly feels like the PC version is just the beta test for next year's PS3 version.
Its a fun game with jobs and different options for the characters. it starts slow but you will access to more and more functions leveling up your character, like sell on the market and better items and stuffs.
This game is great and the expansions are the best.
Fully recommended.
First lets discuss the bad. The control scheme is dedicated to controllers, you will not enjoy the controls on a mouse and keyboard, which is fairly inexcusable. The second item is the UI, S-E in their infinite wisdom decided to prevent botting they would store portions of the UI server side... unfortunately this means the UI is amazingly unresponsive. There are times when the latency for clicking items in the interface exceeds 20s. It's wretched. There are not enough quests, they limit the "guildleve" (eg: quests) you can complete to 8/3x hours. That being said there are good points to the game, the combat is slower (think pre-eq1 days slow) which I enjoy as a nice change of pace and I find it interesting and a bit more tactical since agro shifts very easily between members, it is largely a sandbox and the role-play community is great (besaid), the crafting system doesn't have formulas you learn, you must find or lookup the recipes and learn them through experimentation, which I find to be spectacularly fun. The class system has both horizontal elements that are generally only seen in skill systems and vertical elements you see in level based games and they mesh well together. The graphics are bar none the best on the market present, the sound is stellar, and the fmv are completely unmatched. That being said ffxiv, because of the speed, difficulty of crafting, and horrible ui will turn off about 60% of people off the bat... and unless the major issues with the ui are corrected soon they will drive the game into a small niche market which would be a sad occurrence because the game has good potential. If you're optimistic about the ui changes being made soon, I feel its an acceptable buy, otherwise hold off, watch, and wait. It has good potential and I find it fun, but the ui overshadows almost everything else.
Haters gonna hate. The game is far from perfect, but it isn't horrible. The game isn't designed for power levellers or the people who play all day long. So far the game has been fun. The game is designed to make people craft their own items, and sometimes the crafting can be complex. This isn't a game where you just go do the "optimal build" and pound on baddies and pray for awesome armors. You have to make your own armor or pay a premium for it. There is no "optimal build" and there are a ton of ways people can customize their gaming experience. You can be a rogue character that can heal. You can be a caster that can beat the crap out of things. You can make your own items, or team up with a group to make items for everyone. There is almost too much to do right now, and people who don't have a big bad boss to go after first thing haven't a clue as what they should be doing and they'll lose interest. The graphics are gorgeous, naturally. There hasn't been much of a story line, but then again, the game isn't complete yet. I have a feeling it won't be "complete" until the PS3 release, and this is just a bigass beta test. The quests can get kid of repetitive, but there's a lot of things to do. I have a feeling this game is going to shape up well. It's not complete and there's things to do yet to finish it, but I think it will do well.
Oh, for the whiners about keyboard/mouse control: This is a game designed for gamepad use. Either use one or get over yourselves.
Have not even played the game yet. Because I literally cant even figure out where to download the client.
The FF XIV website is probably the worse user experience I have ever seen. It seems as though they are actively trying to stop you from playing their game.
Also you have to buy the game more than once if you want to play it on mac and windows.
I love Final Fantasy from FFVI - FFXIII, I've collected almost all its goods and its action figures, played the console games and its online games.... and FFXIV is just excited me... well it was... until it launched...
OMG SE really need to change this grinding mode.... Not every player is hardcore player! to think i will have hours doing quest kills X number of monster etc etc etc and hours again to do other quest... and more hours in high lv to grind..... thx SE you really ruined my mood to play FF.... i really hopping FFXIV would be different..... guess not... AND DONT SAY I'M NOT A FF FAN BOY 'coz i do.... but NOT for this FF series.... i rather wait and play Guild Wars 2 FTW