Saturday, September 18, 2010

Open Beta Experiences: Volume 2

       This week I was able to tear myself away from obsessing over character creation to try out the game play a bit more. I decided to play on a pre-created Thaumaturge that my boyfriend had created previously. I ended up in Limsa Lominsa, as that had been where she was started. My first impression was that the map reminded me of an annoying FFXI Jueno, and I quickly was frustrated with the different levels and maze-like layout. I wanted to give the first mission a try so I found a helpful pre-written guide and set out to earn my easy 32,000 gil. After a lot of running around I finally nailed down more of the map and was ready to set out to the nearest camp and try some guildleves.


     I have been using a controller for awhile now, and find it far superior to the keyboard and mouse due to the hardware fix not being currently available. The menu still feels a bit clunky and the general slowness of menu and window switching could use some improvement.

     So I get to camp bearded rock and pick up a couple of available guildleves, I had forgotten to make sure all 4 were activated in the adventure's guild before I left to the camp...grrr. I killed some bats and some moles and noticed it felt like many of the mobs in the guildleves had the ability to link very easily, even without using aoe spells. The bats by far were the easiest to link, and I am unsure if this was a mob type mechanic or not. The moles on the other hand in the guildleve were different from the surrounding moles, so as long as I didn't aoe, I was fine. After being done with guildleves I then proceeded to attempt to run around and fight with the other masses for mobs that conned blue or green to me. Competition was brutal, as I expect it will be upon release so I quickly learned this is not really efficient for leveling. To regen my health I would use the /sit command, but I was annoyed to find that moving my controller did not cancel the /sit and I had to actually open the menu and select /stand.

     I later tried out the crafting guildleves to get a feel for the crafting system. I received 1 leve through the camp at bearded rock in which I had to make a knife.  I also noticed there is an NPC there to help with crafting support, however it is for a fee. After a few tries and different combinations I was able to make the object being requested and turn in my leve. My Observations on the crafting so far is that there is a lot more windows involved then in FFXI. I had to choose mainhand or offhand, confirm it, accept the materials, and confirm it another time. Making the item itself felt long and tedious. Now I did this craft as part of the guildleve quest so I am not sure what crafting feels like on your own as of yet.

    I plan on giving this game time to develop and work the kinks out even after release, however, I feel that FFXIV will still be a significant time sink just as its predecessor. I am hoping they fix some of the combat related issues and make it feel smoother overall. I am still looking for useful macros that will make gameplay significantly easier, although, I was reading about one that would eliminate the repeated aoe confirmation windows when using spells. I am looking forward in the coming months to guides and strategies being released for efficiency and time management purposes. I strongly feel that the PS3 population will have the opportunity to experience a more polished and smoother version of this game then we are receiving...but what can I say, I guess I am just a masochist at heart.

   

No comments:

Post a Comment