Hello,
I recently acquired an open beta key for Final Fantasy XIV. Yesterday I found the time to play it.
After I created a little Taru Traumaturge (Lalafell.. sorry if I use XI-Vocabulary here...) and watched the intro scene which was pretty amazing (Gridania). The graphics of the game are superb, and pure joy to walk around and just look at stuff.
After getting used to the controls (rather similar to XI, but not quite the same... I hope it will be customizable at release!). I explored a little, did my first quest and had a little bit of money, say 1000Gil. With this you can buy any weapon and therefore change job. I assume you know the basic mechanics of job changing here.
After I noticed that my Traumaturge has no access to Cure I wanted to play Conjurer first. However I was not able to find a merchant that sells the Conjurer weapon in Gridania! I'm pretty sure I'm blind because I found the merchants for just about every other class in the market quarter but whatever. :P
I just created a new character, this time Ul'dah. A bit stupid, the game crashed during the intro-cutscene! Anyhow, I quested, did those Guild Leves, grinded a bit... Did the first "main story quest" and after that was a rich Lalafell with 30k gil just from Quest Awards. That is MORE than enough to start out.
The battle system is the same as in FFXI so I like it. A lot of people complain about having to "click" the mob twice to actually attack, and my advice is: Don't use the mouse. Use the numpad, with 0 you can tab and you have a enter key right there as well. The arrow keys aren't far away either so that's the best solution for me.
Concerning crafting:
My boyfriend created a Galka (I don't even know how they are called in XIV...Rhoesomething) Alchemist. He failed the first quest and therefore was standing there with no gil, and no offfensive skill. How would he get money? I see a big design flaw right there. Most guild leves for the crafters require level 5 as well, but how is he going to level if he can't buy any mats?
Well, back to myself and my opinion on crafting. Yes, the menu is sluggish and slow as hell and that sucks and has to change. But I love the basic idea behind the crafting. You actully have to craft it yourself and not say "Make 200 Hempen Cloths, I'll go afk and be a level 10 Clothcrafter when I come back". I love that idea. They just have to add a "known recipe" section so you don't have to go through the inventory (which lags HORRIBLY) every time you want to make something. Just like it automatically adds the ingredients when you do the guild leves.
To all those people complaining about not being able to jump: People, this is FF! You just don't jump. Get used to it or leave the game alone.
Let's get to the bad stuff though. Gotta keep in mind that it's a beta though.
* no hotkeys for inventory, etc.
* doors or aetherytes are not targetable. You get a little action icon when you approach one and then have to select it in the menu. That feels really awkward. Target it via tab and when hitting enter open the door or display the interaction with the object would be much nicer.
* game crashes, but i expect this to stop after release
* no real tutorials. At the aetherytes you can select a manual kind of thing where stuff is explained, but that's about it. You kind of just get thrown in there and have to figure stuff out for yourself. Which I don't mind but I have read a lot of people complaining about this.
* Not enough spawn points of exp-mobs. This is really sucky. At peek times you run through this huge huge desert area and maybe every 5 minutes you can kill one mob. This flat out sucks. I don't mind grinding, not at all, but at this state you can't really even do that.
* controls are not customizable.
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