(TL;DR? Skip to the bottom for a brief summary)
First off, I want to point out that I love Final Fantasy. I only got into it starting with FFVII(like most), but I've since played all the core games, seen the movies, and bought the Christmas Chocobo Plushie. Don't judge me. However, I never really got into FFXI, the first FF MMO. I bought it, installed it, patched it, logged in, created a character, died to the first mob, and then uninstalled it. I just figured it wasn't for me. So please, keep all this in mind throughout the following paragraphs.
Also, note that this is my experience in pre-release(Collector's Edition only), with actual release occurring tomorrow, the 30th. Oh, and that I enjoy writing, so this is probably going to be really long.
Final Fantasy XIV is the 15th-ish iteration of the beloved series, and unlike nearly all of them, is an MMORPG. The first thing I noticed is that it does what Square Enix is well known for: providing a spectacular visual experience. This game is truly beautiful, especially for an MMO. After you create your character and select a starting city, you go through a cinematic that looks like, well, a typical video game cinematic. But then you start playing the game itself, and you realize THAT'S WHAT THE ENTIRE GAME LOOKS LIKE. The character animations and visuals are exquisite, even the way the clothes and hair (and/or tail) move is very well done. The starting cities are graphically excellent, and running through them gives you a sense of grandeur that most MMOs fail to create.
Character creation itself is excellent, with a wide variety of choices, from massive Roegadyn to adorable Lalafells to super-cute catgirl Miqo'tes. Each race has sub-tribes that provide different starting stats. For example, the Miqo'te have the Keepers of the Sun, which are more physical damage oriented, and the Keepers of the Moon, with better caster stats. Each sub-tribe also has different visuals available for your character, adding additional customization. There are quirks to the character creation process, however. For example, when creating a female Hyur(the human), the different facial selections also have different breast sizes, with no way to separate the two. Odd. Also, the Miqo'te have three voices to choose from, one American-esque and two incredibly annoying(in my opinion) Japanese anime girl. In addition, keyboard 1-5 allows you to see different emotes your character can do, while ijkl changes the camera angle. None of these are mentioned on the character creation screen itself.
Once you select your race/tribe/looks, you get to pick your class. FFXIV has four archetype classes with numerous sub classes. There are the Disciples of War, the physical damage specialists, with Pugilist, Marauder, Lancer, Archer, and Gladiator. Also, the Disciples of Magic with Conjuror and Thaumaturge. In addition to these combat classes, there are also Disciples of the Land and Disciples of the Hand, gatherers(Miners, Fishers, Botanists) and crafters(Blacksmith, Armorer, Alchemist, Carpenter, Culinarian, Goldsmith, Leatherworker, Weaver) respectively.
An important part of FFXIV is that you are not locked to your beginning class. You can choose to change to ANY class you wish at any point in the game by simply equipping that class?s weapon in your main hand slot. Thusly, I could create a Miner character, mine materials, turn those materials into armor as an Armorer, and then equip them as a Lancer. To accommodate this, Square Enix has implemented a dual leveling system, your physical level and your class level. Killing monsters and completing crafting/gathering actions grants you physical experience, and performing class specific actions grants you a chance at combat class experience, and guaranteed crafter class experience. For example, if my Miqo'te lancer attacks a monster, every attack gives a chance to gain lancer experience, and once the monster is dead I get the accumulated lancer experience from the fight as well as physical level experience. Gathering and crafting give you a bit of class experience if you fail, and significantly more class experience and physical experience if you succeed.
Once you log into the game proper, you are treated to a cinematic featuring your character and are introduced to the starting quest line that you will be venturing down. These cinematics are specific to each starting city, and I found them quite enjoyable. However, please note that this is basically the only time you will ever hear actual voice dialog. Don't get used to it. You will progress through these beginning quests, which gives you some (very limited) tutorials, the chance to fight monsters and at the end, a nice chunk of gil. However, it was with these quests, and my introduction to the game, that I started to notice some very serious issues.
For one thing, the game basically tells you NOTHING of how to play. For my first few hours of play, I literally spent more time on my laptop trying to find a decent tutorial to figure out how to change my class, attack a monster, and adjust my UI than I did playing the actual game. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is intuitive. Crafting quests drove me insane trying to find who I needed to talk to until I discovered a FFXIV wiki. Initiating a fight with a monster is horribly clunky. Rather than simply left clicking to attack, you must first select the monster, switch to active mode, wait for the weapon-readying animation to finish, run within range, select attack, smack monster. Assuming you even hit it. The first opening scene wolf I fought I missed/it evaded the first 6 attacks. I spent waaay too long killing my very first enemy. Casting is even more obtuse. You select the monster, click your spell, select area of effect or non-aoe, and then your character goes into a casting animation/pose for an indeterminate time that seems to change for the same spell every time I fight something before FINALLY casting and then, usually, missing. Or if aoe, then hitting and pulling the nearest five mobs, since nowhere in the game is the range of your aoe illustrated or explained.
A significant part of my earliest trouble with the game is that I was playing with a keyboard and mouse, like every single other game I've ever played on my computer, ever. BUY A GAMEPAD. Once I set up my gamepad and started playing the game like it was a regular Final Fantasy with other people, the experience was much smoother. Using the mouse to control your camera is stupidly hard, and it makes steering around objects insanely frustrating. The gamepad itself is also difficult to use in its own unique ways. Switching from gamepad to mouse constantly is annoying, and playing with a group it becomes nearly impossible to select monsters through the giant Roegadyn character in between you and the tiny marmot you're trying to kill.
Speaking of group play, if you are a caster, don't even try to cast spells. The physical damage specialists are going to tear through the enemy at such a rate you'll be stuck in that stupid casting position from the time you click Lightning I to the time the monster dies. Use your weapon attack, it is much faster and provides class experience. Also, get used to missing more times than you hit. Oh, and never aoe. Oh! You can?t select your party through their displayed healthbars or with hotkeys, you have to manually click them to heal. Have fun.
There are three quest archetypes that, along with randomly killing monsters/making things/gathering materials (grinding for experience, basically) will advance your character. The quests are your storyline quests. You go through the first one upon character creation, and you get the second one at level 10. Regional guildleves, or levequests(I'm not sure which is appropriate) for damage dealers are your typical go here kill X-number of Y, with a bit of spice thrown in. To start, you can select the difficulty of the enemies and the size of the reward by selecting the number of stars for the mission, which you can usually self determine by the amount of people you have in your group. One star for solo, two stars for two people, etc (I think, the game doesn?t actually say recommended group size).The monsters are spawned specifically for you in the area highlighted by the quest, so you don't have to worry about other players tagging your kills. As you kill the last monster, one of two things will happen. Either it will die and you will complete the mission, or it will start to run away, and you will spend an annoying few minutes chasing it across the wilderness until it stops and spawns several more monsters, which are added to your quest. Upon completion of the quest, an Aetherial Node will spawn, which you can use to complete your quests, get the rewards, and teleport back to camp.
You are limited to 8 levequests per day, however you can participate in all of the quests your group members have, and receive the awards from them, so as far as I can tell you are only limited by your ability to group with other people for the combat quests. Gathering levequests count towards your 8, and local levequests have a different limit, also of 8, which you have to do solo.
In addition to these quests are local levequests for gatherers and crafters, which are either of the go here and mine x number of nodes, or pick up materials and craft x number of y. For gathering, you are given an ability which shows the direction and distance to a gatherable node in text form. Once you find the node, you go through a little minigame to mine it that is fun the first few times, after which it becomes exceedingly monotonous. First you have to select the angle you want to mine at(I have no idea what this determines), then you have to strike at different strengths to try to determine what strength will give you the materials with a line of text telling you how close/how far you are from it. You have a durability bar that ticks down with every strike, but you usually only get three shots, so good luck. I have no idea what can increase your overall durability. Your weapon, your gear, your level? If you find out, let me know please.
This brings me to crafting. Crafting in Final Fantasy XIV has filled me with more frustration than any other activity I have ever engaged in my life, in or out of a game. Creating a simple robe is harder than removing a front-clasping bra from your first lover, and not nearly as much fun. For the robe, to make it as cheap as possible (economically feasible), you have to take moko grass, a random drop from mobs, and turn it into yarn. You turn that yarn into cloth, which you turn into robe parts, which you turn into a robe. This is much harder than it sounds. Two moko grass makes 12 spindles of yarn. Three yarn makes one cloth. Two cloth and one yarn makes a hood, three cloth and one yarn makes an inner cowl, and four cloth and one yarn makes an outer cowl. The inner cowl, the outer cowl, the hood, and one yarn makes the robe. Oh, and each sythesis requires elemental shards, which you can only get from killing monsters or buying from characters who have killed said monsters, if you can even find who is selling what (more on that later). I was going to calculate the number of synthesis you would have to do for just one piece of gear, but I started crying hysterically halfway through and gave up. Oh, and if you fail while making the final product, you lose EVERYTHING. I did note that making the sub components was much harder than crafting the final product, but I was still terrified while creating my first robe.
Even this wouldn't be so bad if it was simply a click button to craft x system. There's a minigame involved in crafting that is incredibly esoteric. To begin, you equip your crafting weapon. Then you open your menu and select synthesize. Your character crouches down, and a menu opens. If you are crafting for yourself, you have to individually assign the material to each box on that menu, and then click the Main Hand button, and if you are lucky you will have selected the correct materials and be given an option on what to craft. There is no recipe list in game, so I hope you have a wiki open to tell you what you need. If you are doing a quest, you simply click the Requested Materials at the top of the menu and then the quest, and it auto-assigns the materials. Once you start crafting, it gets even more obtuse.
A tool appears, depending on what class you are. Armorers get an anvil, leatherworkers get a work table, weavers get an embroidery hoop, etc. A glowing dot appears on your tool that starts out as white, but then changes to either white, yellow, red, or flashing colors. You select from one of four different options, Standard Synthesis, Rapid, Bold, or Wait. Supposedly, for white you select Standard, yellow Rapid, and red Bold, with the flashing colors being random, but to be honest, I have no idea. It seems like everything is completely random. Rapid can work on white, bold can fail on red, sometimes sparks start flying out of your materials, it is all chaos. Your material has a success rate that must reach 100% to complete, a durability rate that once it reaches 0 you fail, and a quality rate that I haven't figured out yet. Each individual action you perform can either succeed, in which case you gain progress and maybe lose durability and gain quality, or fail where you can either gain no progress and lose a substantial chunk of durability, gain some progress and lose some durability, or just completely fail altogether, which has happened to me twice.
Frustrating, to say the least.
Oh, and I hope you like walking. Everywhere. For a long, long time. The distances between places in the cities is ridiculous, the distances from the cities to the camps even more so. A teleport option exists to instantly transfer to any city or camp you've visited, but it costs 4 anima a port, and you only generate 4 anima a day, with a starting pool of 100. So, your choice.
Hmm, what else? No jump, but I didn't really notice that as time went by, and it's kind of nice to not see people bunny hopping all over. There's been some issues with terrain copying, but I didn't even notice it until I started actively looking for it. Oh yes! Monster placement and aggression and player bazaars. Okay, bear with me, two more paragraphs.
Everyone expects the little critters loitering outside of a main city or starting area to be low level and suitable for baby avatars just starting out. This is the case in Final Fantasy XIV, except that the low level monsters are all a significant distance from the city itself. HOWEVER, there are also larger monsters interspersed with the little ones that will absolutely destroy a low level character. Oh, and most of them are aggressive. As a level 8, running to the second camp location outside of Ul'Dah, I came across Antling Diggers on the path. Running past one, it hit me for over 1000 points of damage. I had 600 health. A good rule of thumb: If it's bigger than a dog or is called Ladybug, avoid it at all costs. Oh, and you will see the same little monsters from the lower level areas, with the same names/looks, but able to destroy you easily. Click the monster, and check the shield by its name. Red is bad.
Half of the classes in FFXIV are directly related to crafting, so obviously the player created economy is of huge importance. However, there is no cohesive, centrally organized way to shop for what other players are selling. You have two options to sell your goods, either a player bazaar accessible when someone selects your character, or a retainer bazaar available when you set your retainer(basically a NPC bank character) up in a city ward. You have one way to buy goods, and that is randomly searching through each and every bazaar you can find in the vain hope that SOMEONE has the lightning shards you need to craft yarn. Good luck. There is no auction house or any way to search centrally for items, and the dozens of available wards all have random names, so everyone just drops their retainer in the first one and hopes for the best. Oh, and once you zone into the ward, only the retainers in your immediate vicinity are loaded, so you can walk right by the one selling the materials or weapon you need and never even see him. Ugh.
I know that a lot of what I?ve observed is negative, but there are several positive things that partly balance it out. I think once I?ve figured out how to remove some of the randomness from crafting, it will be much more fun. I really like the idea of a player driven economy that creates the armor and weapons you use, rather than being dependent on random boss monster drops. Being able to increase the difficulty of your regional levequest and its rewards is a really cool feature. Again, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Also, there are surprisingly few bugs for an MMO release. There is a general sense of lag in accessing menus and sub screens, but the only bug I?ve encountered has been a ?target already engaged? error while fighting a monster that was alleviated by switching to passive mode and back to active mode.
Oh, and this is pre-release, so there is always the possibility of SE changing things for release (doubtful), or patching things later on down the road to make the game more fun (likely).
To conclude, Final Fantasy XIV is beautiful, but there are issues with the questing and crafting that I feel either need to be changed by SE or explained more thoroughly. The game is very un-user friendly, which is merciless since everyone is a new user. There needs to a better tutorial system instituted, especially for crafting. Keyboard and mouse controls are bad, buy a gamepad. Combat is a bit clunky, but grows on you over time. Despite these drawbacks, I personally enjoy the game and will continue playing in the hopes that Square Enix can turn its high quality ingredients into a unique masterpiece. Or until The Old Republic comes out. Whichever comes first.
First off, I want to point out that I love Final Fantasy. I only got into it starting with FFVII(like most), but I've since played all the core games, seen the movies, and bought the Christmas Chocobo Plushie. Don't judge me. However, I never really got into FFXI, the first FF MMO. I bought it, installed it, patched it, logged in, created a character, died to the first mob, and then uninstalled it. I just figured it wasn't for me. So please, keep all this in mind throughout the following paragraphs.
Also, note that this is my experience in pre-release(Collector's Edition only), with actual release occurring tomorrow, the 30th. Oh, and that I enjoy writing, so this is probably going to be really long.
Final Fantasy XIV is the 15th-ish iteration of the beloved series, and unlike nearly all of them, is an MMORPG. The first thing I noticed is that it does what Square Enix is well known for: providing a spectacular visual experience. This game is truly beautiful, especially for an MMO. After you create your character and select a starting city, you go through a cinematic that looks like, well, a typical video game cinematic. But then you start playing the game itself, and you realize THAT'S WHAT THE ENTIRE GAME LOOKS LIKE. The character animations and visuals are exquisite, even the way the clothes and hair (and/or tail) move is very well done. The starting cities are graphically excellent, and running through them gives you a sense of grandeur that most MMOs fail to create.
Character creation itself is excellent, with a wide variety of choices, from massive Roegadyn to adorable Lalafells to super-cute catgirl Miqo'tes. Each race has sub-tribes that provide different starting stats. For example, the Miqo'te have the Keepers of the Sun, which are more physical damage oriented, and the Keepers of the Moon, with better caster stats. Each sub-tribe also has different visuals available for your character, adding additional customization. There are quirks to the character creation process, however. For example, when creating a female Hyur(the human), the different facial selections also have different breast sizes, with no way to separate the two. Odd. Also, the Miqo'te have three voices to choose from, one American-esque and two incredibly annoying(in my opinion) Japanese anime girl. In addition, keyboard 1-5 allows you to see different emotes your character can do, while ijkl changes the camera angle. None of these are mentioned on the character creation screen itself.
Once you select your race/tribe/looks, you get to pick your class. FFXIV has four archetype classes with numerous sub classes. There are the Disciples of War, the physical damage specialists, with Pugilist, Marauder, Lancer, Archer, and Gladiator. Also, the Disciples of Magic with Conjuror and Thaumaturge. In addition to these combat classes, there are also Disciples of the Land and Disciples of the Hand, gatherers(Miners, Fishers, Botanists) and crafters(Blacksmith, Armorer, Alchemist, Carpenter, Culinarian, Goldsmith, Leatherworker, Weaver) respectively.
An important part of FFXIV is that you are not locked to your beginning class. You can choose to change to ANY class you wish at any point in the game by simply equipping that class?s weapon in your main hand slot. Thusly, I could create a Miner character, mine materials, turn those materials into armor as an Armorer, and then equip them as a Lancer. To accommodate this, Square Enix has implemented a dual leveling system, your physical level and your class level. Killing monsters and completing crafting/gathering actions grants you physical experience, and performing class specific actions grants you a chance at combat class experience, and guaranteed crafter class experience. For example, if my Miqo'te lancer attacks a monster, every attack gives a chance to gain lancer experience, and once the monster is dead I get the accumulated lancer experience from the fight as well as physical level experience. Gathering and crafting give you a bit of class experience if you fail, and significantly more class experience and physical experience if you succeed.
Once you log into the game proper, you are treated to a cinematic featuring your character and are introduced to the starting quest line that you will be venturing down. These cinematics are specific to each starting city, and I found them quite enjoyable. However, please note that this is basically the only time you will ever hear actual voice dialog. Don't get used to it. You will progress through these beginning quests, which gives you some (very limited) tutorials, the chance to fight monsters and at the end, a nice chunk of gil. However, it was with these quests, and my introduction to the game, that I started to notice some very serious issues.
For one thing, the game basically tells you NOTHING of how to play. For my first few hours of play, I literally spent more time on my laptop trying to find a decent tutorial to figure out how to change my class, attack a monster, and adjust my UI than I did playing the actual game. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is intuitive. Crafting quests drove me insane trying to find who I needed to talk to until I discovered a FFXIV wiki. Initiating a fight with a monster is horribly clunky. Rather than simply left clicking to attack, you must first select the monster, switch to active mode, wait for the weapon-readying animation to finish, run within range, select attack, smack monster. Assuming you even hit it. The first opening scene wolf I fought I missed/it evaded the first 6 attacks. I spent waaay too long killing my very first enemy. Casting is even more obtuse. You select the monster, click your spell, select area of effect or non-aoe, and then your character goes into a casting animation/pose for an indeterminate time that seems to change for the same spell every time I fight something before FINALLY casting and then, usually, missing. Or if aoe, then hitting and pulling the nearest five mobs, since nowhere in the game is the range of your aoe illustrated or explained.
A significant part of my earliest trouble with the game is that I was playing with a keyboard and mouse, like every single other game I've ever played on my computer, ever. BUY A GAMEPAD. Once I set up my gamepad and started playing the game like it was a regular Final Fantasy with other people, the experience was much smoother. Using the mouse to control your camera is stupidly hard, and it makes steering around objects insanely frustrating. The gamepad itself is also difficult to use in its own unique ways. Switching from gamepad to mouse constantly is annoying, and playing with a group it becomes nearly impossible to select monsters through the giant Roegadyn character in between you and the tiny marmot you're trying to kill.
Speaking of group play, if you are a caster, don't even try to cast spells. The physical damage specialists are going to tear through the enemy at such a rate you'll be stuck in that stupid casting position from the time you click Lightning I to the time the monster dies. Use your weapon attack, it is much faster and provides class experience. Also, get used to missing more times than you hit. Oh, and never aoe. Oh! You can?t select your party through their displayed healthbars or with hotkeys, you have to manually click them to heal. Have fun.
There are three quest archetypes that, along with randomly killing monsters/making things/gathering materials (grinding for experience, basically) will advance your character. The quests are your storyline quests. You go through the first one upon character creation, and you get the second one at level 10. Regional guildleves, or levequests(I'm not sure which is appropriate) for damage dealers are your typical go here kill X-number of Y, with a bit of spice thrown in. To start, you can select the difficulty of the enemies and the size of the reward by selecting the number of stars for the mission, which you can usually self determine by the amount of people you have in your group. One star for solo, two stars for two people, etc (I think, the game doesn?t actually say recommended group size).The monsters are spawned specifically for you in the area highlighted by the quest, so you don't have to worry about other players tagging your kills. As you kill the last monster, one of two things will happen. Either it will die and you will complete the mission, or it will start to run away, and you will spend an annoying few minutes chasing it across the wilderness until it stops and spawns several more monsters, which are added to your quest. Upon completion of the quest, an Aetherial Node will spawn, which you can use to complete your quests, get the rewards, and teleport back to camp.
You are limited to 8 levequests per day, however you can participate in all of the quests your group members have, and receive the awards from them, so as far as I can tell you are only limited by your ability to group with other people for the combat quests. Gathering levequests count towards your 8, and local levequests have a different limit, also of 8, which you have to do solo.
In addition to these quests are local levequests for gatherers and crafters, which are either of the go here and mine x number of nodes, or pick up materials and craft x number of y. For gathering, you are given an ability which shows the direction and distance to a gatherable node in text form. Once you find the node, you go through a little minigame to mine it that is fun the first few times, after which it becomes exceedingly monotonous. First you have to select the angle you want to mine at(I have no idea what this determines), then you have to strike at different strengths to try to determine what strength will give you the materials with a line of text telling you how close/how far you are from it. You have a durability bar that ticks down with every strike, but you usually only get three shots, so good luck. I have no idea what can increase your overall durability. Your weapon, your gear, your level? If you find out, let me know please.
This brings me to crafting. Crafting in Final Fantasy XIV has filled me with more frustration than any other activity I have ever engaged in my life, in or out of a game. Creating a simple robe is harder than removing a front-clasping bra from your first lover, and not nearly as much fun. For the robe, to make it as cheap as possible (economically feasible), you have to take moko grass, a random drop from mobs, and turn it into yarn. You turn that yarn into cloth, which you turn into robe parts, which you turn into a robe. This is much harder than it sounds. Two moko grass makes 12 spindles of yarn. Three yarn makes one cloth. Two cloth and one yarn makes a hood, three cloth and one yarn makes an inner cowl, and four cloth and one yarn makes an outer cowl. The inner cowl, the outer cowl, the hood, and one yarn makes the robe. Oh, and each sythesis requires elemental shards, which you can only get from killing monsters or buying from characters who have killed said monsters, if you can even find who is selling what (more on that later). I was going to calculate the number of synthesis you would have to do for just one piece of gear, but I started crying hysterically halfway through and gave up. Oh, and if you fail while making the final product, you lose EVERYTHING. I did note that making the sub components was much harder than crafting the final product, but I was still terrified while creating my first robe.
Even this wouldn't be so bad if it was simply a click button to craft x system. There's a minigame involved in crafting that is incredibly esoteric. To begin, you equip your crafting weapon. Then you open your menu and select synthesize. Your character crouches down, and a menu opens. If you are crafting for yourself, you have to individually assign the material to each box on that menu, and then click the Main Hand button, and if you are lucky you will have selected the correct materials and be given an option on what to craft. There is no recipe list in game, so I hope you have a wiki open to tell you what you need. If you are doing a quest, you simply click the Requested Materials at the top of the menu and then the quest, and it auto-assigns the materials. Once you start crafting, it gets even more obtuse.
A tool appears, depending on what class you are. Armorers get an anvil, leatherworkers get a work table, weavers get an embroidery hoop, etc. A glowing dot appears on your tool that starts out as white, but then changes to either white, yellow, red, or flashing colors. You select from one of four different options, Standard Synthesis, Rapid, Bold, or Wait. Supposedly, for white you select Standard, yellow Rapid, and red Bold, with the flashing colors being random, but to be honest, I have no idea. It seems like everything is completely random. Rapid can work on white, bold can fail on red, sometimes sparks start flying out of your materials, it is all chaos. Your material has a success rate that must reach 100% to complete, a durability rate that once it reaches 0 you fail, and a quality rate that I haven't figured out yet. Each individual action you perform can either succeed, in which case you gain progress and maybe lose durability and gain quality, or fail where you can either gain no progress and lose a substantial chunk of durability, gain some progress and lose some durability, or just completely fail altogether, which has happened to me twice.
Frustrating, to say the least.
Oh, and I hope you like walking. Everywhere. For a long, long time. The distances between places in the cities is ridiculous, the distances from the cities to the camps even more so. A teleport option exists to instantly transfer to any city or camp you've visited, but it costs 4 anima a port, and you only generate 4 anima a day, with a starting pool of 100. So, your choice.
Hmm, what else? No jump, but I didn't really notice that as time went by, and it's kind of nice to not see people bunny hopping all over. There's been some issues with terrain copying, but I didn't even notice it until I started actively looking for it. Oh yes! Monster placement and aggression and player bazaars. Okay, bear with me, two more paragraphs.
Everyone expects the little critters loitering outside of a main city or starting area to be low level and suitable for baby avatars just starting out. This is the case in Final Fantasy XIV, except that the low level monsters are all a significant distance from the city itself. HOWEVER, there are also larger monsters interspersed with the little ones that will absolutely destroy a low level character. Oh, and most of them are aggressive. As a level 8, running to the second camp location outside of Ul'Dah, I came across Antling Diggers on the path. Running past one, it hit me for over 1000 points of damage. I had 600 health. A good rule of thumb: If it's bigger than a dog or is called Ladybug, avoid it at all costs. Oh, and you will see the same little monsters from the lower level areas, with the same names/looks, but able to destroy you easily. Click the monster, and check the shield by its name. Red is bad.
Half of the classes in FFXIV are directly related to crafting, so obviously the player created economy is of huge importance. However, there is no cohesive, centrally organized way to shop for what other players are selling. You have two options to sell your goods, either a player bazaar accessible when someone selects your character, or a retainer bazaar available when you set your retainer(basically a NPC bank character) up in a city ward. You have one way to buy goods, and that is randomly searching through each and every bazaar you can find in the vain hope that SOMEONE has the lightning shards you need to craft yarn. Good luck. There is no auction house or any way to search centrally for items, and the dozens of available wards all have random names, so everyone just drops their retainer in the first one and hopes for the best. Oh, and once you zone into the ward, only the retainers in your immediate vicinity are loaded, so you can walk right by the one selling the materials or weapon you need and never even see him. Ugh.
I know that a lot of what I?ve observed is negative, but there are several positive things that partly balance it out. I think once I?ve figured out how to remove some of the randomness from crafting, it will be much more fun. I really like the idea of a player driven economy that creates the armor and weapons you use, rather than being dependent on random boss monster drops. Being able to increase the difficulty of your regional levequest and its rewards is a really cool feature. Again, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Also, there are surprisingly few bugs for an MMO release. There is a general sense of lag in accessing menus and sub screens, but the only bug I?ve encountered has been a ?target already engaged? error while fighting a monster that was alleviated by switching to passive mode and back to active mode.
Oh, and this is pre-release, so there is always the possibility of SE changing things for release (doubtful), or patching things later on down the road to make the game more fun (likely).
To conclude, Final Fantasy XIV is beautiful, but there are issues with the questing and crafting that I feel either need to be changed by SE or explained more thoroughly. The game is very un-user friendly, which is merciless since everyone is a new user. There needs to a better tutorial system instituted, especially for crafting. Keyboard and mouse controls are bad, buy a gamepad. Combat is a bit clunky, but grows on you over time. Despite these drawbacks, I personally enjoy the game and will continue playing in the hopes that Square Enix can turn its high quality ingredients into a unique masterpiece. Or until The Old Republic comes out. Whichever comes first.
