100% Unbiased View of this game

[Catalystics]

Regarding tab-targeting, from what I've heard, you can change what "Tab" targets to "closest enemy target" or something similar to help clear that issue up.

press "F11"

[Duster505]

Im playing from EU. Very bad Ping on the servers. Nothing strange considering the servers are in Canada. Simply not acceptable for a modern MMO.

[Yalingo]

The game is sorely missing a lot of small QoL things that people have become accustomed to in many other MMOs around these days. Not that every MMO has to have the same things but some of the systems square included are overly convoluted and unintuitive.

Gameplay:
- Auto-dismount when riding into city
- Auto-dismount on skill-use
- Allow to talk to NPCs while mounted (or auto-dismount when talking to NPC, thanks Taliesin)
- Make minions ignore right-clicks at all times (they get in the way when gathering for example) and ignore all clicks in combat
- Make it so we can't accept quests that we can not finish due to being too low in level (thanks Arreat)
- Add the ability to summon and fight with your chocobo while you are queuing in the duty finder (thanks CSLionheart)
- Auto-hand over of key-items to NPCs (thanks Stamar)
- Let us skip the game-opening when creating new characters after the first (thanks Thundaja)
- Bring back sub-targeting place holders for macros. (i.e. <stpc>; <stnpc>; <stenemy>; etc) (thanks Jeditkirk)
- Let us open the character- and inventory-windows during quest-cutscenes that award items. (thanks Sziadan)
- Improve tab-target priority to be closest to farthest (thanks Killparadise)
- Fix Shadowflare overriding AoE circles

Chat:
- Allow us to lock chat position and size (thanks Raymeo)
- Add blacklist-on-click as chat-functionality (thanks Lament)
- Make pressing ESC clear chat box, pressing ESC again remove chat from focus (thanks Randalthor)
- Implement a UI-scale slider** (thanks Stamar)
- Add chat-links to map-markers and items (thanks Tenku)
- Allow us to use /tell during duties (could make it an option, default is off) (thanks Vaemyr)
- Allow us to set a default chat-channel (like FC instead of /say) (thanks Nubian)

Bank & Inventory:
- Add inventory-categories for consumables, crafting mats, etc. (thanks ViolanteVirides)
- Add the option to display all inventory/bank pages at once in one window (thanks Raymeo)
- Highlight recommended items for current class in the armoury-chest (thanks Besbeset)
- Add indicator to armory-chest that shows which items are part of a set (for sorting out materia-food and vendor-trash)
- Add a "sort inventory"-button (thanks Niklaus & Inuakurei)


Misc UI:
- Highlight currently useable (craftable) crafting recipes in the crafting log (thanks Roric)
- Let us craft with items stored on our retainers
- Add 'on hover' names to (small) aetherytes on the map. (thanks Furio)
- Add item-previews (on click, from inventory, bank, vendor, etc) (thanks Sheoldred)
- Make cut-scenes on airships only play the first time you travel/make this an option
- Add an option for text-auto-scroll in unskippable cutscenes and allow to advance speech-bubbles with ESC or SPACE (thanks Lament)
- Add an option for numerical values/percentage-values on enemy healthbars (thanks trentfish)
- Add sorting-priorities to vendor (alphabetically, categorically) (thanks Chouxbun)
- Add item-comparisons (side-to-side; with stat-comparison, not just base value) (thanks Stamar & AmaiHanakaze)
- Add "repair all" at mender (including full armoury) (thanks Azoryl)
- Add options for speech-bubbles (thanks Tenku & Niklaus)
- Add an option for having a number-overlay on skills on cooldown (thanks Rekujen)
- Add map-markers
- Add chat-links to map-markers and items (thanks Tenku)
- Add an indicator to minimap-objects indicating height-differences (above/below) (thanks Romirez)
- Add level-indicators for explored zones (thanks Slirith)
- Alphabetize the emote-list (thanks Wartooth)
- Add option to choose which duties are shown in duty tracker (thanks BlazeChronic & KaosuNoTenshi)
- Allow us to hide the floating number identifying each hotbar (#1, #2, etc) (thanks Raymeo)
- Allow us to bind the mousewheel (thanks mdzapeer)
- Let us add notes to names on the blacklist
- Give us customisation-options for floating combat text (font, size, etc) (thanks matu)
- Market Board should prompt "list items individually or as a stack" when selling stuff (thanks Tannlore)
- "Maximum-amount" button (in vendors, bank, etc). Makes it so you don't have to type in the number.*

Sound:
- Give us an option to select "continuous music" and/or improve transitions***
- Add an option to completely mute the battle music (thanks Furio)
- Make it so that only the first tell from a person (within X amount of time) plays the /tell sound (thanks Telrunya)

Give mob visuals priority over players/pets/npcs. There are more than a few FATEs where the boss will completely disappear because too many people are on screen, which also makes you lose your target. It currently seems to be npcs/pets > players > mobs, but it should really be the opposite with the exception of quest nps loading first so they don't vanish in a crowd.

Targeting needs some much needed improvements. Names/healthbars need adjustments with how they show up. At the moment they just stack, seemingly randomly which makes it very hard to target things sometimes. An option to make them spread or stack (similar to how WoW nameplates, for example), or at least the option to place mobs at the top so they don't get lost under dozens of players.

- Padding option for UI so you can stick buttons
- Option to remove the 'glow' from the UI, also option to remove art.
Example the party bar is way to cluttered for a healer, I would strip down half of it if I could.
- Option to mod the party bar more, think of larger health bars.
- Option to scale buffs and show them as bars
- Grace timer in instances so you can try the item in case some one wants to pass an item after all
- Showing your dots larger on target and as first.
- Specific dot timer bar
- Specific hot timer bar
-Option to auto join a 'fate' group on entering fate (can be put off) it's a pain to heal fates other wise.
- More UI models, personally I find the party model way to big.
As DD I find it fine, as healer it isn't adequate compared to what can be done by a good modder.
- Simple pet bar option :
Aggressive: Does what ever it wants
Defensive: Only uses abilities you assign through options
Passive: Manually.

Ability to expand company chest slots. Need a company chest log. Guild UI and options need work. No comments next to character name in guild? Come on run of the mill stuff even crappy Neverwinter had in guild options. Also, rank creation needs work. We need more options to have more than one person with GM power. I can't even set company chest withdraw options on members as an AGM.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...obvious-things

[Razael]

The game is sorely missing a lot of small QoL things that people have become accustomed to in many other MMOs around these days. Not that every MMO has to have the same things but some of the systems square included are overly convoluted and unintuitive.

I'd kill for almost all these QoL features. Nice list of stuff they should add.

[-aiko-]

That ls a pretty funny list. I agree with a huge chunk, but a lot of those aren't QoL features that are 'in other MMOs'. Some are downright ridiculous:

Add inventory-categories for consumables, crafting mats, etc.
Let us add notes to names on the blacklist
Grace timer in instances so you can try the item in case some one wants to pass an item after all
Improve tab-target priority to be closest to farthest (this option exists)
Add indicator to armory-chest that shows which items are part of a set

And so on and so forth.

[Reavyn]

That ls a pretty funny list. I agree with a huge chunk, but a lot of those aren't QoL features that are 'in other MMOs'. Some are downright ridiculous:

Add inventory-categories for consumables, crafting mats, etc.
Let us add notes to names on the blacklist
Grace timer in instances so you can try the item in case some one wants to pass an item after all
Improve tab-target priority to be closest to farthest (this option exists)
Add indicator to armory-chest that shows which items are part of a set

And so on and so forth.

Have to agree on this one. Many things in that list can be transplanted onto a wishlist for virtually any other MMO.

I especially disagree with 'Bring back sub-targeting place holders for macros. (i.e. <stpc>; <stnpc>; <stenemy>; etc) (thanks Jeditkirk)'. You can already macro the living crap out of abilities. Some classes can literally macro entire rotations into a single button. If it were up to me, I'd add even more limiters on macroing. Macros should be useful, not bordering on botting.

And other listed features are already in the game. Such as 'Make pressing ESC clear chat box, pressing ESC again remove chat from focus (thanks Randalthor)'. Just press '/' and you start with a fresh chat line.

Others yet are just flat out lazy. I mean 'Highlight recommended items for current class in the armoury-chest (thanks Besbeset)'... Really? I mean, REALLY?!

And it seems a lot of people still don't know you can resize every UI element in the game by pressing 'Ctrl + Home' in the UI editor (granted, it's not exactly well documented in-game). Standard UI size is medium. I set nearly everything, save the minimap, to small.

Now granted, there are also a lot of things I agree on (like the dismounting issue), but I feel you can scrap most of that list simply because most of it is either unneeded (because it's already available), lazy man's options or stuff that's just wishful thinking in any current MMO. On top of that, addons will most likely be allowed sometime in the future and future content such as housing will alleviate some of the inventory troubles people are having.

[RohanV]

Add indicator to armory-chest that shows which items are part of a set

This would be pretty useful. It would be nice to know that this chestpiece is being used by another class, and so I shouldn't convert it to materia. WoW does this, the item tooltip will say "Set: Ret, PvP" if it's part of one of your gear sets.

[-aiko-]

This would be pretty useful. It would be nice to know that this chestpiece is being used by another class, and so I shouldn't convert it to materia. WoW does this, the item tooltip will say "Set: Ret, PvP" if it's part of one of your gear sets.

No doubt all of the listed features would be useful. I just took issue with the assumption that the list is of things all MMOs have/should have, and the implication that ARR failed to deliver these features. As mentioned in my post and Reavyn's, some of them are just silly. What that list looks like is someone listed out a few QoL issues that shouldn't be there, like no auto-dismounting, then all of the posters in that thread decided it should be a wishlist instead.

[theWocky]

I must be lucky or something - I have yet to experience lag.

[PizzaSHARK]

FFXIV doesn't break new ground. It's main advantage is it took what worked from other MMOs, slapped FF iconic things on it, and shipped. They didn't have time to reinvent FFXIV from it's first failure. They simply took what worked and used it all. But it came a LONG way.

Except several things, mostly of the "quality of life" sort are curiously missing. I'm honestly flabbergasted that these sorts of things are regularly missing from MMOs when literally the only thing a company has to do to produce a successful MMO is look over Blizzard's shoulder and take notes.

More complex system design like dyes, we'll just give an obscure quest with no guarantee you'll ever pick it up. Making sure you know where all the vendors are in Gridania? We'll give you a detailed and non skippable series of quests that intently carries you through vendor stalls. I feel like their idea of what needs to be communicated to players is skewed.

This is usually the sort of thing that crops up during playtesting. It makes me wonder what their playtesting was like; was it just nothing but QA (which is just trying to break the game so the developers can iron out the bugs you find and are able to successfully replicate, not actually playing the game), or do the Japanese have a different mentality when it comes to playtesting?

For what it's worth, you should kind of trip over the dye lady when you visit the JRPG-pick-and-mix family for the first time since she's along the way. Too bad she doesn't mention where you might come up with some Orange Juice, though...

To put it best, this is an RPG first MMO second in terms of leveling and beginning the game. After that, it seems everything has a nice balance.

It felt vaguely like Dragon Age's opening segment in some ways. Unfortunately, I feel like you can't really combine a gripping story and MMOs, not with the way people have been trying it; sure, there's a story, but are people really going to say that FF14's story is better than, say, FF7's or FF9's or <pick your favorite FF game>?

I agree with you on that Kitty. They seem to have sort of oddish priorities when planning the quest pathing. It's sort of funn but in a way it feels like FFXIV got a lot of the big things right, while messing up a bunch of little things. Though my one big annoyance atm isn't that certain important things are skippable, it's that you can pick up some quests, complete them, and then be unable to turn them in because you are too low level. I currently have 5 quests in my questlog which are complete and I can't turn them in. And no I didn't pick them up while having a higher level class active. And I didn't complete them as a higher level class.

Yep, I've noticed this before, too. It feels like the system is setup so that you can access fighter quests whenever you have a fighter or wizard of high enough level, regardless of whether or not that fighter or wizard is currently active. Again, this feels like something that should've come up during playtesting.



Personally I would've loved to see them take a page from World of Tanks and implement a "Free Experience" system, go F2P, and ditch the subscription business model.

I would just like to point out that your "review" is in fact not a review, but merely an opinion on your personal experience with the game. In order to write a proper, unbiased review, you would need to do some research to find some truths about the game and compare and contrast them to other games in the genre, its predecessor, etc..

An opinion piece, while informative to some extent, isn't actually an unbiased review as you seem to think.

wat

[jaystea]

Be prepared to restart a dungeon due to the dungeon timer if your group is constantly wiping. And when someone leaves the group, the timer still goes down while you're waiting for the position to be filled. I don't play that many mmos, but it's the first time I've seen a timer on dungeons.

[Ravex]

Except several things, mostly of the "quality of life" sort are curiously missing. I'm honestly flabbergasted that these sorts of things are regularly missing from MMOs when literally the only thing a company has to do to produce a successful MMO is look over Blizzard's shoulder and take notes.



This is usually the sort of thing that crops up during playtesting. It makes me wonder what their playtesting was like; was it just nothing but QA (which is just trying to break the game so the developers can iron out the bugs you find and are able to successfully replicate, not actually playing the game), or do the Japanese have a different mentality when it comes to playtesting?

For what it's worth, you should kind of trip over the dye lady when you visit the JRPG-pick-and-mix family for the first time since she's along the way. Too bad she doesn't mention where you might come up with some Orange Juice, though...



It felt vaguely like Dragon Age's opening segment in some ways. Unfortunately, I feel like you can't really combine a gripping story and MMOs, not with the way people have been trying it; sure, there's a story, but are people really going to say that FF14's story is better than, say, FF7's or FF9's or <pick your favorite FF game>?




Yep, I've noticed this before, too. It feels like the system is setup so that you can access fighter quests whenever you have a fighter or wizard of high enough level, regardless of whether or not that fighter or wizard is currently active. Again, this feels like something that should've come up during playtesting.



Personally I would've loved to see them take a page from World of Tanks and implement a "Free Experience" system, go F2P, and ditch the subscription business model.




wat

We get it you are unhappy with pretty much every aspect of this game. Also if a persons opinion is different then yours they are wrong.

Seriously guy, do you really have to keep whining over and over and over?

I don't like the feeling when I stab a fork through my hand, so I choose not to do it. Try it out.

[mrpoker]

I dunno why people keep having an issue with this. You can just get it from the food vendor!

Or make it. Or buy it from the auction house thing.

Or where can i get myself some Lentils and Chestnuts?

[Kelimbror]

For what it's worth, I had a random OJ in my bag already from leveling cooking. It felt pretty special.

[PizzaSHARK]

For what it's worth, I had a random OJ in my bag already from leveling cooking. It felt pretty special.

Yeah, I had exactly one left, probably a left-over from that, like, level 10 cooking leve at Red Rooster whatever.

[Jimmyw]

We get it you are unhappy with pretty much every aspect of this game. Also if a persons opinion is different then yours they are wrong.

Seriously guy, do you really have to keep whining over and over and over?

I don't like the feeling when I stab a fork through my hand, so I choose not to do it. Try it out.

Oh god yes. This pizzashark guy is so zzzzzzz. We get you dont like the game, we get everyone is wrong but you are right. Honestly if I had this many problems with a game as this dude i wud stop playing it....

[Arlee]

Hey, knock off making personal attacks on other posters. It doesn't matter what you think of how someone else posts, there isn't a good reason to pick on people.

[jearle]

Or where can i get myself some Lentils and Chestnuts?

Any level 1 food vendor.

ZAM DB will help with this stuff.