Final Fantasy 14 : A Realm Reborn screenshots and opinion

[SouthGate]

Really looking forward to this game, the original was a flop. I've pre-ordered, and never got invited to the closed beta. :(

[spaceelf]

Really looking forward to this game, the original was a flop. I've pre-ordered, and never got invited to the closed beta. :(

It's currently open beta, so you might try again?

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

Beta ended not too long ago. You will have to wait for the full version now :(
 

[spaceelf]

Geez, didn't realize it was so short, sorry.

 

I think I'm in the middle of too many other games to get into this, but I did enjoy it.  Perhaps later.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

Yes this was the final beta before release, unfortunately only running this weekend. I think the NA servers may be available for like an hour or so but they will definitely go down later (like a couple hours max) from this post.

[margrave]

Love it. I'm a little bias as I own all the Final Fantasy titles. Love the series. Was never a fan of XI but this reboot of XIV is great. Can't wait for launch!

[spacer]

Well I took part in the beta over the weekend and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the game. It definitely had that Final Fantasy feel, which you'll either love or hate; but, I happen to like it. The game had a lot of polish, despite some technical problems with the servers, which I hope/assume will be fixed by launch or soon after.

 

Even with my old computer, the game ran really well and still looked good too. I could see this game looking amazing if I had a newer machine.

 

Right from the get-go, the game was pretty welcoming. The tutorial tips and the introductory quest lines were pretty good at teaching you the basics. I like how there is a "main" quest line, filler quests, and class quests to do.

 

I mainly played a Gladiator, but I also tried a Conjurer. Combat is pretty standard, but felt good. I didn't try any crafting, and unfortunately, I couldn't play enough to get to real group content. So I can't comment on either of those. Though I have heard that people are really enjoying both of those things.

 

The Fate system is your (now) typical public question system. They'll pop up in pre-determined areas from time to time and you're required to fulfill a certain objective within the time limit. Then, you're rewarded experience and gold based on your performance. I think it's even possible to win items from them, but I'm not 100% on that.

 

The only thing I didn't like about the game is the disconnected feeling of the world. The game world is not a huge, contiguous landmass like WoW or others. Similar to FFXI, it's made up of a lot of inter-connected areas that are large-ish, and requires a loading screen every time you cross a barrier. At least on my machine, the loading times were under a minute, but still not quick. This may improve with a better machine, but it's still lame. Even the capital cities are split into two sections, which was surprising. And made it hard (at least at first) to figure out where to go for quests and to get your barrings. I guess related to that issue is the map system. It's good, but not the greatest.

 

Overall though, I had a lot of fun with the game. If I had the time to play MMOs, I could definitely see myself choosing this one over others.

[CUBBYJR2005]

cant wait till it officially launches

[Jaybot]

I have been playing since beta 3, and absolutely love it. This game is classic Final Fantasy.

 

I can't wait for early access!

[dead.cell]

I've already pre-ordered the collector's edition. I'm already seeing it become sort of the next main MMO, as I seem to see people all over the place talking about which servers they'll be on. People I haven't played with in a long time, which is cool considering World of Warcraft seems to have lost that intelligent user base that once existed. (not that there aren't smart people on there, but I used to be able to easily find great people to talk to)

 

Anyway, I'm pretty excited. All my friends seem to be joining up on all different realms though so I'll be committing to the realm this one cute girl asked me to join her on. Yeah... I'm a sucker for a pretty face. :blush:

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

Im not sure yet but I have already made a character on a Japanese server (since its closer then a US one). 
Tonberry I think it was. Not sure if these latest characters save over to the official release but if anyone wants to join when its out, may be a nice idea to start a Neowin guild much like we did with WoW and have everyone join the same server :)

 

[Blackhearted]

Last i heard, characters from open beta(this past weekend) will remain as you left them for launch.

[dead.cell]

Last i heard, characters from open beta(this past weekend) will remain as you left them for launch.

 

Hope it's true, if only for the fact that it may help to reduce the crazy amount of people all in one damn area. :P

 

I didn't hardly get to play this weekend. Work sucks.

[HawkMan]

Free to play in 3, 2, 1.

:p

MMOs these days don't do very well without being free to play at best they last half a year with subs before they adopt some form of free to play, and without som from of free trial time or free to play starter area which players have really come to expect so they can see how the game plays I don't see it working out for them with just subs.

[YounGMessiah]

Only characters from BETA 4 phase will be saved FYI.

[spaceelf]

Free to play in 3, 2, 1.

:p

MMOs these days don't do very well without being free to play at best they last half a year with subs before they adopt some form of free to play, and without som from of free trial time or free to play starter area which players have really come to expect so they can see how the game plays I don't see it working out for them with just subs.

FF11 never went F2P and I don't expect this to either.  We'll see if they can get the players back though.

[HawkMan]

FF11 never went F2P and I don't expect this to either.  We'll see if they can get the players back though.

 

FF11 is a long time ago though. pretty much no MMO that doesn't use a F2P model today.

[Patrick831]

Really enjoy this game a lot. Although the Map is frustrating for now. I hope they change it in the final release.

 

Your characters from the Phase 4 weekend will be saved unless a game breaking bug comes up and they need to wipe. So far so good! :)

[Blackhearted]

And a confirmation from the ff14 twitter that nothing will be lost from last weekend.

 

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[YounGMessiah]

I cant wait till early access tomorrow :D

[Blackhearted]

It's amazing. Even with what should be less people than last weekends open beta, their servers STILL struggle function properly. Did they not learn anything about how to do servers from the like 10 years or so of ff11?

[spaceelf]

It's amazing. Even with what should be less people than last weekends open beta, their servers STILL struggle function properly. Did they not learn anything about how to do servers from the like 10 years or so of ff11?

I've seen very few MMO launches go well.  LOTRO was the only one I recall.  LOTROs move to F2P on the other hand was horrible (and kinda funny.)

[SekaiStory]

I've been playing A Realm Reborn since beta phase 3 and loving it much better than Guild Wars 2, which I've been with since the beginning.

 

I've been with FFXIV since 1.0 and that was just awful, but this really blew me away. The design is simply stunning and some of the gameplay systems make other MMOs look pale in comparison.

Okay, enough fangasming.  :laugh:

 

Servers are actually running alright, no major log-in problems in general aside from waiting queues and temporarily disabled servers, (pretty good as Square reports ~130.000 concurrent connections)

what really surprises me is that once I was in the game I never got logged out, not even when early access started this morning. Remember being thrown out frequently with GW2 in the beginning, but that may happen here too once the game launches next week.

 

What happened today though, was that a lot of people had problems doing the instanced dungeons. Square did an emergency maintenance, rendering the game unplayable for 3 hours. Afterwards this issue wasn't resolved for everyone else so they decided to do another 3 hour maintenance, something that's going on as I'm writing this post, which should hopefully fix this issue for everyone.

 

Earlier beta versions went alright, though Square always underestimated the amount of players (1 million ended up in closed beta) and had some trouble there, at the end all problems were resolved and beta phases ran smoothly. 

I only hope the full retail launch goes smooth,  

[Blackhearted]

What happened today though, was that a lot of people had problems doing the instanced dungeons. Square did an emergency maintenance, rendering the game unplayable for 3 hours. Afterwards this issue wasn't resolved for everyone else so they decided to do another 3 hour maintenance, something that's going on as I'm writing this post, which should hopefully fix this issue for everyone.

 

Sure took them a while to start doing something. I started having connectivity issues like 30 mins to an hour before i posted here earlier.

[Blackhearted]

So another day of early access is completely unplayable. I hope they plan on making it up to people for failing to deliver on what was promised when people payed, or else they're going to lose alot of customers.