Originally posted by Lowdos

Originally posted by cyphers

Originally posted by MisterSr

The Bazaar

This seems the biggest grey area amongst XIV's players, many see it is as a hassle (which I am not denying, it is), but it's purpose is good. The reason SE chose this system was because it creates an extremely diverse economy in which the player's are the base of it, and nothing else.  Basically, it creates a web of interdependence amongst the three (soon to be four) city states, in which there are a plethora of varying prices on foreign goods. For instance, in LL a common shard is the Wind Shard, but in Ul'dah this is a rare commodity. Gathering wind shards and selling them in Ul'dah's market wards can create a lucrative profit for the seller. Basically, think of EVE and it's economy, and put it on a smaller scale between several smalls nations. The lack of easy access (like an AH) allows for price fluctuation, which creates for an interesting economic experience. 

This raised a few questions to me:

- does FFXI have an AH?

- I vaguely recall reading somewhere that some sort of search function for retainers might be implemented. Is this true, or is the situation - as it is now - how things will stay, namely running from retainer to retainer?

 FFXI didn't have an AH system in the early days. Only after the first initial months was one implemented.

I'm not sure about the prospect of a search function for the market wards. I've only heard rumours, but we haven't really been giving any concrete info (as far as I'm aware).

The thing about XI was that the 3 main cities had their own AH that weren't tied to each other, so you'd find things more expensive in certain cities and cheaper in others. Eventually there was a main AH in Jeuno, the main city, but while leveling up you were bound to the AH in your starter city.

This worked absolutely perfectly in XI and created the plyer run economy that everyone loved. SE should have stuck to that and expanded on it instead of trying to do something different for the sake of being different.

Perhaps SE saw how much people loved bazaaring things in XI without realizing they did so only to avoid sales tax. The key word here is we had options in XI.

Originally posted by Alders

Originally posted by Lowdos

Originally posted by cyphers

Originally posted by MisterSr

The Bazaar

This seems the biggest grey area amongst XIV's players, many see it is as a hassle (which I am not denying, it is), but it's purpose is good. The reason SE chose this system was because it creates an extremely diverse economy in which the player's are the base of it, and nothing else.  Basically, it creates a web of interdependence amongst the three (soon to be four) city states, in which there are a plethora of varying prices on foreign goods. For instance, in LL a common shard is the Wind Shard, but in Ul'dah this is a rare commodity. Gathering wind shards and selling them in Ul'dah's market wards can create a lucrative profit for the seller. Basically, think of EVE and it's economy, and put it on a smaller scale between several smalls nations. The lack of easy access (like an AH) allows for price fluctuation, which creates for an interesting economic experience. 

This raised a few questions to me:

- does FFXI have an AH?

- I vaguely recall reading somewhere that some sort of search function for retainers might be implemented. Is this true, or is the situation - as it is now - how things will stay, namely running from retainer to retainer?

 FFXI didn't have an AH system in the early days. Only after the first initial months was one implemented.

I'm not sure about the prospect of a search function for the market wards. I've only heard rumours, but we haven't really been giving any concrete info (as far as I'm aware).

 

The thing about XI was that the 3 main cities had their own AH that weren't tied to each other, so you'd find things more expensive in certain cities and cheaper in others. Eventually there was a main AH in Jeuno, the main city, but while leveling up you were bound to the AH in your starter city.

 

This worked absolutely perfectly in XI and created the plyer run economy that everyone loved. SE should have stuck to that and expanded on it instead of trying to do something different for the sake of being different.

 

Perhaps SE saw how much people loved bazaaring things in XI without realizing they did so only to avoid sales tax. The key word here is we had options in XI.

 I just relised then WoW was the same in Classic. The AHs in cities where not connected plus the neutral goblin one. Ahhh how times have changed.

To OP: I do like the game world, even some of the places are copy and paste. For AH, I think maybe their first intention was to stop inflation or people playing AH game but if you look map, there is an area looks like will be future AH site, so I think AH will come in the near future.

Battle: it's the part I feel lacking in action. There no such thing as skills, it's more if you have enough HP and MP you will win for my class anyway. MP management is important for magic caster. I basically use 2 skills (buttons) and 1 cure to grind to 14 without doing that many quests (one of the mage class needs to be 10 first), since I don't want to wait for timer is up. My physical lvl is 18, CON 14 , THA 10, 2 or 3 crafting at 6 or 7 , some are 2 or 3. Of course no RED monsters, most of time it's RED = death. Grinding on blue and green is actually faster then fight orange or yellow, since I can just use basic attacks and MP recover skill. I even went to different starting area to collect crystal shards because in beta, I notice different region has more different type of crystals.

Grouping does give more xp and better rewards but "Targeting System" is so retarded and too console friendly made grouping at lower levels is waste of time, solo grinding is just way faster. According to SE, a solo player can finish all the contents if he/she wants to do so.

The main problem for me is how many clicks will take to just perform a basic function is very tedious. 2-3 sec delay on every actions are annoying, An example: I tried to craft some gears for myself, it took me almost 1 hour just to run around to buy mats and craft them. I DO know where and how to craft those gears, but delay in EVERY SINGLE action made it unbearable to even looking at the beautiful and detail of the game. I was playing on my iPad while doing crafting. In the end, if I want to play something so slow and tedious, I think I will go back to play EVE online, at least it's easier to manager 3 or 4 accounts at the same time.

SE did make a comment on streamlining the Retainer Function. It states they are adding Policy to the retainer system.What they mean by the word policy. You guess is as good as mine.

They will be adding an AH later no doubt about that. It's obvious that having no AH at the start has turned off some players. Maybe they will end up making the Retainer system something innovative down the road? Or they are working out the kinks on the AH coming to XIV in a patch? The coming months will tell if their choice on the retainer system in game and no AH at launch, grows into something better when the AH and retainer systems get finalized.

I wonder if a system that listed what everyone had in thier retainers in that area and then when you choose an item it highlights the retainer to buy it from, that would make it easier to find the items without looking through everyones stuff but still would not kill the retainer idea, almost like a mix. I dunno though maybe it would help or maybe it wouldnt

Originally posted by teco221

To OP: I do like the game world, even some of the places are copy and paste. For AH, I think maybe their first intention was to stop inflation or people playing AH game but if you look map, there is an area looks like will be future AH site, so I think AH will come in the near future.

 

Battle: it's the part I feel lacking in action. There no such thing as skills, it's more if you have enough HP and MP you will win for my class anyway. MP management is important for magic caster. I basically use 2 skills (buttons) and 1 cure to grind to 14 without doing that many quests (one of the mage class needs to be 10 first), since I don't want to wait for timer is up. My physical lvl is 18, CON 14 , THA 10, 2 or 3 crafting at 6 or 7 , some are 2 or 3. Of course no RED monsters, most of time it's RED = death. Grinding on blue and green is actually faster then fight orange or yellow, since I can just use basic attacks and MP recover skill. I even went to different starting area to collect crystal shards because in beta, I notice different region has more different type of crystals.

 

Grouping does give more xp and better rewards but "Targeting System" is so retarded and too console friendly made grouping at lower levels is waste of time, solo grinding is just way faster. According to SE, a solo player can finish all the contents if he/she wants to do so.

 

The main problem for me is how many clicks will take to just perform a basic function is very tedious. 2-3 sec delay on every actions are annoying, An example: I tried to craft some gears for myself, it took me almost 1 hour just to run around to buy mats and craft them. I DO know where and how to craft those gears, but delay in EVERY SINGLE action made it unbearable to even looking at the beautiful and detail of the game. I was playing on my iPad while doing crafting. In the end, if I want to play something so slow and tedious, I think I will go back to play EVE online, at least it's easier to manager 3 or 4 accounts at the same time.

Indeed, I'll agree with most things you say here, besides combat, I really like it's pace but maybe that's cause I'm always doing like 5 things at the same time at any given moment. I play THM and CON and basically Damnation and Punishing Barbs and I never run out of MP really. I would agree that you should wait to play this, it's not going to be finished till PS3 version, I foresee a huge UI revamp here some day, but it's not going to be possibly till march next year. They also need to work on optimization for some cards, mostly ATI from what I hear. The game works tremendously well for Nvidia, but ATI cards apparently get a lot of issues with the game, from what I've heard anyways. 

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Originally posted by MisterSr

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Originally posted by grapevine

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Originally posted by MisterSr

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Originally posted by whilan

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Originally posted by rwmiller

Intentions are nice and theoretical intentions are the nicest of all or so I theorize but I am a bit unsure of my intentions towards them.
 
The simple fact of the matter is that intentions don't matter, game design doesn't matter, the UI doesn't matter, lag, artwork, lore, etc none of it matters if the game isn't fun to play. Any game to succeed needs to be able to draw the player into the world and then make them want to come back time and time again. In other words the only thing that matters is what is actually delivered and how it works. These forums are full of experts and as such they tend to quickly decide on what they like and don't like and then inform everyone else of their expert opinion (me included). As a newly released game it is still a bit early to know how close to the dream and vision that SE has that they were able to actually deliver up.
 
For me there are bits and pieces of the game that I absolutely love and find to be very well done but I am having a hard time loving the game as a whole.

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I agree if the game is fun nothing else matters. The idea that people here are experts. I'm not so sure on that. experienced sure. but not experts.  Alot of  people miss several things an expert wouldn't. (myself included) 

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Like I said, this game is a niche game, and it's new. It will appeal to it's niche, and to everyone else they will be "scratching their heads" as to why people like it. To me these were the obvious intentions. And even if it wasn't their intention, it's how it's going to pan out.  

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There is one problem with that claim.  That being it wasn't designed to be niche.

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Whether it was or it wasn't, that's what FF has always been and will always be. It's never going to appeal to the masses like WoW because SE refuses to mainstream their game. It's sad that not everyone can see what I see, but I understand this game is not for everyone. 

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Have you never heard of FFX or FFX-2? That was clearly mainstream and the suck of the series. Excuses man just pure excuses.

As for your OP there is logic in there that is entirely flawed.

The lack of AH is nothing but a hassle for everyone, there is nothing special about it. If you like to randomly click retainers waiting for the next grab bag be my guest but don't tell me this is a clever feature. That would be like google sending me off to search results of apples when I searched for oranges.

The copy and pasting doesn't save memory to process if anything it enhances it. As someone stated before me polygons are polygons they need to get rendered no matter what there is no special rule if hill A is loaded the rest is, it doesn't work that way. It was just lazy and more than likely they were crunched for time, but don't sit there and tell me it saves system requirements cause it doesn't.

I'm sure the monsters get tougher as you climb that's any game, but most people are doing exactly what you said opposite. They have a rotation, it isn't FFXI strategic at all.

I think they clearly missed the mark with what they wanted. It is in no way casual when that's what they wanted to appeal to. It's clear to me that mixed ideas started to get implemented in the middle of the project cause this blunderbuss of a situation for this game.

I'm waiting it out, it'll improve but atm it is nothing to defend.

Originally posted by Hashbrick

 

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Originally posted by MisterSr

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Originally posted by grapevine

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Originally posted by MisterSr

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Originally posted by whilan

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Originally posted by rwmiller

Intentions are nice and theoretical intentions are the nicest of all or so I theorize but I am a bit unsure of my intentions towards them.
 
The simple fact of the matter is that intentions don't matter, game design doesn't matter, the UI doesn't matter, lag, artwork, lore, etc none of it matters if the game isn't fun to play. Any game to succeed needs to be able to draw the player into the world and then make them want to come back time and time again. In other words the only thing that matters is what is actually delivered and how it works. These forums are full of experts and as such they tend to quickly decide on what they like and don't like and then inform everyone else of their expert opinion (me included). As a newly released game it is still a bit early to know how close to the dream and vision that SE has that they were able to actually deliver up.
 
For me there are bits and pieces of the game that I absolutely love and find to be very well done but I am having a hard time loving the game as a whole.

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I agree if the game is fun nothing else matters. The idea that people here are experts. I'm not so sure on that. experienced sure. but not experts.  Alot of  people miss several things an expert wouldn't. (myself included) 

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Like I said, this game is a niche game, and it's new. It will appeal to it's niche, and to everyone else they will be "scratching their heads" as to why people like it. To me these were the obvious intentions. And even if it wasn't their intention, it's how it's going to pan out.  

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There is one problem with that claim.  That being it wasn't designed to be niche.

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Whether it was or it wasn't, that's what FF has always been and will always be. It's never going to appeal to the masses like WoW because SE refuses to mainstream their game. It's sad that not everyone can see what I see, but I understand this game is not for everyone. 

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Have you never heard of FFX or FFX-2? That was clearly mainstream and the suck of the series. Excuses man just pure excuses.

As for your OP there is logic in there that is entirely flawed.

The lack of AH is nothing but a hassle for everyone, there is nothing special about it. If you like to randomly click retainers waiting for the next grab bag be my guest but don't tell me this is a clever feature. That would be like google sending me off to search results of apples when I searched for oranges.

The copy and pasting doesn't save memory to process if anything it enhances it. As someone stated before me polygons are polygons they need to get rendered no matter what there is no special rule if hill A is loaded the rest is, it doesn't work that way. It was just lazy and more than likely they were crunched for time, but don't sit there and tell me it saves system requirements cause it doesn't.

I'm sure the monsters get tougher as you climb that's any game, but most people are doing exactly what you said opposite. They have a rotation, it isn't FFXI strategic at all.

I think they clearly missed the mark with what they wanted. It is in no way casual when that's what they wanted to appeal to. It's clear to me that mixed ideas started to get implemented in the middle of the project cause this blunderbuss of a situation for this game.

I'm waiting it out, it'll improve but atm it is nothing to defend.

It's a justification of possible intentions, it doesn't mean I approve it. It was a take on the direction of the game, but I will say that it will create a diverse economy regardless. Although I have no doubt they will do the same thing as from FFXI and implement an AH, I am just hoping they make them regional AH and not national AH. Also if you play up in the higher levels there is no rotation, it's hard to have one due to the games mechanics to have a solid rotation at ranks past 15. 

Originally posted by Hashbrick

 

The copy and pasting doesn't save memory to process if anything it enhances it. As someone stated before me polygons are polygons they need to get rendered no matter what there is no special rule if hill A is loaded the rest is, it doesn't work that way. It was just lazy and more than likely they were crunched for time, but don't sit there and tell me it saves system requirements cause it doesn't.

If they're so lazy, then why can FFXIV have the same level of graphical and textural detail as AoC but while being able to have hundreds of players wandering around in the same area, without having to resort to heavy instancing and zoning, and while allowing players to travel seamlessly from one area to others?

There are no other current MMORPG's with quite the level of detail in their graphics as AoC and FFXIV have, and FFXIV manages to accomplish this in a better way than AoC has, and they even manage to do it crossplatform, a feat that none of the other major AAA titles succeeded in.

Lazy? Don't think so, they just used different methods to cram it all in the current-gen hardware limitations.

Originally posted by Alders

Originally posted by Lowdos

Originally posted by cyphers

Originally posted by MisterSr

The Bazaar

This seems the biggest grey area amongst XIV's players, many see it is as a hassle (which I am not denying, it is), but it's purpose is good. The reason SE chose this system was because it creates an extremely diverse economy in which the player's are the base of it, and nothing else.  Basically, it creates a web of interdependence amongst the three (soon to be four) city states, in which there are a plethora of varying prices on foreign goods. For instance, in LL a common shard is the Wind Shard, but in Ul'dah this is a rare commodity. Gathering wind shards and selling them in Ul'dah's market wards can create a lucrative profit for the seller. Basically, think of EVE and it's economy, and put it on a smaller scale between several smalls nations. The lack of easy access (like an AH) allows for price fluctuation, which creates for an interesting economic experience. 

This raised a few questions to me:

- does FFXI have an AH?

- I vaguely recall reading somewhere that some sort of search function for retainers might be implemented. Is this true, or is the situation - as it is now - how things will stay, namely running from retainer to retainer?

 FFXI didn't have an AH system in the early days. Only after the first initial months was one implemented.

I'm not sure about the prospect of a search function for the market wards. I've only heard rumours, but we haven't really been giving any concrete info (as far as I'm aware).

 

The thing about XI was that the 3 main cities had their own AH that weren't tied to each other, so you'd find things more expensive in certain cities and cheaper in others. Eventually there was a main AH in Jeuno, the main city, but while leveling up you were bound to the AH in your starter city.

 

This worked absolutely perfectly in XI and created the plyer run economy that everyone loved. SE should have stuck to that and expanded on it instead of trying to do something different for the sake of being different.

 

Perhaps SE saw how much people loved bazaaring things in XI without realizing they did so only to avoid sales tax. The key word here is we had options in XI.

AH has this same system at the beginning, I am pretty sure AH will be implemented. Although this is a great idea for a system, it is terrible when actually implemented. Nice in paper, terrible in actuality. They did the same thing at FFXI's beginning though, so I assume we will eventually have an AH. 

Originally posted by cyphers

Originally posted by Hashbrick

 

The copy and pasting doesn't save memory to process if anything it enhances it. As someone stated before me polygons are polygons they need to get rendered no matter what there is no special rule if hill A is loaded the rest is, it doesn't work that way. It was just lazy and more than likely they were crunched for time, but don't sit there and tell me it saves system requirements cause it doesn't.

If they're so lazy, then why can FFXIV have the same level of graphical and textural detail as AoC but while being able to have hundreds of players wandering around in the same area, without having to resort to heavy instancing and zoning, and while allowing players to travel seamlessly from one area to others?

There are no other current MMORPG's with quite the level of detail in their graphics as AoC and FFXIV have, and FFXIV manages to accomplish this in a better way than AoC has, and they even manage to do it crossplatform, a feat that none of the other major AAA titles succeeded in.

 

Lazy? Don't think so, they just used different methods to cram it all in the current-gen hardware limitations.

Yeah, it actually helps make the game less taxing on your computer. Like the poster said above, the only reason the zones can be so big is because of their copying and pasting of things... I think the areas are gorgeous and I don't even notice the copying and pasting (besides caves -_-). 

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Originally posted by MisterSr

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Originally posted by cyphers

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Originally posted by Hashbrick

 
The copy and pasting doesn't save memory to process if anything it enhances it. As someone stated before me polygons are polygons they need to get rendered no matter what there is no special rule if hill A is loaded the rest is, it doesn't work that way. It was just lazy and more than likely they were crunched for time, but don't sit there and tell me it saves system requirements cause it doesn't.

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If they're so lazy, then why can FFXIV have the same level of graphical and textural detail as AoC but while being able to have hundreds of players wandering around in the same area, without having to resort to heavy instancing and zoning, and while allowing players to travel seamlessly from one area to others?
There are no other current MMORPG's with quite the level of detail in their graphics as AoC and FFXIV have, and FFXIV manages to accomplish this in a better way than AoC has, and they even manage to do it crossplatform, a feat that none of the other major AAA titles succeeded in.
 
Lazy? Don't think so, they just used different methods to cram it all in the current-gen hardware limitations.

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Yeah, it actually helps make the game less taxing on your computer. Like the poster said above, the only reason the zones can be so big is because of their copying and pasting of things... I think the areas are gorgeous and I don't even notice the copying and pasting (besides caves -_-). 

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I would throw LotRO in that mix too and that has an open world for the most part save for the instances. I personally don't have an issue with how the terrains look, there is going to be copy and pasting in games it saves resources and time for the artist but has no difference in the actual loading under certain circumstances. It isn't going to take any longer unless the next model has more polygons. I'm saying a detailed world isn't going to be any more taxing then a copy and paste world unless that copy and paste world has less objects to load. It has to do with the amount of objects and amount of polygons.

I argued the point cause you threw it in your mix of points not because I personally agree or disagree with the art direction and world building.