Sunday, June 23, 2013

Long beta weekend


Sleepy... I overdid it this weekend x.x

Played much too much, almost entirely on Marauder, finished the main scenario content for the beta and nearly finished everything in beta! At this point, the last thing remaining among content in the beta is just the final level 32-34 dungeon.

In this beta, the 1.0 or legacy character import was added and I found that I had a character on the "Hyperion" server. This server is probably going to end up as the final server as Excalibur is filling up already.

Meanwhile, here's a screenshot dump! Brain no worky for thought deep ideas.

Even legacy characters start with the same opening sequence, like it's a new game
Legacy characters get branded in their upper back
2.0 engine
Same outfit, 1.0 engine. Any graphics people who can comment on the differences?
Full set of level 20 armor the Ark crafted for me. This was actually equal to, maybe slightly better than the dungeon drop for this level.
I swear that I didn't chop off that Lalafell's head! Really!
Ifrit says hi!
A lot of boss mobs are BIG! And this is the UI layout I'm becoming used to.
Lighting makes a different in how the world feels. This scene was at night. I wonder how the mood would change if it was during the day... (Music in the open world also changes depending on the time of the day)
At a certain rank, Lalafells can can get a special mount!
This is the Seed Seer, aka the Hyur Star Sybil! (Names that are S.S., leader of the city in the trees... even the flag's colors are the same!)
Some alien looking landscapes out there
Small temple in the middle of nowhere. Feels like this might be part of a quest or story eventually, or there should be NPCs here. There are a few outposts which look like they are missing NPCs
Camp Tranquil, which isn't very tranquil as there are high level plants waiting to eat you below
Ruins of an ancient civilization?
Hi Gigas!
And Mamool Ja... maybe they went overboard with importing FFXI stuff
A floating city
Sunrise at an onsen bed & breakfast! 
Floating city during the day
Costa Del Sol!
Wide open seas, though there are invisible walls if you try to walk out to the ocean. 
Local entertainment. The purple (!) on top of her head means that talking to her can start a dynamic FATE event. In this case, an escort quest where anyone in the area can participate
Which, if you do, leads to this conclusion >.>
There's an in-game military system where you can get promoted, buy uniforms and stuff too
Dungeons start with a cutscene which gives a fast, dramatic pan through where you'll be fighting and who you'll be facing
Like this friendly lizard!
I think Archers have some of the better outfits xD
Someone's cranky!
Many classic FFXI NMs are back as boss monsters in FATEs
Hmm... a house... Wonder what's in it?
Crazy floating women!
Classic party fighting regular mobs in the dungeon. This also shows the target marking system in action
Creepy floating eye
Yes, definitely haunted
Some people complain that combat is too flashy and has too many special effects... what do you think?
Well.. at least the house has a nice garden!

Whee! Giant crabs! This also shows my personal chocobo helping me as a party member companion (usually set to heal me) Unfortunately this means I can't ride her right now!
End of beta 3 part 2
That's it for this round... I'm almost done with the content that they're releasing for this beta, having just one dungeon left. If it seems that the game is progressing fast, it is probably because in the beta, there are a few parts where you can take leveling fast-forwards to bypass a few levels. For example, once you hit level 26, you can skip directly to level 29 by talking to a NPC. Similarly, once you enroll in a grand company at level 20, you can skip all the other jobs directly to level 15 after unlocking them. This lets us experiment with different actions from other jobs, as well as increases the pool of people to help out in the level 15 dungeon sequence. (You have to do 3 dungeons as part of the main storyline). It also lets you discover a lot of interesting other action combinations, like on Marauder, I have found that Flash from Gladiator really works well, even with the small MP pool.

Anyway, that's it for this weekend's photo dump! May have some thoughts later this week about the direction, and my experiences from doing the dungeons... Let me know if there's anything you'd like me to talk about in the comments!

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3 comments:

Vanh said...

Finally! Someone updated their blog! {Slacks} {Can I have it?} No posts on those other MMOs? Or maybe not worth talking about D:

Crazy Ascy, looks like you've played more 2.0 beta, and progressed further, than you did 1.0 retail (at least based on your character levels).

I've been out of the MMO scene for a while, but so far I'm liking XIV. There's a lot more hand holding compared to XI, and I'm really liking that. I think Ghir pointed that out in a comment somewhere, but I like not having to look stuff up on wiki. Maybe some people found that fun, but I don't. Maybe it's me getting old and don't have the energy to poke around until I finally find out where to go and what to do. All around, the transparency of things is great. I don't need to guess what my HQ crafting rate is, I can see it. I don't need to experiment with food to see what it does, I can see the stats.

I did find a couple things that were lacking. Like Zu pointed out, gear seems pretty bland so far. Everyone at a similar level is wearing nearly the same thing. Most people are wearing what the get rewarded with from quests. Problem is that same stuff is also buyable or craftable. Hardly anything is unique, at least not until lvl 15. I did sneak a peak at some lodestone profiles, and yours, and noticed that the 'unique' stuff comes from the lvl 15+ dungeons. So maybe there's still hope.

That kinda leads me into my other point. I haven't really found a good use of gil except for crafting. Since you just use gear you get as rewards, there isn't really much need to buy much. I end up dumping my gil into crafting, and use the stuff I craft, further reducing my need to buy gear.

Overall, a good game and I'm having fun with it.

June 23, 2013 at 11:24 PM
Ascule said...

Yay Vanh is around too :D

Mmm... I could do post on other MMOs, maybe a quick talk about the experiences in them and what eventually lead me to lose interest. It will make for an interesting comparison for FFXIV and FFXI as well. I haven't really played a MMO for an extended period since SWTOR.

And I think I went further in my first evening of 2.0 beta compared to all of 1.0... Probably due to the absolute lack of content in 1.0. I think I used up my guildleve allowances and went "what now?"

About the uniformity of gear so far... well, I can think of two possible reasons for that.

1. In theory, many of the models are not in game yet so there might be some different models coming in. I noticed that some of the screenshots of players who had higher level chars (from legacy) had more detailed variants of the gear that us lowbies had access to. The dev team also stated that what was in the game was not final. In the beta phase 1, I remember that there were definite class-unique armor that you could by directly from NPCs (due to the content to get them not being in the game yet) which made everyone look better. These may have actually been the AF armor designs.

2. We're still in the relative low levels. 1-15, 1-20 in any MMO is still the tutorial stages and pretty much everyone wears the same gear. Just think about what everyone in FFXI was wearing in Qufim. For MRD & GLA, there's a armor set at around level 25 that make you look like a tin can which adds a small bit of variety, and there are also armor dyes. The 'unique' gear drops are definitely rare drops from dungeons, possibly only from the final boss and aren't a 100% drop.

For gil... there's a big money sink in repair costs at higher levels. At level 30, my repair cost is 1k gil. This can be reduced if you simply craft and use your crafting skills to repair. It would take a blacksmith level of 19 to repair my gear, so dumping your gil into crafting is actually a really good idea. Furthermore, you can turn in some crafted stuff to the grand companies for rewards in exp and company seals, which are then used for promotions and unique looking grand company armor. Oh, and the HQ crafted gear was actually better compared to the "pink" dungeon drops of the same level. They had the overall same stats, but had materia slots. I don't know how hard these were to craft though since Ark crafted them for me xD

Oh, and teleporting gets expensive too. Some places are 500+ gil even with them set as favorites.

June 24, 2013 at 6:28 AM
Kurai said...

I'm wearing pink jedi robes!

June 24, 2013 at 9:20 AM

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