Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta Begins Next Week (Coming Sept 2)

• Cucurbita wrote on 2010-09-01 03:27
  Starting to sound a lot like Nexon...
• Drifter wrote on 2010-09-01 15:31
  M. Night Shyamalan: "What a twist!"
• BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2010-09-01 15:39
  Beta is returning tommorow
  

  FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test Will Start on Sep. 1!
  
  We would like to take this opportunity to provide an update regarding FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test, which was announced to be postponed on Aug. 31, 2010.
  
  Along with the completion on investigation and correction of the critical issue, we have decided to begin FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test on Sep. 1, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT).
  
  Starting on Sep. 1, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT), acquisition of registration code required for FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test will be available.
  

  
  
  FINAL FANTASY XIV
• Lan wrote on 2010-09-02 17:50
  Seems the fatigue system isn't as bad as it seemed. Will only really affect those who play 24/7. Since when you're not on the thing regenerates :s
• Cucurbita wrote on 2010-09-02 19:07

  Quote from Lan;144042:

  Seems the fatigue system isn't as bad as it seemed. Will only really affect those who play 24/7. Since when you're not on the thing regenerates :s

  
  
  Oh cool. Kinda.
• Lan wrote on 2010-09-02 19:46

  Quote from Margatroid;144091:

  Oh cool. Kinda.

  
  
  

  The Final Fantasy XIV open beta is supposed to launch tomorrow. I haven't found anywhere to pre-load the client, but I have the game pre-ordered so I'll definitely be checking it out this week (in case I want to cancel my preorder!)
  
  I played Final Fantasy 11 for a few weeks, but it wasn't my cup of tea. The frustrating combat system/menus and struggle to find groups turned me off. Still, I make it a point to try almost any MMO at least once, and at the very least FF14 is looking very attractive from a visual standpoint.
  
  There was a recent uproar concerning the Fatigue system that the game has in place, but only really started to get noticed in Beta Phase 3 after some fixes were made. The initial nerdrage was, ultimately, due to a poorly translated Japanese post. An official, clearer translation was released by Square-Enix, and while the Fatigue system is not quite as harsh as initially assumed (from the poor translation) it's still got some people in a sour mood.
  
  Before I try to sum up the system (as I understand it), it's important to remember that Final Fantasy 14 will be sporting a class system similar to the job system in FFXI. Basically any character can have more than one class, and can switch between the classes at will depending (apparently) on the weapons they equip.
  
  Square-Enix has then calculated an average amount of skill/experience points that a person could obtain in an hour if they were solely grinding out experience and doing nothing else. They're calling this number a "threshold value". I'm just going to call it a block.
  
  Now, in a given week (think of the week-long raid lockouts in WoW) for the first eight blocks of leveling, you're earning the maximum amount of experience possible. So this could be eight hours, if you were to spend eight hours just earning experience. For a normal player, it's probably going to take much longer to reach eight blocks of experience.
  
  Once you've passed the eight blocks, the next seven blocks will see your experience/skill gain gradually decrease (per block) until it reaches zero. Once a week everyone's blocks reset at zero.
  
  Now, if this were the system alone, I'd say players are justified in being angry. However there are a couple additional points to consider. First of all, as soon as you stop engaging in experience-gaining activities, your blocks begin to recover. We don't have confirmation yet, but I'm going to assume this counts when you're logged off as well. So basically, while you're hanging out in town, or offline altogether, your blocks are resetting, even before the weekly hard reset.
  
  So I think maybe this system only realisticly effects the hardcorest of the hardcore grinders. Those without jobs or families who desire to play their MMOs for 12-16 hours a day. I don't think the average player is really going to be hitting this threshold as often as they think they are.
  
  And even if they do, the next thing to remember is the the skill block countdown applies per class. So if you churn out eight blocks as a Gladiator, and you're still chomping at the bit for another eight hours of playtime, you can swap to your Thaumaturge class, or your Fisherman class and churn out some skill points on those classes, with a fresh timer on your skill blocks.
  
  I may be missing some crucial pieces of information here, but who even plays that much in a day? Are people legitimately angry because after (roughly) fifteen hours of straight grinding they'll be prevented from earning experience for a little while? Or ar they just angry because the option to grind 24 hours a day is being removed, even though they'd never even come close to doing tha

  
  
  Where I got my info from.
• BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2010-09-02 22:15
  That's like the pets from DFO
• Falsetto wrote on 2010-09-02 22:43
  You'll never get in. This is the first time I've ever seen a direct download have an 'upload' marker. Needless to say, neither is moving at all at this point.
  
  

  [Image: http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b248/Uriko002/bitorrenix.png]

  
  [SIZE="1"]Square Enix and Bittorent Unite?[/SIZE]
• silentselene wrote on 2010-09-03 04:21
  Fatigue isn't THAT bad, especially if you're me, the one who's always in the 8 person party.
  
  Anyways, the downloader is a P2P client, so...yeah. I think FFXIVCore has a guide on forwarding a certain port to make this load a lot faster.
• Liraiyu wrote on 2010-09-03 08:00
  Oh boy.
  >Create character
  >Gets stuck at loading screen
  >crashes
  >now I can't access the character select screen
  
  :|
• silentselene wrote on 2010-09-07 05:41
  Just tried the game, it was pretty amazing. Best graphics I've ever seen in an MMO. And the character customization is even better than Mabi's :O
  
  Now I poke everyone here to join Figaro server, just because FF6 was awesome xD
• BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2010-09-07 05:48
  The cat doesnt have money to give to hungry Square Enix
• silentselene wrote on 2010-09-07 05:53
  Yeah, I didn't think you guys would be willing to pay. Oh well.
• Liraiyu wrote on 2010-09-07 06:04
  Well, I'm going to pay for it.
  I'm really, really enjoying the beta so far.