A return to Final Fantasy XIV - Impressions from my first two days (WARNING: Long!)
Danielle (aka smittenkitten) and I recently subscribed to Final Fantasy XIV. We haven't played for months now - I think the last time we were on was in December, and even then it wasn't a regular thing. It's been far too long since we actually spent more than a maybe two hours on the game in a week. Most of our later efforts were spent on gathering, crafting and working with materia - and this was just to get ourselves up to speed with our general crafting in the hope that eventually a number of EoFFers would join up to the game and we could kit them up with the right gear without any cost to themselves (this offer still stands, by the way, should a few of you jump in).
This is the first time we've played since the pay-to-play aspect finally kicked in. It's £6.89 each for us, which isn't much. Of course, not many online games are trying to recreate themselves after a company-confessed catastrophe like we saw with FFXIV. I was prepared for the worst from the get-go, and for me, the get-go was actually paying the money. Previously, this involved paying for an online currency called Crysta, similar to Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. I was never keen on this system as it involves paying for more Crysta than you need (again, similar to Microsoft Points). If I remember right, though, they have now allowed you to identify more specific amounts of Crysta to avoid this issue. I still wasn't interested. I like to pay through either PayPal or through direct debit. The latter option being available, I opted for this.
That was that... simple. For those who managed to get through the trials of registering a character, this was a welcome change. I just followed the instructions supplied to me on Square Enix's website and was activated in no time. Patching was over in about ten minutes, downloading at around 500kps, which is great compared to the old 3kps we used to have to deal with using the default downloader. One more thing, though - world merges. This was done automatically in our case, having missed the chance to choose our server. We didn't mind as we wanted to stay with the people we'd seen in earlier days.
We logged in and picked up right where we logged off. One slight issue clearly hasn't changed since I last played, although it could just be my PC or something else out of SE's control - the terrible lag you get after you first log into the game, especially if you haven't played for a long time. It took me about a minute of running around in circles before the game would keep up with my movements. Once that was out of the way, I walked around while Danielle got her patch done and talked to some people.
A few new things on the minimap caught my attention and soon I was unlocking achievement types. My initial thought was "Why do we have to unlock the achievement system?" However, it did give Danielle and I something to do. We started teleporting and chocobo-riding our way around Eorzea. I went to areas I'd never seen before while doing this, and we accidentally unlocked the goobbue mount, which we amused ourselves with for a while. It didn't take us too long and it turns out I already have quite a few achievements unlocked, which is nice. Unfortunately there are achievements for things I've already done, however since they weren't counting this kind of stuff at the time, my counter for this kind of thing (eg. craft 50 items requiring level 1-10 woodworking recipes) starts at zero. It was a solid adventure, roaming the world again and it got us back into the swing of things with some unexpected bonuses.
With that out of the way, we attempted a bit of power-leveling, which was a futile venture as we had no clue how it was supposed to be done. In the end, it was an education for us in the new actions/traits system. Previously your class level would dictate how many points you could spend on actions and traits. Each action and trait had it's own cost. There was, however, a lot of mixing and matching of skills that allowed everyone to come up with their own form of red mage without there even being an official red mage class. For example, my axe-weilding, damage-dealing marauder would wander around, waving his weapon at his enemies... after he had ensured that he had enough emnity/hate from his opponent using various provoking skills. Oh, and after casting various buffing spells prior to battle. Not to mention curing himself during battle. Perhaps I might poison the enemy. Sure, I couldn't use every skill from every other class, but I could use most of them and I could even avoid using marauder skills altogether if I wanted to.
The new system restricts this kind of do-everything mentality immensely. Now my level 32 gladiator has an allowance of six additional actions. All gladiator actions are there by default, so I don't need to spend any points on them. However, skills belonging to other classes are additional actions and for me, that meant I had to give up a lot of the luxury I used to have. On the flipside, when I fight, it really feels like I am my own character. Danielle has found the change more frustrating than I have, although I think we'll get the hang of it in time. I'll feed back on that again later, I think.
After we gave up on power leveling, we turned our attention to unlocking jobs. Danielle was to go first - she had just got her gladiator to the level she needed to be in order to unlock White Mage. Unlocking any job requires a very similar (and very closely tied) class - in her case, Conjurer - to be level 30 (hers was level 32). It also requires an additional job to be level 15. The first thing she found upon taking on this quest was that she can bring up to three additional characters in her party. I was one, but did we really need the other two? It did make the note that it was reccommended, so we asked around. Nobody bit when she shouted out, although she did get some advice - try to get people to help her that are around level 40. Erk. That's above our rank by some way... and we still couldn't find anyone.
Then we found what we needed in the new Search function. A little bit that says "Seeking Party". Within five minutes of turning this on, we had our party organised, together and were teleporting to the appropriate place. A kind individual had attempted this quest with just two helpers before, and died. We quickly warned her that we had only just got back and weren't up to speed, but we decided to go ahead anyway. It was a team of three conjurers, all doing the same quest, and me tagging along for fun. Only one of us was level 40, and two of us were level 32 and still rusty, so this wasn't something we figured would be easy.
Just a quick note - it still is very novel that we only find out that one of our party members doesn't speak English after chatting with them. Online translation software - which I assume they used - mixed with the in-game communication system leaves such barriers paper-thin, and the only downfall of the in-game solution is that I couldn't find anything that asked "So, where are you from?" I still don't know what language they spoke fluently. But I'd party with them again any time. :)
Every one of us was most definitely needed. I asked for confirmation of my expected course of action as the local tank (something along the lines of "I take it that I just attack the big one, yeah?") and was given the thumbs up. At least some things never change. :) I focused on this task completely and used every one of my 16 skills. I still got low on health on many an occasion and barely made a dent in the enemy, but I assured myself that this was a valuable task, keeping the main enemy off the backs of the relatively weak conjurers. The Danielle died. Having three conjurers paid off, though, and one continued their assault on the many smaller but apparently quite vicious mobs while the other raised the KO'd ally. I... carried on clicking buttons, but didn't panic. Then another died, and the recently revived Danielle raised them. They got through them, though, and suddenly the fight got much easier. I'd only taken a third of the main enemy's health, but with three mages backing me up it was over very quickly, and we all celebrated and parted ways.
We went power leveling for a while after this, having finally figured it out (basically, don't party up) and got Danielle from level 1 through to level 13 on her pugilist in roughly an hour or so. I think the game has really come far since it's release and although I'm not a master of MMO standards by any means, I'm happy to pay £6.89 per month to keep up with the world... particularly now that it's so much more social, and that parties are so easily put together. :) The people are still friendly, too, which is always a plus. I think it makes a big difference when everyone is paying for the game rather than trolling for free.
