4.0 the new 8.8?

[Jessweeee♪]

The learning curve is bad. It was in FFXI too. I remember struggling to figure out what to do in that game. Hell, I initially struggled to figure out how to move. xD

There's no way I could have picked it up on my own. The very first time my character spawned into FFXI, ♪TJ Gaga♪ pretended to be a little tutorial NPC and gave me a tour of the town, showing me all of the shops and auction houses and stuff like that, and even out in the field to fight. It was so much fun xD

[Ouch!]

Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIV being released in the same year have no bearing on one another. There is absolutely no significant bleed over between their staffs, so efforts made towards the game are entirely independent. I sincerely doubt money is an issue for Square Enix; they can, after all, afford to purchase a struggling developer like Eidos. They're a business, and they wouldn't put down that kind of money unless they were confident they could afford to turn a profit on such a large investment.

Issues of time for the game, as Rostum mentioned, are apparent. It's become pretty clear that the development team was pressed to release the game ahead of its schedule. That's most likely an issue of the upper management putting pressure on the team, though, and has very little to do with FFXIII's release unless possibly FFXIII's disappointing sales numbers made Square Enix's management push harder to get FFXIV out. That would make sense, I guess, since MMORPGs tend to be massive cash cows.

[Rostum]

What were the sales figures on FFXIII? I thought they were pretty damn high, but maybe it was wrong information.

[Ouch!]

I looked it up. Apparently I was wrong and it sold very well. For some reason I was thinking that initial sales were very strong but they tapered off very quickly.

[Del Murder]

Finally read the review. I feel some of the stuff is blown out of proportion. I've never played the game, but some of the things he complains about (like having to navigate menus) was in FFXI and I had no problem dealing with it. Some of it, though, is completely justified. Like going to equip an item and it pulls up your whole inventory instead of just the items you can equip in that slot. Wtf SE? Simple things like this (and hotkeys) that were already in FFXI should not be a problem. This game should never have been released when it was and SE is going to take a big hit for that.

[Depression Moon]

Issues of time for the game, as Rostum mentioned, are apparent. It's become pretty clear that the development team was pressed to release the game ahead of its schedule. That's most likely an issue of the upper management putting pressure on the team, though, and has very little to do with FFXIII's release unless possibly FFXIII's disappointing sales numbers made Square Enix's management push harder to get FFXIV out. That would make sense, I guess, since MMORPGs tend to be massive cash cows.

That's what I was saying about that minus the XIII redeem part. They had to regulate time and quality for both. If they had waited for it to come out next year, probably a good bit of that stuff would've been resolved and primarily focused on those flaws. I don't see how testers couldn't have told them about these problems. By the sound of it they seemed to rush and put this out. My game instincts have never failed.

This game should never have been released when it was and SE is going to take a big hit for that.

I can agree on that. A lot of people take reviews into consideration to help them from making the wrong choice of spending their money. If the majority of these reviews are like this, people are going to take that into consideration.

[Mirage]

Finally read the review. I feel some of the stuff is blown out of proportion. I've never played the game, but some of the things he complains about (like having to navigate menus) was in FFXI and I had no problem dealing with it. Some of it, though, is completely justified. Like going to equip an item and it pulls up your whole inventory instead of just the items you can equip in that slot. Wtf SE? Simple things like this (and hotkeys) that were already in FFXI should not be a problem. This game should never have been released when it was and SE is going to take a big hit for that.

From what I've heard and read, it seems like the retail build is more or less the same as the open beta. I was in the open beta, and it was pretty bad. I didn't find a lot of improvements in OB from the third closed beta phase either. I would never pay for anything that was as half done as what I played in the beta phase.

[Loony BoB]

I thought you'd already got the game, Mirage?

I can agree on that. A lot of people take reviews into consideration to help them from making the wrong choice of spending their money. If the majority of these reviews are like this, people are going to take that into consideration.

To be fair, of the "critic reviews" metacritic has logged, two of them also point out the faults detailed in the Gamespot review but give it twice as high a score, pointing out the immense potential and solid core gameplay - I think they were ratings of 83 and 84 compared to Gamespot's 40 (there were only three critic reviews when I last checked metacritic). Which isn't terrible, when you consider that Gamespot is a "pay for ratings" site and Square-Enix is possibly the last company that will do such a thing for an English speaking site. xD

[Old Manus]

But I love Final Fantasy XIV!

[Mirage]

I thought you'd already got the game, Mirage?

I can agree on that. A lot of people take reviews into consideration to help them from making the wrong choice of spending their money. If the majority of these reviews are like this, people are going to take that into consideration.

To be fair, of the "critic reviews" metacritic has logged, two of them also point out the faults detailed in the Gamespot review but give it twice as high a score, pointing out the immense potential and solid core gameplay - I think they were ratings of 83 and 84 compared to Gamespot's 40 (there were only three critic reviews when I last checked metacritic). Which isn't terrible, when you consider that Gamespot is a "pay for ratings" site and Square-Enix is possibly the last company that will do such a thing for an English speaking site. xD

I was turned off when I saw the distinct lack of any sort of progress in core elements of the game, going from beta 3 to open beta. Considering the current retail is barely better than open beta, I'm gonna wait. I'm not interested in paying for beta testing their prematurely released game.

I've cut them way too much slack over the years I've played FF11. If they want to hook me again with another subscribtion based time sink of a game, they will have to do better than they have done so far.

[Loony BoB]

Having actually played both beta and retail, I find that there are notable differences - particularly with mouse lag and a bit of UI lag too (although the latter still needs work, but hey, it's good regardless). As for the game itself, I never had any real problems with beta, so I guess we differ in what we enjoy. Fair enough.

[Mirage]

It is impossible that the developers did not understand that the release date was set way too early. Someone in the company smurfed up real bad by deciding to release it several months before it was done, and I intend to tell them that they were morons by not buying the game until it is closer to what I would call a finished product.

Any game that was not primarly an online game would never have gotten away with this, and I think it is a terrible practice to purposely release a game that is heavily flawed just because they can fix it "sometime later". I'm not going to support that kind of crap.

[Loony BoB]

As I said, I guess we differ in what we enjoy, because while I don't think it's a finished product (and no MMO is at release, otherwise there wouldn't be room for additional content), I feel that it's a great raw product with a couple of inconveniences when it comes to the UI. *shrugs* Even the lack of AH is becoming less of an issue lately. Danielle and I are making a significant amount of gear now. I'm making needles, pickaxes, hammers, daggers, earrings, rings, chokers, wristlets and probably could make a lot more with a couple of extra materials. She's making gloves, hats, scarves, tights, pants, boots, belts, etc. Between us, we could outfit a full linkshell for a very low cost indeed! All this and we've barely spent a penny. If there was an AH, we probably wouldn't have got as into crafting as we have.

[Rostum]

Any game that was not primarly an online game would never have gotten away with this...

Oh come on, get off your high horse. This is always the major complaint for any new MMO that's been released. Always. As an MMO, if they kept holding off the release date to fix and add things, then it'll never get released! Not to mention they would practically have little to no user feedback to help them in the process (which is absolutely needed for video game development, and MMO's have the advantage of it).

[Loony BoB]

On a sidenote, if someone is really interested in the game but don't want to buy without knowing finer details, I think the IGN in-depth review is fantastic and pretty accurate in it's addressing to flaws and strengths - and, importantly, the way it doesn't focus on either but simply tells you what you might want to know, and doesn't linger too long on it.