Raids! All... two of them...

[Lionx]

Well you see, the issue of areas being 'boxed' off is not as appealing anymore. It takes away some of the realism and appeal of the game. It only makes it feel more artificial than anything. An example would be the forests of Gridania. I was like whoaaa it looks huge! Then i look at my map and went =/. So artificially limited. Even WoW sometimes felt that way with their areas, but at least the area you are in, you don't feel that limited.

MMOs are gravitating towards more single player type action mechanics while still maintaining the MMO feel. Having a slow auto attack, or basically anything not as fast or active is usually not in people's interests.

[Miriel]

The voice acting preference is possibly down to your Korean roots and the voice acting being Korean - I imagine that's a rather natural thing - I know that if I ever heard an NZ'er or non-exaggerated Scottish accent in an MMO, I'd probably think it was pretty cool. xD I haven't heard it but I'm going to guess that I wouldn't understand it so I don't know if it's good or not. D= Personally, I'm kind of in two ways when it comes to voice acting in MMOs. It would be okay if you could still skip what they're saying and move on to the next sentence, kind of like it is in some single player RPGs I've played in the past. I hate being forced to wait for people to say their bit. The problem with voice acting in FFXIV is that the few parts that are done are done exclusively in English, even for the Japanese. It's an odd thing.

It's nice to hear the Korean, but I was more referring to the quality of it. The voice acting sounds like how regular actors sound in Korean tv shows and movies. Whereas a lot of dialogue for other video games some times sound like actors who can't get any other work. Blade and Soul cut scene dialogue: ‪Blade & Soul - Closed Beta Video Gameplay 2/3‬‏ - YouTube

The FFXIV voice acting here is just, yikes. So bad! ‪Final Fantasy XIV - Gridania Introduction‬‏ - YouTube

Edit: Here check this out - ‪HD Test and Blade & Soul Game Preview‬‏ - YouTube

Oh my god, are the characters eating raman towards the end of that video? xD Can characters actually EAT in the game? That would be so awesome!

[Lionx]

Thats because Asian voice actors take it more seriously than those in the US.

[Rostum]

So how is the new patch? I'm just starting a podcast from FFXIV Core to see what they think.

[Loony BoB]

I can't say much about the raids/dungeons, as I've not done any of them yet. I have one for a story quest, though, so hopefully it won't be long. I have, however, been doing solo, duo and "light party" (minimum 4 players) fighting, and have done a number of the new quests. My thoughts are...

- Battles are far, far better. The new system works extremely well. I find myself using actions so fast that often the previous action's animation cuts out to start the new action. Hate-management is something that Danielle and I have picked up on quickly and although we still need to practice certain things, it's much easier than it ever was before and yet obviously other people we've partied with have had no clue whatsoever regarding it and ended up dying. When partying with around 3-4 people, tactics are a must. I understand it's not so much the case for parties of 8 players, but that's hear-say and I imagine they still at least try to make things work nicely rather than simply spamming attacks.

- I really like the number of quests that are steadily piling up. The big problem with them is that they aren't repeatable, though, and this is a concern of mine that I hope is eventually addressed. They don't need to make them all repeatable, but some of them should be. Oh well, either way - the quests are still great, there are cutscenes and whatnot in a few of them too (not FMVs, but at least storyline). The Grand Company quests are good so far.

- I miss level sync. Danielle parties more often than I do and is therefore a higher level with her main class (Conjurer) while both of my two main fighters are rank 26, the same as her secondary class. I want to level with her conjurer backing me up, but the higher the level difference, the less sp bonus you get. I only voice this concern because it will become a gamebreaker for me if it is not addressed. If eventually Danielle and I can not effectively party together then I will find myself in a position where I simply have no desire to continue playing - almost all my time is spent partying with Danielle and I don't want to have to commit to further leveling on my own just to catch up. I have other things to do in my life, shockingly, so I don't want to have to spend every living moment I have available playing this game.

- Some people have complained about the higher MP cost, but we've had little downtime when battling. Some mages obviously haven't mastered the art of syphoning MP every 30 seconds, nor caught on to the idea that when doing leves, every time you restart leves you get your MP regenerated and, perhaps more importantly (considering the 10 minute recharge on a MP regenerating action they have) all recharge timers are set to ready for cast/action. Perhaps when grinding you could run out, but other than that mages should be able to manage their MP well enough. Danielle only struggles when things get out of hand, ie we fight something above what we should really be fighting. Which admittedly we did a lot of last night. xD

- The new repair system is a godsend. The durability penalty on return, however, is possibly too much. I have to repair far more often than I ever had to before (admittedly, again, due to fighting things of too high a level last night and subsequently dying four or five times). I think a reasonable solution to this would be to slow the overall degradation of repairable items so it's a little more balanced. And for me to not get so cocky with the difficulty levels. But being able to repair every item I wear, and almost every item other people wear (note: people need to stop wearing things so far above their level, it's no wonder they have a constant need for repairs as they degrade fast and have worse benefits until you actually reach the reccommended level for the gear)... that's fantastic. I hated having to carry so many repair items on me beforehand, not to mention the need for really obscure items. Now I carry four different items and in retrospect could have got away with carrying two or three different items, given that hardly anyone wants a grade 1 item repaired and that I'm not a high enough level to do a grade 4 item.

My experiences have been exaggerated by the fact that we've found an extremely talkative linkshell that is often on at the time we are. We aren't part of their linkshell and many of their members are not quite up to speed on what should and should not be done in battle while others were very clueless about how to do anything at all... but overall, they're great for the social side and that's very important to me. There are a few really good fighters in there, too, and most of the others are very willing to learn. We've partied with about five of them over the various days recently and they all know us now. I'd invite a few of them to our LS (but not all of them... as said, some just don't understand what is good for battling and what isn't eg. "buffs are for wusses" and charging into battle and getting us killed etc.) but they're all very close so I don't think it's worthwhile. But we don't need them in our LS, we just chat to them anyway by partying up. xD I'm almost certain we'll end up in the same 'private company' together at this rate, though. Whenever private companies are implemented.

Finally, as for the feedback in the official forums, for once the "thanks" and "I like this stuff!" are outweighing the "this is horrible!" stuff. There have been various polls and it always ends up favouring the positive viewpoint now, so that's great. Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done but they have definitely made a step in the right direction. Despite this, the changes are polarising views perhaps more now than ever, but I think that was needed. There was too much of trying to please everyone and it was never going to be a successful model that way - they need to latch on to the majority viewpoint and stick with it rather than wavering all the time. Sadly, the last letter from the producer showed signs of wavering, but hopefully they won't last and we'll still see the game continue making progress.

[Mirage]

Where are you playing again?

[Loony BoB]

We play on Lindblum, and at the moment we fight mostly around Ul'dah (particularly Nanawa Mines) but with the recent patch forcing you to get guild marks from the cities that guilds are based in, we've branched out more.

[Mirage]

How much help would i get if i remade my character there?

[Loony BoB]

*shrugs* Depends when you're online first and foremost, I imagine! But if we can help, we help. We do repairs on the cheap compared to most people and we grind/party whenever we feel like it obviously. And we're happy to make stuff for people if we can do so - of course, if it's expensive stuff then we might ask for something to cover the money spent, but really it shouldn't be that much, everyone in the game has more money than they need at the moment due to the lack of gil sinks (which will kick in for patch 1.19 in the shape of airships and chocobo rental).

Danielle will be away for a week come Monday, so I'll probably be doing more crafting than anything at that point, but otherwise the game is keeping us occupied until close to that time and will probably be played for a lot after that, too, as we both have a couple of weeks off work and nothing planned.

So long as you're able to socialise and can stand our stupidity (which I assure you, comes out often ) then yeah, you'll get all the help you need. It doesn't hurt that Lindblum is one of the more active servers out there, so even when we're not around you should hopefully find someone out there who will party up with you.

[Mirage]

There goes my 4th character slot~

[Loony BoB]

You have four characters? O_o Why? Do you pay for any of them?

[Mirage]

Not yet, probably will have to when the unlimited trial is over.

I have characters on three different servers, and one remade on my first because i liked the character i made on teh second server better, so i made another one just like my second to play on my first server.

[Rostum]

You make it sound decent BoBsicle. I think for now I might hold off though, just because I could use less distractions and it'll give time to see how the next major patch turns out.

[Del Murder]

What was the main change to the battle system?

[Mirage]

auto attack, so you can actually type stuff to other players while fighting