FFXIV Closed Beta First Look

My FFXIV Closed Beta “Tell All” In Wall Of Text Form!

PLEASE NOTE: While the Press Embargo may have been lifted on FFXIV Closed Beta Phases 1 and 2, The NDA is still in full effect until Square Enix decrees otherwise. Please refrain from making NDA breaking comments below. If you have a question ask it below and I will answer it to the best of my ability! Let the text wall begin! [Editors note: all NDA breaking comments will be deleted.]

It’s no secret that I have been looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (FFXIV) for a while now. Whether it has been in comments on previous articles or on our very own forums I’ve shared with you my hope for the relaunch of Square Enix‘s MMORPG, but I’ve also shared many of your “cautious” optimism outlooks as well. Quite frankly, being a Final Fantasy “fan boy” to a degree, I felt badly burnt by the version 1.0 launch and was determined to look at Version 2.0 through both the eyes of a gamer and the eyes of a skeptic.

Could Square Enix actually pull off a revamp to this degree? Could FFXIV turn into a game that could be played AND enjoyed? After multiple weekends playing the game  I am here to tell you that many of my questions have answers now, and I am here to share them with you.

In the most recent beta weekends, we’ve had access to all 5 races in FFXIV. Each race has 2 affiliations to choose from which basically changes your appearance and heritage. While customization did not include the level of “slider” action available in some other MMORPGs, the sheer number of options available for you to choose from makes duplicate characters unlikely. Yes, choices on appearance were make from lists of preset images, but there were so many decisions to make that most gamers will find a style that suits them without feeling generic. We did have access to the full calendar for birth dates and all patron deities to choose from, but our initial class selection was limited to Archer, Lancer, or Conjurer. I chose Archer to start with (although I did play MANY other classes along the way) and opted to play most of the time with the gamepad functionality that was enabled in FFXIV closed beta phase 2. More about that later though.

As in Final Fantasy tradition, after creation we are treated to a rather lengthy cut scene on our way to Gridania. This city was our home for each beta weekend as the main story line quests stopped at level 15 since they involve travel to other cities via airship and we weren’t allowed to fly just yet. It is at this point that questions start to get answered.

Graphics and Overall Performance

Graphically the game is as impressive as it ever was. Most people thought that game looked beautiful in version 1.0 but took issue with decent performance being reserved for higher end machines. That isn’t the case in the FFXIV closed beta. The world was beautiful on multiple different setting options and ran almost flawlessly on my system and my wife’s system (which is not a gaming rig by any stretch but did OK on the previously released benchmark.) In short, if you ran the benchmark OK, you shouldn’t have to much of an issue with performance in game. The shifting of graphic power to the server side has certainly helped, and I couldn’t find and copy/pasted landscapes in my FFXIV closed beta travels.

In all honesty, the only graphical or performance glitch I ever encountered was this odd blacking out of my screen if I alt tabbed out and came back. It didn’t happen every time but coming back in and seeing my UI but nothing else usually meant a restart was in order. No complaints otherwise and I’m sure that’s something that will be addressed.

First Impressions On Gameplay And Questing

HOLY HELL I CAN JUMP! I know most of you already knew this from seeing in game video from Yoshi-P, but during the FFXIV closed beta, I really tried to test the limits of jumping to see if it was a lazy tack-on or if it actually worked. Real short version, it works like it should. Jumping over fences and the like was no issue and it felt just fine.

You also probably noticed the totally revamped UI. This was perhaps the thing I was worried about the most. While I had no doubt the hot bars would function well using a keyboard and mouse or a gamepad, I was unsure how the rest of the menus and targeting would fare. The version 1.0 menu nightmare was scary. The FFXIV closed beta played fine with a mouse and keyboard but believe it or not I actually played almost 100% of the beta with a gamepad on my PC. I literally only used the keyboard to chat.

I picked up the ENTIRE gamepad scheme in about a half hour. I mean the ENTIRE scheme (menus and all), and I wasn’t sitting there trying to learn it, I figured it all out through actual gameplay and the on screen tool tips to guide you the first time you come in contact with a new system. I am actually SHOCKED at how well this worked with a gamepad and will probably play with one at launch because of it. If I had to give you a negative on the gamepad I guess I could say that targeting takes a second to get used to but even then you have so many options for mapping that it really was never a big deal. 

Gamepad sum up: I LOVE the gamepad play but targeting can get challenging in FATE (more on those later) events when there are 30 people doing one event with 15 monsters nearby. Other than FATE I generally had no issues. I’ll be interested to see the gamepad in action in 8 man groups since I didn’t get any of that action in the FFXIV closed beta.

Questing is pretty standard. I wish I had other news for you on this front. Quests are typical “kill X” quests, “fetch this” quests and the like. The interface is much improved and adopts the time tested “!” and “?” system. Targets are not pinpointed for you, but a general area is usually displayed on your map for you. Questing felt fluid, I liked the main story line (as much of it as we could see), and I had fun but there isn’t anything earth shattering about the questing system. 

One note here, I don’t mind a quest grind so I enjoyed the system, BUT from my time in the FFXIV closed beta I can tell you that if you do not like quest grinding FFXIV probably is not the game for you. Yes there are other ways to gain experience of course but if you are looking at leveling multiple jobs on your character eventually you will break down and have to start completing levequests (basically repeatable quests that are class specific for alternate class leveling) and complete hunting, gathering, or crafting logs (random experience rewards for making certain things or killing certain targets as a certain class) if you want to level in any reasonable amount of time.

The exception to this is the Fully Active Time Event (FATE) system. Similar to events in Guild Wars 2, these events appear randomly on almost any zone map and all you have to do to join in the fun is walk into the area marked on your map. These were usually pretty fun and involved swarms of monsters, large bosses, and even a few odd tasks in the FFXIV closed beta. Yoshi-P has said that these events are triggered by many things including a zone’s population and I have to think he was telling the truth. While fun and experience heavy, I do hope they make one improvement before launch. When a FATE event popped up on your map you could hover over it and see the task at hand. I would like to see a completion percentage displayed too. Nothing sucked more than trekking across the map to a FATE to have it end just as I got there. Just a small gripe and something I can live with if they don’t add it though.

Combat, Abilities, And the Global Cooldown

If you’ve stuck with me this long you’re either a FFXIV fan like myself, or you’re still trying to decide if you are willing to give FFXIV a second chance. Here’s where some of you may drop off on me. No, the combat in the FFXIV closed beta was not “action” combat like a title such as Tera includes. Yes, at its core it is a tab targeting system. Having said that though, the combat is a LOT faster than version 1.0 and it doesn’t involve absurd menus and 3 second delays on casting. Depending on your class you may be able to move while casting abilities but true casting classes must remain still while casting spells that have a casting time on them. 

Being that I still enjoy other tab targeting games, I enjoyed the combat in the FFXIV closed beta. I am not going to hype it up as the most fun thing on the planet, but it felt good and it is the way it SHOULD have been in version 1.0. Abilities are learned as soon as you level and are automatically added to your hot bar for you but you can swap things around if you like. 

My biggest concern with combat was the Global Cooldown (GCD) going into the FFXIV closed beta. Between Alpha and Beta the GCD was reduced by 0.5 seconds and while this certainly makes combat FEEL faster, I still had doubts on if having every ability tied to the GCD can work. I wish I could say those questions are totally answered, but they aren’t. At lower levels you start to realize that simply spamming your most powerful ability over and over again is a perfectly viable option for most occasions. When running my first dungeon I did start to see that sometimes this “spam” tactic fails as you burn through TP (TacticalPoints, used for some class’s abilities) or MP too fast to keep up. I hope this trend continues otherwise every Archer will just spam Heavy Shot over and over again and other classes will follow suit. 

I hope the TP/MP burn makes this tactic less viable in even higher levels but I still have concerns that I look forward to testing at higher levels soon. I was encouraged by the fact that the first dungeon’s main boss caused my Archer to run low on TP while the boss was still at 20% health. The jury is still out on the GCD in my book, but I am at least optimistic now.

Running Dat Dungeon

While the FFXIV closed beta did not include a dungeon queue system, there is a search option for you to find other players that are looking for a party. If the other players are smart, they may add in the comments on their “Looking for Party” profile what they would like to do. If you played FFXI you’ll know what I mean when I say it is a “put your flag up” system. I found 3 people to run the first dungeon within 5 minutes but, yes, we had to walk there.

The first dungeon on the Gridania side of Eorzea is the Tam-Tara Deepcroft. In the FFXIV closed beta, and likely in the full release, you needed to be level 15 to access the dungeon and a party of 4 was required. My Archer tackled this instance with a level appropriate group with 1 tank, 2 dps, and 1 healer/dps.

The dungeon was a large circular chamber with catacomb tunnels all over the side chambers. You can see this dungeon and boss teased in the benchmark test. At this point my Archer did have 1 semi-crowd control ability (a 10 second Bind) so my role became one of binding any unexpected adds while burning the tank’s target. We made our way through multiple passages to 3 different altars. At each altar we broke an orb and this culminated in a bridge to the center of the circular chamber opening up and allowing us access to the final boss.

Along the way, we fought standard packs of trash and some mini bosses. We scavenged for treasure ( I won NOTHING…damn you /roll), had a run in with a bad pull that wiped our Conjurer, and generally had a good time. Dungeons are timed in FFXIV and we had one hour to complete this run but “speed run” bonus rewards that made pugging in version 1.0 difficult have since been removed from version 2.0.

The final boss was a tank and spank affair where at every 25% adds would appear to shield the boss and attack us. Burn the adds, back to boss, rinse and repeat. While we did down the final boss on our first try, I’ll be honest and tell you that it was a close call. As mentioned before I wanted to see if spamming one ability caused issues and it was nice to see that it did towards the end of the fight.

In the FFXIV closed beta, if you had any time left from your one hour, you were free to explore other parts of the dungeon you may have skipped earlier, we did so, grabbed a few treasures, and then got ported out when our timer expired.

I had a blast in this initial run. Yes, I know that the instance wasn’t anything new and earth shattering in the MMO world, but it was fun at least. Something that very few people said about the initial launch.

Crafting and Gathering

During my few weekends in the FFXIV closed beta so far I’ve managed to get one character leveled in Archer, Conjurer, Gladiator (ok that one was a feebie when you finished your level 10 initial class quest), Carpenter, and Botanist classes. 

Crafting is a tad on the unique side actually and as long as Yoshi-P can make crafting an important and viable part of FFXIV‘s economy, I am sure there will be linkshells (FFXIV guilds) dedicated to crafting. 

Remember, in FFXIV you can switch classes on your character simply by switching the weapon or item in their hand. Equip a saw and BOOM you’re a level one Carpenter. 

Don’t worry about bag space for all those sets of gear (at least initially). In the FFXIV closed beta we had 6 Gear Sets we could equip and switch between them on the fly. If you put a piece of gear in one of the sets it doesn’t take up bag space anymore, even if you don’t have that particular set equipped. (Nice touch Yoshi-P and team!)

Crafting follows a familiar formula but adds in a lot of tweeks. For example, as a Carpenter you have a set list of possible items you can craft at certain levels. You gather the materials needed and you click “Craft”, but that’s just where it starts. You see, your Carpenter has abilities just like a combat class would and you gain new abilities as you level. These abilities require CP (Crafting Points) that work just like TP and MP. You have to pay attention to what you’re crafting, use abilities well to help ensure success and even improve the quality of items you create, and yes…you can fail at crafting and lose materials.

Just like Disciples of War and Magic, crafting classes have their own “story” line quests every 5 levels and you can use your crafting levequests and your “Logs” to gain experience for your crafting classes. 

Gathering classes are very similar to crafting classes. You have quests to gather certain items, can repeat levequests that are gathering class specific, or gather items in your gathering log for additional experience. You have certain gathering abilities (that use Gathering Points or GP) that must be used well to ensure success and it felt VERY gratifying to me to actually FAIL gathering levequests. The system didn’t feel like it was “giving” me anything and I had to participate intelligently to make sure I hit my marks.

All in all, this may have been my favorite part of the FFXIV closed beta! I actually LOVED the gathering and crafting classes I played and didn’t feel like I was leveling some random ability by spam creating. I felt engaged in both types of classes and the FFXIV closed beta had me starting to think about which order I would be leveling things come launch time.

Magicman’s Final Thoughts

I went into the FFXIV closed beta with an open mind. I found myself very pleased with certain things but then quickly reminded myself that “That really should have been there since the first launch.”

After playing for a good bit of time, if you asked me if I thought FFXIV was going to blow the doors off of the MMO world I would tell you honestly, no, it will not. BUT, the version 2.0 relaunch is shaping up to be at the very least on par with other triple A MMO titles out there. Will there be debate of “Feature A” and if some other game does it better? Of course, but at least there will be debate now where version 1.0 drew nothing but ire from most gamers. 

The other main topic of controversy is the subscription requirement. Many feel that it isn’t warranted, and I can see where they are coming from, but after getting hands on time I feel comfortable paying my monthly sub to play. The only question on my mind now is how long I’ll pay. Will the content be enough to keep me engaged for a long period of time? I certainly hope so. My time in the FFXIV closed beta leads me to think A Realm Reborn may be the Final Fantasy MMO many were hoping for years ago. 

Will it draw FFXI players away? I don’t think so. The thing with FFXIV is that I only partied to run a dungeon. The rest of my leveling for all classes was solo and my Archer was almost level 30. I think hardcore FFXI players like the party dependency and I just don’t know if FFXIV will have that at higher levels, we’ll have to wait and see.

I still have questions about FFXIV but now they are questions of how WELL something is implemented and what Yoshi-P and team can do in the future to make some current systems genre changing systems. 

So far, the FFXIV closed beta has left me wanting to play more each weekend the betas end and that’s a great mark of improvement in my book. 

If you flat out hate the game and aren’t interested in giving Square Enix a second chance, I can understand that but if you’re a fan or even a “maybe gonna try it” player I cannot urge you enough to try and get into the future FFXIV closed beta and the upcoming open beta. You’ll know in a few hours if you’re willing to pay or not. With no free trial for NEW players, it may be the only chance you get without having to pay. 

Quite simply there is SO much more I want to test out and jump into for FFXIV but I have enjoyed every minute so far. 

To Yoshi-P and team, well done so far. You’ve certainly earned at least a chance in my book. It isn’t all roses though, there’s still work to be done and questions to answer. You 100% have my subscription at launch, but with other AAA titles on the horizon, what do you plan to do to KEEP my sub? While FFXIV is fun, it isn’t groundbreaking (yet) so I certainly look forward to seeing what the future has in store, even if it is still shrouded in a little bit of mystery.

If you have questions feel free to post them below and I will answer them if I can and enjoy this gallery of images you may not have seen yet!

 

 

TL:DR – Nothing groundbreaking yet, but certainly fun and worth a look by even the most jaded FFXIV player. Brings FFXIV at least on par with most MMOs out now. A bit of everything Final Fantasy fans want to see, but maybe lacking a bit on the “party” side of business…we shall see.

 

 

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