After waiting over 5 years for the promised "next-gen" MMO once named Rapture. I have come to give my take on the current MMO known as Final Fantasy XIV. Now I know there are fans out there who believe that there should not be a main online FF game like XI/XIV. Honestly when it came to FFXI I would argue to my grave with people that XI deserves to be part of the main series. Sadly however Final Fantasy XIV does not. It doesn't even deserve the name of Final Fantasy.
Here are just some of my GLARING issues with this atrocity of a game:
Guild Leves which are essentially FFXIVs take on Quests are limited to 16 every 36 hours (8 battlecraft / 8 field craft). These are missions where you just go around and kill/collect items pre-determined by the leve. The rewards can be decent on occassion but there is no variety to them at all. You will repeat these same leves week after week and gain similar rewards. There is 0 backstory in any of these
Main Scenario Missions which are the back bone of the game. I believe my main city has 8 missions to do in total. EIGHT. You can usually do them every 5 to 10 levels. For a game that took over 5 years to make we get 8 missions. These missions are pretty epic for online standards story wise though.
The UI - At the launch of Final Fantasy XIV it was horendously slow. Most if not all menus had lags on them notably in the market wards areas (which I will bitch about in a minute). You figure this issue would have been sorted out in the alpha or beta but no it took at least 3 months AFTER release to mix most of the UI lag. It is noticeably better now but some areas still need work. The UI is also is not what I would call user friendly. Things are very cluttered.
Recycling - I know in the MMO world you are going to see recycled models and resources to save money. However Square-Enix decided to take that too a new extreme with FFXIV. Most of you have followed FFXIV at all know that most of all areas besides cities are mainly copy pasted terrain spinned in different directions. I am fine with that but when a zone is 10 sizes bigger than it needs to be we have a major problem. Once you step outside into Thanalan/La Noscea/The Black Shroud you have essentially seen everything there is to offer. Each of the starter zones have two land monument town structures within them (i.e. the golden bazaar) that are full of USELESS NPCs. None of these zones feel different. This is not limited to zones however. You will encounter MANY different recycled monsters and weapons.
Too much emphasis on Crafting - As stated you need crafting for everything in this game. Notorious Monsters which were added only recently only drop crafting items. Also when you craft you need to multiple craft jobs leveled just to craft an item to level your main crafting job. Hell even the christmas event needs crafting for you to take part.
Classes have 0 distinction from one another - You can play a Gladiator/Archer/Marauder one after the other and feel as if you have been playing that same class the entire time. There is no difference between any of them. In Final Fantasy XI classes had certain roles and were depended upon. It is definitely not that way this time.
The Market Wards - I could go an entire day screaming my lungs out about how god damn SUCKY this system is. I seriously do not understand how anyone at SE can even think this was a good idea. The Market Wards is obviously where one would go to sell their belongings. Square-Enix was nice enough to gives us (2) retainers that will hold and sell our stuff for us. The problem is that when your buying something you have to visit......EVERY.....SINGLE.....RETAINER....to find an item that you don't even know exists. I'm talking hundreds if not thousands here. If you do know that it exists you can't friggin find it. I have come across several max level players in level 20 gear because they simply can't find anyything close to their level. I am a level 20 Gladiator and it took me 2 hours to find a dagger that was level 19. I was looking for armor as well. I only found a dagger. The system is clunky, laggy, and quite frankly just stupid. Their is an item search feature update set for tomorrow the 21st but after reading it myself i'm not hopeful.
The Patcher System - Instead of having a server where you can download the patches directly from Square-Enix they decided to use a system that is P2P. It took me over 4 hours to download a 200MB patch on 15MB internet. The patcher will run very slow and give you poor dl speeds and it will also stop your dling process entirely SEVERAL times. This system is horrible and most people have to resort to getting their patches from torrent sites from those lucky enough to dl the entire patch.
There is NO content for beginners or people at endgame - When you log into FFXIV there may seem as if there are endless possibilities available to you. Well to put it bluntly, there isn't. Final Fantasy XIV fun is essentially grinding on monsters and crafting. You can throw in those repeated guild leve quests every 36 hours and the 8 main scenario missions every once and awhile. You also can occassion do a "behest" mission which is a guild leve on steroids. That's IT.
Those are just "some" of my complaints. I think i'm really at the point of beating a dead horse now. This may sound as if i'm a troll just coming off to vent my anger but i'm really not. I'm just frustrated that an incredible company can just bitch slap their customers in the face with something this pathetic. This game does have some incredible things such as its opening movie, music, main missions when you see them, and it's unbelieveably gorgerous graphics. However this is not anything CLOSE to a Final Fantasy main title. This is garbage to be honest.
Hopefully the development team switcheroo can help save this game but at this point the damage has been done and i'm doubtful. I keep hearing i'm sorry from SE and requesting that we give them more time. Well SE after over 5 years of waiting I can tell you i'm not giving you more time. I am unsubsubscribing and will be going back to Final Fantasy XI (the good one). I am tired of being told to wait when I have already waited so long. These are just my thoughts. If you have played XIV I would like to hear yours as well.
