Final Fantasy XIV Alpha vs Beta: “We Made It Faster!”

Slower speeds.
Slower progress.
Customer base plays longer to achieve goals.

Customer pays you money for longer?

hmm good to see this game is progressing well maybe square could u know? finished versus xiii and the 3rd birthday so that that we can get agito xiii and dragon quest X on the way. not to mention they also said the fabula nova crystallis isn't exclusive to the ps3,psp, and 360 so there's a chance for a wii game right?

So level 1-10 on any other MMO is more exciting than that? give me a break. of course it looks stupid and boring it's the very basics of the combat system! besides, most of this game will be played in groups or at least pairs. chill out. and if you don't like it, don't play it.

well i hope this time SE desapear the HNMs, the reason it was very boring wait for hours for the claim, and the community is a shit, always guildmaster and officer win everything, the member was only tools
ffxi sucks for community, hnm, racist with outher class (when people prefer invite ninja because they are lazy to heal), for hnmls you need fucking 5 class high lvl is ridiculous

Hmm...

They did improve the lighting and texture effects. BUT- Note they started from inside a city, what looked like it might be an official building.

Now, let's say it's the "Office" you work at daily, or the saloon, etc. Which lighting set would you use; a - the more realistic set or b - the "Kafka nightmare" set?

The battles, though, just pure laugh city. FPS shooter should mean FPS freedom. I frankly don't like that you go through a Final Fantasy map and then randomly the screen blurs and you fight monsters. If the computer allows a giant, many miles wide area to walk around in, then just have monsters roaming about normally.

Likewise, ditch the "Turn" thing where you each stand their waiting to smack each other. There's plenty of ways to chain attacks into a controller with all the button options now.

awesome.. now you're finally on par with FFXIII...

I'm not kidding my eyes just shut while watching the video. I am disappoint.

The whole combat system just breaks any sense of immersion you might have developed by seeing the game world. Things would be better off if they made it like Phantasy Star Online's combat system. Instead of trying to over complicate everything with some stupid futuristic HUD combat system where stabbing a rat takes as much effort as writing an essay on religion.

But no.. it's called Final Fantasy. Gotta have some sort of pseudo tactical combat system that makes you feel like a genius when you learn how to kill something.

~Ganthir (first post on Sankakucomplex ever. Not like anyone would care)

I feel like im taking crazy pills here. THIS IS THE SAME PIECE OF SHIT GAME THAT FF11 WAS!!

Looks like you can do more things in a shorter amount of time, yeah.

Solo-play seems as slow as any other MMORPG, but I guess they have to do that to encourage group play--if you could do everything by yourself in a timely manner, you wouldn't team up, right?

looks much better but battles still look long for non-factor enemies.

horrible battle music

The graphics are amazing, especially for an MMO.

I think I'll enjoy this one, despite the hate articles.

They should just leave it to the koreans..

Could've been good, I guess, but meh. Gonna stick with EVE.

Looks alright to me. I agree the alpha version looked way too slow to be any fun, but it seems much better now. It's still a slow paced system, but there's nothing wrong with that. I can see myself enjoying it now as long as the strategy is strong enough.

It doesn't all have to be lightning fast action like FFXIII or real time stuff. I'm happy enough with what I see there.

OK maybe the combat's faster but it still doesn't look interesting.

Looks like WoW with different theme....

fuck this shit, i'm going back to world of warcraft

The best thing this game could hope to be is another bad WOW clone. Unless they take a new approach like Bioware's doing with Star Wars then these guys are going to stay as dead as their hope with hope.

Why is it that I'm more attracted to the beta version graphic-wise?

What a slow and boring game. The guy fights for over 30 seconds and some jellyfish trash mob is still around 40% hp. Step it up already. The character looks like some old man who needs to catch his breath for 5 seconds every time he swings his sword.

Square-Enix is succeeding very well in attracting old people who need to look at the keyboard to find their hotkeys ("Now where is my 1 key? Oh, there it is" *slowly presses*) whenever it's their turn to attack. Yeah, we wouldn't want old folks to be stressed out while playing.

That's exactly what they did in FFXI, but a lot of people who stayed in FFXI for friends said they wouldn't play FF14 so I doubt it would work as well a second time.

The speed looks about fine now. Considering you have to wait your turn in every FF game, the time it takes between turns now is no different than most FF games. Anyone whining about the speed should play FFT and learn what slow means.

why don't they just implement real time fighting/casting instead... that'd be much more interesting than waiting for your bar to heal up when you want to swing your sword. (Monster Hunter style :D)

Delicious Miqo'te...

I do like the field depth improvements a lot, doesn't let beautiful scenery go to waste, even on a single monitor. The lighting looks better, if a bit overdone for the demo video.

Battle tempo appears to be much improved. However, it's mentioned in a few interviews that this destroys your ability to chat while in battle (or make sandwiches if you're a Monk). I like the idea of playing a more active role (compared to, say, an FFXI damage dealer) and this style of combat should cut out leechers quickly. Though, I think casual conversation is important and might be missed quite a bit.

Did this video use the ambient occlusion feature they briefly discussed?

Funny. video title reminds me of a very old and far more catastrophic real rpg ; "metamorphosis alpha"

This game seems to have improved a lot of gameplay systems over FFXI. The new battle system is so much faster than XI, it looks like a blast to play.

Also, people are forgetting that this game is going to allow more than 6 members per party. If the battle was any faster, it'd be a hectic mess which would gimp the strategic element(which FFXI actually somewhat required). It's great that they're actually taking elements from the traditional FF job/battle systems, too.

Also, did SanCon's writers get raped by SE? Why are they so anti-Final Fantasy?

Final Fantasy XI wasn't much faster than this either.

It took nowhere near 7-8 seconds to swing if you were geared and supported right. Haste gear, spell, and March(es) would almost halve that attack time.

Love how easy it is to pick out the fanboys from these comments...

But anyway, this will end up being a terrible mmo unless they redo the combat system at the very least. And tactics, in an mmo, ohh yeah~!

Player A: I'll execute skill A, after i'm done you should try to stun the rat with skill B, ok?
Player B: Alright, will do.
*Player A goes to bed*
Player B: Ok, it's 4am, and it's my turn to attack (Uses skill B). Player C you handle the next attack.
Player C: Alright.
*Mob dies after 48 hours, they all had a good night's sleep, watched some porn, few movies and rat finaly died*

FF greatness.

Not conceited but truth. Are you telling me you would rather click once and let the game do all the work, or do it hands on like most console games. E.g god of war, DMC, Ninja Gaiden, if i play a console i want that experience not a turn based system. I mean this is free flow as well, so it's not a simple turn base like final fantasy and random battles, this is like having a game slower than World of warcraft, ON a console. Sorry but I can't see how anyone can enjoy that, because this doesn't even give you a decent JRPG story since it's an mmo anyway, right now im seeing nothing going for this game.

You can chain skills in Aion, you're not dependent on a single bar filling up.

It is considerably faster than before. Also note that, because you have to input individual attacks like a traditional FF (or a game like City of Heroes), it's a lot different feel from ffxi and some other games with auto-attack. Really, if you input attacks any faster than that there'd be constant button mashing, and you would lack some ability to effectively choose your skills when playing on a controller. I think that's a good reason MMOs should require keyboards, but that's neither here nor there.

I really don't know what you're complaining about though, as aside from the mob having too much hp, it looks comparable to most other MMOs as far as combat goes, especially over the last couple of years as many have moved away from auto-attack. But then, this site's full of trolls looking for any excuse to bash ff after all, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'd feel less justified in that opinion if people gave a reason why they thought the combat was boring other than just "zzz".

Joy~ Shadows that Don't shift in the BETA while do in the ALPHA! And the exciting combat? Still there... Bet if you drop a fucking mountain on that rat - it'll still only twitch~~~~

Wat, combat is TONS faster in Beta. Renewed my excitement for this game as that was my only concern.

Well, it's not a huge improvement. I'm not in alpha/beta, so all I have to judge by is what I see in the video.

The video does illustrate a slight increase in running speed, although since the perspective/camera distance between the two versions is slightly different, it's unclear exactly how much of an improvement it is.

Having played FFXI, it looks like the enemy health still scales far too high with respect to player level, making combat still take an excessively long time. Also, time between attacks (I'm assuming the primary attack method is still auto-attack?) is quite high.

In my opinion, if I'm going to pay for a game, I expect it to be a good, fun time-sink. That said, I don't believe that fighting the same mob for 5+ minutes is what I consider fun (actually happened alot for me in FFXI). Unless the combat is sped up, I can't see getting into this, even though I liked the FFXI environment.

I don't know, doesn't seem impressive enough for my taste...

The new battle system is faster, that's for sure.

Although it won't please everybody. Either it's too fast or it's too slow or it's not engaging enough or..it just goes on and on.

You know what happens when devs listen to their fanbase too much? You get world of warcraft (free epic armor for everyone!).