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[Jinko]

Thats lvl 20 gear, not really end game.

What notworksafe said, was what 9 months between the expansion and ICC. ?

edit my mistake 11 months.

 

[Kagari]

http://www.gamestop.com/thedeal

GameStop is offering free overnight shipping for any version (PS3, PC, PC LE). Today only.

 

[Kandinsky]

I'm just hoping the PC version is successful and sells alot in every region, so SE can just cancel the PS3 one, that or they could just keep PS3 users away from us with superior hardware, that way we wont have an unfair advantage over them (plugins, addons, etc), A man can dream, can’t he? D:

FFXI still hurts.

 

[notworksafe]

A man can dream, can’t he? D:

Sorry, dreams are against ToS.

Spoiler

PS3 limitations

 

[Ravidrath]

BTW, probably going to be joining GAF in XIV... although we need to get some server coordination going.

I know some people from Famitsu that I met at E3 that it'd be cool to be on the same server with again, so maybe we can figure out where they're going and pick based on that? Can probably get into some screenshots in Famitsu, that way!

 

[Diablohead]

I could never get into the original online game, bought it when it came out with the expansions included sometime in 2005? gave it a few months with new characters and even tried the 360 beta which game with the xbox 360 mag back in 2006 but I was just unable to be hooked.

Any idea if single playing is a little easier? not asking for a whole team nerf or anything but have they made it less of a brick wall for solo players when they are unable to team up?

I will try out the benchmark for sure, my old pc ran the old game at around 30fps, 1024x768 with most settings up to look nice, will be nice to see how my current year old budget pc rig will handle this.

 

[Ikkarus]

Spoiler

Jk, thats the level 20(cap) mage gear from the alpha

I was hoping not to be a mage this time around but after seeing numerous pictures of them around the web I find myself yet again wanting to be one!

 

[Teknoman]

BTW, probably going to be joining GAF in XIV... although we need to get some server coordination going.

I know some people from Famitsu that I met at E3 that it'd be cool to be on the same server with again, so maybe we can figure out where they're going and pick based on that? Can probably get into some screenshots in Famitsu, that way!

No complaints here. Of course, one key thing about doing anything GAF centric is to also recruit other non-gaf. Lots of GAF groups have suffered the loss of most of their members due to that "omg new game" feeling wearing off and people moving on to the next big thing.

 

[Forbiden]

I could never get into the original online game, bought it when it came out with the expansions included sometime in 2005? gave it a few months with new characters and even tried the 360 beta which game with the xbox 360 mag back in 2006 but I was just unable to be hooked.

Any idea if single playing is a little easier? not asking for a whole team nerf or anything but have they made it less of a brick wall for solo players when they are unable to team up?

I will try out the benchmark for sure, my old pc ran the old game at around 30fps, 1024x768 with most settings up to look nice, will be nice to see how my current year old budget pc rig will handle this.

I believe they said that they were making the game more accessible to where single players could get stuff done without the absolute necessity of a party.

 

[Teknoman]

I could never get into the original online game, bought it when it came out with the expansions included sometime in 2005? gave it a few months with new characters and even tried the 360 beta which game with the xbox 360 mag back in 2006 but I was just unable to be hooked.

Any idea if single playing is a little easier? not asking for a whole team nerf or anything but have they made it less of a brick wall for solo players when they are unable to team up?

I will try out the benchmark for sure, my old pc ran the old game at around 30fps, 1024x768 with most settings up to look nice, will be nice to see how my current year old budget pc rig will handle this.

Yes (see Guildleves system). Faster battle system too.

 

[notworksafe]

BTW, probably going to be joining GAF in XIV... although we need to get some server coordination going.

I know some people from Famitsu that I met at E3 that it'd be cool to be on the same server with again, so maybe we can figure out where they're going and pick based on that? Can probably get into some screenshots in Famitsu, that way!

If the server names stay the same, I say we go with Kefka! Best FF boss ever! There's only seven world servers at the moment though. I'm sure SQE will add more before launch.

Shadowlord
Exdeath
Kefka
Sephiroth
Ultimecia
Jecht
Gabranth

 

[HappyBivouac]

Does anyone know if Amazon bills right when you order or when the game ships?

Want to get my pre-order in but I'm broke right now ;(

:lol I'm in the same boat. I was assuming it was bill on pre-order. Glad you asked.

 

[theMrCravens]

Any idea if single playing is a little easier? not asking for a whole team nerf or anything but have they made it less of a brick wall for solo players when they are unable to team up?

This is impossible to predict, with the alpha cap and all.

For all you know, the retail game might start out easy, but the last 1/3 could be hell to level solo.

Even beta testers won't be able to properly judge the endgame.

 

[Diablohead]

Yes (see Guildleves system). Faster battle system too.

Good to see they are thinking about solo players a bit, I can understand if endgame is party based as it should be in an mmo, but in my mmo gaming life there have been plenty of times where I had to play solo because no friends were around or the guild I was in were busy in other things.

Just updating my nvidia drivers for the benchmark, realised I was about 8 months out of date!

 

[Kintaro]

What notworksafe said, was what 9 months between the expansion and ICC. ?

edit my mistake 11 months.

11 months from release to end. You fight the Lich King and also did many things that advanced the story/lore in WoW (Ulduar, Wrathgate, and more). In case you forgot, Wings of the Goddess came out in November of 2007. No end to the story yet. They got people to pay for shitty mini-expansions that didn't add to the world though, so good on them.

I never claimed Blizzard gives it to you in one shot, but comparing the amount of content available to players at the launch of each game's respective expansions? It's not even remotely close.

 

[Nakazato]

If the server names stay the same, I say we go with KUJA ! Best FF boss ever! There's only seven world servers at the moment though. I'm sure SQE will add more before launch.

Shadowlord
Exdeath
Kefka
Sephiroth
Ultimecia
Jecht
Gabranth

fixed :lol .as long as i can get my pc up to speed in the next month ill be there day one with you guys

 

[NarcissisticJay]

Read this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3795/mobile-buyers-guide-notebooks-dtrs

Posted about half a dozen times in FF threads in the last 12 hours!




Nothing, you'll actually go backwards in some games. 5870/GTX 470 is the minimum level you should be looking at but you're fine for FF even without the upgrade.

Brain Stew!

Build me a rig that will run this maxed @ 2560x1600.

Already have an idea of what I'm going with, but I'd like to hear your opinion

Basically an i920, 6gb and 2 gtx 470 .. Or possibly 2 unlocked 465s

 

[Salaadin]

Have they announced how servers will be picked again? Can we choose our own? World passes?

 

[Kagari]

I'm just hoping the PC version is successful and sells alot in every region, so SE can just cancel the PS3 one, that or they could just keep PS3 users away from us with superior hardware, that way we wont have an unfair advantage over them (plugins, addons, etc), A man can dream, can’t he? D:

FFXI still hurts.

Because more users in a MMO is a bad thing... right.

It's probably not going to matter as it is for PC users since PS3 patching, addons, whatever will likely be similar.
It helps that PC is the lead platform this time with the PS3 limited to a native 720p resolution. You can keep crying about it all you want, but they probably won't cancel it, especially when the current PC specs are hardly mass market and certain regions will definitely skew more towards the console version (Japan).

 

[Jinko]

11 months from release to end. You fight the Lich King and also did many things that advanced the story/lore in WoW (Ulduar, Wrathgate, and more). In case you forgot, Wings of the Goddess came out in November of 2007. No end to the story yet. They got people to pay for shitty mini-expansions that didn't add to the world though, so good on them.

I never claimed Blizzard gives it to you in one shot, but comparing the amount of content available to players at the launch of each game's respective expansions? It's not even remotely close.

Why are you even arguing with me, I already said WotG was a shit expansion, what more do you want ?

The other FF11 expansion were fine in my opinion yes you had to wait sometimes if you rushed through the content, but you would have to do that in any game, or log on every night and continue the same raid you had done 40 times before.

FWIW doing ToC10/25 ever week for countless weeks burnt me out and I quit WoW just before ICC came out, IMO blizzard took too long to release ICC.
....

They won't cancel the PS3 version, but having them on a seperate server's wouldn't be such a bad thing.

 

[Edeuinu]

I remember not being able to afford a world pass for my friends when I first got 11. I'd def like some GAF on the same server stuff going on, just hope it's not that much of a pain and don't want to spend the whole night waiting for passes to be given out and such.

 

[Nakazato]

I remember not being able to afford a world pass for my friends when I first got 11. I'd def like some GAF on the same server stuff going on, just hope it's not that much of a pain and don't want to spend the whole night waiting for passes to be given out and such.

yea that would be horrible.

 

[BMX Bandit]

I remember not being able to afford a world pass for my friends when I first got 11.

Ha, yeah. My friend had to figure out how to make enough money to get one of us on his server and then two of us had to make enough for the third. Horrible way to handle server load :/.

 

[Salaadin]

How is it handled in games like EQ or WOW?

 

[Nakazato]

How is it handled in games like EQ or WOW?

in wow you can just click on the serve you want to be on. That started happening on FFXI after 4 or 5 years of being out :\

 

[Kyoufu]

Paying for extra characters is the most retarded decision S-E has made. There wasn't much point to making a 2nd character in FFXI but still, why should we pay just to have a bank mule or a different race character? Makes no sense.

 

[Forbiden]

Why are you even arguing with me, I already said WotG was a shit expansion, what more do you want ?

I remember people that still play FFXI who I talk to saying WotG had the potential to be way better than CoP(which just happens to be my favorite FFXI expansion), what happened there?

 

[Kyoufu]

I remember people that still play FFXI who I talk to saying WotG had the potential to be way better than CoP(which just happens to be my favorite FFXI expansion), what happened there?

CoP was the worst FFXI expansion and definitely the contributing factor in killing FFXI endgame.

RoZ remains the best expansion. This isn't even up for debate!

 

[Ravidrath]

No complaints here. Of course, one key thing about doing anything GAF centric is to also recruit other non-gaf. Lots of GAF groups have suffered the loss of most of their members due to that "omg new game" feeling wearing off and people moving on to the next big thing.

Yeah, I think I'll bring some people from Valefor with me, most likely... we'll see.

Basically, we used to have a pretty abusive LS leader, and he's saying he's coming back for XIV. I don't even want to be on the same server he is, so I'll be going my own way with a handful of like-minded people. Some of them are also the best and nicest players in the LS, too, fortunately!

 

[Kintaro]

Why are you even arguing with me, I already said WotG was a shit expansion, what more do you want ?

Actually was meant for the only guy. Sorry.

CoP suffered as well btw. There were several updates which added like, two missions tops. One of which being a cutscene (for example, they stuck you right before the Pot fight in CoP for months).

Here's to hoping SE learns. MMO market is much more competitive now than before.

 

[careksims]

I remember not being able to afford a world pass for my friends when I first got 11. I'd def like some GAF on the same server stuff going on, just hope it's not that much of a pain and don't want to spend the whole night waiting for passes to be given out and such.

Lol! Yes I remember that when it launched. I do hope we can pick out our servers... ah! Who am I kidding. We'll be waiting in long lines when this launches. I like to play on which server, GAF, chooses.

 

[Jinko]

CoP was the worst FFXI expansion and definitely the contributing factor in killing FFXI endgame.

RoZ remains the best expansion. This isn't even up for debate!

I didn't think RoZ was paticularly special, and considering it came as part of the main game (in NA/EU) didn't have the impact it could have if it were released afterward (like in Japan)

CoP had a kick ass storyline.

 

[Einbroch]

Yeah, I think I'll bring some people from Valefor with me, most likely... we'll see.

Basically, we used to have a pretty abusive LS leader, and he's saying he's coming back for XIV. I don't even want to be on the same server he is, so I'll be going my own way with a handful of like-minded people. Some of them are also the best and nicest players in the LS, too, fortunately!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb8t2n0jItc

 

[Edeuinu]

There's that little trick in 11 when you make a char and it picks your server, if you don't finalize it you won't lose the name, so you just have to keep making your char until it picks the server you want.

 

[Forbiden]

CoP had a kick ass storyline.

.

 

[Salaadin]

CoP had a kick ass storyline.

It had the most memorable fights as well. Who doesnt remember Snoll, U/O, The Pots, Promathia.

I couldnt even tell you the names of the other expansions major battles except for maybe Alexandar and that Mamool riding a dinosaur. :lol

 

[brain_stew]

I'm so stoked for the September 22nd release date of this, but I'm gonna have to do some upgrades on my PC I built in 2008 before then. Out of the following components is there any one thing I could upgrade that would make a big difference? Or should I be looking at new everything?

EVGA Nforce 750I SLI FTW LGA775 ATX DDR2 2PCI-E16 1PCI-E1 2PCI SATA RAID Sound GBLAN Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core Processor LGA775 3.0GHZ Wolfdale 1333FSB 6MB Retail

EVGA E-GEFORCE 9800GTX Superclocked 700MHZ 512MB 2.2GHZ GDDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI-I HDTV Out Video Card

OCZ XTC Platinum Edition PC2-8500 DDR2 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-18 Dual Channel EPP Memory Kit

That rig will run it just fine.

@centracore I would suggest going quad core and getting a newer GPU.

Try the benchmark, you should be aiming for around 3500-4000 for a decent experience at the respective settings.

That's such BS though. A score of ~4000 means pretty much a constant 60fps without any drops, that's hardy necessary for an RPG. Anything above 2000 and you're looking A-OK in my book.

By that logic the PS3 version is going to be a completely unplayable mess. I was averaging around 40-50fps for the majority of the 1080p benchmark and only came in with a score of ~2200, so the sort of performance you're going to get out of the PS3 version will be around 1500 for the low benchmark at best and yet there'll be millions playing and enjoying that version.

 

[Azrael]

Because more users in a MMO is a bad thing... right.

It's probably not going to matter as it is for PC users since PS3 patching, addons, whatever will likely be similar.
It helps that PC is the lead platform this time with the PS3 limited to a native 720p resolution. You can keep crying about it all you want, but they probably won't cancel it, especially when the current PC specs are hardly mass market and certain regions will definitely skew more towards the console version (Japan).

Reading the post history of Kandinsky and Valru, it's really not worth arguing with them. It has nothing to do with making the game better and everything to do with Sony Derangement Syndrome.

 

[Ravidrath]

Not trying to defend some of the things they've done in the past, but their dev team is also MUCH smaller than WoW's.

Furthermore, while there were definitely some bad updates, I think meting out small amounts of new content is smart for 99% of players, especially at the start of a new game. People in these games often times have a particularly corrosive kind of OCD, where they feel they are "getting behind," and I think smaller updates help out with that a bit because it gives everyone a chance to "catch up."

This last FFXI update was (and still is) COMPLETELY overwhelming - too many new things to do, not to mention all the leveling. I didn't get to do 1/10th of the VNMs I wanted to do from the last update, we've barely scratched the surface of the first Abyssea, and there are still 7 more zones being added in the next 6 months. Then there's Magians, etc... completely overwhelming.

The main thing I hope we can do in XIV is multitask, and it seems like this is possible. XI is far too focused on monotasking, and it makes the "so much to do" problem feel even worse.

 

[Kintaro]

CoP was the worst FFXI expansion and definitely the contributing factor in killing FFXI endgame.

RoZ remains the best expansion. This isn't even up for debate!

Truth. CoP was a garbled mess with an epic final boss while WotG is...man, I don't know what it is. :lol

Not trying to defend some of the things they've done in the past, but their dev team is also MUCH smaller than WoW's.

Furthermore, while there were definitely some bad updates, I think meting out small amounts of new content is smart for 99% of players, especially at the start of a new game. People in these games often times have a particularly corrosive kind of OCD, where they feel they are "getting behind," and I think smaller updates help out with that a bit because it gives everyone a chance to "catch up."

This last FFXI update was (and still is) COMPLETELY overwhelming - too many new things to do, not to mention all the leveling. I didn't get to do 1/10th of the VNMs I wanted to do from the last update, we've barely scratched the surface of the first Abyssea, and there are still 7 more zones being added in the next 6 months. Then there's Magians, etc... completely overwhelming.

The main thing I hope we can do in XIV is multitask, and it seems like this is possible. XI is far too focused on monotasking, and it makes the "so much to do" problem feel even worse.

I can understand all this. The dev team is definitely smaller. There is also nothing wrong with smaller updates. However, the overwhelming feeling is because of how the team designed their content. Tiered content created that feeling of being overwhelming. For example, the VNMs. That's just an evolution from stuff they did all the way back in Sky. Kill a mob to get an item to spawn another mob and hope it drops what you want. Use that drop to kill another bigger mob. Etc. VNM is kill a mob and hope your key item turns a certain color so you can kill the mob you're aiming for and hope it drops....etc and so on.

The limitations and designs of this type of content is what creates the feeling of being overwhelmed. Dynamis, Limbus, Nyzul, ZNM, ANNMs, VNMs, so on and so forth. That's what creates that feeling. If you miss out on one or two steps, you're weeks (if not months) behind a group.

 

[gillty]

Reading the post history of Kandinsky and Valru, it's really not worth arguing with them. It has nothing to do with making the game better and everything to do with Sony Derangement Syndrome.

Spoiler

PS3 limitations

 

[Jinko]

That rig will run it just fine.




That's such BS though. A score of ~4000 means pretty much a constant 60fps without any drops, that's hardy necessary for an RPG. Anything above 2000 and you're looking A-OK in my book.

So you are comparing a couple of cutscene with no game code running in the background to a realtime situation in a built up town with 50-100 players running around :S

I have a Q6600 and a 4870 and it stutters like crazy in some area's of the alpha.

It's already been said on several forums that the benchmark is pretty meaningless at the moment anyway, we should prob wait for Version 2.

By that logic the PS3 version is going to be a completely unplayable mess.

Perhaps it is, they didn't delay it for nothing.

 

[Salaadin]

I have a Q6600 and a 4870 and it stutters like crazy in some area's of the alpha..

Im hoping they straigthen it out. I got a 3ksomething score from the benchmark but Im having doubts on how good that really is.

 

[brain_stew]

So you are comparing a couple of cutscene with no game code running in the background to a realtime situation in a built up town with 50-100 players running around :S

I have a Q6600 and a 4870 and it stutters like crazy in some area's of the alpha.

It's already been said on several forums that the benchmark is pretty meaningless at the moment anyway, we should prob wait for Version 2.



Perhaps it is, they didn't delay it for nothing.

I don't see why performance in the alpha is relevant, really.

The amount of "AI." in a scene isn't going to affect performance worth a damn in a GPU bottlenecked situation. There were some seriously GPU hurting scenes in that benchmark with dozens of characters and an insane amount of particles effects, so no I don't believe an "average" scenario is going to put a load more stress on the GPU, actually quite the opposite is more likely to be true.

This thing has to run on the PS3 at the end of the day, worrying that its not going to be playable on hardware nearly an order of magnitude faster is a little silly imo.

 

[Ravidrath]

The limitations and designs of this type of content is what creates the feeling of being overwhelmed. Dynamis, Limbus, Nyzul, ZNM, ANNMs, VNMs, so on and so forth. That's what creates that feeling. If you miss out on one or two steps, you're weeks (if not months) behind a group.

Nah, I don't think that's it at all. All of those are group activities, so you don't need to have your own key item or anything to participate, so there is no "getting behind." Maybe if you have a dick LS with DKP or something? But I've never felt that missing anything other than, say, Einherjar has ever left me at a disadvantage... and then hey changed that system to actually be doable by an LS.

Part of the problem is the forever-lateral gear upgrading, which I think XIV has addressed by not having mid-battle gear-swapping. Your gear will constantly need to improve on the whole, not just in pieces for seconds at a time. That should mean that old content can be phased out or ignored, rather than added to your to-do list for all of eternity.


Performance question... anyone have something with the nVidia 330M GPU and know how that performs? Or just have a general sense if it should be able to run the game reasonably well?

 

[Jinko]

Low (720p) the bottleneck is the CPU, high(1080p) the bottleneck is the GPU. (no surprise there)

Lets not forget this benchmark has been rushed out the door, there is no support for crossfire or SLI.

Yes comparing the alpha to the benchmark to the beta is all meaningless.

It all really depends on the individual though, personally I can't stand slow down or lag so I will be aiming for a system that runs the game as smoothly as possible.

Yes you can make do with a score of 2000 but in large battles (similar to dynamis) you are guna soon realise that your pc specs aren't enough, god forbid they have campaign.

PS3 is completely different it is a closed system and they can tweak the code and assets to maximize the optimisation process.

 

[Teknoman]

I just hope they actually make exploration as well as fighting on the move in the overworld and dungeons worthwhile. Sucks that you should sneak/invis through a dungeon in XI rather than fighting your way through, finding interesting treasure along the way.

Also more random treasure chests and decent standard items from normal enemies please. For some reason Uematsu's presence makes me think XIV will have more elements from standard FF games than XI did.

EDIT: I dont think they delayed the PS3 version due to issues. After all, wasnt it said that XIV would focus on the PC more than anything?

 

[brain_stew]

Low (720p) the bottleneck is the CPU, high(1080p) the bottleneck is the GPU. (no surprise there)

Lets not forget this benchmark has been rushed out the door, there is no support for crossfire or SLI.

Yes comparing the alpha to the benchmark to the beta is all meaningless.

It all really depends on the individual though, personally I can't stand slow down or lag so I will be aiming for a system that runs the game as smoothly as possible.

Yes you can make do with a score of 2000 but in large battles (similar to dynamis) you are guna soon realise that your pc specs aren't enough, god forbid they have campaign.

PS3 is completely different it is a closed system and they can tweak the code and assets to maximize the optimisation process.

No amount of optimisation is going to get the RSX to perform significantly faster than a GTX 260 and that is what you're actually suggesting, its completely ridiculous. Never has, never will.

Even with the best optimisation in the world the PS3 version is still going to perform significantly worse than a system with a 8800GT, just like every single other multiplatform game out there on the market. What you're suggesting is that the PS3 version is going to have to run in the single digits for a significant portion of the time, and I'm sorry I'm just not buying the possibility of that. Why exactly do you believe this game is going to be significantly more demanding than every single other PC title out there despite the fact its held back by the PS3 version?

Again, everything I'm seeing is suggesting that this isn't going to be some super CPU crushing monster like you seem to be suggesting, so it follows then that cutscenes that push the graphics side of things as far as possible (like the benchmark) are actually a pretty decent judge of performance at its lowest.

 

[Kandinsky]

You can keep crying about it all you want

Cool, thanks!

 

[Azrael]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10440897&PID=3332167&SID=

Would this be a good budget laptop to run the game, or is the extra ~$300 to get a system with the HD 5850 worth it?

I know a desktop would get me the most bang for my buck but my PC gets heavy use in the evenings and it's not a practical option for me.