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Final Fantasy XIV Information Thread | PC Open Beta... yeah it's not really open.

Kintaro said:
No, I read the whole post. I commented on the part that didn't need to be said at all. But you like...

Blizzard added a voice chat feature to WoW later into the game. Most people don't like it, but it's there. Just because you can use typing for communication, doesn't mean voice chat should be left out. This will be consoles too and you can't depend on PS3 players to lug keyboards around to play this. It's shortsighting to not include voicechat in 2009.

We're merely commenting on what we see here and now. What we're presented with. Not beta. This. There is nothing wrong with that. Will it change? Sure. Should we shut up about it? No. Otherwise, lock the thread until open beta since discussion is discouraged.

Ok, well, I'll bite. So WoW didn't have voice chat to begin with and now Blizzard added a half-baked one which not many people use anyway, it automatically means every MMO that follows should have it? Do Champions Online or Aion have voice chat? You said it's shortsighted not to have it, but in fact how many MMO being released this year and forward have this as a feature? To be honest I think it is far sillier to not have a keyboard to play an MMO than to expect voice support. This isn't a shooter, for which it is essential.

I don't really think a lot of people are merely commenting at this point. Many are stating assumptions as facts or criticizing SE's approach in how to present early builds of the game. So yes, I do wonder if they have experience in game developments to speak like that. I think my question is perfectly valid.

Kintaro said:
Weird. I've had healers say the same thing.

Unrelated to the above discussion, but it's far easier to ninja-afk as a melee than as a caster. Unless you have a very good NIN tank, WHM is expected to constantly cycle between cures and regen. It's even worse as RDM and BRD. I have never had downtime when playing either job, unless we stop pulling completely. If you can't figure out whether your healer is doing his job after a couple of pulls, then...well, I don't think you're a very good player yourself.


My one concern right now is why do they feel the need for you to be able to unsheathe your weapon when not engage in combat. It's being repeated as a "feature" in the interviews/Q&A, and there are complaints that attacking is now a two-button process because of it. Or could you simply issue the "attack" command like it was in XI and your character will unsheathe then attack automatically?
 
I dont' think Voice chat is all that important actually, I played 3 year in FF11 without ever using Vent or Teamspeak.

I have used it serveral time on WoW and don't think it adds that much to raiding, players should be watching videos reading tactics etc instead of talking crap on voice chat.

If you have decent players then you shouldn't have to say much, and I sure as hell don't want to listen to 12 year olds spouting abuse over a headset.

Edit:- There is a reason why Wow has crappy voice chat and it comes down to bandwidth and server loads, if you have 11 million users and only a fraction are using voice chat thats still a lot of bandwidth.
 
Zalasta said:
Ok, well, I'll bite. So WoW didn't have voice chat to begin with and now Blizzard added a half-baked one which not many people use anyway, it automatically means every MMO that follows should have it? Do Champions Online or Aion have voice chat? You said it's shortsighted not to have it, but in fact how many MMO being released this year and forward have this as a feature? To be honest I think it is far sillier to not have a keyboard to play an MMO than to expect voice support. This isn't a shooter, for which it is essential.

You saying voice chat isn't essential in WoW? Blizzard added it way too late. At least they added it though. It would blow my mind if their next MMO did not have voice chat built in. I believe it's short sighted to not have voice chat built into Champions Online and Aion as well. The limitations are easy to get around on the PC, but this isn't just a PC only MMO now is it? The PS3 (and 360) have built in voice chat for many game and many players would enjoy having it. PS3 players will be playing this game with gamepads mainly as well and not keyboards. Pretty silly eh?

It IS shortsighted in all respects for all those games.

I don't really think a lot of people are merely commenting at this point. Many are stating assumptions as facts or criticizing SE's approach in how to present early builds of the game. So yes, I do wonder if they have experience in game developments to speak like that. I think my question is perfectly valid.

Even developers criticize the point of showing off early ass builds. *shines the Dyack signal* You roll the dice.

Unrelated to the above discussion, but it's far easier to ninja-afk as a melee than as a caster. Unless you have a very good NIN tank, WHM is expected to constantly cycle between cures and regen. It's even worse as RDM and BRD. I have never had downtime when playing either job, unless we stop pulling completely. If you can't figure out whether your healer is doing his job after a couple of pulls, then...well, I don't think you're a very good player yourself.

All of this can be spun the same way to a melee person (not using JAs when timers are up, not WS' etc). If you can't tell, you must not be a very good player yourself.
 
A lot of Japanese players don't like voice chat because they're too shy to talk in a game. Also voice chat has serious limitations in a worldwide game like this because auto-translation of text can make communication feasible across multiple languages. Not so for voice. I don't mind it being an option, but I would use text primarily even if voice chat was there. Voice chat would be too chaotic for any content with large groups.

I expect not having it will lead to platform segregation when a 360 port is released, because many 360 players will insist on using party chat for communication exclusively.
 
Azrael said:
A lot of Japanese players don't like voice chat because they're too shy to talk in a game. Also voice chat has serious limitations in a worldwide game like this because auto-translation of text can make communication feasible across multiple languages. Not so for voice.

I expect not having it will lead to platform segregation when a 360 port is released, because many 360 players will insist on using party chat for communication exclusively.

Did that happen in XI?
 
Azrael said:
A lot of Japanese players don't like voice chat because they're too shy to talk in a game. Also voice chat has serious limitations in a worldwide game like this because auto-translation of text can make communication feasible across multiple languages. Not so for voice.

I expect not having it will lead to platform segregation when a 360 port is released, because many 360 players will insist on using party chat for communication exclusively.




...


Are you seriously going to use "Japanese people would be too shy" as an argument? While we're making up facts and generalizations, I'm gonna go ahead and say they also are too intelligent to bother grouping together in large sums to complete endgame raids.

However, on the 360, it will be essential.
 
Japanese players voice chat in Resistance 2. Loved playing in a JPN players only room in that game hah.

i6e73r.jpg
 
Nice, haha.

Anyways, regardless of if they add voice chat or not, people will find a third party software program to run it anyway, because it tends to be necessary.
 
Kyzer said:
Nice, haha.

Anyways, regardless of if they add voice chat or not, people will find a third party software program to run it anyway, because it tends to be necessary.

Used vent plenty in my two former end game shells. Much easier to communicate during fights and more entertaining to boot.
 
Azrael said:
I expect not having it will lead to platform segregation when a 360 port is released, because many 360 players will insist on using party chat for communication exclusively.

Doesn't party chat require them to be on your XBL friends list though ?

It would be a headache for SE to program for 3 serperate types of voice chat each with its own way of doing things, I doubt they are keen on using their server for voice chat either.
 
Voice chat is nice option to have during an organized raid and such but it's hardly a necessity during normal game play. A complicated feature to add for little gain for the majority of the players; I would rather have them spend the time polishing other things.
 
RuGalz said:
Voice chat is nice option to have during an organized raid and such but it's hardly a necessity during normal game play. A complicated feature to add for little gain for the majority of the players; I would rather have them spend the time polishing other things.

I don't know man. Ask those playing games on Xbox live how necessary voice chat is. Or even PSN. Even just in normal gameplay when I played WoW, BSing with friends off questing, it was a much better and relaxing experience than typing everything.

Eh. ex-FFXI players seem to have a weird view on things I guess.
 
Kintaro said:
I don't know man. Ask those playing games on Xbox live how necessary voice chat is. Or even PSN. Even just in normal gameplay when I played WoW, BSing with friends off questing, it was a much better and relaxing experience than typing everything.

Eh. ex-FFXI players seem to have a weird view on things I guess.

It is easier when *everyone* has voice chat and is actually paying attention full time. When you expect everyone to have voice chat but someone in the party mute their sound for whatever reason or has hard time hearing what you say then the whole voice communication breaks down. With text chat, you always have a log to scroll back to.
 
Not being able to take screenshots of text chat logs in FFXI would have resulted in a much less enjoyable experience for me really.

The drama, the misspells, the misstells...

Wish I had some pics at hand to give some examples.

I'm not against voice chat but personally I prefer text chat for this kind of game.
 
Even though I probably wouldn't use it often, I think they should offer voice chat.

I wouldn't want to use it for partying, most likely, but would love it for duoing with friends and linkshell mates.

A lot of this may come from the Japanese perspective? Japanese players, in my experience, are not very chatty online. It's hard to get them to talk about where they live in text, let alone with voice. From the Japanese perspective, it's probably just not a priority, and ultimately Square feels (rightly or wrongly) that the Japanese consumer is their number one priority.
 
RuGalz said:
It is easier when *everyone* has voice chat and is actually paying attention full time. When you expect everyone to have voice chat but someone in the party mute their sound for whatever reason or has hard time hearing what you say then the whole voice communication breaks down. With text chat, you always have a log to scroll back to.

Well, sure. Of course. It works either way though. You know how we partied. someone can zone completely out and miss hours of text chat and not bother to scroll up. =P Doesn't mean there should be the option. :D
 
Ravidrath said:
Even though I probably wouldn't use it often, I think they should offer voice chat.

I wouldn't want to use it for partying, most likely, but would love it for duoing with friends and linkshell mates.

A lot of this may come from the Japanese perspective? Japanese players, in my experience, are not very chatty online. It's hard to get them to talk about where they live in text, let alone with voice. From the Japanese perspective, it's probably just not a priority, and ultimately Square feels (rightly or wrongly) that the Japanese consumer is their number one priority.


Not with Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are reverse in their eyes. FF is much more popular in the West and DQ is much more popular in the East. I can't find it but there was some sort of article where they talked about their priorities and it went something like that. With DQ they do the best they can to cater to Japanese fans, and with Final Fantasy they know they'll be judged more by the West.
 
Kintaro said:
You saying voice chat isn't essential in WoW? Blizzard added it way too late. At least they added it though. It would blow my mind if their next MMO did not have voice chat built in. I believe it's short sighted to not have voice chat built into Champions Online and Aion as well. The limitations are easy to get around on the PC, but this isn't just a PC only MMO now is it? The PS3 (and 360) have built in voice chat for many game and many players would enjoy having it. PS3 players will be playing this game with gamepads mainly as well and not keyboards. Pretty silly eh?

It IS shortsighted in all respects for all those games.

Honestly, I think you argue for the sake of arguing. You make these general statements like how MMO is shortsighted for not having voice chat and act like how it is the norm, yet you can't even name one announced title that is actually confirmed to have it. So I called you out for it, and yet you're still trying debate about it.

Yes, I think WoW can be played without it. I don't think its raid contents (up until when I quit) is any more complicated than what I have gone through in XI (in fact, I think a lot of the old stuff back in the days of RoZ and CoP are arguably harder than most of WoW's stuff). However, since WoW is a PC-only game not released for the console, it doesn't even support your argument.

MMO has been played and can continually to be played without voice chat support by the developers.

Kintaro said:
All of this can be spun the same way to a melee person (not using JAs when timers are up, not WS' etc). If you can't tell, you must not be a very good player yourself.

It's not even the same. You have no clue what people's TP (unless you used one of the hacks) and JA timers are. As a melee you can obviously see what other melee is and isn't doing, but as a competent caster whose doing his job, he's got no time to look around. The only clue is when the party takes too long to kill a mob. Point is, melee has a lot more room to just leave auto-attack on and do the bare minimum than caster can.
 
Kyzer said:
Not with Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are reverse in their eyes. FF is much more popular in the West and DQ is much more popular in the East. I can't find it but there was some sort of article where they talked about their priorities and it went something like that. With DQ they do the best they can to cater to Japanese fans, and with Final Fantasy they know they'll be judged more by the West.

I'm not sure that is the case though, otherwise FF13 would be an action based real time RPG. /sarcasm

SE will always favour Japan, anyone who has played FF11 will know this, and as a Japanese company I don't think its a bad thing either.
 
Kyzer said:
Not with Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are reverse in their eyes. FF is much more popular in the West and DQ is much more popular in the East. I can't find it but there was some sort of article where they talked about their priorities and it went something like that. With DQ they do the best they can to cater to Japanese fans, and with Final Fantasy they know they'll be judged more by the West.

Hence the part about "rightly or wrongly."

And while FF does sell more worldwide than it does in Japan, it doesn't mean they don't approach it from the mindset of a Japanese player. It's hard to put yourself in other peoples' shoes, and Square Enix, in particular, has not exactly shown a comprehensive understanding of non-Japanese markets.
 
TheChillyAcademic said:
All the videos of the demo seem to have people who have no idea what the HELL they are doing lol

I love videos like that. Especially because most of the idiots watching instantly assume it's the game's fault.
 
Ploid 3.0 said:
Japanese players voice chat in Resistance 2. Loved playing in a JPN players only room in that game hah.

i6e73r.jpg

Yea, I ran into people like this in XI too, but I also ran into JPs that liked playing w/ NA/EU and I ran into NA/EU that hated playing w/ JPs. Play in your zones primetime and you should be fine.
 
Favoring japan or not, XIV better have some decent events. I know even the JP players got tired of watching fireworks and catching goldfish for junk.

If you're going to put in minigames, make them actual minigames, and make the items somewhat worthwile...or at least have event bosses. Crazy Santa "Claws" (Ogre with a santa suit?) boss would be cool.
 
I'm not super duper impressed yet, but it is just an alpha. I'll definitely be trying the beta for this if it's open. It's going to take a hard-hitting and extremely compelling game to pull me away from WOW for my MMO fix, particularly after 3 years of FFXI.
 
Teknoman said:
Favoring japan or not, XIV better have some decent events. I know even the JP players got tired of watching fireworks and catching goldfish for junk.

If you're going to put in minigames, make them actual minigames, and make the items somewhat worthwile...or at least have event bosses. Crazy Santa "Claws" (Ogre with a santa suit?) boss would be cool.

IN GAME TETRAMASTER

The most fucking obvious thing and SE never wrapped their brain around it.
 
Teknoman said:
Did that happen in XI?

Can you have 360 voicechat/partychat in FFXI? I think my ffxi buddy told me you could not and that this is one of the exceptions MS made for FFXI, but I'm really not sure so don't hate me if this is bogus.
 
Ive been on Xbox Live for 6 years. Voice chat is great.

Its worked great in the different implementations for different games and sometimes not so great.

Once MS finally got around to updating the dash for party chat (the most awesome party chat ever I might add) it was gravy. Now if I wanted to game with my friends we knew we would be able to communicate effectively no matter what the game was.

I played FFXI on 360 from beta. Live voice chat was not effective for FFXI at first. You could only have one person in a private chat.

I played exclusively on 360 for 2 or 3 years I think? Cant remember when it came out. As far as I know every other 360 player used a keyboard or the on screen keyboard or the chat pad that came out later but not once did I ever see anyone only wanting to play with other 360 users that used voice chat.

I am now pretty much exclusively playing FFXI on PC. Ive been in a Dynamis LS and they never asked me to use Ventt for better communication even though I know a select few people in the LS used it.

Nobody in the GAF LS has ever asked or shown interest in voice chatting except for one time when I was helping someone do a quest. Funny thing is I was playing on PC and talking to him via Xbox Live.

Im not sure why I typed all this but the voice chat talk is driving me crazy. I get the feeling some people want it but Im not sure they realize how underused it would be.

If youre on PC theres already a 3rd party solution and from what Ive heard it works just fine? For 360 users party chat should be enough to allow voice chat for XIV if it ever comes out on 360. Im not sure how PS3 works but if they have any sort of party voice chat option like 360 they problem solved there too.

I see no reason to spend time getting voice chat in the game when text chat and the other options work just fine. How would you implement it anyway? Proximity? party only? would everyone be able to talk at once?

Im not sure how WoWs voice chat works but Im sure its full of people trying to talk over each other all the time.
 
My opinion in the Voice Chat feature is that it isn't necessary for FFXIV, not because it isn't usefull, but because of the game userbase.

I do agree that having VC as an option, maybe added later or just by Ventrilo or TS is ok, however in games like FFXI/XIV, where you have (going to have) people from numerous countries around the world, with many of them not having english as their main language, will just help to segregate the community.

English is a must in the game to communicate, even for Japanese players that want to somehow interact with some NAs, writing english is several times easier than speaking it and listening to it, especially if you aren't used to it, or just because there are so many different accents in the world, oh and not forgetting technical issues that could occur client-side making it harder than what already might be to understand.

Voice chat is a welcomed feature if they added, if not, there is always Vent/TS.

Kintaro you think is weird that some people might not like to talk in a game where they might not understand or not be understood? You think it is shortsighted not to have that feature because you and your buddies can playing bsing around and have a more relaxed play time?

Well, you might as well keep playing MMOs with region specific servers, or if you're going to XIV, make sure your LS (or w/e) only has native english speakers or people who are very good at it, because the only one being weird and shortsighted here is you, you might want to look a little bit further than the limits of your neighbourhood dude.
 
I havent been in too many parties in FFXI where I was the only one who spoke English but Ive been in a few and it worked out ok either because of auto translate or the Japanese players used just enough English when they were talking to me.

I like world wide servers as opposed to region specific. Feels more like a real world with different races and more MMOey.
 
Zalasta said:
Which current MMO supports voice chat without the use of a 3rd party software? Honestly, if we can do complicated strategic fights like the Divine Battle (no we did not and never mana burned it with BLM) and Vrtra encounter without voice chat back in XI, I don't see why it would be a big deal in XIV.
That reminds me... In five years of playing, the only time I ever started a party was to do Divine Might. Seriously.
Already mentioned this second part before, but I coaxed a convincing victory out of the first 17 random people who answered my shouts. (I'd won before the old-fashioned way with one of my HNM shells)
 
Ploid 3.0 said:
Japanese players voice chat in Resistance 2. Loved playing in a JPN players only room in that game hah.

i6e73r.jpg
Heh, I had this with Rainbow Six Vegas. I was actually kind of surprised since I never thought Japanese players liked playing these sorta games let alone voice chat.
 
Jinko said:
I dont' think Voice chat is all that important actually, I played 3 year in FF11 without ever using Vent or Teamspeak.
I don't see how distributing cells in Salvage would even be possible without voice chat unless your group was slow as fuck. (Other than possibly having two people controlling the leader's account? One to play and one to type? Even then...) Other than that, it's mostly a social thing.
 
I was really hoping that this game would advance the MMORPG genre somewhat, but beyond flashy graphics it seems the same to me as WOW and FF11... I would LOVE to be wrong here!

All I see is some elves killing tiny mobs in tiny-mob-killing quests.

Any demo's out there that are worth seeing?
 
Teknoman said:
Favoring japan or not, XIV better have some decent events. I know even the JP players got tired of watching fireworks and catching goldfish for junk.

If you're going to put in minigames, make them actual minigames, and make the items somewhat worthwile...or at least have event bosses. Crazy Santa "Claws" (Ogre with a santa suit?) boss would be cool.

I only played in '04 but there was this one event (during Easter? or christmas?) where a huge mob was outside the 3 kingdoms. Took forever to take them down and everyone on the server had to work together. That was fun :D


Here's hoping they don't gimp Galkas in XIV -_-
 
TAJ said:
I don't see how distributing cells in Salvage would even be possible without voice chat unless your group was slow as fuck. (Other than possibly having two people controlling the leader's account? One to play and one to type? Even then...) Other than that, it's mostly a social thing.

As leader of a Salvage group of 4 to 8 people during one year I can tell you that when you have a group with people that knows what they are doing, that just after a short briefing before starting the run everyone would know on what order get what cells and what paths we were taking, then everying will go very smoothly and it is not hard at all to call for cells if needed when you are fighting/running.

If you were used to using VC for your events, then that's great. I never used it in my 4 years, and many people didn't either and still everything went smoothly and perfect after getting used on what to do.

So I don't see why are you saying that it would be impossible to do Salvage or something else without it. Oh but now I remember, you are the one that said that a pad is the superior control type to someone that had no problems playing with a kb only during such a long time.

Do you know that your own experiences don't apply to everyone else? How funny, opinions and points of view can differ.



Pai Pai Master said:
Vent really isn't necessary except for the few higher-ups in a linkshell who are calling the shots during a Dynamis run or something.

I think that's a very good use too, but then again, I never had any problems on Dynamis when our callers (sometimes I was a backup one too) used the /l chat to call the targets or the pulls. Same for casts lots.
 
The only thing holding back from this was the idea of voice-chat. If there is none I'll be there day one. It would ruin the experience hearing a chubby 12 year old spew racial slurs through an Elvaan female.
 
Oh gosh, please no voice chat. If I was forced to listen to the general population blab and play music into their mics in order to communicate then I would've quit XI the first week. I could only imagine what some of things I read would sound like from the people that wrote them. Text at least filters it out enough to avoid a headache, and makes people who get a kick out of the word n***** and the like able to be turned in if necessary. Keep it in a controllable environment like vent. Plenty of console players can still come in with their laptops.

Plus, think of all the missed drama when you can't prove what was said.
 
I just wanted to note that JPs being resistant to voice chat is very valid. I was in an all-Japanese HNMLS for years, and maybe 30% of our members would voice chat -- and even then, many of them would use voice changing software.
 
Khrno said:
when you have a group with people that knows what they are doing
Not everyone has that luxury. We usually had at least one new person. Vent kept that from ever being an issue.
Khrno said:
So I don't see why are you saying that it would be impossible to do Salvage or something else without it. Oh but now I remember, you are the one that said that a pad is the superior control type to someone that had no problems playing with a kb only during such a long time.
Something can only be superior to another thing if that other thing causes problems? Good to know. /rolleyes
 
I need to know if I can solo in this game at anytime that I want to? I hated that you can only level the first 12 levels in FFXI. After that anything can kill you, its was insane! I remember waiting for hours just to get a party going to level up and on the way home to log out get attacked by a rabbit 10 levels below me and getting owned. Then the dreaded level down crap affecting me. Its the deal breaker for me, so is this game solo friendly?
 
Kobe said:
I need to know if I can solo in this game at anytime that I want to? I hated that you can only level the first 12 levels in FFXI. After that anything can kill you, its was insane! I remember waiting for hours just to get a party going to level up and on the way home to log out get attacked by a rabbit 10 levels below me and getting owned. Then the dreaded level down crap affecting me. Its the deal breaker for me, so is this game solo friendly?
These changes alone made that a lot less of an issue:
The following bonuses are available with the Signet effect:

* Increased Healing HP
* No TP loss while resting
* Bonus experience earned in smaller parties
* Increased defense and evasion against attacks from your auto-attack target
I leveled Dancer solo to lv37 about as fast as I would have looking for groups.
 
*checks in from the MONK IN DIABLO III OMG PALM THRUST!*

No new interviews posted yet? =*(

Oh gosh, please no voice chat. If I was forced to listen to the general population blab and play music into their mics in order to communicate then I would've quit XI the first week

Uh, this isn't how it I figured it would work. Use WoW's for example applies to like FFXI. Set the settings to LS, to Party, and Alliances/Zones (in the case of like, Dynamis, etc). Av oids your issue completely.

*Palm thrusts people on the way out, hoping for more information later*
 
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