|
I'be been playing the beta for about an hour. Looks and sounds fantastic but runs like shit on my system for some reason despite me having an above-average PC (Core i7 920 @ 3.2 GHz, 6 GB, HD 5870 CrossFireX, Windows 7). Starts off at around 30 - 40 fps then drops to 15 - 20 fps while running around the start area. Even outside in the emptiness of the fields surrounding the city it still runs at sub-20 fps? Playing at 1920x1200 with the default settings using the Xbox 360 controller. Technical issues aside, it seems a polished but fairly standard MMORPG but it has the same issue that annoyed me about FFXI, namely that you can be fighting a rat that has the constitution and health of a Tyranosaurus Rex! Makes the fights more than a bit laughable really as you watch you character take hits from a rat that jumps twenty times its height to attack you. I died fighting a rose bush!!! Great that I can try it but it certainly lacks the accessibility and user-friendliness of, say, World of Warcraft and I actually lost track of what I was supposed to be doing. It would be nice to have had a little more hand-holding at the start. A nice-looking game but perhaps not for me. Gonna give it few more goes though to see if it grabs me. How is it for everyone else? |
Final Fantasy XIV Online Thread • Page 7
-
Darren 9,637 posts
Seen 22 minutes ago
Registered 17 years ago -
Darren 9,637 posts
Seen 22 minutes ago
Registered 17 years agoZuluHero wrote:
Shame my PC at home isn't as great as my one in work, I have it on its lowest settings and resolution but it stills running somewhere between 10-20fps. I think my home PC scored around 1450 on the benchmark score, so i was expecting performance to be low.
Doesn't seem to make any difference as I scored 6,200 with a fullscreen hack (so I had CrossFireX) when I ran the benchmark (4400 otherwise) and it ran silky-smooth but the actual games runs appallingly at sub-20 fps for me. It feels very laggy and sluggish as a result. Looks great though but I'd trade some of that for performance personally. -
SClaw 826 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 12 years agoDarren, I had a lot of trouble running at that resolution. I dropped down a little bit and I get maxed out FPS all the time. Doesn't look any worse.
I've been in the closed beta and while most of the irritating little things are still present its ALOT better than it was, by a factor of about 300. This gives me a lot of hopes for the final release. They've worked a bit of magic in the last couple of weeks.
My main issues with the game (mental controls aside) are annoying cut scenes... they really need to be voiced to work, just too odd right now... and fairly irritating city design, because it takes too long to find places.
No mention of the crap UI and general obsecurity of... everything? Nope. It bothered me in the beta a lot but now things are a bit more smooth (lag and menu) I'm happy to get lost in menus, fiddle with buttons and generally dick around with stuff until it works. Its very odd but its nice not to have my hand held for a change. That's going to be serious marmite for people though - it's retro design there.
Also... the dancing bit in Gridania got me laughing my ass off. 50 people in an instance emoting, trying to figure out those damned riddles. Stupid... but completely hilarious. -
silentbob 29,527 posts
Seen 1 year ago
Registered 19 years agoOK, been in for a couple of hours now and, I like it. Quite a bit actually. Let's see:
Controls: Had a mare when I first jumped in without configuring the joypad properly (how could I, I didn't know what everything was), and so found menus etc. a bind. Once I'd had a think and assigned correctly everything became much simpler. I don't have any issues controlling 99% of the game via the pad alone. A definite improvement over FFXI.
I can see why people would find the system a pain in the arse, but it clicked after a while. I can see me becoming fairly adept at it all fairly quickly.
Graphics: I started in Limsa Limonsa and whilst I could easily see the engine was technically excellent (superb draw distance, dynamic lighting, texturing) - the city feels somewhat antiseptic. Leaving the city to head into the fields beyond though was a minor revelation, landscape stretched in front of me with HDR and some superb texturing. Everything about this game is visually polished to an incredib;e high standard. Attention to detail is quite amazing. As a result the place feels very organic, especially in comparison to WoW's clearly 'painted' surfaces. I could quite easily get lost in this world I think.
Incidental effects and animation are again excellent almost without fault with spell-casting effects looking suitably Final Fantasy.
Framerate was extremely choppy at times, but I suspect this is due to both network coding and Dual GPU issues - I haven't tried disabling my 2nd GPU core to bear this out. I suspect huge improvements here over the next few weeks as ATI and Square optimise drivers and code respectively.
Character design is stunning as you'd expect.
Music: Solid so far, I can already see which ditties will be echoing in my head tomorrow. Again though, technically polished and obviously high production values evident.
Generally, the first 20 mins were somewhat bewildering, compounded by my initial control issues. I ran about fairly aimlessly before stacking up on quests. I found finding my way out of the city a real chore, and although the map did begin to make sense, the sheer size of the city meant I was lost for most of the first half hour.
It was all a bit overwhelming, as starting new MMORPGs usually are and in fact it did bring back stark memories of my first few hours in FFXI. There absolutely needs to be more handholding for the first hour. Oddly, once you start questing, things are much more clearly laid out for you.
I found the questing system to be a breath of fresh air if I'm honest and where I find Darren's statement about it being 'just like other MMORPGs' puzzling - because it absolutely isn't. It's nicely structured so you can perform the tasks at hand, pickup your reward AND teleport back from where you finished (are you listening WoW?) to pickup the next quest. Only one Leve is active at any one time so you can focus on what you need to do, even actively highlighting areas of the map containing the item / target of interest.
Levelling I found a little disappointing. Compared with WoW's 'flash boom' you get a fairly weedy 'Level up' notice. Further, enhancing you character by spending points is not explained properly and there's little clue as to where or why you should spend points here rather than there. I haven't played long enough to explore the jobs or crafts system as yet.
Bugs: Every in-game cuts-scene was a black screen with text overlays and audio. The opening sequence (that worked just fine in the benchmark) as were the adjoiingin cut-scenes when hitting the city. Need to sort this.
Running Full screen at 1900 x 1200, the game would occasionally stop at the initial load screen immediately before the character select screen. Dropping the rez worked around the issue. Puzzling as I'd been in at 1920 several times.
Glitchy respawning after KOing. Nothing dreadful, and I've not hit any game breaking bugs resulting from it.
Thats about it. It's quite unlike every other MMORPG I've ever played if I'm honest, in both good and bad ways. But the bottom line is, I'm buying it for sure. -
Gave this a go : Like others , while the benchmark ran smooth as silk (average 45-50 fps) the beta is almost a slide-show 
I fiddled with the settings and the difference is minimal , so , is it a server overload thing or... ?
I'm really baffled gents as i wanted to give this a (good) try , think it's going to be impossible for me though with the game running at 20fps and below...
Ferck -
Dizz 72 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 15 years agoI gotz a key and haven't been able to play so I have one question that puzzled me the entire week...what's a leve? I'm not really into FF lore or background... -
silentbob 29,527 posts
Seen 1 year ago
Registered 19 years agoZuluHero wrote:
Joypad layout is similar, I have active/passive on the left bumper with the map on the right. I still have things that aren't mapped TBH, which I'll address tonight.
silentbob wrote:
Bugs: Every in-game cuts-scene was a black screen with text overlays and audio. The opening sequence (that worked just fine in the benchmark) as were the adjoiingin cut-scenes when hitting the city. Need to sort this.
Running Full screen at 1900 x 1200, the game would occasionally stop at the initial load screen immediately before the character select screen. Dropping the rez worked around the issue. Puzzling as I'd been in at 1920 several times.
Regarding the cutscenes, they should be working - i wonder if thats a graphical setting?
In regards to people having trouble with framerate, I also found out that if you go into MENU->CONFIG while in-game and turn OFF "extended draw" (or something like that) it speeds up the game a bit.
OOI what is your pad setup like, Bob?
Mine is:
Menu = D-pad
Movement = Left stick
Camera = Right stick
Cancel = B
Confirm = A
Active/passive = X
Change view = Y
RB = Target lock
LB = Emotes
RT = alt- macros
LT = Ctrl Macros
Back = Auto Run
Start = Menu
L3 = Map
R3 = See Status Effects
I only have to use the keyboard to type - nothing else.gif)
Does anyone know how to take screenshots?
The cut-scenes is deffo a bug with this build as I can run the identical cut scenes on the benchmark flawlessly. Obviously some combination of drivers, code and in-game visual settings causing issues. Bear in mind that I still see text overlays so ..
I assume printing a screenshot isn't on the print screen key? -
redael 1 posts
Seen 2 hours ago
Registered 14 years agofrom one of the recent patch notes
- A screenshot feature has been added.
Players can take pictures of the game screen by pushing Print Screen while holding down Scroll Lock on the keyboard.
-
MasterNameless 367 posts
Seen 6 days ago
Registered 14 years agoHere's a bunch of useful links a friend of mine has collated;
Macro set up -
http://www.ffxivcore.com/blog/244/entry-559-guide-to-macro-set-up
Beta testers site -
https://dev-eu.ffxiv.com
FINAL FANTASY XIV Basic Controls -
https://dev-eu.ffxiv.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=8045#Post5045
Server status -
http://www.ff14news.com/serverstatus
Official players site -
http://static.finalfantasyxiv.com
Very good guides, wiki and forum -
http://www.ffxivcore.com
The Art of Combat - A Guide to Combining Classes on FFXIV -
http://www.ffxivcore.com/blog/248/entry-566-the-art-of-combat-a-guide-to-combining-classes-on-ffxiv
I used the Basic Conrols one to configure the gamepad, it's a little different to the configs used above, but is handy for knowing exactly which commands are needed to map every button on the pad. The only one they seemed to have missed out, was the emote key, and they didn;t map Y on the pad either, so I just put emotes on Y.
I played the game for a good 6 hours last night, and thoroughly loved it. silientbob's impressions were pretty much exactly how I felt about the game. A definite buy for me too. -
MasterNameless 367 posts
Seen 6 days ago
Registered 14 years agoDizz wrote:
I gotz a key and haven't been able to play so I have one question that puzzled me the entire week...what's a leve? I'm not really into FF lore or background...
As far as I could tell, a leve is just another name for a quest. -
So lads, how much is your average fps on this ?
I'm sorry for all the moaning but, i still can't believe how shitty this runs on my compy (unless it's something that has to do with server congestion).
My specs are : 4gigs or Ram , core i5 2.66GHz , Ati radeon HD 5650 and - again - the benchmark tool ran the game at an average of 45 fps , hell , i can run mafia 2 Batman Arkham asylum and other games at highest settings at 720p at excellent framerates , so, why is this such a slog ?
What settings do you boys use with the game and with what compy specs ?
Cheers -
Hypercube 976 posts
Seen 7 years ago
Registered 15 years agoffs, I still can't get a key! Why have you forsaken me, SE?
Edit: OMG! I got one! Yay! -
SClaw 826 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 12 years agoMess with the config if you are still getting bad FPS. As I said earlier, simply dropping one rank of resolution seems to solve a lot of problems for everyone.
Leve is, basically, a busy-work quest. SE have said there will be "quest" quests in the game too, but leves are there for you to grind a bit or just go kill something for 30 minutes if you can't find anything else to do. At least that's what they've said...
Mainquest only goes up to a certain point in the beta and other quests are disabled, which hopefully explains why there are so many npcs who do nothing in the cities. -
MasterNameless 367 posts
Seen 6 days ago
Registered 14 years agoGrats Hypercube! 
-
Kafeen 565 posts
Seen 2 years ago
Registered 17 years agoklem578 wrote:
So lads, how much is your average fps on this ?
I'm sorry for all the moaning but, i still can't believe how shitty this runs on my compy (unless it's something that has to do with server congestion).
My specs are : 4gigs or Ram , core i5 2.66GHz , Ati radeon HD 5650 and - again - the benchmark tool ran the game at an average of 45 fps , hell , i can run mafia 2 Batman Arkham asylum and other games at highest settings at 720p at excellent framerates , so, why is this such a slog ?
What settings do you boys use with the game and with what compy specs ?
Cheers
Do you have Ambient Occlusion turned on? It tends to kill things a bit.
I got a key for the Open Beta, I'm playing on Figaro server. -
Kafeen wrote:
klem578 wrote:
So lads, how much is your average fps on this ?
I'm sorry for all the moaning but, i still can't believe how shitty this runs on my compy (unless it's something that has to do with server congestion).
My specs are : 4gigs or Ram , core i5 2.66GHz , Ati radeon HD 5650 and - again - the benchmark tool ran the game at an average of 45 fps , hell , i can run mafia 2 Batman Arkham asylum and other games at highest settings at 720p at excellent framerates , so, why is this such a slog ?
What settings do you boys use with the game and with what compy specs ?
Cheers
Do you have Ambient Occlusion turned on? It tends to kill things a bit.
I got a key for the Open Beta, I'm playing on Figaro server.
Turned ambient occlusion to OFF mate and the game still runs like shit...
Dropped the texture and shadow quality to Medium and low and the game still runs like shit...
Something tells me that my compy specs have nothing to do with how the game runs.
And oh, i'm running it at 720p (fullscreen).
Thanks for the input -
silentbob 29,527 posts
Seen 1 year ago
Registered 19 years agoI did mention this earlier. I foresee performance bumps on their way. The framerate was inconsistent rather that poor all the time. -
SilentTristero 460 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 12 years agoSo I finally get a key; now that I've registered it, I'm stuck on a cycle of 'Click to login to the Beta Test Site' -> 'Login process is running' -> 'Click to login to the Beta test site!'
This process has been harder than many MMO's I've tried. -
SilentTristero wrote:
So I finally get a key; now that I've registered it, I'm stuck on a cycle of 'Click to login to the Beta Test Site' -> 'Login process is running' -> 'Click to login to the Beta test site!'
This process has been harder than many MMO's I've tried.
Don't bother with it brother , it was Borked for me too yesterday...
What you should do : 1) Download the client (there's a link 2 pages back in this thread)
2) Log into the square-enix account site and enter the key.
3) install client
4) Wait many hours until it finishes updating
5) Login with your account details
6) Finito -
SilentTristero wrote:
So I finally get a key; now that I've registered it, I'm stuck on a cycle of 'Click to login to the Beta Test Site' -> 'Login process is running' -> 'Click to login to the Beta test site!'
This process has been harder than many MMO's I've tried.
I had this problem. Turned out the problem for me was that the link they sent was the US site. I changed na to eu in the link and it worked fine. However getting the client to actually download at a reasonable rate is another matter. -
Kokapetl 864 posts
Seen 4 years ago
Registered 13 years agoGutted! I've finally got in, set up my character and Lindblum isn't given to me as an option server wise! Boo! -
SilentTristero 460 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 12 years agoFinally got to the proper site! Just 26 hours to go for the download! -
SClaw 826 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 12 years agoThe first mushrooms were someone else's quest. That's why you couldn't attack. The idea is that this does away with kill stealing without forcing people into instances.
No, I don't get Lindblum either. -
silentbob 29,527 posts
Seen 1 year ago
Registered 19 years agoZuluHero wrote:
Y'big jessie. I thought this made things easier, there's a big golden arrow and highlighted area with the targets you're aiming for highlighted too.
So i got another proper play of it at lunch. The Leve quests are bloody annoying! Basically it gave me 30 mins to go kill mushrooms, so off i went.
Found said mushrooms and tried to attack them, but kept saying invalid target. After 25 minutes of frustration i asked in /chat and someone told me to look at my map. It showed a specific area to go to. So i legged it there as fast as i could, and found the SAME BLOODY MUSHROOMS with the SAME NAME and everything, and i was able to attack these?!?!
Thankfully they were easy to kill and I only needed 3.
While i was very annoyed and frustrated, it soon went away when i heard the iconic FF fanfare for completing the quest (or maybe it was when i levelled) but it was awesome.
Silly game quest mechanic, but I can forgive it now that I know!
Weirdly, despite the number of people running around I had no problems with fighting over mobs to kill. Not once in 8 leves. Maybe I was lucky or maybe this is why the targetting system is done, so make sure the minimum number of people are after the same monsters. -
silentbob 29,527 posts
Seen 1 year ago
Registered 19 years agoSClaw wrote:
Confirms what I was saying ta. This is a very good thing.
The first mushrooms were someone else's quest. That's why you couldn't attack. The idea is that this does away with kill stealing without forcing people into instances.
No, I don't get Lindblum either. -
Ok , i'm beginning to reaaally like this !
Music is awesome , graphics and general atmosphere too, also , i'm really digging the way general combat behaves , much better than the usual "Left click until your index finger bleeds" shenanigans...
I had the same WTF moments like Zulu had but i managed to understand what was going on in the end, so everything's forgiven now
On a side-note , the game's performance is shit to be honest , one minute is 50-ish fps and the next one crawls to 10-ish fps for no apparent damned reason whatsoever , now , it's either down to bad code optimization (it is a beta after all) or server congestion - no matter the settings i choose (either from the menu/gui before actually launching the game and from the in-game one) , the (shitty) performance is pretty much the same...
This is going to be a sure buy come March for my PS3 , i don't think i'm going to rush buying it come late September for the PC though because - frankly - i think we all know how most MMO launch days go usually...
Jolly good game gentlemen , really happy with the final outcome
.gif)
Sometimes posts may contain links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. For more information, go here.
