[15 Oct 2013|07:15am] With my free trial time just about coming to an end, I figured this was as good a time as any to reflect on the experience. I managed to finish the story before going dark, so I'll start there (spoiler free, o'course).



If you were to give a quick synopsis on the FFXIV:ARR story, it actually wouldn't be too bad. Nothing special, but not too bad at all. The last five levels were pretty good, and the actual story bits for the first 45 levels did their job. However, that's about where the compliments end. The presentation of the story is awful. There is SO MUCH FILLER I don't even know where to begin, or how to explain it. Basically, every few levels something interesting happens and you're given a real story mission. The type from FFXI, the type you (mostly) looked forward to. They're decent. Now maybe it's nostalgia talking, but I didn't mind nothing happening for a level or two while I leveled into the next story arc.. and I much prefer it to what ARR tried to do.







That is a story mission. In fact, it is one of the last story missions right before the final showdown (epic, right?). It's not an abnormality, it's FFXIV. You do something cool and relevant, then get sent somewhere else in a somewhat related capacity. When you arrive, the guy you're supposed to talk to doesn't trust you. Or he doesn't have the information you need just yet. So here, do this random shit in the meantime. Not once, not twice, but usually like 5-10 times before you get anywhere. It sucks, and I hated it every step of the way. And of course, there were other non-mission fetch quests in the vicinity to pile on once you arrived where ever you were supposed to be. Great. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad if the quest tracker could track more than five quests at a time. Or let you choose what quests you wanted to track (order of acceptance, then pushed off). Or if you could see the quest locations on the map for something other than the five quests you were tracking (not tracked = not mapped). Or if, you know, the quests were at all interesting to do.





Sometimes I feel like they forgot that they already added certain things..



It is what it is I guess. It's exclamation point gaming at it's finest, so I really shouldn't be too surprised. I knew it was going to be this kind of game, I'm just disappointed it interfered with the story. Now, with that being said, are you ready to see how you level up in ARR when you're NOT doing the story? After all, there's only one story and so many fetch quests.. and the staple of FF-MMO series is changing jobs on the fly. Good old grind parties? Dungeon grinding? Keep dreaming. Feast your eyes on the leveling content of ARR:







You stand in a centralized location until an event pops, run with the zerg, and then spam an AoE for a few seconds until it's over. Return to centralized location; repeat. Basically, a bastardized version of GW2 events. The type of shit my nightmares were made off when I was sitting there wondering if Arena Net could actually pull off what they set out to do. Looks fun, doesn't it? Ugh.



I guess you could avoid that if you wanted, even if it is at least twice as fast as everything else. The game obviously has dungeons, and there is a cross server dungeon finder to help you find groups. I believe I already touched upon it in my previous "archaic" post, so I won't rehash the critiques there... but here's something else. It's fucking slow. And I'm not talking about slow to find members, even though its slow there too. I'm talking about what happens after your party is full.







Yeah, after you're queued to find a party.. you're then queued to get in the actual dungeon. Just find some people on your server and run in you say? Sorry, you can't even enter any dungeon without using the duty finder. Even if you're in a full group, you then have to use it and queue up.



What are the dungeons like when you actually get inside, you ask? HAH, well... ok they're actually pretty good. No two fights are the same, and the mechanics are solid. They're also tuned pretty well, and plenty can be somewhat challenging if you roll in with a bunch of retards. Definitely an enjoyable experience and one of the few bright spots of my playing time (don't get it twisted though, we're talking about leveling dungeons here). I'm sure some people will be able to stick around for them.





Did you know it was purdy, btw?



Didn't expect it to be all negative, did you? Here's another positive! I greatly enjoyed the company of all the old faces giving the game a whirl (sup), and I may even toss $9 towards the game as a 3D chatroom until everybody dissipates again.



I'm sure overall this comes off pretty harsh, but I'm trying to be objective and judge the game on its own merits rather than judge it versus the turd that was 1.0. Things like "well they fixed the combat lag!" are all well and good, but do you really give points to a game for NOT LAGGING? It's great that they fixed it (although its still a rubberbanding disaster visually), but it should never have been there to begin with. So while it is definitely lightyears ahead of 1.0 by comparison, it's still just not a very good game to me. Obviously, I won't be playing come subscription time. A check-in down the road for an expansion story? Meh, maybe, but I'm gone the first time I have to bring lemon tea to the guard post. Not again.



5/10 Cels.