PC Gamer ARR Review up... not so greatFollow

"There's an old saying in Tennessee ....................... I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, 'Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again!'"

p sure the rest of the world is about at the point where they're tired of facepalming and ready to just ignore the idiot in the room

its 100% retarded to mention needing a keyboard as a negative, or at all, when reviewing an MMO.

same. and when doing the few things in the game that need actual communication (coil, basically) i'm on mumble anyway

It's only been 2 months, and you're surprised that new content hasn't been added?

Also, I'd like to draw your attention to this:

http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?forum=152&mid=1383836238220438105#2

Edited, Nov 7th 2013 3:59pm by Pickins

I get the sense this individual knows close to nothing about MMOs.

The review in itself is almost a slap in the face to hardcore MMO players.

This being what's essentially a brand new game, Yoshi-P did the right thing by focusing efforts on satisfying new players. Most Legacy players who didn't cap all of their jobs can still experience all of this content by leveling up new jobs.

It's way too early to criticize SE for a lack of content... ARR is only a couple months old.

A big patch is coming in December, that will bring in lots of new content... that will be a great pace for the vast majority of players.

If I had some complaints to lobby, they'd be the following:

1) Servers are too full. This leads to issues like overcrowding FATEs, zone lag/congestion, and severe economic swings when something is suddenly flooded. I've said it before, but I feel like the server pool needs to be doubled, transfers to remain free (but weekly restricted), and a means to set up parties with folks on other servers to be established.

2) Crystal shard farming is obscenely unfun. There are multiple ways to remedy this. As nodes increase in level, they can pump out more shards by default. Alchemists could get a synth to convert crystals up or down tiers. All enemies could be assigned a specific crystal type to drop at a fair pace. The GP abilities could be cut from 400 to 50-75. Or on the other end of the craft spectrum, all recipes would only use 1 crystal. Overall, it's not uncommon for a craft to cost more in shards than it does base materials, and that's pretty darn stupid.

3) There needs to be an open world area with nothing but level 50-52 mobs. Main purposes here are to facilitate timely spiritbonding sessions and giving max level players a good place to level their chocobos. Toss in some epic FATE chains while you're there.

4) Some mob families could use some higher densities. Some don't even have open world counterparts like flans, which have a drop used to make a potion within the Alchemy quest line. The sheep in Coerthas serve as an example here. While recently improved, it's still not uncommon to see people at all the 4-6 pop spots. Fleece is just something even max level weavers need a lot of to produce their goods.

5) Good things to spend company seals on. Unique craft materials, ilvl70-80 armor, I don't care. Just something for people who favor open world play to not feel so shackled to dungeons and queues, which 2.1 only seems to be strengthening with more dungeon incentives.

6) Chimera and Hydra need to be DFable. Too often I see DPS jobs shouting for hours and that mirrored my own experience on BLM. Add these to the pending "daily rotation" too. If it helps, you could even add a casket to the end of the fight with some unique things like pets, barding, or even craft mats. Otherwise, people done with these phases have little incentive to backtrack, which basically exemplifies the issues of one-sided tiering.

Some additional things that I thought of:

1) No 40 durability synth should require more than one shard.
2) Keep the 400 GP abilities at 400, but have them stay in effect until you either change jobs or leave the zone.

That being said, I don't mind shard farming that much. If nothing else, not having to deal with randomness when it comes to collecting them means I know how long it will take before I even start doing it. 500 shards only takes me about half an hour or so.

You don't have to read the whole review to comment on one statement, but at least read the statement in it's entirety. When you defend XIV just for the sake of defending it, you're a knight. It is what it is and that's what it's called. There will be white knights, trolls and fanboys until the end of time. It's not a phase. If you want people to stop using the term that would require people not play the role.

No, it doesn't satisfy me to call someone out on their ignorant behavior. I'd be satisfied if people had either just taken it for what it was or come back to amend their opinion due to the fact that they didn't digest all of the information despite it being right there in front of them.

When things are taken out of context, it has a variety of differing results. Sometimes it's a complete 180 from what it originally was(as is the case here). Sometimes it doesn't make any sense at all. Sometimes it can even turn out to be quite entertaining.

People stopped at that part because it's... well... wrong. In a fashion we're defending the game because controller support is very damn good and keyboard and mouse are in no way "neccesaary" for group play like the reviewer stated. You can get by just fine with a controller, and Voice chat overrides keyboard for communication where it's important.

I also prefer it over keyboard and mouse for subjective reasons, camera and movement control, which feels way more natural than KB/Mouse to me. I picked up the controller found it felt a lot more "free" than KB/Mouse. This is totally a subjective matter though, and there's really no solid ground to claim either way is better.

I mean obviously you have more functionality available to you with a KB and mouse, I don't think anyone is arguing against that. As to how much of a difference it would make to me in terms of performance at the moment, I'd say it would be very little.

I think it touches a nerve with some people as there's a fair amount of unjustified bias against those who choose to use a controller. Saying that it's "necessary for group play" just re-reinforces the misconception that people who use controllers are second rate citizens.

If I were to critique the review honestly, I'd say it was fairly superficial, regardless of whether it was positive or not.

Don`t blame the controller
when you suck
when using the controller.