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Final Fantasy XI For PC Explored

Posted by simoniker on from the chocobos-and-nvidias dept.

Thanks to Adrenaline Vault for their hands-on preview of Final Fantasy XI for PC. This cross-platform MMORPG is due for PC this October in the U.S., several months ahead of the PlayStation 2 version, and features many features to excite the average Final Fantasy fan: "Each player is granted their own Mog house complete with a yellow cherubic Moogle servant... To travel great distances quickly... [a] favorite method of transportation is at near hand: the many splendored horse/chicken hybrid, the Chocobo." Another hands-on preview at Frictionless Insight brings up the interesting problem of control methods that work for both PS2 and PC: "What won't be familiar to PC gamers is the user interface. The system of menus... ties in with the need to be accessible to gamepad-type controllers. With a moderately button-intensive gamepad in hand, PC gamers will zip through menus with a flutter of finger twitching and d-pad action."

5 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Oh please no, not controlling via a pad alone. by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I remember playing the demo of a previous FF game. It may have been 8. The hype had made me look forward to it but the interface just blew it for me. I am on a pc. A device with a multitude of input devices many with more buttons then all the consoles put together.

    Please please remember this in porting a game to this most costly of all gaming platforms. I do not enjoy holding a joystick left or right to enter my name when I got a perfectly working keyboard in front of me.

    Neither do I want to hold some pad, or use control keys to navigate through a menu structure or to manange an inventory. I got a bloody mouse. It has been used for 2 decades or so now, learn to use it.

    I mean seriously, with all the coding that needs to be done to adopt to a totally different hardware structure, can they at least use allow the use of the default input hardware on a pc?

    Midnight run for the PC did it right for me. First console port that realised that on PC's we got wheels. force feed back wheels with seperated pedals. (oh and I know that they also exists for consoles, sadly very few games apperantly, like say vice city use them)

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  2. Ebay style economy by Fred+IV · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FFXI sports an eBay-style auction system that augments the local array of NPC-owned marketplaces. Players put items on the auction block to go to the highest bidder less a small service fee collected by the NPC auction house owners.

    Nice, this sounds a lot better than the crap I have to go through to buy and sell at my current online RPG. I hope this becomes the standard way of doing things.

    Is there an existing game that uses an ebay style player economy? This seems like too good of an idea to be unique to FF XI.

    1. Re:Ebay style economy by The+Munger · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I wonder if perhaps this is to reduce the number of real-life auctions?

      With all the developers/publishers putting things in EULAs and requesting auctions to be closed, perhaps they decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I think players would warm to it a lot more than forking out real cash as well.

      Implementation could also be an interesting point. I wonder if you have to be in the game to collect on your auction, or whether you'll be able to do it via web/email. Couldn't you see merchants popping up who don't move away from the auction houses?

      --
      Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
  3. Re:One Beta tester's opinion... by FluxCapacitator · · Score: 1, Interesting
    It's definitely more interesting on a populated server. I am living in Japan at the moment and playing the Japanese version now (with the expansion). It's been about month now. If you can find people to party with to do quests and missions together it is a lot more fun, apart from the fact that levelling is a lot faster!

    In every area there's usually at least 15 people, and the more popular areas for questing/levelling can have more than a hundred.

    Also I have been reading about a lot of complaints about the problems with "1337 dudez" running amok in the Beta, but I think you'll find less of them when the EN game officially comes out and you play on the Japanese servers with an already established in-game etiquette among the Japanese and Import players.

  4. Re:One Beta tester's opinion... by snarlydwarf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hrm.

    I'm a PS2 beta tester (and from what Square has told me, they won't spank me for saying what I'm saying in this post...) and have different views from you, or at least I think I do, since I have to weed out your negatives to figure out what it is that you're saying.

    I don't know what you mean about XP. Last night I decided to start up a new job (THF for the lv15 innate for treasure hunting.... I need Gil!), and, at level 4 was getting XP-Chains solo. 100xp followed by 120xp. Oh, yeah, and I'm too cheap to keep buying level 1 armor, and too much of a packrat to waste storage space on it... so I was fighting in just a pair of pants, and a lv1 sword.)

    (For those that don't know: you get a bonus for an "Experience Chain"... you have to keep killing harder monsters in a row, and each kill then gets you an xp bonus. I killed two monsters that were precisely my level, one after another, so I got 100 for the first and a 20% bonus on the second.)

    You really can't work alone on FFXI. You can do well until level 10, at which point it gets harder and harder to solo, regardless of class.

    But this is normal for MMORPGs: the trick is to get a Good party (and there are many, many, many bad ones) and go for some serious monsters. With a couple people able to heal in the party, you'll be able to trade off on healing duties to keep xp chains going.

    As for lack of quests, um, I haven't found that. I have 70 some quests completed, most of them in my home town (I dislike the others and am not there often enough to pick up and complete quests). I have another ten or so on my 'accepted but not completed' list.

    You will find that as you complete quests, you will be offered more. (Your 'fame' is a key factor in which quests you have been offered, and is partially based on quests you've completed.)

    (So, yes, it's good to do the 'this only pays 100gil' quests: they increase your fame.)

    All in all, I'm very impressed with FFXI.

    After far too many years wasted on MUDs, this is very much like a good old MUD, except with a lot more thought in it (mm... spell casting times, mages can get interrupted, where the thief stands helps sneak attack, varying speeds on weapons, NPC-generated quests, an auction that isn't as annoying as a global shout, a working economy where players don't just collect gil and wonder how they heck they'd ever spend it all, and it's even pretty.)

    I even like the 'little' touches, like the circus that visits the first-ranked nation, complete with a fire-eating Galka, or the fireworks that were on sale for a couple weeks in July: no use, but they were fun to set off.

    The real key, I think, is that this is not a game for loners.

    If you don't want to work as a team, you will find FFXI very difficult. Some things will be downright impossible (like Windurst Mission 8) without partying.

    Most of all FFXI passed the Girlfriend Test.

    When the Beta arrived, I was told, "okay, you can only play that for 2 hours a day, you can't ignore me!" (I'm sure you've all heard something like that...)

    Here it is two months later, and our nightly routine is to play. We play together (sometimes things happen fast so an extra set of eyes helps, sometimes one person remembers directions better than the other... etc).

    Yep, FFXI even managed to convince the "I hate online games and I hate final fantasy!" girlfriend that Square has a hit.