Famitsu Hands-On with Alpha

[Raesvelg]

Stolen from *shudder* Zam.

Character Creation

Famitsu boasts that the character creation system is so deep, you'll be nitpicking your avatar setting all day long trying to get it just right. Even the alpha, while not complete, has a considerable amount of variations available such as face type, skin color, hair style and body size. There are even smaller details, like putting highlights or streaks in your hair, that are customizable. There will be brand new aspects of your character to select as well -- there will even be a number of different voice types.

The character creation process begins with selecting one's race and customizing the avatar. Once your character is complete, you begin the game and set up your Class, birthday and Guardian Diety. What effects one's Guardian Diety will have in game are unknown at this time. Once all those steps are complete, you choose your name, which as we know consists of both a first and last name.

Seamless Fields and Instanced Areas

Leaving a town brings you into the Field Area where you have your adventures. FFXIV will have a seamless transition between areas that requires no loading time. From their experience with the game, Famitsu says this really gives Eorzea the feeling of a wide, expansive world. In addition, the background music transitions naturally between the areas you traverse.

A new addition, familiar to many MMO players, is the Instanced Area. This is where a private copy of an area is created, into which only you and your party can enter. These will be used in FFXIV for special events, an example being when cut scenes take place in order to eliminate outside effects and noise, allowing the player to enjoy their cut scene in peace.

Guildleve and the Battle System

Guildleves are like "quests" that you can undertake by visiting an adventurer's guild in a city. The contents of a Guildleve can vary player to player, and you can attempt them alone or with a group. To begin your selected Guildleve, first you must seek out Aetheryte in a Field Area. Players can move instantly to Aetheryte they have visited once before by selecting the "Teleport" command.

Many Guildleves involved combat, and the Famitsu team was kind enough to explain the flow of combat below:

1) Target your enemy - Find the enemy you wish to attack and select it. Once selected, the L3 button will initiate Target Lock, keeping you facing the enemy's direction.

2) Ready your weapon - Move your cursor over your weapon of choice and press Circle. Once selected, R1 will take out your weapon and ready your stance. Now you are in "Active Mode" and able to engage the enemy.

3) Select your commands - A list of your commands is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Underneath each icon is a guage showing how much time remains until they are ready for use.

4) Store up your Action Guage - Once your Action Guage is full, you can activate commands. To boost their effect, store up the Effect Guage.

5) Using the Effect Guage - You can activate commands immediately, or you can enhance their effects by storing up your Effect Guage. This guage is constantly building, so timing is important.

Convenience and Travel Time

Aetheryte provides the foundation for adventure for all players. It exists out in Field Areas as well as inside cities. Aetheryte serves as a the launching point for a Guildleve and the destination for Teleport. All players are able to use Teleport right from the start. In addition, once a quest is complete, an Aethereal Node will appear, allowing players to easily warp back to the original Aetheryte they came from. Everything is designed to allow players to move around and enjoy the game with ease.

Freedom of Growth

In FFXIV, what most MMO players know as "levels" will be the character's "Physical Level." Points you accumulate in battle can be freely spent on HP/MP, physical strength, intelligence or a variety of other parameters. In other words, you can focus on one aspect of your character, or aim for balance between all stats. The ultimate decision regarding the direction of the character is completely up to the player.

Alpha Test Hands-On Report

The team from Famitsu were able to create characters and try out the Alpha Version of FFXIV. They put their experiences into two write-ups -- one for Disciples of War and one for Disciples of Magic. Here are the key points of what they had to say.

Kikuo Saji: Roegadyn, Disciple of War, Pugilist

- The Character Creation system is so deep, you'll spend all day tweaking your avatar

- Don't fret too much over Class, you can change at anytime by changing your weapon

- The size difference between Roegadyn and Lalafell is quite massive

- You'll love the variety of new emotes -- Lalefell are especially adorable

- Aetheryte warps you right to where you need to go for Guildleves

- Guildleve difficulty is split into 5 levels, 1 star (easy) 5 stars (hard)

- The locations of target monsters for Guildleve are clearly displayed on your map

- There is a "weakened state" after dying -- HP/MP are lowered and it lasts for 5 minutes

- The game feels incredibly expansive, and it feels like you could walk on forever

- Crabs are back! Apparently Kikuo Saji found a giant one outside town that killed him in one strike!

Opone Kikuchi: Lalafell, Disciple of Magic, Thaumaturge

- There is so much more to do in the alpha compared with the Gamescom version 7 months ago

- Again, feels character creation is like a day's work in and of itself

- Once your MP is spent, you cannot recover it through resting

- Disciples of Magic have a basic magical ranged attack that does not consume MP

- It is possible to move while casting magic, but still important to be aware of the area of effect your spell will cover when cast

- Sheathing your weapon puts you into Passive Mode, which begins to recover HP, making it possible for even magic users to solo effectively

 

[Mattaru]

きゃーーーーわいい

 

[Raesvelg]

きゃーーーーわいい

Huh?

 

[Mattaru]

Super cute Lalafell.

 

[Xalioniaf]

These will be used in FFXIV for special events, an example being when cut scenes take place in order to eliminate outside effects and noise, allowing the player to enjoy their cut scene in peace.

Praise the Lord.

 

[Reya]

Epic FFXIV Music!

 

[Anglis]

I'm glad the world is seamless!

 

[Tiael]

FFXIV Alpha Soundtrack:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HL7SZ6BF

Sounds interesting so far.

 

[Raesvelg]

One thing that interested me was the "Physical Level" concept, which from what they're saying is there mostly just to let other people know how much experience you've spent on stat/skill increases.

Proving my mastery of all things in geekdom, the Dark Heresy tabletop rpg uses a similar system, actually, though it also couples it with scaled availability of increases/bonuses, which FFXIV might actually do as well, rather than simply work with prerequisites.

So far what they're describing for combat sounds a lot more dynamic than XI, which is probably a good thing. Sure, being able to briefly afk during a fight without substantially decreasing your dps is nice, but it gets boring after a while to only hit buttons every 15-30 seconds or so.

Hell, on my MNK I can be afk for most of the fight and still out-damage most people. Which is kinda sad.

- Once your MP is spent, you cannot recover it through resting

That puzzles me though. Not sure how you're supposed to recover MP, unless they're going to make it a resource that you build through battle in the same way that some of the classes in WAR worked.

- Disciples of Magic have a basic magical ranged attack that does not consume MP

And this should please most people, I think.

 

[Anglis]

One thing that interested me was the "Physical Level" concept, which from what they're saying is there mostly just to let other people know how much experience you've spent on stat/skill increases.

Proving my mastery of all things in geekdom, the Dark Heresy tabletop rpg uses a similar system, actually, though it also couples it with scaled availability of increases/bonuses, which FFXIV might actually do as well, rather than simply work with prerequisites.

So far what they're describing for combat sounds a lot more dynamic than XI, which is probably a good thing. Sure, being able to briefly afk during a fight without substantially decreasing your dps is nice, but it gets boring after a while to only hit buttons every 15-30 seconds or so.

Hell, on my MNK I can be afk for most of the fight and still out-damage most people. Which is kinda sad.



That puzzles me though. Not sure how you're supposed to recover MP, unless they're going to make it a resource that you build through battle in the same way that some of the classes in WAR worked.



And this should please most people, I think.

I'm sure their will be MP restoring abilities and of course foods.


One thing I don't like. You can only form parties with people who are close to you...

 

[Raesvelg]

One thing I don't like. You can only form parties with people who are close to you...

How close is "close", though? That's the way that XI works, and while I'm not excessively keen on that aspect of the game I do understand why they do things that way.

But in theory if you can warp to exactly where you need to be for a Guildleve, it shouldn't be too hard to rapidly assemble groups of like-minded individuals.

 

[Jagster]

Thanks for all that info. I'm excited about the seemless world as well as the character developement. However, I am somewhat concerned about the skill points or level points depending on what you want to call them.

I'm worried and in question of a few things such as: Are points gained in individual disciples, jobs within disciples, or are points gained only once and must be spread between all our jobs.

I also hope points can be redistributed. What if we make some errors, especially while the game is new and we don't know better. If we can reassign 10-20 points a day then no big deal. I'm just concerned some might end up with a character that's not what was wanted. The game will be new, we won't know all the effects and uses of the stats in this new game.

I felt a great part of XI was there weren't too many mistakes to be made as you could always level new jobs and subjobs. That seems to be somewhat intact with XIV and for that I'm grateful. I just hope the points system is handled with the same degree of flexibility.

Here are some things I mean as examples.

Prehaps a tank later in his developement discovers a very practical use for int/chr/luck/dex/mp
Prehaps a DD later on finds uses for mnd/int/chr/luck
Prehaps a mage later on wishes he at least distributed some points to evasion/vit even if minor amounts.

I don't want the world explained to me, but I do want the ability to amend even within a disciple/job possible for things change throughout one's experiences be it solo/xp/endgame.

 

[Raesvelg]

I can't imagine that anyone would be dumb enough to introduce a skill-based system without the ability to respec at some point in the future. Even XI lets you redo your merits, albeit in an incredibly punitive fashion.

 

[Uzor]

Thanks for all that info. I'm excited about the seemless world as well as the character developement. However, I am somewhat concerned about the skill points or level points depending on what you want to call them.

I'm worried and in question of a few things such as: Are points gained in individual disciples, jobs within disciples, or are points gained only once and must be spread between all our jobs.

I also hope points can be redistributed. What if we make some errors, especially while the game is new and we don't know better. If we can reassign 10-20 points a day then no big deal. I'm just concerned some might end up with a character that's not what was wanted. The game will be new, we won't know all the effects and uses of the stats in this new game.

I felt a great part of XI was there weren't too many mistakes to be made as you could always level new jobs and subjobs. That seems to be somewhat intact with XIV and for that I'm grateful. I just hope the points system is handled with the same degree of flexibility.

Here are some things I mean as examples.

Prehaps a tank later in his developement discovers a very practical use for int/chr/luck/dex/mp
Prehaps a DD later on finds uses for mnd/int/chr/luck
Prehaps a mage later on wishes he at least distributed some points to evasion/vit even if minor amounts.

I don't want the world explained to me, but I do want the ability to amend even within a disciple/job possible for things change throughout one's experiences be it solo/xp/endgame.

I posted the following on BG, and I think it is a rather good assumption;

I think you're both thinking of it wrong.

Yes, I think Physical will be an overall stat increase for all characters. After all, it would make no sense that a battle-hardened Gladiator switching over to a Mage class wouldn't suddenly lose all of his physics just because he pick up another weapon.

However, that would make little sense when it comes to leveling other classes. I'm guessing "Physical" is simply an overall character level. When you exp on your jobs, this is something that levels up across all jobs and is shared. Its basically your base attributes.

I'm guessing the allocated stat points are your skill level. When a Gladiator picks up a staff instead, its only natural he do not have the same proficiency in this as his sword. So when changing to a new class, you temporarily lose your allocated points. Remember when SE said weapons are how you increase your stats? Yeah.

So basically, allocated stats are on a per-weapon basis. When you level up your skill level in Sword, you get C number of points to allocate among your stats. So when you change from Gladiator to Thaumaturge, you would reset your stats to your Physical Level + Skill Level. This way, each class would have their own stats, without a Mage having to worry he would be gimped from leveling Gladiator first.

It would also be interesting if the only way to cap your "physical" level would be to cap all other jobs. That would actually benefit people that decide to level other jobs beyond giving them Maat's Cap, and would be yet another time sink that we all know SE loves to do.

 

[Raesvelg]

I think you're applying to much logic to the system.

Recall the job system. A level 75 PLD puts down his sword, picks up a staff, and is now a level 1 BLM, with no special benefits to be had.

I expect Physical Level will just be a bit of notational shorthand, so to speak, and an easy way of saying "I have this much experience" in a given class, rather than having everyone list the precise way in which they spent their points.

 

[Reya]

I just hope that leveled abilities will not be a grim deciding factor involoving group play like it is in FFXI.

 

[Raesvelg]

I don't think it's possible for SE to create a system that won't have one "optimal" build emerge for each class, unfortunately, whether it's truly optimal or just perceived as such by the community.

Realistically the most I hope for is for each class to have two or so viable builds, each with a different focus.

We'll see though. And it's worth noting that what is considered "optimal" by the community can vary significantly depending on how things play out over the evolution of the game.

 

[Tiael]

Wild West de Chocobo!



I still like XIII's Pulse de Chocobo better, but this Wild West-ish one for XIV is good too.

Anyways, about the soundtrack, I can't help but feel I have heard a lot of it before in past FF's.
One of the songs is pretty much Dancing Mad 2.0, and there's quite a bit of songs that are like that.

 

[Raesvelg]

Given that Nobuo Uematsu is doing the composing for XIV, it's rather unsurprising that it would sound rather familiar.

 

[Tiael]

Well, yes, but some of these are eerily similar.
It's like he couldn't come up with something original so he used previous work and re-did it.

Don't get me wrong, I like Uematsu as much as the next guy, but I feel his best work was FFIX and it's been declining ever since.
I am not one of the ones who says he's God's Gift to FF music, as I have enjoyed the soundtracks composed by Mizuta (XI), Sakimoto (XII) and Hamauzu (XIII).