Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Well considering you only read half my post, pardon me if I take it with a grain of salt.

Just because I quoted part of your idiotic rant doesn't mean I didn't read the rest of it, unfortunately for me.

It'd be acceptable to suggest taking up crafting but for a few simple factors. Namely the usual lack of space available to characters to use for storing all the crafting materials and the fact that in true S-E fashion they've made crafting a convoluted, painful load of shit. Let's take a look at what you need to make some Bronze Arrows.

Bronze Nugget (Blacksmith 4)
Copper Ore 3
Tin Ore 1
Fire Crystal 1

Bronze Arrowheads (Blacksmith 11)
Bronze Nugget
Wind Shard x6
Fire Shard x2

Cock Fletchings (Weaver 1)
Cock Feather x3
Wind Shard x6

Cedar Arrow Shafts (Carpenter 21)
Cedar Branch
Wind Shard x3

Fish Glue (Alchemist 11)
Indigo Herring x5 (Requires fishing of an unknown level to acquire)
Sea Pickle x1 (Requires fishing of an unknown level to acquire)
Muddy Water x1
Water Shard x4
Fire Shard x4

Hempen Yarn (Weaver 1)
Moko Grass x2
Lightning Shard x8

And they're only level 3 arrows so, yeah, keep up the helpful suggestions there champ.

[Malacite]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Mal, they do not expect you to level up all the crafts. They want people to trade with each other.

Screw that. I was planning on leveling every craft anyway, because of the long term benefits. It's just aggravating that what should honestly be an aspect of mid-high range crafting is prevalent even at the beginner levels.


Also, status update: Botany 12, Mining 9, Carpentry 10, Smithing 10, Cloth 5 Gold 1 Alchemy 3 Cooking 3. Not a bad start, and I'm getting ready to power my gold and cloth followed by Leather to 10. So far I have made an absolute killing off of the rank 10 gathering leves. I'm averaging 5~8k gil per run, plus whatever I gather up during the leves. The only problem is this is taxing my anima quite harshly.

---------- Post added at 11:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:11 PM ----------

And they're only level 3 arrows so, yeah, keep up the helpful suggestions there champ.

They're also only 11 gil each from the Centuar's shop (or w/e the hell it's called) in Gridania

EDIT 2: UPDATE! I have discovered the missing ingredient (walnut hammer head) for the Bronze Cross-pein hammer during a leve tonight, woot! Just need to carve a piece of walnut lumber. Sorry I don't have the exact skill rank or crystal amount, but yay mystery solved. Now to try and make one @_@ (ugh CRAP need a 21+ weaver to make the canvas.... f'ing great.)

[Aeni]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Please bear in mind that the list of recipes SE has on their site is very, very minimal. You guys do not know how many recipes in just the level 1-10 range there are. There are A LOT. One way to discover them all is to do the crafting leves, which are not counted towards your limit of 8 general leves per day. You can theoretically obtain crafting leves in all 3 major cities and for all crafts.

The leves will (a) provide you with material (b) reward you for following the color coding (which Dak posted about, this is where the color coding comes into play) All you need is the appropriate tools and shards. Some leves require you to be of a high level and/or be in a group to deal with monster aggro to distant camps.

Rewards vary from leve to leve but almost always scale with your "style" points. Style points is following the order (color coding) and being able to complete the synthesis without losing all of your materials. It's better to be of a higher level than the recipes but even if you fail the quest, you get to keep your skill gains. Do this everyday and slowly but surely you will make gains w/o breaking the bank.

[Firewind]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

The one thing I don't like about the crafting is how skewed the level requirements are. By the time you can craft something you can use you will have far outlevelled it.

Case in point: my Pugilist's Rank 11 weapon: Bronze Knuckles. You need Leatherworking and Blacksmithing at 11+ (assuming you obtained all of the components which need Goldsmithing, Blacksmithing, Carpentry and Alchemy) but you can't even attempt it until both are at 15+ because you will just blow up every synth before then. By that time more weapons are available to use.

I wouldn't mind seeing the base level needed to craft weapons lowered for that reason. As it stands there is little reason to level crafts for your own gear purely because you are required to obsolete the gear you are crafting in order to craft it, much like in FFXI.

In games like Monster Hunter, Aion and White Knight Chronicles you can level up while crafting your own gear because crafted gear actually scales with level in a non-idiotic manner.

[Aeni]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

The one thing I don't like about the crafting is how skewed the level requirements are. By the time you can craft something you can use you will have far outlevelled it.

There might be more than one recipe to make it. You just need to keep looking (or wait until someone finds out and posts about it)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Wasn't there something said that the crafting jobs would need to do some foot work to learn about the different recipes? Travel to different towns, talk to NPCs and all that? Seem to remember reading about that a bit.

In games like Monster Hunter, Aion and White Knight Chronicles you can level up while crafting your own gear because crafted gear actually scales with level in a non-idiotic manner.

And how do you rationalize that when you're talking about a game that's always expanding, always adding new gear, equipment and recipes? Are you really going to take Pugilist and other crafts at the exact same pace? And are you not going to barter/trade with other people, for which you might get what you need for your Pugilist?

Two of the games you mention also have to function as a single player experience, by the way. White Knight Chronicles sure as heck ain't going to be seeing the kind of updates Monster Hunter or Aion would and definitely not on the scale of FFXIV.

There have to be gaps right now. What you have now is padding to keep you busy til the updates add new things to fill those gaps.

---------- Post added at 07:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:05 AM ----------

Just because I quoted part of your idiotic rant doesn't mean I didn't read the rest of it, unfortunately for me.

It'd be acceptable to suggest taking up crafting but for a few simple factors. Namely the usual lack of space available to characters to use for storing all the crafting materials and the fact that in true S-E fashion they've made crafting a convoluted, painful load of shit. Let's take a look at what you need to make some Bronze Arrows.

Bronze Nugget (Blacksmith 4)
Copper Ore 3
Tin Ore 1
Fire Crystal 1

Bronze Arrowheads (Blacksmith 11)
Bronze Nugget
Wind Shard x6
Fire Shard x2

Cock Fletchings (Weaver 1)
Cock Feather x3
Wind Shard x6

Cedar Arrow Shafts (Carpenter 21)
Cedar Branch
Wind Shard x3

Fish Glue (Alchemist 11)
Indigo Herring x5 (Requires fishing of an unknown level to acquire)
Sea Pickle x1 (Requires fishing of an unknown level to acquire)
Muddy Water x1
Water Shard x4
Fire Shard x4

Hempen Yarn (Weaver 1)
Moko Grass x2
Lightning Shard x8

And they're only level 3 arrows so, yeah, keep up the helpful suggestions there champ.

If there was any way to prove you don't read, this is it.

Yes, and I'm totally sure people are going for this for leveling up archer, given there are arrows you can buy from vendors. Sometimes there are common sense answers. If I wish to craft them, I have options for how to gain the materials, too. Do I really need to spend a whole two days crafting if I want to go level archer today? No. I did leves, I got gil. I buy the fuckin' arrows. I level a craft toward the more expensive arrows to keep my expenses low. I craft around things that are too large of an investment for the skills gained.

You know, like any person with a lick of sense.

And none of that junk you just posted is an adequate answer from you anyway. You flamed me for daring to say we shouldn't have AHs. I understand how crafting works just fine. I pointed out how crafters stand to benefit from a non-centralized system.

If I can't see that guy in Limsia Lomsa selling his fish at a lower price and the buyer doesn't feel like looking around further, he buys from me and I get the sale. I win. If the guy shops around and finds a better deal, he wins. Some people do the same thing in real life, whodathunkit?

If there's an AH, though, then I'm competing with everyone and all of us are competing with an RMT, whose first impulse is always to undercut if he can't buy us all out and inflate the product for bigger gains.

By having the barter/trade system as it is, if there is an RMT, he has to out himself to the public to sell. This makes him easier to catch. And if he isn't caught, the damage he does isn't really felt by the community at all.

Since you called me an idiot for suggesting we keep the system as is and seek other solutions, that has to mean you'd favor an AH system. It doesn't matter if they expand the sales history of an AH to satisfy your desire to witchhunt suspected RMT or not - the second you give them a centralized system - they win and their impact is felt.

So basically, you're just asking for the same old problems to return. And then you'll act surprised and get mad at SE for letting it happen.What am I saying? You're big ball of angst, you'll get angry no matter what.

Simply put: Be careful what you wish for.

[wrongfeifong]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Pro:
-Love the graphic and details
-keeping the good FFXI features like LS
-give you location on MAP for QUESTS!!!
-no more buying the damn maps!!! - plus!!!
-Teleport is always a plus, i don't want to call teleports
-free boat ride?

Cons:
-No Party.....i don't see the point yet since no chain bouns (@least i didn't see it)
-Force crafting- Hate it.
-Teleport require anima and only get 4 points per 24 hours.
-not enough mage jobs (major turn down)
-Macros is slow as turtle
-UI is slow as snails (like equip actions and such)
-No changes in the LS structure (Give us a LS hall or something or LS level)
-no voice after the first CS
-horrible lag on big servers due to no initial regulation
-engaging bug is annoying.
-crafting doesn't make sense (the light effects and all)
-Uneven EXP, just weird to sometime get xp sometime doesn't
-too much running where are our KFC delivers?
-I don't see anything worthwide to explore
-crafting is too hard when you need so many components from other classes
-No PVP yet
-i wish i can stop fighting little furballs @ level 30
-can the moles be hit by magic when they tunnel underground?
-no airship yet....
-No mog house or AH
-No moogle slaves (major turn down)
-No shantotto ..(super major turndown)
-The elves are ugly...please get them away.
-The lafafel are weird, why do they lift them arms instead of extend their arms.

[Firewind]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

You clearly haven't played the game. Your physical level is what determines stats and gear level. Your class level has nothing to do with what gear you can use and only determines what abilities you have access to. Your physical level goes up no matter what you do, even while crafting. If you level say Blacksmithing up to 15 to make that Lv7 Bronze Dagger, guess what? You are a Lv15 character in Lv7 gear because your character level will have gone up alongside your crafting level.

You only learn recipes by doing leves. You can only do 8 crafting leves per 48 hours and that is assuming you succeed at them. Some of them have very skewed level requirements. The Leather Harness for example is given to you as a Rank 1 leve yet you need to be at least Rank 10 to craft one without is exploding.

Honestly all Squeenix need to do is tweak the rank requirements to successfully craft gear and boost Crystal Drop Rate back to how it was in beta or slow down how quickly you gain character level exp and the crafting will seem less ridiculous.

When trying to keep your gear up to date causes you to gain even more levels it makes the gap even bigger. At the end of the day all you get is a game full of gimped characters who will have gear that is nowhere near up to what they need to take on endgame content. Being at Lv15 and still in starter gear because levelling crafting and gathering jobs to be able to improve my gear just keeps giving me even more XP really does suck.

[Freelancer]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

You clearly haven't played the game. Your physical level is what determines stats and gear level. Your class level has nothing to do with what gear you can use and only determines what abilities you have access to. Your physical level goes up no matter what you do, even while crafting. If you level say Blacksmithing up to 15 to make that Lv7 Bronze Dagger, guess what? You are a Lv15 character in Lv7 gear because your character level will have gone up alongside your crafting level.

I believe you got this turned around, gear clearly state "Optimal rank" so I doubt that physical level is what matters in regard of gear/weapons. (unless this is sarcasm then joke's on me. I'll poke you if I see you ingame.)

And about rank and level even if you're rank 15 your rank 1 Conj will be weak despite having improved stats.
I noticed that even though my HP is over 800 when I switch from GLD to lv1 miner it goes down to 400 so I guess I got this right.

The game so far follows level sync laws and your gear from what I saw improves as you reach its optimal rank.

-----------------------------

Crafting so far is indeed a bitch if you intend on being self sufficient, you'll either try to level everything and slow down to a crawl or you accept reality and work with other crafters to trade materials and strike deals with DoL guys to get materials for a decent price so all of you can improve.

Though you get to make gear sooner than you did in FFXI (level 1 even) and you get exp off all synths so leveling is also faster, now if the blasted market wards has a search function this would be better.

[Ziero]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Your physical level is what determines stats and gear level. Your class level has nothing to do with what gear you can use and only determines what abilities you have access to.

...err, unless things have drastically changed from the Beta, this statement is entirely, absolutely, 100% incorrect. Your physical level has little to nothing to do with the gear you should be wearing, where your current class and rank is all that matters.

All gear has an "Optimal Rank" and are "Suited" for certain classes. This means that you can wear whatever the hell you want regardless of level or class, but unless you're XX class at YY rank, you'll get no bonuses from that piece of gear. You need to be a class that's well "Suited" for the armor that is also at or above the "Optimal Rank". Your physical level only determines two things, your base stats and your base elemental resistances. Rank and class are what's most important when selecting your gear.

As for the "problems" with crafting, it's clear(literally, it's one of the first things SE explained about they game) we're supposed to be bartering and trading with each other a lot more then people apparently are. The fact that everyone is complaining that it's so hard to make something 100% from scratch is proof we're doing it "wrong". You're not supposed to make every single mat for every single synth yourself, you're supposed to buy from other crafters to obtain what you need to make your item to sell to someone else. The problem isn't in the crafting recipes, material ranks or anything like that, the problem is the retainer system and how ass-backwards it is.

If SE doesn't want an AH, that's fine and dandy, but players still need some quick and easy way to find the items they're looking for. If you want to do player-to-player shops, then do player-to-player shops. As someone mentioned before, a system straight out of PSU would work wonders for this game. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, every player got their own private, decoratable house, and if a player oh so chose to, they could go and buy a special item which would actually add a shopfront too said house. The players then put any and all items they wished to sell into their shop, set their prices and were free to do whatever. The shop would always be up, always be selling, and always be in the same exact spot which was always easy to find (since it's your home). Players who wanted to buy something would literally do so right from their own house, they'd open up a menu and input whatever specifics they wanted into the search system. Max Price, Min Price, Item Name, Item Slot, Item Type, Rarity, so forth and so on, anything they wanted. They would then get a list of Sellers and the Buyer could pick one, teleport to their shop and browse the shop first hand. If they found what they wanted, they'd buy it, if not they'd just keep searching.

A system like that, even if it was a direct copy, would be perfect for this game. At the very least, some sort of actual search system for the retainers would work wonders to balance things out and make it easier to both buy and sell items. Increased Bazaar and Item storage would also be wonderful as in the beta both issues were painfully limited.

I'll be honest, I currently don't have the game yet, I only got to play in some of the Open Beta. But from what I've seen, this game has a lot of potential. SE seems to be taking a "wait and see" approach on a lot of things however, meaning people who start at launch will be nothing more then glorified beta testers. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the big complaints right now are specifically addressed before the PS3 launch, because if they can get the current playerbase to sing the game's praises by then, the PS3 Launch will end up blowing the PC launch out of the water.

I noticed that even though my HP is over 800 when I switch from GLD to lv1 miner it goes down to 400 so I guess I got this right.

HP/MP values also change with Discipline, along with things like accuracy, attack, evasion, defense and so on.

[Firewind]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Physical Level is what matters for gear. Case in point is Lv10 Glads running around in Lv20+ armour. Maybe you don't get the full stat boost from it until your Class rank is up there but you can still equip it.

Class level is what determines what mobs check as and what abilities and HP/MP pool you have.

I would love the Wards to have a search function to be honest because it would make acquiring parts much easier. Phantasy Star Universe had such a system and got along fine without an auction house.

Actually I found out one thing that bugs me about the current system. You can advertise in your personal and retainer's bazaar that you need items but you need to already possess that item to ask for it which is completely redundant when you think about it. It becomes silly when you need crystals as if you only have one Fire Crystal but need 10, you can't advertise for 10 Fire Crystals, you can only advertise that you are after however many fire crystals that you already have. So if you need 10 Fire Crystals you need to already have 10 Fire Crystals to seek for 10 Fire Crystals in your bazaar, thus negating any need to seek for the crystals in the first place...

The comments about people who are trying to make things from scratch are "doing it wrong" clearly haven't tried to buy, sell or trade parts ingame.

[Ziero]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Physical Level is what matters for gear.

No.

You can wear gear higher then your Physical Level as well because gear has nothing to do with Physical Level.

[Gman]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

If SE doesn't want an AH, that's fine and dandy, but players still need some quick and easy way to find the items they're looking for. If you want to do player-to-player shops, then do player-to-player shops. As someone mentioned before, a system straight out of PSU would work wonders for this game. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, every player got their own private, decoratable house, and if a player oh so chose to, they could go and buy a special item which would actually add a shopfront too said house. The players then put any and all items they wished to sell into their shop, set their prices and were free to do whatever. The shop would always be up, always be selling, and always be in the same exact spot which was always easy to find (since it's your home). Players who wanted to buy something would literally do so right from their own house, they'd open up a menu and input whatever specifics they wanted into the search system. Max Price, Min Price, Item Name, Item Slot, Item Type, Rarity, so forth and so on, anything they wanted. They would then get a list of Sellers and the Buyer could pick one, teleport to their shop and browse the shop first hand. If they found what they wanted, they'd buy it, if not they'd just keep searching.

A system like that, even if it was a direct copy, would be perfect for this game. At the very least, some sort of actual search system for the retainers would work wonders to balance things out and make it easier to both buy and sell items. Increased Bazaar and Item storage would also be wonderful as in the beta both issues were painfully limited.

While I agree that a system like that would be cool, and give player the chance to buy straight from one another with some type of organization, wouldn't RMT still thrive in this environment, as it is essentially the same as having an AH? The only way I can see it being different than in FFXI would be the ability to see the ACTUAL price it's being sold for rather than it being a mystery.

Also, I think RMT could abuse a system like that because they could simply do a search on an item, see what everyone else is selling it for, then undercut.

All that said, if S-E is trying to make players buy and sell from each other's retainers to deter RMT, I don't think it will ultimately have the effect they are looking for. They will have to eventually go about it differently.

I also don't have the game- I'm waiting for PS3, when I hope this will all be sorted out.

[Ziero]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

The only real difference would be that with Player to Player shops, you'll always know who you're buying from. This can eventually lead to actual player interaction directly, cutting out the whole shopping aspect creating a direct barter system. It also means that RMT would need more characters to really control the market as if they keep getting banned they won't have enough time to really dictate prices. They'd still try to majorly undercut everyone else, but there wouldn't really be a set price to anything to begin with, so they'd have to really undercut everyone and hope they last long enough to sell enough to make it worth the price drop.

[DakAttack]

Re: Honest First Impressions? (For those of us still on the fence)

Wouldn't we create some sort of reference, one way or the other? All we're really looking for is some sort of organization to prices and locations, and once these become player made it wouldn't be any more difficult for the RMT to exploit than an auction house.