Hello everyone

[Yuniver]

I am new to the community if you couldn't tell =P but that aside I have a few concerns. First of all I am having difficulty getting used to how sluggish the game is even with adjusted settings to increase performance. It could just be my pc but it plays other games like rift/wow perfectly with no issues at all. If theres anything I can do to help this, I would appreciate the info. Secondly, sluggishness aside, I can't find any players in-game to assist me. I don't know where to go to get out of the first town I started in. Some guy gave me a quest to go to this camp but everytime I see an area I can walk out of the town with, I hit an invisible wall?? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Also is it better to play this game with a controller or a mouse?

[REDace0]

FFXIV is very very demanding. Only top-of-the-line systems run it at max settings without major problems. There are a couple of things you can do: turn off Ambient Occlusion, disable/lower shadows, run in Fullscreen mode (don't accidentally Alt+Tab), lower your drawing quality (though not too much or it gets too grainy to play). On the plus side, 2.0's new graphic engine (yes, they're writing a brand new one for it), should let you reduce quality and increase framerate more gracefully.

Hm...I'm going to guess you started in Limsa Lominsa or Gridania. Nobody lives there because the population is too low for the markets to get any use. Everyone is in Ul'dah. To leave Gridania, hit M to bring up your map and walk down the paths in the bottom-right or bottom-left corners of the town. To leave Limsa Lominsa, bring up your map and see if you're in the upper or lower docks. If you're in the Upper Docks, head to the inn in the middle of town (big round room) and take the stairs down to the first level. If you exit the first level heading east you'll run down a loooong bridge that leads to the region of La Noscea. Once out of town, bring up your Journal on the Main Menu and select the quest. If you click the map button it will show you where to do. All of the starter (L1-9) camps are very close to their respective cities, so you should be good from there.

I use a keyboard mostly, but use a mouse for precision targeting. I find that I play much more responsively with a keyboard, but others swear by a controller. I'd try both and see which you prefer.

[Yuniver]

I appreciate the information you have given. With it I was able to leave LL, lol. I have taken your advice and lowered the settings you have recommended, drawing quality down a few points from standard, and disabled shadow and ambient occulsion and have switched to full screen mode and am about to login to see the changes. I am also giving my PS3 controller a try since my mouse inst as responsive as it should be.

[REDace0]

Glad to hear it! By chance do you have 'Enable hardware mouse cursor' checked? They originally had a software mouse, so it was a bit less responsive.

[Yuniver]

I do have it checked if thats a bad idea, I dont know. I havent tried with it not checked.

Edit: I do like how it plays with a ps3 controller better than the mouse already anyways

[REDace0]

I was just looking for a reason behind your reported sluggish mouse behavior. Based on your character name, good luck on your future WHMing!

[Yuniver]

You are correct and thanks for all the help.