Feedback on the New Player experience

Greetings! I've been playing Final Fantasy XIV for almost a month now, and though I'm new to this game, I'm not new to MMO's. I want to offer my experience so far and my thoughts on the game. Also, as the title suggests, I'm new, so if I list something as a "con" that's either just wrong or if the game already offers resolutions to what I'm complaining about, feel free to politely educate me.

Pros:

• Leveling is actually nice, and I find that I actually do enjoy the linear-style main quest line and that it keeps you geared as well without having to rely on repeated dungeon runs or relying on the market boards from other players.
• Extended from above, I really like how little GIL matters at this point in the game (approaching mid 30's in level), and that it's really only needed for travel so far. This will really help down the road too as the game mature's so that new players aren't price gouged for gear.
• Travel options are perfect, and I hope they don't deviate much in the future. I also love how you have to travel to each Aetheryte manually as least once before being able to port to it. I'm introduced to the world and the scenery and then I'm given the option to skip it if desired for a GIL-sink. Great mechanics here.
• I love the FATE system, and the world activity it promotes. I just had an epic battle yesterday against the giant crab Cancer near Costa Del Sol, and we had probably 10 or more people show up, and we took him down, and it was challenging and rewarding. That's what the MMO experience is about.
• I also like the Grand Company idea of offering another way of gearing up for good quality gear outside of dungeons. Although the leve quests get extremely old really quick, But the farming time to gear ratio is pretty good, considering the high quality of the gear available.
• So far I like the dungeons for the most part. I have some cons to list here too but I like how the dungeons require a LITTLE bit of effort, especially compared to another MMO I just unsubscribed from where the game could be derped without batting an eye all the way through end game. Resource management is a thing. There were even times where mob aggro management has been a thing. Having consequences for bad play, including party wipes, is a thing. I personally think it could be a little more challenging but for the leveling process so far, I think it's sufficient for the general masses. I also like how, similar to Aetherytes, the dungeon queue is locked behind visiting the dungeon at least once.
• I like the default UI and that's pretty customizeable, including keybinds and hotbar placements, and especially how pretty much every frame is move-able. I also like the camera and movement setup and options.
• I mostly like the job and class system, but I have some cons for this one too. I like how my single character can be anything, and I like how class is specific to weapon, which makes switching really easy. And the cross-class skills are neat as well.
• I like the combat flow and speed. Also the "facing" indicators are real useful as well as enemy AoE indicators. Marking and identifying marks targets is easy, though it's hard sometimes to select the right target when they are stacked. I think right clicking should prioritize numerically marked targets in targets that are stacked together as well as tab-targeting should prioritize the lowest number marked target.

Cons:

• Crafting! I guess the design concept sounded good on paper with each crafting/gathering profession also changes your "class" by weapon and they all level individually like that. It's a system that I don't like, at all. That also means that crafting and gathering all get their own gear sets at the same time. That adds a layer of item management which gets cumbersome and annoying (which is another con I'll touch on). The interface design and the flow of actually crafting something is also too complex. I have to select what I want to make from the crafting log, then get a screen showing durability and progress while I click a redundant "snythesize" button to take the action. That's too much. When I click the item I want to craft, it should craft with a simple pass or fail. Also, crafting items to craft pull too heavily from other professions. I understand the need to make them somewhat dependent on each other, but I think that should only be required for making higher quality and usable items, NOT for the leveling process. Also, crafting is not rewarding enough. Aside from filling materia slots and repairing some of your own gear, there's no reason to craft for gear. Gear is easily available, and cheaply at that, from NPC's for quests and of course you can always get even better gear from dungeons or grand company seals. I feel like crafting needs an entire overhaul/redo.
• The market boards are a pretty lackluster design. And also largely useless outside of selling craft items that I'm avoiding entirely right now. But that aside, the whole process of looking at and searching the market boards to putting your own items up for sale is pretty terrible. I can't look at what other items are already up on the market boards when I'm putting things up for sale. Really? There's also no method of auto-filling the search bar with an item's name, everything needs to be manually typed in. Minor inconvenience but an easily fixed inconvenience. That market board needs some serious work.
• Retainers and item/gear management. I like how in my character UI my gear is split up and sorted by armor slot. This needs to be added to retainers. Also, gear needs to be highlighted or somehow easily determined as the highest level item wearable by my current class. I'm only level 34 and I only have one other class leveled really at all (marauder) and I'm already frustrated mousing over each piece of gear to see which one is the best for him to be wearing. As my gear starts building as I'm getting items for other classes through greed roll wins, this is getting cumbersome, especially as I need to start putting gear into my retainers that doesn't even sort gear by type. I want to switch classes, open up my retainers gear stash, and easily pull out the best pieces according my level. I couldn't imagine the pain trying to manage gear with multiple level 50 jobs, even moreso throwing in full sets of crafting gear (the fact that there's crafting gear at all seems awkward and bad to me).
• The world seems limited and small. There is tons of viewable world that I can't step foot on because of invisible barriers. The minimap is marked with areas that can be traversed on foot. I think this really cuts out the ability to "explore" and this removes any challenge or reward that could have been offered on that front. Also, since every zone is instanced, I can't view any active fates without having to travel to that zone, which I think should be doable.
• Dungeon layout seems a little boring. I think the level design of these dungeons could be much more interesting and meaningful. The whole foot-traffic limitation thing applies here too, though, there's no deviating from the set paths and there's no sense of exploration, and everything seems really tight and linear.
• Nit-picky Quality of Life things are getting on my nerves a bit too. The whole "you can't do that while mounted" is a huge annoyance. Please either open up what we can do while mounted (talk to NPCs) and at the same time make us auto-dismount when we take actions that can't do while mounted (teleporting or using abilities etc.). RMT spam I would put here as a QoL issue too because it really ruins my experience every time I get one and I get one Every. Single. Hour. There are easily technical ways to limit this, for starters I would put in some flood detection and not allow a single account to send 100 tells in 5 seconds. I could offer other suggestions too but that's it's own thread. Also the quests with text that instruct "Wait for X to happen" is not good design when you really have to "Go find the purple smoke area and click on 'Desitination'". Also, some of the interact-able click boxes are time-wastingly too small (see my thread shoved into "working as intended" at this link: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-way-too-small).
• Some game elements are found randomly through quests that I think need to be integrated into the main story. I mean things such as getting your chocobo, unlocking armor dying, and opening the white wolf gate in Gridania. I shouldn't have to randomly stumble into these important game elements by clicking on the right quest giver.
• I'm very disappointed in the race choices. Especially because they were basically the same races from FFXI. Just from exploring the world it's what? 50% Hyur 20% Miqo'te 10% Lalafell, 10% Roegadyn, 10% Elezen? I'd be surprised if the numbers are much different than that. And if that's accurate. . .doesn't that tell you something? I feel like they are all weak designs with weak stories, compounded that there no strongholds, kingdoms, or individually celebrated cultures for each race. So far you don't get behind a race for self immersion or identification, you get behind one of the three city-states that are mostly all race-integrated. It's really too late to do anything here, but it doesn't mean I can't point it out as a serious flaw as a new player getting started in this game.

TL;DR Overall I'd say FFXIV has been a positive experience. It's a fun game that gives me plenty to do (remember, I'm just speaking the perspective of someone still leveling). The biggest problems with it so far I think is the crafting system and the market boards. Hopefully these insights will be useful to other players and more importantly to the developers. If life doesn't get too busy and I can make it to end game, I'll write about how my experiences have changed and from the new end-game perspective. These of course all my opinions, feel free to share yours, and if any of my opinions look like they are based on false or incomplete information let me know.

I just want to say I didn't read to far, but I disagree with crafting, one of the reasons I enjoy it is, it is NOT a simple pass/fail, but actually has an entertaining process within it.

Reasonable opinions put forward well, nice post.

I would say that I think you're wrong on the race percentages though, it feels more like 35% cats, 35% humans, and about 10% each for the giants, midgets and elves.
I sometimes wish I'd gone with the suave looking elf dude I created instead of contributing to the flood of humans and humans with cat ears :) .

Because of lockouts, I finally decided to level an alt. The whole benefit to having one character be able to play all jobs is not needing to level an alt . . . . anyway . . .

It only took me a couple weeks to get to 50 and finish all quests just playing casually after doing stuff on main char on mondays. And just started end game last week.

With the game being so easy for a person to get to end game, my biggest con is lockouts. So if there weren't lockouts, I would be able to catch up to everyone in a short time. I also wouldn't need to create an alt to gear up other jobs which I already have on my main character.

I love what they did with crafting. And actually, now that I just hit 50 in 2nd char, crafted gear is much better than darklight so that helped me enter end game sooner. Crafting is fun, actually. And the economy is what it is. Gil can be made if that is your focus. But gil is not necessary right now.

A couple of notes:

• Crafting:
  • The simple pass/fail is quick synthesis which unlocks at level 10. It's boring.
  • The crafting clothes are not class specific. If you level them approximately together they can all use the same outfits.
  • HQ crafted gear is much better than what is available from NPCs and quests
• Market Board:
  • You can see what is currently selling from your retainer while putting items up for sale. One of the buttons in the upper right when setting the price shows you the current market.
  • Those things you need for crafting that are made by other crafting classes? Buy them from the market board.
• Gear Management:
  • Have you played with the sort settings? I find the level sort very helpful to at narrow down the items I need to look at.
• Game elements in random quests:
  • I would argue that those aren't important game elements :P
  • You can set the recommended quests to popup whenever you enter a new area.
  • Have you gotten your chocobo to fight with you yet? That one is in Camp Tranquil.
• Races:
  • Apparently there was more about the individual races in 1.0. I would also like more in-game lore focus on them.
  • Check the lore section of the forums for some info.
  • I thought female Miqo'te were the most common :P
  • Some links to survey data - http://i.imgur.com/nhTm07A.jpg -- http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/misc.php?page=census-2013

Very well stated opinions. These were the same opinions I had of the game when I was first playing it. I would add that I liked the story at the beginning, but it started to feel like there were holes everywhere in it after a while. Also, I had mixed feelings about crafting, which went more towards the negative side upon hitting end game because some crafts become useless for gearing after the cap is reached. As a result, I ended up getting shoved into the duty finder and party finder scene for end game quality gear, which is the breeding ground of all that is bleak, hateful, and depressing in the community. End game dungeons and fights are designed with high levels of party coordination in mind, which can't be achieved very easily with a random group of people. So it makes people want to kill one another and victories bittersweet.

Still, if the new player can find a group of friendly people who are on the same time table (a flip of the coin really), the end game can be fun and rewarding. Unfortunately, there is little for the person who can't do things on a set schedule once the bulk of the game has been complete. Using duty finder for anything but basic dungeons is a recipe for hours of wiping, so it pains me to say that despite the fact I enjoyed the bulk of the game, it is probably better to seek greener pastures if the player doesn't have a schedule that accommodates playing at set times.

I'm still relatively new but I wanted to give an opinion on the mounted thing. Teleporting I can't see a reason why but talking to NPCs I may have an understanding.

Imagine you've around a popular NPC and everyone is on their mount. Some of these mounts are HUGE. It would end up being very confusing to even find the NPC in those sorts of situations.

Regarding the market....what I find irritating is that while you have to use your retainer to sells tuff, you have to go back and forth between your retainer and the market board to see what you should be looking to sell your items form.

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Originally Posted by Failia

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Regarding the market....what I find irritating is that while you have to use your retainer to sells tuff, you have to go back and forth between your retainer and the market board to see what you should be looking to sell your items form.

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You don't have to run back and forth. When you go to sell an item, there is a history button in top right-hand side of the window and that will show you what the current prices are. There is also a button to click on that shows what price and how many were sold.

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Originally Posted by Alipoprocks

You don't have to run back and forth. When you go to sell an item, there is a history button in top right-hand side of the window and that will show you what the current prices are. There is also a button to click on that shows what price and how many were sold.

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O_O

I feel like a dunce now. I'll have to check that more thoroughly. Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alipoprocks

You don't have to run back and forth. When you go to sell an item, there is a history button in top right-hand side of the window and that will show you what the current prices are. There is also a button to click on that shows what price and how many were sold.

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Wow, very useful. That's something not very obvious in the game - maybe SE should consider making it more intuitive for new users like me - I'm a programmer and I'm very adept at adapting to software and I completely missed this. Thanks for the education!

I thought your review was fair overall. People already pointed out the MB history thing so I won't go into that.

Regarding crafting: Yes, it can seem a pointless system opposed to pass/fail if you're only spamming standard synthesis, but this isn't the most efficient way of crafting. The pinnacle of crafting is synthing High Qualty items, which are noticeably better than their Normal Quality counterparts. If you're not using all HQ materials, having the right abilities at your disposal and a little luck makes the system a lot more deep than it is at face value.

It's possible to easily and quickly level every craft to 15 just utilizing NPC vendor materials. Each class gets a cross class ability at 15. I might suggest you try taking some of the crafts that far just to see how much more depth this adds to the crafting system.

You're not incorrect in saying that crafting is fairly useless in the long term though, but this is a development team decision as they want the best gear to come from the hardest content. Crafted gear enhanced with materia is supposed to be a stepping stone to supplement your gear along with gear you can buy with end game currencies.

They're supposed to be adding some "Master Recipes" in the upcoming patch, but I still don't see how they will be on par with the new armor that drops. Personally I find crafting to be a fun (and sometimes frustrating) diversion when I don't feel like doing battle activities. I have two crafts to level to 50 as of now, and I might work on getting one of them (Blacksmithing) to 50 this weekend in preparation for the patch as they should be adding new ilvl90 recipes that could help fill some gaps on some of my alt characters to prepare for the next tier of content.

In summary, crafting is definitely not for everyone, but I believe you're doing yourself a disservice to completely write it off without playing it as it was meant to be.

Wall of text crits Moheeheeko for 99999999999999!

Moheeheeko goes down!

Crafting in this game is one of the better function. Once you understand it.,You can say down the road many other mmo will start to copy it. It not like most mmos were it is auto make the stuff into the higher version. You got to work for it. It will take a few of the other crafting jobs skill to add to the crafter and some of those skills in order to make what you would like to make in the HQ versions.

The only downfall though is, They got no gear that is like a elite statis, unless you count the melding part that is luck base and you can get some of pieces that equal a I90 piece of gear in away. You lose some stuff, but can gain a bonuses that most do not relize that helps out.

I wanted to begin by saying that this is one of the most respectable posts on these forums I have read in a very long time. Well thought out and put together very nicely.

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Originally Posted by Geryth

Pros:

• Leveling is actually nice, and I find that I actually do enjoy the linear-style main quest line and that it
  keeps you geared as well without having to rely on repeated dungeon runs or relying on the market boards from other players.
• Extended from above, I really like how little GIL matters at this point in the game (approaching mid 30's in level), and that it's really only needed for travel so far. This will really help down the road too as the game mature's so that new players aren't price gouged for gear.
• Travel options are perfect, and I hope they don't deviate much in the future. I also love how you have to travel to each Aetheryte manually as least once before being able to port to it. I'm introduced to the world and the scenery and then I'm given the option to skip it if desired for a GIL-sink. Great mechanics here.
• I love the FATE system, and the world activity it promotes. I just had an epic battle yesterday against the giant crab Cancer near Costa Del Sol, and we had probably 10 or more people show up, and we took him down, and it was challenging and rewarding. That's what the MMO experience is about.
• I also like the Grand Company idea of offering another way of gearing up for good quality gear outside of dungeons. Although the leve quests get extremely old really quick, But the farming time to gear ratio is pretty good, considering the high quality of the gear available.
• I like the default UI and that's pretty customizeable, including keybinds and hotbar placements, and especially how pretty much every frame is move-able. I also like the camera and movement setup and options.
• I mostly like the job and class system, but I have some cons for this one too. I like how my single character can be anything, and I like how class is specific to weapon, which makes switching really easy. And the cross-class skills are neat as well.
• I like the combat flow and speed. Also the "facing" indicators are real useful as well as enemy AoE indicators. Marking and identifying marks targets is easy, though it's hard sometimes to select the right target when they are stacked. I think right clicking should prioritize numerically marked targets in targets that are stacked together as well as tab-targeting should prioritize the lowest number marked target.

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I agree to all these points entirely.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geryth

• So far I like the dungeons for the most part. I have some cons to list here too but I like how the dungeons require a LITTLE bit of effort, especially compared to another MMO I just unsubscribed from where the game could be derped without batting an eye all the way through end game. Resource management is a thing. There were even times where mob aggro management has been a thing. Having consequences for bad play, including party wipes, is a thing. I personally think it could be a little more challenging but for the leveling process so far, I think it's sufficient for the general masses. I also like how, similar to Aetherytes, the dungeon queue is locked behind visiting the dungeon at least once.

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I agree that they could be more challenging, however, the main reason they dumbed the dungeon down this level is because their target for this game is the common gamer that may or may not have ever played an MMO before. If they haven't, throwing them into a medium difficulty dungeon would turn them off to the game if they couldn't clear it. So, instead they decided to introduce new mechanics and build on them. Examples being: Sastasha is the basic pull mobs hold their aggro and kill them in addition to adds coming in mid fight in bosses. Tam Tara introduces gathering of items and using them to progress. Copperbell introduces control of DPS and a mechanic learning curve. (3 entirely different boss mechanics)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geryth

[LIST]

Cons:

• Crafting! I guess the design concept sounded good on paper with each crafting/gathering profession also changes your "class" by weapon and they all level individually like that. It's a system that I don't like, at all. That also means that crafting and gathering all get their own gear sets at the same time. That adds a layer of item management which gets cumbersome and annoying (which is another con I'll touch on). The interface design and the flow of actually crafting something is also too complex. I have to select what I want to make from the crafting log, then get a screen showing durability and progress while I click a redundant "snythesize" button to take the action. That's too much. When I click the item I want to craft, it should craft with a simple pass or fail. Also, crafting items to craft pull too heavily from other professions. I understand the need to make them somewhat dependent on each other, but I think that should only be required for making higher quality and usable items, NOT for the leveling process. Also, crafting is not rewarding enough. Aside from filling materia slots and repairing some of your own gear, there's no reason to craft for gear. Gear is easily available, and cheaply at that, from NPC's for quests and of course you can always get even better gear from dungeons or grand company seals. I feel like crafting needs an entire overhaul/redo.

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I beleive crafting was done right. I personally would not have participated if it were a simple pass or fail. I like the idea of manipulating CP to get the most quality while still completing the craft. It gives the crafter a reason to upgrade gear so they can get more experience per craft and maybe a High Quality that they can sell for a pretty penny. I do agree however that crafting needs a more prominant role, in endgame especially.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geryth

• The market boards are a pretty lackluster design. And also largely useless outside of selling craft items that I'm avoiding entirely right now. But that aside, the whole process of looking at and searching the market boards to putting your own items up for sale is pretty terrible. I can't look at what other items are already up on the market boards when I'm putting things up for sale. Really? There's also no method of auto-filling the search bar with an item's name, everything needs to be manually typed in. Minor inconvenience but an easily fixed inconvenience. That market board needs some serious work.

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Actually there is an option to view others items while setting your price. Click the button in the top right corner when you are at the price setting screen to view others prices. Makes for easy undercutting to put yours at the top. Also, there isn't an auto fill option, true. However, you do not need the whole item name and they have the categories for that reason. If you are looking for copper ore, you can type "cop" to get a very short list of items that includes copper ore or you can click the "stone?" category. (not at my PS3 atm) and it is actually at the top of that list.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geryth

• Retainers and item/gear management. I like how in my character UI my gear is split up and sorted by armor slot. This needs to be added to retainers. Also, gear needs to be highlighted or somehow easily determined as the highest level item wearable by my current class. I'm only level 34 and I only have one other class leveled really at all (marauder) and I'm already frustrated mousing over each piece of gear to see which one is the best for him to be wearing. As my gear starts building as I'm getting items for other classes through greed roll wins, this is getting cumbersome, especially as I need to start putting gear into my retainers that doesn't even sort gear by type. I want to switch classes, open up my retainers gear stash, and easily pull out the best pieces according my level. I couldn't imagine the pain trying to manage gear with multiple level 50 jobs, even moreso throwing in full sets of crafting gear (the fact that there's crafting gear at all seems awkward and bad to me).

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I agree the retainer needs more work, but not to the level you describe. I like the idea of split/sorting the retainers inventory, but the highlighting of best gear is just a lazy mans fix. It currently highlights all the gear your current class job can wear. Just look through those and pick for yourself.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geryth

• The world seems limited and small. There is tons of viewable world that I can't step foot on because of invisible barriers. The minimap is marked with areas that can be traversed on foot. I think this really cuts out the ability to "explore" and this removes any challenge or reward that could have been offered on that front. Also, since every zone is instanced, I can't view any active fates without having to travel to that zone, which I think should be doable.

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So, do you want the edges of the map to be black walls? The map has to end somewhere. :P Also, the instanced issue for FATES is easily fixed by teleporting to that area. Else it would require too much of the hardware. Would you like to only be able to view 5 characters at a time in order to view all the FATES in ever zone?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geryth

• Dungeon layout seems a little boring. I think the level design of these dungeons could be much more interesting and meaningful. The whole foot-traffic limitation thing applies here too, though, there's no deviating from the set paths and there's no sense of exploration, and everything seems really tight and linear.

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Already touched on this above.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geryth

• Nit-picky Quality of Life things are getting on my nerves a bit too. The whole "you can't do that while mounted" is a huge annoyance. Please either open up what we can do while mounted (talk to NPCs) and at the same time make us auto-dismount when we take actions that can't do while mounted (teleporting or using abilities etc.). RMT spam I would put here as a QoL issue too because it really ruins my experience every time I get one and I get one Every. Single. Hour. There are easily technical ways to limit this, for starters I would put in some flood detection and not allow a single account to send 100 tells in 5 seconds. I could offer other suggestions too but that's it's own thread. Also the quests with text that instruct "Wait for X to happen" is not good design when you really have to "Go find the purple smoke area and click on 'Desitination'". Also, some of the interact-able click boxes are time-wastingly too small (see my thread shoved into "working as intended" at this link: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-way-too-small).
• Some game elements are found randomly through quests that I think need to be integrated into the main story. I mean things such as getting your chocobo, unlocking armor dying, and opening the white wolf gate in Gridania. I shouldn't have to randomly stumble into these important game elements by clicking on the right quest giver.

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I agree entirely on these two points.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geryth

• I'm very disappointed in the race choices. Especially because they were basically the same races from FFXI. Just from exploring the world it's what? 50% Hyur 20% Miqo'te 10% Lalafell, 10% Roegadyn, 10% Elezen? I'd be surprised if the numbers are much different than that. And if that's accurate. . .doesn't that tell you something? I feel like they are all weak designs with weak stories, compounded that there no strongholds, kingdoms, or individually celebrated cultures for each race. So far you don't get behind a race for self immersion or identification, you get behind one of the three city-states that are mostly all race-integrated. It's really too late to do anything here, but it doesn't mean I can't point it out as a serious flaw as a new player getting started in this game.

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This was due to what the old game had. FFXIV (NOT A Realm Reborn) literally used the same models as FFXI, renamed them and HD'afied them. Without completely redoing them they could not change them too much. So as a result we are stuck with them only until the new race(s) are introduced in the comming months. Also, from my experience, I seem to feel its 20% Hyur, 35% Miqo'te, 20% Lalafell, 15% Roegadyn, 10% Elezen.

I appreciate everyone's thoughtful responses to far, and for the help such as educating me to how the Market Board prices are searchable while selling items.

I am surprised at how many people actually do enjoy the crafting system. Maybe I'll give it more time before coming to a decision so quickly. I was taken aback because by level 3 my crafting items needed to pull things things from 3 or 4 different professions. I like to be self sufficient, but leveling all of the professions together in order for me to supply myself with everything is way too much of a time investment. I learned Carpentry and Botany thinking that I could level the primary gathering profession for the corresponding crafting profession with just those two professions, but I'm going to have to spend a lot of GIL buying things from other professions in order to level. I guess that's by design because the market boards are actually not a primary or even a good way to buy gear, so the market board economy basically lives by trading crafting and gathering items. And since my GIL doesn't need to be spent on gear or increasing my damage, maybe it's not so bad to spend it on crafting.

Sorry for the ramblings there. I'll reserve further judgement on the system until I get some more professions leveled up.

Don't apologize for your opinions. I thoroughly enjoyed reading and responding to your post. This forum needs more threads like this.