What XIV is and isn't

[HappyHimitsu]

I started playing again after the disastrous beta experience. The game has improved its true. I would say that not as greatly as I expected seeing how its close to 1 year from release and thats quite a lot of time. Im not a FFXIV hater but I have mixed feelings with this game. I love some parts of it but some other parts just make me want to smash it.

Sadly I think that the parts I hate seem to be unfiaxable, they are in the very core of the game. The game is focused to be played in ps3 and pad and Im a pc lover and mouse+keyboard fanatic. So I find the slowness of the interface, the count in seconds delay of actions, the lethargic character conversation, the sluggish menu navigation insufferable. It has been slightly improved but still cant stand it is like going back to 1994 and the firsts O.S. slowness.

I play a couple of hours a day and it takes more than 30 minutes to talk to the guild vendors, the leve providers, the quest speeches, journal navigation, retainer interaction. So Im wasting 25%-33% of my time just with the interaction between machines and menu navigation and this is something that I cant understand.

I will keep playing casually to see if the new aditions make up for that great flaw I find in this game I really hope they make a great game and add some more user friendly functions to let the casual player as myself to enjoy to their most their playing time doing enjoyable things.

It's funny how much we can all differ in opinions. I do have to agree that the menu is very tedious (I really can't understand why we can't use shortcuts for all of it) but other than that I actually enjoy the quest speeches and such. I feel they add to the game and should not all just be rushed through, though I am probably in the minority as such. That is why I do not enjoy 99% of mmorpgs out there, they all feel too rushed to me, too concentrated on quick gameplay and not enough emphasis on story line. FF has always been about the story, and I enjoy that.

The only other thing I can't help but pick at is the cut and paste environments. Maybe I am too early in the game and just haven't explored enough but I swear when walking through Gridania it felt like I was running in circles when I wasn't (I think SE wanted it to be maze like, but instead made it too redundant. This sort of thing only works when we don't have a full map of the area, otherwise it is pointless). They even had the same slab of stone graphic in the exact same place in multiple areas!
Other than that however, I am in Love with this game