1 Month in impressions/criticisms...

[Onikimaru]

This could have been better. The options are somewhat limiting and in some cases a bit irritating. For example, I am an Au Ra, and yet I cannot select a face independent of her horns? How does this make sense?

Theres actually a thread here http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...rom-the-faces! about people complaining on the lack of horn customization. It's probably the biggest thread on here aside from the RMT thread yet they haven't implemented it despite promising that the Au Ra's horns would have the highest amount of customization.

[Waliel]

Theres actually a thread here http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...rom-the-faces! about people complaining on the lack of horn customization. It's probably the biggest thread on here aside from the RMT thread yet they haven't implemented it despite promising that the Au Ra's horns would have the highest amount of customization.

I'm pretty sure they gave the answer to that in the latest live letter and it was basically "memory limitations".

[TyrErlieden]

OP is entirely correct about the language issues. I had to stop reading the dialogue on account of getting semantically raped by a poor attempt at old English. If I wanted to read that garbage I would have picked up a 20 year old bible.

[zipzo]

To be blunt, I think your opinions, OP, are being heavily influenced by the fact that you're watching the cutscenes in a fashion that was not intended - reading one language while hearing another. The localisations are all different for a reason, I suspect it being something to do with cultural differences, so in your head there's a culture clash that wouldn't happen if, you know, you just picked a language =P (Don't eat me, I was joking, play it the way you want to)

You're also willfully ignoring that pepole have given you an answer to your question as to why the language is the way it is in English. It is a thematic choice taken because the setting for Eorzea and the tropes surrounding the story are heavily drawn from a time when such language was common. Does a similar manner of speaking exist in Japanese/French/German? Probably. However because there's no correlation between those languages and the themes running through the game, there's no reason for them to use the language.

I heavily suspect the sentence you used as an example in your OP doesn't exist, and if it does I'd love proof, as I've never noticed an example of poor grammar in the entire storyline. Just because they follow old usage doesn't mean it's wrong, nor is it another language. It also shouldn't be hard to understand for an adult who has English as a native language, as very few words they use are particularly obscure, just used differently to how we use them today.

Very fair point. Ultimately the biggest jab against my argument is that the game was designed for all languages at the same time, which means they willfully chose to approach the story context with that style, rather than it simply being their attempt at "creatively" translating the text.

I went for a good chunk of the game with everything in full Japanese, and the text followed what they said, so it was simply quite jarring to find that the English text did something COMPLETELY different. Yes, the languages are different systemically, and the major over-arching story point gets across...but it's done so dramatically different that it really caught my eye. It's probably that I started with the game in japanese, and then switched to English later that this shocked me so much.

For the names, you would want to educate yourself before complaining of something out of pure ignorance (ignorance is not a fault but persisting in it is stupidity) you know. For the translation, the team is doing a great job, there are mishaps here and there but overall is GREAT JOB. Just ebcause what you hear doesnt correspond to what you see, doesnt make it bad, there is written language and spoken language and as you should know those two are not always exactly compatible, and two languages with so much of a cultural difference and root difference cannot be translated exactly or you would just be reading words meaningless or better said that feel nothing, think about this

Mei

I'm not persisting on the subject of the names. I recognize based on like the first responder in the thread that I'm clearly ignorant to the culture of naming that apparently inspired the English localized names, but just to let you know, many of the names are much more simple to pronounce in Japanese, so it was confusing.

I've worked as a translator before, and one thing that's heavily important in what we do as translators is integrity in the translation provided, you have to make it as clear and concise as you can, not to mention doing it in real time. It's probably my old job that has made me a bit...sensitive to this stuff.

[Sandpark]

I just wanted to comment on the combat. This is the one area besides too many instances that I don't like in the game. It feels too slow when breaking out of animations. I don't like the long casting animations for spells, I feel they should be instant. If Fire on BLM doesn't do much more damage than a DPS weaponskill, why should I be locked into an animation or it fails to go off. I found rotations to be boring until I played Ninja. I like how the hotkeys change based on what combination of mudras you do. Most other classes rotations are too straight forward/bare bones for me. Though I do like the skills that set up other skills for more potency and position based things.

I would like a choice between locking on or not locking on like Dark Souls combat.

[MeiUshu]

Ah good to hear, because the comment came out as a bit arrogant, thus why answer in a way of a saying we have in our side of the world.

For the rest, my main problem and I have already vented about this, is the gathering drops in killing mobs to get base material, that is just horrendous and so frustrating that it doesnt give any desire to even play, hours at end for just a few stuff collected that allows you to make just a couple of end material, that is a great way to frustrate people.

Mei

[Bodicca]

1. Combat - Excellent!

People enjoy different things so I'm not going to take you to task for your opinion. But I will say this is, by a large margin, the number one reason players don't stick with this game. The absurd GCD, boring rotations, spell mechanics and a myriad of other issues make combat in this game at best, duller than dull. At worst it makes the game simply not worth playing.

I picked up a bow in the first MMO I ever played and never looked back. In every game since it's been my character choice and in each game I've found the combat fun. That is until I picked up this game. My bard is sitting mid level and there she'll stay because I just couldn't stand it anymore. That's not to say I love combat on my whm or enjoyed leveling with her (stone, stone, stone . . . oooh level up and get a bigger stone) but casting makes the GCD at least tolerable.

As far as I'm concerned, this game fails big when it comes to combat.

[Demise]

The english translations miss a lot of story/character motivation/explanations when it comes to Iceheart and Midgardsomar's speeches with it's 'flavourful' localization, and in the end I'd take story over 'flavor' any day. Mixing pop culture references and 24 puns and 'twixt thy thus and thee's per quest are not near as important to me as they seem to be to everyone who defends this localization team. That's been my biggest beef with the game, and my friend who will rant about it after every cut scene (since he has a functional understanding of japanese) reminds me of it whenever they decide to skip critical lines in order to localize it.

It kind of gives me the idea that Square Enix has very little faith in their english community, that we will not appreciate something unless it's been inflated with pop culture and simplified for our meager minds, and then everyone goes and proves them right by eating it up and defending it and it's just very depressing.

Thankfully there are people who translate the text from some cut scenes and post it so the people who aren't fluent in Japanese like myself can still find out what little bits of story we've been missing. /o/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ersus_english/
I'll just leave this here, for anyone who doubts that you're actually missing out in the english version. Nothing like replacing foreshadowing and world building with some flowery ye old englishe text instead!

[Shadray]

It'd be interesting if someone could translate the main cut scenes more literally. Although I suspect this would be a somewhat monumental task to take on.

[Onikimaru]

I'm pretty sure they gave the answer to that in the latest live letter and it was basically "memory limitations".

I know that im just disappointed about the broken promise.