The whole game is a bug

[ganfalfxviv]

@OP

As others have mentioned, the game is going to go through a major overhaul by the end of the year, so I'd expect a lot of your issues to be resolved by then. If you're finding some aspects of the game enjoyable, by all means continue playing. You can at least progress your character a little further. (there won't be any character data wipes transitioning to version 2.0)

I don't mind the gathering system much, and as you do it more, you start to memorize where things are based on certain factors. There are also good sources online that tell exactly where you can gather each item with all their parameters. As mentioned earlier, this system was put in place primarily to combat RMT. (not that I think it's affecting bots too much...)

The crafting system has been talked about recently, and it seems it's going to see some big changes for the new version. We will get a recipe book which shows exactly which ingredients are needed for a synth and Yoshida has also mentioned we might be getting one-click synthesis for low difficulty recipes. The current system is set up, once again, to combat bots, but to also make you work to craft that HQ piece of equipment. It wouldn't be very special if everyone could just have a chance to click a button and it may or may not HQ. Why a recipe book wasn't included in the original version is beyond me, but a lot of their design choices with the original game baffle me.

For now, if you see the potential this game has, stick with it and enjoy the current story in place that will go away when the new version comes. I'd expect most of your issues to be resolved by the end of the year. If you can't bear with how the game currently runs, you can always shelve it and come back later when the new version is active.

I don't actually mind the act of synthesizing itself--where you have to pick among the three choices until the crafting is complete. What I don't like is the fact that you have to guess what ingredients to use. I mean, yeah, you can go online and look it up somewhere. But it seems to me that it would nicer for the creators to simply include it in the game so I don't have to go to a forum/wiki to look it up, it can just be right there. But, I mean, most games just have a button that you click and it makes the thing for you. I don't mind the non-specialness of that at all. I just want the pants.

And, like I said, even if I want to stick with the game, I can't stick with it, if the monsters keep disappearing. I can sit there and heal myself ad infinitum, but if I can't target and attack the enemy, then I can't really play the game well.

[Skies]

I don't actually mind the act of synthesizing itself--where you have to pick among the three choices until the crafting is complete. What I don't like is the fact that you have to guess what ingredients to use. I mean, yeah, you can go online and look it up somewhere. But it seems to me that it would nicer for the creators to simply include it in the game so I don't have to go to a forum/wiki to look it up, it can just be right there. But, I mean, most games just have a button that you click and it makes the thing for you. I don't mind the non-specialness of that at all. I just want the pants.

I can tell you that the current devteam does intend to include a recipe thing for real in the game come 2.0 (in fact, they have stated that you'll be selecting recipes instead of ingredients in 2.0), but right now they are technically limited and cannot adjust that right now. Indeed that is true so much that the actual Lodestone page has all the recipes (although third-party sites have a far better search and filtering system)

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

Most of OPs issues will be fixed with 2.0. Some things will be exactly as OP suggests, such as synthesis and equipment swaps.

Check the link in my signature, I think you'll find everything is mentioned there somewhere.

[Orophin]

And, like I said, even if I want to stick with the game, I can't stick with it, if the monsters keep disappearing. I can sit there and heal myself ad infinitum, but if I can't target and attack the enemy, then I can't really play the game well.

Just curious, are you only having this problem with that one quest or is it everywhere? I can understand the frustration about not being able to advance the story, but if you can fight things otherwise, you can at least progress your character in the meantime. In some cases (mostly in towns or highly populated areas for current content) the 40 character max draw limit gets reached, but this sounds like something else entirely.

If this is a reoccurring problem for you everywhere, you might want to submit a ticket via the technical support forums and see if there anything they can do for you there. I don't know off the top of my head if there's a known problem with that quest or not or if it's just a general graphics/ATI driver issue. I think I've seen more complaints about Nvidia cards than ATI cards as of late.

[ganfalfxviv]

Just curious, are you only having this problem with that one quest or is it everywhere? I can understand the frustration about not being able to advance the story, but if you can fight things otherwise, you can at least progress your character in the meantime. In some cases (mostly in towns or highly populated areas for current content) the 40 character max draw limit gets reached, but this sounds like something else entirely.

If this is a reoccurring problem for you everywhere, you might want to submit a ticket via the technical support forums and see if there anything they can do for you there. I don't know off the top of my head if there's a known problem with that quest or not or if it's just a general graphics/ATI driver issue. I think I've seen more complaints about Nvidia cards than ATI cards as of late.

It's not just that quest. Like, I'll be in Grinadia in a shop or something and the shopkeeper and other NPCs will just disappear. It's usually everyone in the room/area, but sometimes it's only some people. Like, in that quest, I can see me and Powle but no one else. Once or twice when it's been people in a building that disappear, I can make them reappear by leaving the building, going to another area where there are people, and then coming back. But I've had times where every single person is gone. Every once in a while I'll even disappear, but usually that's just because it's loading my new gear or something.

[REDace0]

It's not just that quest. Like, I'll be in Grinadia in a shop or something and the shopkeeper and other NPCs will just disappear. It's usually everyone in the room/area, but sometimes it's only some people. Like, in that quest, I can see me and Powle but no one else. Once or twice when it's been people in a building that disappear, I can make them reappear by leaving the building, going to another area where there are people, and then coming back. But I've had times where every single person is gone. Every once in a while I'll even disappear, but usually that's just because it's loading my new gear or something.

That's strange. Rezoning does require that all character models be reloaded in the current engine, which has invisible zone lines in places. Depending on your connection and system the reloading could take a little while. What's the connection integrity widget doing during this? That's the little icon in the top-right corner with S, R and numbers. If you're mostly disconnected ( R=0 ) then often nothing will load, but you can move freely.

[PSxpert2011]

When I first started playing, there was also an error that said *"Final Fantasy XIV stopped working" or something like that and just quit the application at that point. I think I fixed that by installing DirectX 11 or something, I'm not sure. But I'm really disappointed in how easy it is to crash this game. I have a nice system, there isn't anything that is wrong with my system itself that should make a game crash. It seems to me that this game is very poorly coded and that all of the effort was spent on the graphics and zero on stability or playability. (The graphics are amazing, btw, but that's entirely useless and pointless when I don't even want to play the game because it's so annoying and crashes all the time.)

Does anyone who works for Square/Enix read this board? If not, is there a place where I can voice these complaints directly to them? I'm just so glad that they give one month free of subscription. I don't want to pay one dollar of monthly fees for this game until it's actually fun to play.

*I got that message "double attacked" on me just awhile ago...(pissed me off) and I'm NOT about to blame my PC(Duo-Core Quad CPU, 8GB RAM and on Win7)! I feel your pain but I'm a FF-fan boy, I don't think I'll quit anytime soon.
Maybe I would want to upgrade my GeForce GTS 450 but it not really giving my problems ATM(or is it?).

SE really needs critical feed back like this and I'm all for specific improvements over these issues. I'm not so much into code but as much 14 has in it due to UI and other "bells and whistles", it's probably their ambition that's causing the system to crash( much like how Microsoft Windows like s to crash alot).

[Cenewulf]

Ladies and Gentlemen....

Mr. Conway Twitty..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og1QRtcWdEY

[PSxpert2011]

LOL, that's just great! ^^

[ganfalfxviv]

That's strange. Rezoning does require that all character models be reloaded in the current engine, which has invisible zone lines in places. Depending on your connection and system the reloading could take a little while. What's the connection integrity widget doing during this? That's the little icon in the top-right corner with S, R and numbers. If you're mostly disconnected ( R=0 ) then often nothing will load, but you can move freely.

I don't have a connection integrity widget. But I can watch the resource manager while the game's running to see if that's the problem. But, if it were, why would it make people disappear? If they're already there, that means they've already loaded. I could understand it being the connection if they were never there to begin with, but that's not the case.