Welcome to the third and final MMO Log before we slap a review on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and call it the better part of a month. This week I’m taking a look at the PlayStation 3 version of the game, which is just like the PC version after three or four beers.
First off, an update on my activities. My main character, Mister Fahey, achieved his goal of becoming a Dragoon in spectacular fashion. Folks warned me that it wouldn’t be a spectacular transition — the Dragoon gets a new skill (Jump) and the goes about his business, but drama is in the eye of the beholder, and it was a pretty great moment for me.
Goal achieved, I focused on gathering up some of the other classes in the game. I picked up Conjurer so I’d have access to Protect, an essential soloing spell. I grabbed a little Thaumaturge, because I wanted to blow things up. I leveled my cooking up to 12, because I wanted a constant supply of stat-enhancing food on hand.
Last week folks were wondering why I created a separate character to act as a caster, instead of just acquiring the class through Mister Fahey. The answer was I wanted to experience all the quests, but they had a good point — as long as I can enjoy class quests, there’s no reason for me to stray. Mister will eventually have all of the classes. I plan on playing a good long time.
So, for the PlayStation 3 version of the game, I created a whole new character. I am a bit of an alt-aholic, but the real reason was I wanted to ease myself into gamepad controls. Abruptly jumping from bars to buttons was a bit confusing, and starting fresh helped the learning process.
I’ve been hesitant to play on the PlayStation 3, because what I saw of the console version in beta was pretty ugly. It’s pretty jarring to go from a Nvidia GTX Titan running at 1080p to a PS3 running at 720p on low settings.
Here’s my test character, Xheh Kaatapoh (Coeurl server, if you must know) on PC:
And here she is on PlayStation 3:
There’s a huge drop in sharpness, enemies and other players tend to pop in pretty close, rather than being seen by a distance. Character and creature animations become stuttered in large groups to conserve resources. These are the allowances made to bring a gorgeous PC MMO to an underpowered console.
Still, after a day of playing on the PlayStation 3 I only really notice I am playing on a console when it comes time to chat with people or go into the menus, which are intuitive for a gamepad user but take a bit getting used to for the mouse and keyboard crowd.
For die-hard PlayStation fans, these issues are only temporary. The PlayStation 4 is coming, and owners of the PS3 version of the game get to upgrade for free and a spot in the beta test, launching in February of 2014.
The gist is this: I’m having a great time with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, no matter which platform I play it on. I’m more involved in this game than I have been in any other MMO for ages, which is a good thing. Also a horrible thing. All depends on how you look at it.
When next we meet, it will be on the review battlefield. Wear something pretty.
Comments
4 responses to “Final Fantasy XIV MMO Log Three: Play Us Out, PlayStation 3”
I am playing it from the couch from from my PC to my TV with xbox controller.
Its very nice, I get the crisp graphics and better draw distances as well as the ability to play from my couch!
One wireless keyboard later and we’re good to go! 🙂 I am pretty impressed with the controls for the console the constant pressing L2/R2 plus face button to attack took me a while but I am getting used to it quickly
The biggest problem i found on console was that too many abilities (as a dragoon i had 2 entire bars filled with frequently used abilities and a few ones like mounts, so roughly 25 combat only abilities (about 22 used per boss fight). Even on a pc having to keybind all of these would be ridiculous, even with my nice mmo mouse.
But on console its even worse, because half of these abilities now require me to stop moving, let go of the movement stick and press on the dpad. Which would be fine if EVERY SINGLE boss and anything related to end game didn’t 100-0 insta kill you with a 1 second cast time aoe attack. When you couple this with the current server side delay issues conflicting with onscreen representations and you have a flaming nightmare trying not to die and dps at the same time.
For reference what im referring to is that when a monster does a special attack a cast bar is shown along with a corresponding area of effect range(GIANT RED highlighted area) on the ground. How its supposed to work is if you are in the red when it vanishes you get hit, if you are out you don’t. But what actually happens is because the server is having ALOT of issues even when your out of it for a significant amount of time you still take damage and die, which is beyond frustrating. ( its happening for everyone people wiht low pings and highs)
here is a video to illustrate.
And the thread about the massive problem
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/80152-GAMEBREAKING-Ability-moving-objects-delay-and-unresponsiveness-(affects-everybody)
Besides these and other end game problems i’ve elaborated on in previous threads the game really is fantastic. I can’t wait for the ps4 version because it will look/run better and all these problems will be gone and i get it for free its fantastic.
Also, too much comment moderation 😛
Have you set the hotbar controls to Mixed to make it so much more easier to attack monsters (and give your fingers a break)?
Which servers are most Aussies on?
There like a defecto one or something?
Tonberry(JP) is where most Oceanic/SEA players on
That would be:
Tonberry and Tiamat for JP servers
Behemoth for NA server
I think the majority of Aussies/Kiwis are in Tonberry.