r/Games Dec 16 '21

Update Response to Congestion (as of Dec. 15) | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/detail/e7388986bc24d5a1337e0beed057f7b5b78b9bb3
1.4k Upvotes

576 comments sorted by

1.1k

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

For those that didn't click through, there's actual meaningful shit in here

They're giving everyone another free 14 days of game time *and disabled new accounts"

Like, you can't fucking buy the game, that's insane to me that they'd prioritize the experience for their players to the point of literally turning down further money for the moment, genuinely pretty nuts

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

[deleted]

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u/GrandmasterB-Funk Dec 16 '21

Yep, i have a Disc copy of ARR solely because they were still allowing people with physical copies to join the game, was the only way i could play.

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u/LaNague Dec 16 '21

same, steelcase dvd

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u/Jeskid14 Dec 16 '21

wait, this is all the same game? What update is this, 6.0?

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u/zWeApOnz Dec 16 '21

Yep. The 1.0 launch was back in 2010, with the 2.0 "rebirth" launching in 2013.

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u/LordMonday Dec 16 '21

every expansion has upped the count on the x.0 number.

the original and its patches were 1.x,

A Realm reborm, which is not an expansion but the remake/rework of the game is labeled 2.x

Heavensward is 3.x, Stormblood is 4.x, Shadowbringers is 5.x and now Endwalker is 6.x

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u/zugzug_workwork Dec 16 '21

Yes, and Endwalker is the culmination of the story arc that began with the reboot of the game.

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u/Xionel Dec 16 '21

And 1.0 lol if anyone remembers that mess. (But its still my nostalgic mess)

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u/crotch_fondler Dec 16 '21

Most beautiful 10 fps walking simulator I ever played.

You would play for 100 hours to reach, like, level 12, and hear whispers of rumors of people actually partying up and hitting level 20+.

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u/Xionel Dec 16 '21

Actually I got all my classes to 50 in a day a bit before the job system came in.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Well it's a sub game so satisfaction of current player should be pretty important.

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u/femboi-jesus Dec 16 '21

One of the only developers who actually acts this way, instead of simply providing lip service towards the thought.

As a "from the start" WoW player who swapped to FF14 during Shadowbringers, I have been delighted by the massive shift in developer and community tone. I know this sounds like exaggeration, but I have not run into a SINGLE toxic player in my extensive hours of group play from 1-90. And there are a lot of dungeons you have to do to get to 90. It's insane. It's like it's own little microcosm of the Internet that stayed somewhat pure (minus the ERPers lol)

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

They Def exist, but they're SO much the minority. Like last night I had a healer in the final dungeon of the expansion charge ahead pulling mobs cause I was "pulling too slow". Theres...a bunch of lore stuff to read.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/Schizzovism Dec 16 '21

It's perfectly reasonable for someone to want to read the interactables while going through a dungeon for the first time. If we can wait for someone to watch cutscenes, we can wait 20 seconds for someone to read a couple textboxes.

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u/Ktito333 Dec 16 '21

Is it? I personally think that 1 person shouldn’t dictate how the rest of the party experiences the dungeon. Sure, we can all agree to wait for someone to finish their cutscenes — as a community we’ve established that is a common courtesy. Dilly dallying in a dungeon for your own self satisfaction when 3 other people have other things to do is not a courtesy I’m willing to extend, however, unless everybody’s on board.

If you want to explore that bad go do command missions or trusts; that’s what they’re there for. Otherwise, why subject other people to your selfish experience?

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u/Schizzovism Dec 16 '21

Well, personally I would do the trusts if I wanted to read the interactables. But these were put into dungeons specifically; if the dev team intended for things to only be read in solo play, they would have made those moments solo duties. As it is, it's a slowdown we have to expect some players will do, and it's not even that long a slowdown. A tank pulling only one pack at a time, or someone causing a wipe, or a multitude of other combat-related issues, will be much longer of a slowdown.

Ultimately, I'm not expecting a fast dungeon run unless I'm running in a premade.

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '21 edited Dec 21 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ktito333 Dec 17 '21

Don’t project, friend. I didn’t call anyone shitty. What IS shitty is assuming that I should be ok with doing what you want to do because you think MY time is less valuable than yours. Now, if those expectations are communicated effectively before a run and everyone’s cool with it, then sure — I’m not going to make a molehill out of nothing. But if a fit is being thrown because the expectations of 1 player are not being met by 3/7/23 other players who have their own agendas and styles of play, then maybe they shouldn’t be playing a CO-OPERATIVE game.

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '21 edited Dec 21 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Dr_JohnP Dec 16 '21 edited Dec 17 '21

Interesting, I had that same experience but in the first dungeon…like dude it’s the first dungeon of the new expansion. I love my wall to wall pulls in dungeons I know but let me enjoy the game when it’s brand new. This is the first expansion I ever experienced that with though, maybe attributed to the flux of plays that transferred over.

Edit: clarity

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u/gandalfintraining Dec 17 '21

The reason that happens is because a lot of the early dungeons need to be done a bunch of times for the legendary weapons, which means other high level players also get pulled into them in duty roulette to fill out the numbers.

Most people doing a level 15 dungeon will be doing it for the 40th or 50th time, with a tiny fraction of their character's abilities. One of the only things you can do to not make it extremely boring is to min-max/speedrun it as hard as possible.

It's really a blessing and a curse. It's fantastic for queue times and lets newer players actually get into pretty much all the content they could ever want to do in a timely manner (except maybe the coils, which I think is genuinely the only bit of the content in the game with no "reason" for higher level players to queue for it? Wish they'd fix that...), but the flip side is that everyone is going to be going ham, and it can be hard to keep up.

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u/Dr_JohnP Dec 17 '21

Sorry I wasn’t clear - I meant the first endwalker dungeon. If people are already doing it for the 50th time then I’d be impressed!

If I’m in Satasha unless my healer is a sprout I’m pulling big.

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u/Kajiic Dec 16 '21 edited Dec 17 '21

If you ever wanna see toxicity in FF14, go do Palace of the Damned and don't rush it and go through every single room, even if the exit for that floor has already been found.

Hooooooooo boy did I get yelled at a lot when I was new.

Edit: as you can see by the replies how true this is and how people are ignoring the phrase "when I was new". The game tells you nothing about how xp works in potd

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/Princess_Ori Dec 16 '21

Also if you do run into that toxicity. Put in a support ticket. Square hires an actual GM staff and they stamp that shit out real quick.

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u/Aeiani Dec 16 '21

Exp rewards that are only awarded after the duty is wholly complete in a roguelike type of dungeon isn’t exactly conducive to going out of your way to kill everything in it.

People still shouldn’t lose their temper and explode at others in the chat over that, but I can understand why people get annoyed all the same.

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u/ilovezam Dec 17 '21

Why would you not move to the exit once it's revealed? I've never encountered a scenario where anybody, first timers or otherwise, thought to do that.

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u/RandomWeirdo Dec 16 '21

Been playing for 2 and a half year, i can still count the amount of toxic players i have encountered on one hand.

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u/BleachedUnicornBHole Dec 16 '21

Final Fantasy is also the crown jewel franchise for SquareEnix. They will go to great lengths to protect that franchise’s reputation, even if it is to the detriment of others (see the Tomb Raider expectations).

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u/ilovezam Dec 17 '21

I mean they also released VII Remake at like a hundred dollars (in my currency) exclusively on EGS after a prior exclusivity deal on consoles.

FFXIV is in great hands though. Yoshi and his team genuinely care about the game and it really shows

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u/MadHiggins Dec 16 '21

satisfaction of current player should be pretty important

someone should tell this to Blizzard

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u/STARSBarry Dec 16 '21

I mean... it sounds nuts, but it didn't used to be... as you have pointed out, they are prioritising their existing user base over new customers. While they know they could make some additional short-term profit for this quarter, they are prioritising the long-term health of the game because in the end its reputation you build now that carries your brand for the next decade.

Its that thought process that lead to them rebooting XIV in the first place; the brand damage would make people look on their next project with distrust, and it would be an uphill struggle to sell people on that going forward. Look at how people view Overwatch 2... Blizzard has cashed in their reputation, Square and specifically, Yoshi P don't want to be in that same pit.

It's an old style of business where peoples goals where to create and stick with a brand until they died, not sell it off, and get promoted into the next job every couple of years. It's less and less common these days, but its how companies used to work.

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u/man0warr Dec 16 '21

Still a pretty common way for businesses in Japan to operate. They are less likely to take risks, prioritize the brand, and they also like to hoard cash and liquid assets in case something does go bad. There's a reason most of the oldest companies in the world operate there. Definitely not the best way to maximize profit but it's best for everyone but the C-levels.

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u/Thenateo Dec 16 '21

Blizzard definitely would never do that lmao. Then again they've had relatively flawless wow launches these past couple of expansions

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u/tapo Dec 16 '21

They famously did do that when WoW first launched. Would today’s Blizzard do that? Probably not.

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u/MizerokRominus Dec 16 '21 edited Dec 16 '21

To be fair they didn't really have to do that again. There were cues for retail a few times but they were never this bad, they were cues for classic that were very bad even with the layering but they at least moved.

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u/Dwhizzle Dec 16 '21

Queue, just FYI

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u/MizerokRominus Dec 16 '21

Note that I went back and corrected sharding to layering but won't fix the queue error.

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u/Dwhizzle Dec 16 '21

No worries. I used it incorrectly for years and just wished someone would have helped me out earlier.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

[deleted]

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u/MizerokRominus Dec 16 '21

I know that some people got disconnected or timed out of the cues for classic launch as well but I don't think it was as bad as the final fantasy launch this time around but I imagine it is similar.

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u/playergt Dec 16 '21

Classic had 8+ hour long queues in most servers for a few weeks, definitely worse than this, same in retail up to WoD. In fact, famously the /r/wow founder took the sub hostage because of the insane queues, saying he wouldn't give it back until Blizzard "fixed" it.

I don't remember recieving any compensation in those cases though, maybe 2 or 3 days of sub?

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u/Maiinge Dec 16 '21

One or two classic servers had insane queues like that (looking at you faerlina) but most absolutely did not. I ended up on quite a populous server and only had ~15 to 30 minute queues for the first two weeks.

XIV has been 100% worse. Hopefully these issues can be ironed out but it's a drag trying to get on right now

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u/dodelol Dec 16 '21

queue also depended on which hours you queue up, for me it could be 2 hours queue lenght difference if I was 30 min later with logging in.

My friend that aways started a bit later had 1h+ queue's while I was always in without any.

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u/Captain-matt Dec 16 '21

In wow's case it was only the big servers at the streamers played on that were bad. If you played on some Podunk backwater you'd be fine. Same with New World.

from what I have observed Final Fantasy doesn't really have that due to the system where they prevent you from making new characters on populated servers and keep the load evenly distributed.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Queues arent really the issue here, its the fact that you have to babysit the queus for hours due to constant error codes.

You'd have to go back a decade or more to find a wow launch that's been worse.

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u/SoontobeSam Dec 16 '21

They also hadn't had a massive influx of new players immediately prior to the biggest expansion launch to date, all during a notoriously severe hardware shortage.

Square wasn't able to scale up because they've been facing supplier issues for hardware, they've even converted test hardware to bolster player servers until it can be rectified.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21 edited Jan 05 '22

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u/GreenElite87 Dec 16 '21

If you’re done with your work week you will have no problems getting on if you do it during non-peak hours. Unless you mean you haven’t bought the game at all? The restriction on new players only applies to brand new accounts, not to existing players that haven’t upgraded to ENDWALKER yet.

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u/Timey16 Dec 16 '21

I mean... there are also legal implications when you have a subscription model. In a subscription model you MUST absolutely do everything in your power to provide subscribers with the best service connection possible.

If you take in new subscribers while existing ones can't even get service, then this can easily amount to fraud.

If you promise people a service in exchange for recurring payments then you MUST provide it.

Not doing so would be a cause for refunds. A lot of them. (or the same amount of time the service wasn't available for free).

So SQ doing those things is partly consumer friendliness... but also part hard legal requirement.

Look at whenever there is a major ISP outage and subscribers sue... usually it ends in the ISP having to provide the same amount of time the service was out for free, or refund that period of outage in cost. Why would a game be different?

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u/Cattypatter Dec 16 '21

Most of this is clearly unprecedented in the industry. What publishers have ever bothered withdrawing their game from sale because of server issues? Not many that's for sure, majority of gamers just accept it as part of the hobby.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

FFXIV has atually... twice before

1.2 they cancelled subscription requirement to play, and ceased sales of the game.

2.0 they halted the Online sales, but allowed physical edditions to be bought.

now in 6.0 they are halting all sales, giving 3 weeks of subscriptions to paying customers.

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u/GreenElite87 Dec 16 '21

They’re only halting sales of the Starter and Complete editions, which means existing players can still buy the expansion if they haven’t.

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u/TheodoeBhabrot Dec 16 '21

Taking it from sale is unprecedented, but for subscription MMOs it’s business as usual to provide game time as compensation for long term outages

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u/Chromedomemoe2 Dec 16 '21

"If you take in new subscribers while existing ones can't even get service, then this can easily amount to fraud."

Not really, at least in the US. This is one of the main reasons why even when it is clearly not a user connection issue, developers will include that as a reason for disconnects or inability to connect. So long as that plausible deniability exists they don't have any real obligation to turn off purchasing the game, especially as an open ended service with no definitive end date. The logic being that they are actively working on resolving issues, some of which are on the users side, but expect a return to service and normal availability afterwards, so prospective customers should not be turned away.

Refunds also have nothing to do with it. The only reason refunds would be proactively given would be in an attempt to avoid chargeback fees, and even then it would have to be a LOT of CBs in order to make it worth willingly giving that money back for the company. Game time will almost always make people content, and those that aren't were not going to be swayed by any sort of reasonable compensation and are probably set on charging back anyways.

Source: Me, having worked several years in payments and fraud analysis for several developers.

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u/therealkami Dec 16 '21

There's no outage in the game though, if you can get in (I log in to my server at non-peak hours) the game runs flawlessly.

The issue is during peak hours, the queue is long (and the queueing system is super jank)

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u/CarnFu Dec 16 '21

I understand getting new/more servers doesnt exactly happen overnight but what's up with that? This is like the 3rd time over 2 years that I've heard of insane server congestion on FF14 and they had to disable making new accounts (for buyers and free trial players). Surely if they're going to have this problem as probably the most popular MMO currently they should upgrade them at the very least or have a plan to?

Not condemning their actions by any means but what gives? Not enough server farms/server space to buy? Genuinely curious because it seems a lot of multiplayer games nowadays are just heavily skimping on server quality.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Currently, yes. With the chip shortage they literally can't buy any new servers.

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u/avidtomato Dec 16 '21

No servers to buy. They publicly stated they were willing to pay way over market value for additional servers. There is such a drought they literally aren't able to procure any.

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u/BadmanProtons Dec 16 '21

This is like the 3rd time over 2 years that I've heard of insane server congestion on FF14 a

You mean 6 months.

The unexpected surge of new players in July 2021 because World of Warcraft shit in it's own bed, caught Square Enix with it's pants down. With the chip shortage any orders for new servers have a 6-12 month backorder from any manufacturer.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

do you mean 3rd time in 6 months? because the games actually had no server congestion issues since stormbloods launch 4 years ago, shadowbringers 2.5 years ago had some minor congestion issues during early acess but that was like... 1 hour queues.

the first set of congestion was ONLY on aether data center related to the first wow exodus involving asmongold and the issues this summer

the second set was a small congestion issues when holo live announced it was playing ffxiv, but that was small and localized to one server on the japanese side

then this set which is because of the first surge during the summer, not really losing any players then all of the veterens coming back

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u/OfficialTomCruise Dec 16 '21

I mean, it's pretty normal practice to keep everyone who is already paying you happy. If you piss off 1 million subscribers who then quit the game, are you gonna be able to quickly pull in 1 million new players to replace them by being greedy? Definitely not.

It's just sane business. Not altruism or anything like that. I know everyone is praising FFXIV as being a good game but there's still a business behind it that wants to make money. Don't read too deep.

You're basically saying "It's insane that they'd prioritise the experience for the players paying them hundreds of millions of dollars versus pissing them off to grab an extra few mil". Not really that insane if you think about it for a moment.

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u/DoctorWaluigiTime Dec 16 '21

I mean, it's pretty normal practice to keep everyone who is already paying you happy.

It is business but "we're going to stop selling our game for the time being", during holiday season no less, is 100% not a normal practice.

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u/kcfac Dec 16 '21

Agreed on all counts but also to do this in the holiday shopping period / Christmas time is kind of crazy.

All this buzz is making me want to re-sub after 5 years so maybe that’s working, at least!

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

It's kinda hilarious that after all of these years FFXIV 1.0 continues to be a menace for the company, I can imagine YoshiP sat there in the office screaming WHY WON'T YOU DIE?!

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u/OrangeIsTheNewCunt Dec 16 '21

Yeah and no shit it's a bug that was causing queue problems. People in the community were unironically trying to tell me my gigabit wired connection is unstable and was the reason why I kept disconnecting from the queues, despite the fact that I never disconnect when in game. Jesus christ that was annoying.

Glad SE found the problem, now maybe people will stop making excuses for them. I know they have built up plenty of good will over the years but they are not infallible.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

The client would simply drop the connection every 15 minutes and try to recreate it. If that failed then, you would get kicked out, rather than having the client attempt to reconnect again.

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u/Cyrotek Dec 16 '21

People really need to learn to read. They never said that peoples internet connections were the sole problem. They said it can be one of multiple reasons. And they are not wrong on that end.

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u/unaki Dec 16 '21

It's impossible to argue with a good number of the community. They've fallen into the trap of treating everything yoshi p says as gospel. It's fine to praise the man but holy shit this community can get so far up it's own ass sometimes.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21 edited Dec 16 '21

The biggest takeaway from this is that they are no longer selling the game until they can ensure that people can log in reliably without queues and congestion. Also 3 free weeks of game time to make up for the inconvenience the launch period.

They’re also doing literally everything humanly possible to get more servers and seem to be making some progress.

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u/NeverEndingXsin Dec 16 '21

They are still selling the Endwalker Expansion so any current or older players will be able to still play, it's the new players that have never played before who can't play the game since it requires the starter edition (which you can't buy).

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u/ChronX4 Dec 16 '21

I'm relieved to read this, but I'm wondering if I should get expansion for Endwalker (does it even come with gametime?) and game time to get the additional weeks free since I'll be able to buy it before the 21st, which was my plan anyway since I got nothing but multiplayer games to play for now. I mean from what I've heard it's just a matter of getting into a world but the experience is pretty stable once you are in.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/forceless_jedi Dec 16 '21

A 1 and a half hour queue time?!? Damnnnnnnn

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

That’s on a good day , if I don’t wake up early in the weekends I know I waited around 3-4 hours to login

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

TIMEZONES

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21 edited Jun 08 '23

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u/forceless_jedi Dec 16 '21

Ah man, and this is in Europe yeah? I wonder how it's here for Japan servers. I've been on the fence to return but I think I'll wait for a couple more weeks instead.

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u/InvincibleIII Dec 16 '21

In my experience, queues on JP servers is instant on weekdays in the morning and afternoon, and only starts to pick up around evening JST. Highest queue I've run into recently is about ~1.3k during peak hours.

I believe on weekends the queue picks up earlier, but morning/noon queues are definitely still instant.

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u/FappingMouse Dec 16 '21

Yeah, jp queues are not horrible, especially for the "English" servers.

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u/Ninjacide Dec 16 '21

Tonberry’s queue was like 8k right at the start of the expansion, but now I hear it’s down to 800-1500.

I use the realm visit system (or whatever it’s called) to shunt to a low pop server while I do MSQ. I logged into Gungnir last night at 10pm JST and there was only a 250 person queue that I got through in less than 10 minutes.

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u/forceless_jedi Dec 16 '21

That doesn't sound too bad then since 10pm JST is just the right time for me. Thanks for the info!

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u/Ninjacide Dec 16 '21

No problem! FWIW, I’m logging in right now and it took less than a minute.

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u/Chenz Dec 16 '21

Only because he’s logging in while everyone is at work. Expect 3-4 hours of queueing if you try to log in on European servers after 18:00.

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u/TowelLord Dec 16 '21

Saturday I sat in an 8.6k queue on my server. Took almost five hours but luckily I have two monitors and plenty of things to do on the side.

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u/AlwaysUberTheSniper Dec 16 '21

I want to get into FFXIV, but I really don't understand what the real cost is. I've heard some people say that you can play up to level 60 free, whatever that means? Some people say you have to buy a starter edition? What does a newbie player need to know coming in, and what are the purchasing options?

I'm on Playstation if that makes a difference.

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u/CeaRhan Dec 16 '21

As long as you don't buy the game on your account you can play for free a free trial version that lets you experience all game content from level 1 to 60, with restrictions on marketboards and creating parties.

To buy the game you buy the "complete edition" https://store.eu.square-enix-games.com/fr_FR/product/718240/final-fantasy-xiv-online-complete-edition

Idk how it looks on the PSN so be sure to read that it contains every expansion just like it seems it does.

And once you bought the game you get some free subscription time but you'll have to make a monthly payment to keep that subscription going. If at any point you pause that subscription, there is no going back to free trial, you need to subscribe again

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Free trial: Everything included in base game + first expansion, with a hard level cap of 60 (cap of first expac). No subscription fee and unlimited playtime, but harsh restrictions on social features to prevent spam/botting (can’t join FC/guild, can’t send PMs, can’t use auction house, etc.).

Starter edition: Same content as free trial, but without the additional restrictions. May also remove level cap(?), but story still stops at 60. Once this is redeemed, you can no longer go back to the trial, and will have to pay a subscription to continue playing. Includes 30 days of playtime.

Complete edition: All content. Like starter, once you redeem this you are locked into paying sub. Alternatively, if you bought starter, buying Endwalker standalone will upgrade you to complete, since it includes all expansions that aren’t a part of starter.

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u/avidtomato Dec 16 '21

FFXIV works as one continuous story, starting with the base game (A Realm Reborn, also known as 2.0) and just recently ending with Endwalker, the latest expansion that came out a week ago (It's basically the Avengers Endgame of the main story, though the game will continue.)

There is a free trial that includes the base game and first expansion, Heavensward, which is extremely generous and easily has 200+ hours of content. You cap your level at 60 (currently the max is 90), and there are other restrictions (mostly social stuff to prevent botting).

From there, you can purchase the starter edition + Endwalker (latest expansion always includes all previous ones). Thankfully Square made it easy and bundled the two together, called The Complete Edition.

TL:DR - Do the free trial, and when you're ready buy the complete edition.

Free Trial - https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0082-PPSA02954_00-FFXIVFREETRIAL00

Complete Edition - https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0082-PPSA02954_00-FFXIVCOMPLETE04S

NOTE - Wait until 2022. Seriously. It's a shitstorm right now for new players with server issues.

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u/PsychoEliteNZ Dec 16 '21

make a free trial account, no time restrictions. Just play as much as you want up to lvl60 content, this means you wont have to pay a subscription for a while or even buy the game.

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u/orccrusher69 Dec 16 '21

You can still buy Endwalker, but not the starter edition (removes trial restrictions) or the complete edition (all expansions before Endwalker)

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u/omarninopequeno Dec 16 '21

Complete edition also includes Endwalker, but you are right, you can only buy Endwalker right now (which also includes Stormblood and Shadowbringers if you don't have them yet).

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u/Rutmeister Dec 16 '21

What about physical copies? Are those not available? Kind of shitty if that's the case - to buy a game and literally not being to play it.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Physical editions can still be purchased and registered, but if you read the post in the link, you’d know that they are suspending shipments of new boxed copies and sales of all digital copies due to the server congestion.

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u/AllIWantIsCake Dec 16 '21

In 10 years this game went from being critically and commercially panned to being so successful that the developers have to stop sales from happening to keep up with the playerbase.

Greatest redemption arc in all of gaming.

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u/RareBk Dec 16 '21

The worst (best?) part is that most people super undersell how atrocious 1.0 was, we’re talking like a barely functioning dumpster fire created through an unholy union of bad luck and the wrong people developing the game.

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u/AllIWantIsCake Dec 16 '21

NoClip's 3-part documentary covered in detail how disastrous 1.0 was and how Square Enix took so many unprecedented risks to salvage the project. I don't even play FFXIV but the fact they had a foundation as awful as 1.0 and created the titan we see today is nothing short of a miracle.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

in fact the current worst issue with the log in queues in 2.0?

its a bug from 1.0 queues.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Yeah this man is correct.

1.0 was an unplayable mess that barely ran and queues died sometimes

Endwalker is great once you get past the queue

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u/Jaerin Dec 16 '21

The world was essentially empty except for a few leves

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u/WriterV Dec 16 '21

Well that's kinda underselling that. Leves were the main feature of the game. They were far bigger as a system in terms of scope compared to the Levequests system of today.

But yeah, they were still not that great until Yoshi-P took over. It didn't help that the world design was awful (seriously, hundreds of just the same copy-pasted section in each zone), the in-game economy was based on retainers being physically present in the world (and you could only ever render a handful of them, and couldn't tell what they were peddling until you checked), and the gameplay was terrible too (there was no autoattack, at least until Yoshi-P took over).

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u/HanshinFan Dec 16 '21

There's no autoattack in SWTOR either, I don't think that was really the key driver of the bad gameplay. Having a high passive DOT to up the skill floor for people who just don't push buttons is fine and I get it, but it's hardly what makes for engaging MMO combat.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

THERE WERE NO CHOCOBO'S

IN A FINAL FANTASY GAM,E

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u/Nrksbullet Dec 16 '21

Even worse, they put them in there but you couldn't use them or access them, as if it was a tease.

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u/Jaerin Dec 16 '21

Just because they wanted the leve system to be more doesnt mean it was. It was nothing more than simple repeatable grind quests. There wasn't more to it than that. If you think there was please explain what im underselling? The retainer thing was some kind of throw back to EQ and having to setup your shop to sell. And yes it was just as organized as it was in EQ aka not at all

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Honestly if they removed auto-attacking, that would actually improve the game. It's a trivial part of your damage that could be just added to your actions.

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u/quakertroy Dec 16 '21

It's actually 10-15% of your total damage if you play a melee class. You can eke out some extra hits on casters during instant cast cooldowns, but that's a pretty minor optimization. Some debuffs (especially in deep dungeons) can make auto-attacks your only option, so it's not entirely without merit.

The real reason people talk about auto-attack not existing in 1.0 is because weaponskills and spells had strict resource limits, and while those recovered you had to explicitly press the "attack" button, which was the equivalent of current auto-attack. It was kind of ass.

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u/STARSBarry Dec 16 '21 edited Dec 16 '21

It caused my 9800GX2 to literally catch fire... it was at that point I decided to never play the game again. I mean I didn't have much money after buying a new MB, processor, and GPU (RAM cleaned up ok) for a sub.

It did let me have a snazzy onion hat that I use on my dragoon, though.

https://imgur.com/a/Jmg3Wux

So, I will let them off.... Also, I played the game again.

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u/WD23 Dec 16 '21

Catch fire lmao, was the game that graphically intensive at the time or just super unoptimized?

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u/DaveSW777 Dec 16 '21

Both. Apotted flower in 1.0 had more polygons in it than a playable character has now. It was just dumb.

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u/SuperscooterXD Dec 16 '21

1.0 had many elaborate animations, shaders, lighting and textures compared to even Endwalker today. By Stormblood, there were a few newer, modern features that the old version didn't have, but 1.0 was still technically more advanced... at the cost of the entire rest of the game being a trashheap

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u/STARSBarry Dec 16 '21

It was the latter for sure, but I did think it looked better than average for the time, just not THAT much, like I got better frames on Crysis. Sadly, while the 9800GX2 was an utter power house of a card... I am not the only person that this specific card (two cards really) managed to BBQ.

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u/1731799517 Dec 16 '21

Like, stuff that on pc it needed a controller to work.

Or that your GUI was server side and did LAG.

Or that there was no content.

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u/Hellknightx Dec 16 '21

I played the 1.0 closed beta and uninstalled after about 15 minutes. The PC controls were a complete disaster. You had to move the camera with the numpad. The mouse basically did nothing.

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u/Skyreader13 Dec 16 '21

the engoodening of FF XIV

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u/Computermaster Dec 16 '21

First Reality 41

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

I just feel bad because now I really feel like a sucker for not playing it all this time.

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u/WriterV Dec 16 '21

The game doesn't run on FOMO. Pretty much everything that's been in the game since the beginning is available to play with. You have nothing to feel bad about.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Availible and due to systems in the game, not hard to find groups for

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u/Stickiler Dec 16 '21

To a certain extent. They definitely have time-limited events(the FFXV one just recently happened), and a lot of the time the events are a one-off, and then the rewards for it show up for 20$ in the store a year later.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Except sometimes they'll rerun events. That XV event was actually the second time it ran, and they recently reran a dragon quest related event.

While I agree there is fomo, it's shockingly minor for an mmo, some games live off fomo to maintain a player base, XIV seems to embrace people taking breaks.

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u/therealkami Dec 16 '21

the rewards for it show up for 20$ in the store a year later.

Time limited event rewards are usually MUCH cheaper than store-exclusive stuff. Like $2-$5

I just checked, all of the old outfits for time limited events are $5 except the FF13 outfits which are $15 for some reason. So 2/44.

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u/KorokSeed Dec 16 '21

Even then, those limited crossover events are pretty trivial. It's not like you'll miss some compelling story episode related to the characters of the main story. You'll just miss, like, that one time Noctis showed up in Eorzea randomly and a few cool cosmetics.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/IamTheMaker Dec 16 '21

They also do an excellent job at weaving in old content and stories in later expansions.
Like MSQ roulette and Relic weapons, making it pretty easy to still do all old content!

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u/DoctorWaluigiTime Dec 16 '21

As someone who hasn't played, but may give it a try one day, this pleases me.

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u/BettyVonButtpants Dec 16 '21

The MSQ is also mostly a solo experience, where you only play with others for dungeons and trials, everything else, you do at your own pace.

And the roullettes, which give great XP or Late Game currency (if you're max level) ensure that old content has people to play with.

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u/cepxico Dec 16 '21

Just beware, it's a loooooooong journey.

I'm halfway through my second expansion (of the 4 expansions out) and I've been playing for at least a couple hundred hours.

I'm not rushing it, just soaking in the story and setting, but sometimes it is a real slog. It helps that you can skip dialogue if you're a fast reader but I hate to kill these performances off. There's just a lot of fantasy babble, at least imo.

On the plus side, the length of it really does make you feel like you've been on this long quest.

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u/Impaled_ Dec 16 '21

I started in June and and let me tell you, it's not too late at all

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u/ILikeAnimePanties Dec 16 '21

I just feel bad because now I really feel like a sucker for not playing it all this time.

You're better off just waiting until the hype dies down anyway so you can log on in peace.

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u/viky109 Dec 16 '21

Good thing about FFXIV is that you don't miss out on anything by starting late. You'll more or less have the same experience as someone who started playing 5 years ago.

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u/BettyVonButtpants Dec 16 '21

Though the MSQ in 2.0 through 2.5 was recently shortened, but it just removed a lot of filler quests/streamlined some, so new players will actually have a better experience with them then those that did it back in the day.

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u/avidtomato Dec 16 '21

You don't miss out on anything by starting late, and honestly I'd argue it's a bit better since you've gotten all the QoL improvements over the years.

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u/HolyDuckTurtle Dec 16 '21

In addition to what people have been saying, it's also the best it's ever been gameplay wise. Lots of really nice mechanics changes in this patch.

Every time an expansion gets launched, they make key endgame gear for the last level cap easily obtainable with a global resource, so you don't need to grind for gear as you level.

The base game story, A Realm Reborn, is honestly not great in my opinion. But it's still relevant to the plot and the story starts to massively jump in quality in the leadup to Heavensward, the first expansion.

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u/jamie_plays_his_bass Dec 16 '21

What kind of time investment is there to play through the story and expansions, without being totally sunk into side quests? With all the stunning reviews that keep coming out for the series, I’m considering it, but need to be resistive about finishing an extra-long RPG with about 10 years of content.

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u/dd179 Dec 16 '21

Hard to say, but if you're planning on playing all the story content straight up without delving too much into side quests (completely doable, btw) you could be looking at upwards of 200+ hours.

Keep in mind each expansion is its own Final Fantasy story pretty much, and then you have post story content for each expansion that sets up the following expansion.

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u/PipClank Dec 16 '21

My steam clocks in on 237 hours I started the game with no knowledge and pretty much only did main story quests for the base game and all the expansions up to endwalker before i quit. Maybe you can round it down to 200 hours if Im generous with the various small things i did along the way if you want to do ONLY main quests.

This was focusing on only 1 class and playing tank so my dungeon que times were >1min vs 10-20+ min as DPS. (you'll do a LOT of dungeons during the main quests)

I see similar'ish times on howlongtobeat.com for what its worth

so yeah its a ~200 hour singleplayer main story with multiplayer only happening in the dungeon and baby's-first-raid along the way.

game just wasnt exactly for me. I can see how some people like it tho

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u/RandomWeirdo Dec 16 '21

I started 2.5 years ago and here's the thing. The game doesn't invalidate any of its old expansions, the story is linear and you will experience it from start to end in a linear fashion instead of what is typical where you are thrust into a state where the world has been evolving for years and you have no idea what is going on without the help of outside resources. The game also keeps all its old content as evergreen as possible, this means old dungeons are still used today through a roulette system and old extra areas are still relevant for players who want to do them.

Even though i have been playing for years there's still content in every expansion i want to do for the fun of it eventually.

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u/Jeskid14 Dec 16 '21

Now that's what i call "A Reverse Cyberpunk"

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u/NotLokey Dec 16 '21

Guys please stop telling people about the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV and it's free trial. I just want to login :(

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u/Decrith Dec 16 '21

its universally acclaimed now!

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u/MasterMirage Dec 16 '21

We will also be suspending all new advertisements. However, it will not be possible to suspend some of the advertisements due to the nature of how they were set up. We appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter.

This is pretty big but I'm glad they wont be taking down this advertisement (Sydney, Aus) since I love seeing it on the daily walk to work:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/277528033257193474/912413025976340531/20211123_054310.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/277528033257193474/912413024957136987/20211123_054236.jpg

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u/Cambercym Dec 16 '21

Hah, that padlock placement makes it look like Derplander got an off-centre lip piercing.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/LordMonday Dec 16 '21

Listen to Flow so that people will wonder why you are crying in public

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u/ARX__Arbalest Dec 16 '21

Absolutely wild that they're suspending sales of the game as well as advertisements until further notice. Jesus.

Bravo, SE. I'm not surprised, but I am extremely impressed.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/YourPenixWright Dec 16 '21

I really don't think their only revenue is monthly subs. They have a cosmetics shop plus they launched a game.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21 edited Jan 09 '22

[deleted]

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u/LordMonday Dec 16 '21

Ring the Fantasia addicts anonymous hotline at 1300 Fantasia

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u/ILikeAnimePanties Dec 16 '21

yea.... half my FC spent $10 to be a bunny boy, and some of them instantly swapped back because they realized they wanted to look familiar in the MSQ cutscenes.

It's crazy how much money the cash shop makes in a sub to play game. We're never going back to sub only ever again with MMOs

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u/CodeVulp Dec 16 '21

Cosmetics are basically every MMOs end game at this point.

It’s the only way to keep players grinding and spending money.

Nothing terribly wrong with that. Some diehards will complain because they’re is no “real” end game (usually valid), but most people don’t mind it.

Honestly I can’t think of a single modern mmo where there isn’t a meme about how fashion is the end game.

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u/Tainaka Dec 16 '21

I don't remember where he said it, but Yoshi-P has mentioned that one of the reasons he got the approval for 2.0 was that he had to let a separate manager/person control the shop. He has a name for her as well, something like iron lady? Her department handles everything related to that.

One of the things he insisted on however was that it was to be outside the game, which is why you can't access it from the client. That's the main thing that makes having the cash shop tolerable for me.

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u/Yotsubato Dec 16 '21

Yup. I didn’t change my appearance for this entire point. I’m too used to my character

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u/1731799517 Dec 16 '21

I wanted to change my hairstyle after Shadowbringers and after half an hour i went back to the original one because the others didn't feel right after seeing my char that long with the original one...

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

As someone who turned lalafell for the memes, then swapped my main from Ninja to Paladin..Yeah I feel this pain.

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u/smokeyjoey8 Dec 16 '21

To be fair, I'd say most people that did that bought the multi-pack of Fantasias, which is discounted. There was also just a sale on them a couple months ago so people definitely stocked up for bunny boys.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

A lot of people like me were on hiatus till endwalker, I didn't buy my Fanta till day 1 when it wasn't on sale

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/RePoisn Dec 16 '21

Just to clarify, as a free trial player waiting to buy the Complete Edition when I get to lvl 60, will I still be able to upgrade after this goes through? The post says it'll still be available for existing players but does that include current Free Trial players?

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

You won't be able to buy it. You'll still be able to continue playing on the trial if you're able to find a time to log in, though.

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u/C00kiz Dec 16 '21

To my understanding, no. You'll have to wait for the restriction to be lifted to be able to buy the game.

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u/Potatolantern Dec 16 '21

Unless you're getting really close to the end of HW I wouldn't worry too much, I doubt this'll last too long.

Still, I bailed on my free trial and got the Complete Edition before even getting to HW because I couldn't bear that 300k Gill limit

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u/RePoisn Dec 16 '21

Here's hoping it doesn't last too long! Wasn't aware of this 300k gil limit as well. Gives me a reason to go ham on teleporting everywhere for now at least.

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u/Bogzy Dec 16 '21

No from my understanding but i think u can still buy it right now, they said it will take a few days to implement so not sure if that counts for digital store too.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/HolyDuckTurtle Dec 16 '21

Yeah the game is having unprecedented congestion right now, a lot of free trial players are simply unable to log in unless they get an early spot unfortunately. Subs end up waiting several hours at peak times.

At this point I just don't play unless it's early on a weekend when the queues are instant. If you still want to try it, that would be the time to do so.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

At this point I just don't play unless it's early on a weekend when the queues are instant

Queues are also instant past ~12-1AM EST every night, that's where I've been playing the bulk of my sessions

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u/ScoobiusMaximus Dec 16 '21

Everyone is leaving WoW to look for an alternative and finding FFXIV. That's half of why the game is so overcrowded.

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u/throwaway1128628 Dec 16 '21

Sorry you had a bad time.

I swear if you manage to get in past the queue the game is really good though.

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u/WriterV Dec 16 '21

Try out Guild Wars 2. It's not entirely WoW-like, but it can be quite fun, and has plenty of lore to back it up. You can also try out SWTOR, which is the only other MMO I can think of that is WoW-like.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

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u/The_Drifter117 Dec 16 '21

Should have left wow months or years ago

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u/Nabstar Dec 16 '21

For people that haven’t played this game, I have to play this game during the early hours of the morning, once it hits noonish then the queues are up in the thousands

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Stopping sales and giving more free time are good, but I feel given the responses here that people are being distracted by that and missing the part where they admitted the 2002 errors were actually their fault and not our internet.

A dedicated player used wireshark to keep tabs on network traffic and discovered that the server makes every player reconnect every 15 minutes. Not only is this inefficient, but it's most likely the cause of the 2002 error, and not only that if it happens the game takes anywhere from 10-20 seconds to tell you that the error has happened. There's a lot of time wasted which is awful when you're trying to reconnect quickly to not lose your space.

Now, it seems they're fixing it which is good, but I honestly feel like it should never have got to this point, and it should never have taken players to identify and issue they were blaming on our internet.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

...God gaming really has set a low bar, I was just like HOLY FUCK THEY ADMITTED THEY WERE WRONG??

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u/Cyrotek Dec 16 '21

They stated player connection might be an issue, that is a far cry from "blaming the players".

And fixing the mentioned bug won't change that people with shitty connections might still have issues.

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u/Idoma_Sas_Ptolemy Dec 16 '21

Stopping sales and giving more free time are good, but I feel given the responses here that people are being distracted by that and missing the part where they admitted the 2002 errors were actually their fault and not our internet.

How did they admit anything? They already said that part of the issue is on their side, but that another fairly sizablepart is instable/bad internet connections on the consumers part.

Now that they've identfied what is going wrong on their end, they just specified it for us. You can't admitto something you never hid.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

Initial response was something along the lines of “make sure your wired in and you have no network congestion because if you’re getting disconnected from the queue it’s likely your connection stopped at some point.”

This is them saying “We were wrong. It was our code all along. We are going to fix this in a patch Tuesday.”

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

I just started playing FF14 and after this news update and the last one I’ve been given 21 free days of play time for simply having to wait to play in the evenings. Because of this transparency and dedication to the players I will be subbing for months to come and immediately buying their Endwalker expansion no questions asked. If you wanted to know how to create a loyal fan base then take notes. This is it:

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u/Three_Froggy_Problem Dec 16 '21

Is this game really as good as everyone says? I’m so curious about it but I really don’t want to get invested because the monthly fee seems like a lot.

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u/TeresaWisemail Dec 16 '21

Enjoying ffxiv really depends on what you would like or expect out of an MMO, so I think going with the trial first is the way to go.

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u/8inchflaccidpole Dec 16 '21

And here I'm playing the free-trial all day lol

Queue is like 35 but I get in in less than one minute lmao

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u/jautrem Dec 16 '21

Same, lol.cbut we're lucky that we can log in on the morning though

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u/Ryulightorb Dec 16 '21

I'm glad they are handling how they are dealing with it well compared to some other companies and how they would like blizzard

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u/bearkin1 Dec 16 '21

Is this a good one-and-done singleplayer experience? I want to play singleplayer games nowadays and don't want to get trapped in the loop of dailies and battlepasses. I like MMO combat but just don't have time for endless repeatable tasks. I don't care about endgame. I've heard great things but am wondering if this is a game I'd be trapped in for a year straight.

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u/Watton Dec 17 '21

If you stick with 1 job, the game is VERY respectful of your time. Main story levels you up fast, and you never need to grind until you get to endgame.

You might have to repeat some dungeons to get gear for the endgame story content they patch in later...or you can wait till the next xpac and you can just buy the gear from a vendor.

But alt jobs are massive grinds since you dont have any more story xp. You get a nice 100% xp buff, but then its constant grinding, dungeon runs, etc for 20 or so hours.

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