Free weekend-first day impression

My LS told me this weekend inactive players can play FFXIV for free, so I decided to give 2.1 a try, although I highly doubt I'll sub after free weekend ends unless my in-game connections drag me in.

I mainly wanted to try PVP, new dungeons and maybe new raid if I have time, I doubt I'll have time to do anything hardcore this weekend.

I decided to try new dungeon first, instances are one of the strongest feature in ARR, of course dungeon first! I used DF for new dungeon Pharos sirius, after 30+ min of painful DF wait time finally got in.

Then first thing I noticed was that I can't check my pt member in instance anymore D:

I'm not sure if they just change it so that you can check pt member equipment other way, or just get rid of it so ppl stop flaming other player's gear in an instance. But I can still kinda tell by looking at the player appearance.

This Pharos Sirius pt doesn't seem good D: 

And I knew it D:

Wiped at 1st boss D:

After 2~3 wipes ppl decided to leave D:

I guess I can't rely on DF anymore D:....wait, DF already sucked since 2.0, what a surprise!

I noticed that there's new pt finder feature, which is a great addition. I no longer have to camp in Ul'dah(JPs often /shout in Ul'dah, unlike NAs like to /shout in Mor Dhona) for /shout pt, I can do other stuff and randomly check whether a pt doing content I wanted are recruiting. I even noticed several English pt. Most of the time English community are too small that it takes forever to get ppl by /shouting in English. Finally more chance to interact with English speaking players :)

Planning to play with hard mode dungeons if I have time, 1 weekend is kinda too short :X 

Then I unlocked PVP and played entire night. I don't really have time to get PVP set, and rumor says my current PVE gear is equivalent to IL55 ones, so I may as well just use current PVE gear. Sorry for those who lost in a match due to Afania wearing PVE gears D: I still have 50% win rate solo queue so it's not the end of the world D:

Honestly, I have low expectation from PVP to begin with, due to terrible skill/battle system and job mechanics. On the other hand, PVP is one single aspect I wanted to play the most before 2.1 launch.

Sounds ironic, huh? And my POV toward PVP is just as ironic.

If I want to describe PVP in FTG terms, it's not Street Fighter 4. If it's SF4 I'd praise it to death. I was expecting it to be MvC3, but it's more like Soul Calibur 4.

In case if anyone don't know what Soul Calibur 4 is, at one point of time(when I still had a job and not a job-less gimp like now) I played it with a group co-workers, some of them are used to play more complex titles like SF4 or King of Fighters, one of them used to play in tournaments. I pretty much raped everyone in SC4 until someone decided to bribe me with food. So I continue to accept their challenges while eating food. I played with 1 hand spamming 1 button(1 button, for real, not including directional pad) and still able to use combos by repeatedly spamming one button and won again. 

Then other FTG pros finally rage quit: What kind of shit game is this! Win(and do crazy combos) with 1 button spam and no directional pad? BS

Note that I couldn't beat them in SF4(and I can beat other SF4 noobs or normal or higher difficulty CPU if I play Ken/Ryu), so they certainly don't suck at FTG.

On the other hand, SC4 was the title being played the most, because only a few ppl can play SF4 properly. Nobody have fun with SF4(watching noobs playing SF4 is downright one of the worst experience you can ever have), everyone just plays SC4 all day.

I have to agree, ARR PVP was quite surprising. It's surprisingly fast, some queue matches can end in less than 1 min(but I doubt serious teams of 2 can end it that fast), surprisingly shallow, and surprisingly fun in a brainless way.

It seems that there's not much strategy going on, every pt I've joined is always the battle between BLM trying hard to cast sleep while everyone else try to stop BLM from casting sleep and kill BLM first. I don't even know wtf tank's for with the way they design PVP.

After reading a bit of PVP form looking for more in depth strategy, I realized ARR PVP is:

SMN is da best.

BLM sleep.

Tank DD build plz.

Strategy? What strategy? Get your best PVP IL gear, use most OP class, ???? profit. That's pretty much all the info I can find on forum, rest are about class balance complains.

There are no 200 pages of "what is best" discussion D:

I have to agree, I was fairly disappointed, since PVP seems more like a mini game rather than anything serious(although serious teams can probably perform better regardless). On the same time, I spent entire night playing it. I know I'm probably going to get sick of it after a few days, like majority of MMORPG PVP, mostly with little to no complexity(but still more complexity than ARR PVP). On the same time, expecting ARR PVP to be amazing is as unrealistic as expecting next Soul Calibur title as classic as Street Fighter 4, or expecting FFXI suddenly turn into LOL after an update or expansion. 

PVP is just like rest of the ARR game, no depth, no complexity, just instant gratification. But no way it'd suddenly turn ARR into something else I wish it is.

Now that I see all that ARR v.s 1.23 argument on official forum all over again. It's pretty obvious that I'm on the "I don't like ARR direction and liked XI/1.23 direction more" team, but every time when I see ppl reply with "just give it time, it will get more content with more update" I just want to lol.

Of course it'll get more content and more issues gonna be fixed after more update, this I'm sure of.

But it's not possible, nor a good choice, to change the direction drastically. They can keep adding 100 dungeons, 100 maps, 200 items, 15 jobs, but fundamentally it's still going to be ARR, not XI/1.23. It's going to be ARR with 100 dungeons, 100 maps and 15 jobs, not 1.23 with 100 dungeons, maps and 15 jobs.

If their direction is to make a shallow, instant gratification MMO like every other current-gen title, aim for players that won't spend more time doing research than playing the game, then they should stick with that direction, instead of pissing ppl off and change the direction. But that means the game won't be the type of game I'm looking for.

And it's pretty silly to assume "majority" of players liked ARR direction more than XI/1.23. You can only post on OF if you're active players, those who are not happy with ARR direction already left and not bother with ARR to begin with. Maybe "majority" of player don't like wow clones nor XI, but something else.

But fuck ARR official forum. It's pretty much a fanboy/whitenight fest.

The fact that I no longer get a queue on weekend night during campaign period and SE's free weekend campaign kinda hinted that ARR already been losing ppl after first 1~3 months.

I'll probably play as much as I can this weekend, but I've planned not to sub unless friends make me do so. The way ARR is, is same as 100 other titles out there that I can play for free. I've been playing GW2 whenever I want to have brainless kind of fun in an MMO. I can just play whenever I want without having to feel like wasted money on sub. Last month I probably played GW2 for about 2~5hr entire month, no way 2~5hr of playtime justify a sub. In terms of scope, shallowness and brainless kind of fun, GW2 and FFXIV is pretty much the same......except GW2 is a bit more ambitious than XIV and no sub.

So why pay $10 a month to PVP, help NPCs, do dungeons, play with gears when I can do those in other games for free in a bigger world?

Unless MMO titles have a strong tight-knit community like FFXI/EQ, most of the current-gen theme park MMO don't justify a sub IMO. Yes, I pay $12 a month in FFXI to help NPC, kill NM, grind gears, but I'm not really paying $12 for those, but more like paying $12 for living in a community and virtual world, something I don't get in GW2/FFXIV/SWTOR/insert your title here.

If XIV is F2P, I'd probably be fine with spending 5hr a month, occasionally log on and play here and there. If current-gen theme park MMO wants to offer instant gratification, they probably needs F2P to be competitive, IMO. 

Anyways. I may or may not do extreme primal/CT depending on time, but I honestly don't expect extreme/CT to be anything different from what I've experienced so far. PVP is the last thing I wanted to experience in ARR, and I already got Yoshi-P's intention about game direction after I played it.

Been there, done that.