Final nail in the coffin for FFXIV?

The only news I seem to be hearing lately about FFXIV seems to be bad news and I think this could actually be the final nail in the coffin for the game. It seems that Square Enix in their infinite undiscovery wisdom have decided to add a limiting feature on the game. After 8 hours your character will start to earn less experience which degrades over a further 7 hours. After this your character will stop earning experience completely. To make matters worse, this "feature" is on a weekly timer which means you effectively have 8 hours a week to play the game at full capacity.

Square Enix say this is to level the playing field for those of us who aren't free to play on a full time basis. I'm in this category and I still think this is a ridiculous thing to do. They think this is going to limit the hardcore players from playing too much, what's going to end up happening is after 15 hours of levelling a week, players are going to grind for materials/reputation/items instead.

I think they could only really get away with something like this in a free to play business model but the fact that Square Enix are expecting you to pay a monthly fee and then limit the time you can actually progress in the game sounds like robbery to me and it's looking less and less likely that I'll be subscribing past the free 30 days that come in the box.

FFXIV to suffer from same problems FFXI did?

Massively.com have recently added a new post telling of the current beta testers who are complaining about problems in the Final Fantasy XIV which are very familiar to a lot of problems that FFXI suffered from too. It's also disappointing that the producer of the game Hiromichi Tanaka has gone on the record to say that these complained about features are actually intended.

Players are complaining that the cooldown on Guildleves (quests) is way too long, it takes 48 hours for a quest to reappear after you've completed it which is about double the amount of time that you see in other MMO's like World of Warcraft and Star Trek Online. Tanaka says that this is the case because they don't want players to rush through the quests solo, it's expected to be a team effort. This coincides with the next problem the majority of players are upset about. The regeneration of Mana in the game is slooow. This is a problem that I felt bordered on ruining FFXI for me and it seems that XIV won't be any different. Anything that breaks up the momentum of gameplay for me is a huge no-no. Again Tanaka explains that this is intended because the player is expected to tactically use points and work as a team.

Unfortunately the more I read about the game the more I'm starting to feel that they really should have just called it FFXI-2 instead of making it another numbered entry in the franchise because it really doesn't seem to be much different from it except maybe the class system and the quest system, otherwise it really is starting to look like an graphically updated XI.

As I've said before and will most likely say again, I can't really make any lasting judgements until I've actually played the game for myself. As much as I might complain about features and decisions, I'll still be picking it up at launch and playing through the first 30 days to see how things go.

Not long now!

Impressions after using the iPhone 4 for a week

With the iPhone 4 officially released in Ireland last week I couldn't help myself and picked one up. I'm glad to say that I'm unable to recreate the "death grip" on my phone, before or after updating to iOS 4.0.1 but thats not to say that there is reception issues with the phone. Since changing to the iPhone I have noticed that the bars on my phone are a lot lower than that of my last phone (which was a HD2) I've only experienced one dropped call and that was on a train in the middle of the countryside which would have happened on any phone.

I have to say I'm really in love with the design of the phone, it's even nicer to look at in person than it is in pictures. The retina display is also a treat, best screen I've ever seen. Everything really comes out crisp and clear. Battery life is quite good too, heavy use gets you about a day. Charging is fairly quick. Looking at about 1-2 hours for a full charge.

Can't really say much about the apps since there are so many. My last phone was WinMo6 which sucked donkey balls for choice (and price) changing to a platform with so many options in the app department is great. I've spent a few hours every so often browsing the free sections of the iTunes store which has some useful stuff.

So for anyone who might have been on the fence about getting this phone, I can tell you that I haven't been disappointed and I suggest to pick it up.