One Year Later: (Very) Basic Features FFXIV Doesn't Yet Have II

With 1.19 dropping soon, but the one year mark almost three weeks behind us, I felt it was time to showcase a few more cases of FFXIV lacking very, very basic features.  One or two of these will finally be changed with 1.19, but most will not - and keep in mind, we're well beyond a year into the game's lifecycle, having released September 21st, 2010.

• Can't abandon guildleves from the Journal menu.  Even more peculiar, the function is there: you can abandon other quests from the same menu, but move down a space to Guildleves, and it disappears.

• Drag and drop functionality.  We still can't drag and drop actions.  Changing an action's location requires going Menu > Actions and Traits, then manually clicking a spot, then clicking each individual action to place it.

• Saved action bars for each job.  And in a similar vein, your action bar for a given job is not saved.  In other words, switching to a new job (one of the most touted features of FFXIV) requires you to manually redo your actions bars every single time.  The only solution is to make a macro, and it requires four or five full, ten line macros just to change.  And that brings us to...

• Instant macro commands.  Made a full macro to change jobs?  It'll still take you close to a full minute as you wait for each individual line to be executed.

Buttkick set to action slot 1. (two second pause)
Facepunch set action slot 2. (two second pause)
Etcetera.

It gets better.  If you're switching to a job with fewer actions, you need another set of macros to wipe the previous set of actions.  For example, your L50 Pugilist might have actions on action bar 3, but your L20 Lancer doesn't need that many, so you make a Lancer macro that only fills the first bar.

The problem is that your Lancer macro can't switch actions in the first line, because you have far less action points.  Since you have two more bars as Pugilist, and the game randomly decides to save actions from those lines, you need another set of equal macros to remove *the entire bar* first, pushing the process well past a minute long, just to change jobs.

And keep in mind you have to do this for everything, even crafting jobs.

• No /assist command, or any way to target someone else's target.  Want to figure out what mob is hitting your healer?  Want to assist someone in trouble with their mob?  No can do, buddy!

• No way to adjust how widgets react.  The number of bars and widgets you can adjust is very small.  You can't adjust anything that not standard (for example, you can't permanently move the "sell" menu that comes up after selecting an item to vendor to somewhere more convenient, it automatically resets), firstoff.

But it gets worse.  Say you like having your party menu in the upper left corner, as is standard for MMOs (WoW, PSU, Rift, so forth).  You can move the box up there, but the problem is, it scrolls *up*, with no way to change it so it scrolls downward.  What that means is, if it's too high up, you can't see the members of your party beyond the first one as it scrolls offscreen, with the only alternative being to move the box to the middle of a 1080p resolution.

Basically, if you only have one or two party members, instead of the upper left, their HP box is in the middle!

• No mouseover tooltips.  They finally added more icons to the minimap, but the problem is, there's no indicator of what's-what, and you can't mouseover to figure it out.

• No adjusting chat tabs without digging through menus.  Most MMOs allow a simply right-click on a chat tab to change how it functions.  Not FFXIV: you must go Menu > Configuration > Chat Tab to change things.  And better yet, you can't add your own customized tabs, you're limited to four pre-defined tabs, and you can't even attach all four to the same bar.

• Disconnecting still causes you to be removed from and fail various quests.  I mean, really?

• No mouseover info, for anything, be it tooltips or map information.  Similarly, no right-click functionality for things like buying and selling.

• Almost zero in-game configuration options.  You can't adjust your controller in game, and graphic settings are almost non-existent outside of the "Final Fantasy XIV Config" program.  Basically, to change even the smallest settings, you need to log out and quit the FFXIV program entirely (you can't even run the two programs simultaneously), boot Config, fix your settings, quit Config, then reboot FFXIV and see if the settings are now as desired.  If not, the process repeats!

• And finally, another big one: no overlapping menus.  Want your inventory open while you search for items and make purchases, so you can compare?  No can do.  Want your action palette up while you do your macros so you can match it up?  No dice there, either.  Want your retainer's bazaar window open (bazaaring being a function for buying and selling with the retainer) while your inventory and their's is open, so you can track, compare, and price items?  Nothing.

Of all these issues, the only one 1.19 will fix is the guildleve abandoning aspect.  Yes, as of 1.19, we'll be able to use a feature that's already existed in-game for months on the other half of the questlog, because that's the kind of change that should take months, to apply existing code to existing quests.

Is this acceptable a year into the lifecycle of a game that was started in 2005 from a team of highly skilled professionals working for one of the most lauded companies of the gaming world?  Absolutely not.  Better games made in a shorter span than a year have had these features, and better yet, Square Enix is working from an *existing base*, none of this is ground up, it's body work on a vehicle that already runs.

Comparing Post-Patch Fix Timetables Between XIV and Rift

The developers have been saying they would pick up the pace of patching post 1.18, and the fanboys have been shoving it down the throat of the internet.  1.18 has released, and what do we have to show for it so far?  Let's compare it to Rift's activity since their most recent major patch, 1.4.


FFXIV, since last major patch, 1.18:
1.18 (July 21st)
Minor Version Update (July 27th)
1.18a (August 8th)

(Verifiable at Square Enix's FFXIV Patch List)


Rift, since last major patch, 1.4:
1.4 (August 3rd)
1.4 Hotfix #1 (August 3rd)
1.4 Hotfix #2 (August 5th)
1.4 Hotfix #3 (August 9th)
1.4 Hotfix #4 (August 10th)

(Verifiable at Trion's Rift Patch List)



Within roughly the time it took Square Enix to release their first minor "Version Update" (a two-line bug fix), Trion delivered not just a major patch but four hotfixes, two that each individually matched the almost three week later XIV follow-up (1.18a) in scope (Hotfix #3 and #4), making the other two just insult to injury.  The first XIV patch after the major 1.18 (claimed to be the start of an avalanche of updates through a much quicker update schedule) was almost a week later; Rift's first post-1.4 patch was later that same day.  It should be noted that XIV does have an (apparently static, unchanging) event coming up, but it should also be noted that during most of this time, Rift had a worldwide event with multiple phases with changing quests occurring during this same time period, the second such they've done (XIV has yet to do any progressive events).

Essentially, it took Square Enix literally three times as long to deliver what smaller, inexperienced, financially lacking Trion did.  It should also be noted the previous major FFXIV update, 1.17, released April 14th, more than three months prior.  In literally under half the time it took to go from 1.17 to 1.18, the previous Rift update, 1.3, occurred June 22nd, six weeks prior to 1.4.

I ask again: does this really look like a company with tons of financial backing and a decade of successful MMO experience dead-set on turning XIV around?

Things I've Learned from the Square Enix Fanbase!

Having spent the last couple years heavily immersed in the Square Enix fanbase, I can tell you it's an interesting thing.  Never have I come across such a vocal group bent on convincing you that a company can do no wrong.  Here's just a few of the ways in which they have enlightened me, enriching my life beyond measures I thought attainable in this mere humanity.

• Fluff pieces are much better than getting real answers (it's also okay to creep all over the female interviewer).  But they're not really "fluff" anyway, because it's really important we know what XIV race the developer would like to be in real life, whether they prefer tea or coffee, and what they'd do if they were attacked by flying goblins.

• Producer's Letters every few weeks featuring a few vague points stretched out over several paragraphs are a great example of a company communicating well with it's fanbase, and you're just ingrateful if you think otherwise.  It doesn't matter if other companies release detailed lists of upcoming changes and specific timelines - Square Enix's developers let you know they're afraid of flying, and that's what's important.

• Criticism is only constructive when they say it - anything else is trolling, and you're a "hater".  (Don't be surprised if they randomly show up on your Twitter to tell you how stupidly wrong your innocent comment about FFXIV is.)

• "Be patient" is an unarguable response to anybody who questions the game's progress.  It doesn't matter if you've waited ten months for a promised feature, you're just an impatient, selfish child.  ("Please be patient" is also the FFXIV development team's official motto, as Yoshida constantly reminds us in interviews and letters, sometimes multiple times in a single one.)

• It's okay for the updates to trickle in, and you can't compare FFXIV to Rift, because Square is doing a complete overhaul and Trion is not.  It doesn't matter that better games have been completed in the same timeframe it's taken us to get a handful of sidequests, a Market Ward search box and auto-attack, or that SE is a corporate monster with ten years of successful MMO experience and far more financial backing than Trion could ever hope to attain.

• Allowing the realistic and common motion of "jumping" destroys people's immersion, whereas fantasy races, magic spells, real world leve timers, bags holding literally thousands of items, bells that drop candy, text chat, and a convoluted UI covering half the screen do not.

• You don't understand.  No, that's it entirely.  Prefer an Auction House to Market Wards?  You don't understand the unique brilliance at work (and you're probably lazy to boot).  Prefer rested EXP systems to Fatigue?  You don't understand how this makes thing fair.  You want jumping?  You don't understand how that's unrealis... er, how it's too hard to... you just plain don't get it!

• RMT is the worst scourge to ever face MMOs, and your convenience is entirely worth throwing away to stop them.  If it's convenient for you, it's convenient for them, and therefore all the law-abiding citizens of Eorzea must suffer to combat that Lalafell train (even though, with all the time and resources in the world at their disposal, they'll deal with it just fine, and you'll still be inconvenienced).

• Basic features, like being able to tab out of fullscreen mode or view an on-screen clock, are for whiny casuals who are too lazy to turn and look at a desk clock, purchase an additional computer to use for multitasking, or use an illegal third party program (which is normally wrong, but since we're the fanbase and we want to be able to alt tab too, we're totally and arbitrarily cool with it).  If you want convenience, smooth gameplay, standard features, or basic accessibility, you've simply fallen prey to that entitlement mentality all casual gamers have.

When it comes down to it, if you disagree with a Square Enix decision, you don't understand how ingenious it is, how much work it takes to fix (doesn't matter if smaller companies have done similar things in less time!), and you want everything handed to you.  Square Enix decisions that can acceptably be disagreed with are the ones that were made strictly as concessions to the hated casuals (like jumping and auto-attack).  BTW, you're ruining MMOs, go back to WoW.