Final Fantasy XIV news

[C']

I'm running a Core i7 2.66GHz (which I think I overclocked to about 3.2GHz although with my cackhandedness with these things probably not XD) although looks like that is no longer available. According to my invoice I only paid £145 for it too.

I don't get great performance at the moment which I'm hoping is due to having a really ****ty GPU (Nvidia GT 240) and once I get a 460 GTX next week, I should be seeing much better results.

[Rep]

Are people going to about this week in the evening? Plan on visiting the other nations and collecting camps etc along the way. Could kill mobs on the way to the various nodes too. Since there's so much to do it would probably take place other several evenings.

Still a few people missing pearls, just keep sending me a tell online (the game doesn't tell you if someone is offline via tell yet).

[GluedOnBeard]

So overall what are peoples general thoughts compared to Final Fantasy XI?

[elaniel]

Rep, I'll be around most of the day Wednesday.

[C']

Any night should be fine for me so can do Wednesday if other people good for that.

Crashing issue seems to have been sorted for me now. I actually followed Tal's advice and reduced the buffer window size but also at the same time was the version update so I'm not sure which (if either) of them fixed it.

The fact that the update seems to have broken it for Rep whilst fixed it for me (as it was in phase 2 of the beta) suggest that it may have been the update.

Getting random R:0 instances now which the game isn't recovering from either although may be wireless issue at my end. Will try rebooting my router later and see if that helps. Got chucked off last night (in the middle of a levequest annoyingly) and despite repeated attempts to log back in, just hung on the 'Now loading' screen.

[talizker]

Any night should be fine for me so can do Wednesday if other people good for that.

Wednesday is good for me, I should be online most evenings other than Tuesday or Thursday mind.

Also thinking out loud, if I can make do with my PC until March 2011 then look at the PS3 version may be a good option...

[mikewl]

What CPU's are the guys with Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 running with right now and how are things looking for you in game?

SE recommend Core i7 - the cheapest one i7 930 (2.8GHz) looks to be just over £200. An i5 750 (2.66GHz) can be had for around £150 and is also Quad Core. The Dual Core i3 530 (2.93GHz) looks like it should easily run stable at around 4GHz for £85. I wonder how much better the Quad Core i5/i7 would be than a i3 running at 4GHz?

The £70-£115 saving would go nicely towards a decent GTX 460 and at least on paper looks like a good performance/price for XIV.

I'm running it with an I5 not overclocked, the game runs fine for me apart from the usual overcrowded areas which go a bit choppy but still perfectly playable.

I'm not sure how different the I3 is to I5, worth looking into though.

[InvisibleKid]

What server are you guys on?

[Rep]

I3 processors are the bottom end of the scale I3 > I5 > I7. I use an AMD and have no issues.

We're on Istory in Grindina*.

Some of these mobs are hitting me for over 5000.

[talizker]

I'm running it with an I5 not overclocked, the game runs fine for me apart from the usual overcrowded areas which go a bit choppy but still perfectly playable.

I'm not sure how different the I3 is to I5, worth looking into though.

The i5 7xx is quad core and similar to the i7 8xx series while the i5 6xx is dual core and more similar to the i3 5xx. I would love to know how much difference the extra cores make (plus cache) over running an OC'd dual core.

Certainly I would expect a i3 running 3GHz-4Ghz would be a step up from my Core2Duo 2.2Ghz but for FFXIV it depends how much CPU useage is speed vs cores (assuming a GTX 460 or similar to partner it).

There are certainly plenty of comments online about FFXIV hardware but nothing that very definitive.

@Rep, which AMD CPU do you run, i'm a little out of the loop AMD wise...!

[C']

One thing I've noticed is that the Grindina tutorial questline (Color of Sin) is nowhere near as refined as the Limsa Lominsa one, almost as if it's not finished yet. Yes it's beta, but I assumed with the game due for release in a little over two weeks, stuff like this would be done by now (maybe I'm too used to this XBL era of "open beta" basically meaning limited access demo of final game).

I've had two cutscenes where the name of something has been what appears to be untranslated japanese text. Also the emote tutorial part in LL was incredibly straightforward and made sense whereas this Grindina one didn't make any sense and I only managed to clear it by trying every emote on the list on each NPC. The text or actions performed by NPCs didn't seem to relate to any of my emotes at all.

The servers are seriously below par, performance is variable at best, there's so little content and we have people encountering crash bugs nearly every five minutes. Yet despite all that I'm still keeping my pre-order and plan to be on retail for day one.

I think a good part of this is despite all the problems, when playing I feel exactly like I did when I first started XI when it seemed exciting and years of job imbalance haven't worn me down. Just Friday evening when we had a bunch of the old line up all hanging together had me excited about things to come (it reminded me of late 2005/early 2006 when the linkshell was arguably at it's finest).

[Rep]

Phenom II X4 940, running at 3.6.

Wedge how did you cross the zones? I've plotted about 5 different routes now, stuff can aggro you from miles away and hit between 2000-5000+ Even as a group we wouldn't stand a chance.

[mikewl]

Phenom II X4 940, running at 3.6.

Wedge how did you cross the zones? I've plotted about 5 different routes now, stuff can aggro you from miles away and hit between 2000-5000+ Even as a group we wouldn't stand a chance.

Can't remember the names of the places but from the Gridania forests I took a South exit, almost directly south of the city, then the next area you should be able to see the city on the map, as well as a port area further west for la noscea.

[talizker]

Also the emote tutorial part in LL was incredibly straightforward and made sense whereas this Grindina one didn't make any sense and I only managed to clear it by trying every emote on the list on each NPC. The text or actions performed by NPCs didn't seem to relate to any of my emotes at all.

I gave up here last night!

I think a good part of this is despite all the problems, when playing I feel exactly like I did when I first started XI when it seemed exciting and years of job imbalance haven't worn me down. Just Friday evening when we had a bunch of the old line up all hanging together had me excited about things to come (it reminded me of late 2005/early 2006 when the linkshell was arguably at it's finest).

This is EXACTLY the way i'm feeling ^_^

Phenom II X4 940, running at 3.6.

Wedge how did you cross the zones? I've plotted about 5 different routes now, stuff can aggro you from miles away and hit between 2000-5000+ Even as a group we wouldn't stand a chance.

Thanks man - will look into it. We had the same thing last night when Wedge and I went exploring although he mentioned it was much more straight forward going to the other cities. I'm sure it will all make sense in a few weeks...!

[mikewl]

The i5 7xx is quad core and similar to the i7 8xx series while the i5 6xx is dual core and more similar to the i3 5xx. I would love to know how much difference the extra cores make (plus cache) over running an OC'd dual core.

Certainly I would expect a i3 running 3GHz-4Ghz would be a step up from my Core2Duo 2.2Ghz but for FFXIV it depends how much CPU useage is speed vs cores (assuming a GTX 460 or similar to partner it).

There are certainly plenty of comments online about FFXIV hardware but nothing that very definitive.

@Rep, which AMD CPU do you run, i'm a little out of the loop AMD wise...!

I always have software running on my second monitor showing cpu and ram usage, I can tell you strait up that FFXIV uses all 4 cores, rarely do any of them max out but I often see all four hitting about 60-70% usage.