Hit and Miss.

I've been back and forth with XIV. Some days I hate it, then I miss it. Only a little.

I've made some significant gains since my last post, which all came after they fixed SP and EXP rates.. then they stealthily changed them again and now they suck. Again. OH, but they did an emergency maintenance to fix a Crafting recipe because it put out the wrong number of items.

I'm glad our priorities are in the right place.

I've always been a huge Squaresoft (and of course, now Square-Enix) supporter. I love their products. Their games take me somewhere new, somewhere with meaning, somewhere mystical and beautiful. Nearly every game ending has made me cry. In FFXIV, I find myself hating every little thing:

Crafting takes forever, having to find/craft/hope you don't break 6 items in a row, only to possibly lose them all in the final synth. A lot of recipes, in essence, require you to completely level a craft before leveling a job. What I mean is, if I want to craft my own weapons, I have to have (Insert Guild Training Here) and usually the craft level is way higher than the use level. Now, is that much different than XI? I suppose not, but there were other measures to obtain what you wanted/needed. Also, I know that SE said the world would revolve around crafting, but I don't like being forced to do it because every five seconds another piece of armor breaks. You know, having to have a double-digit craft to repair your level 1 item.

The current rate of SP on non-Leve mobs is horrendous. Again. Did I say 'again' already? Well, let me say it AGAIN. FFXIV uses a gauge system just like XI, why not have set SP/EXP rates like XI too? I'm killing IT+ mobs solo, getting 89 SP? For me, this makes leveling outside of Leves/Behest pointless. I need 22,000 SP to get to 23 Conjurer- getting 89 SP/mob is NOT going to work.

And if you're not into leveling on horrible numbers or crafting deep into the night, sorry, there's nothing else for you to do. There aren't quests on the side. Well, if you manage to level some, you can do a quest. A quest.

Good luck with that.

I'm glad that SE made the decision to keep XIV free 'until further notice.' I hope that the new development team can whip this game into shape. Or, at least back into the shape it was in for all of five minutes a few weeks ago before they ninja-nerfed it YET AGAIN.