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How is the UI?Follow

#1 May 07 2012 at 2:41 PM Rating: Good

M0NKEYSNARF

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I'm thinking about looking at FFXIV again during their "check it out again" period.

My main concern is how is the UI? Did any of the patches speed everything up? Does it still take all day to transfer stuff to your retainer, then transfer it back? Does every action have several confirm menus? Does doing everything still feel like the entire game in on the server and every action requires 2 seconds to send the command and then 2 more seconds to receive the response? I'm not bitching, I'm just trying to find a way to describe what it felt like at the end of the free period. Does the code feel optimized on the client side or does everything feel like it's done server side?

Thanks,

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#2 May 07 2012 at 2:44 PM Rating: Good

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It's been very minorly tweaked but if you didn't know that, you'd think it was exactly the same one from launch.

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#3 May 07 2012 at 2:48 PM Rating: Good

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hexaemeron wrote:

It's been very minorly tweaked but if you didn't know that, you'd think it was exactly the same one from launch.

Balls. Okay thanks for the info. The UI was the only reason I quit playing before. It looks like I'm going to have to wait for 2.0.

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#4 May 07 2012 at 2:49 PM Rating: Good

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For buying/selling things and retainer transfers, it is still very slow and laggy.

Combat itself is not too bad any more. However, in fights like level 50 Ifrit, the server lag is sometimes in issue when some of the battlefield traps come into play.

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#5 May 07 2012 at 6:47 PM Rating: Default

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I disagree with the above posts. I feel like it's much faster than it was. If it was just a minor tweak then it's made a much bigger difference than if feel the above posts are making it sound like. If you are a crafter or gatherer class, they've sped up those actions significantly so it doesn't take 30 seconds to do just 1 action. I also feel like people are over exaggerating the server lag. Personally, I haven't had much of that issue. If I die during an ifrit run, it was my fault because I simply didn't get out of the way in time. Perhaps it's different for other people though. I think monkey should try it out just for 1 month and if its still not up to what he would expect then he should wait until 2.0 to check it out again. He'll have access to the free beta again when they roll 2.0 out.

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#6 May 07 2012 at 7:47 PM Rating: Excellent

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swisa wrote:

I disagree with the above posts. I feel like it's much faster than it was. If it was just a minor tweak then it's made a much bigger difference than if feel the above posts are making it sound like. If you are a crafter or gatherer class, they've sped up those actions significantly so it doesn't take 30 seconds to do just 1 action. I also feel like people are over exaggerating the server lag. Personally, I haven't had much of that issue. If I die during an ifrit run, it was my fault because I simply didn't get out of the way in time. Perhaps it's different for other people though. I think monkey should try it out just for 1 month and if its still not up to what he would expect then he should wait until 2.0 to check it out again. He'll have access to the free beta again when they roll 2.0 out.

Is the UI a Christmas-lights-in-the-closet fustercluck of endless nested menus? Yes
Is there drag-and-drop? No.
Is the UI still server-side authenticated? Yes

It's the same f'in UI with modest tweaks. I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, but this is not a place for credit at this time, imho.

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#7 May 08 2012 at 1:57 AM Rating: Good

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swisa, have you not bought anything from the market wards? The game freezes on me for like 20 seconds.

I like the game and I enjoy the direction that it's going in, but if the OP left because of his issues with the UI, he's not going to like the improvements on it. If he left because of lack of content, etc, that would be another story.

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#9 May 08 2012 at 2:34 AM Rating: Excellent

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hexaemeron wrote:

swisa wrote:

I disagree with the above posts. I feel like it's much faster than it was. If it was just a minor tweak then it's made a much bigger difference than if feel the above posts are making it sound like. If you are a crafter or gatherer class, they've sped up those actions significantly so it doesn't take 30 seconds to do just 1 action. I also feel like people are over exaggerating the server lag. Personally, I haven't had much of that issue. If I die during an ifrit run, it was my fault because I simply didn't get out of the way in time. Perhaps it's different for other people though. I think monkey should try it out just for 1 month and if its still not up to what he would expect then he should wait until 2.0 to check it out again. He'll have access to the free beta again when they roll 2.0 out.

Is the UI a Christmas-lights-in-the-closet fustercluck of endless nested menus? Yes
Is there drag-and-drop? No.
Is the UI still server-side authenticated? Yes

It's the same f'in UI with modest tweaks. I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, but this is not a place for credit at this time, imho.

Just wanted to commend you on the word, that is all :)

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#10 May 08 2012 at 5:22 AM Rating: Excellent

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M0NKEYSNARF wrote:

I'm thinking about looking at FFXIV again during their "check it out again" period. My main concern is how is the UI?

Did any of the patches speed everything up?
It's faster than it was at launch. But with server-side authentication and a generally less-than-optimal game engine, the current version has a perceptible lag that can't be cured until the version 2.0 re-launch next year.

Does it still take all day to transfer stuff to your retainer, then transfer it back?
There are fewer clicks involved in moving items around, which is a relief from how it used to be. But it still suffers from being forced to wait while your one-item-transaction-at-a-time completes, unlike a game like WoW where you can keep moving more things even while your previous transactions haven't finished. In other words, it's not so bad when you're moving a few things, but it's a real pain when you're moving dozens.

Does every action have several confirm menus?
They've done a good job of streamlining this. There are way fewer clicks to do most things now, especially when selling or crafting.

Does doing everything still feel like the entire game in on the server and every action requires 2 seconds to send the command and then 2 more seconds to receive the response?
As answered previously, it's apparently a limitation of the game engine and it won't be fixed until version 2.0.

Does the code feel optimized on the client side or does everything feel like it's done server side?
As answered previously, there's a perceptible lag that remains. Server-side authentication is still in effect.

#11 May 08 2012 at 7:31 AM Rating: Default

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Hmm the karma bomb dropped. Understandable since apparently my experience is different from everyone else's. I was just stating that from my experience, the game runs much more smoothly than it did at launch and that I don't experience the lag issues you guys are complaining about. I never stated that they weren't there. I never stated that you guys were lieing in any way. I was stating my experience and that is that. I still think he should come back and try it out and if he still doesn't like the state of the game then he should quit and come back at 2.0. Also, yes I do make purchases in the market wards. Yes I walk to the retainer, purchase my item, and run out. I do not experience game freezes of any type.

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#12 May 08 2012 at 8:22 AM Rating: Excellent

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Thanks for the info guys.

I think I'm going to hold off. I wouldn't call myself a twitch gamer but I do prefer games that involve reaction time. Even in WoW, executing the right move 1/3 of a second quicker will make a difference in either pvp or pve. Although I haven't played WoW for a while. I've been playing CoD MW3 and Skyrim on the PS3.

I liked FFXIV when I played it and reading about the stuff they've added makes me think there's a lot of cool stuff to do. I just couldn't get past the UI and I don't think there's any way I could get past it now. I'm really looking forward to 2.0.

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#13 May 08 2012 at 10:22 AM Rating: Good

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swisa wrote:

I was just stating that from my experience, the game runs much more smoothly than it did at launch and that I don't experience the lag issues you guys are complaining about.

Any chance you're in Europe? I also rarely if ever experience the UI lag to the extent others do, although ever since the server merge I get bad lag NPCing items especially in Ul'Dah. Everything else seems speedy enough for now (well I haven't really done any of the end game dungeon fights so I can't comment on those)

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#14 May 08 2012 at 12:56 PM Rating: Excellent

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Once I enabled hardware mouse, it was like a new game for me. That was my biggest complaint, I'm pretty happy with the game now although the new UI for 2.0 looks awesome:

Screenshot

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#15 May 09 2012 at 12:23 PM Rating: Good

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The recent updates (around the 1.18 timeframe) turned my laptop from a crafting box, to a dedicated gaming box. I can now play on it nearly as effectively as on my desktop (I have an I7 +Nvidia GPU+Intel integrated graphics card on my laptop, don't have the specific stats on me).

But the over-all UI is much smoother. It is still sluggish, but command updates, and reactions are now pretty much consistent.

But other than the ifrit lag (which is much better than it used to be, and now it's more of a network connection issue than anything else), the game reactions are completely different than even a year ago. However, if you have an eye for timing, you will be able to tell in a heart beat that the game still has communication issues.

The current stance is that they are integrated issues with the Client-Server communication design (mostly on the client end), and the new client will do away with them (there is still going to always be latency issues, simply because, unlike an FPS, there is no movement prediction that can work on that scale... At least not that any developer has ever successfully released).

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#16 May 09 2012 at 2:29 PM Rating: Good

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Perrin, S.O.B. Superhero wrote:

swisa wrote:

I was just stating that from my experience, the game runs much more smoothly than it did at launch and that I don't experience the lag issues you guys are complaining about.

Any chance you're in Europe? I also rarely if ever experience the UI lag to the extent others do, although ever since the server merge I get bad lag NPCing items especially in Ul'Dah. Everything else seems speedy enough for now (well I haven't really done any of the end game dungeon fights so I can't comment on those)

I'm sorry I'm not in Europe. I live in the midwest of the United States. I think I read somewhere that they were going to show a video of actual gameplay from the 2.0 servers during E3. I hope it's true that they will. I'm interested to see how much of a difference the new server structure will make.

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