by Here is a list of all of the changes in patch 1.18, including the new company system (factions), auto-attck, abolishment of stamina guage, introduction of enmity guage, side quests, company quests, instance raids, nm's, new repair items and abolishment of old repair system, settlements (landmarks), and tons of other stuff.
Sadly, Chocobos/airships, the Job System, and the Materia system are all not included as was previously thought. Going to have to wait until 1.19 and 1.20 before we see these things come to pass.
While this patch is a step in the right direction it failed to be the long awaited golden patch. W/O other means of transportation and no job system in place it is pretty hard to even consider playing the game atm, guess we just have to wait for several more months. About 1-2months between updates. I appreciate everything that the dev team has done so far, but they keep missing the fact that chocobos/airships and jobs are the ONLY thing keeping people away. Once these things are completed, only then will anyone be willing to play the game.
I give this update 3.5 chocobos out of 5 and the game is now bumped up to about a 5.0/10 (4.95/10 to be exact) using the following grades on content:
Transportation: 0.5/10 (again, no chocobos, no airships, no other mounts, only transportation is teleportation and return make for a boring experience, running all over eorzea will make you want to shoot yourself in the eyes after about two weeks and you are most likely to quit because of this...thousands already did just because there is no way to get from point A to point B, and when point A and B are always 30min-2hr of walking distance apart, then you'll quickly get why this is such a hindrance on gameplay, getting invited to a party at 9:00pm will likely mean arriving at the party at 11:00pm or 12:00am...see the problem...yeah, it's that bad, but I gave it a boost to 0.5/10 instead of 0.1/10, mainly because return cost is now lowered to 0, which could have put it to 1/10, but they implemented a damage system to gear now when you return after death, so i take back .5/10 lol)
UI: 8.5/10 (still can't move camera with arrow keys like XI, forced to use mouse or just deal with auto-follow camera/weird keys)
Job System: 0.0/10 (there is nothing good about this system whatsoever, it doesn't even deserve .1/10 as jobs/classes are nonexistant at this point and there is only 1 job, which feels like mix and match blue mage from xi...but way worse then blue mage)
Crafting System: 9/10 (The best feature in ff14 is crafting, and repairs have become easier to do so I'm bumping it up from it's 8.5/10 to 9/10, it's way better then XI by leaps and bounds especially with quests now available from each guild and guildleves)
Quests: 4/10 (not much to say here, and that's the problem, there just isn't enough quests at this point, not even close to enough and the rewards are kinda bleh)
Guildleves: 6/10 (this is sort of controversial, but I believe that the reduction of gil from Guildleves makes for a more stable economy, and right now it's kind of nuts, so I think it deserves a boost from it's 5/10 spot)
Item purchasing/selling: 6/10 (This is a far cry from the .5/10 that the retainer system had at launch, but it is still a pain to have to warp to a zone and find the retainer and then find the right item, people kinda need/want a real auction house instead of this system, but SE has done a great job with retainers, now you can search an AH inspired catagory system and find who/where an item is selling at, once inside the retainer you are looking for uploads first before anyone else and is easier to spot due to the highlighted name color)
Battle System: 7.5/10 (This is the largest gain for patch 1.18, and is a large leap from it's 1.0/10 from before. Auto-attack and the abolishment of the stamina guage have put this system back on the map, and it's just much more balanced then before.
Big Monsters to kill: 5.0/10 (A small increase from it's previous 4.5/10 spot, due mostly to several new nm's and most importantly the new instance raids, this would be higher, but with only 2 instances available right now it's impossible to give it any higher ranking)
Linkshell/Company System: 3/10 (chatting requires you to stop what your doing, press the space bar or / key and type your message, whereas in XI you can play and type with ease. Still lacks the ability to remove inactive players from shell and the small limit/ls means that remaking a shell once a month still remains a usual task that is just plain stupid. I'm unsure why companies have still not been added (maybe I'm missing them), but either way talking should not be this difficult.)
Storyline: (I'm not willing to grade something I don't know much about, I've heard it's boring and unimaginative, but until I see the content for myself I'm not going to grade the storyline)
Sadly, Chocobos/airships, the Job System, and the Materia system are all not included as was previously thought. Going to have to wait until 1.19 and 1.20 before we see these things come to pass.
While this patch is a step in the right direction it failed to be the long awaited golden patch. W/O other means of transportation and no job system in place it is pretty hard to even consider playing the game atm, guess we just have to wait for several more months. About 1-2months between updates. I appreciate everything that the dev team has done so far, but they keep missing the fact that chocobos/airships and jobs are the ONLY thing keeping people away. Once these things are completed, only then will anyone be willing to play the game.
I give this update 3.5 chocobos out of 5 and the game is now bumped up to about a 5.0/10 (4.95/10 to be exact) using the following grades on content:
Transportation: 0.5/10 (again, no chocobos, no airships, no other mounts, only transportation is teleportation and return make for a boring experience, running all over eorzea will make you want to shoot yourself in the eyes after about two weeks and you are most likely to quit because of this...thousands already did just because there is no way to get from point A to point B, and when point A and B are always 30min-2hr of walking distance apart, then you'll quickly get why this is such a hindrance on gameplay, getting invited to a party at 9:00pm will likely mean arriving at the party at 11:00pm or 12:00am...see the problem...yeah, it's that bad, but I gave it a boost to 0.5/10 instead of 0.1/10, mainly because return cost is now lowered to 0, which could have put it to 1/10, but they implemented a damage system to gear now when you return after death, so i take back .5/10 lol)
UI: 8.5/10 (still can't move camera with arrow keys like XI, forced to use mouse or just deal with auto-follow camera/weird keys)
Job System: 0.0/10 (there is nothing good about this system whatsoever, it doesn't even deserve .1/10 as jobs/classes are nonexistant at this point and there is only 1 job, which feels like mix and match blue mage from xi...but way worse then blue mage)
Crafting System: 9/10 (The best feature in ff14 is crafting, and repairs have become easier to do so I'm bumping it up from it's 8.5/10 to 9/10, it's way better then XI by leaps and bounds especially with quests now available from each guild and guildleves)
Quests: 4/10 (not much to say here, and that's the problem, there just isn't enough quests at this point, not even close to enough and the rewards are kinda bleh)
Guildleves: 6/10 (this is sort of controversial, but I believe that the reduction of gil from Guildleves makes for a more stable economy, and right now it's kind of nuts, so I think it deserves a boost from it's 5/10 spot)
Item purchasing/selling: 6/10 (This is a far cry from the .5/10 that the retainer system had at launch, but it is still a pain to have to warp to a zone and find the retainer and then find the right item, people kinda need/want a real auction house instead of this system, but SE has done a great job with retainers, now you can search an AH inspired catagory system and find who/where an item is selling at, once inside the retainer you are looking for uploads first before anyone else and is easier to spot due to the highlighted name color)
Battle System: 7.5/10 (This is the largest gain for patch 1.18, and is a large leap from it's 1.0/10 from before. Auto-attack and the abolishment of the stamina guage have put this system back on the map, and it's just much more balanced then before.
Big Monsters to kill: 5.0/10 (A small increase from it's previous 4.5/10 spot, due mostly to several new nm's and most importantly the new instance raids, this would be higher, but with only 2 instances available right now it's impossible to give it any higher ranking)
Linkshell/Company System: 3/10 (chatting requires you to stop what your doing, press the space bar or / key and type your message, whereas in XI you can play and type with ease. Still lacks the ability to remove inactive players from shell and the small limit/ls means that remaking a shell once a month still remains a usual task that is just plain stupid. I'm unsure why companies have still not been added (maybe I'm missing them), but either way talking should not be this difficult.)
Storyline: (I'm not willing to grade something I don't know much about, I've heard it's boring and unimaginative, but until I see the content for myself I'm not going to grade the storyline)
