Thoughts on the DioField Chronicle Demo

I tested the DioField Chronicle demo on Steam Deck on August 24, 2022.  I played for about one hour on high settings at 60 FPS with ray tracing enabled.  The Deck ran a little hot.  I saw one hitch in a cut scene.  Otherwise, the experience was flawless--but it also ate 40% battery in that time.

Combat was fun and engaging on Normal difficulty.  I felt challenged but not against impossible odds.  The combat mechanics almost felt like a puzzle in that judicious use of combat techniques and summons "solved" the maps I played.  It definitely checked the box for tactics.  I also can see that the character progression and skill unlocks addressed between missions add a strategic layer.  Players will be able to cater the party to their fighting style or to the challenges of a particular map.  

In handheld mode, the text was easy enough to read, something a lot of games don't get right.  I did find it hard to quickly select characters in the heat of battle to avoid enemy techniques on the Deck.  This is because the task of holding the heavy Deck sometimes makes finding the right button hard for me.  On the Switch, where I have a Satisfye ZenGrip, I bet it would be great in handheld.

I downloaded the demo on the PS5 on the morning of August 25, 2002, and found the text to be good there, too.  Performance was flawless, of course.  I also was better able to execute more precise controls, and I can only imagine it would be terrific mouse and keyboard.  

Graphics are fine but not outstanding.  Close inspection reveals some tricks used in the cut scenes (edge color blur, tight focus, lens flare, etc.) to make up for lack of a AAA budget.  And combat typically has enough distance between the camera and the action to not make things look poorly done.  The techniques and summons look pretty good.  My only graphical complaint would the combat animation from Fredret's horse hops when he attacks an enemy.  The horse hops with each attack when we should only see Fredret's lance moving in my opinion.  Honestly, this is the kind of game that doesn't need stellar graphics, and it does just fine.

Sound is good for the limited time I have spent with the game.  One grating effect is the sound when calling up the Technique menu in battle.  The game gives a sound I associate with slow-motion bullet-dodging scenes in movies, a kind of "Wooooom" that is a tad too basal and breaks the action too much.

I will excitedly return to the demo tonight and this weekend, and I could see this game easily sneaking to a Day 1 purchase for me.

Getting to the Core: 36 Hours to Progress

I have waited long enough to form a judgment about the 36-hour timer on Guildleves (GL) in Final Fantasy XIV. With the Collector's Edition releasing on September 22, I now have over one month of playing time under my belt since the service went live. In that time, I have been able to assess just how casual-friendly the system is. I started Getting to the Core with the promise to focus on casual gaming in FFXIV, and this is my best effort at looking at what the game really is contrasted to what it promises to be. In short, the 36-hour GL timer doesn't impede the hardcore gamer with a lot of time on his hands, but it slows the casual gamer nearly to a halt, especially if he tries to solo.

The Casual Player's Journey to Rank 16

Since launch, I have been working diligently on my conjurer (CON) ranks so that I could learn Protect and Shell. The road to CON 16 to learn those coveted spells was filled with solo attempts at low level leves, solo grinding on moles, and excellent parties with the likes of Woodchuck Ladorn, Sasquatch Redbeard, Rockem Sockem, and Brin Zalazar.

Playing in 2-4 hour spurts roughly 3-4 nights per week, the trip to rank 16 took me about a month. I would log in and teleport to a city to get some GL. I would run those in about an hour (including travel time and a random Behest), and then I would try to party with different members of my linkshell, Hammerfist Clan. We'd hit whatever GL anybody had, grind on random monsters, and explore the world.

Sometimes I would log on for an entire play session of solo grinding in a cave of moles. I fairly well got from rank 14-16 on doing just that because it turned out to be the most efficient form of XP for me. So it was that four weeks after the FFXIV service went live that I hit CON 16.

Moving Forward

Having achieved rank 16 and learned the spells the weekend of October 15, it was time to start working on my thaumaturge (THM) ranks. I was already THM 12 from the first four weeks of action, so I was hoping for a week to two weeks to climb to THM 16 or so. Family life got in the way of play time, and I only got to play 3 hours total the week of October 18. Let me say how that went:

• Log on. Say hi to linkshell.
• Teleport to city to pick up GL.
• Run three GL and one Behest (one hour has passed). See that I have gained 20-25% of a rank.
• Do I want to teleport to a second city and grab those GL? Or do I want to grind moles in a cave? I only have about 30 minutes more for this play session.
• Meh. Log off.
• Come back in 36 hours and repeat the process.

I understand that XP is more efficient in groups and that I could get boosted XP by running GL with other people. The point is that I neither had the time nor the desire to party during my play session. I was playing as super-casual as possible, and the 36-hour timer was inhibiting me.

In a perfect world under the current system, I could get, say, 6 GL from two different cities and hit both cities every 36 hours. At 20-25% of a rank from each city, I could gain a rank every 36 hours for little while until the curve got steeper. Not bad progress. I bet I could hit my goal of getting THM 16 in two weeks. But let's look what happened to my comrades who helped me to CON 16...

Woodchuck and Sasquatch

These two dudes have a lot of playing time. I expect and appreciate that they rank up faster than I do with my meager playing time. They both have ranks in the high 20s to low 30s now. Their power is the fruit of their many hours put into the game.

I last partied with Woodchuck and Sasquatch at CON 12 for an XP grind back in early October. In 3 hours with them, I was CON 14. Two ranks in three hours, something that would have taken me three days of casual play with GL. I believe people who play more should get more progress, but I am forced to wonder if a ratio of one day casual to one hour hardcore supports a game that prides itself for being casual-friendly.

My Solution

I finally am ready to get on board with everybody else who wants Guildleves set on a 24-hour timer. Woodchuck and Sasquatch face the same 36-hour restriction on GL that I do. Of course, they know as well as I do that GL are hardly the most efficient XP. It's must faster to just go out and grind mobs in a party. You enjoy all of the benefits of party XP bonuses and you don't have to watch a clock to see when you can kill more monsters.

Still, setting the GL on a 24-hour timer would not really affect their style of play, and it would not allow me to equal their ranks with only a fraction of the playing time. What it would do is allow me to feel a greater sense of progress. It would encourage me to log in a little each day. Doing so would have me in linkshell chat a little each day. It would result in me feeling more connected to the game and the community. An additional but not major benefit of a 24-hour timer for GL is the ease of knowing when GL reset (no app needed!).

Parting Thoughts

At the risk of repeating myself too much, I must again stress that I understand that hardcore players should rank up faster than I do. I am only expressing that I have come around to the notion that Guildleves should be on a 24-hour timer. If Square Enix moved them to once per day, the hardcores would still pretty much level up at the same rate. It's the casual crowd that would benefit if only in a small way. I think that perception of better progress and the benefits of having your user base log in every day are well worth the change.

What do you think of the 36-hour Guildleve timer? Let me hear from you.

Getting to the Core: Theorycrafting is Alive and Well (Mostly)

I've enjoyed discussing character builds for as long as I have played MMOs. For evidence, see this old post from me on the EverQuest Online Adventures forums. The cleric interviewed for that guide was my lovely wife. Of course, that was just me being an excited member of the community, back in the dark days (6 whole years ago!) when wikis were not all the rage and the community mostly had to work together to figure out a game because major gaming networks as we know them were still in their infancy. But that was a large part of the fun of EQOA--the chance to re-specialize (respec) our characters and the variety of Class Masteries available made theorycrafting a delicious exercise in mathematics.

Lucky for me, theorycrafting is alive and well (mostly) in Final Fantasy XIV thanks to a button that allows gamers to reassign previously spent attribute points and a class system that makes it possible to combine most skills from one class with any other class. I'll share my planned build not as a guide (not even close) but as a way to start conversation about the fun of planning a character in FFXIV.

Blurry Archetypes

The first thing that I realized about the combat classes in FFXIV is that most of them defy cut and dry archetypal labels. We can try all we want to label the conjurer as a healer, but it's a ranged DPS class also. Likewise, the lancer brings the damage with his spear and the right skills, yet he controls the flow of combat through buffs and debuffs. The versatile pugilist can dish out some pain while having options like a traditional tank. You get the picture. This aspect of FFXIV appealed to me greatly.

MMOs lose a lot of their luster to me once the player base figures out the optimal build and it becomes cookie cutter for the whole community. In EQOA, every rogue had to go heavy on the STR, DEX, and AGI and pick the Wound line of skills during their class quests or risk ridicule by the community. The rogue's job was to do insane damage at the beginning of the fight and then brag about highest damage scores.

That didn't cut it for me. In a game that only permitted ten action bar slots (five at launch!), I wasn't cool with using up as many four of them on skills that had a 60 or maybe even 120 second recast. And I didn't buy into the theory of swapping out for other skills while using auto-attack. I found, though much experimentation and manual parsing, that I could do more total damage over time by using even a simple level 4 skill with a 30 second recast on my toolbar instead of a level 30 skill with a 120 second recast.

That refusal to have my doughy build forced into the shape of the cookie cutter is at the heart of my build. It is the source of one of the first posts I ever made on FFXIVCore.com, a reply to hardcore gamer Evicerator that I never wanted to group with him. It wasn't that I thought he was a bad guy or that he did not deserve to enjoy the game he pays for (see my next post in the thread before you jump to conclusions). It was that my fun in the game rested in my ability to experiment and be different. I know from past trials and many errors that such nonconformity leads to mishaps in MMOs.

All of that to say...I knew I didn't want to be conventional.

What I Wanted to Do

I play better as classes that do things directly to the mob (DPS of all forms) than classes who have to be responsible for mobs and party members every second (tanks and main healers). I enjoy damage and often get a kick out of nuking. I also enjoy buffs and debuffs. So it was shaping up like I wanted to be a support class.

I thought LNC would be my pick at launch because of its Moonrise and Speed Surge. I played and enjoyed LNC all throughout beta. If it lacked anything, I felt it was some way to either kill quicker (LNC seem to be near the bottom of the DPS totem pole) or heal for solo play. Thaumaturge seemed like a natural complement, one many other players had focused in on, too. A THM brings some heals and many debuffs, so it felt like the perfect fit. Only it wasn't to me.

As much as I like to play with alternate builds, I found the mathematical reality of the loss of potency for spells being used by a Disciple of War to be too great to forgive. I found the inability to completely respec attribute points with one press of the button too limiting in how often I could switch between builds effectively as a casual player. I discovered that many of the cool LNC skills could be used only with polearms equipped and thus could not convert to secondary skills on a THM main. Plus, the ones that moved over with any weapon--even the cool ones like Moonrise--did such reduced damage that they became little more than debuffs.

So I tried to find another way to be unconventional.

What I Decided to Do

I decided to aim to be a ginger cookie in the middle of a sheet of sugar cookies. That is to say I decided to go THM for my main and embrace the support role with a twist. I have been combining my THM with a CON for the buffs. I am not after the nukes; instead it is skills like Protect and Shell that motivate me to level CON. My primary goal is to build a Disciple of Magic who buff the party before a pull, drop damage over time spells (DoTs), do some debuffs, and mix in the rare nuke or patch heal as needed. I'll continue to do some manual parsing and evaluate my build, but that is my idea for now.

My build plan calls for a mostly conventional attribute distribution with a small twist. While most DoMs will favor INT, MND, and PIE in some form, my character will value PIE the most. I want those debuffs to succeed, and I am leaning on piety until I see evidence that piety does not increase the success rate on debuffs (that the % chance to succeed is static). INT and MND are of near equal importance to me because I want the small boost to DoT damage that I'd get from INT and the extra MP I get from MND. Finally, I plan to throw in enough VIT to prevent getting one-shotted with every pull of enmity.

My elemental attributes is my real chance to be as different as I want to be for both the merits and demerits of the notion. Most of my points go toward boosting the element of wind. This makes my occasional nukes expand from the Astral and Umbral lines of THM to include the Aero line from the CON. I also can mix in Choke for a nice DoT.

Parting Thoughts
So, you remember how this is not a guide, right? It's just me sharing my ideas. I recognize that I have little data to theorycraft with at this point. Ah, but the fun is back for me. Just as I built my rogue, a major DPS class in EQOA, with less burst damage than just about anybody else who played the game, I am building a FFXIV THM that has very different party roles from the conventional mentality. In EQOA, my rogue delivered steady damage that worked out to my advantage over a long fight but suffered in short battles (so I sucked in duels). In FFXIV, my THM will be very party-dependent for kills and will be vastly less effective against monsters with wind immunity. But it sure will be fun to stumble upon those with a weakness to wind. Have a Tornado!

What about you? Have you begun theorycrafting in FFXIV yet? Do you have any math that backs up your decisions to build the way you do? Do you dare to be unconventional, or does the inefficiency of alternate builds drive you crazy. Discuss!

Getting to the Core: Unspecial Olympics

This is not a research paper with a bibliography and two sources per page. If you want a scholarly journal, I can provide a citation for a terrific article from the Journal of Social Psychology I read recently that addressed how to mitigate stereotype threat by using challenge-framing. This, this is a rant about how stupid Square Enix's payment system for subscriptions to Final Fantasy XIV is. When all is said and done, I'll be a subscriber from Day One, so read this for what it is: an emotional outburst, an editorial, a rant.

So, SE has done something stupid that I am almost tempted to use the word "retarded." Now, I hate using that word to describe stupidity because retardation is a mental and/or physical condition over which a person has control. Square Enix, on the other hand, is a company led by intelligent people with a high level of business acumen. Maybe it's that business expertise that allows SE to be completely clueless about how their payment options for subs is at launch. It's one thing to set the bar high in the long jump, but it's another entirely to set it so high that no one even lines up to attempt a jump. Mistakes of this magnitude deserve their own games--the Unspecial Olympics I will call them from now on!

To end the ranting and to start making some sense, let me be informative for a bit. Earlier today, I noticed that Square Enix has release the payment options for FFXIV subs on their official site, The Loadstone. I'll quote them for posterity:

Fee Type	Service Period	Fee (*1)
Basic Account Fee (*2)	30 days	$9.99 (or 999 Crysta)
	90 days	$26.97 (or 2,697 Crysta)
	180 days	$47.94 (or 4,794 Crysta)
Character Fee	30 days	$3.00 (or 300 Crysta)

*1

Service fees can also be paid by using Square Enix Crysta.

*2

To play FINAL FANTASY XIV, you will need to pay a basic account fee and fees for each character. PAYMENT METHODS The following methods can be used to pay FINAL FANTASY XIV subscription fees. SQUARE ENIX CRYSTA Crysta can be added to an account using a credit card, and then used to pay service or subscription fees. Crysta may also be used to add options, and can even be designated as a means of automating regularly scheduled payments. ADDING SQUARE ENIX CRYSTA TO YOUR ACCOUNT ClickandBuy and UltimatePay can be used to purchase Square Enix Crysta. For details on Square Enix Crysta, please refer to the Square Enix Account Management System. http://account.square-enix.com * Square Enix Crysta cannot be used in some countries and regions. Credit Card /Debit Card (ClickandBuy Account Required ) ClickandBuy is an account-based billing system provided by ClickandBuy International Limited. An account can be acquired for free and used to add options to an account or automatically pay service fees. It is possible to register multiple credit cards and debit cards to a single ClickandBuy account. Payment methods differ per country. To learn more about ClickandBuy, please refer to the ClickandBuy official site. http://clickandbuy.com

Two things are wrong with this setup: the itemization of the service (which is useless by itself) as separate from all characters (not making it clear that the base service price does not include any characters at all) and the requirement to sign up with third party site clickandbuy.com no matter how you want to pay for your sub.

First, let me be clear. The $9.99 per month only pays to have an account turned on. It does not allow you to create a character. You'll need at least one of those at $3/month each. So $12.99/month is the minimum you will pay to play the game unless you buy bulk month rates, which make the service cheaper but NOT the character charge(s). I am not complaining about the price. I feel it is fair, and I recognize that it is cheaper than most MMOs. I am complaining because many people will be confused in reading this despite the footnotes in red.

Second, no matter which method of payment you choose (Crysta currency or a credit/debit card), you MUST sign up for clickandbuy.com's third party service. If you login on your Square Enix account and try to add Crysta, you can't pay for it directly with a credit card. Se prompts you to use clickandbuy. If you want to pay with a credit card automatically every month, you have to use clickandbuy.

I had never heard of clickandbuy.com before. At a glance, the site compares readily to PayPal. I get it. My credit card will not be linked to my SE account. If someone hacks my game account, my credit card is safe. Regardless, this third party service, which I have no authority to opt out of, creates a huge hurdle (or sets the bar to entry way too high to be consistent in my tack & field anologies) for many gamers. A lot of people will call this a deal breaker.

I'll bitch about it for a week or two and go on with my life, but let me share my early experiences with clickandbuy.com for the readers who have not heard of it before today either. First, I had to sign up with my physical address, email, and phone number. Then I have to confirm my email. To verify my credit card (let them know they can get into it for charges and credits), I'd have to agree to allow two charges between $1 and $1.99 and report the amounts in my clickandbuy.com profile within 60 days. If I choose to cancel my account, I must write to ask for it to be closed. Otherwise, I can be charged a $1.50 service fee after 12 months of inactivity. Furthermore, if I link my bank card and come up with insufficient funds, clickandbuy will charge me $22. Beware if you sign up; read ALL of the terms of service.

Parting Thoughts

In the end, I am just whining for now and will take it like a good soldier and sign up for clickandbuy.com because I want to play Final Fantasy XIV. I mean, I don't have any options. Still, I can't help but see this as another instance of Square Enix being obtuse for the sake of being different. Itemizing the charges for both account connection fees and character fees will ONLY confuse the hell out of potential customers. And forcing subscribers to use a third party account, to essentially hand their credit card to a middle man, to play the game is little different from the PlayOnline experience everyone was so glad to see disappear from FFXI. Oy!

Does the requirement to use clickandbuy.com change your decision to subscribe to FFXIV? Let me hear from you!

Getting to the Core: Is FFXIV the Game for You?

I started writing Getting to the Core with the promise that I would cater to the Core gamer, the guy who wishes he could play 30 hours per week but who can only manage 15. The Core gamer is the lady who really knows her stuff and can play her toon well but doesn't have the time to run with the top guilds or the energy to raid all the time. As we approach the launch of Final Fantasy XIV, I thought I should revisit the Core concept one more time to analyze whether or not FFXIV is a fit for the Core gamer. I'll do it with a simple five-question quiz.

1. Are you a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise?

Long-time Final Fantasy fans are used to learning a different system with just about each new release. Just think about the differences we saw between FFIV and FFVIII:

• FFIV had party members coming and going instead of with us from start to finish. Players got to choose between a few spells as one character remembered the magic he had forgotten.
  
  
• FFV introduced the job system. While the characters were static, their roles changed greatly depending on the job we set them to.
  
  
• FFVI used Espers to teach magic and summons. Players came and went. We had special moves to execute that were unique to each character.
  
  
• FFVII gave us Materia as the method for learning magic and summons, and Materia could be socketed into gear to change its properties. Getting the right combinations of Materia was key. Characters had special moves we had to unlock. One character even died!
  
  
• FFVIII employed the controversial Draw system of stockpiling magic from enemies. Finding enemies with rare spells was a joy at times. Also, gunblades!

Clearly, Final Fantasy fans are used to learning a new gameplay mechanic with each release. This is a good thing, because FFXIV is different from any other title in the hallowed franchise, too. Expect to spend 2-3 hours learning how to manipulate the mechanics of classes, skills, and Guildleves at the basic level; it'll take much longer to master the intricacies. People who are not Final Fantasy fans will be annoyed by an MMO that is so different from everything else on the market.

2. Did you play Final Fantasy XI?

Gamers who played FFXI for more than a couple of months will have a leg up on gamers who did not in a couple of areas. First, they will be better equipped to deal with the wacky controls of FFXIV. Second, they will be accustomed to the concept of slow but steady progression centered around a story rather than expecting a quick trip to the cap for some epic gear and mobs.

The controls in FFXIV are, in a word, very unusual for an MMO. First, I find it next to impossible to use the WASD keys by themselves to move. The A and D keys make my character turn at a right angle and move left and right, respectively. Meanwhile, the camera stays fixed, so I see my character moving from the side view. In order to turn the camera to see what was ahead of me, I need to use the right mouse button or the camera control keys (IJKL). In the end, I found I could move very smoothly by using WJSL. This meant using two hands to move and letting go of the mouse, certainly an awkward control scheme for the average North American gamer. I could tell it would be a terrific scheme for a controller, though. Using the left analog stick to move forward while changing the camera with the right analog stick is standard on most console games. Since FFXIV also releases on the PS3, this makes sense.

Two other control settings that are counter to my MMO intuition are the use of the number pad "-" key to open the main menu instead ESC and the use of the space bar to open the chat menu rather than Enter. It takes some getting used to, but opening the main menu with a key on the right side of the keyboard allows players to keep moving forward while opening the menu. Since FFXIV does not give players the ability to jump, the space bar goes unused outside of chat, making it the perfect key to open the chat box. Again, these controls are different from what most PC MMO players are accustomed to.

The final way worth mentioning that controls in FFXIV differ from the norm is the Active and Passive systems. In FFXIV, your character does not run around with his sword drawn all the time. With weapons stowed, players are in the Passive mode. This is the mode for talking to NPCs and logging out of the game. To attack enemies, players must draw their weapon and enter Active mode via the F key or clicking an icon on the action bar. As with the other controls, this slight difference will have many gamers puzzled.

In the end, FFXI veterans are more likely to forgive a design intent with the controls that is contrary to the norm than people who never played FFXI. That doesn't mean that gamers who did not play FFXI will hate the game, but I must honestly acknowledge that the controls are very awkward for no good reason.

Also recognize that FFXIV is not a game where you race to the top and get to the "real" content. FFXIV is about story and slow progression. You see your character in the major cut scenes, and you can count on levels to come slowly. It's about the ride in this game--not the destination.

3. Will you be playing FFXIV four hours per day or less?

This is a key factor. Square Enix designed FFXIV from the ground up to be a better fit for casual gamers. As such, a lot of systems are in place to support short gameplay sessions each day instead of marathon sessions daily.

Take the Guildleves as an example. Currently, Guildleves are on a 48 hour timer. This means you can only complete the same Guildleve once every 2 days. In the lower levels (less than 20), you can burn through all of your battlecraft Guildleves in about an hour. Then you have to choose either fieldcraft (harvesting) or local (crafting) Guildleves. But be warned: if you go through all of them in one play session, then you really have nothing to do the next day.

Then think about the Fatigue system. Play the same class long enough and you start to get reduced XP because the game really wants you to hop around from class to class. How long does it take for this to happen? Well, I played my marauder for 5 hours on August 21. By the end of the 4th hour, I was on red (reduced) XP. I had gone from rank 5 to rank 7. That is not very much at all. The current build of the game simply does not support long grind sessions.

I must state the obvious here as a caveat: Square Enix will be adding story quests to the launch version, and I have not experienced the depth of Guildleves at the higher levels. But I have to be honest about the way the game is now. You can play about 2-3 hours before you need to make a decision. Do I burn through all of my content for the next two days, or do I log off and save some for tomorrow?

4. Can your computer run the game well?

Trying to run a game on a machine that cannot handle it can negatively color your perception of the game (see EQ2 at launch, Vanguard, or Age of Conan). Now, I hear what you are saying. But Vanguard had piss-poor optimization at launch! You are right. It did. But some of the people who complained about the game were trying to run it on the bottom of the required specs. Same thing will happen with FFXIV.

I run a Core 2 Duo E7500 processor @2.93 GHz with Win 7 32bit as my O/S. I have 4GB RAM and a Radeon HD 5770 1GB graphics card. My hard drive is a pedestrian 1TB Seagate Barracuda @ 7200RPM. My graphics card, which is a terrific mid-grade card is the best piece of hardware in my case. I get terrific performance (40ish FPS in the fields with FRAPS and Vent running in the background, 20-40 FPS in the city), but I would not recommend anyone attempt to play with much less than I have, especially on the graphics card end.

People who try to run FFXIV on less than my specs must be prepared to deal with some frustrations in performance. I haven't seen what my machine does in a raid situation yet, but I assume it will drop me down to 20FPS or so, like in the busy parts of town. A lesser machine, especially a lesser graphics card, likely will drop down to teens or even single-digit FPS.

5. Do you want to like Final Fantasy XIV?

I hold a strong belief that people almost never enter a gameplay experience with an open mind. Either you are a fan (see #1 and/or #2) and want FFXIV to be good, or you are not a fan and are looking for any excuse to write off the game as a failure.

FFXIV has flaws, many of which will not be fixed by some miracle patch at launch (no auction house, mana regen issues for Disciples of Magic, Guildleve timers that suck so hard when you disconnect and your active Guildleve fails, UI lag, and more). If you are hoping to like FFXIV, you'll probably be able to overlook these flaws and find your enjoyment. If you are only curious, you're probably going to use these issues as the basis for your decision to dislike FFXIV.

Parting Thoughts

Time to tally up your score. Use this as a loose guide when deciding whether or not to add Final Fantasy XIV to the shopping at cart at your favorite online or local retailer.

How many questions did you answer "yes" to?

• 5 out of 5: You should pre-order FFXIV right now. Put it off no longer. Start working on getting into a good linkshell now. You'll have a blast.
  
  
• 4 out of 5: FFXIV is a safe bet for you. It's unlikely that your one "no" answer came to #5, so try it during open beta and see how it goes. Make sure your computer can handle it and you have an understanding of the play style FFXIV offers.
  
  
• 3 out of 5: FFXIV is a gamble for you. If you did not answer "yes" to #1 or #2, I fear the game may be too different from the MMOs you are used to. If you did not answer "yes" to #5, you likely won't be able to look past the game's current flaws. Try the open beta and see if you can get used to the controls and gameplay mechanics. If you get comfortable with them now, you will have more fun at launch.
  
  
• 2 out of 5: FFXIV is too risky to buy at launch. Think of trying the open beta. If you fall in love with what you see, reconsider that pre-order. Poll your friends to see who else will be playing. That could increase your enjoyment. If you are bothered by some of the design elements, wait around for the PS3 launch in March 2011. By then, a lot of those problems should be fixed for you. Also, if you own a PS3, you can skip the computer upgrades by playing the game on your PS3.
  
  
• 1 out of 5: You won't like FFXIV right now, so don't buy it. Avoid open beta. The game's current build won't do much to change your mind. See if you can get a buddy key or a trial around the time the PS3 version launches in March 2011 if you have a lot of friends playing. Keep your eye on the FFXIV community and see how people are reacting to the game and its patches. You may need to upgrade your computer to play the game, and you want to be sure the expense works out for you.
  
  
• 0 out of 5: FFXIV is not the game for you. You don't want to like it, and you won't. Stay far away from open beta, or you will hate the game forever. If a ton of your friends are playing, ask them about the game after the PS3 launch in March 2011. See if you can try it at a friend's house. Price the upgrades you will need to make the game run well on your computer, and then consider if the expense if worth playing a game with your friends. If they seem to be in for the long haul and some of the launch problems are resolved, you may be upgraded to a 2 out of 5 on this quiz. Refer to that section of this quiz when the time is right.