There are numerous threads being created for single off-site reviews which is beginning to clutter up these forums. Please post links to any off-site reviews you'd like to discuss in this thread. If you'd like to post your own review of the game, we've gone ahead and created a separate sub-forum for just that.

Review threads and threads linking to off-site reviews in this forum will be locked.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/final-fantasy-xiv-online

54/100 from Metacritic so far. Stay away, they say.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/finalfantasy14/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;read-review

Gamespot: 4/10. We should actually turn this thread into a compilation of FFXIV reviews. For the lols.

My "discussion" portion amounts to about this: Final Fantasy XIV is currently scoring about a mediocre 53/100 on metacritic.  Whether you want to interpret that was an MMORPG almost half empty or and MMORPG slightly over half full is your call. 

In many (although not all sites) sites, the user review breakdown is about 25%-35% really like it and about 65-75% of the people don't, with very few in the middle.  This is interesting in that there seems to be a significant rift in the playerbase. 

The main points of differences seem to be in just how bad it is for you to look off-game for in-game info, whether you can adapt to a console-like interface, and if these and other similar hurdles are really sufficiently detracting from the game's up sides of a flexible class system, generally open (less-directed) experience, and debatably the best graphics we've seen in an MMORPG yet.

At the rate things are going, history should show this: it's not quite right to say that Final Fantasy XIV had either positive nor negative reviews at release, it had highly mixed reviews at release.  40-60% seems to be fairly common, with one at 25% and three at 80-84%.

Even amongst positive reviews, it's advised to wait a bit if the flaws are overly problematic for you, as they likely will be patched out in time.  Otherwise, go for it.

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.  Its being panned on a large scale.   Please quit making up pure fiction.

Originally posted by grapevine

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.  Its being panned on a large scale.   Please quit making up pure fiction.

Would you kindly read to me the words immediately under "Metascore" on the main critic aggregate page?

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.  Its being panned on a large scale.   Please quit making up pure fiction.

Would you kindly read to me the words under "Metascore" on the main critic aggregate page?

I would suggest you read it, to be honest.  Along with the vast majority of negative reviews.   I can't believe you are trying to portray the games being accepted well, or even having balanced reviews.

Originally posted by grapevine

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.  Its being panned on a large scale.   Please quit making up pure fiction.

Would you kindly read to me the words under "Metascore" on the main critic aggregate page?

I would suggest you read it, to be honest.  I can't believe you are trying to portray the games being accepted well.

Very well, the words are "mixed or average reviews based on 11 critics."

Underline and bold facing mine, of course.

For the record, I can't believe I am trying to portay the games being accepted well either, considering a "mixed" review suggests it's only being accepted well by some.

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.  Its being panned on a large scale.   Please quit making up pure fiction.

Would you kindly read to me the words under "Metascore" on the main critic aggregate page?

I would suggest you read it, to be honest.  I can't believe you are trying to portray the games being accepted well.

Very well, the words are "mixed or average reviews based on 11 critics."

Underline and bold facing mine, of course.

For the record, I can't believe I am trying to portay the games being accepted well either, considering a "mixed" review suggests it's only being accepted well by some.

Seriously!  Have you even bothered to read the vast majory of reviews, and been able to comprehend how badly FF XIV is being accepted by the MMO community?   Even if the game was "average", and not sub-par, it would still be a bad game.  People aren't after "average".

Originally posted by grapevine

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.  Its being panned on a large scale.   Please quit making up pure fiction.

Would you kindly read to me the words under "Metascore" on the main critic aggregate page?

I would suggest you read it, to be honest.  I can't believe you are trying to portray the games being accepted well.

Very well, the words are "mixed or average reviews based on 11 critics."

Underline and bold facing mine, of course.

For the record, I can't believe I am trying to portay the games being accepted well either, considering a "mixed" review suggests it's only being accepted well by some.

Seriously!  Have you even bothered to read the vast majory of reviews, and been able to comprehend how badly FF XIV is being accepted by the MMO community?   Even if the game was "average", and not sub-par, it would still be a bad game.  People aren't after "average".

Sure, I read a lot of the reviews, wher do you think I got the laundry list of what people either like about or not don't?

As for "how badly FFXIV is being accepted by the MMO community" that's a very interesting question.  There's an MMO community?  Last I checked, it seems to mostly be the people who play World of Warcraft or don't.  Intresting mental construct, that.  That's a really ambigious thing to try to verify unless you've got godlike omniescence, since the greater bulk of that is going to be, "what I saw some guys saw on forums and review threads about it."  They're not very representative of the truth.

So, instead, lets just lets check the dipstick on Besaid right now, by that I mean the "Party" function off the menu where it reads, "world" referring to world population.  Highest I ever saw it was ~2600 at the prime of release 4 weeks ago and again 2 weeks later.  It's typically ~1900 during prime time on weekdays.

It's currently at 1,664 at 6pm PST.

Retention level: generally accepted amongst its primary audience.  I wouldn't be surprised to see it hit ~2600 this weekend again when tommorow's patch rolls.

Originally posted by grapevine

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.

A roughly equal balance of good and bad reviews = mixed reviews.... and that is exactly what FFXIV is getting.

I loved know how define "mixed reviews".

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Originally posted by grapevine

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.  Its being panned on a large scale.   Please quit making up pure fiction.

Would you kindly read to me the words under "Metascore" on the main critic aggregate page?

I would suggest you read it, to be honest.  I can't believe you are trying to portray the games being accepted well.

Very well, the words are "mixed or average reviews based on 11 critics."

Underline and bold facing mine, of course.

For the record, I can't believe I am trying to portay the games being accepted well either, considering a "mixed" review suggests it's only being accepted well by some.

Seriously!  Have you even bothered to read the vast majory of reviews, and been able to comprehend how badly FF XIV is being accepted by the MMO community?   Even if the game was "average", and not sub-par, it would still be a bad game.  People aren't after "average".

Sure, I read a lot of the reviews, wher do you think I got the laundry list of what people either like about or not don't?

As for "how badly FFXIV is being accepted by the MMO community" that's a very interesting question.  There's an MMO community?  Last I checked, it seems to mostly be the people who play World of Warcraft or don't.  Intresting mental construct, that.  That's a really ambigious thing to try to verify unless you've got godlike omniescence, since the greater bulk of that is going to be, "what I saw some guys saw on forums and review threads about it."  They're not very representative of the truth.

So, instead, lets just lets check the dipstick on Besaid right now, by that I mean the "Party" function off the menu where it reads, "world" referring to world population.  Highest I ever saw it was ~2600 at the prime of release 4 weeks ago and again 2 weeks later.  It's typically ~1900 during prime time on weekdays.

It's currently at 1,664 at 6pm PST.

Retention level: generally accepted amongst its primary audience.  I wouldn't be surprised to see it hit ~2600 this weekend again when tommorow's patch rolls.

It's senseless to use retention rates in your defense while the free month period is still going on.

Geldon 53% is fail. its not 'half good' its an average not a median. If there is a decent mechanic to examine retention ratings within the game, then lets just wait till the bulk of free months are up. It should be interesting.

http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/pc/final-fantasy-xiv

GameRevolution's review

Grade: D
+  Beautiful graphics and cut-scenes
+  Some decent potential
-  That hasn’t come close to being utilized
-  Forced limits on how much you can do
-  Boring combat
-  Broken interface
-  Broken design
-  Broken map
-  Just broken everything, really

Another spot on review in my opinion.

Originally posted by StoogeMonkey

Geldon 53% is fail. its not 'half good' its an average not a median. If there is a decent mechanic to examine retention ratings within the game, then lets just wait till the bulk of free months are up. It should be interesting.

It's a popular conception that 53 means a failure, but actually it really is intended to say it's a "mediocre" or "fair" rating by a reviewer.  This is what I typically will get in trouble for mentioning, but I nonetheless think it's important to underscore: a mediocore-scoring game is nonetheless rather enjoyed by many players.

I agree, should be interesting to see just how many hang around after the first month s up.  Although, I wil speculate that if they dislike the game, chances are they're not logged in now, even now before their 30 days are up, because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to play a game you don't enjoy.

Originally posted by geldonyetich

My "discussion" portion amounts to about this: Final Fantasy XIV is currently scoring about a mediocre 53/100 on metacritic.  Whether you want to interpret that was an MMORPG almost half empty or and MMORPG slightly over half full is your call. 

In many (although not all sites) sites, the user review breakdown is about 25%-35% really like it and about 65-75% of the people don't, with very few in the middle.  This is interesting in that there seems to be a significant rift in the playerbase. 

The main points of differences seem to be in just how bad it is for you to look off-game for in-game info, whether you can adapt to a console-like interface, and if these and other similar hurdles are really sufficiently detracting from the game's up sides of a flexible class system, generally open (less-directed) experience, and debatably the best graphics we've seen in an MMORPG yet.

At the rate things are going, history should show this: it's not quite right to say that Final Fantasy XIV had either positive nor negative reviews at release, it had highly mixed reviews at release.  40-60% seems to be fairly common, with one at 25% and three at 80-84%.

Even amongst positive reviews, it's advised to wait a bit if the flaws are overly problematic for you, as they likely will be patched out in time.  Otherwise, go for it.

Sorry Geldonyetich, but this is just spin on your part.  Scores this low are pretty much rock bottom...and I think deep down you know that.

For example, at Gamespot - http://www.gamespot.com/reviews.html?type=reviews&category=Massively+Multiplayer&platform=5&mode=all&sort=score&dlx_type=all&sortdir=asc&official=all notice that you'll need to go to the second (last) page (sorted by score)... a 4/10 from Gamespot is 3rd from the bottom (FFXIV only beats Mimesis Online and ArchLord) which ends up 71/73.  If you want to play percentages, then it is basically in the bottom 3% of all Gamespot MMO reviews.

Need another example?  At IGN - http://www.ign.com/index/reviews.html (sorry, can't get a URL already restricted to RPG and sorted by reviews) notice that you'll need to go to page 7 of 8...a 5.5/10 from IGN is 9th from the bottom (including page 8) which ends up 171/179.  Basically in the bottom 5% of all IGN RPG reviews.

These scores are a complete embarrassment to a company like Square Enix.

I understand you like the game.  And I am honestly glad that you do enjoy your game.  But please stop being a corporate shill.  The reviews truly are bad, and the game simply does not appeal to most people and probably never will short of Square Enix doing a complete overhaul of the game.  I wish the news was better for the game you enjoy...but the facts are the facts.

Originally posted by lornphoenix

Originally posted by grapevine

It has not received mixed reviews, as in its balanced between good and bad.

A roughly equal balance of good and bad reviews = mixed reviews.... and that is exactly what FFXIV is getting.

I loved know how define "mixed reviews".

Positive 3, Mixed 4 and negative 5, please tell me how is it balanced? add to that pathetic  score of 3.9 given by users. If you still can't see what failure this game is, then you never will.

Originally posted by unbound55

Sorry Geldonyetich, but this is just spin on your part.  Scores this low are pretty much rock bottom...and I think deep down you know that.

For example, at Gamespot - http://www.gamespot.com/reviews.html?type=reviews&category=Massively+Multiplayer&platform=5&mode=all&sort=score&dlx_type=all&sortdir=asc&official=all notice that you'll need to go to the second (last) page (sorted by score)... a 4/10 from Gamespot is 3rd from the bottom (FFXIV only beats Mimesis Online and ArchLord) which ends up 71/73.  If you want to play percentages, then it is basically in the bottom 3% of all Gamespot MMO reviews.

Need another example?  At IGN - http://www.ign.com/index/reviews.html (sorry, can't get a URL already restricted to RPG and sorted by reviews) notice that you'll need to go to page 7 of 8...a 5.5/10 from IGN is 9th from the bottom (including page 8) which ends up 171/179.  Basically in the bottom 5% of all IGN RPG reviews.

I'm not spinning, I honestly don't look at it that way.

A real example of spinning you can see regularly being done in the media is where you'll a bar chart with a significant amount of the values removed from the chart in order to represent a massive change in what is, in reality, merely a very tiny fluctuation and they just took a very small range.

This is very similar to what you're doing here by taking an individual review and contrasting it with a body of overall reviews and then making the claim that this review is much worse than it actually is.  You're omitting all the complicating factors such as genre incompatibility, platform, year the game was made, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of games considered "not good enough" to be of high enough priortiy to pay the reviewer to review, and then contrasting it on this chart as evidence the game is really in the bottom 3% or 5% of all games.

Though I've seen this argument mentioned many times, I really can't accept it considering these gaping holes.  I've written reviews before, and I know that if a reviewer of a 2010 game gives a game a 53%, it's because he believes has got 53% as much merit as the very best possible scenario for a game, as best as he's able to isolate within a scoring system. 

As a player, you should look at the 53% of what the game offers and decide whether or not it's worth it to you or not before buying the game.  Otherwise, you're going to potentially miss out on a lot of games it may turn you could enjoy despite the flaws because the flaws are the kind you can live with and what the game delivers may be exactly what you wanted.

Originally posted by unbound55

Originally posted by geldonyetich

My "discussion" portion amounts to about this: Final Fantasy XIV is currently scoring about a mediocre 53/100 on metacritic.  Whether you want to interpret that was an MMORPG almost half empty or and MMORPG slightly over half full is your call. 

In many (although not all sites) sites, the user review breakdown is about 25%-35% really like it and about 65-75% of the people don't, with very few in the middle.  This is interesting in that there seems to be a significant rift in the playerbase. 

The main points of differences seem to be in just how bad it is for you to look off-game for in-game info, whether you can adapt to a console-like interface, and if these and other similar hurdles are really sufficiently detracting from the game's up sides of a flexible class system, generally open (less-directed) experience, and debatably the best graphics we've seen in an MMORPG yet.

At the rate things are going, history should show this: it's not quite right to say that Final Fantasy XIV had either positive nor negative reviews at release, it had highly mixed reviews at release.  40-60% seems to be fairly common, with one at 25% and three at 80-84%.

Even amongst positive reviews, it's advised to wait a bit if the flaws are overly problematic for you, as they likely will be patched out in time.  Otherwise, go for it.

Sorry Geldonyetich, but this is just spin on your part.  Scores this low are pretty much rock bottom...and I think deep down you know that.

 

For example, at Gamespot - http://www.gamespot.com/reviews.html?type=reviews&category=Massively+Multiplayer&platform=5&mode=all&sort=score&dlx_type=all&sortdir=asc&official=all notice that you'll need to go to the second (last) page (sorted by score)... a 4/10 from Gamespot is 3rd from the bottom (FFXIV only beats Mimesis Online and ArchLord) which ends up 71/73.  If you want to play percentages, then it is basically in the bottom 3% of all Gamespot MMO reviews.

 

Need another example?  At IGN - http://www.ign.com/index/reviews.html (sorry, can't get a URL already restricted to RPG and sorted by reviews) notice that you'll need to go to page 7 of 8...a 5.5/10 from IGN is 9th from the bottom (including page 8) which ends up 171/179.  Basically in the bottom 5% of all IGN RPG reviews.

 

These scores are a complete embarrassment to a company like Square Enix.

 

I understand you like the game.  And I am honestly glad that you do enjoy your game.  But please stop being a corporate shill.  The reviews truly are bad, and the game simply does not appeal to most people and probably never will short of Square Enix doing a complete overhaul of the game.  I wish the news was better for the game you enjoy...but the facts are the facts.

Very good way to put it. I'm sure on Metacritic, a 53 is at least in the bottom 10% of MMOs, if not lower. In that context, this game is rated worse than 90% of MMOs. Or in other words, you would do better to spend your money on the other 90% of MMOs.

The "professional" reviewrs are giving it a 54 , which is sad and bellcurved upwards because of professionals giving it kudos for areas where they see potential.

But if you look at user rating, even with most postive user ratings at full 10's (an obviously ploy to try and bell curve the rating, as even positive users opinions shouldn't be a 10) you still end up with a 3.8.

I know that I usually want to know what normal people think of the game, and as there are always a lot more user reviews then porfessional I take it as a better reflection of popular opinion before trying a game.

Both the user and professional ratings are low and SE should feel like crap for thinking their name and IP was enough to treat their fans so poorly. To think I bought an HDTV, a PS3, and thena PC when they anounced the PS3 would be 6 months late and then the Collectors Edition- and for what?- a buggy and god awfull grindy game. And I like grindy games but, this one is god awfull because I am grinding away at the same mining minigame over and over for hours with little progress, or when i want to grind mobs, they dont exist. Crafting wont be fixed at all since the whole long grind is apparently how you play this class. Kinda ridiculous as its nothing more then a repetitive mini game requiring no skill but taking up a lot of time.  And mobs wont be increased untill after the new free month.