Another fun thing about the alliance raids is that they also tend to serve as a test bed for new mechanics that they put in the main raids. Many prototypes versions of mechanics we see in later raids get their beginnings in Alliance raids.
thats why things like Stack Markers and such are strange and don't really see proper homogenization in CT. Xandes stack marker are strange purple circles, but they absolute need to be stacked by 2+ players. the first time players see the traditional stack marker is in 3.1 of HW in Void Ark and Thordan.
@@StealthMaster5k one thing i wished they kept for nier stuff and probably transferred over to endwalker is the difficulty scaling they had. yoko taro wanted to kill everyone but yoshi p reined him back. that said, if we're given a chance to try and kill another alliance party because mechanic, i am all for it 😂
If you ever find yourself hanging out in the Sea of Clouds or the Churning Mists keep an eye out on the sky box in the distance. You can see the Void Ark floating nearby on occasion. When Heavensward came out several of us saw it and had no idea what it was for. Speculation, of course, was for the next Alliance raid but nothing was confirmed until the raid came out. It was a cool moment because you could just be fly around those zones and see in the distance a looming essentially space craft that seemed so alien and strange.
@@silmerien6 its still flying around off the north side of sea of clouds and i think north side of churning mists just keep an eye out it shows up often enough
Kinda remind me of the Mana Fortress in Secret of Mana. You will see it looming on the sky near the end of the game, and it will run away the moment you try to approach it with your flying dragon. It is the very last dungeon of the game.
just for clarification the 8 man raids drop in the .0, .2, .4 patches while the 24man raids are .1, .3, .5 still hype to see preach going through this content and having such a blast
@@Galaick It'd be .1.5 and .2.5 though, right? a .15 or a .25 makes no sense in versioning. You have to remember, his audience is probably 90% WoW people, that's who he is speaking to. Now, you are correct that he could have clarified better to speak to both fan bases, but I suspect he's not worried about long time FFXIV players understanding when Alliance Raids are released.
@@andrewshandle ff14 does number the patches with raids as .15 .25 not .1.5 and if you look up when a raid came out its also listed as .25 for example. however you raise a valid point to compare the content to the wow raid patch cycle that i had not considered
I absolutely adore the alliance raids. To put it in perspective, I'm 65, played wow for 13 years, did mythic raiding and the whole nine yards. Now, I'm not so much into doing the Savage and Ultimate fights. Apart from getting competent group together, I'm just not as capable as I was back in MoP. They are a way for me to still enjoy raiding. And FF doesn't have the strict requirements on things like raid consumables or even gear to a certain extent. You can learn the myriad mechanics after a few runs and they're just a lot of fun. Now, Mike, wait till you get to the Nier raids in Shadowbringers for a real creep show. It certainly appears that you're having a lot of fun. Welcome to the family.
Bro I totally understand, I am an old fart myself and played WoW until BFA, buuuut give yourself a chance to enjoy the high end content, you will realize you still got it. That is how I got my triple legend and boy was I about to ditch that awesome content bc I thought that was for youngsters, trust me I was wrong. Try it out.
w00t! glad to see it, 60 here as well, similar experiences. came to FF a year and a half ago, never looked back. love this game so much. its just very accessible.
As of Shadowbringers, the MSQ DOES push you to complete the ARR Crystal Tower Raids in the last patch (Just before the last few quests). It becomes mandatory to finish the Patches and access Heavensward. It didn't use to be Required and, much like Coils, was optional content.
Thanks for this. I finished ARR well before Mike and was so god damn confused because I felt like the story DID push me to do crystal tower, but Mike felt like the game pushed him to do Coils, which I never heard of until I watched Asmon doing it. I still havent seen Coils and I just wrapped up HW.
Yes, the force you to it, but pretty late in the MSQ so he may have just gotten to it first before he realized that. It's a separate path that very late into the MSQ it basically says "oh, you can't go any further until you do it", because up to that point it felt completely optional. I still think they should force players to the Coils as part of the MSQ as well because it's super hard to get a group...that or provide a link to a video to watch it all the cut scenes. ;)
@@andrewshandle They actually tell you really early on in the 2.x patches now that the crystal tower quest series *will* be required for progressing to Heavensward, chances are he just forgot or did it all before that point in 2.x
One of my favourite experiences from the game is day 1 trying a new alliance raid. No-one knows what's going to happen and it's hillarious to watch 24 people collectively go "oh, I need to stand on the other side of those blocks"
I know the EXACT mechanic you're taking about. Did this in a premade group on Discord day 1. The mech wiped the raid clean and the entire call erupted in raucous laughter for 5 straight minutes. Every single one of us thought we were being big brain calling out the wrong spot. Such a wonderful memory
Yup its causal enough to go in blind and just die to everything and have fun and still clear with reasonable time. Usually the spectacle for the raids are also big so its just a good time
I know the mechanic you're talking about too! XD I queued for the raid immediately after maintenance was over so we all went in completely blind. Never before have I seen an entire alliance wiped off the arena in one fell swoop. XD It was that moment that I decided to ALWAYS run alliance raids immediately on release. lol
watching the background and I gotta say 13:57, the SMN Noki Navarre is a boss. everyone in the alliance has at least 3-5 vuln stacks, but Noki aint got one. Noki is a boss and deserves some commendations for that.
The first Alliance Raid in Stormblood is such a step up in scope and scale, it's awesome...and waterslides are fun. :) As for the Sky Pirate base, if they let players buy those as their house plot, I think they'd be the most popular location in all of FFXIV. I _love_ the Pirate base and I was so glad when they let us walk around it.
@@Skijaramaz it definitely would...although I wonder if the Islands in 6.1 will kind of fill that role...that being said, the WoW fanboy who also commenting says the game sucks, so I guess I'll unsubscribe. ;)
@@TheAssirra It splits you up by Group too which is a neat touch. The scale is so huge, it makes you feel like you are doing something epic in an Uncharted Game or Indiana Jones movie. Good stuff.
I imagine the talk in SE offices Yoshida:People are asking for 2B costumes in the game what we do Yoko Taro? Yoko Taro:What about a cheeky side quest like FFXV and you receive the clothes. Yoshida: OK, an alliance raid it is!
The Nier crossover raids literally got me to buy the games since I loved the visuals, songtrack, and glamour. I thought it was really interesting how they timed the last one for the Replicant remake since I for sure bought into the hype and was sold lol
There's even a line of Achievements for raising people outside of your group and I am pretty sure it's meant for stuff like this, not random dead players in the Overworld
One of the most important things that gets taken for granted a lot is the regularity. I think it was mentioned in an earlier video, but FFXIV is predictable to the point where anyone can guess almost to the exact day when patch X.Y is going to drop and generally what content it will have. The constant flow of new content and the idea that it's okay and even encouraged for players to take a break and play something else until content they're interested in is released is probably one of the best things about the game.
If you don't watch the spoilers they release you'd have to be nostradamus to predict the story. Especially the expansions so don't feed ppl bs because you're on Blizzard's dick dude
@@sylphidstriker6909 They're not talking about the story - they're talking about the contents of a patch. 6.1 will have a new alliance raid and trial (with extreme), 6.2 will have a new raid tier (with savage) and dungeon, 6.3 will be alliance/trial again, and so forth. That sort of predictability.
I like how Pyromancer looks at this analysis stuff from a lore standpoint while Preach does basically the same amount of work but from a technical/mechanical standpoint.
Also, it’s amazing. Ivalice has always been a fantastic theme, and once you know what you’re doing in those fights, they’re some of my favorite in the game.
@@Skyblade12 It’s a shame that out of all the alliance raids Ivalice is kinda a slog to get through. There’s WAY more text to read and cutscenes where you’re just standing around on the airship listening to lore dumps. Don’t get me wrong it’s still good but when it comes to pacing/story it’s the worst one out of the alliance raids. Honestly the most interesting piece of lore I learned from the Ivalice raids is that [SPOILER] The fact that Solus/Emet was a fan of theatre and fine arts and is the only reason the traveling performers even have their own airship and whatnot. It doesn’t help bring about a calamity to rejoin the worlds in anyway but he thought “Hey I really like theatre and plays here’s a bunch of money and a huge airship you deserve it.”
XIV's catch up systems let you catch up for the next tier. A casual player can hit the same ilvl as a hardcore raider minus 5 ilvls on the weapon. They won't have optimal substats on the gear, but that's minor - especially with new crafted gear coming. The raid lockout being removed before the next raid launches, combined with XIV's page (badge) system makes it easy to grab pieces you're missing/gear a new role. WoW's catch up system never lets you catch up.
Super easy as well, by the end of the patch the alliance raids have their cap removed adn the tomestone gear also removed cap, so everyone can catch up even by spamming a few times.
The catch up patches don't just have the alliance raids, they also make tomestone upgrade tokens available for hunt currency. Which is actually an even bigger deal, since you're limited to one token per week from the alliance raids, but you can do as many hunts as you want. On datacenters with organized hunt groups tracking S-rank spawn timers and hosting regular A-rank trains, it becomes very easy to get augmented tomestone gear once the catch up patch lands.
@@jacks1368 And now there's even an easier way to catch up with gear and that's until the next expansion launches to go to the previous expansion's Capital City to get the 530 gear. lol Which is in all honesty I am actually doing since I can't be asked to play FFXIV before Endwalker.
Doing the older Alliance raids... at the end, people are hopping about, saying gg and chit chatting with one another. When I cleared some of the current alliance raids (Puppet's Bunker and Paradigm's Breach) for the first time, nobody said shit at the end. First of all, over half of the alliance was KOed on the floor, and the rest were just shocked to be alive. So it was dead quiet in chat as we all simultaneously unclenched our buttcheeks and learn to breathe again. It was so stressful clearing a new raid with a bunch of other first timers. Lol. Can't wait to do it again in EW. XD
yeeees, paradigm's breach was that experience for me. loved every second of it. (it also helps that the music was jaw-droppingly good, as expected from nier.)
Yeah I keep hearing him talk about how the alliance raids are just so easy, when he apparently hasn't done the Return to Ivalice and NeiR raids yet. He's in for a treat or rude awakening depending on how you look at it.
EW will be my first expansion where I can actually play things on the first day. (Joined before all Shb patches were out but wasn't done with it until the last patch dropped.) I am so excited to be part of this chaos this time and not just hear the war stories of the veterans. :D
The receptiveness to feedback is something that really stands out, particularly if you did the content in real time or if you research the development and feedback as you've done. As just one quick example for content you've already seen- after ARR we never saw another 8 man dungeon again, nor a dungeon with the extremely intrusive cutscenes present in Castrum Meridianum or the Praetorium. The final dungeons of each expansion still have heavy story influence, but they constantly improve the way they incorporate that story into the dungeon itself rather than forcing people to wait for cutscenes. The Heavensward final dungeon, Aetherochemical Research Facility, only had a few cutscenes at the final boss. Stormblood leaves all the big story scenes outside of the dungeon so it's a very smooth experience, and by Shadowbringers they're telling the story WITH the dungeon rather than just shoehorning it in AROUND the dungeon.
Ironically, back in 2.0, Meridanum and Praetorium were the go to places to speedrun Tomestomes for the first 'AF' gear that was available. It honestly surprised me how long it took SE to tweak those 2 instances so that it was an enjoyable experience for new players, because for quite a long time it was either 'Steamrolling through the place' so sprouts were getting back to back cutscenes and by the time they finished them all, they were alone in the group, because the last boss had been killed 10 minutes prior, and then it went to having to wait 20-30 minutes for 7 other sprouts that needed it, because no one else was running it for any reason (because it just wasnt worth it).
One of the things I like about FFXIV's gearing system is how they don't try to twist every aspect of the game to feed into it. Like if you're a savage or ultimate raider, you're not required to run these dungeons even once to get your gear. Imagine having to run potd every week to keep up on gear for your raid static.
i mean, not quite true every class had to (almost mandatorly do to it being most efficent) run Crystal tower a bunch fo times for their relic weapon in SHB. Every class had to run the 3 nier raids a bunch of time to agument their cryptlurker gear. every player had had to run 180!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Raids of SHB and SB to gain their relic weapons(ok, fine 90, as the other 90 are fater farmed in bozja) yes there where "alternate ways" to get the relic part, BUT a savage player HAD ot run Copied factory, Puppets bunker, and baradigms breach once each per Cryptlurker gear(which was around 4-5 pieces per class BIS so a total of 15 raids)
@@weberman173 That's not true. You can get the tome gear upgrade tokens from savage floors themselves lol, so you can get BiS without ever touching alliance raids or any battle content other than expert roulette and savage; been like that since Heavensward. Relic weapon is a unique case but most of the time it's slightly behind the current raid weapon in terms of ilvl, only surpassing it towards the end of an expansion when the final raid tier is about to lose its weekly lockout (iirc)
It just occurred to me - This is exactly why the FF team don't need a PTR. They release things in smaller chunks which also had the effect of allowing them to respond to player concerns quicker, usually as soon as the next patch 3 months down the road.
Eh, the "smaller chunks" thing only works for the hardcore raids, which have less bosses (though way higher quality) than WoW raids. In terms of raw content added per patch, just look the patch notes for both games, XIV dwarfs WoW in every other aspect on a patch by patch basis, and still manages to have at least 2 more big patches per expansion than WoW.
@@TheRayzorOne It honestly feels like the current WoW team has inherited a lot of success from their predecessors and have been content to rest on their laurels assuming the inertia of the game leaves it untouchable. I see videos of them patting themselves on the back for simply giving players back stuff that they'd removed in the first place, as though it were some new amazing thing they'd just invented themselves. Or the utter disconnect that players will find the concept of water walking to be some new incredible thing, just because they said so, when it's already existed forever. One interesting thing Koji said in the NoClip documentary was that a lot of members of the FFXIV team were there for 1.0, and remember that sense of abysmal failure and it's not something they ever want to experience again. And they know that it stemmed from simply sliding down the path of the previously successful FFXI without innovating or looking at what players want from a modern MMO, not to mention using the strength of the brand as a crutch rather than rely on the strength of the game itself.
@@Reldan The downward trend of WoW, in my opinion, can be attributed to one main thing. The people that are A) Designing the game and B)Making decisions that impact design, dont play the game. So how could you understand what players want if you cant comprehend why? The only why they get is what feedback they are given. Which I would think is incredibly limiting. I honestly dont know if this is true or not, but it definitely feels that way. I think the removal of tier sets is a pretty good argument for this being the case though. No one who played and enjoyed WoW would ever EVER think "Hmmm...you know these class specific, very unique sets of gear that add a unique taste/spin to different classes/specs? Lets get rid of them"
as someone who has been playing since World of Darkness was new content, and has been present for nearly every single patch the moment servers go live, i can say this is a fascinating watch. i have never been super involved in the community aspect of ffxiv outside of the game and void ark and weeping city were the only two raids i ever missed on launch due to a hiatus i had taken from the game. but i can tell you i was there for the release of dun schath and it was a fucking nightmare in the best way. every boss was a pug killer in their own right. my first group literally ran out the duty timer on the first boss!!!! i have been in a group in dun scathe that has fallen apart at every single boss (like, a group that failed at the first, another that failed at the second and so on). they listened to us asking for harder content and they have been fine tuning it ever since (for the newer raids) i cannot express how incredibly excited i am for endwalker's 24 man content as i am one of those individuals who never really got into the savage tier raiding.
Dun scaith still wipes pub on the regular afaik. I started focusing on the game this year so I had to do all of them eventually and this one was the hardest of all for some reason with the group I had. I did it a few times after and I still saw teams bite the dust quite regularly. Some of the mechanics can be easily forgotten if you don't do it often enough. At least, I am very forgetful that way. I need to hammerin a raid to never forget it afterward but anything under 10ish runs and it will be hazy. That's why I kind of get pissed off easily in the Nier raids. The mechanics gets me way too often, I feel shame all the time. I would need to realy do all 3 often.
The level 60 Alliance Raids commonly get called the Sky Pirates raids, but their officially collectively called The Shadows of Mhach. It's really cool how it continues some of the lore you encountered in ARR. Like the blm job quests are all about the ancient Mhachi and what happened to them. This just expands on that and brings back Diabolos and Ferdiad from those lvl 50 optional dungeons way back in ARR. I was super excited to see both of them make a return. I actually got to endgame while HW was still current and while Weeping City was the latest 24 man with a weekly lockout on gear drops. I was so excited trying to predict where the story was going to go. Like, I knew we were going to have to fight the Shadow Queen, but I honestly thought she was going to be the last boss. I was not expecting the fight a merged Diabolos. That final fight was soooo cool. Gave me chills the first time. Omg.
In fact, doing the level 50 optional dungeons, which are Ampador Keep (Hard) for Ferdiad and The Lost City of Ampador for Diablos, the game gives you new dialogue with Diablos and Ferdiad acknowledging the fact that they have lost to you before.
As someone that doesn't know raid design from a hole in the ground, this is an angle on the FFXIV alliance raids that I hadn't considered! Thank you so much for this, I really feel like I learned something cool, here.
Specifically about the HW alliance raids, you gotta remember that the jobs were the hardest they've ever been too. Weeping city was pretty hard on launch week because it paired decently challenging mechanics with complex rotations, healers juggling cleric, tanks juggling stances, dps juggling debuffs and dots as well as like 5 damage buffs and sometimes stances. Like Ozma was a pug killer in current content, unfortunatley even at min ilvl no echo it doesn't do it justice lol.
hands down absolutely. Also the content doesn't just disappear into the void each expansion. The very first raid is still done and always will be. You do unfortunately bypass the majority of the mechanics in crystal tower now though however.
Like poor ol' Glasya, he can be burned down so quickly now that he barely gets to show anything off. World of Darkness does still retain most of its mechanics, at least
@@jimi_jams Yeah, exactly one day i was just bored and decidede to look up why the hell there was those side platforms, i had no idea that each alliance group had to go to their respective ones to kill mobs or else you wiped lol. You can experience the trials anytime at minimum level SOMEWHAT easy if you have a lot of friends, but you will probably never get 3 full groups for a 24 man raid of old content.
@@DracoSuave that's what I'm hoping. As someone that loves doing stuff at min ilvl I'm going to spend a lot of time doing old content when endwalker launches to see how big an impact it makes lol. Maybe Royal Menagerie will go back to being the hardest normal mode trial in the game lol (besides Urth's Fount of course)
@@DracoSuave That would be nice but also really terrifying XD I wonder how many people know the mechanics, including the extra ones, well enough to be smooth sailing xD
One really interesting thing that you'll start to notice as you do more of these: the alliance raids typically have more lethal mechanics (in terms of tighter timing windows, harder to avoid aoes, etc) than the "normal"/"story" difficulty smaller group raids & trials because killing a few players is less likely to lead to a wipe. So for a casual player who wants to get all of the story but doesn't care about the more difficult mechanically challenging modes, the normal raids are the most difficult mechanics casuals are expected to *master*, while alliance raids are the most difficult mechanics casuals are expected to be comfortable being exposed to but not necessarily mastering. It's really interesting to track those two skill benchmarks as the game progresses through Stormblood and Shadowbringers, because it tells you a lot about the growth in the skill level of players as the game goes on. And the rare places they've had to go back and make adjustments tell you interesting things about what mechanics are just too hard for that crowd. (For example, they had to tack on a flat buff to the third Stormblood raid during Shadowbringers because it was just a bit too hard for groups of newer/more casual players to clear with a lower percentage of more experienced players in the pool + not enough help from overgearing as the last raid of the expansion.)
Yeah. That fight in particular has a lot of mechanics that require individual players to do the right thing or it causes huge problems their party or the whole raid, which isn't that common in the alliance raids.
Mhach raids story was also connected to the ARR dungeons which I found great. Love that the dungeon bosses you face actually come back bigger and better :D
2:33 that's more like Palace of the Dead or Heaven-on-High, if I understand what Torghast is correctly. 3:35 You can do some interactions with other parties, but it's true that it's limited. A lot of stuff specifies 'party member', like AoE heals, Shirk, Aetherial Manipulation, but there's plenty that doesn't. For example, single target heals and, most crucially, resurrects. I've saved so many raids by verraising folks in other parties when both their healers go down...
Yeah, he's referring to PoD or HoH even though he doesn't know the name of them yet. It's pretty easy to kind of miss PoD because it's just in a hole in Gridania, it's a lot harder to miss HoH which has an awesome visual. ;)
Honestly, Torghast is more like Blue Mage gameplay than the Deep Dungeons. Torghast gets compared to Deep Dungeons because it's a bunch of same-ish floors over and over, but the real appeal of Torghast is that you get absolutely broken abilities in it that you'll never be able to use outside of that content.
@@thriftingtonpost The random generated, Rogue-like part is where the PoD/HoH similarity is, but yes I think it's fair to say it has some element of Blue Mage too. But given that people called Torghast "WoW's version of Palace of the Dead", I think it's fair to say that is what Preach meant ;)
The cool thing about the HW alliance raids is that they are jumping off from ARR dungeon stories, namely Amptdoor Keep (Hard) and Lost City of Amptdoor. The final bosses of those dungeons are the voidsent Ferdiad and Diabolos respectively, who feature fairly heavily in the Alliance Raid story, and you even fight them again.
The evolution of the alliance raids is interesting as it sort of follows the evolution of the playerbase as well. Crystal tower is definitely pretty casual, not a whole lot of scary mechanics or anything that requires too much mental overhead. However each successive bunch of ARs gets more and more involved, with the stormblood alliance raids being staggeringly more of a challenge than the previous ones, presumably due to the players themselves gravitating more towards harder content as the game moves on (due to older players getting more experienced or attracting more hardcore players).
Its also because to access those raids you need to finish the main storyline, which also has a learning curve on its own - the dungeons and trials ALSO become more involved and mechanically heavy - and thats 100% because FFXIV is designed as a complete game and not just episodic expac-purchase bait like WoW has been for the last decade or so where the leaning curve is so non-existent that they needed to create a whole ass place to not only skip the story of the game but also none of the content of previous expansions is relevant anymore. The FFXIV devs expect a player's skill and understanding of the game to progress BECAUSE they give them that chance to learn as they move through the MSQ and previous raids. The MSQ isnt just a wonderful tool to create a rich writing and narrative in a MMO, it also allows gameplay escalation: even after EW releases I expect the NIer raids to remain difficult, because its not expected to be a player's first delve into Alliance Raids or more complex mechanics in general.
I really appreciate these kinds of videos. Feels like a light being shown nearly a decade of how gaming development should be done but never got the publicity it deserved. Which maybe it’s a good thing they weren’t the biggest dog on the block so they could cultivate that type of development style
This is big true. FF14 was blessed for being in WoW's shadow for these years, because that drove them in the right direction (along with our beloved Yoshi P) and now they're in the perfect position to take the mantle of king and keep it, as long as they continue this great work.
There's a few technical things you might have missed on the Alliance raids cause they were changed over time. Labyrinth of the Ancients and Crystal Tower were originally designed for 6 tanks in a normal 2 tanks 2 healers 4 dps group. That was changed later to the current 3 tanks standard and with that many of the fights were nerfed and lost several of their mechanics, even tho you can still see them around you, example: 2nd boss in Crystal tower has several circular platforms around the arena with jump pads on them that you can't reach anymore. Aside from that they occasionally nerf certain bosses when a new expansion comes out, I will not mention who cause spoilers. Aside from that with the damage formula and skill reallocation changes in Stormblood and Shadowbringers the damage output of players have increased significantly. Combo that with the fact that more players are showing up in these raids with maximum iLv and you have what you get now where Ozma in Void Ark, which was known as the PUG killer, being exceedingly easy to kill. As you progress through the xpacs you will see fights getting more and more complicated and becoming harder, with old content raids getting easier than what they used to be. Btw this is fine, it would be a nightmare to do these old dungeons with new players still learning the game while still have day 1 content difficulty.
The Labyrinth bosses didn’t actually lose any mechanics. The extra tanks often stood around picking their noses before the change to 3 tanks. And the rest of the time the mechanics are inconsequential due to overgearing.
Pretty sure most of the LOTA mechanics don't appear just because they are skipped by high average DPS. You still have the platforms in play at min ilvl on some streams I've been watching recently.
This was an awesome video, even for a long-time player of FFXIV. Some very good insight here to appreciate. Also, I cried tears when cooldowns were popped during Diabolos' invuln stage...RIP Rune of Power
I wouldn't say it is cheesing. The game is designed for older content to be easier even when it syncs you down. If you want the challenge and all your friends want the challenge go minimum item level no echo. If you want to just chill, just play it normally. It is all about how you want to experience it, if you want to experience it like it was released, if you want to experience it harder than/the same as release, or whatever. FF14 should be a you do you game =).
As we've seen with the reaction to a particular content streamer clearing Ultimates, there will always be people out there who will tell you that you are playing the game wrong. ;)
And even with the minimum ilvl feature....you're still at an advantage, because very rarely did every single person in the group have max ilvl in new content...even if it was on farm. I mean the gap isnt huge, but still....5 people 10-15 ilvl below compared to everyone at max definitely makes a difference...especially on the more tuned savage content. Of course with the Ultimate raids this isnt an issue.
@@Saxonsredux Sorry what do you mean by this? Wouldn't 'min ilvl' literally sync everyone down to the bare minimum requirement to access the raid? I would think 'min ilvl' makes it a disadvantage, because there was usually a few players in those groups that had gear from the harder raids and exceeded the bare minimum requirements. The game doesn't let you queue for content you don't meet the minimum ilevel for.
@@docdoom1987 the min ilvl historically has always been a number SE picked, rather than any actual min level you had to meet...since that has never actually existed. You have always been able to enter a raid in a group of 8 no matter what gear you had on. Its only when matching with players via que where you are restricted to a duties ilvl requirement.
@@docdoom1987 to add to my reply, the number they pick is usually higher than the average ilvl people had when the content was new. Easy example.. Second coil....110 ilvl gear drops. I105 sync. The world first guild on cactuar cleared it wearing a lot of i90 AF gear
That's something I've always appreciated about FF, Preach, is that yeah, you're not forced to do super hard stuff if you don't want to. You can do the dailies, alliance raids, etc., and still end up in an okay place compared to everyone else. It gives you the option and freedom to choose. As someone who played since the 1.0 days too, yeah it's been interesting to see them tweak and adjust the overall "tiers" as the feedback comes in. Not on live, mind you usually, and not mid-tier ala WoW, but keep a finger on the pulse. You can really feel the quality step up in HW and it just keeps going from there.
For anyone wanting to see the raids it's on PG Highlights Ep 19 for start of Crystal Tower (18 if you want to see getting items to unlock CT) & EP 58 for Sky Pirates.
I still remember patch day for 3.3 The Wiping City of Mach. We ran out of time for 3 runs that night because of the increase in difficulty. Probably equally my favourite alliance raid alongside Orbornne
A fun thing to look forward to from the story point of view: If you do side content like the alliance raids, sometimes the characters from them show up in seasonal event. The sky pirates were in Gridania for the Easter event this year
The Ivalice story is downright tedious after awhile, but the raids themselves are golden. Great, epic environments, very fun boss fights, lots of personality on display. I'm really glad the game "forced" me to do them as a requirement for Bozjan Southern Front.
I think that raid has the best story as well. But there's that one super annoying part where you have to get the guy wine. Which is comedic sure, but a bit random.
I think my favourite raid is still Dun Scaith. That beeing said, Ivalice probably is the best set of 3 we have and in terms of fun and unique mechanics, Ridorana and Orbonne are definetly top tier
The Sky Pirates are the best crew in the whole game lol, I love them. If the game let me live there, I would. The raids themselves are great, Void Ark is the weakest of the bunch, but they're all better than the Crystal Tower raids imo. Stormblood's alliance raid is a mixed bag. It almost requires a fairly thorough understanding of Final Fantasy Tactics and FFXII to really appreciate the callbacks to what is happening. The quests are almost too exposition heavy but, the flip side, is that it does a ton of worldbuilding for the future of the game. In fact, there are areas/features of Shadowbringers that wont open until you do the Stormblood alliance raids. As for the raid instances themselves, Stormblood raids are INCREDIBLE. The visual and dramatic spectacle of whats happening there is off-the-charts awesome.
And quite likely there will be areas in Endwalker as well that require the Ivalice Raids seeing as the Ivalice storyline is not even close to done after Bozja.
The alliance raids are connected to later story points and activities such as Shadowbringers requires you to do the Crystal Tower beforehand. The Stormblood alliance raid is also required to enter Bozja/Zadnor which are large scale world bosses and raids of up to 48 people with different optional rewards and catch up systems. The game also adds an extreme every patch that drops mounts and catch up weapons or gear. You also can buy or make crafting gear that is pretty good and is usually reasonable priced so that helps a lot for getting caught up especially if you have a friend or are in a good FC that help you out a bit.
18:02 Interestingly, I've actually had a situation where one of the groups was really struggling and we actually traded some party members by having some players from each party leaving and then rejoining in progress. It worked, but only because some people had abandoned already and we got lucky no one else happened to join in progress at that exact moment. It was a really cool community experience.
As esja said, its an awesome test ground for new mechanics. But there's also this deeper point. One of the first things i noticed with dungeons and trials in the msq being mandatory is that the game teaches you how to play it in a lowkey, low pressure environment. By the time players hit heavensward, they have this core foundation on reading the raid language the game deploys. And rarely, if ever, do they change it just to subvert you. What they do instead, is slowly introduce new symbols, new mechanics, and new telegraphs. So combining the two aspects: On the one hand through these alliance raids you'll have new markers etc introduced in an environment where there is significantly less individual pressure to allw players to get used to and begin learning them. Then an expansion later, slowly bring them into the core game where there is greater personal responsibility. Its so obvious and yet incredibly smart.
As others have said, 1st day Alliance raiding is a lot of fun and they are the right amont of difficulty for a lot of us. Certain parts of Mhach were an utter horror when they were first out. I remember taking about 2 hours in pugs for both Ridorana and Rabanastre on day 1. Again, Game Design that allows for all sections of the player base is much and well appreciated.
ah... hearing this just reminds me of when we all called it "the wiping city of mhach" cuz of how frequent raid wipes would happen on boss 3 or just how the crystal tower series had a lot of tactics or mechanics no1 would ever see as gear/skills improved and the addition of extra dps (the alliance teams used to be 2 tank, 2 heal, 4 dps just like raids)
You can see the Void Ark flying around in the Sea of Clouds map. There was a lot of speculation about what it was before the raid came out. And Weeping City of Mhach was affectionately known as Wiping City of Salt for a while.
yes the alliance raids are the catchup system- in Shadowbringers you have Eden's Promise as the main raid, where you get tokens for 510 gear and Tomestones of Revelation. Tomestones of Revelation give you options to purchase 520 gear. If you go back to the Kobold that sells the 510 gear, you can trade in Books for 530 gear upgrade, but you can also do the Alliance Raids (Puppet's Bunker, Copied Factory, and Paradigm Breach) to get coins; if you collect all 3 coins, you can go to the "token exchange" guy and under "glorious gewgaws" you can trade for "crystalline twine" or "crystalline dusting" or "crystalline ester" for 520 > 530 upgrade. Two Paths: Tomestones of Revelation (520 gear) > Savage (Books) > 530 gear Tomestones of Revelation (520 gear) > Alliance Raids (coins) > Crystalline Reagents (ester/dusting/twine) > 530 gear
Mr. Happy made a very good video about the history of the normal raids and how the changed and evolved over the expacs, i definingly recommend watching it as its a really good watch.
dude thank you I'm a 1.x player and it is such a relief to finally see more content creators digging into the design and experience of the raid content. Love seeing all the new players enjoying things I am very nostalgic for now, hope you continue to enjoy the game dude
You can interact with the other groups but most of the dps skills are for example defined as targeting a "party member" and those only go in your group. However... single-target healing, debuffs on the bosses and (most importantly in some cases) raising can be used on others as well. So really, dps in their own groups but tanks and healers have to cooperate cross group much more
As a healer in Alliance raids, you can rez and single target heal other parties or the main tank, but yeah party heal or buffs are for your own group, i kinda like that and that each group you have a responsibility to do a different mechanic.
Day 1 alliance raids are very spicy and probably some of the most fun content in the game. Hard enough that you might wipe quite a few times, but ultra satisfying to pull it all together and get a clear. This was especially the case in SB raids. SB also brought a bunch of QoL combat changes to tanks and healers. You originally needed 6 tanks for Lab / Syrcus / WoD, and all tanks / healers did significantly less dmg than they do now.
Another cool part of the Alliance raids is the currency reward you get for completing it. Even in the last patch of an expansion, the first Alliance raid is still relevant, because you need currency from all raids to upgrade gear. Final Fantasy has so many systems in place to keep older content relevant to the point where although you maybe get a bit less than you do in WoW, it feels like you get so much more. And in Shadowbringers the alliance raids are... Amazing. It genuinely feels like a reward to be able to go back to the previous alliance raids of the expansion and feeling like your character moves forward in doing it, because even after 2 years I still enjoy going into the first of the three raids.
In addition, those alliance raids drop special currency at the end, usually some manner of token that allows you to buy the upgrade items to your tomestone gear. When the content is current you can’t buy those with tomes, you have to get it from the savage raid drop or the savage raid pity book (every time you kill a savage boss they drop a book and gear/upgrade items have a set price in those). But that’s during the very first patch the raid tier comes out. Once the alliance raid comes out in the next major patch, you can buy those upgrades with the alliance raid currency. So even people who are still proging savages will be doing those, because it’s such a great catch up mechanic. If you are just unlucky with rolls or you have lots of tomestone gear this time around in your BiS (which happens sometimes), you can get those armor and accessory upgrades. But note they do not give out weapon upgrades with those. Those still must come from the 3rd savage boss in the tier.
Speaking as someone who is a little ahead of you, my assumption is alliance raids will actually all eventually tie into msq. My fc and I were talking last night. I think you may have missed a little fact about the Crystal Tower raid series. When you, and I, went through it, it was actually required in order to progress. They cook blocked me when I reached the final ARR patch. Why? But it wasn't always that way. In fact, Crystal Tower wasn't required until Shadowbringers. A spoiler light version: Crystal Tower and the events therein help you understand a big lore point of Shadowbringers. Which makes me even more certain that every expansion's equivalent will eventually matter. Omega and sky pirates will all come back at some point I'm betting. Or at least, the lore that comes from these events.
You can interract with the other groups as a healer with more difficult bosses I've rezzed, pulled, and healed the other groups. You can see the health bars so it's easy to assist other groups and if one wipes it's not a game over.
Love the video, very good and astute takes on the content. That being said I’m fucking terrified now. No sooner did this beautiful man utter the words “piece of the pie” than a pizza ad started that like the fourth words were “piece of the pie”
Enlightening episode and goes over the slow growth and improvements of alliance raids. I feel Stormblood is where they tested out the most varied and unique content, albeit at the cost of having fewer dungeons released, to add more fun things for players to do within the game. Looking forward to your thorough progression and veteran insight.
A key thing with ARR alliance raids with crystal tower actually they did come out across the earlier patches hence why the intro cutscenes for unlocking each segment did a catch up of the last ones story so labyrinth was 2.3 then tower was 2.4 and WoD was 2.5. Also Crystal Tower is as of Shadowbringers mandatory content for ARR MSQ (you cannot enter 2.5's MSQ without having completed it all because reasons)
4:00 There is an exception to this. Buffs that increase damage and whatnot aren't usable on other alliance members outside your own party, but direct heals and resurrects do work. So if you're a healer, Red Mage, or Summoner, ressing people in other parties, especially the healers, can and will definitely save a run.
Debuffs on the boss however works for everyone, so things like Trick attack and Chain Stratagem are even more powerfull than they already are. I once had a raid with 5 NIN, and the bosses were almost constantly under Trick.
One thing I will say about 'min Ilvl no echo' crowd... it's not entirely about 'waah he didn't do it as hard as I did'. A lot of the time, in FFXIV - the spectacle, the mechanics, the fun of the fight... is in seeing all of the mechanics. If you run it off min ilvl no echo, then you stand a fair chance of seeing only 60% of these fights and even missing their main mechanics. I personally do propose people do fights on min ilvl no echo, if only to make sure they see all the main mechanics a fight has to offer so they have a full, robust experience. Not so they have to struggle or anything. For instance, Alexander 8 - Brute Justice. That fight is fun as fuck, but if you have a good group, you'll burn that shit down way before the fun stuff happens and you'll legit miss things like that crazy ass transition phase. That's a thing in a lot of stuff, from 8-mans, to 24-mans.
One thing about tweaking things as the raid goes on I noticed was with the eden raids (shb 8man) where the later bosses in the raid have much bigger hitboxes because in the earlier fights people were often arguing about safe strats vs melee uptime strats, the bigger hitboxes gave melees more room to move while keeping uptime so can do mechanics and rotation together more easily.
I'm sure other people have already clarified but the raid release schedule has the 8-mans and alliance raids coming out on alternating major patches, not the .5 patches. So X.0 has the first tier of the 8-mans, X.1 has the first alliance raid, X.2 has the second tier of the 8-mans, etc etc. The patches are roughly 4 months apart and there's 5 per expansion. The .5 patches typically have other minor content and updates such as new steps for the relic weapons.
The alliance raids are an audio-visual spectacle. One of my favorite things in FF14 so far. Absolutely blew me away. Alliance raids are how LFR should be in WoW.
I have done savage raids and extreme fights etc and i now prefer to just chill and do the content without savage raiding, That is what i find amazing about this mmo. You can do what ever you find fun and not feel obligated to do said content.
Just happy to see new players and Preach enjoy their time with the game. Endwalker is going to be a treat for the community thanks to all the new faces and content creators.
one funfact about Dun Scaith: that Ultima "miniboss" you fight, before facing the queen, was originally a Succubus type enemy with rather little mechanics
That succubus was a real bastard to kill too. She dropped huge ass puddles on the ground that never went away, so if she did it to somebody who wanted to kill you, you'd end up with like 95% of the arena covered and the last one dropping if/when you finally killed her. Same thing with the last boss of Wiping City. If a Warrior wanted to farm karma on Reddit, they'd turn her so that Haircut hit 95% of the arena, killed everyone, and then spent the next 45 minutes soloing the boss. Because WAR's self-healing was so high and the boss' damage output was so low, they'd be able to hold you hostage for the better part of an hour.
You can interact with a the other two parties in an alliance a little bit. As a healer you spot heal the other tank for instance and certain specific abilities affect the entire raid.
I think something to consider when you talk about how much content we're getting is that there is always something else that we get with each of these patches. It's not JUST the main raid or the 24man raid. We of course have more MSQ every patch, each patch gets a new dungeon and a new trial. Sometimes a patch is including content for the relic weapon quests. Sometimes they're even adding something more for crafters and gatherers to do. So maybe we get less "raid" content than WoW per patch but we tend to get so much more as well.
I was there in that stream and while i agree its very easy to assume people were talking about Min Ilvl for the purpose of "Muh challenge" most people were just upset that the group was going so fast that half of the eye candy mechanics werent even on display. not that that is a problem either, but oh boy can they be a spectacle , and it is a shame to miss out on them.
The three groups are labeled A, B, C. In general you tank 3 monster or mechanics groups from left to right (A team goes left, B middle, C right) Additionally, experienced players may place A B C markers. When in doubt, follow your group
I did Void Ark sooooo often for the Tank set, its real easy for sure compared to some other. I like the ones in Stormblood a lot. Instead of being super dark it goes super bright for the most part.
I’d say customers will generally be more pleased to be presented with a tailored made product that is fun for most than canned version that only caters to a selected few.
Around 12:00 when you mentioned that it's for more of the casual style of players - and I've paused here so forgive me if you mention it later - it makes me squinge a bit because the difficulty of the Nier raids, Delibrum, and even Ivalice's Lighthouse come to mind. I think at the time of HW this was true, but holy SHIT do they get SO MUCH BETTER at making raids! The Ivalice story and raid series are my favorite in the entire game, as well as The Four Lords. In fact the extra content of trials and raids are what make Stormblood my favorite expansion of all time.
The other thing I'd note, though its not quite as obvious going from ARR to HW, is that the raids also act as a catch up mechanic, or a teaching tool, to teach players new mechanics that will appear in the next expansions casual content. You've mentioned that in other videos in a very roundabout way, but I found that such an interesting realisation on re-playthroughs, seeing how the mechanics were actually intriduced and progressed as the game did.
Speaking of the 48 player and 56 player content. I think you'll really enjoy that. Especially BA, the big group stormblood content. It reminded my a lot of my old WoW days, back in original Burning Crusade. It requires a lot of knowledge, and caution. The fights are simple compared to other ffxiv content, or at least they feel that way to me. But the mechanics are... Trickier? Requiring more knowledge to do them correctly, and they are more punishing. It's a very interesting experience.
Yeah the alliance raids always come out every other patch after the 8 man raid patch and they contain gear that is on par with the last raids set and also the currency to get the second bets gear. They are also a lot easier being around lfr/normal difficulty which makes them perfect for people wanting to catch up on gear.
4:00 you can heal and rez people in other groups. I haven't tried dps abilities like eye of the dragon, dancer partner thing, or BLMs fast movement ability. But being able to heal or rez other groups is actually pretty essential.
![Why Heavensward's Story Is So AMAZING! [Spoiler Talk]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/uPPfgtLCY5s/mqdefault.jpg)
Another fun thing about the alliance raids is that they also tend to serve as a test bed for new mechanics that they put in the main raids. Many prototypes versions of mechanics we see in later raids get their beginnings in Alliance raids.
thats why things like Stack Markers and such are strange and don't really see proper homogenization in CT.
Xandes stack marker are strange purple circles, but they absolute need to be stacked by 2+ players. the first time players see the traditional stack marker is in 3.1 of HW in Void Ark and Thordan.
Oh lord, imagine all the messed up Nier stuff reapplied for Endwalker
Edit: Also the messed up Bozja stuff
@@StealthMaster5k ohh boy the first boss running behind u in circle and the SQ HQ XD
@@StealthMaster5k one thing i wished they kept for nier stuff and probably transferred over to endwalker is the difficulty scaling they had. yoko taro wanted to kill everyone but yoshi p reined him back. that said, if we're given a chance to try and kill another alliance party because mechanic, i am all for it 😂
you could even see that as catch-up raids giving catch-up training as well as catch-up gear
If you ever find yourself hanging out in the Sea of Clouds or the Churning Mists keep an eye out on the sky box in the distance. You can see the Void Ark floating nearby on occasion. When Heavensward came out several of us saw it and had no idea what it was for. Speculation, of course, was for the next Alliance raid but nothing was confirmed until the raid came out. It was a cool moment because you could just be fly around those zones and see in the distance a looming essentially space craft that seemed so alien and strange.
Damn! I didn’t get the chance to see it and I had already completed the whole raids…
@@silmerien6 You can still see it there. It's not always there but it does still appear.
@@silmerien6 its still flying around off the north side of sea of clouds and i think north side of churning mists just keep an eye out it shows up often enough
Kinda remind me of the Mana Fortress in Secret of Mana. You will see it looming on the sky near the end of the game, and it will run away the moment you try to approach it with your flying dragon. It is the very last dungeon of the game.
Thats soo cool better than wow
just for clarification the 8 man raids drop in the .0, .2, .4 patches while the 24man raids are .1, .3, .5 still hype to see preach going through this content and having such a blast
And each of those patches is 4 months apart so we have a very good idea of the date those get released.
He's speaking more to the WoW players who are more familiar with the "point 5" terminology.
@@andrewshandle yeah but FFXIV has .15 and .25 patches too so it might be confusing if you don't clarify it
@@Galaick It'd be .1.5 and .2.5 though, right? a .15 or a .25 makes no sense in versioning.
You have to remember, his audience is probably 90% WoW people, that's who he is speaking to. Now, you are correct that he could have clarified better to speak to both fan bases, but I suspect he's not worried about long time FFXIV players understanding when Alliance Raids are released.
@@andrewshandle ff14 does number the patches with raids as .15 .25 not .1.5 and if you look up when a raid came out its also listed as .25 for example. however you raise a valid point to compare the content to the wow raid patch cycle that i had not considered
I absolutely adore the alliance raids. To put it in perspective, I'm 65, played wow for 13 years, did mythic raiding and the whole nine yards. Now, I'm not so much into doing the Savage and Ultimate fights. Apart from getting competent group together, I'm just not as capable as I was back in MoP.
They are a way for me to still enjoy raiding. And FF doesn't have the strict requirements on things like raid consumables or even gear to a certain extent. You can learn the myriad mechanics after a few runs and they're just a lot of fun.
Now, Mike, wait till you get to the Nier raids in Shadowbringers for a real creep show.
It certainly appears that you're having a lot of fun. Welcome to the family.
/GCsalute Respect, old timer. :)
@@1Invinc It's surpringingly difficult not to get into the "back in my day" thing though hehe
Bro I totally understand, I am an old fart myself and played WoW until BFA, buuuut give yourself a chance to enjoy the high end content, you will realize you still got it. That is how I got my triple legend and boy was I about to ditch that awesome content bc I thought that was for youngsters, trust me I was wrong. Try it out.
w00t! glad to see it, 60 here as well, similar experiences. came to FF a year and a half ago, never looked back. love this game so much. its just very accessible.
As of Shadowbringers, the MSQ DOES push you to complete the ARR Crystal Tower Raids in the last patch (Just before the last few quests). It becomes mandatory to finish the Patches and access Heavensward.
It didn't use to be Required and, much like Coils, was optional content.
Thanks for this. I finished ARR well before Mike and was so god damn confused because I felt like the story DID push me to do crystal tower, but Mike felt like the game pushed him to do Coils, which I never heard of until I watched Asmon doing it. I still havent seen Coils and I just wrapped up HW.
Yeah having finished 5.0 it makes a lot of sense why they did that.
Yes, the force you to it, but pretty late in the MSQ so he may have just gotten to it first before he realized that. It's a separate path that very late into the MSQ it basically says "oh, you can't go any further until you do it", because up to that point it felt completely optional.
I still think they should force players to the Coils as part of the MSQ as well because it's super hard to get a group...that or provide a link to a video to watch it all the cut scenes. ;)
Yeah Mike did CT out of choice before he was pushed into it by msq
@@andrewshandle They actually tell you really early on in the 2.x patches now that the crystal tower quest series *will* be required for progressing to Heavensward, chances are he just forgot or did it all before that point in 2.x
One of my favourite experiences from the game is day 1 trying a new alliance raid. No-one knows what's going to happen and it's hillarious to watch 24 people collectively go "oh, I need to stand on the other side of those blocks"
I’ll never forget seeing every single person getting yeeted off the arena in that fight day one lmao
Wiping City was hilarious for the first couple weeks, as was orbonne! But all alliance raids are worth attempting day 1 for a laugh or two
I know the EXACT mechanic you're taking about. Did this in a premade group on Discord day 1. The mech wiped the raid clean and the entire call erupted in raucous laughter for 5 straight minutes. Every single one of us thought we were being big brain calling out the wrong spot. Such a wonderful memory
Yup its causal enough to go in blind and just die to everything and have fun and still clear with reasonable time. Usually the spectacle for the raids are also big so its just a good time
I know the mechanic you're talking about too! XD I queued for the raid immediately after maintenance was over so we all went in completely blind. Never before have I seen an entire alliance wiped off the arena in one fell swoop. XD It was that moment that I decided to ALWAYS run alliance raids immediately on release. lol
watching the background and I gotta say 13:57, the SMN Noki Navarre is a boss. everyone in the alliance has at least 3-5 vuln stacks, but Noki aint got one. Noki is a boss and deserves some commendations for that.
Ok Noki, you’ve made your point xD
@@elduardo2496 "Who's that handsome SMN" - Noki, probably
The first Alliance Raid in Stormblood is such a step up in scope and scale, it's awesome...and waterslides are fun. :)
As for the Sky Pirate base, if they let players buy those as their house plot, I think they'd be the most popular location in all of FFXIV. I _love_ the Pirate base and I was so glad when they let us walk around it.
Strikes me that small size flying houses could be an ideal framing device for an instanced housing system.
@@Skijaramaz it definitely would...although I wonder if the Islands in 6.1 will kind of fill that role...that being said, the WoW fanboy who also commenting says the game sucks, so I guess I'll unsubscribe. ;)
@Retinal Scan Found the clown.
I love how the waterslides have no use besides just fun transitions.
@@TheAssirra It splits you up by Group too which is a neat touch. The scale is so huge, it makes you feel like you are doing something epic in an Uncharted Game or Indiana Jones movie. Good stuff.
"I went and played Nier, I wish Nier was in the game."
Yoshi. P: "Got you fam. "
I imagine the talk in SE offices
Yoshida:People are asking for 2B costumes in the game what we do Yoko Taro?
Yoko Taro:What about a cheeky side quest like FFXV and you receive the clothes.
Yoshida: OK, an alliance raid it is!
The Nier crossover raids literally got me to buy the games since I loved the visuals, songtrack, and glamour. I thought it was really interesting how they timed the last one for the Replicant remake since I for sure bought into the hype and was sold lol
@Big Tatsu and they were allegedly nerfed before release because Yoko Taro is a madman
@@sharlockshacolmes9381 oh god.... And they're still hard af at times.
Reallly though, it ends up being more of a Drakengard raid than Nier
Actually you can interact with other Alliance groups but with targeted spells/abilities like resurrecting if one lost all its healers.
Unless that target specifies being used on a member of your group, as a few do.
It's an absolute life saver, especially when both healers in another alliance get munched by Cerberus without being mini.
I was wondering if someone was going to correct Preacher on this.
I mean, those work on the other Alliances because those are abilities that work on people not in your party even in the overworld
There's even a line of Achievements for raising people outside of your group and I am pretty sure it's meant for stuff like this, not random dead players in the Overworld
One of the most important things that gets taken for granted a lot is the regularity. I think it was mentioned in an earlier video, but FFXIV is predictable to the point where anyone can guess almost to the exact day when patch X.Y is going to drop and generally what content it will have. The constant flow of new content and the idea that it's okay and even encouraged for players to take a break and play something else until content they're interested in is released is probably one of the best things about the game.
Hahahaha
So predictable hahaha
@@sylphidstriker6909 ?
If you don't watch the spoilers they release you'd have to be nostradamus to predict the story. Especially the expansions so don't feed ppl bs because you're on Blizzard's dick dude
@@sylphidstriker6909 They're not talking about the story - they're talking about the contents of a patch. 6.1 will have a new alliance raid and trial (with extreme), 6.2 will have a new raid tier (with savage) and dungeon, 6.3 will be alliance/trial again, and so forth. That sort of predictability.
I like how Pyromancer looks at this analysis stuff from a lore standpoint while Preach does basically the same amount of work but from a technical/mechanical standpoint.
which works less, cuz ff14 is a very lorebased game
Also the Stormblood Alliance raid is required for the Shadowbringers Relic Weapon storyline because it builds off of that cast. Just a heads up
Also, it’s amazing. Ivalice has always been a fantastic theme, and once you know what you’re doing in those fights, they’re some of my favorite in the game.
@@Skyblade12 It’s a shame that out of all the alliance raids Ivalice is kinda a slog to get through. There’s WAY more text to read and cutscenes where you’re just standing around on the airship listening to lore dumps. Don’t get me wrong it’s still good but when it comes to pacing/story it’s the worst one out of the alliance raids.
Honestly the most interesting piece of lore I learned from the Ivalice raids is that [SPOILER]
The fact that Solus/Emet was a fan of theatre and fine arts and is the only reason the traveling performers even have their own airship and whatnot. It doesn’t help bring about a calamity to rejoin the worlds in anyway but he thought “Hey I really like theatre and plays here’s a bunch of money and a huge airship you deserve it.”
@@Confy__ and he would too, he's so dramatic and over the top sometimes it fits his character
XIV's catch up systems let you catch up for the next tier. A casual player can hit the same ilvl as a hardcore raider minus 5 ilvls on the weapon. They won't have optimal substats on the gear, but that's minor - especially with new crafted gear coming. The raid lockout being removed before the next raid launches, combined with XIV's page (badge) system makes it easy to grab pieces you're missing/gear a new role.
WoW's catch up system never lets you catch up.
There is no such thing as a catch up system in WoW anymore, it's called Timegated content.
Something, something, casual players didn't earn it, something, something! ;)
Super easy as well, by the end of the patch the alliance raids have their cap removed adn the tomestone gear also removed cap, so everyone can catch up even by spamming a few times.
The catch up patches don't just have the alliance raids, they also make tomestone upgrade tokens available for hunt currency. Which is actually an even bigger deal, since you're limited to one token per week from the alliance raids, but you can do as many hunts as you want. On datacenters with organized hunt groups tracking S-rank spawn timers and hosting regular A-rank trains, it becomes very easy to get augmented tomestone gear once the catch up patch lands.
@@jacks1368 And now there's even an easier way to catch up with gear and that's until the next expansion launches to go to the previous expansion's Capital City to get the 530 gear. lol
Which is in all honesty I am actually doing since I can't be asked to play FFXIV before Endwalker.
Doing the older Alliance raids... at the end, people are hopping about, saying gg and chit chatting with one another. When I cleared some of the current alliance raids (Puppet's Bunker and Paradigm's Breach) for the first time, nobody said shit at the end. First of all, over half of the alliance was KOed on the floor, and the rest were just shocked to be alive. So it was dead quiet in chat as we all simultaneously unclenched our buttcheeks and learn to breathe again. It was so stressful clearing a new raid with a bunch of other first timers. Lol. Can't wait to do it again in EW. XD
yeeees, paradigm's breach was that experience for me. loved every second of it. (it also helps that the music was jaw-droppingly good, as expected from nier.)
Yeah I keep hearing him talk about how the alliance raids are just so easy, when he apparently hasn't done the Return to Ivalice and NeiR raids yet. He's in for a treat or rude awakening depending on how you look at it.
Paradigm's breach was hard, but I can't say it was harder than Orbonne Monastery, that shit still goes bad pretty often.
I remember doing Nier 1 for the first time. EVERYONE in the last fight had 3-4 vuln stacks. It was fun!
EW will be my first expansion where I can actually play things on the first day. (Joined before all Shb patches were out but wasn't done with it until the last patch dropped.) I am so excited to be part of this chaos this time and not just hear the war stories of the veterans. :D
The receptiveness to feedback is something that really stands out, particularly if you did the content in real time or if you research the development and feedback as you've done. As just one quick example for content you've already seen- after ARR we never saw another 8 man dungeon again, nor a dungeon with the extremely intrusive cutscenes present in Castrum Meridianum or the Praetorium.
The final dungeons of each expansion still have heavy story influence, but they constantly improve the way they incorporate that story into the dungeon itself rather than forcing people to wait for cutscenes. The Heavensward final dungeon, Aetherochemical Research Facility, only had a few cutscenes at the final boss. Stormblood leaves all the big story scenes outside of the dungeon so it's a very smooth experience, and by Shadowbringers they're telling the story WITH the dungeon rather than just shoehorning it in AROUND the dungeon.
Ironically, back in 2.0, Meridanum and Praetorium were the go to places to speedrun Tomestomes for the first 'AF' gear that was available. It honestly surprised me how long it took SE to tweak those 2 instances so that it was an enjoyable experience for new players, because for quite a long time it was either 'Steamrolling through the place' so sprouts were getting back to back cutscenes and by the time they finished them all, they were alone in the group, because the last boss had been killed 10 minutes prior, and then it went to having to wait 20-30 minutes for 7 other sprouts that needed it, because no one else was running it for any reason (because it just wasnt worth it).
One of the things I like about FFXIV's gearing system is how they don't try to twist every aspect of the game to feed into it. Like if you're a savage or ultimate raider, you're not required to run these dungeons even once to get your gear.
Imagine having to run potd every week to keep up on gear for your raid static.
i mean, not quite true
every class had to (almost mandatorly do to it being most efficent) run Crystal tower a bunch fo times for their relic weapon in SHB.
Every class had to run the 3 nier raids a bunch of time to agument their cryptlurker gear.
every player had had to run 180!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Raids of SHB and SB to gain their relic weapons(ok, fine 90, as the other 90 are fater farmed in bozja)
yes there where "alternate ways" to get the relic part, BUT a savage player HAD ot run Copied factory, Puppets bunker, and baradigms breach once each per Cryptlurker gear(which was around 4-5 pieces per class BIS so a total of 15 raids)
@@weberman173 That's not true. You can get the tome gear upgrade tokens from savage floors themselves lol, so you can get BiS without ever touching alliance raids or any battle content other than expert roulette and savage; been like that since Heavensward. Relic weapon is a unique case but most of the time it's slightly behind the current raid weapon in terms of ilvl, only surpassing it towards the end of an expansion when the final raid tier is about to lose its weekly lockout (iirc)
It just occurred to me - This is exactly why the FF team don't need a PTR. They release things in smaller chunks which also had the effect of allowing them to respond to player concerns quicker, usually as soon as the next patch 3 months down the road.
yeah and same time not let us Hungry for long time
Eh, the "smaller chunks" thing only works for the hardcore raids, which have less bosses (though way higher quality) than WoW raids. In terms of raw content added per patch, just look the patch notes for both games, XIV dwarfs WoW in every other aspect on a patch by patch basis, and still manages to have at least 2 more big patches per expansion than WoW.
@@TheRayzorOne It honestly feels like the current WoW team has inherited a lot of success from their predecessors and have been content to rest on their laurels assuming the inertia of the game leaves it untouchable. I see videos of them patting themselves on the back for simply giving players back stuff that they'd removed in the first place, as though it were some new amazing thing they'd just invented themselves. Or the utter disconnect that players will find the concept of water walking to be some new incredible thing, just because they said so, when it's already existed forever.
One interesting thing Koji said in the NoClip documentary was that a lot of members of the FFXIV team were there for 1.0, and remember that sense of abysmal failure and it's not something they ever want to experience again. And they know that it stemmed from simply sliding down the path of the previously successful FFXI without innovating or looking at what players want from a modern MMO, not to mention using the strength of the brand as a crutch rather than rely on the strength of the game itself.
@@Reldan The downward trend of WoW, in my opinion, can be attributed to one main thing. The people that are A) Designing the game and B)Making decisions that impact design, dont play the game. So how could you understand what players want if you cant comprehend why? The only why they get is what feedback they are given. Which I would think is incredibly limiting.
I honestly dont know if this is true or not, but it definitely feels that way. I think the removal of tier sets is a pretty good argument for this being the case though. No one who played and enjoyed WoW would ever EVER think "Hmmm...you know these class specific, very unique sets of gear that add a unique taste/spin to different classes/specs? Lets get rid of them"
Well, the disadvantage with that is that the releases are really small chunks, if WoW released 4 bosses as a raid tier everyone would be mad
as someone who has been playing since World of Darkness was new content, and has been present for nearly every single patch the moment servers go live, i can say this is a fascinating watch. i have never been super involved in the community aspect of ffxiv outside of the game and void ark and weeping city were the only two raids i ever missed on launch due to a hiatus i had taken from the game. but i can tell you i was there for the release of dun schath and it was a fucking nightmare in the best way. every boss was a pug killer in their own right. my first group literally ran out the duty timer on the first boss!!!! i have been in a group in dun scathe that has fallen apart at every single boss (like, a group that failed at the first, another that failed at the second and so on). they listened to us asking for harder content and they have been fine tuning it ever since (for the newer raids) i cannot express how incredibly excited i am for endwalker's 24 man content as i am one of those individuals who never really got into the savage tier raiding.
Dun scaith still wipes pub on the regular afaik. I started focusing on the game this year so I had to do all of them eventually and this one was the hardest of all for some reason with the group I had. I did it a few times after and I still saw teams bite the dust quite regularly. Some of the mechanics can be easily forgotten if you don't do it often enough. At least, I am very forgetful that way. I need to hammerin a raid to never forget it afterward but anything under 10ish runs and it will be hazy. That's why I kind of get pissed off easily in the Nier raids. The mechanics gets me way too often, I feel shame all the time. I would need to realy do all 3 often.
oh man they did not disappoint!!! first EW alliance is so fun
The level 60 Alliance Raids commonly get called the Sky Pirates raids, but their officially collectively called The Shadows of Mhach. It's really cool how it continues some of the lore you encountered in ARR. Like the blm job quests are all about the ancient Mhachi and what happened to them. This just expands on that and brings back Diabolos and Ferdiad from those lvl 50 optional dungeons way back in ARR. I was super excited to see both of them make a return.
I actually got to endgame while HW was still current and while Weeping City was the latest 24 man with a weekly lockout on gear drops. I was so excited trying to predict where the story was going to go. Like, I knew we were going to have to fight the Shadow Queen, but I honestly thought she was going to be the last boss. I was not expecting the fight a merged Diabolos. That final fight was soooo cool. Gave me chills the first time. Omg.
In fact, doing the level 50 optional dungeons, which are Ampador Keep (Hard) for Ferdiad and The Lost City of Ampador for Diablos, the game gives you new dialogue with Diablos and Ferdiad acknowledging the fact that they have lost to you before.
As someone that doesn't know raid design from a hole in the ground, this is an angle on the FFXIV alliance raids that I hadn't considered! Thank you so much for this, I really feel like I learned something cool, here.
Specifically about the HW alliance raids, you gotta remember that the jobs were the hardest they've ever been too. Weeping city was pretty hard on launch week because it paired decently challenging mechanics with complex rotations, healers juggling cleric, tanks juggling stances, dps juggling debuffs and dots as well as like 5 damage buffs and sometimes stances. Like Ozma was a pug killer in current content, unfortunatley even at min ilvl no echo it doesn't do it justice lol.
Ah yess, I remember when people called it Wiping City of Mhach LoL
@@hentainin87 they still do lol
hands down absolutely. Also the content doesn't just disappear into the void each expansion. The very first raid is still done and always will be. You do unfortunately bypass the majority of the mechanics in crystal tower now though however.
Like poor ol' Glasya, he can be burned down so quickly now that he barely gets to show anything off. World of Darkness does still retain most of its mechanics, at least
@@jimi_jams Yeah, exactly one day i was just bored and decidede to look up why the hell there was those side platforms, i had no idea that each alliance group had to go to their respective ones to kill mobs or else you wiped lol. You can experience the trials anytime at minimum level SOMEWHAT easy if you have a lot of friends, but you will probably never get 3 full groups for a 24 man raid of old content.
Fortunately, the stat squish has restoring the mechanics there as a handy side effect.
@@DracoSuave that's what I'm hoping. As someone that loves doing stuff at min ilvl I'm going to spend a lot of time doing old content when endwalker launches to see how big an impact it makes lol. Maybe Royal Menagerie will go back to being the hardest normal mode trial in the game lol (besides Urth's Fount of course)
@@DracoSuave That would be nice but also really terrifying XD I wonder how many people know the mechanics, including the extra ones, well enough to be smooth sailing xD
One really interesting thing that you'll start to notice as you do more of these: the alliance raids typically have more lethal mechanics (in terms of tighter timing windows, harder to avoid aoes, etc) than the "normal"/"story" difficulty smaller group raids & trials because killing a few players is less likely to lead to a wipe. So for a casual player who wants to get all of the story but doesn't care about the more difficult mechanically challenging modes, the normal raids are the most difficult mechanics casuals are expected to *master*, while alliance raids are the most difficult mechanics casuals are expected to be comfortable being exposed to but not necessarily mastering.
It's really interesting to track those two skill benchmarks as the game progresses through Stormblood and Shadowbringers, because it tells you a lot about the growth in the skill level of players as the game goes on. And the rare places they've had to go back and make adjustments tell you interesting things about what mechanics are just too hard for that crowd. (For example, they had to tack on a flat buff to the third Stormblood raid during Shadowbringers because it was just a bit too hard for groups of newer/more casual players to clear with a lower percentage of more experienced players in the pool + not enough help from overgearing as the last raid of the expansion.)
Yeah. That fight in particular has a lot of mechanics that require individual players to do the right thing or it causes huge problems their party or the whole raid, which isn't that common in the alliance raids.
Yeah.. Orbonne Monastery is rough lol, my first run of it a few weeks ago took an hour and a half. Very fun though
Mhach raids story was also connected to the ARR dungeons which I found great. Love that the dungeon bosses you face actually come back bigger and better :D
2:33 that's more like Palace of the Dead or Heaven-on-High, if I understand what Torghast is correctly.
3:35 You can do some interactions with other parties, but it's true that it's limited. A lot of stuff specifies 'party member', like AoE heals, Shirk, Aetherial Manipulation, but there's plenty that doesn't. For example, single target heals and, most crucially, resurrects. I've saved so many raids by verraising folks in other parties when both their healers go down...
Yeah, he's referring to PoD or HoH even though he doesn't know the name of them yet. It's pretty easy to kind of miss PoD because it's just in a hole in Gridania, it's a lot harder to miss HoH which has an awesome visual. ;)
Honestly, Torghast is more like Blue Mage gameplay than the Deep Dungeons. Torghast gets compared to Deep Dungeons because it's a bunch of same-ish floors over and over, but the real appeal of Torghast is that you get absolutely broken abilities in it that you'll never be able to use outside of that content.
@@thriftingtonpost I mean pomanders are pretty broken. At least some of them are.
@@thriftingtonpost The random generated, Rogue-like part is where the PoD/HoH similarity is, but yes I think it's fair to say it has some element of Blue Mage too. But given that people called Torghast "WoW's version of Palace of the Dead", I think it's fair to say that is what Preach meant ;)
The cool thing about the HW alliance raids is that they are jumping off from ARR dungeon stories, namely Amptdoor Keep (Hard) and Lost City of Amptdoor. The final bosses of those dungeons are the voidsent Ferdiad and Diabolos respectively, who feature fairly heavily in the Alliance Raid story, and you even fight them again.
Since Preach plays a Black Mage, one wonders if he noted the connections to his job, as Mhach and the Magi War relate to BLM a lot.
*Amdapor
The evolution of the alliance raids is interesting as it sort of follows the evolution of the playerbase as well. Crystal tower is definitely pretty casual, not a whole lot of scary mechanics or anything that requires too much mental overhead. However each successive bunch of ARs gets more and more involved, with the stormblood alliance raids being staggeringly more of a challenge than the previous ones, presumably due to the players themselves gravitating more towards harder content as the game moves on (due to older players getting more experienced or attracting more hardcore players).
Its also because to access those raids you need to finish the main storyline, which also has a learning curve on its own - the dungeons and trials ALSO become more involved and mechanically heavy - and thats 100% because FFXIV is designed as a complete game and not just episodic expac-purchase bait like WoW has been for the last decade or so where the leaning curve is so non-existent that they needed to create a whole ass place to not only skip the story of the game but also none of the content of previous expansions is relevant anymore.
The FFXIV devs expect a player's skill and understanding of the game to progress BECAUSE they give them that chance to learn as they move through the MSQ and previous raids. The MSQ isnt just a wonderful tool to create a rich writing and narrative in a MMO, it also allows gameplay escalation: even after EW releases I expect the NIer raids to remain difficult, because its not expected to be a player's first delve into Alliance Raids or more complex mechanics in general.
@@unixtreme Congrats on being good then, comment section little pogchamp? Most people arent as good as you and thats fine.
I really appreciate these kinds of videos. Feels like a light being shown nearly a decade of how gaming development should be done but never got the publicity it deserved. Which maybe it’s a good thing they weren’t the biggest dog on the block so they could cultivate that type of development style
This is big true. FF14 was blessed for being in WoW's shadow for these years, because that drove them in the right direction (along with our beloved Yoshi P) and now they're in the perfect position to take the mantle of king and keep it, as long as they continue this great work.
There's a few technical things you might have missed on the Alliance raids cause they were changed over time. Labyrinth of the Ancients and Crystal Tower were originally designed for 6 tanks in a normal 2 tanks 2 healers 4 dps group. That was changed later to the current 3 tanks standard and with that many of the fights were nerfed and lost several of their mechanics, even tho you can still see them around you, example: 2nd boss in Crystal tower has several circular platforms around the arena with jump pads on them that you can't reach anymore.
Aside from that they occasionally nerf certain bosses when a new expansion comes out, I will not mention who cause spoilers. Aside from that with the damage formula and skill reallocation changes in Stormblood and Shadowbringers the damage output of players have increased significantly. Combo that with the fact that more players are showing up in these raids with maximum iLv and you have what you get now where Ozma in Void Ark, which was known as the PUG killer, being exceedingly easy to kill.
As you progress through the xpacs you will see fights getting more and more complicated and becoming harder, with old content raids getting easier than what they used to be. Btw this is fine, it would be a nightmare to do these old dungeons with new players still learning the game while still have day 1 content difficulty.
The Labyrinth bosses didn’t actually lose any mechanics. The extra tanks often stood around picking their noses before the change to 3 tanks.
And the rest of the time the mechanics are inconsequential due to overgearing.
Pretty sure most of the LOTA mechanics don't appear just because they are skipped by high average DPS. You still have the platforms in play at min ilvl on some streams I've been watching recently.
This was an awesome video, even for a long-time player of FFXIV. Some very good insight here to appreciate. Also, I cried tears when cooldowns were popped during Diabolos' invuln stage...RIP Rune of Power
It is not an invulnerability stage but a shield you need to break, so popping ley lines was absolutely the right thing to do.
@@jakobknudsen3296 Ah. I stand corrected then. Thank you for the clarification
I wouldn't say it is cheesing. The game is designed for older content to be easier even when it syncs you down. If you want the challenge and all your friends want the challenge go minimum item level no echo. If you want to just chill, just play it normally. It is all about how you want to experience it, if you want to experience it like it was released, if you want to experience it harder than/the same as release, or whatever.
FF14 should be a you do you game =).
As we've seen with the reaction to a particular content streamer clearing Ultimates, there will always be people out there who will tell you that you are playing the game wrong. ;)
And even with the minimum ilvl feature....you're still at an advantage, because very rarely did every single person in the group have max ilvl in new content...even if it was on farm. I mean the gap isnt huge, but still....5 people 10-15 ilvl below compared to everyone at max definitely makes a difference...especially on the more tuned savage content.
Of course with the Ultimate raids this isnt an issue.
@@Saxonsredux Sorry what do you mean by this? Wouldn't 'min ilvl' literally sync everyone down to the bare minimum requirement to access the raid? I would think 'min ilvl' makes it a disadvantage, because there was usually a few players in those groups that had gear from the harder raids and exceeded the bare minimum requirements. The game doesn't let you queue for content you don't meet the minimum ilevel for.
@@docdoom1987 the min ilvl historically has always been a number SE picked, rather than any actual min level you had to meet...since that has never actually existed. You have always been able to enter a raid in a group of 8 no matter what gear you had on. Its only when matching with players via que where you are restricted to a duties ilvl requirement.
@@docdoom1987 to add to my reply, the number they pick is usually higher than the average ilvl people had when the content was new. Easy example.. Second coil....110 ilvl gear drops. I105 sync. The world first guild on cactuar cleared it wearing a lot of i90 AF gear
That's something I've always appreciated about FF, Preach, is that yeah, you're not forced to do super hard stuff if you don't want to. You can do the dailies, alliance raids, etc., and still end up in an okay place compared to everyone else. It gives you the option and freedom to choose. As someone who played since the 1.0 days too, yeah it's been interesting to see them tweak and adjust the overall "tiers" as the feedback comes in. Not on live, mind you usually, and not mid-tier ala WoW, but keep a finger on the pulse. You can really feel the quality step up in HW and it just keeps going from there.
I was initially so confused. "Each boss and raid has different mechanics" Yes?? What was it like on the other side of the fence?
That isn't what he said, he said the boss and raids change mechanics each time you do it. No game has had that.
A = adds, B = belly, C = chains, a classic.
Refreshing hearing Preach sounding excited and happy to play a game. He was missing that for awhile.
For anyone wanting to see the raids it's on PG Highlights Ep 19 for start of Crystal Tower (18 if you want to see getting items to unlock CT) & EP 58 for Sky Pirates.
I still remember patch day for 3.3 The Wiping City of Mach. We ran out of time for 3 runs that night because of the increase in difficulty. Probably equally my favourite alliance raid alongside Orbornne
A fun thing to look forward to from the story point of view: If you do side content like the alliance raids, sometimes the characters from them show up in seasonal event. The sky pirates were in Gridania for the Easter event this year
Yes! This is so cool ive seen them a couple of times at the gold saucer too!
@@tezeroth4905 I've missed them there! I need to look closer
The Stormblood Ivalice raids are by far the best alliance series in the game, hopefully you put out a video on Orbonne after you do it.
The Ivalice story is downright tedious after awhile, but the raids themselves are golden. Great, epic environments, very fun boss fights, lots of personality on display. I'm really glad the game "forced" me to do them as a requirement for Bozjan Southern Front.
I think that raid has the best story as well. But there's that one super annoying part where you have to get the guy wine. Which is comedic sure, but a bit random.
I think my favourite raid is still Dun Scaith.
That beeing said, Ivalice probably is the best set of 3 we have and in terms of fun and unique mechanics, Ridorana and Orbonne are definetly top tier
The Sky Pirates are the best crew in the whole game lol, I love them. If the game let me live there, I would. The raids themselves are great, Void Ark is the weakest of the bunch, but they're all better than the Crystal Tower raids imo.
Stormblood's alliance raid is a mixed bag. It almost requires a fairly thorough understanding of Final Fantasy Tactics and FFXII to really appreciate the callbacks to what is happening. The quests are almost too exposition heavy but, the flip side, is that it does a ton of worldbuilding for the future of the game. In fact, there are areas/features of Shadowbringers that wont open until you do the Stormblood alliance raids. As for the raid instances themselves, Stormblood raids are INCREDIBLE. The visual and dramatic spectacle of whats happening there is off-the-charts awesome.
And quite likely there will be areas in Endwalker as well that require the Ivalice Raids seeing as the Ivalice storyline is not even close to done after Bozja.
"They built this whole new zone and we don't go back!" ..... Well, never say never. Endwalker baby!
Love watching your growing excitement for the game and what comes next, your breakdowns on the technical point are really interesting 🧐
I absolutely loved the story and cutscenes in the Return to Ivalice alliance raid set. But then FF12 and Tactics are two of my favorite FF titles.
The alliance raids are connected to later story points and activities such as Shadowbringers requires you to do the Crystal Tower beforehand. The Stormblood alliance raid is also required to enter Bozja/Zadnor which are large scale world bosses and raids of up to 48 people with different optional rewards and catch up systems. The game also adds an extreme every patch that drops mounts and catch up weapons or gear.
You also can buy or make crafting gear that is pretty good and is usually reasonable priced so that helps a lot for getting caught up especially if you have a friend or are in a good FC that help you out a bit.
18:02 Interestingly, I've actually had a situation where one of the groups was really struggling and we actually traded some party members by having some players from each party leaving and then rejoining in progress. It worked, but only because some people had abandoned already and we got lucky no one else happened to join in progress at that exact moment. It was a really cool community experience.
As esja said, its an awesome test ground for new mechanics. But there's also this deeper point. One of the first things i noticed with dungeons and trials in the msq being mandatory is that the game teaches you how to play it in a lowkey, low pressure environment. By the time players hit heavensward, they have this core foundation on reading the raid language the game deploys. And rarely, if ever, do they change it just to subvert you. What they do instead, is slowly introduce new symbols, new mechanics, and new telegraphs.
So combining the two aspects: On the one hand through these alliance raids you'll have new markers etc introduced in an environment where there is significantly less individual pressure to allw players to get used to and begin learning them. Then an expansion later, slowly bring them into the core game where there is greater personal responsibility. Its so obvious and yet incredibly smart.
Great analysis. Never noticed that as I did alliance stuff. Appreciate it even more now.
I wanna see you try out Palace of the Dead
As others have said, 1st day Alliance raiding is a lot of fun and they are the right amont of difficulty for a lot of us. Certain parts of Mhach were an utter horror when they were first out. I remember taking about 2 hours in pugs for both Ridorana and Rabanastre on day 1. Again, Game Design that allows for all sections of the player base is much and well appreciated.
ah... hearing this just reminds me of when we all called it "the wiping city of mhach" cuz of how frequent raid wipes would happen on boss 3
or just how the crystal tower series had a lot of tactics or mechanics no1 would ever see as gear/skills improved and the addition of extra dps (the alliance teams used to be 2 tank, 2 heal, 4 dps just like raids)
I enjoyed calling Dun Scaith 'Dung Scrape' for all the bodies I had to pick up off the ground as a healer.
You can see the Void Ark flying around in the Sea of Clouds map. There was a lot of speculation about what it was before the raid came out. And Weeping City of Mhach was affectionately known as Wiping City of Salt for a while.
yes the alliance raids are the catchup system- in Shadowbringers you have Eden's Promise as the main raid, where you get tokens for 510 gear and Tomestones of Revelation. Tomestones of Revelation give you options to purchase 520 gear. If you go back to the Kobold that sells the 510 gear, you can trade in Books for 530 gear upgrade, but you can also do the Alliance Raids (Puppet's Bunker, Copied Factory, and Paradigm Breach) to get coins; if you collect all 3 coins, you can go to the "token exchange" guy and under "glorious gewgaws" you can trade for "crystalline twine" or "crystalline dusting" or "crystalline ester" for 520 > 530 upgrade.
Two Paths:
Tomestones of Revelation (520 gear) > Savage (Books) > 530 gear
Tomestones of Revelation (520 gear) > Alliance Raids (coins) > Crystalline Reagents (ester/dusting/twine) > 530 gear
Mr. Happy made a very good video about the history of the normal raids and how the changed and evolved over the expacs, i definingly recommend watching it as its a really good watch.
I'm so excited to see him get through the MSQ! I love seeing his reactions, so positive and real! Keep doing you, Preach! ♥
dude thank you
I'm a 1.x player and it is such a relief to finally see more content creators digging into the design and experience of the raid content. Love seeing all the new players enjoying things I am very nostalgic for now, hope you continue to enjoy the game dude
Loving the variety of vids lately Preach, really interesting, great content
You can interact with the other groups but most of the dps skills are for example defined as targeting a "party member" and those only go in your group. However... single-target healing, debuffs on the bosses and (most importantly in some cases) raising can be used on others as well.
So really, dps in their own groups but tanks and healers have to cooperate cross group much more
10:15 "Ohhhhh, well that makes sense!" Is so fucking meme worthy xD
As a healer in Alliance raids, you can rez and single target heal other parties or the main tank, but yeah party heal or buffs are for your own group, i kinda like that and that each group you have a responsibility to do a different mechanic.
Love your content and excitement of FFXIV! It's spot on and I thoroughly enjoy it. Keep it coming Preach 👍
Day 1 alliance raids are very spicy and probably some of the most fun content in the game. Hard enough that you might wipe quite a few times, but ultra satisfying to pull it all together and get a clear. This was especially the case in SB raids. SB also brought a bunch of QoL combat changes to tanks and healers. You originally needed 6 tanks for Lab / Syrcus / WoD, and all tanks / healers did significantly less dmg than they do now.
Another cool part of the Alliance raids is the currency reward you get for completing it. Even in the last patch of an expansion, the first Alliance raid is still relevant, because you need currency from all raids to upgrade gear.
Final Fantasy has so many systems in place to keep older content relevant to the point where although you maybe get a bit less than you do in WoW, it feels like you get so much more.
And in Shadowbringers the alliance raids are... Amazing. It genuinely feels like a reward to be able to go back to the previous alliance raids of the expansion and feeling like your character moves forward in doing it, because even after 2 years I still enjoy going into the first of the three raids.
In addition, those alliance raids drop special currency at the end, usually some manner of token that allows you to buy the upgrade items to your tomestone gear. When the content is current you can’t buy those with tomes, you have to get it from the savage raid drop or the savage raid pity book (every time you kill a savage boss they drop a book and gear/upgrade items have a set price in those). But that’s during the very first patch the raid tier comes out. Once the alliance raid comes out in the next major patch, you can buy those upgrades with the alliance raid currency.
So even people who are still proging savages will be doing those, because it’s such a great catch up mechanic. If you are just unlucky with rolls or you have lots of tomestone gear this time around in your BiS (which happens sometimes), you can get those armor and accessory upgrades. But note they do not give out weapon upgrades with those. Those still must come from the 3rd savage boss in the tier.
I wonder if preach has realized yet just how different every single boss fight is and how different all their designs are. It's so awesome.
Speaking as someone who is a little ahead of you, my assumption is alliance raids will actually all eventually tie into msq.
My fc and I were talking last night. I think you may have missed a little fact about the Crystal Tower raid series. When you, and I, went through it, it was actually required in order to progress. They cook blocked me when I reached the final ARR patch. Why?
But it wasn't always that way. In fact, Crystal Tower wasn't required until Shadowbringers.
A spoiler light version: Crystal Tower and the events therein help you understand a big lore point of Shadowbringers.
Which makes me even more certain that every expansion's equivalent will eventually matter. Omega and sky pirates will all come back at some point I'm betting. Or at least, the lore that comes from these events.
You can interract with the other groups as a healer with more difficult bosses I've rezzed, pulled, and healed the other groups. You can see the health bars so it's easy to assist other groups and if one wipes it's not a game over.
Love the video, very good and astute takes on the content.
That being said I’m fucking terrified now. No sooner did this beautiful man utter the words “piece of the pie” than a pizza ad started that like the fourth words were “piece of the pie”
This is the most in depth explanation of alliance raids I’ve been able to find. That’s what I’m talking about
And imagine he hasn't even gotten to Eureka or Bozja yet.
He's gonna love Bozja.
Enlightening episode and goes over the slow growth and improvements of alliance raids. I feel Stormblood is where they tested out the most varied and unique content, albeit at the cost of having fewer dungeons released, to add more fun things for players to do within the game. Looking forward to your thorough progression and veteran insight.
I sorta want to see what Preach would think of Baldesion Arsenal, despite the crazy time investment and zonewide organization it requires.
A key thing with ARR alliance raids with crystal tower actually they did come out across the earlier patches hence why the intro cutscenes for unlocking each segment did a catch up of the last ones story so labyrinth was 2.3 then tower was 2.4 and WoD was 2.5.
Also Crystal Tower is as of Shadowbringers mandatory content for ARR MSQ (you cannot enter 2.5's MSQ without having completed it all because reasons)
im so amazed by the story in this game, makes everything so much more meaningful. i enjoy the raid stories.
4:00
There is an exception to this. Buffs that increase damage and whatnot aren't usable on other alliance members outside your own party, but direct heals and resurrects do work. So if you're a healer, Red Mage, or Summoner, ressing people in other parties, especially the healers, can and will definitely save a run.
Debuffs on the boss however works for everyone, so things like Trick attack and Chain Stratagem are even more powerfull than they already are. I once had a raid with 5 NIN, and the bosses were almost constantly under Trick.
One thing I will say about 'min Ilvl no echo' crowd... it's not entirely about 'waah he didn't do it as hard as I did'. A lot of the time, in FFXIV - the spectacle, the mechanics, the fun of the fight... is in seeing all of the mechanics. If you run it off min ilvl no echo, then you stand a fair chance of seeing only 60% of these fights and even missing their main mechanics. I personally do propose people do fights on min ilvl no echo, if only to make sure they see all the main mechanics a fight has to offer so they have a full, robust experience. Not so they have to struggle or anything. For instance, Alexander 8 - Brute Justice. That fight is fun as fuck, but if you have a good group, you'll burn that shit down way before the fun stuff happens and you'll legit miss things like that crazy ass transition phase. That's a thing in a lot of stuff, from 8-mans, to 24-mans.
One thing about tweaking things as the raid goes on I noticed was with the eden raids (shb 8man) where the later bosses in the raid have much bigger hitboxes because in the earlier fights people were often arguing about safe strats vs melee uptime strats, the bigger hitboxes gave melees more room to move while keeping uptime so can do mechanics and rotation together more easily.
12:30 when you don't remember which ley lines was yours so you stand in between them both lmao
I'm sure other people have already clarified but the raid release schedule has the 8-mans and alliance raids coming out on alternating major patches, not the .5 patches. So X.0 has the first tier of the 8-mans, X.1 has the first alliance raid, X.2 has the second tier of the 8-mans, etc etc. The patches are roughly 4 months apart and there's 5 per expansion.
The .5 patches typically have other minor content and updates such as new steps for the relic weapons.
The alliance raids are an audio-visual spectacle. One of my favorite things in FF14 so far. Absolutely blew me away. Alliance raids are how LFR should be in WoW.
quick note, 24 man raids have traditionally come out on the ODD content patches (.1, .3, .5) and 8 main raids on the EVEN patches (.0, .2, .4)
Watching preache’s videos makes me wanna raid way more than I do in ffxiv
I have done savage raids and extreme fights etc and i now prefer to just chill and do the content without savage raiding, That is what i find amazing about this mmo. You can do what ever you find fun and not feel obligated to do said content.
Just happy to see new players and Preach enjoy their time with the game. Endwalker is going to be a treat for the community thanks to all the new faces and content creators.
one funfact about Dun Scaith: that Ultima "miniboss" you fight, before facing the queen, was originally a Succubus type enemy with rather little mechanics
That succubus was a real bastard to kill too.
She dropped huge ass puddles on the ground that never went away, so if she did it to somebody who wanted to kill you, you'd end up with like 95% of the arena covered and the last one dropping if/when you finally killed her.
Same thing with the last boss of Wiping City. If a Warrior wanted to farm karma on Reddit, they'd turn her so that Haircut hit 95% of the arena, killed everyone, and then spent the next 45 minutes soloing the boss. Because WAR's self-healing was so high and the boss' damage output was so low, they'd be able to hold you hostage for the better part of an hour.
You can interact with a the other two parties in an alliance a little bit. As a healer you spot heal the other tank for instance and certain specific abilities affect the entire raid.
I think something to consider when you talk about how much content we're getting is that there is always something else that we get with each of these patches. It's not JUST the main raid or the 24man raid. We of course have more MSQ every patch, each patch gets a new dungeon and a new trial. Sometimes a patch is including content for the relic weapon quests. Sometimes they're even adding something more for crafters and gatherers to do. So maybe we get less "raid" content than WoW per patch but we tend to get so much more as well.
Loved it !very insightful keep up the great work
I was there in that stream and while i agree its very easy to assume people were talking about Min Ilvl for the purpose of "Muh challenge" most people were just upset that the group was going so fast that half of the eye candy mechanics werent even on display. not that that is a problem either, but oh boy can they be a spectacle , and it is a shame to miss out on them.
I loving this man, having Preach deep dive into a game that I love, it's like all my namedays have come at once!
The three groups are labeled A, B, C. In general you tank 3 monster or mechanics groups from left to right (A team goes left, B middle, C right) Additionally, experienced players may place A B C markers. When in doubt, follow your group
I did Void Ark sooooo often for the Tank set, its real easy for sure compared to some other. I like the ones in Stormblood a lot. Instead of being super dark it goes super bright for the most part.
I’d say customers will generally be more pleased to be presented with a tailored made product that is fun for most than canned version that only caters to a selected few.
Around 12:00 when you mentioned that it's for more of the casual style of players - and I've paused here so forgive me if you mention it later - it makes me squinge a bit because the difficulty of the Nier raids, Delibrum, and even Ivalice's Lighthouse come to mind.
I think at the time of HW this was true, but holy SHIT do they get SO MUCH BETTER at making raids! The Ivalice story and raid series are my favorite in the entire game, as well as The Four Lords. In fact the extra content of trials and raids are what make Stormblood my favorite expansion of all time.
The other thing I'd note, though its not quite as obvious going from ARR to HW, is that the raids also act as a catch up mechanic, or a teaching tool, to teach players new mechanics that will appear in the next expansions casual content. You've mentioned that in other videos in a very roundabout way, but I found that such an interesting realisation on re-playthroughs, seeing how the mechanics were actually intriduced and progressed as the game did.
Awesome to hear some of the history!!
Speaking of the 48 player and 56 player content. I think you'll really enjoy that. Especially BA, the big group stormblood content. It reminded my a lot of my old WoW days, back in original Burning Crusade. It requires a lot of knowledge, and caution. The fights are simple compared to other ffxiv content, or at least they feel that way to me. But the mechanics are... Trickier? Requiring more knowledge to do them correctly, and they are more punishing. It's a very interesting experience.
Glad he enjoys himself. Wish him many "please look forward to it"s in the future.
Yeah the alliance raids always come out every other patch after the 8 man raid patch and they contain gear that is on par with the last raids set and also the currency to get the second bets gear. They are also a lot easier being around lfr/normal difficulty which makes them perfect for people wanting to catch up on gear.
4:00 you can heal and rez people in other groups.
I haven't tried dps abilities like eye of the dragon, dancer partner thing, or BLMs fast movement ability. But being able to heal or rez other groups is actually pretty essential.