Yeah, he is not supporting the game and cheating himself of some awesome story that Yoshida put his heart and soul into. It's just like the fact that visual novels can be skipped and you only need to spend three minutes watching text flash by. I bet the creators of those novels are screaming when they find out that 99% of their readers don't actually read the story and just want to complete it for the trophies. :( Sadly, we can't take this guy to court because technically he's not breaking any laws. If this guy tried to live on the free trial of Wizard101, he'd quit the game in frustration due to the free trial being... well, rather small. XD
@@whowantsmypants8888 No, he doesn't. He just can't do any content after 3.55. He can rerun dungeons, trials and raids in ARRR and Heavensward. If you mean he is disabled from gaining EXP, that's not his worry as nothing inHeavensward requires you to be over Level 60.
Feedback regarding Echo - its introduced only on older content and never "current content" - to make it easier for players to catch up and clear older fights. There's always the option to turn it off in pre-formed groups, doing some of the older content with "Minimal Item Level, No Echo" (MINE) can still be challenge even with some job ability/potency changes :D
There’s a legendary free trial player on my server who has all jobs capped at 60, relics complete on every job, and even has The Necromancer title for soloing palace of the dead to floor 200. Absolute mad lad. See them at ARR hunts pretty often. Edit: I finally found the player name! It's Estelle Bright, they are on the Aether datacenter, on the Siren server. Edit 2: NOT ONLY do they have everything unlocked and have The Necromancer, they also have the highest score on the entire datacenter for Palace of the Dead in a party
@@Hambs23 pretty sure that’s not possible unless they’re a free trial player or they racked up most of that time as a free trial player and then switched
@@extrathicc78 It is possible. You just need to not progress enough on MSQ. You only stop being a sprout after playing a certain amount of hours and reaching the latest expansion.
Right? I ended up just buying the game since I figured I’d enjoy it anyway. I love it. Bought the entry version for my brother so he could try it when the dang free-trial launcher bugged out on him too.
Just dont forget to register your account as Free Trial, please. Sincerely, someone who's friend nearly dropped the game after spending actual days trying to log in. I asked multiple forums worried it was a region issue. Eventually learned they didnt click the big "Sign Up for the Free Trial!" button and got it sorted in 15 seconds.
My brother did too. He wasn't on free trial but still got a zeta on level 50(dragoon). And he also had many level 50 crafter classes. People can really play this game in many different ways
Initially, I watched this before playing FFXIV, I was considering playing it because MMO and Final Fantasy. Now, 5 months after starting to play and 700 hours of play time I finally reached stormblood and I fully understand this vid.
Following the MSQ through all expansions could be a bit overwhelming make sure you don’t get burnt out. The best experiences is still ahead with Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Have fun! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@@Grimmm233 i have finished endwalker and done a lot more since then, very excited for dawntrail. FF has become my most played game and one of my favourites ever.
Damn, 2000+ views, that's kind of nuts to me considering I stopped trying to promote this a while ago. Can't thank you enough for all the feedback, I'm really happy to see that this video wasn't executed on arrival despite a lot of the comments pointing out stuff that I missed. I appreciate it a lot. P.S. Honestly, if I was aware of the Trust System before making this video, I probably would have cut that part out entirely as it sits kinda weakly as an argument considering Yoshi-P has acknowledged wanted to implement it in earlier content. I wanna chalk it up to me not wanting to spoil stuff by looking it up, but honestly it was just lazy research on my end. P.P.S. Holy shit, that's over 100k.
It's kinda crazy how accepting the ffxiv community is, criticism is actually taken with some thought, there's always a few bad apples, but most games if you say something bad about their game people get really defensive. also with tab targeting press F1 then tab and it will target what you're looking towards.
I think your comment on the wish to be able to run dungeons with a party of NPCs still has a place in your video. Even if it's true that you are able to run, even repeatedly, later dungeons with a party of NPCs of your chosing, your comment is still relevant to the contents of the free trial, which you clearly pointed out at the start of the video. I am honestly more surprised they didn't go back to include this system into the early parts of the game in one way or another. Trust system comes with special dialogue and even voiced lines for the party members, which obvisouly takes up some development time and brings its degree of costs to the table, but I feel like they could still pull it off even in some limited fashion, so it could really be played like a singleplayer RPG through and through. Great video BTW! I am tempted to get you the game and at least 6 months of sub so you could experience more of it, if you don't feel like you're done with the game, hit me up.
@@Kujar3Player to some degree, they already have that in squadrons. Admittedly, the ai is awful, it unlocks very late and only does specific dungeons between 20 and 60, but once they’re leveled up their buffs make squadrons faster than a speedrunning group of real players. As I recall, the explanation for shit they are was mostly that a lot of the arr dungeons are repurposed 1.0 dungeons- which makes the spaghetti code of 2.0 look good - and that actually fixing it would be a major issue, so they bandaided with more hp and damage on the npcs lol I still think that it would be worth improving, as well as adding sb‘s dungeons to either squadrons or trusts.
YOU said you got to lv 50 ? this may be a spoilor of sorts so ill try not to but the GRAND COMPANIES ARE THROUGHOUT THE STORYLINE not just something you have to join to get your mount ,there are several times you are forced ti choose what way the story goes, in one of the situations i had with a gand company allience when they all work together finally around lv 60 i had to choose out of 3 options and decieded to help the friends in doma, and im so glad i did i am now in the far east a japanese looking city about to leave that city on another boat to another place...grand companies ARE A BIG PART OF THE STORY so far in mine and im lv 66 white mage at this stage,doing stormblood storyline
Stumbled upon this video randomly and thought you might like to know that Stormblood is now being added to the free trial (sometime this year with 6.5) :) Glad you enjoyed it and I also agree that the music in this game is awesome! The ARR quest line is annoying near the end for sure and that gave me a tough time when I first started playing because I really wanted to get to where my friend was in the game. They ended up quitting before I made it to them since they only did end game stuff and went back to WoW. I stayed and just made a new character on another random server and made friends along the way.
36:59 There's actually a reason why you can't skip those cutscenes. See, back before Shadowbringers, you COULD skip all those cutscenes, but that meant that players that were legitimately invested in the story and wanted to view all the cutscenes were left behind by the people just trying to speedrun the main scenario roulette. Square introduced that change so those players wouldn't get left behind and could actually play the game. EDIT The Crystal Tower Raids are the only mandatory ones, and were only made so at the start of Shadowbringers since there are plotlines that you WILL not get if you haven't done those raids.
As an addition to this, the rewards are so high *because* of the time investment, and there were points where people would KICK NEW PLAYERS because it was slowing down their runs. While I get not liking the changes into having forced cutscene viewing, it was 100% required. They've learned from this (mostly) and it doesn't, for the most part, come up again, but they haven't been able to justify putting more time into fixing these two (and to a lesser extent, Cape Westwind).
@@BlueMageDaisen I'm sorry that happened dude, I actually think the best thing they did was make the cutscenes unskippable. Did you start playing again?
I was super lucky to be in a party of 6 new sprouts in Castrum as a sprout myself and the more experienced tank who joined us at the time was ok with waiting while we watched the cutscenes. I think having this experience made going through Prae with the skippers running ahead much more tolerable for me (I still watched the cutscenes, did not regret missing the boss fights that burned down in seconds anyways) and I'm glad it didn't sour the experience overall.
I will say, Limsa is probably the most populated starting city simply because of the proximity of the marketboard/summoning bells to the main aetheryte.
I realize that you can't get there on the free trial. But they expand upon that "doing content alone with NPCs" later on in shadowbringers and even into endwalker, releasing a system called "Trust" where you take story NPCs through the dungeon.
I'm a bit embarrassed to learn about this after the fact, although in a way it helps me to feel a little validated. I thought I might've been blowing wind out my ass when I wrote that section, but its really cool to see how they are implementing the idea. Honestly, it's the sort of thing that would get me to purchase the full game.
@@SwanCC Yep! I was gonna mention that comment - Your opinion isnt wrong but they did add it in Shadowbringers but said they wouldnt be able to do it for previous expansions because of the ammount of Development it requires to do it. So Shadowbringers and moving forward we have the Trust system and its great! As a dps I could do instant queue and just it at my pace and not be stressed. Part of the reason the devs said they added the feature was because of player anxiety and devs knowing there are some players that really enjoy doing as much as possible solo. (No 8man Trust systems yet though, so still need to queue) but they also wanted the NPCs to feel more involved and part of the story with you, like previous FF Games were the npcs all had their own personality as you play through.
@@Zeet1 as soon as you mention the NPC personalities, I remember there is dungeon in Shadowbringers that if you take different Trust member, they will act differently. I took Thancred, Urianger and Yshtola. Y'shtola was like: "this is nothing to me" and walk through the path like a sassy lady. Thancred was like: "let's see my ninja move even though I'm a gunbreaker". And Urianger was like: "hmmm, I just teleport there, too ez"
@@SwanCC I'll add that by EW there were some of these dungeons and trials that I felt you simply HAD to do with NPC trusts the first time for story and RP immersion so they have been improving on it greatly.
Considering how much you love other FF games, I think you'd really really love what the other expansions have in store for you. There is also a reason why the crystal tower is mandatory.
I'm glad I started playing 2013 I was introduced by a friend and I couldn't stop playing now I'm at endwalker and the story has me crying, this damn storyline FFXIV has has it tugging at my heart strings 😭
I want to see an updated Stormblood version. Probably one of my favourite pieces of UA-cam content ever. It's a very minimalist way of playing. I was inspired to play free trial again recently and keep it that way.
Fun fact: PreShadowbringers it was MUCH harder to maintain aggro and the DPS/Healers would have to use antiaggro abilities or stuff that would lower enmity. Most raids DPS would prepop their diversion(their 90% aggro lowering ability) while the tank would get aggro then turn their tank stance off since it lowered their DPS.
Honestly I miss those days too, it was a much more engaging system that really seperated the good from the great, though I won't deny tanking is much more approchable now
So I can actually give a bit of light on the castrum/prae thing, it didn't always used to be like that the cutscenes used to be skipable so u could just slog right through in no time and we did, But what this caused was new people running it for the first time which there is normally atleast 1 (as the roulette usually puts you in a group with someone queing for it to cut down on que times) would either have to skip all the cutscenes and keep up or they would leave a cutscene to be greeted with another cutscene and see little to no combat. so what they did was up the exp drastically for your time investment and make them unskipable. so now u will see atleast half a levels worth of exp for msq roulette but it used to be like 1/4 maybe or less. it might not make u like them more, but atleast you might understand why they're that way.
As a new player myself, I wish that they'd just... redo the story so that there aren't so many cutscenes in those dungeons. ARR had a terrible story anyway (at least until the Garlemald stuff is finished - I really enjoyed the refugee storyline and the stuff with Shiva was a good setup for HW). You can have all of the same material paced in a much better fashion in ARR, but they botched the job.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 I agree and they are trying their best to cut fat where they can, believe it or not arr used to be longer than it is now, in shadowbringers we had a patch where they reduced the quest by 13% and simplified a lot of the cutscenes/quests unfortunately arr is a product of it's time and they don't really have the scheduling time or expense to go back and remake a whole expansion even now while they are working on patches to endwalker they are prob also simultaneously working on the next expansion also we used to not be able to fly in arr zone, that is actually the reason why "all mounts can fly" because you didnt unlock flight until heavensward thats why you get a black chocobo cause it is capable of flight while ur company one is not. flying in itself cutsdown so much of travel in arr. so they got rid of the (flying mounts) (non flying mounts) thing so that newer players could fly through arr zones earlier and not be mount gated. arr is in a waayy better spot right now and im sure they will continue to improve it as they can.
@@5chneemensch138 I'm not making a product of it's time arguement i'm making a literally they made them unskipable so new players dont feel like they have to miss the story to keep up with the party. this isnt a product of its time thing this would lit still happen today if they made them skipable.
@@Airlinecuisine Work on your sentences, I can barely make out anything you just said. And no, your argument is that unskippable cutscenes are a product of the time. And no, people can watch the cutscenes and not be left behind. It's called automatic teleport. And no, new people will be left behind regardless because everything will be dead before they even realize wtf is going on. There is no justifyable reason to not be able to skip cutscenes.
A BIG thing I noticed while watching is your remark on paladin, I’ve gotta let you know that paladin does not have cast bars in most cases of gameplay. The main time you would ever actively use the cast bar is between level 64 and 67, when you get Holy Spirit but don’t have requiescat yet. Requiescat is a cooldown to remove cast times and double spell potency. It feels fine to play, the only time you use cast bars in content outside that small area is ranged damage when you have to be away from a boss or healing someone that would otherwise die. Cast bars basically don’t actually take place in normal paladin play.
When it comes to tab targeting and your character snapping to face your target when you use an ability, did you check your character settings? You can turn the "face target" off, and there's also two versions of tab targeting that either select the enemy by proximity or from left to right according to what you can see on your screen. Still not perfect but... options!
there's also a keybind for "target nearest enemy" which i use a lot when i want to snap back to the most immidiete threat (or just re-target an enemy after having had to target a teammate)
Weirdly enough, I turned "face target" off for one dungeon run and thought I was lagging because sometimes I couldn't use my GCD's at all. I realized near the end that this is because you have to face enemies to use a lot of abilities/skills, so if I backed up at all then I just couldn't do anything until I turned back around. Maybe this works differently if you're on the default movement controls, but I turned it right back on after that.
Your criticisms of ARR are fair and valid. It's not for EVERYONE. Great video. Echo is meant for casual players to experience the story around the raids and keep the queues active. With party finder tool you can turn echo off :)
I think you are absolutely right with the pacing and just doing dungeons without a queue. In Shadowbringers they introduced the Trust system, which is doing exactly what you mentioned: with a group of the NPCs important to the story, especially in Endwalker I feel like they got it so much better even. One dungeon outright feels criminal to do without trusts as it gives a looot of insight into the characters if you pay attention. Great video, big thumbs up.
Genuinely interesting things you keep pointing in this video. I also envy how much value you're getting from the free trial. The 300k gil limit and my mind thinking I'm 'wasting' gil and exp made me bite the bullet so early in the free trial. I do have a little regret for doing that to this day, wished I stuck out the free trial a bit longer
Was pleasantly surprised to see the lines of DRKs standing in vigil for Kentaro Miura when you mentioned the game's community. I started playing back at around the launch of 3.2 and I remember very early on, someone saw I was a sprout and crafted me a whole set of HQ armor for my level. People in this game mostly want other players to have a good time and it's a nice thing to see. Most people I know who came from WoW are surprised at how much more relaxed and open the community is overall.
11:40 I had the same exact movement problem when starting warrior. That was until someone told me about Legacy Movement in the character settings. I, too, was about 1,000 hours in before I knew it was even a thing. And another 1,000 hours later I haven't even considered reverting to the default movement.
When starting as a dragoon, I considered switching between the two modes. That was, until I realized dragoon’s backwards jump would be tied to the character’s direction and I’d have to press S and the keybind. I thought it was too much hassle, so I never did it. Holding right click keeps your camera steady, but you’d have to move the camera as well while you’re doing any skills. It’s a minor annoyance, but as I’m used to it, it’s hardly even conscious now.
This is actually super helpful, unfortunately I'm not at a place to afford the expansion and subscription though I've spent so much on final fantasy 14 already. The fact that you were able to spend so much time on the current trial is a plus for me, since I started a new character that's fully F2p. As a plus, since I started in SHB it actually gives me real time with older content. I did do endgame stuff at 80 but it also gave me crazy anxiety, older players got to play through each expansion at the current level, but honestly the opportunity to be capped at 60 for a while actually helps ease me back into the game and master my classes, I used to barely even be able to play raids/dungeons with others due to my anxiety but FFXIV has helped me a lot with that.
I can see your point on the story. It's unusual for an MMO, but it's what keeps me in the game! Before FFXIV, no other MMO managed to grab my attention - they all felt so pointless. Without a main story and plot it's all just a grind.
I totally get how you feel. I loved WoW for a long time but I forced myself to by researching the lore of the world and speculating on what could happen next; in FFXIV I don't need to do any of that, the story gives me so much more information, and my worth in it is so much more obvious.
Ngl, the main story is so boring, at least where I'm up to (I just helped recover the sultana's crown or some shit) it's all just been a bunch of busy work and has barely focused on the actual intresting part with the crystals, the dark mage guy, and me being some kidn of chosen one (which I have no idea where tf that shit came from, mfs just started saying I was special). I came into this because people were jerking the story off but I'm hours in and it's nothing special, shit i'd call it below average right now. The only thing keeping me is the combat and the intresting game systems like being able to be whateer class which I look forward to.
Idk I'd rather watch a movie or atleast play an interactive story game like swtor or single player game, really no point of the story in ffxiv, esp considering it is like 95% not voice acted.
They used to have skippable cut scenes in the Praetorium. It was great for returning players grinding for gear. It was hell for a first time player. You would go from a cutscene to a cutscene as your group was already halfway through the scenario. Oh and there were even more quest post ARR. They cut up to 30 percent. Echo can be switched off, but I guess that would require full account.
Understanding this aspect of Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum is very important, because it allows you to understand that the fact that they're required content that essentially boil down to hour-long unskippable cutscenes is the SPECIFIC REASON the rewards for Main Scenario Roulette are so good in the first place. It's an incentive to get existing players to keep doing those two duties, so that new players don't have to spend 3 hours in a queue to run them only to get matched with seven other newbies and then they wipe and have to queue for another 3 hours to try again. Asking to be given the same rewards but changing the content is really putting the cart before the horse. It's not a perfect solution but this is also the oldest, worst part of an old game built from the ashes of an even older, MUCH worse game. He was right at the beginning of the video: this isn't a review of FFXIV. It's a review of the worst parts of FFXIV still actively playable (Heavensward's MSQ aside). I'm not saying his points and opinions are invalid, simply that they are neither revelatory nor useful as the devs have already done just about everything they can to address them, whether in future content or by making changes to previous content (as far as they can short of a complete rework of the 1-50 content, which based on several recent comments by Yoshi-P, I suspect is in the works).
@@ValkyrieTiara I still recall castrum and prae before msq roulette was a thing. I never ended up getting a queue, I was carried through by my fc after whining about a 3 hour queue lol
Veteran player here! I usually don't comment on videos like these, but I really felt like I had to. This video seems so absolutely genuine and I enjoyed hearing your criticisms a lot. I know people have already pointed out the Trust system and expanded targeting, but since you're a big FF fan and mentioned ARR pumping out some of the most memorable characters - as well as primals being incredibly interesting to you - I'd like to tell you (spoiler free) that it dips into so, so, so much more FF fanservice in some of the most incredible ways! I understand that you said you likely won't buy the game, but I personally feel that buying it would be an amazing decision for you, as this game has so much more to offer you, so much less jank, so many incredibly little community gems and so much more incredible FF story to unfold! The extent in which they bring back old FF characters, music and references is mindblowing! I sincerely hope you'll one day get to visit people in the housing ward system and join one of the many house parties or nightclubs, and maybe one day join us in hunt trains or fate-spawning- oh, and of course doing blind runs of FRESH brutal content!
sub fee just doesn't work in video games it almost doesn't work even in real life things so it's a big no and impossible for 50% of the population in general gaming to even check something out that's locked behind a sub fee
@@alpharad4513I just don’t get why I have to pay $60 for the game AND $13 monthly after that. Either charge me $60 or charge me for a sub. This is the only thing that’s turned me away from playing. It looks like a great game though.
I did a Zodiac ages ago, back before Heavensward came out, so I thought I was prepared for what you'd have to say about it. When I realized as a free trial player, you had to spiritbond all that materia yourself, it was like being hit by a truck. My condolences.
@@MIAsuxdonkey nope, he's correct, spiritbond, by doing stuff with the item equipped you get to spiritbond and when full gives u a random materia that is within the rank of the spiritbound armor.
Fantastic video! It's really nice to see the perspective of a free trial player actually doing everything, I feel like most free trialers either quit or buy the game early bc the gated systems really suck. I will say you've only scratched the surface when it comes to raiding content and dungeons though and I hope someday you take the plunge into the rest of the game bc there is a very noticeable jump in quality in every expansion.
Just found out your video as recommended and I am still at the first minutes but must say your character aesthetics considering a Warrior and the thought of thinking about all this during the creation was awesome and inspiring.
You have really fair and balanced opinions, it's always appreciated to hear someones honest thoughts that aren't just relentlessly hating/praising things. You kept it level in this video
As a new free trial player, I was drawn to your video to see just how far I could take it. Thanks for sharing all of that. I'm also wary of locking my free play away, and wonder if there's a legit way to have a second non-free account which I occasionally pay or lapse, depending on level of interest. Like you, I find myself speeding through the story quests - with my friends barely involved in my gameplay at all, except as vastly over-levelled world map helpers, or dungeon buddies. It doesn't feel right at all, making them plus-ones in my hero arc. I hope they are re-living some of the magic of their first time through me, at least.
you can have as many free trials as you want. Just make a new Square Enix account. You will have to play through the game again but it's definitely a thing. Also the game is much easier when you are playing the game after paying for the sub as you will have more free acess to the stuff so getting caught up on a new character is not hard at all.
the fact that pso e1&2 is your favorite game of all time is proof you have good taste. what an amazing game. i still jump on blueburst pservers to this day to get my nostalgia fix.
Good video, I spent a fairly long time in the trial before buying the game so it was interesting to see someone take it way further than I did. I mean, I currently have 1000+ hours in the game AFTER finishing Shadowbringers, so its kinda wild that you've put even more time into it than I have and haven't even gotten to Stormblood yet. I think it's a testament to how much content is in the game and how much value it offers to the player.
Well done! Truly impressive what you were able to do in the free trial. I hope one day you'll subscribe because Shadowbringers was a real treat. Keep up the good work!
It's cool how you said about wanting story dungeons to be able to be done solo with NPCs, similar to doing them with your Squadron, and then they later on add exactly that feature.
There's a system that started since Shadowbringers called "Trusts". Let's you run all recent dungeons with story npcs that are programed pretty well for all the dungeons. Yoshi P did mention at one point he wants to revisit squadron AI at some point to make it similar to Trusts.
@@percocetthirty I managed to force bigger pulls while playing healer but yeah you're right, AI kinda sucks for anything more than a more immersive first run with no queues
A few months back, I met a free trial only player who had all combat/crafting/gathering jobs at 60 in a duty, and I had to go check it just to make sure this wasn't the same guy, but they've got different names. Kind of surprising to find out these madlads actually exist and stick with the free trial for so long.
@@QuantumFishFTW iirc, he said he was going to buy the game itself eventually, but he wanted to finish literally everything he could on the free trial first, including the relics for all jobs.
@@juannito6318 Not entirely true, check the free trial rules, the free trial restrictions are for shout, yell and tell (the chat modes RMT use to reach a lot of people). This was party chat during a Xelphatol(I think?) run.
it's hard for me to even watch 10 minute videos, yet you captured my complete attention for 50 whole minutes. would love to see your take on later expansions, especially since the game only gets better.
Fellow titan appreciator. To this day still one of my absolute favourite fights. I think the Titan fight is where I originally fell in love with this game
This was really cool to see the perspective of a trail player and the systems you have grinded that I have largely ignored or breezed through because of the market board
With the grand company ranks it's not that simple. They were not "strictly" abandoned, more like you ascended as much as the story wanted you to. The top ranks are reserved for story NPCs to give orders to you. It would make no sense if you were Grand Admiral and Merlwyb would be a rank under you or in case of Raubahn if you were the Flame General and barked orders at him. On the other hand they didn't bother to iterate the feature further for the following expansions, as you toil more for the scions and not for the city states themselves anymore.
There's no grand admiral rank or even close. Highest is marshal. Although the ranks above Captain are infinitely unused we can't say that won't ever change, nor can we say they are strictly "just for show". They probably had intent to use them originally and just kept them in "just in case". The feature was probably eschewed further iteration for more than just story reason -- they most likely figures from a gameplay standpoint it was getting stale too.
My sister and I played together about a year and a half ago, but we both stopped as other things became important in our lives. My sister had picked it back up, so naturally I joined the game again with a new character and attempted to get further so we could spend time together in-game. However, I personally find the story captivating and love the world building. It has so much history and so much life to it that I don't find it tedious at all. I've kept myself at a good pace, stopping after maybe 5-10 quests during a typical gaming day so I don't get burnt out. I'm well into Stormblood now and LOVE IT. The story just keeps getting better and better, but if you don't love the story then it can be really daunting to look at the list of hundreds of quests you'll need to do and decide to quit. For me, this game is my favorite and the only one whose story has truly kept me reading rather than skipping text.
Someone else has probably already mentioned it, but Echo is never applies to whatever the current endgame is. It gets added to older content to make it easier for people who might be struggling to get clears. But theres also an option in your Duty Finder settings to turn the Echo off
I didn't think I'd be able to watch a yt video for that long but I thoroughly enjoyed, and am even more hyped to play ffxiv than Ive been for the past couple of days
If you're a new player wanting to play with your friends who play at end game, it's probably best that, instead of playing with your friends at end game, your friends could play with you at whatever level content that you are at.
What a well made video. You clearly put a lot of time and care into this and I enjoyed every second of it. Looking forward to flipping through the rest of your content o/
You actually don't stand still to cast as a Paladin generally, and you also don't use your magic damage abilities until level 68 anyway; both because of Requiescat. In addition to generating your buff window for magic damage, Requiescat removes the cast time. With it, you don't need to stand still. Without it, you don't usually use Holy Spirit.
I've put in somewhere between 200-300 hours myself on the free trial. I've determined that the extreme trials and relic weapons aren't for me, it's just too tedious when you're playing without friends. I wouldn't mind getting more into crafting, but it feels impossible with how limited your inventory is. Admittedly part of that is my own fault for hanging onto items that I plan to sell on the market board once I do eventually pay for the game, but you make an interesting point in the video about not wanting to lock the character behind a paywall. Even if I do decide to sub, would missing out on selling strength tonics and dyes at a slightly higher price really be worth sacrificing my current inventory space? Anyway I'm rambling. The main thing that puts me off wanting to sub is that it's a timed recurring payment. With the free trial I can take my time doing everything. My current goal is to get all the battle jobs up to 60, which has been an off and on process as my interest for this game waxes and wanes.
I'd honestly recommend the game cards to an extent. You don't have to worry about recurring payment and can just slam down 2 months or so guilt free, and for me the playtime I get in those two months is far more than most $40 games I would buy anyway. Highly recommend
You'd be surprised how much of that modern attire stuff isn't from the cash shop. Many are rare drops from various side systems or just crafts with very expensive endgame materials. Many are from events. Nier raids and other crossovers, etc... Several even come from desynthesizing rare fish.
That was pretty funny; I’m pretty sure the bit where he said “it’s from the cash shop” was over an image of some guy in a glamour from the msq. The scion adventurer’s set, maybe?
@@FirelighttheKing Gave me a good chuckle as well. Probably wasn't intentional and is just him not knowing where those items come from. As a side note: Top: Scion Adverturer's Jacket acquired through lvl 60 MSQ Bottoms: Peacelover's Pantaloons acquired through Ishgard Restoration Fetes or the MB Boots: Anemos Expeditionary's Boots acquired through Eureka: Anemos or MB
Thanks so much for the video! Very impressed with all you have accomplished (you've seen and done a lot in this game that a lot of people that have been playing and paying a sub from the start never have), and the appreciation for the game that it gave you. As it's been mentioned in other comments, the "Trusts" and "Duty Support" systems has been added to the game (and function similarly to the GC Squadron going with you into dungeons) and is being expanded on in future patches (I think most of ARR is included now, with more to follow), so hopefully one day the entire game (and every fight) can be completed with a party of NPCs, for those who want to just play the story like a single player RPG. I'm a big fan of the idea cause I agree, there are times where I'd rather go on my own a bit slower, and not have to work with a group of other real people. And a bonus is, the NPCs you take have things to say all the way through the dungeons, so it helps keep the immersion of the story a lot, big fan of that!
What I love about this game is you see lots of people over and over again like idk the community is its own story I’m new to the game and people I see often be telling me good job and keep it up ask for help if I need it we’ll talk for like 5 mins then I got to my next quest then it repeats it’s amazing
I just finished ARR's, and I completed all dungeons on my Scholar. I'm aiming to do all trials now, then see if I can get into Extreme Trials, to start getting those hunting logs for Arcanist and my grand company. After that... The grind to get all classes to lvl 60 begins :) On the side note, I'll probably get all beast tribes reputations as well. I'm not sure about the crafting side of the game, though, mainly because as a free to play user I don't have access to the market.
The raids only became mandatory during the last expansion as they connect heavily to the Shadowbringers story so without the raids people would have very little context for that expansion
...HOW THE HELL DO YOU ONLY HAVE 1k subs!!! I thought this was done by someone with 100k+ or more! Dude you have talent! Very engaging! I never played f14, but you made me want to!
36:54 “The rewards for these dungeons are great, but I would rather do the dungeon then watch an hour long cutscene” Fun fact, back in the day, you used to be able to skip the cutscenes, however what that lead to was vet players skipping them and the new players just stuck watching cutscenes. In fact, the first time I did it myself, I didn’t get to hit a single enemy because by the time the first cutscene was done, the other players would be running to and beating the next boss and thus triggering another cutscene
Absolutely amazing video. I haven't watched a random 50 minute long video from someone I didn't know until now and this is getting me back into FF14! I've got 125 hours from 2 years ago (around the time this came out) and I don't think I even got close to starting Heavensward :p
Now theres another expansion coming and a lvl cap raise in October to the trial version its literally bigger than basically all aaa paid games its nuts and primal are basically what we final fantasy fans know as aeons
Happy to see this vid on my recommended. I was always curious about the journey of someone who didn't wanna subject themselves to a monthly sub yet. After finishing the latest expansion I do hope you have the time to enjoy the game to its entirety someday, for it will not disappoint as every aspect of the game just kept improving and adding. Also curious on how your thoughts on the relic grind for Stormblood and Shadowbringer would be as they had a very unique way to on approach acquiring them those expansions that is completely different from ARR and HW.
Kinda funny, you point about Dungeons in MSQ and being able to run with NPC's rather than players is a part of the game, but it started in Shadowbringers which obviously isn't in the Free Trial.
He is talking about the grand company unit you can start running at a high enough rank. You can take them into some dungeons which will suck balls because those npcs literally do not perform mechanics unlike the npcs from the later trust system. Ironically this content still was not added until stormbringer.
I love that one of his suggestions about basically a command mission for the dungeons is actually something they implemented later in other expansions.
My one gripe with the game was the Heavensward class quests. Having to grind through ARR to get to Ishgard was a pain. By the time I reached Ishgard, I was 20 levels over the classes, so I had zero reason to drop everything and learn them. Luckily, with all the new expansions, classes are available no matter your point in the story as long as you are the right level. Now I’m almost done with Heavensward and have unlocked every job except Reaper and Sage. One of the best changes they have made honestly.
Your points you made on Castrum and Praetorium having unskippable cutscenes... I'm sure it's been said over and over in these comments but yeah, them being unskippable is the point. It's the big finale of the story for new players, and too often you'll see in other dungeons people skipping cutscenes and not waiting for sprouts to finish theirs before starting a boss fight or something. By making the cutscenes in the finale dungeons unskippable it brings players old and new onto equal footing, so veterans aren't blaming new players for taking too long on a cutscene and sprouts aren't feeling like a burden for wanting to ingest the story, or get left behind by those who've done MSQ roulette 200 times. If i recall correctly there was a period where you could skip the cutscenes if everyone in your party had done the dungeon before, but that created scenarios where people would instantly leave and re-queue if they found out they were doing an unskippable cutscene run.
"I cant imagine how hard it is to get a dps set from one of these raids" Good thing most the dps gear in crystal tower is... uh... pretty bad compared to stuff you can get as normal mode gear in trials. As for the main story quests. ARR is by far the worst offender of having quests that dont really feel because well... they werent initially. Hell some of them still arent. I think the reason is that they do actually want to have a well paced story in ARR but at the same time they are still limited by the quest system in some ways, that or each quest is treated like its own chapter in a book. Its not even that ARR is really that terrible in the first place, hell looking back i actually like the costa del sol quests to show how uptight yshtola is compared to how laid back most other characters felt even with garlemald at their doorstep, or how much they had to chill every now and again just to try and recover from shit that happened only 5 years prior. But i can definitely say that going through it the first time definitely makes you empathize a lot more with yshtola the first time through, even if you barely payed attention to the story and speed read like i did. As for the crystal tower raids being MSQ required, they did that after they made the crystal tower a LOT more relevant in Shadowbringers. Completely valid criticisms, but i cant really think of a way for them to improve after they essentially cut off as much of the fat they really could, they even cut off a lot of fat in Praetorium and Castrum in the last update.
When you upgrade, your steam account wont show those 1000 hours as the trial is counted as a separate game, so you'll be logging into your 1000+ hours account, while steam shows 1 minute playtime.
This is a fantastic video, and I'm amazed it only has this many views! I definitely didn't see myself sitting through the whole thing, but you really kept me engaged throughout. I can definitely see this video picking up a lot more traction soon, with the big boom XIV is in right now. Looking forward to more content from you!
3:55 That analogy only works in your incredible case if you were coming back for more pepperoni every 2min with slightly different disguises for weeks at a time... A 1000 hours trial bro... WTH! Why would anyone torture themselves like this, like past the 20 first hours, I would seriously consider a full version just to make my life easier at that point for the next 980 hours.
“Really get a feel for it”… sure, I guess. The feel of the combat massively improves between 60 and 70; the story settles in, and other systems within it get largely developed on. It also sounds like you had a rough time without access to your own party finder groups - another major thing that changes how it feels and plays. The jobs feel awful and half baked below 70 or 80 depending on the job. And also - yes. The arr relic is by far the worst of the lot. Lol. I still have my pld books half done in my inventory Seeing you talk about the other final fantasy’s suggests to me that you would quite probably really enjoy the fanservice in later expacs- there’s one fight in particular, but tbh many of them sound like you’d enjoy them. Also yes, as pointed out by others, paladin isn’t suppose to be played with holy spirit’s cast timer. It’s a ranged attack when it needs to be before you unlock requiscat, and after that, it’s just a ranged rotation - no for real, paladin is partially a ranged tank. Paladin becomes the most mobile tank in FF because of that trait.
Shadowbringers does actually implement a system called Trusts for running story dungeons with the other important story characters. It works pretty well. The lack of queue time is kind of offset by their slower clear time, but it's a solid option.
To each their own but I feel like you'd be really robbing yourself of a great time if you choose not to buy the full game. Stormblood may have been critisized for its story but I think it made a huge leap in terms of its trials and raids. The Omega raids in particular are fantastic and Ivalice is the most memorable raid I've done in the game. Btw, I'm a player from ARR era and I initially didn't care about the story so I just skipped every singe cutscene and I still had a good time. It's only been since Shadowbringers that I decided to actually pay attention to the story and wowzers, I was super impressed by it. I was drawn in and didn't want to stop playing to see what would happen next. After finishing Shadowbringers, I decided to play New Game + and relive the earlier stories. ARR was definitely moreso a slog, but not necessarily bad. It's writing isn't "exciting" but it is still pretty good. There's a lot of foundation created at the begining of the game. I did Heavensward as well and I was actually slightly let down because it seemed kind of hyped, but I did see how it was leagues better than ARR. I have to say though, I'm almost done with Endwalker, and holy shit did the story just keep getting better and better. So yeah, everyone should play at their own pace. Skip cutscenes if you don't care, you can watch them later. There's no wrong way to play this game except being a brand new player and buying a level skip in a game you don't know how to play. I think everyone should manually level up to max level themselves and let the MSQ guide you through the game and then you can start buying level skips for other classes.
Tanks that bounce and move all over the place drive me nuts. Moving out of AoE is one thing, but when DPS have positional to account for, an ADHD tank is essentially slowing you down. Turn off the echo if you don’t want it. Set minimum ilvl if you want the real challenge, which is still slightly easier than release.
He can't, free trial can't use party finder to directly instance into a duty with the option on. he can only do duty finder queuing which doesn't let you have min ilvl selected
@@sibbyXIII To be completely fair, he's clearly got a lot of content out of a free trial xD If he can't find it in him to buy it after all that, I'm not sure what to tell the guy. I do hope he joins eventually though, I want everyone to get all the enjoyment they can out of this game!
My friend will turn a boss in completely stationary fights constantly in order to "keep himself on his toes." I used to do that in WoW, and it wasn't a good idea then, but it's obviously not a good idea to turne more than you need to in FF14 which has a lot more positionals. I wish more tanks would consider clustering mechanics, though, and try to position enemies for circle, cone, and line aoes.
Desperately feel like this needs pointing out, but the Echo mechanic isn't a reward- it's a crutch to help you if you have trouble with any boss that isn't "current content", so you don't get locked out from getting to the endgame. The Echo isn't present in current tier trials until a couple of weeks before a new MSQ patch, and you can turn it off on older content if you want or run trials as Min iLVL to maintain the challenge
I was the same as you on lalafells at first, but now I am petting them each time I have the chance. Honestly a great video from the perspective of a Free Trial player, tho even with the same hours I have compared to yours (Subbed for around 1350 hrs) there is still so much to still learn from the game, now I need to complete the beast tribes for that certain cutscene lol There is one thing you might not know bout tab targeting, it has a bunch of options/keybinds you can change, I have my mouse side buttons for targeting nearest to the other button circle targeting. Theres also the enemy list on your ui you can click and can target an enemy that you can tell isn't aggro whilst playing as a tank. I do agree ARR is kinda slow but not unenjoyable, I recommend playing with a friend as your first time, tho I don't have any issue playing alone on my second run with my alt. But either you pay for the sub and the other expansions or not, never say never, the meme selling is on point and the post ARR content leading up to Heavensward convinced me to buy my sub and the content after Heavensward has been worth every penny.
If I do end up playing again after Endwalker comes out, I'll probably try it out on controller just because I am curious to see how it feels, although it is good to know about the tab target options. I will however, never, ever trust a lalafell.
@@SwanCC , controller is meh. I mainly play with it, but have raided with mouse and kb. In some things I like controller better, in others I like kb+mouse.
This game taught me that I enjoy the game still can outside of battles. There’s collectibles, leveling uo your squaldrons, mini games in gold saucer, crafting and gathering
You have potential for larger viewership. Might have to do with video time. Maybe if you had broken this up into episodes the short attention spans might have watched. My personal critique is as follows: I tend to agree with the criticism of ARR and the MSQ seeming like a chore. Personally I skipped all of the story til Shadowbringers. I have over 5k hrs of playtime btw, so everything you've talked about in this video I did while it was current, and let me tell you it wasn't much different even with access to the mb back then. 2ndly, the main issue with the MSQ and its chorelike approach is only such when your attention is elsewhere. For example, I recently replayed through the entire ARR and HW expansions as lore prep for EW, and since I am no longer in the raiding scene, that playthrough was much more measured and not rushed in the least. What I found was that ARR was actually a very pleasant experience when you don't have anywhere to be or people to meet (in game). Rewatching cutscenes at the inn does not do the story justice. Trust me, I did it that way all the way through to 5.0. Since going back and playing through it again in NG+, I would say it's probably better to experience it correctly the first time through, but I was able to still have an amazing experience as an OP max leveled WoL soloing everything unsynced. Regardless, your criticisms are far from contrarian indeed, and your experience would be far more enriched by the likes of Eureka, Bozjan, and the whole community aspect within an fc. Here's hoping to see you in EW.
I have been playing the free trial for like two years. I got all battle and crafting/gathering classes to lvl 60. Got a Zeta weapon (not doing that again anytime soon). Got almost all anima weapons. Finished all trials and raids on mil ne, progressing Alexander Savage at the moment. I wasn't going to subscribe to the game. Alex Savage was going to be the last thing that I do. But the thing that made me finally buy the game was that I found awesome people (some of them also free trials) whom I started to constantly hang out with. So the game didn't make me subscribe, the community did. The developers should remember that and take it to heart. Cheers from Light Twintania.
I like to imagine my man just "sampling" free pepperoni for a thousand hours in a supermarket
I enter hungry, I leave happy.
Life hack for free food
Yeah, he is not supporting the game and cheating himself of some awesome story that Yoshida put his heart and soul into. It's just like the fact that visual novels can be skipped and you only need to spend three minutes watching text flash by. I bet the creators of those novels are screaming when they find out that 99% of their readers don't actually read the story and just want to complete it for the trophies. :(
Sadly, we can't take this guy to court because technically he's not breaking any laws. If this guy tried to live on the free trial of Wizard101, he'd quit the game in frustration due to the free trial being... well, rather small. XD
@cj_skywalker After he hit level 60 he has to pay a subsciption. That supports the game
@@whowantsmypants8888 No, he doesn't. He just can't do any content after 3.55. He can rerun dungeons, trials and raids in ARRR and Heavensward. If you mean he is disabled from gaining EXP, that's not his worry as nothing inHeavensward requires you to be over Level 60.
Feedback regarding Echo - its introduced only on older content and never "current content" - to make it easier for players to catch up and clear older fights.
There's always the option to turn it off in pre-formed groups, doing some of the older content with "Minimal Item Level, No Echo" (MINE) can still be challenge even with some job ability/potency changes :D
There’s a legendary free trial player on my server who has all jobs capped at 60, relics complete on every job, and even has The Necromancer title for soloing palace of the dead to floor 200. Absolute mad lad. See them at ARR hunts pretty often.
Edit: I finally found the player name! It's Estelle Bright, they are on the Aether datacenter, on the Siren server.
Edit 2: NOT ONLY do they have everything unlocked and have The Necromancer, they also have the highest score on the entire datacenter for Palace of the Dead in a party
I heard of this player, I can't for the life of me remember their name though ^^;
i need to know his name lol
There's a guy who isn't in Free Trial, but has been a sprout for more than 570 days of playtime in Sargatanas.
@@Hambs23 pretty sure that’s not possible unless they’re a free trial player or they racked up most of that time as a free trial player and then switched
@@extrathicc78 It is possible. You just need to not progress enough on MSQ. You only stop being a sprout after playing a certain amount of hours and reaching the latest expansion.
I spent a 1000 hours trying to sign in for the free trial
Right? I ended up just buying the game since I figured I’d enjoy it anyway. I love it. Bought the entry version for my brother so he could try it when the dang free-trial launcher bugged out on him too.
same. I spent another 1000 on the download....
Same had to make another profile
😂😂😂
Just dont forget to register your account as Free Trial, please.
Sincerely, someone who's friend nearly dropped the game after spending actual days trying to log in. I asked multiple forums worried it was a region issue. Eventually learned they didnt click the big "Sign Up for the Free Trial!" button and got it sorted in 15 seconds.
This guy really got an Anima and a Zeta on a free trial character, MAD MAN.
i did too
it was pain
but fun pain
@@lautarotrefilio4773 same here....
Good job.
Yeah. Me too. Got 2 anima and a Zeta as a free trial
Anima is fine.. just time bottlenecked by tomes, Zeta is a nightmare grind though takes less time if you stick to it
My brother did too. He wasn't on free trial but still got a zeta on level 50(dragoon).
And he also had many level 50 crafter classes.
People can really play this game in many different ways
Initially, I watched this before playing FFXIV, I was considering playing it because MMO and Final Fantasy. Now, 5 months after starting to play and 700 hours of play time I finally reached stormblood and I fully understand this vid.
Following the MSQ through all expansions could be a bit overwhelming make sure you don’t get burnt out. The best experiences is still ahead with Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Have fun! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@@dreamer6737 really hard not to have fun playing this game and I'll do my best not to get burntout
Just finished 4.0. 👌 good expac
@@celalshakon Did you finish endwalker? :D
@@Grimmm233 i have finished endwalker and done a lot more since then, very excited for dawntrail. FF has become my most played game and one of my favourites ever.
Damn, 2000+ views, that's kind of nuts to me considering I stopped trying to promote this a while ago. Can't thank you enough for all the feedback, I'm really happy to see that this video wasn't executed on arrival despite a lot of the comments pointing out stuff that I missed. I appreciate it a lot.
P.S. Honestly, if I was aware of the Trust System before making this video, I probably would have cut that part out entirely as it sits kinda weakly as an argument considering Yoshi-P has acknowledged wanted to implement it in earlier content. I wanna chalk it up to me not wanting to spoil stuff by looking it up, but honestly it was just lazy research on my end.
P.P.S. Holy shit, that's over 100k.
Wtf the pepperoni was a lie?
It's kinda crazy how accepting the ffxiv community is, criticism is actually taken with some thought, there's always a few bad apples, but most games if you say something bad about their game people get really defensive. also with tab targeting press F1 then tab and it will target what you're looking towards.
I think your comment on the wish to be able to run dungeons with a party of NPCs still has a place in your video. Even if it's true that you are able to run, even repeatedly, later dungeons with a party of NPCs of your chosing, your comment is still relevant to the contents of the free trial, which you clearly pointed out at the start of the video.
I am honestly more surprised they didn't go back to include this system into the early parts of the game in one way or another. Trust system comes with special dialogue and even voiced lines for the party members, which obvisouly takes up some development time and brings its degree of costs to the table, but I feel like they could still pull it off even in some limited fashion, so it could really be played like a singleplayer RPG through and through.
Great video BTW! I am tempted to get you the game and at least 6 months of sub so you could experience more of it, if you don't feel like you're done with the game, hit me up.
@@Kujar3Player to some degree, they already have that in squadrons. Admittedly, the ai is awful, it unlocks very late and only does specific dungeons between 20 and 60, but once they’re leveled up their buffs make squadrons faster than a speedrunning group of real players. As I recall, the explanation for shit they are was mostly that a lot of the arr dungeons are repurposed 1.0 dungeons- which makes the spaghetti code of 2.0 look good - and that actually fixing it would be a major issue, so they bandaided with more hp and damage on the npcs lol
I still think that it would be worth improving, as well as adding sb‘s dungeons to either squadrons or trusts.
YOU said you got to lv 50 ? this may be a spoilor of sorts so ill try not to but the GRAND COMPANIES ARE THROUGHOUT THE STORYLINE not just something you have to join to get your mount ,there are several times you are forced ti choose what way the story goes, in one of the situations i had with a gand company allience when they all work together finally around lv 60 i had to choose out of 3 options and decieded to help the friends in doma, and im so glad i did i am now in the far east a japanese looking city about to leave that city on another boat to another place...grand companies ARE A BIG PART OF THE STORY so far in mine and im lv 66 white mage at this stage,doing stormblood storyline
Stumbled upon this video randomly and thought you might like to know that Stormblood is now being added to the free trial (sometime this year with 6.5) :) Glad you enjoyed it and I also agree that the music in this game is awesome! The ARR quest line is annoying near the end for sure and that gave me a tough time when I first started playing because I really wanted to get to where my friend was in the game. They ended up quitting before I made it to them since they only did end game stuff and went back to WoW. I stayed and just made a new character on another random server and made friends along the way.
I bought the game, didn't know about the free trial, lol.
in another video someone said that the producers might give shadowbiders for free in a few years, not sure if its true
Thinking of starting because i can try samurai now
@@topek1196 - you have to reach level 50 on a class to unlock it but it's not too rough. Hope you are playing and having a great time!
36:59 There's actually a reason why you can't skip those cutscenes. See, back before Shadowbringers, you COULD skip all those cutscenes, but that meant that players that were legitimately invested in the story and wanted to view all the cutscenes were left behind by the people just trying to speedrun the main scenario roulette. Square introduced that change so those players wouldn't get left behind and could actually play the game. EDIT The Crystal Tower Raids are the only mandatory ones, and were only made so at the start of Shadowbringers since there are plotlines that you WILL not get if you haven't done those raids.
As an addition to this, the rewards are so high *because* of the time investment, and there were points where people would KICK NEW PLAYERS because it was slowing down their runs. While I get not liking the changes into having forced cutscene viewing, it was 100% required. They've learned from this (mostly) and it doesn't, for the most part, come up again, but they haven't been able to justify putting more time into fixing these two (and to a lesser extent, Cape Westwind).
My first time in the Praetorium was before they become unskippable, it was such a bad experience I took a year off from the game
@@BlueMageDaisen I'm sorry that happened dude, I actually think the best thing they did was make the cutscenes unskippable. Did you start playing again?
@@AzazelSylphson yup. Over 7000 hours on record now and not a single similar bad experience!
I was super lucky to be in a party of 6 new sprouts in Castrum as a sprout myself and the more experienced tank who joined us at the time was ok with waiting while we watched the cutscenes. I think having this experience made going through Prae with the skippers running ahead much more tolerable for me (I still watched the cutscenes, did not regret missing the boss fights that burned down in seconds anyways) and I'm glad it didn't sour the experience overall.
I will say, Limsa is probably the most populated starting city simply because of the proximity of the marketboard/summoning bells to the main aetheryte.
I have rather long load times so acessing the market board in Uldah and Gridania can take a while compared to Limsa.
Unless you're on Balmung or Mateus in which case you can see similar numbers in Ul'dah from time to time
@@Hirotoro4692 That's because those people are there for something completely different lol.
I realize that you can't get there on the free trial. But they expand upon that "doing content alone with NPCs" later on in shadowbringers and even into endwalker, releasing a system called "Trust" where you take story NPCs through the dungeon.
I'm a bit embarrassed to learn about this after the fact, although in a way it helps me to feel a little validated. I thought I might've been blowing wind out my ass when I wrote that section, but its really cool to see how they are implementing the idea. Honestly, it's the sort of thing that would get me to purchase the full game.
@@SwanCC Yep! I was gonna mention that comment - Your opinion isnt wrong but they did add it in Shadowbringers but said they wouldnt be able to do it for previous expansions because of the ammount of Development it requires to do it. So Shadowbringers and moving forward we have the Trust system and its great! As a dps I could do instant queue and just it at my pace and not be stressed.
Part of the reason the devs said they added the feature was because of player anxiety and devs knowing there are some players that really enjoy doing as much as possible solo. (No 8man Trust systems yet though, so still need to queue) but they also wanted the NPCs to feel more involved and part of the story with you, like previous FF Games were the npcs all had their own personality as you play through.
@@Zeet1 as soon as you mention the NPC personalities, I remember there is dungeon in Shadowbringers that if you take different Trust member, they will act differently. I took Thancred, Urianger and Yshtola.
Y'shtola was like: "this is nothing to me" and walk through the path like a sassy lady.
Thancred was like: "let's see my ninja move even though I'm a gunbreaker".
And Urianger was like: "hmmm, I just teleport there, too ez"
@@SwanCC I'll add that by EW there were some of these dungeons and trials that I felt you simply HAD to do with NPC trusts the first time for story and RP immersion so they have been improving on it greatly.
@@Zeet1 Actually there is one 8 man trust fight at level 89. the others you have to fight with people though.
Considering how much you love other FF games, I think you'd really really love what the other expansions have in store for you. There is also a reason why the crystal tower is mandatory.
If it wasn't for this vid, I would not have given ff14 a chance, I seriously have been addicted for the past couple days, thanks!
This is honestly one of the nicest and most unexpected comments that I never expected to read. Cheers man, this made my day.
I'm glad I started playing 2013 I was introduced by a friend and I couldn't stop playing now I'm at endwalker and the story has me crying, this damn storyline FFXIV has has it tugging at my heart strings 😭
Welcome to the big big family! We hope you enjoy your stay :D
Ayye! What server you on?
i just started 3 days ago and cant stop. I can relate. Been a blast
I want to see an updated Stormblood version. Probably one of my favourite pieces of UA-cam content ever. It's a very minimalist way of playing. I was inspired to play free trial again recently and keep it that way.
Fun fact: PreShadowbringers it was MUCH harder to maintain aggro and the DPS/Healers would have to use antiaggro abilities or stuff that would lower enmity. Most raids DPS would prepop their diversion(their 90% aggro lowering ability) while the tank would get aggro then turn their tank stance off since it lowered their DPS.
wow that sounds super unfun :D
@@ETIENNELIVE I find the new system much less fun and braindead. Apparently I'm in the minority though since more people are playing tank now.
@@carstan62 you are the only person I have ever met that hates the way tanking is now. I never even fathomed that anyone hated how tanks are now.
Honestly I miss those days too, it was a much more engaging system that really seperated the good from the great, though I won't deny tanking is much more approchable now
@@carstan62 imo tank gameplay should be more about damage midigation than capping how much the rest of your party can do
Almost a year later and FF14 now gives you the option of playing through dungeons in ARR and Heavensward with a party of NPCs!
So I can actually give a bit of light on the castrum/prae thing, it didn't always used to be like that the cutscenes used to be skipable so u could just slog right through in no time and we did, But what this caused was new people running it for the first time which there is normally atleast 1 (as the roulette usually puts you in a group with someone queing for it to cut down on que times) would either have to skip all the cutscenes and keep up or they would leave a cutscene to be greeted with another cutscene and see little to no combat. so what they did was up the exp drastically for your time investment and make them unskipable. so now u will see atleast half a levels worth of exp for msq roulette but it used to be like 1/4 maybe or less. it might not make u like them more, but atleast you might understand why they're that way.
As a new player myself, I wish that they'd just... redo the story so that there aren't so many cutscenes in those dungeons. ARR had a terrible story anyway (at least until the Garlemald stuff is finished - I really enjoyed the refugee storyline and the stuff with Shiva was a good setup for HW). You can have all of the same material paced in a much better fashion in ARR, but they botched the job.
@@TheWickedWizardOfOz1 I agree and they are trying their best to cut fat where they can, believe it or not arr used to be longer than it is now, in shadowbringers we had a patch where they reduced the quest by 13% and simplified a lot of the cutscenes/quests unfortunately arr is a product of it's time and they don't really have the scheduling time or expense to go back and remake a whole expansion even now while they are working on patches to endwalker they are prob also simultaneously working on the next expansion also we used to not be able to fly in arr zone, that is actually the reason why "all mounts can fly" because you didnt unlock flight until heavensward thats why you get a black chocobo cause it is capable of flight while ur company one is not. flying in itself cutsdown so much of travel in arr. so they got rid of the (flying mounts) (non flying mounts) thing so that newer players could fly through arr zones earlier and not be mount gated. arr is in a waayy better spot right now and im sure they will continue to improve it as they can.
@@Airlinecuisine No one ever liked unskippable cutscenes, so "product of the time" is not a good argument.
@@5chneemensch138 I'm not making a product of it's time arguement i'm making a literally they made them unskipable so new players dont feel like they have to miss the story to keep up with the party. this isnt a product of its time thing this would lit still happen today if they made them skipable.
@@Airlinecuisine Work on your sentences, I can barely make out anything you just said.
And no, your argument is that unskippable cutscenes are a product of the time.
And no, people can watch the cutscenes and not be left behind. It's called automatic
teleport.
And no, new people will be left behind regardless because everything will be dead before they even realize wtf is going on.
There is no justifyable reason to not be able to skip cutscenes.
A BIG thing I noticed while watching is your remark on paladin, I’ve gotta let you know that paladin does not have cast bars in most cases of gameplay. The main time you would ever actively use the cast bar is between level 64 and 67, when you get Holy Spirit but don’t have requiescat yet. Requiescat is a cooldown to remove cast times and double spell potency. It feels fine to play, the only time you use cast bars in content outside that small area is ranged damage when you have to be away from a boss or healing someone that would otherwise die. Cast bars basically don’t actually take place in normal paladin play.
When it comes to tab targeting and your character snapping to face your target when you use an ability, did you check your character settings? You can turn the "face target" off, and there's also two versions of tab targeting that either select the enemy by proximity or from left to right according to what you can see on your screen. Still not perfect but... options!
there's also a keybind for "target nearest enemy" which i use a lot when i want to snap back to the most immidiete threat (or just re-target an enemy after having had to target a teammate)
Weirdly enough, I turned "face target" off for one dungeon run and thought I was lagging because sometimes I couldn't use my GCD's at all. I realized near the end that this is because you have to face enemies to use a lot of abilities/skills, so if I backed up at all then I just couldn't do anything until I turned back around. Maybe this works differently if you're on the default movement controls, but I turned it right back on after that.
legacy movement controls are objectively better for combat
This is the video that made me finally actually jump into ffxiv. I'm absolutely loving it, so cheers for the new addiction!
Your criticisms of ARR are fair and valid. It's not for EVERYONE. Great video. Echo is meant for casual players to experience the story around the raids and keep the queues active. With party finder tool you can turn echo off :)
I think you are absolutely right with the pacing and just doing dungeons without a queue. In Shadowbringers they introduced the Trust system, which is doing exactly what you mentioned: with a group of the NPCs important to the story, especially in Endwalker I feel like they got it so much better even. One dungeon outright feels criminal to do without trusts as it gives a looot of insight into the characters if you pay attention. Great video, big thumbs up.
Genuinely interesting things you keep pointing in this video. I also envy how much value you're getting from the free trial.
The 300k gil limit and my mind thinking I'm 'wasting' gil and exp made me bite the bullet so early in the free trial. I do have a little regret for doing that to this day, wished I stuck out the free trial a bit longer
Was pleasantly surprised to see the lines of DRKs standing in vigil for Kentaro Miura when you mentioned the game's community.
I started playing back at around the launch of 3.2 and I remember very early on, someone saw I was a sprout and crafted me a whole set of HQ armor for my level. People in this game mostly want other players to have a good time and it's a nice thing to see. Most people I know who came from WoW are surprised at how much more relaxed and open the community is overall.
11:40 I had the same exact movement problem when starting warrior. That was until someone told me about Legacy Movement in the character settings. I, too, was about 1,000 hours in before I knew it was even a thing. And another 1,000 hours later I haven't even considered reverting to the default movement.
6 year veteran and I only use legacy camera.
It's impossible to kite with a ranged damage class without using Legacy Movement mode :O
Yeah legacy is way better imo. Also there are things you can do to make tab targeting easier as well as key binding a target nearest button
@@SonyUSA It's not impossible. Just hold mouse 1 to keep the camera in place and input movement after using a skill.
When starting as a dragoon, I considered switching between the two modes. That was, until I realized dragoon’s backwards jump would be tied to the character’s direction and I’d have to press S and the keybind. I thought it was too much hassle, so I never did it.
Holding right click keeps your camera steady, but you’d have to move the camera as well while you’re doing any skills. It’s a minor annoyance, but as I’m used to it, it’s hardly even conscious now.
I spent like 800 hours on free trial too lol, not a single bit of regret, just bought the game and stormblood is pog
Stormblood is now free with the trial version in October lol
This is actually super helpful, unfortunately I'm not at a place to afford the expansion and subscription though I've spent so much on final fantasy 14 already. The fact that you were able to spend so much time on the current trial is a plus for me, since I started a new character that's fully F2p. As a plus, since I started in SHB it actually gives me real time with older content.
I did do endgame stuff at 80 but it also gave me crazy anxiety, older players got to play through each expansion at the current level, but honestly the opportunity to be capped at 60 for a while actually helps ease me back into the game and master my classes, I used to barely even be able to play raids/dungeons with others due to my anxiety but FFXIV has helped me a lot with that.
I can see your point on the story. It's unusual for an MMO, but it's what keeps me in the game! Before FFXIV, no other MMO managed to grab my attention - they all felt so pointless. Without a main story and plot it's all just a grind.
I totally get how you feel. I loved WoW for a long time but I forced myself to by researching the lore of the world and speculating on what could happen next; in FFXIV I don't need to do any of that, the story gives me so much more information, and my worth in it is so much more obvious.
Ngl, the main story is so boring, at least where I'm up to (I just helped recover the sultana's crown or some shit) it's all just been a bunch of busy work and has barely focused on the actual intresting part with the crystals, the dark mage guy, and me being some kidn of chosen one (which I have no idea where tf that shit came from, mfs just started saying I was special). I came into this because people were jerking the story off but I'm hours in and it's nothing special, shit i'd call it below average right now. The only thing keeping me is the combat and the intresting game systems like being able to be whateer class which I look forward to.
Idk I'd rather watch a movie or atleast play an interactive story game like swtor or single player game, really no point of the story in ffxiv, esp considering it is like 95% not voice acted.
Try SWTOR
@@styxzero1675 Tell me you've not made it far in the story without telling me you haven't made it far in the story.
They used to have skippable cut scenes in the Praetorium. It was great for returning players grinding for gear. It was hell for a first time player. You would go from a cutscene to a cutscene as your group was already halfway through the scenario. Oh and there were even more quest post ARR. They cut up to 30 percent.
Echo can be switched off, but I guess that would require full account.
pretty sure for echo you can disable it by rightclicking the buff on the bar, just like any other one.
Understanding this aspect of Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum is very important, because it allows you to understand that the fact that they're required content that essentially boil down to hour-long unskippable cutscenes is the SPECIFIC REASON the rewards for Main Scenario Roulette are so good in the first place. It's an incentive to get existing players to keep doing those two duties, so that new players don't have to spend 3 hours in a queue to run them only to get matched with seven other newbies and then they wipe and have to queue for another 3 hours to try again. Asking to be given the same rewards but changing the content is really putting the cart before the horse.
It's not a perfect solution but this is also the oldest, worst part of an old game built from the ashes of an even older, MUCH worse game.
He was right at the beginning of the video: this isn't a review of FFXIV. It's a review of the worst parts of FFXIV still actively playable (Heavensward's MSQ aside). I'm not saying his points and opinions are invalid, simply that they are neither revelatory nor useful as the devs have already done just about everything they can to address them, whether in future content or by making changes to previous content (as far as they can short of a complete rework of the 1-50 content, which based on several recent comments by Yoshi-P, I suspect is in the works).
@@ValkyrieTiara I still recall castrum and prae before msq roulette was a thing. I never ended up getting a queue, I was carried through by my fc after whining about a 3 hour queue lol
My girl is laying on me trying to sleep and you got me cracking tf up. Good video dude 10/10
Veteran player here! I usually don't comment on videos like these, but I really felt like I had to.
This video seems so absolutely genuine and I enjoyed hearing your criticisms a lot. I know people have already pointed out the Trust system and expanded targeting, but since you're a big FF fan and mentioned ARR pumping out some of the most memorable characters - as well as primals being incredibly interesting to you - I'd like to tell you (spoiler free) that it dips into so, so, so much more FF fanservice in some of the most incredible ways!
I understand that you said you likely won't buy the game, but I personally feel that buying it would be an amazing decision for you, as this game has so much more to offer you, so much less jank, so many incredibly little community gems and so much more incredible FF story to unfold! The extent in which they bring back old FF characters, music and references is mindblowing!
I sincerely hope you'll one day get to visit people in the housing ward system and join one of the many house parties or nightclubs, and maybe one day join us in hunt trains or fate-spawning- oh, and of course doing blind runs of FRESH brutal content!
sub fee just doesn't work in video games it almost doesn't work even in real life things so it's a big no and impossible for 50% of the population in general gaming to even check something out that's locked behind a sub fee
@@alpharad4513I just don’t get why I have to pay $60 for the game AND $13 monthly after that. Either charge me $60 or charge me for a sub. This is the only thing that’s turned me away from playing. It looks like a great game though.
I did a Zodiac ages ago, back before Heavensward came out, so I thought I was prepared for what you'd have to say about it.
When I realized as a free trial player, you had to spiritbond all that materia yourself, it was like being hit by a truck.
My condolences.
You mean he had to craft the materia himself, even as a sub you still have to bond the materia to the weapon yourself….
@@MIAsuxdonkey "spiritbonding" is the system where you build up a meter on your gear and get a materia when it's done
@@MIAsuxdonkey nope, he's correct, spiritbond, by doing stuff with the item equipped you get to spiritbond and when full gives u a random materia that is within the rank of the spiritbound armor.
Fantastic video! It's really nice to see the perspective of a free trial player actually doing everything, I feel like most free trialers either quit or buy the game early bc the gated systems really suck.
I will say you've only scratched the surface when it comes to raiding content and dungeons though and I hope someday you take the plunge into the rest of the game bc there is a very noticeable jump in quality in every expansion.
Just found out your video as recommended and I am still at the first minutes but must say your character aesthetics considering a Warrior and the thought of thinking about all this during the creation was awesome and inspiring.
You have really fair and balanced opinions, it's always appreciated to hear someones honest thoughts that aren't just relentlessly hating/praising things. You kept it level in this video
As a new free trial player, I was drawn to your video to see just how far I could take it. Thanks for sharing all of that.
I'm also wary of locking my free play away, and wonder if there's a legit way to have a second non-free account which I occasionally pay or lapse, depending on level of interest.
Like you, I find myself speeding through the story quests - with my friends barely involved in my gameplay at all, except as vastly over-levelled world map helpers, or dungeon buddies. It doesn't feel right at all, making them plus-ones in my hero arc. I hope they are re-living some of the magic of their first time through me, at least.
you can have as many free trials as you want. Just make a new Square Enix account. You will have to play through the game again but it's definitely a thing. Also the game is much easier when you are playing the game after paying for the sub as you will have more free acess to the stuff so getting caught up on a new character is not hard at all.
Nice video. I'm just now approaching 500 hours after about 2 months of playing and I can tell we've had similar experiences in dungeon groups.
Amen brother. I hope you've had better endgame trial experiences than me, cause I omitted a few spicy stories involving some mentors.
the fact that pso e1&2 is your favorite game of all time is proof you have good taste. what an amazing game. i still jump on blueburst pservers to this day to get my nostalgia fix.
Good video, I spent a fairly long time in the trial before buying the game so it was interesting to see someone take it way further than I did. I mean, I currently have 1000+ hours in the game AFTER finishing Shadowbringers, so its kinda wild that you've put even more time into it than I have and haven't even gotten to Stormblood yet. I think it's a testament to how much content is in the game and how much value it offers to the player.
People who spend 1000+ hours in a trial are like those people who save paper napkins to reuse several times.
Well done! Truly impressive what you were able to do in the free trial. I hope one day you'll subscribe because Shadowbringers was a real treat. Keep up the good work!
It's cool how you said about wanting story dungeons to be able to be done solo with NPCs, similar to doing them with your Squadron, and then they later on add exactly that feature.
There's a system that started since Shadowbringers called "Trusts".
Let's you run all recent dungeons with story npcs that are programed pretty well for all the dungeons.
Yoshi P did mention at one point he wants to revisit squadron AI at some point to make it similar to Trusts.
they are programmed "pretty well" if you enjoy single pulling packs and your allies not using aoe
@@percocetthirty I managed to force bigger pulls while playing healer but yeah you're right, AI kinda sucks for anything more than a more immersive first run with no queues
bro what a splendid video, I DIED with laughter at that fashion sequence and scene. I think I need to give this game another go though
A few months back, I met a free trial only player who had all combat/crafting/gathering jobs at 60 in a duty, and I had to go check it just to make sure this wasn't the same guy, but they've got different names. Kind of surprising to find out these madlads actually exist and stick with the free trial for so long.
Realistically it might be someone who has no financial ability to dip into paid content
@@QuantumFishFTW iirc, he said he was going to buy the game itself eventually, but he wanted to finish literally everything he could on the free trial first, including the relics for all jobs.
@@tciddadoshow did he speak to you considering you can't use chat as free to play
@@juannito6318 Not entirely true, check the free trial rules, the free trial restrictions are for shout, yell and tell (the chat modes RMT use to reach a lot of people). This was party chat during a Xelphatol(I think?) run.
@@tciddados oh shit so there us ways to communicate with people as free to play i didn't know
it's hard for me to even watch 10 minute videos, yet you captured my complete attention for 50 whole minutes. would love to see your take on later expansions, especially since the game only gets better.
Fellow titan appreciator. To this day still one of my absolute favourite fights. I think the Titan fight is where I originally fell in love with this game
I never cared about Titan in any of the Final Fantasy games until this one. Now I am your average Titan enjoyer.
This was really cool to see the perspective of a trail player and the systems you have grinded that I have largely ignored or breezed through because of the market board
With the grand company ranks it's not that simple. They were not "strictly" abandoned, more like you ascended as much as the story wanted you to. The top ranks are reserved for story NPCs to give orders to you. It would make no sense if you were Grand Admiral and Merlwyb would be a rank under you or in case of Raubahn if you were the Flame General and barked orders at him. On the other hand they didn't bother to iterate the feature further for the following expansions, as you toil more for the scions and not for the city states themselves anymore.
There's no grand admiral rank or even close. Highest is marshal. Although the ranks above Captain are infinitely unused we can't say that won't ever change, nor can we say they are strictly "just for show". They probably had intent to use them originally and just kept them in "just in case".
The feature was probably eschewed further iteration for more than just story reason -- they most likely figures from a gameplay standpoint it was getting stale too.
This is an insanely polished and well-made video man, enjoyed every second of it
When the trial goes to 70 you will be able to solo Bahamut. It will still be quite challenging.
Really can't wait till free trial players at lv 70 will be able to solo ARR stuff more efficiently.
You are CRAZY dedicated and I love it, thanks for all the inspiration ☆
Just saying, the 2 last expansions are one of the must experience experiences out there. Highly reccomend to get it
My sister and I played together about a year and a half ago, but we both stopped as other things became important in our lives. My sister had picked it back up, so naturally I joined the game again with a new character and attempted to get further so we could spend time together in-game. However, I personally find the story captivating and love the world building. It has so much history and so much life to it that I don't find it tedious at all. I've kept myself at a good pace, stopping after maybe 5-10 quests during a typical gaming day so I don't get burnt out. I'm well into Stormblood now and LOVE IT. The story just keeps getting better and better, but if you don't love the story then it can be really daunting to look at the list of hundreds of quests you'll need to do and decide to quit. For me, this game is my favorite and the only one whose story has truly kept me reading rather than skipping text.
Someone else has probably already mentioned it, but Echo is never applies to whatever the current endgame is. It gets added to older content to make it easier for people who might be struggling to get clears. But theres also an option in your Duty Finder settings to turn the Echo off
I didn't think I'd be able to watch a yt video for that long but I thoroughly enjoyed, and am even more hyped to play ffxiv than Ive been for the past couple of days
If you're a new player wanting to play with your friends who play at end game, it's probably best that, instead of playing with your friends at end game, your friends could play with you at whatever level content that you are at.
Yup. I love helping sprouts with low level dungeons. Much more enjoyable with running high end duties with people who jump straght in after boosting.
What a well made video. You clearly put a lot of time and care into this and I enjoyed every second of it. Looking forward to flipping through the rest of your content o/
You actually don't stand still to cast as a Paladin generally, and you also don't use your magic damage abilities until level 68 anyway; both because of Requiescat. In addition to generating your buff window for magic damage, Requiescat removes the cast time. With it, you don't need to stand still. Without it, you don't usually use Holy Spirit.
I've put in somewhere between 200-300 hours myself on the free trial. I've determined that the extreme trials and relic weapons aren't for me, it's just too tedious when you're playing without friends.
I wouldn't mind getting more into crafting, but it feels impossible with how limited your inventory is. Admittedly part of that is my own fault for hanging onto items that I plan to sell on the market board once I do eventually pay for the game, but you make an interesting point in the video about not wanting to lock the character behind a paywall. Even if I do decide to sub, would missing out on selling strength tonics and dyes at a slightly higher price really be worth sacrificing my current inventory space?
Anyway I'm rambling. The main thing that puts me off wanting to sub is that it's a timed recurring payment. With the free trial I can take my time doing everything. My current goal is to get all the battle jobs up to 60, which has been an off and on process as my interest for this game waxes and wanes.
I'd honestly recommend the game cards to an extent. You don't have to worry about recurring payment and can just slam down 2 months or so guilt free, and for me the playtime I get in those two months is far more than most $40 games I would buy anyway. Highly recommend
You'd be surprised how much of that modern attire stuff isn't from the cash shop. Many are rare drops from various side systems or just crafts with very expensive endgame materials. Many are from events. Nier raids and other crossovers, etc... Several even come from desynthesizing rare fish.
That was pretty funny; I’m pretty sure the bit where he said “it’s from the cash shop” was over an image of some guy in a glamour from the msq. The scion adventurer’s set, maybe?
@@FirelighttheKing Gave me a good chuckle as well. Probably wasn't intentional and is just him not knowing where those items come from.
As a side note:
Top: Scion Adverturer's Jacket acquired through lvl 60 MSQ
Bottoms: Peacelover's Pantaloons acquired through Ishgard Restoration Fetes or the MB
Boots: Anemos Expeditionary's Boots acquired through Eureka: Anemos or MB
Thanks so much for the video! Very impressed with all you have accomplished (you've seen and done a lot in this game that a lot of people that have been playing and paying a sub from the start never have), and the appreciation for the game that it gave you. As it's been mentioned in other comments, the "Trusts" and "Duty Support" systems has been added to the game (and function similarly to the GC Squadron going with you into dungeons) and is being expanded on in future patches (I think most of ARR is included now, with more to follow), so hopefully one day the entire game (and every fight) can be completed with a party of NPCs, for those who want to just play the story like a single player RPG. I'm a big fan of the idea cause I agree, there are times where I'd rather go on my own a bit slower, and not have to work with a group of other real people. And a bonus is, the NPCs you take have things to say all the way through the dungeons, so it helps keep the immersion of the story a lot, big fan of that!
This is about as close as you can get to being trapped inside a video game, except it's completely self-inflicted
Congrats for this breakthrough on your channel. ♥️
What I love about this game is you see lots of people over and over again like idk the community is its own story I’m new to the game and people I see often be telling me good job and keep it up ask for help if I need it we’ll talk for like 5 mins then I got to my next quest then it repeats it’s amazing
"Why would bird people want a flying machine"
Idk why would humans want cars if we have feet?
I just finished ARR's, and I completed all dungeons on my Scholar. I'm aiming to do all trials now, then see if I can get into Extreme Trials, to start getting those hunting logs for Arcanist and my grand company. After that... The grind to get all classes to lvl 60 begins :) On the side note, I'll probably get all beast tribes reputations as well. I'm not sure about the crafting side of the game, though, mainly because as a free to play user I don't have access to the market.
Gratz on your progress so far. There is SO much content for you to experience still tho….;) Have fun!
Watching this video was like a journey. I love this so much
The raids only became mandatory during the last expansion as they connect heavily to the Shadowbringers story so without the raids people would have very little context for that expansion
Crystal tower was required I think in arr
@@Zaque-TV It only became a requirement with patch 5.3
...HOW THE HELL DO YOU ONLY HAVE 1k subs!!! I thought this was done by someone with 100k+ or more! Dude you have talent! Very engaging! I never played f14, but you made me want to!
36:54 “The rewards for these dungeons are great, but I would rather do the dungeon then watch an hour long cutscene”
Fun fact, back in the day, you used to be able to skip the cutscenes, however what that lead to was vet players skipping them and the new players just stuck watching cutscenes.
In fact, the first time I did it myself, I didn’t get to hit a single enemy because by the time the first cutscene was done, the other players would be running to and beating the next boss and thus triggering another cutscene
Absolutely amazing video. I haven't watched a random 50 minute long video from someone I didn't know until now and this is getting me back into FF14! I've got 125 hours from 2 years ago (around the time this came out) and I don't think I even got close to starting Heavensward :p
Now theres another expansion coming and a lvl cap raise in October to the trial version its literally bigger than basically all aaa paid games its nuts and primal are basically what we final fantasy fans know as aeons
this video had me subscribed and installing the trial in less than 30 minutes. im impressed
he literally has more hours on free trial than me on full game
Imagine the opportunities with the NOW INCLUDED free Stormblood expansion! :P Great video
Happy to see this vid on my recommended. I was always curious about the journey of someone who didn't wanna subject themselves to a monthly sub yet. After finishing the latest expansion I do hope you have the time to enjoy the game to its entirety someday, for it will not disappoint as every aspect of the game just kept improving and adding. Also curious on how your thoughts on the relic grind for Stormblood and Shadowbringer would be as they had a very unique way to on approach acquiring them those expansions that is completely different from ARR and HW.
Done a little bit of everything that you talked about and have only good memories of it.
You made me chuckle. Nice video!
Kinda funny, you point about Dungeons in MSQ and being able to run with NPC's rather than players is a part of the game, but it started in Shadowbringers which obviously isn't in the Free Trial.
He is talking about the grand company unit you can start running at a high enough rank. You can take them into some dungeons which will suck balls because those npcs literally do not perform mechanics unlike the npcs from the later trust system. Ironically this content still was not added until stormbringer.
I love that one of his suggestions about basically a command mission for the dungeons is actually something they implemented later in other expansions.
My one gripe with the game was the Heavensward class quests. Having to grind through ARR to get to Ishgard was a pain. By the time I reached Ishgard, I was 20 levels over the classes, so I had zero reason to drop everything and learn them. Luckily, with all the new expansions, classes are available no matter your point in the story as long as you are the right level. Now I’m almost done with Heavensward and have unlocked every job except Reaper and Sage. One of the best changes they have made honestly.
Your points you made on Castrum and Praetorium having unskippable cutscenes... I'm sure it's been said over and over in these comments but yeah, them being unskippable is the point. It's the big finale of the story for new players, and too often you'll see in other dungeons people skipping cutscenes and not waiting for sprouts to finish theirs before starting a boss fight or something. By making the cutscenes in the finale dungeons unskippable it brings players old and new onto equal footing, so veterans aren't blaming new players for taking too long on a cutscene and sprouts aren't feeling like a burden for wanting to ingest the story, or get left behind by those who've done MSQ roulette 200 times.
If i recall correctly there was a period where you could skip the cutscenes if everyone in your party had done the dungeon before, but that created scenarios where people would instantly leave and re-queue if they found out they were doing an unskippable cutscene run.
"I cant imagine how hard it is to get a dps set from one of these raids"
Good thing most the dps gear in crystal tower is... uh... pretty bad compared to stuff you can get as normal mode gear in trials.
As for the main story quests. ARR is by far the worst offender of having quests that dont really feel because well... they werent initially. Hell some of them still arent. I think the reason is that they do actually want to have a well paced story in ARR but at the same time they are still limited by the quest system in some ways, that or each quest is treated like its own chapter in a book. Its not even that ARR is really that terrible in the first place, hell looking back i actually like the costa del sol quests to show how uptight yshtola is compared to how laid back most other characters felt even with garlemald at their doorstep, or how much they had to chill every now and again just to try and recover from shit that happened only 5 years prior. But i can definitely say that going through it the first time definitely makes you empathize a lot more with yshtola the first time through, even if you barely payed attention to the story and speed read like i did.
As for the crystal tower raids being MSQ required, they did that after they made the crystal tower a LOT more relevant in Shadowbringers.
Completely valid criticisms, but i cant really think of a way for them to improve after they essentially cut off as much of the fat they really could, they even cut off a lot of fat in Praetorium and Castrum in the last update.
When you upgrade, your steam account wont show those 1000 hours as the trial is counted as a separate game, so you'll be logging into your 1000+ hours account, while steam shows 1 minute playtime.
This is a fantastic video, and I'm amazed it only has this many views! I definitely didn't see myself sitting through the whole thing, but you really kept me engaged throughout. I can definitely see this video picking up a lot more traction soon, with the big boom XIV is in right now. Looking forward to more content from you!
3:55 That analogy only works in your incredible case if you were coming back for more pepperoni every 2min with slightly different disguises for weeks at a time... A 1000 hours trial bro... WTH! Why would anyone torture themselves like this, like past the 20 first hours, I would seriously consider a full version just to make my life easier at that point for the next 980 hours.
“Really get a feel for it”… sure, I guess. The feel of the combat massively improves between 60 and 70; the story settles in, and other systems within it get largely developed on. It also sounds like you had a rough time without access to your own party finder groups - another major thing that changes how it feels and plays.
The jobs feel awful and half baked below 70 or 80 depending on the job.
And also - yes. The arr relic is by far the worst of the lot. Lol. I still have my pld books half done in my inventory
Seeing you talk about the other final fantasy’s suggests to me that you would quite probably really enjoy the fanservice in later expacs- there’s one fight in particular, but tbh many of them sound like you’d enjoy them.
Also yes, as pointed out by others, paladin isn’t suppose to be played with holy spirit’s cast timer. It’s a ranged attack when it needs to be before you unlock requiscat, and after that, it’s just a ranged rotation - no for real, paladin is partially a ranged tank. Paladin becomes the most mobile tank in FF because of that trait.
Sooner or later, 7.0 will introduce Stormblood to the Free Trial.
Shadowbringers does actually implement a system called Trusts for running story dungeons with the other important story characters. It works pretty well. The lack of queue time is kind of offset by their slower clear time, but it's a solid option.
To each their own but I feel like you'd be really robbing yourself of a great time if you choose not to buy the full game. Stormblood may have been critisized for its story but I think it made a huge leap in terms of its trials and raids. The Omega raids in particular are fantastic and Ivalice is the most memorable raid I've done in the game. Btw, I'm a player from ARR era and I initially didn't care about the story so I just skipped every singe cutscene and I still had a good time. It's only been since Shadowbringers that I decided to actually pay attention to the story and wowzers, I was super impressed by it. I was drawn in and didn't want to stop playing to see what would happen next. After finishing Shadowbringers, I decided to play New Game + and relive the earlier stories. ARR was definitely moreso a slog, but not necessarily bad. It's writing isn't "exciting" but it is still pretty good. There's a lot of foundation created at the begining of the game. I did Heavensward as well and I was actually slightly let down because it seemed kind of hyped, but I did see how it was leagues better than ARR. I have to say though, I'm almost done with Endwalker, and holy shit did the story just keep getting better and better. So yeah, everyone should play at their own pace. Skip cutscenes if you don't care, you can watch them later. There's no wrong way to play this game except being a brand new player and buying a level skip in a game you don't know how to play. I think everyone should manually level up to max level themselves and let the MSQ guide you through the game and then you can start buying level skips for other classes.
Really sick video. I couldn't resist and had to pre order endwalker for the XP boost earrings. Commendable
Tanks that bounce and move all over the place drive me nuts. Moving out of AoE is one thing, but when DPS have positional to account for, an ADHD tank is essentially slowing you down.
Turn off the echo if you don’t want it. Set minimum ilvl if you want the real challenge, which is still slightly easier than release.
He can't, free trial can't use party finder to directly instance into a duty with the option on. he can only do duty finder queuing which doesn't let you have min ilvl selected
@@sibbyXIII To be completely fair, he's clearly got a lot of content out of a free trial xD If he can't find it in him to buy it after all that, I'm not sure what to tell the guy. I do hope he joins eventually though, I want everyone to get all the enjoyment they can out of this game!
My friend will turn a boss in completely stationary fights constantly in order to "keep himself on his toes." I used to do that in WoW, and it wasn't a good idea then, but it's obviously not a good idea to turne more than you need to in FF14 which has a lot more positionals.
I wish more tanks would consider clustering mechanics, though, and try to position enemies for circle, cone, and line aoes.
Desperately feel like this needs pointing out, but the Echo mechanic isn't a reward- it's a crutch to help you if you have trouble with any boss that isn't "current content", so you don't get locked out from getting to the endgame. The Echo isn't present in current tier trials until a couple of weeks before a new MSQ patch, and you can turn it off on older content if you want or run trials as Min iLVL to maintain the challenge
I was the same as you on lalafells at first, but now I am petting them each time I have the chance. Honestly a great video from the perspective of a Free Trial player, tho even with the same hours I have compared to yours (Subbed for around 1350 hrs) there is still so much to still learn from the game, now I need to complete the beast tribes for that certain cutscene lol
There is one thing you might not know bout tab targeting, it has a bunch of options/keybinds you can change, I have my mouse side buttons for targeting nearest to the other button circle targeting. Theres also the enemy list on your ui you can click and can target an enemy that you can tell isn't aggro whilst playing as a tank.
I do agree ARR is kinda slow but not unenjoyable, I recommend playing with a friend as your first time, tho I don't have any issue playing alone on my second run with my alt. But either you pay for the sub and the other expansions or not, never say never, the meme selling is on point and the post ARR content leading up to Heavensward convinced me to buy my sub and the content after Heavensward has been worth every penny.
If I do end up playing again after Endwalker comes out, I'll probably try it out on controller just because I am curious to see how it feels, although it is good to know about the tab target options. I will however, never, ever trust a lalafell.
@@SwanCC , controller is meh. I mainly play with it, but have raided with mouse and kb. In some things I like controller better, in others I like kb+mouse.
@@SwanCC Not trusting tataru is a sad day indeed.
Free trial player with 700 hours and counting, not stopping until I'm lv 60 on all classes and unlocked all relic weapons.
Minimum Item Level, No Echo. It's not for me, but perhaps that will give you the challenge level you want.
Not really for me anymore. Banging my head into a wall for hours on end doesn't have the appeal it used to.
What is the name of the song that plays during minutes 9:00 to 12:00? I've been searching for it for a long time.
On Windy Meadows, on the Before Meteor Soundtrack. Only plays during the opening cutscene for Limsa.
@@SwanCC Thank you! I think it also plays during one of the first endwalker cutscenes as that is where I renember it from.
You insult and make fun of the Roegadyn, and yet you create a character that may as well be one.
This game taught me that I enjoy the game still can outside of battles. There’s collectibles, leveling uo your squaldrons, mini games in gold saucer, crafting and gathering
You have potential for larger viewership. Might have to do with video time. Maybe if you had broken this up into episodes the short attention spans might have watched.
My personal critique is as follows: I tend to agree with the criticism of ARR and the MSQ seeming like a chore. Personally I skipped all of the story til Shadowbringers. I have over 5k hrs of playtime btw, so everything you've talked about in this video I did while it was current, and let me tell you it wasn't much different even with access to the mb back then. 2ndly, the main issue with the MSQ and its chorelike approach is only such when your attention is elsewhere. For example, I recently replayed through the entire ARR and HW expansions as lore prep for EW, and since I am no longer in the raiding scene, that playthrough was much more measured and not rushed in the least. What I found was that ARR was actually a very pleasant experience when you don't have anywhere to be or people to meet (in game). Rewatching cutscenes at the inn does not do the story justice. Trust me, I did it that way all the way through to 5.0. Since going back and playing through it again in NG+, I would say it's probably better to experience it correctly the first time through, but I was able to still have an amazing experience as an OP max leveled WoL soloing everything unsynced. Regardless, your criticisms are far from contrarian indeed, and your experience would be far more enriched by the likes of Eureka, Bozjan, and the whole community aspect within an fc. Here's hoping to see you in EW.
I have been playing the free trial for like two years. I got all battle and crafting/gathering classes to lvl 60. Got a Zeta weapon (not doing that again anytime soon). Got almost all anima weapons. Finished all trials and raids on mil ne, progressing Alexander Savage at the moment. I wasn't going to subscribe to the game. Alex Savage was going to be the last thing that I do. But the thing that made me finally buy the game was that I found awesome people (some of them also free trials) whom I started to constantly hang out with. So the game didn't make me subscribe, the community did. The developers should remember that and take it to heart. Cheers from Light Twintania.