Don't know why the video is showing incorrect chapters. But here are the correct timestamps if you want to skip around: 00:00 Opening 01:17 The Pitch 01:59 Genre & Setting 04:11 Core Mechanics 08:39 MMO Features on the Tabletop 09:01 Light Party 10:42 Aetheryte Travel 11:51 Titles 13:26 Enmity (Tanking) 14:49 Rotations 16:12 Telegraphing Attacks 19:21 Cutscenes 20:38 Limit Breaks 22:26 System Messages 23:53 Character Creation & Advancement 26:49 Price & Availability 28:20 What's in the Box?? 30:11 Close
I’ve run the starter set a few times now and it’s so fun. I love how they captured the essence of each of the class (even WHM freecure fishing. 😅) I can’t wait for the full ruleset.
I've played a few sessions of this with my PF2e friends on Roll20 and we've been enjoying it a bunch. Pros: - It captures the "feel" very well. The tank feels like they're tanking. The Black Mage feels like they're juggling their AF and UI stances to manage their MP while maximizing damage. The abilities of a TTRPG White Mage lv30 are the exact same ability names and general functionality of an MMO White Mage lv30. - Interesting boss monsters (vanilla or homebrew) can make combat strategic and interesting. The telegraph markers are in theory very easy to dodge, but moving means giving up your Focus activity, and it might also move you away from the relatively small range of the White Mage's AoE healing or the Bard's party buffs. There's a push and pull for staying clumped for player abilities, versus enemy telegraphs forcing players to spread far apart. - There is lore justification for a character to be in possession of multiple "job stones" and character sheets so far are very static. Together, this means that it's very easy for the tank player to change to a caster DPS if they feel bored and want to mix things up, without narratively having to retire Selina the elf fighter and introduce Serin the dwarf cleric. - Very few feels-bad turns. One correction from your video, if the attack roll is a nat20, it's a Critical. If the attack roll exceeds the target's defense, that is a Direct Hit, but otherwise (even on a nat1) they still do the Base Effect. So even that player who complains about having cursed dice will still be doing like 3 points of guaranteed damage, plus effects like a tank generating Enmity on the target, regardless of their dice. - The lowest level character sheet still has like 12 abilities. Even if they have obvious niches like the single-target attack, the AoE attack, the DoT attack, the burst attack... you feel a lot more mechanically engaging than low-level characters in some other systems. You also have multiple different reactions (Instant Abilities) and can use more than one per round, which mean that players end up way more engaged outside of their own turn. Cons: - Number one is absolutely the lack of progression. Unless the full rules add support for this, I can't reward players with a cool magic item, or 500 experience points, or other carrots to make them feel incrementally stronger. You could probably string together a long campaign out of 4hr scenarios like the examples in the Starter Set, but the players would have to understand and accept that they'd gain very few mechanical benefits over the length of that campaign. - Lack of character customization isn't great, but can be offset somewhat by changing jobs regularly. The MMO has 21 or 22 combat jobs, so as more of them are added via official release or homebrew, players can at least experience variety that way. - Mooks are not particularly interesting, so combat interest is massively determined by the special abilities of bosses. Until an official bestiary is released, the GM will need to keep homebrewing interesting boss enemies, since recycling old ones will lose their luster quickly. - Telegraph markers are a bit cumbersome for the GM, even on Roll20. The boss(es) might have one or more telegraphs each, and even some mooks will have a telegraph. So on every enemy turn, you're resolving the old telegraph, removing the marker from the map, rolling normal enemy attacks, and then usually placing down new telegraphs on that same turn. There's probably VTT tricks to do this quickly, but for physical play that's going to be a lot of "lift your token, place it on top of the telegraph, okay now lift your token so i can get rid of the telegraph oh wait there's a new telegraph." I think the telegraph system is interesting and worthwhile and adds something to the game, despite this.
Also: if at all possible, play on bigger maps than those packaged with the game. I doubled the map size from 8x8 to 16x16 and it massively improved the player experience.
I'm glad this unbiased rundown exists because every "review" I saw at launch was like "THIS D&D KNOCKOFF SUCKS!!!one!!" without actually trying to understand it. Yes, it's a pseudo-D&D4e and the adventures are written by FEAR studio that practically isolated Japanese TTRPG scene from the rest of the world, but I was furious that everyone just dumped the game into bin with so much prejudice.
Thanks for reviewing this. I was considering picking it up just because I am a fan on FFXIV; however, I'm not sure that it's going to have the same "feel" as the MMO. I like that they tried to keep a lot of the core mechanics from the game though.
i have done the same thing in my D&D play but i told my players the ones in ranger " you feel the ground shake as the boss looks to be now contrasting on something."
I kind of hope this hits foundry and other VTTs, I think telegraphed mechanics are an interesting way to interact with a battlefield. It seems interesting, I'm looking forward to the full rulebook so we get a better idea of how everything works. Listening to this though it very much seems like a beginner friendly rpg. As an FF14 player there isn't really a lot of flexibility or uniqueness to classes, weapons, or armor. They are just stat sticks. So the restrictions and simplicity make sense.
There are some fanmade things out there. I made a Foundry VTT plugin that uses PF2E as a base and it is playable and being updated until someone makes a full system for it.
Happy to see the FFXIV tabletop getting some attention. Worried that having any kind of virtual tabletop accessibility might be hurdle though. Square is pretty notorious for the way they guard their IPs and getting full PDFs/virtual tabletop support will probably be met with some resistance. Also keeping the product restricted to the SE store is just absolute nonsense. Expected, but nonsense.
There are some fanmade things out there. I made a Foundry VTT plugin that uses PF2E as a base and it is playable and being updated until someone makes a full system for it.
First off, I would like to say that I really enjoy these kinds of videos. I think you did a great job trying to present the game as objectively as possible. Really helps forming my own opinion on it, rather than when a content creator goes in with too many preconceptions. After watching the video, I guess I personally hoped that the games emulates more how you see the world of FF14 in the CGI cut scenes. I don't find the premise of playing the MMO but now on a slower medium too enticing. I'm unsure if the nature of d20 systems and a standard grid system screams "Final Fantasy" to me. I want to experience the setting with all the epicness and wonder presented in the aforementioned cut scenes, and I guess a personal hope for me was that the game looked more to Fantasy Flight's Star Wars for inspiration rather than D&D/Pathfinder. Kind of on the fence right now if this will be interesting to me, but I won't put it aside just now. I would really love to see some actual play on your channel to see the game in action! Great work on the video. These small introductions, be it adventures or new games, are really helpful to watch!
Thanks for making it clear this is a starter set and not the core rule book. I’ve seen so many people “review” the product from the ffxiv side seemingly unaware of this distinction. Telegraphs and system messages seem interesting. Limit Breaks being GM fiat feels a little underbaked.
tysm for the thorough rundown! I had looked at the free pdfs, but they were so sparse I couldn’t figure out if the gameplay was going to scratch my FF itch and justify the price tag. The game has some interesting ideas, but overall it just _is very sparse._ I think I’ll keep working on my FF Tactics homebrew.
This sounds similar enough in ways to Fabula Ultima, though I may pick up these books strictly for the lore/art and other ideas to bring into other campaigns.
How does the combat work? Is it like one action, you do your thing and nothing else on your turn? Can you move as well? Do you roll for initiative or is it like fixed based on a stat? Really interesting in some aspects but really weird in others. I feel like maybe I’m more willing to cannibalize some of it as experimental homebrew haha, particularly interested to see how those telegraphed aoes work
Combat is Party phase - Enemy phase - repeat the party can decide its turn order at the start of the encounter and they stick to that for the encounter you have a main action, sub action and move per player and you can use them in whatever order you want.
so this is basically what WoW dnd 3.5 SHOULD have been. I know the WoW ttrpg back in the day TRIED to be the same...by creating systems and parties and classes and roles like the MMO but failed. I always wondered why no one attempted a better job at this like you discuss here...THIS is a party of 1 tank 2 dps 1 healer...GO INTO the ttrpg KNOWING that this is like an MMO with JOBS you'll NEED to do and chains of combos to succeed and has the telegraphs and stuff that's really nice.
Man, this is such strange design. Boundary-pushing, for sure, but it introduces a lot of idiosyncrasies from another medium; I'm not quite sold as to how well they might hold up at the table. The rigid scenario structure is typical of Japanese TTRPGs, but stuff like rotations and telegraphs... Mmm... PF2e has fairly light "rotation" elements (particularly in Magus, Gunslinger and Psychic), and even that attracted some criticism.
As a fan of both ttrpgs and finalfantasy, and as someone was a pretty vocal advocate for an FF TTRPG, I have to say this is pretty dissapointing. It seems like this was made by people who were pretty engrossed in FF 14 and only recently started playing DND. Its not that its a similar philosophy to DND 4e, I like DND 4e. Its that the mmo parts are over stated and the ttrpg parts are practically non existant. I was imagining it a lot more like the final fantasy tactics games with a % dice system. If tactics is a lot more welcoming to diverse combat styles and classes. With the exception of the white mage. But honestly having FF 14 be the base isn't a terrible choice either, if you skirt around the MMORPG parts. Also the fact that it's very restrictive about the setting bothers me a lot. A final fantasy table top rgp should be setting agnostic like DND is( or rather is meant to be). The variety of final fantasy worlds is the closest feeling to play ttrpgs that I get in videogames. How I can just drop into one game and I'm in one world where I have to restore crystals and them I'm in another where I have to gather summons in order to kill the embodyment of humanity's sins. I don't want to be stuck in worse being transported by crystals and a constant reminder that I should just hop online instead, as much as I do like 14. But by far the worst thing about this is that there is practically no support for the players to actually play the game out of combat. The out of combat events are even scripted. This isn't a terrible RPG, if maybe it was made by a couple of dudes who started a company from their living room. But I expected way more from this.
I love Final Fantasy but dislike MMOs so I never played much of 11 and 14. If this was based on the job systems of FF5 or FF Tactics, it'd be an instant buy. Until then, I'm waiting on a Fabula Ultima sale.
FF14 plays like a real Final Fantasy game with the MMO aspect slapped on it, it's not like a typical WoW clone, as the whole game is built around main story quests and a linear scenario.
6 місяців тому
@@dupazbita6103 In fact you can play the entire MSQ and most sidecontent Solo if you want. All story related Dungeons were upgraded in the last expansion so they can be played with a party of NPCs.
I'm gonna be the annoying um actually guy here, so sorry. But technically the star/planet is called Etheirys. Hydaelyn only refers to The Source and not any other reflections. Me being that guy out of the way though, thank you for the run down. I got mine already but haven't had a chance to run it yet. Really looking forward to the full release with character creation and more jobs though. Here's hoping they don't stop at just ARR jobs and get RDM in there at least
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Don't know why the video is showing incorrect chapters. But here are the correct timestamps if you want to skip around:
00:00 Opening
01:17 The Pitch
01:59 Genre & Setting
04:11 Core Mechanics
08:39 MMO Features on the Tabletop
09:01 Light Party
10:42 Aetheryte Travel
11:51 Titles
13:26 Enmity (Tanking)
14:49 Rotations
16:12 Telegraphing Attacks
19:21 Cutscenes
20:38 Limit Breaks
22:26 System Messages
23:53 Character Creation & Advancement
26:49 Price & Availability
28:20 What's in the Box??
30:11 Close
I’ve run the starter set a few times now and it’s so fun. I love how they captured the essence of each of the class (even WHM freecure fishing. 😅) I can’t wait for the full ruleset.
This probably the best video out there explaining the game and it's contents. Great work!
I've played a few sessions of this with my PF2e friends on Roll20 and we've been enjoying it a bunch.
Pros:
- It captures the "feel" very well. The tank feels like they're tanking. The Black Mage feels like they're juggling their AF and UI stances to manage their MP while maximizing damage. The abilities of a TTRPG White Mage lv30 are the exact same ability names and general functionality of an MMO White Mage lv30.
- Interesting boss monsters (vanilla or homebrew) can make combat strategic and interesting. The telegraph markers are in theory very easy to dodge, but moving means giving up your Focus activity, and it might also move you away from the relatively small range of the White Mage's AoE healing or the Bard's party buffs. There's a push and pull for staying clumped for player abilities, versus enemy telegraphs forcing players to spread far apart.
- There is lore justification for a character to be in possession of multiple "job stones" and character sheets so far are very static. Together, this means that it's very easy for the tank player to change to a caster DPS if they feel bored and want to mix things up, without narratively having to retire Selina the elf fighter and introduce Serin the dwarf cleric.
- Very few feels-bad turns. One correction from your video, if the attack roll is a nat20, it's a Critical. If the attack roll exceeds the target's defense, that is a Direct Hit, but otherwise (even on a nat1) they still do the Base Effect. So even that player who complains about having cursed dice will still be doing like 3 points of guaranteed damage, plus effects like a tank generating Enmity on the target, regardless of their dice.
- The lowest level character sheet still has like 12 abilities. Even if they have obvious niches like the single-target attack, the AoE attack, the DoT attack, the burst attack... you feel a lot more mechanically engaging than low-level characters in some other systems. You also have multiple different reactions (Instant Abilities) and can use more than one per round, which mean that players end up way more engaged outside of their own turn.
Cons:
- Number one is absolutely the lack of progression. Unless the full rules add support for this, I can't reward players with a cool magic item, or 500 experience points, or other carrots to make them feel incrementally stronger. You could probably string together a long campaign out of 4hr scenarios like the examples in the Starter Set, but the players would have to understand and accept that they'd gain very few mechanical benefits over the length of that campaign.
- Lack of character customization isn't great, but can be offset somewhat by changing jobs regularly. The MMO has 21 or 22 combat jobs, so as more of them are added via official release or homebrew, players can at least experience variety that way.
- Mooks are not particularly interesting, so combat interest is massively determined by the special abilities of bosses. Until an official bestiary is released, the GM will need to keep homebrewing interesting boss enemies, since recycling old ones will lose their luster quickly.
- Telegraph markers are a bit cumbersome for the GM, even on Roll20. The boss(es) might have one or more telegraphs each, and even some mooks will have a telegraph. So on every enemy turn, you're resolving the old telegraph, removing the marker from the map, rolling normal enemy attacks, and then usually placing down new telegraphs on that same turn. There's probably VTT tricks to do this quickly, but for physical play that's going to be a lot of "lift your token, place it on top of the telegraph, okay now lift your token so i can get rid of the telegraph oh wait there's a new telegraph." I think the telegraph system is interesting and worthwhile and adds something to the game, despite this.
Also: if at all possible, play on bigger maps than those packaged with the game. I doubled the map size from 8x8 to 16x16 and it massively improved the player experience.
I'm glad this unbiased rundown exists because every "review" I saw at launch was like "THIS D&D KNOCKOFF SUCKS!!!one!!" without actually trying to understand it.
Yes, it's a pseudo-D&D4e and the adventures are written by FEAR studio that practically isolated Japanese TTRPG scene from the rest of the world, but I was furious that everyone just dumped the game into bin with so much prejudice.
Thanks for reviewing this. I was considering picking it up just because I am a fan on FFXIV; however, I'm not sure that it's going to have the same "feel" as the MMO. I like that they tried to keep a lot of the core mechanics from the game though.
i have done the same thing in my D&D play but i told my players the ones in ranger " you feel the ground shake as the boss looks to be now contrasting on something."
I kind of hope this hits foundry and other VTTs, I think telegraphed mechanics are an interesting way to interact with a battlefield. It seems interesting, I'm looking forward to the full rulebook so we get a better idea of how everything works. Listening to this though it very much seems like a beginner friendly rpg. As an FF14 player there isn't really a lot of flexibility or uniqueness to classes, weapons, or armor. They are just stat sticks. So the restrictions and simplicity make sense.
There are some fanmade things out there. I made a Foundry VTT plugin that uses PF2E as a base and it is playable and being updated until someone makes a full system for it.
Happy to see the FFXIV tabletop getting some attention. Worried that having any kind of virtual tabletop accessibility might be hurdle though. Square is pretty notorious for the way they guard their IPs and getting full PDFs/virtual tabletop support will probably be met with some resistance. Also keeping the product restricted to the SE store is just absolute nonsense. Expected, but nonsense.
There are some fanmade things out there. I made a Foundry VTT plugin that uses PF2E as a base and it is playable and being updated until someone makes a full system for it.
I could see them partnering with someone like Demiplane/Roll20 where they can maintain rights protections better
Interesting! You made me want to check it out
First off, I would like to say that I really enjoy these kinds of videos. I think you did a great job trying to present the game as objectively as possible. Really helps forming my own opinion on it, rather than when a content creator goes in with too many preconceptions.
After watching the video, I guess I personally hoped that the games emulates more how you see the world of FF14 in the CGI cut scenes. I don't find the premise of playing the MMO but now on a slower medium too enticing. I'm unsure if the nature of d20 systems and a standard grid system screams "Final Fantasy" to me. I want to experience the setting with all the epicness and wonder presented in the aforementioned cut scenes, and I guess a personal hope for me was that the game looked more to Fantasy Flight's Star Wars for inspiration rather than D&D/Pathfinder.
Kind of on the fence right now if this will be interesting to me, but I won't put it aside just now. I would really love to see some actual play on your channel to see the game in action!
Great work on the video. These small introductions, be it adventures or new games, are really helpful to watch!
Watching this as I play Dawntrail. 😃
I haven't started yet... too much work on my plate, but maybe this weekend!
@@HowItsPlayed It's pretty great in my opinion. A very different feel, but if you like team work and building friendships in shows, you'll love it.
Thanks for making it clear this is a starter set and not the core rule book. I’ve seen so many people “review” the product from the ffxiv side seemingly unaware of this distinction. Telegraphs and system messages seem interesting. Limit Breaks being GM fiat feels a little underbaked.
tysm for the thorough rundown! I had looked at the free pdfs, but they were so sparse I couldn’t figure out if the gameplay was going to scratch my FF itch and justify the price tag.
The game has some interesting ideas, but overall it just _is very sparse._ I think I’ll keep working on my FF Tactics homebrew.
This sounds similar enough in ways to Fabula Ultima, though I may pick up these books strictly for the lore/art and other ideas to bring into other campaigns.
19:20 If you use something like roll20 or owlbear, then you can mark am already more easily, but that depends on having a much more expensive set up
How'd you score a copy? It's on preorder?
How does the combat work? Is it like one action, you do your thing and nothing else on your turn? Can you move as well? Do you roll for initiative or is it like fixed based on a stat? Really interesting in some aspects but really weird in others. I feel like maybe I’m more willing to cannibalize some of it as experimental homebrew haha, particularly interested to see how those telegraphed aoes work
Combat is
Party phase - Enemy phase - repeat
the party can decide its turn order at the start of the encounter and they stick to that for the encounter
you have a main action, sub action and move per player and you can use them in whatever order you want.
so this is basically what WoW dnd 3.5 SHOULD have been. I know the WoW ttrpg back in the day TRIED to be the same...by creating systems and parties and classes and roles like the MMO but failed. I always wondered why no one attempted a better job at this like you discuss here...THIS is a party of 1 tank 2 dps 1 healer...GO INTO the ttrpg KNOWING that this is like an MMO with JOBS you'll NEED to do and chains of combos to succeed and has the telegraphs and stuff that's really nice.
Man, this is such strange design. Boundary-pushing, for sure, but it introduces a lot of idiosyncrasies from another medium; I'm not quite sold as to how well they might hold up at the table. The rigid scenario structure is typical of Japanese TTRPGs, but stuff like rotations and telegraphs... Mmm...
PF2e has fairly light "rotation" elements (particularly in Magus, Gunslinger and Psychic), and even that attracted some criticism.
my question is, with all the final fantasy with actual character customization and build. why 14? why not tactics, or 10, or even 8?
$60 for a starter set??? I'm interested in playing it but man... That's a lot for so little content...
For $0 I can just reflavor 3.5/5 for FF settings.
Pass
As a fan of both ttrpgs and finalfantasy, and as someone was a pretty vocal advocate for an FF TTRPG, I have to say this is pretty dissapointing. It seems like this was made by people who were pretty engrossed in FF 14 and only recently started playing DND. Its not that its a similar philosophy to DND 4e, I like DND 4e.
Its that the mmo parts are over stated and the ttrpg parts are practically non existant. I was imagining it a lot more like the final fantasy tactics games with a % dice system. If tactics is a lot more welcoming to diverse combat styles and classes. With the exception of the white mage. But honestly having FF 14 be the base isn't a terrible choice either, if you skirt around the MMORPG parts.
Also the fact that it's very restrictive about the setting bothers me a lot. A final fantasy table top rgp should be setting agnostic like DND is( or rather is meant to be). The variety of final fantasy worlds is the closest feeling to play ttrpgs that I get in videogames. How I can just drop into one game and I'm in one world where I have to restore crystals and them I'm in another where I have to gather summons in order to kill the embodyment of humanity's sins. I don't want to be stuck in worse being transported by crystals and a constant reminder that I should just hop online instead, as much as I do like 14.
But by far the worst thing about this is that there is practically no support for the players to actually play the game out of combat. The out of combat events are even scripted.
This isn't a terrible RPG, if maybe it was made by a couple of dudes who started a company from their living room. But I expected way more from this.
I love Final Fantasy but dislike MMOs so I never played much of 11 and 14. If this was based on the job systems of FF5 or FF Tactics, it'd be an instant buy. Until then, I'm waiting on a Fabula Ultima sale.
FF14 plays like a real Final Fantasy game with the MMO aspect slapped on it, it's not like a typical WoW clone, as the whole game is built around main story quests and a linear scenario.
@@dupazbita6103 In fact you can play the entire MSQ and most sidecontent Solo if you want. All story related Dungeons were upgraded in the last expansion so they can be played with a party of NPCs.
Honestly same and from the looks of it, Beacon, Icon, and Fabula Ultima might be the way to go :/
God I wish this were based of of tactics.
Trying to emulate a video game experience rather than foster playing out a story is an unfortunate design goal IMO
I'm gonna be the annoying um actually guy here, so sorry.
But technically the star/planet is called Etheirys. Hydaelyn only refers to The Source and not any other reflections.
Me being that guy out of the way though, thank you for the run down. I got mine already but haven't had a chance to run it yet. Really looking forward to the full release with character creation and more jobs though. Here's hoping they don't stop at just ARR jobs and get RDM in there at least