I got into XIV years after my other friends did. When I mentioned I was doing Westwind, they all immediately started to hype it up, gave me better gear “you’ll need this man”, the whole nine yards. And then we blazed it. They were cracking up in chat and I’ve yet to forgive them. :/
I just beat Heavensward and honestly Alphinaud is one of the most compelling characters in the game to me. Love that guy (even when I hate him sometimes)
Alphinaud didn't really annoy me as a character in ARR either. He is a haughty, overconfident teenager who thinks he can save the world by himself. Obviously he isn't meant to be liked in that part. Character arcs are only useful if your characters start of flawed. Flawed characters make the best stories, even the ones you hate at first
Yeah, I liked Alphinaud from the start, because as annoying as he is it was always clear that that was the intent. I could see his arc forming before it began.
I disagree that Gaius was “evil mcevilson” as his motivations were quite clearly laid out. Primals or “Eikons” are a blight on the land and he believes Eorzia is too weak to deal with them because they haven’t dealt with them being summoned over and over again thus he took it upon himself to come up with a way to contain them thus preventing their resummoning. What he didn’t account for was the Ascian’s betrayal as they simply wanted the power of Ultima awakened to cause “such devastation” which was not Gaius’ intent.
I think you're being a bit too generous towards Gaius here. Yes, he wasn't the incarnation of evil, but his attitude in ARR ("you should welcome the rule of our strong empire instead of your weak local leaders, and if you don't do so voluntarily, I will force you") was definitely very imperialistic.
Not to mention, when that one Ascion dude unleashed the true power of Ultima and cuased bascily a nuclear bomb to set off, Gaius said "This is not what I wanted"
The thing is he doesn’t differentiate us from the beastmen. He views our gods “the twelve” and their gods “the primals” as the same thing, and he has a very good point. He feels we are all bleeding the land dry of aether, and we don’t have the strength or conviction to notice and enforce change. That is why we need to be conquered and ruled.
Even coming from someone who has only done ARR, it's obvious from the start the warrior of light and the Scions are basically useful idiots drunk on glory, blessed by their "God" to do their bidding. As long as they are kept thinking they are "good", they will keep killing for them. Gaius and the empire are not "evil" per say, they see Eorzea lead by weak leaders who can't control their own country and the beastmen/Eikons that reside in it, lack technology which makes those in power overly reliant on borrowing power from adventurers and aether magic, whilst also harbouring many city factions squabbling for control which could be united. He blames Eorzea for unleashing Bahamut in his speech so believes they wield chaotic destruction they have little control over, even though that part isn't true. He is not even working for the empire at this point who gave up invading, but clearly desperate when making a pact with the Ascians to infiltrate the Scions and discover and wield the Ultima weapon to speed up the process of conquering. From the story POV of the player he is evil, but only from the information you are fed from your allies and the people his forces have killed.
The Cape Westwind troll actually far predates the recent big streamer influx I got hit with it when I first started playing back at the start of stormblood, so I can only imagine its even older than that.
It actually started in ARR, when he actually was a threat. Then when Ilvl came into play all the veterans kinda silently agreed to hype it up as a prank on the sprouts. This coming from someone who timed out many dungeons in vanilla ARR because the time limits were not new player friendly.
as a veteran ff player it is because we have been spoiled by the later expansions and alot of us remember going through arr before the amount of story quests were trimmed down.
@@DakonBlackblade2 true i started in December cause shadowlands wasn't looking very appealing, and i thoroughly enjoyed ARR, it has some rough parts, especially in post ARR, but it was pretty good overral
@@henriquerodrigues7795 Ye. I play this game since launch (on and off but recently almost always on) and ARR is pretty solid. The game gets a lot better but ppl fail to put things in perspective and compare ARR against Shadowbringes which is just unfair.
@@DakonBlackblade2 the thing is, if you are comparing ARR to other games nowadays its kinda just middle of the road. Not great not terrible. It's only terrible when you compare it to the the expansions because of how much better they are.
I remember getting into one a couple weeks ago with my Trials Roulette and someone said "oh God, oh no. Ok guys, how are we going to handle phase 6?" I freaking died when he said that, the new person started to look a little worried. But yeah, its not just a streamer a thing, I got trolled on it when I first ran it last year, which didn't help my anxiety but was still funny looking back at it now.
I've never really seen that in all my time playing it, and I've had my shares of Westwind in roulettes. At most I've seen some clearly sarcastic comments about the difficulty but I never saw people putting down markers or anything before. Though maybe its more common when the new player is playing with an active FC with a preformed party for this, or maybe its just not as much of a thing on Crystal.
It’s honestly pretty frustrating hearing “the slow gameplay would only feel worse as a melee” it’s literally the exact opposite. Nearly every melee has a faster gcd as well as far more OGCD abilities. All of these assumptions from the view of the slowest, most clunky leveling class are seriously warping the view of the gameplay. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong for enjoying BLM, it’s just unfair to judge the rest of the game from that experience. Edit: just wanna say I’m not trying to be overly harsh, I still love this video series and I’m glad he’s enjoying the game. Ffxiv is my favorite game of all time since i started in stormblood.
tbh i do think he would lose his mind if he was playing like… a lancer at low level or something. I think even as a black mage, he will start to understand the gameplay design as he gets further
He had alot of Infos he could have read before and everywhere its being told how clunky slow and hard BLM is, he picked it, so i dont feel pardon of his point of view. he just didnt informed himself beforehand, not my bussines
Yeah no. Lancer/Dragoon was a horrid slog for me until halfway through stormblood. Monk is also a slow burner. Ninja and Samurai feel more refined, but rogue was boring af as well. Ninja only become fun when the double mudras started to be introduced, admittedly that's what, 35, but still.
"All of those abilities alter how your character plays nearly entirely" They do. As black mage. Which why everyone says BLM sucks to level. Your rotation completely changes every couple of levels basically all the way until 80, and any time you're synced down, it feels clunky as hell. Most other jobs will fundamentally play the same, just with less buttons.
@@kosbebot6360 I think the worst part about it is unlike other jobs that replace skills with traits so when you sync down, they are automatically replaced on your bar, BLM needs to have Blizz 1 and Fire 1 on their bar in case they are synced down.
@@ReadySetBacon Yeah, that's the annoying part. I adjusted my hot bars so that Bliz 1 is right below Bliz 3 and Fire 1 is right below Fire 4 to make for easy swapping. :)
Never do roulettes with Blackmage. It's the worst. I mean, I thought Whitemage needing to put Cure 1 back onto the bar was bad. Then I started playing Blackmage.
What I like about Shadowbringers, is that it is all gas no break, with VERY minimal amount of running forward and back delivering message and stuff compared to past expansions.
I found Shadowbringers to have the same amount of filler between major plot points as Stormblood. I've entered a new zone, it's time to meet the new NPC who's going to make me their bitch for the next 45 minutes. I've met a new character and I want something from them so of course they need me to solve their problems and do their chores first, never mind that I'm trying to save not just the world but the universe. This is pretty standard in MMOs so I can't say I'm surprised, especially since I went through the same thing in Stormblood, but SHB's story goes SO HARD that the styrofoam bits had me nearly screaming for the next piece of story.
Thing is, even those slower bits of the MSQ still feel connected directly to the overall goal and provides more insight in this completely new place. It never really dragged for me, in fact I think those moments are really quite important to build up to the next crazy bit. All action all the time would be exhausting, confusing and just kinda lose the impact over time.
I would definitely say try out one of the melee jobs. Ninja, Samurai and Monk all have built in abilities/mechanics which reduces their GCD to around 2 secs. Dragoon doesn’t have abilities which reduces your GCD rather has alot of OGCD’s.
Ninja especially is a REALLY fast paced job when it comes to burst but pretty lax in filler, I'd say SAM might have a lot of planning and less positionals for Preach and it has a decent leveling experience. DRG is great at high level but under 60 dragoon is practically unplayable for me
@@danilooliveira6580 Ninja gets its 15% GCD reduction at 45, samurai gets their 13% GCD reduction skill at 18 (shifu is a level 18 ability IK sam starts at 50). Monk gets a 5% GCD reduction at level 1, 20, 40, and 76 for a total of 20% reduction.
@@josephxp96 the GCD reduction doesn't matter much, because it will still feel slow, what matters is the OGCDs, that is what makes the gameplay feel frenetic at higher levels. without armor crush you have one less ninjutsu every 60s and you get 5 OGCDs and Ten Chi Jin from 50 to 70. Samurai is even worse, he gets 10 new OGCDs between lvl 50 and 70 (even though half of them are situational and not part of the rotation), and 2 more between lvl 70 and 80. before lvl 50 the samurai rotation is incredibly boring, good and functional, but boring, you don't even have positionals before lvl 52.
@@danilooliveira6580 True the OGCD’s improve greatly at higher level (like Dragoon) but I’m merely thinking of early leveling how they feel different with basically a 2.1 GCD for melee outside of Dragoon.
All praise the Golden Carousel!! (when will he realize?) The grass is actually greener on the other side. It gets better. Looking forward to seeing you progress through coils.
Well as long as you start them at about 50 yeah, Lancer at level 1-49 is just suffering. I think you'd be best of with samurai since it starts at 50 anyway
I am hoping he can get through 2.0-2.4 as the story is very slow with the lead up but 2.5 is like holy shit. Then Heavensward is such a great experience. haha
@@darron13 he's right about it not feeling bad when you're casting though WAR feels awful because it has the same GCD or slower but with almost no filler, casting at least feels like a good way to fill the gcd
@@Doublejho WAR really needs some more oGCD stuff. I'm hoping with the 2 charge Inner Release and the more free usage of Upheaval and Onslaught will really help it speed up.
@@Noryll1327 they should've given it haste or something if they're trying to keep it simple imo; better yet, they could also have not stripped it of its previously substantial depth, turning it into the most braindead class in the game bar none instead
Great content. But revisit the gameplay issue when you're 80. Game at 60, 70 and 80 completely changes. Especially for BLM. When you're 80, you will have a lot of off GCD abilities and you'll realize that it's a very complicated and deep system.
As a person who plays, and thoroughly enjoys, both WOW and FF14 I want to talk about the gameplay opinion; the games are paced very different. The best way I can describe it is the difference between Super Smash Brother and Tekken. The gameplay isn't really slower, it's just more methodical and that is compounded by what you can do during your GCD, as well as most mechanics being central on your character requiring basically an entire GCD to avoid them vs WOW's more predictable mechanic locations that require a faster response (but, again, this just boils down to pacing; spending 1.5 GCD moving vs 2.5 GCD moving is still moving). The pacing is just different. FF14 thrives on the methodical gameplay which is highly prevalent when you get to max level and start looking into openers vs rotations; the fact that there's such an egregious, almost bot worthy, rotation system speaks a lot for it's focus.
As someone who has been around since 2010 when it all first began, I love watching all these new impressions. Cannot wait til see what you think about the game as it progresses. Cause man its a hoot.
I still greatly appreciate ARR for setting the foundation for the great stories that would follow. Just the presentation was lacking because of time constraints and technical limitations of the time. It could definitely use a bit of a refresh beyond just cutting out the worst of the padding and giving people flight for the patch MSQ.
It makes sense why Alphinaud is the way he is at the beginning. I would even say apple does not fall far from the tree if you know what I mean lol. About the GCD, a lot of ex-WoW player have the same notion that their former game is superior because it was designed well. The thing they'll realize soon is that the GCD for FFXIV was designed that way for the encounters they'll have. Which makes the fight more of a symphony rather than a reactionary dance at a night club. Under the system FFXIV encounter, the battle is well design just as WoW battle is well designed under their own system of encounter.
xiv is such a hard sell to former wow players (in my experience), as much of the rotational complexity for a lot of jobs in xiv comes in only at max level when you have all your abilities. but in order to get there they have to suffer through 300+ hours of rpg with "slow" gameplay.. i want more of my friends to play xiv but when they just keep comparing it to wow's shorter gcd it's just so hard :\
@@dafire9634 I mean I'll be fine if its tuned up enough that people actually see all of his mechanics regularly. He was never really that dangerous but his big aoe actually hurt and he also puts down some flame patches. Same thing for the first two Crystal Tower raids, particularly Syrcus Tower where you just flat out skip whole phases on the first 2 bosses with no effort.
Fair points, but regarding the global cooldown: every other job gets tonnes of skills to use in between gcds, but BLM is the only class that doesnt (besides buffs) so it is truely bound by the GCD. Youll find that every other class plays significantly faster, even the other casters. And FYI the game is designed with enough exp to concurrently level 2 jobs while doing the story, doing that helps prevent you from being massively overlevelled!
Only if you are in a prefered server and get the "road to 70" buffs. I've leveled 2 alts in different Data Centers and just doing MSQ you hit the level 49 mission and your character is level 47 so you have to stop and do dungoens to continue the story.
@@nahuel3433 you know that they greatly increased the xp you get from MSQ right? I have a level 73 Ninja and a level 71 warrior. Im very early in shadowbringers (i just finished meeting up with the first two people you meet up with in shadow) Started 3 weeks ago.
@@Saxonsredux I am telling you I started my alt character last week. So yes. I know for a fact that you hit the level 49 MSQ when you are lvl 47. (And btw I have Minphilia's earings too, meaning I have more of a bonus XP than most) I can't speak for HW and ahead yet because I haven't tunnel visioned them with a lvl 50 character like I did tunnel vision ARR with a level 0 character So I am inclined to believe you have Road to 70 Because I started playing myself a few months ago and I had road to 70 and ended up with a ton of extra levels and could level 2 jobs at a time. Like what server are you playing in?
@@nahuel3433 I didnt have road to 70 and had multiple jobs going at the same time the whole way through, there are certain points (usually just before finishing ARR or expansion) where the exp can drop behind, but if you unlock and do all the optional dungeons and content youll easily catch up ^^.
I think what it is is that people didnt go through wow when it first came out or they have forgotten, as FF14 ARR + post patch content is just as much a grind as wow when it first came out.
I just wish he would stop listening to people who say the ARR patch content is bad. Its not bad at all, sure there are some slow moments but its not all bad.
Got to say Mike - am loving the new content and direction you're taking the channel. Used to play Eve, but not been on it for quite some time - quite excited to see you go through that as well. :)
The idea behind the gcd is as you level and gain new abilities a lot of classes will gain quite a few instant cast spells which can be cast independently of the gcd. I've only leveled bard to 80 so far but it's normal depending where i am in my rotation to be using 2 or even 3 spells (including a main gcd spell) per gcd and it's possible for me to try and use more, at any one time as many as 5/6 can be available that would actually make sense to cast together if possible, but it's "optimal" to only use 2 off gcd's per gcd due to reasons i sort of understand about server ticks (you don't really need to understand them since you can feel how janky things get when u try to fit in more). For most of the classes i've leveled that doesn't really fully boot in until you get to around level 70, earlier for some, Bard and Machinist were absolutely rocking by the early 60s but Samurai took a little longer to ramp up and red mage still feels a bit slow to me (but I've barely played it as a 70 to be fair). No Idea on Black Mage, never played it but I'd be surprised if that doesn't also pick up a tad in speed. That's not say I think the gameplay is "as good as" or "better" than wows, but in terms of speed it improves (no idea if it does so for every job but I would guess it does since this game tends to be VERY consistent in design). In terms of weight and having a tactile sense to doing a thing with your abilities, wow is better still IMO. You still have quite a bit of ARR to do, as it's end game is a monster, but i think whilst it may bring some frustration you will love the alliance raid and the trials you get to do. Then it's to heavensward... ah blessed heavensward ^_^
The Golden Carousel is my favourite Disneyland ride as well. :) Also, I personally didn't find the patch content that bad; I struggled more on the first 30-40 MSQ levels than I did on the patch 2.x stuff.
I love that even streamers are falling into the Cape Westwind gag. That's one of my favorite things to pull on sprouts, and has been for years. I love it!
I'm so happy that Preach and company are having fun with FF14 and it makes me happy that they can all just get beyond some of the misrepresentations on all sides!
the westwind troll was too funny! Mike, really happy to see you giving this a fair shake. I came to FF14 07/2020, and have stayed ever since. My main character is Omni 80, everything. there is such a deep richness to this game. I'm still unlocking stuff. I hope you are going to check the Coils raids at level, and maybe a savage turn 2 coil.. those are hard, and fun. anway, thanks brother. always quality analysis and content from you brother.
Definitely revisit your thoughts on gameplay when you're 80. Comparing lvl 50 BLM to anything is like comparing a level 5 warlock to a level 60 one. You're missing the most important parts of the class. Additionally, a lot of classes feel slow at lower levels and absolutely do not at higher levels (any melee dps).
My friends got me with Cape Westwind when I was a sprout leveling for the first time, 7 years ago. That joke has been going on FOREVER, I had a good chuckle to see showing up again on streams. There is some hard content, but ARR is almost a decade old now and the number scaling really changed older content, everything became easier which is why the devs are going to crunch numbers. Glad to hear you're enjoying it, it only goes uphill from here!
I just finished heavensward patch cycle last night and that expansion made me cry at least 4 times, but I don’t know why people say the ARR patch cycle is bad I found it pretty good.
It's not bad per-se. It's all about world building and your ascension to becoming the hero Eorzea needs. But the journey can seem a little long at a few points. It's mainly the post-ARR patch quests that get the most flak.
comparatively with the rest of the game, it's bad. By the standards of most MMO's, it's fine. The stuff between HW and the end of 2.0, though, is just clearly so much filler.
@@zoroarkdx4491 gameplay wise it was a lot of fetch quests and busy work to unlock stuff. It wasn't terrible, it was just grindy as hell until HW kicks in. The story was fine, the gameplay elements were lackluster, IMO
Ehh when playing through it 2.1 to 2.3 i could take it or leave it. 2.4 and 2.5 are really good. BUT at late game you just learn how important ARR really was for laying the groundwork even if it was a slog at times.
Seriously pumping out some good content lately, mate. Glad to see you doing something other than only WoW and seeing your excitement instead of your previous moods. Looking smooth,Mike!
You have to remember that with each new expansion, the old content is nerfed. Also you will have a few jobs that are doing the fight that didn't exist when the content was created, throwing off the fight dynamics a little and most groups are now very overgeared for the fight. I think almost all fights allow you to do them with min ilvl, that would make it feel much more like the original fight. All that said, most "base" content was never overly hard to complete in ARR.
Especially Cape Westwind which even when it was new had people in the highest level 50 gear that could use it to their full potential since it's a level 49
they don't actually specifically nerf a lot of content, they just don't adjust them for general changes that make the players stronger overall. Echo being added to trials and savage raids being the regular exception and that happens during the course of the expansion already. Only things I can recall them going back to old content to nerf it specifically would be Eureka (mostly the early zones), Orbonne Monastery (TG Cid got nerfed TWICE along with an echo buff for the first time in an alliance raid) and them adding AoE markers to Coincounter in Aurum Vale. As for the new jobs they are actually very deliberate in barring the use of certain abilities in older content (Red Mage doesn't get Verraise until 64 for example). They don't generally throw out the fight dynamics that much except in terms of DPS (Dancer getting their insane AoE at level 15, even after the nerf).
You'll probably love doing Coils of Bahamut which is the real major level 50 8 man raid, and it even has a savage mode but even the normal mode isn't a walk in the park either. And there's a huge chunk of story related to it too with several major cutscenes that happen as you progress through it and it fills in a lot of backstory you may not quite understand yet. Hope to catch you do it on stream.
Stream needs to tell him to turn off voices tho, oh god the Coil's Alisaie voice acting haunts my dreams. Thank the spirits for the voice actor replacement of Heavensward.
To be fair, the Praetorium dungeon used to be a decent challenge. It is outgeared by huge margins now, plus all of the balancing changes over time also made a change, but it still can be pretty tough on minimum ilvl, just barely anyone does it that way, understandably
I felt the same way my first trip to the Golden Carousel / Saucer. The scale and scope of the place is just so huge and after 20 minutes it was like "wait, why doesn't WoW have this?"
The Darkmoon Faire starting with the Cata revamp where they made it its own zone is kind of like the saucer. The big difference is the Golden Saucer is constantly updated (new minigames, rotating out the old GATEs, etc.) whereas the faire is 90% the same as it was ten years ago. If WoW had constantly kept updating the faire like we originally hoped when the island first came out, it could've been a pretty substantial diversion to play in. So there was a missed opportunity there.
@@troyen3869 As Skyblade responded, DMF it time gated but I'll also add that it's purely transactional. You go there to turn stuff in to get a reward, then you leave, maybe stopping briefly (in the old days) to skill up a crafting profession to save on some mats. The Saucer, on the other hand, is fun. The reason to go to the Saucer is specifically to do Saucer stuff. Let's put it this way, nobody has said "I can't wait for the DMF to open this month" so they can go participate in the _actual_ faire.
@@andrewshandle That is true today, that wasn't true when the faire released. There have been maybe two or three minor updates to the faire in the past ten years or so. Blizzard could have made it into so much more, but they chose not to. In contrast, while the GS at release was way bigger than the faire, it still gets stale after a while. SE knows this and continues to add new things to the saucer in each expansion, to keep the place alive even though it doesn't contribute to player progression. The state of DMF is a reflection of WoW's overall game direction and design priorities. It's a shame too because there are actually a lot of fun little side things interspersed throughout WoW. I remember the plants vs zombies mini-game, the Joust callback in Cata, pet battling tournaments, and a number of other things that are there for fun. They're just treated more like easter-eggs (or turned into dailies) rather than bundled together in a giant carnival/casino.
@@troyen3869 The biggest issue with WoW is that everything they build for an expansion is designed to be temporary for just that expansion and it really hurts the game. Instead of housing, we get the Garrison. Instead of a really cool class guild hall with new quests every expansion, we get the Order Halls which were amazing (for the most part) for 2 years and never used again. The same will be for Torghast...all that work, and it'll never be used again, and for the most part it seems like they don't want to invest in DMF for the same reasons. I don't really understand why they want to spend so much time building things that instantly become unused the second an expansion is over, it feels like such a tragic waste of time. I would love if every expansion they'd say "here's the content, and we know that is going to be used up...but here's this cool thing we added that will be useful/fun/relevant going forward".
@@wtfisawohde3660 They did. It is a level 1 trait (For Black Mage so it's not available from the start as Thaumaturge) and nothing else in EW made me happier. They made the change I wanted the most and did it better than I asked lol.
Quin69 embodied WHY so many people in this game disagree with boosts. Doing the MSQ boost is fine, but doing a level boost is not... unless you are okay with yelling "WHERE ARE MUH EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS". From one WOW raider to another, pretty stoked to see you playing this game. Look forward to your opinions on raiding Ultimates (non-boosted hopefully, but highly doubtful), if you ever get to that point.
@@Crusina You mean the people who play wow raids competitively and have tons of time to devote specifically to raiding and min/maxing and with zero other interests in the game? Sorry, I tend to forget that 99% of any games player base are those kinds of players. Silly me.
as you stated you mainly want to focus on a caster now, I would suggest Red Mage, they have a faster rotation than Black mage due to having Dualcast, which makes every other spell instant. and has a few OGCDs, it also has a melee combo with an engage and disengage.
@@UnwrittenNoise Because he complains the gameplay is slow and then plays the slowest job. Not knocking it or anything, but would be good for him to at least see what other jobs are like i guess
Note I didn't expressly say he should change, I merely suggested a job he may enjoy as well as BLM. At worst he could look into it for whenever he MAY want to in the future
Thank you for giving the game such a fair review with all of its highs and lows. I am looking forward to seeing you do some raid content. Just a tip. When you open the dutyfinder for the raid you can click a gear icon on the top left. There you can change some settings like minimum ilvl (scales you ilvl down to the lowest needed) or no echo (turns off the stacking buff every time you wipe up to 30% more dmg/health/healing). If you want to just see the story of the raid you can leave these turned off. If you want to see the mechanics turn on min ilvl. If you want a challenge turn on no echo.
Glad to hear you sticking with one job . I thought I was the only one. In WoW I mained Dk and Lock, and always was messing around on my other ten alts. Now, FF14: I rolled Lancer/Dragoon. At 30, and again at 50, I tried a couple others, but within a few minutes, I was missing my Dragoon. I'll probably take it to level cap before getting giving a fairer try on anything else. Dragoon just clicks for me.
Leveling a BLM is not bad, I leveling it on an alt and having a _blast_ . But it is very weird, because you keep changing rotations, you have a rotation now and when you reach 60 chuck it in the bin, because after that it changes completely. BTW you should play red mage, best job ever.
Don't worry about the weird Anime friendship blast thing at the end with Hydealyn. Most of FFXIV players also found it really cheesy and weird, and there's really no other scenes similar to that after that point. The story starts getting much deeper and more complex in the post ARR stretch and then truly peaks in the expansions, so I'm legit hyped af to see you experiencing all that if you decided to stick to it!
I mean, at the core there are still a lot of "power of friendship" moments throughout the whole thing. They just continued to get infinitely better at building up to and executing them as development went along, so people actually like them. One of the biggest things that really pumps this game up over time people gloss over is the advancing of the cutscene camera tech. They seem to also be really going hard on custom character animations for scenes that aren't all big action moments in the post 5.0 content, so hopefully we'll see a big improvement there in endwalker.
@@MidBoss2998 And when he says "raids", does he mean the extreme trials or is he thinking of the actual alliance raids? Because he seems to think full parties are raids. Because if he means the actual raids, at least Crystal Tower isn't far off. Getting the higher difficulty trials requires actually doing a lot of 2.X content.
@@AnaseSkyrider There are two sorts of raids. Alliance Raids are basically story driven theme park rides. Not very difficult. And then there are the 8-man raids. Categorized (at least after ARR) in Normal and Savage (and Ultimate but that's a different story altogether) The 8-man raid in ARR is the Binding Coils of Bahamut. The 24-man alliance raid is the Crystal Tower.
I think the patch content for ARR is fine now, they trimmed a lot of the filler out of it some time back. It also now diverts you to the first raid content at level 50 which it used to not do so that becomes part of the experience. I'd say for an MMO you won't be shocked in either way, it's fine. I am a fan of the raids though for sure and I think you will enjoy them and the extreme trials if you feel like giving those a shot.
I honestly think that people exaggerate a lot about ARR , if you are used to older mmos grind ARR is NOTHING , yeah there is some fillers here and there but overall it felt just like a lot of other mmos or rpgs in pace .
@@guerravpb I'd wager it's more to do with veterans that did the original 2.1-2.55 patch quests. They did recently rework them and they cut out pretty much all of the filler that existed in those quests. Most of what's left is the stuff that's relevant in future expansions. Originally though, it was absolutely awful where it was so obvious they were putting stuff in there just to waste your time and keep people busy between patches.
Looking forward to seeing you go through the post-expansion arcs. 2.1 to 2.5 is a mix of some of the most tedious stuff in ARR (it has been termed "The Seventh Astral Slog", though I understand it's been trimmed a lot since I did it in late 2019 or so), and one of the most epic and, to me, unexpected endings I've experienced in a game (and my first game was "Pong" when it was something only your rich friends (who were only your friends 'cause they were rich) had).
My man, I fully understand your perspective because I just went through this about two months ago as well. I promise you there will come a point where you realize “oh this is why people don’t want you to skip the story” and also “oh this is why people want me to try other jobs” when the gameplay actually does open up. The biggest weak point of this game is the early pacing of making that apparent. My entire friend group got filtered out and lost faith. The gameplay will eventually scratch that wow itch or at least come close. It will not disappoint I promise.
That's the real reason Heavensward is free tbh. The devs now ARR is a slog, so they're hoping if people make it to Heavensward they'll stick the whole way.
Awesome job Preach! Glad to hear you finally made it to 50 and are now going to try the raids! For sure, get a group and do them synced down or at minimum item level to really have some challenge! Congrats on getting this far and soon, Heavensward awaits!
Just want to echo the other comments- I think you'd enjoy trying a melee out! I really like lower level monk and ninja gameplay compared to other jobs, definitely feels faster
(and fwiw neither of those are even in my top 3 preferred jobs at level 80, I just think they're fun to level. All jobs start slow but no other job has quite the same "quirkiness" as black mage. but if it's still fun, then that's obviously fine too lol)
Would definitely recommend trying out Red Mage at some point. It is a caster sort of like black mage but also has an interesting twist, every other normal spell is instant cast. Plus their huge damage burst involves charging into melee for a few hits before vaulting back. Also it starts at level 50. Favorite class is Paladin though, I love tanking.
thanks for giving this game a fair chance. much love and I hope youre ready for an experience yet to come I will be here for it! wow objectively has more intuitive gameplay but ff objectively has more impressive cinematic fights and bosses. Some are even sad and tell a story while youre fighting them. you will see man.
"FF14: FINISHING A Realm Reborn - What an ENDING!" Nononononononononono! *waggles finger at you. This isn't the end! You're only, just over, half of the way through, wait until you get to the REAL end of 2.x!!! Also you MUST do the Hildebrand Questline, Anime Tropes galore but also Comedy Gold 👍
There is _a_ _lot_ between the end of ARR and the start of Heavensward, but because you can do the Crystal Tower raids during that time, it's not all that bad...and honestly there was more plot development than I thought there would be including some stuff that is pretty shocking, so it's worth the time....that being said, I was told "welcome to the worst part of FFXIV" by my friends when I started the trek, so it's a common complaint.
@@redwitch95 it’s a separate fork/branch of the MSQ. Eventually you have to finish it, but you can start it pretty much right after ARR after you move the Scions HQ. So mixing in CT while doing the 40+ quests to unlock Ishgard is a nice mix. The mistake I made (and a lot of people make) was trying to unlock Ishgard and hitting a wall where you have to do the CT quest line despite it being avaialbe for days (or weeks depending on your speed), so then you have to go do all the entire CT. Mixing and matching CT + all the story quests to unlock Ishgard would (and Heavensward) would have been a better mix and really made the slog of doing all those fetch quests/message quests more bearable.
I think what he means is dealing with the GCD, which is annoying on almost every job pre 50 due to the lack of oGCDs at that level. BLM circumvents that by having long cast times, so you never bump up against the GCD because you're almost always casting something.
Lots of classes are significantly faster paced and less clunky than BLM at 50. This is only more true later on, but projecting that the “slow caster” archetype is playing very…slowly onto the rest of the game isn’t fair.
Great video Mike. I just finished the Praetorium tonight and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I oddly got stuck at level 47.5 on my run. I only did MSQ and the first 3 sets of hunting logs + a handful of unlocks like Aesthetician and armor dyes + a few dungeon unlocks (didn't do those dungeons though). After getting stuck I was quickly able to do 2 of these dungeons I had skipped + finish some hunting log/Grand Company challenge log entries in order to hit hit 49+ easily on a Pally so I could continue the MSQ. Just odd that there was that hiccup given I was easily 6+ levels above the MSQ all throughout the late 20's through late 30's. Every dungeon I've gone into I've just said "hello, I'm new" and I have not had a single toxic experience the entire time. The worst that I got was a wipe on Garuda b/c I didn't know how to tank it and a DPS pulled before going over what to do. We smashed it on the 2nd pull and there wasn't any raging in chat, just quick explanations and off we went. Very kind community during the group leveling content. The game REALLY does play like a single player RPG 1-50 with maybe 3% of it involving even a single other person. 100% feel your thoughts on the MSQ run-over-here nonsense. They should cut/change like 2/3 of that content. Level 25-40 or so was definitely unenjoyable busy-work run-around boring-stupid story content that I will never ever do again.
It's crazy how Preach's experiences so closely mirror my own with FF14, I remember making basically all of the exact same comments about the game. I guess it's not that surprising, but it's always nice to hear other people feel the same way.
Make sure you do the Normal Raids as well as the Alliance Raids! "Coils of Bahamut" has such a great story for one of the characters you'll interact with a lot later on (Alisaie, Alphinaud's twin-sister), and you get a great story for what happened at the end of FFXIV 1.x and the intro video of FFXIV ARR. Well worth it just for the story.
Preacherman, consider one of the jobs that start at lvl 50 or 60 to help mitigate that "syncing down" problem, since you'll be spreading your msq exp out and be less over levelled. BLM also gets shafted the most by syncing down. Other classes don't generally make you change your rotation that much. Usually just adds an ogcd here and there or makes your combo a bit longer.
Glad you've had fun! Re the patch content... it's not actually bad. But it's long. Something like 80 quests? And in the back of your mind you're constantly hearing a whisper saying 'I could be in the award winning Heavensward expansion if I get through all this filler.' Oddly the content IS relevant and does pay off in a major way. But at the time as you go through it its easy to feel you're just killing time.
That's super sweaty and terrible advice. Because that requires the entire party to be that trihard and usually you'll get a few people new to the experience or not used to it being synced
@@BreakBarrier its right. And I know because I got pressured into doing it and apparently I was good at my job so I wasn't the problem. The whole ordeal only really works if everyone is prepared. If no one is, you find yourself doing 1 turn for over an hour only for a few guys to leave quietly. Its super sweaty and people who only did it unsynced have nothing to measure it to. And turns 1-4 are honestly not worth the hassle of doing it min item lvl. It tends to sound like a bunch of "I'm bored, I need a challenge" talk from players who probably shouldn't be making playthrough suggestions to new comers/first timers. Even weirder considering the fact you commonly read the phrase "its basically savage content" and yet apparently "only no echo, min I.lvl,shirtless, debuff the run if you want to have fun" Like. Something is clearly off if the conversation looks like that
@@PrincessNine Hmmm says that making the content more of a challange is a sweaty thing to do... also brags they were a good player tho... yup deff someone who wants to do harder content but cant cause they suck but will make up stories out "oh thats sweaty behavior oh btw I can do sweaty stuff just fine but I still hate it" Like cmon man... that'd be like saying you were just fine at ultimates but ultimates are sweaty... I'd advise you to grow up a bit and learn its okay you aren't as good as you'd like to be, cause people who are good at the content dont need to say "the issue wasn't me" only insecure people do that :P
The 2.1-3.0 stuff to me was split into 2 halves. First half, boring running back and forth and I couldn't care much. Second half and especially the ending with what happens in Ul'dha, really good, and pissed me off in a good way though. Minor spoiler . . . . I have never forgiven SE for not letting me kill that little shit personally. I wanted to dig the knife in and twist. You'll know who I'm talking about.
Regarding classes, you can try out the levelled up classes such as samurai or dancer to understand where players are coming from without going through the levelling process. I am glad you are having fun! stay safe.
Just commenting before 2 mins in. Just wanted to commend you on your solid stand on playing what you want to play, how you want to play it. If the job feels good then it feels good! Of course everyone's experience is not always the same but as long as you're enjoying the game that's what matters. Kudos and here's to Heavenward! Looking forward to more content!
"I like blm but the gameplay is a bit boring" "Understandable, you might enjoy ninja or something faster, then" "PeOpLe WaNt Me To PlAy ThEiR ClAsS" Jokes aside, I'm glad he's enjoying the game
Imagine comparing the LEVELLING gameplay of the slowest most boring class in ff14 to mythic raiding game play and concluding "WoW has better gameplay." What unbelievable ignorance.
glad you enjoyed it so far. Couple points: - Even though story mode is always easy, there is a bit more weight to it on the expansions, because a lot of adjustments made to the game over the years resulted in ARR being absolutely trivial (Min ilvl no echo raids, even though they're still easier than they were, are fun nonetheless, cause you still gotta learn them). - playing other jobs is something players recommend just because its a feature which is not present in wow. I love this feature and it feels great to have, for example, BLM, a healer and a tank, without having to re-do story, covenant, renown, legendaries, etc. You've probably heard this but the slow gameplay is not as slow as you'd think at high level. Most classes have a lot of button presses, so it kinda goes back and forth between very busy windows and slower windows. BLM as a caster kinda doesnt, which makes it the ultimate caster experience.
I literally just finished ARR last night lol, it’s pretty cool I get to experience the game with you, anyone else on this boat? Also definitely going to try Eve now that you mentioned it!
You can't keep any secrets on the internet... except cape westwind, where all humans suddenly decide that this is the time and place to cooperate perfectly towards a common goal.
Re: boosting. There are two things to keep in mind. First: an experience I've seen many people have with FF14 is going from "I just don't care about the story in mmos" to "I hadn't realized the story in the MMOs I was playing was so bad/the story in an MMO could be good". Furthermore the story you do get by boosting (ie. the latest expansion) is built on top of everything that came before, and as a result is greatly diminished by starting it from a boost, like starting a book from three quarters through. There is an argument there for trying the story even if you normally would have gone straight to boosts. Second: while the battle content is fun and good, and due to level syncing it remains sort of evergreen which also makes it plentiful, just doing endgame raiding may not be worth the cost of game+boosts+a sub fee to people versus cheaper options, especially with the context of fights being an important part of their overall feel. In a sense, if you're going to skip the story, you might ultimately be better served spending that money on two heavily combat focused games instead of on one FF14. The value proposition is good for the whole game, not so much for the disjointed sum of its parts, and what joins it all together is the story.
You are all set for the Coils of Bahamut, the first really difficult content in ARR. Looking forward to watching you try it after you get back from New World!
Hi Mike... I had 'Unsubbed' from you awhile back, not because I didn't like you as a content creator, it was as though I felt you just were an unhappy guy, and it sorta felt it in your videos. I don't know if you were just "Burning Out" with all the seriousness and stress of WoW? Since you stopped creating just for WoW, I have 'Subscribed' again, and how you are in your videos is great! You truly seem less stressed and just having fun with video games again. That makes me happy for you, and I think in the long run, its gonna be the best thing for your channel. I am a WoW castoff to FFIXV... and the transition was a struggle. What you have to remind yourself when playing FF, is that they just want you to 'Have Fun'. If you take anything too seriously, you just won't have fun! AND.... yeah, Raiding in FF can get pretty darn good at the endgame!!! It is a blast to be honest.
The rest of arr can be a bit of a slog, yes, but the finale is soooo worth it. And then heavensward is an absolute joy to play from start to finish. You'll love it! Also to make the rest of arr less of a slog - you can just do the raids and extremes without easy mode. Also also, i really recommend doing both Crystal Tower and Coils of Bahamut before moving on. Not only theyre fun raids gameplay-wise, but both are also important for the story of future expansions. Have fun!
Just for the record, the Cape Westwind thing is not just for streamers, it's for EVERYONE. All sprouts get Westwinded.
That doesn’t make sense but okay
if i queue up for it i always make sure to hype up the battle. lol
@@omensoffate it’s pretty straightforward. I don’t see how it can be any clearer.
I got into XIV years after my other friends did. When I mentioned I was doing Westwind, they all immediately started to hype it up, gave me better gear “you’ll need this man”, the whole nine yards.
And then we blazed it.
They were cracking up in chat and I’ve yet to forgive them. :/
Yeah once there are first time players in there you gotta hype it up xD
I just beat Heavensward and honestly Alphinaud is one of the most compelling characters in the game to me. Love that guy (even when I hate him sometimes)
jmcrofts and maximilian dood raid night when?
make sure to do coils of bahamut if you haven't, its ARRs true ending
Get Steve and Obama to hop on already.
Alphinaud is absolutely great!
jmcrofts and finalfantasy is the crossover we needed and didnt know it. closes we got was cloud and seph in smash
Alphinaud didn't really annoy me as a character in ARR either. He is a haughty, overconfident teenager who thinks he can save the world by himself. Obviously he isn't meant to be liked in that part. Character arcs are only useful if your characters start of flawed.
Flawed characters make the best stories, even the ones you hate at first
He genuinely has one of the strongest character arcs in the entire game, if not the franchise as a whole.
Yeah, I liked Alphinaud from the start, because as annoying as he is it was always clear that that was the intent. I could see his arc forming before it began.
Aye, and personally even if ARR Alphy was arrogant, his heart was still in the right place.
also his voice is way better in Japanese
Ya I never had an issue with him.
As rough as ARR is, it’s necessary for contextualizing the entire rest of the game
This couldn't be more true after EW.
Post arr really isn’t necessary it’s a slog base arr is actually pretty good.
I disagree that Gaius was “evil mcevilson” as his motivations were quite clearly laid out. Primals or “Eikons” are a blight on the land and he believes Eorzia is too weak to deal with them because they haven’t dealt with them being summoned over and over again thus he took it upon himself to come up with a way to contain them thus preventing their resummoning. What he didn’t account for was the Ascian’s betrayal as they simply wanted the power of Ultima awakened to cause “such devastation” which was not Gaius’ intent.
Post Stormblood spoilers:
A lot of Gaius' dialogue and actions pretty much prove he means it too, he's not just throwing out words.
I think you're being a bit too generous towards Gaius here. Yes, he wasn't the incarnation of evil, but his attitude in ARR ("you should welcome the rule of our strong empire instead of your weak local leaders, and if you don't do so voluntarily, I will force you") was definitely very imperialistic.
Not to mention, when that one Ascion dude unleashed the true power of Ultima and cuased bascily a nuclear bomb to set off, Gaius said "This is not what I wanted"
The thing is he doesn’t differentiate us from the beastmen. He views our gods “the twelve” and their gods “the primals” as the same thing, and he has a very good point. He feels we are all bleeding the land dry of aether, and we don’t have the strength or conviction to notice and enforce change. That is why we need to be conquered and ruled.
Even coming from someone who has only done ARR, it's obvious from the start the warrior of light and the Scions are basically useful idiots drunk on glory, blessed by their "God" to do their bidding. As long as they are kept thinking they are "good", they will keep killing for them. Gaius and the empire are not "evil" per say, they see Eorzea lead by weak leaders who can't control their own country and the beastmen/Eikons that reside in it, lack technology which makes those in power overly reliant on borrowing power from adventurers and aether magic, whilst also harbouring many city factions squabbling for control which could be united. He blames Eorzea for unleashing Bahamut in his speech so believes they wield chaotic destruction they have little control over, even though that part isn't true. He is not even working for the empire at this point who gave up invading, but clearly desperate when making a pact with the Ascians to infiltrate the Scions and discover and wield the Ultima weapon to speed up the process of conquering. From the story POV of the player he is evil, but only from the information you are fed from your allies and the people his forces have killed.
The Cape Westwind troll actually far predates the recent big streamer influx I got hit with it when I first started playing back at the start of stormblood, so I can only imagine its even older than that.
It actually started in ARR, when he actually was a threat. Then when Ilvl came into play all the veterans kinda silently agreed to hype it up as a prank on the sprouts.
This coming from someone who timed out many dungeons in vanilla ARR because the time limits were not new player friendly.
If he says Gold Carousel one more time...
In all seriousness, the cannon that Preach is a Boomer learning something new writes itself
To be fair I still can't remember the names of stuff and when I talk to people about FFxiv I say stuff like "That level 47 dungeon"
@@kosbebot6360 Nuff said m8
@@kosbebot6360 look, no one wants to speak of the devil, so "that level 47 dungeon" works just fine
@@spring1610 At least now has ground telegraphs on the second boss so it's mostly just that first room now
it's canon* it is not a large, heavy piece of artillery, typically mounted on wheels, formerly used in warfare.
Man, if you're this impressed by ARR, you're in for one hell of a ride xD
Honestly veteran FF players are usually the ones that say ARR suck, new players tend to like it.
as a veteran ff player it is because we have been spoiled by the later expansions and alot of us remember going through arr before the amount of story quests were trimmed down.
@@DakonBlackblade2 true i started in December cause shadowlands wasn't looking very appealing, and i thoroughly enjoyed ARR, it has some rough parts, especially in post ARR, but it was pretty good overral
@@henriquerodrigues7795 Ye. I play this game since launch (on and off but recently almost always on) and ARR is pretty solid. The game gets a lot better but ppl fail to put things in perspective and compare ARR against Shadowbringes which is just unfair.
@@DakonBlackblade2 the thing is, if you are comparing ARR to other games nowadays its kinda just middle of the road. Not great not terrible. It's only terrible when you compare it to the the expansions because of how much better they are.
To be fair, the Cape Westwind troll isn't just for streamers. We've been pulling that troll on sprouts forever lol
The amount of 'No one tell her' for certain things in FF after I'd called out it being my first time is since seriously silly play. And no one does!
I'm putting E10S macros for this one because it's just hilarious how they think it will be an amazing and hard fight
I remember getting into one a couple weeks ago with my Trials Roulette and someone said "oh God, oh no. Ok guys, how are we going to handle phase 6?" I freaking died when he said that, the new person started to look a little worried. But yeah, its not just a streamer a thing, I got trolled on it when I first ran it last year, which didn't help my anxiety but was still funny looking back at it now.
I've never really seen that in all my time playing it, and I've had my shares of Westwind in roulettes. At most I've seen some clearly sarcastic comments about the difficulty but I never saw people putting down markers or anything before. Though maybe its more common when the new player is playing with an active FC with a preformed party for this, or maybe its just not as much of a thing on Crystal.
@@Nirual86 I see warnings, floor markers, macro spams, almost every time that I get it in trial roulette on Primal!
It’s honestly pretty frustrating hearing “the slow gameplay would only feel worse as a melee” it’s literally the exact opposite. Nearly every melee has a faster gcd as well as far more OGCD abilities. All of these assumptions from the view of the slowest, most clunky leveling class are seriously warping the view of the gameplay. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong for enjoying BLM, it’s just unfair to judge the rest of the game from that experience.
Edit: just wanna say I’m not trying to be overly harsh, I still love this video series and I’m glad he’s enjoying the game. Ffxiv is my favorite game of all time since i started in stormblood.
tbh i do think he would lose his mind if he was playing like… a lancer at low level or something. I think even as a black mage, he will start to understand the gameplay design as he gets further
He had alot of Infos he could have read before and everywhere its being told how clunky slow and hard BLM is, he picked it, so i dont feel pardon of his point of view. he just didnt informed himself beforehand, not my bussines
Is the game faster than runescape? It looks better for sure.
@@TheLegendBrolySS Storywise? No .. Levelwise Classes ? Yes
Yeah no. Lancer/Dragoon was a horrid slog for me until halfway through stormblood. Monk is also a slow burner. Ninja and Samurai feel more refined, but rogue was boring af as well. Ninja only become fun when the double mudras started to be introduced, admittedly that's what, 35, but still.
Cape Westwind troll was pure gold. In my opinion, the story starts to pick up right before you the start heavensward expansion.
"Getting ready to raid before we start heavensward" ...I see no one has mentioned that he still has a long road before he gets to the expansion. XD
Well he do have to raid in crystal tower, so he is correct.
in the last 30 seconds he mentions that people have warned him it's a slog before HW
He got through ARR in like a week and a half, I’m sure 2.x won’t be too bad.
@@Jinnigan I would say after 2.0 is better
yeah the second part of ARR is loooong af
"All of those abilities alter how your character plays nearly entirely" They do. As black mage. Which why everyone says BLM sucks to level. Your rotation completely changes every couple of levels basically all the way until 80, and any time you're synced down, it feels clunky as hell. Most other jobs will fundamentally play the same, just with less buttons.
It's not that hard though. You just swap in Bliz 1 and Fire 1 for Bliz 3 and Fire 4 and you're off to the races.
Dragoon is complete at 64(I think), and below it sucks
@@kosbebot6360 I think the worst part about it is unlike other jobs that replace skills with traits so when you sync down, they are automatically replaced on your bar, BLM needs to have Blizz 1 and Fire 1 on their bar in case they are synced down.
@@ReadySetBacon Yeah, that's the annoying part. I adjusted my hot bars so that Bliz 1 is right below Bliz 3 and Fire 1 is right below Fire 4 to make for easy swapping. :)
Never do roulettes with Blackmage. It's the worst.
I mean, I thought Whitemage needing to put Cure 1 back onto the bar was bad. Then I started playing Blackmage.
The dedication from the editor to correct Mike every time he said Carrousel is astounding
What I like about Shadowbringers, is that it is all gas no break, with VERY minimal amount of running forward and back delivering message and stuff compared to past expansions.
I found Shadowbringers to have the same amount of filler between major plot points as Stormblood. I've entered a new zone, it's time to meet the new NPC who's going to make me their bitch for the next 45 minutes. I've met a new character and I want something from them so of course they need me to solve their problems and do their chores first, never mind that I'm trying to save not just the world but the universe. This is pretty standard in MMOs so I can't say I'm surprised, especially since I went through the same thing in Stormblood, but SHB's story goes SO HARD that the styrofoam bits had me nearly screaming for the next piece of story.
Thing is, even those slower bits of the MSQ still feel connected directly to the overall goal and provides more insight in this completely new place. It never really dragged for me, in fact I think those moments are really quite important to build up to the next crazy bit. All action all the time would be exhausting, confusing and just kinda lose the impact over time.
Except the shadowbringers patch content. That stuff sucks balls.
I would definitely say try out one of the melee jobs. Ninja, Samurai and Monk all have built in abilities/mechanics which reduces their GCD to around 2 secs. Dragoon doesn’t have abilities which reduces your GCD rather has alot of OGCD’s.
Ninja especially is a REALLY fast paced job when it comes to burst but pretty lax in filler, I'd say SAM might have a lot of planning and less positionals for Preach and it has a decent leveling experience.
DRG is great at high level but under 60 dragoon is practically unplayable for me
but in the end all of them will only get fast at around lvl 60 or 70. they are all slow.
@@danilooliveira6580 Ninja gets its 15% GCD reduction at 45, samurai gets their 13% GCD reduction skill at 18 (shifu is a level 18 ability IK sam starts at 50). Monk gets a 5% GCD reduction at level 1, 20, 40, and 76 for a total of 20% reduction.
@@josephxp96 the GCD reduction doesn't matter much, because it will still feel slow, what matters is the OGCDs, that is what makes the gameplay feel frenetic at higher levels. without armor crush you have one less ninjutsu every 60s and you get 5 OGCDs and Ten Chi Jin from 50 to 70. Samurai is even worse, he gets 10 new OGCDs between lvl 50 and 70 (even though half of them are situational and not part of the rotation), and 2 more between lvl 70 and 80. before lvl 50 the samurai rotation is incredibly boring, good and functional, but boring, you don't even have positionals before lvl 52.
@@danilooliveira6580 True the OGCD’s improve greatly at higher level (like Dragoon) but I’m merely thinking of early leveling how they feel different with basically a 2.1 GCD for melee outside of Dragoon.
All praise the Golden Carousel!! (when will he realize?) The grass is actually greener on the other side. It gets better. Looking forward to seeing you progress through coils.
You want faster gameplay then play any of the melee DPS. That's where the speed is
Well as long as you start them at about 50 yeah, Lancer at level 1-49 is just suffering. I think you'd be best of with samurai since it starts at 50 anyway
@@glenndiddy i wanted to say except dragoon but ppl seem to like it.
@@LangLong I prefer Dragoon to any other melee DPS, and I played all but monk
Love DRG but it only gets good at 60+
"Wow gameplay is still king."
*cue jameson laugh*
Can't wait to see your reactions to everything leading up to Heavensward
The entire ending cutscene of ARR will blow his socks off.
I am hoping he can get through 2.0-2.4 as the story is very slow with the lead up but 2.5 is like holy shit. Then Heavensward is such a great experience. haha
Honestly can't wait for him to do the Shiva fight
I await for his travels through the Binding Coils of Bahamut, especially Turn 9.
Preach, man, if ARR impressed you, I just have to say that you have NO idea what's in store.
Enjoy the freaking ride.
Well, you're playing one of if not the slowest classes in a game.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing lol
I mean yeah there's the GCD but most black mage spells are wayyy longer than that
@@darron13 he's right about it not feeling bad when you're casting though
WAR feels awful because it has the same GCD or slower but with almost no filler, casting at least feels like a good way to fill the gcd
@@Doublejho WAR really needs some more oGCD stuff. I'm hoping with the 2 charge Inner Release and the more free usage of Upheaval and Onslaught will really help it speed up.
@@Noryll1327 they should've given it haste or something if they're trying to keep it simple imo; better yet, they could also have not stripped it of its previously substantial depth, turning it into the most braindead class in the game bar none instead
And he keeps saying it's good for making the gcd feel less bad lol. It's the worst class in game for it probably.
New drinking game: Every time Preach calls it the "Golden Carousel", take a shot.
How many people are you trying to murder? When the dust has settled... SUCH DEVASTATION!
@@KeluRolen This was not their intention!
Six-hundred eighty-two shots later..
I don’t want to die
Great content. But revisit the gameplay issue when you're 80. Game at 60, 70 and 80 completely changes. Especially for BLM. When you're 80, you will have a lot of off GCD abilities and you'll realize that it's a very complicated and deep system.
As a person who plays, and thoroughly enjoys, both WOW and FF14 I want to talk about the gameplay opinion; the games are paced very different. The best way I can describe it is the difference between Super Smash Brother and Tekken. The gameplay isn't really slower, it's just more methodical and that is compounded by what you can do during your GCD, as well as most mechanics being central on your character requiring basically an entire GCD to avoid them vs WOW's more predictable mechanic locations that require a faster response (but, again, this just boils down to pacing; spending 1.5 GCD moving vs 2.5 GCD moving is still moving). The pacing is just different. FF14 thrives on the methodical gameplay which is highly prevalent when you get to max level and start looking into openers vs rotations; the fact that there's such an egregious, almost bot worthy, rotation system speaks a lot for it's focus.
Every video is now the “preach finishes 5.0” waiting room. Mans is gonna SOB
Is he an emotional person?
I dont mean that in a bad way, I just want to know about his reactions to hard choices/terrible things
As someone who has been around since 2010 when it all first began, I love watching all these new impressions. Cannot wait til see what you think about the game as it progresses. Cause man its a hoot.
"Forward and back and then go forward and back".
You'll understand in a little bit ;).
Also if you play RedMage or Dragoon.
"and put one foot forward" that's the most important part! :)
It makes me SO happy that even in ARR you love the game. I too love ARR, but everything after makes ARR look like pacman by comparison.
*confused pacman noises*
I don't know what you're talking about, Pacman is great! :p
I still greatly appreciate ARR for setting the foundation for the great stories that would follow. Just the presentation was lacking because of time constraints and technical limitations of the time. It could definitely use a bit of a refresh beyond just cutting out the worst of the padding and giving people flight for the patch MSQ.
It makes sense why Alphinaud is the way he is at the beginning. I would even say apple does not fall far from the tree if you know what I mean lol. About the GCD, a lot of ex-WoW player have the same notion that their former game is superior because it was designed well. The thing they'll realize soon is that the GCD for FFXIV was designed that way for the encounters they'll have. Which makes the fight more of a symphony rather than a reactionary dance at a night club. Under the system FFXIV encounter, the battle is well design just as WoW battle is well designed under their own system of encounter.
xiv is such a hard sell to former wow players (in my experience), as much of the rotational complexity for a lot of jobs in xiv comes in only at max level when you have all your abilities. but in order to get there they have to suffer through 300+ hours of rpg with "slow" gameplay.. i want more of my friends to play xiv but when they just keep comparing it to wow's shorter gcd it's just so hard :\
Play Dragoon and Ninja, and you'd WISH you have 3s GCD lol
That's a weird way to spell Monk
Ninja is like competitive typing in speed requirements
@@MrFrexys *monke
I main Ninja and I'm around lvl 60 and having trouble finding keys to assign my abilities. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do when I'm 80.
@@MrFrexys I have a skill speed set for my monk and playing in bozja with constant 1.5s gcds feels amazing.
In Endwalker, they're revising Westwind to make it less humiliatingly easy -- it was in the last producer letter. And it's Gold Saucer, dude, lol.
What if they put in a crapton of mechanics but they all do 0 damage,
Being true to the meme of everyone hyping it u0
@@dafire9634 I mean I'll be fine if its tuned up enough that people actually see all of his mechanics regularly. He was never really that dangerous but his big aoe actually hurt and he also puts down some flame patches. Same thing for the first two Crystal Tower raids, particularly Syrcus Tower where you just flat out skip whole phases on the first 2 bosses with no effort.
Rip I want it to stay as a meme
@@TheSilverwing999 honestly a better tuned fight would make that meme work a little bit better when the fight isn't over in half a minute.
Fair points, but regarding the global cooldown: every other job gets tonnes of skills to use in between gcds, but BLM is the only class that doesnt (besides buffs) so it is truely bound by the GCD. Youll find that every other class plays significantly faster, even the other casters.
And FYI the game is designed with enough exp to concurrently level 2 jobs while doing the story, doing that helps prevent you from being massively overlevelled!
Only if you are in a prefered server and get the "road to 70" buffs.
I've leveled 2 alts in different Data Centers and just doing MSQ you hit the level 49 mission and your character is level 47 so you have to stop and do dungoens to continue the story.
@@nahuel3433 you know that they greatly increased the xp you get from MSQ right? I have a level 73 Ninja and a level 71 warrior. Im very early in shadowbringers (i just finished meeting up with the first two people you meet up with in shadow) Started 3 weeks ago.
@@Saxonsredux I am telling you I started my alt character last week. So yes. I know for a fact that you hit the level 49 MSQ when you are lvl 47. (And btw I have Minphilia's earings too, meaning I have more of a bonus XP than most) I can't speak for HW and ahead yet because I haven't tunnel visioned them with a lvl 50 character like I did tunnel vision ARR with a level 0 character
So I am inclined to believe you have Road to 70
Because I started playing myself a few months ago and I had road to 70 and ended up with a ton of extra levels and could level 2 jobs at a time. Like what server are you playing in?
@@nahuel3433 I didnt have road to 70 and had multiple jobs going at the same time the whole way through, there are certain points (usually just before finishing ARR or expansion) where the exp can drop behind, but if you unlock and do all the optional dungeons and content youll easily catch up ^^.
I just hope Preach sticks with it until after the start of HW. Literally everything gets so much better
I think what it is is that people didnt go through wow when it first came out or they have forgotten, as FF14 ARR + post patch content is just as much a grind as wow when it first came out.
I just wish he would stop listening to people who say the ARR patch content is bad. Its not bad at all, sure there are some slow moments but its not all bad.
Got to say Mike - am loving the new content and direction you're taking the channel.
Used to play Eve, but not been on it for quite some time - quite excited to see you go through that as well. :)
The ending to the post content is incredible and worth the grind, it also sets up Heavensward perfectly.
The idea behind the gcd is as you level and gain new abilities a lot of classes will gain quite a few instant cast spells which can be cast independently of the gcd. I've only leveled bard to 80 so far but it's normal depending where i am in my rotation to be using 2 or even 3 spells (including a main gcd spell) per gcd and it's possible for me to try and use more, at any one time as many as 5/6 can be available that would actually make sense to cast together if possible, but it's "optimal" to only use 2 off gcd's per gcd due to reasons i sort of understand about server ticks (you don't really need to understand them since you can feel how janky things get when u try to fit in more).
For most of the classes i've leveled that doesn't really fully boot in until you get to around level 70, earlier for some, Bard and Machinist were absolutely rocking by the early 60s but Samurai took a little longer to ramp up and red mage still feels a bit slow to me (but I've barely played it as a 70 to be fair). No Idea on Black Mage, never played it but I'd be surprised if that doesn't also pick up a tad in speed. That's not say I think the gameplay is "as good as" or "better" than wows, but in terms of speed it improves (no idea if it does so for every job but I would guess it does since this game tends to be VERY consistent in design). In terms of weight and having a tactile sense to doing a thing with your abilities, wow is better still IMO.
You still have quite a bit of ARR to do, as it's end game is a monster, but i think whilst it may bring some frustration you will love the alliance raid and the trials you get to do. Then it's to heavensward... ah blessed heavensward ^_^
The Golden Carousel is my favourite Disneyland ride as well. :)
Also, I personally didn't find the patch content that bad; I struggled more on the first 30-40 MSQ levels than I did on the patch 2.x stuff.
Same on the story. I thought the storytelling was better and it was interesting to me to see the political motivations of the different city-states.
I love that even streamers are falling into the Cape Westwind gag. That's one of my favorite things to pull on sprouts, and has been for years. I love it!
I'm so happy that Preach and company are having fun with FF14 and it makes me happy that they can all just get beyond some of the misrepresentations on all sides!
the westwind troll was too funny! Mike, really happy to see you giving this a fair shake. I came to FF14 07/2020, and have stayed ever since. My main character is Omni 80, everything. there is such a deep richness to this game. I'm still unlocking stuff. I hope you are going to check the Coils raids at level, and maybe a savage turn 2 coil.. those are hard, and fun. anway, thanks brother. always quality analysis and content from you brother.
Amazing, your opinion is a good compass for my likings and i'd like to thank you for making me try this game, im super hooked!
Definitely revisit your thoughts on gameplay when you're 80. Comparing lvl 50 BLM to anything is like comparing a level 5 warlock to a level 60 one. You're missing the most important parts of the class. Additionally, a lot of classes feel slow at lower levels and absolutely do not at higher levels (any melee dps).
That's quite the design flaw.
tbh he could probably check back in at 60 given how much the jobs changed in HW alone
If you enjoyed the ARR story at all you will love Heavensward and the gameplay gets a lot better at max level.
My friends got me with Cape Westwind when I was a sprout leveling for the first time, 7 years ago. That joke has been going on FOREVER, I had a good chuckle to see showing up again on streams. There is some hard content, but ARR is almost a decade old now and the number scaling really changed older content, everything became easier which is why the devs are going to crunch numbers. Glad to hear you're enjoying it, it only goes uphill from here!
I just finished heavensward patch cycle last night and that expansion made me cry at least 4 times, but I don’t know why people say the ARR patch cycle is bad I found it pretty good.
It's not bad per-se. It's all about world building and your ascension to becoming the hero Eorzea needs. But the journey can seem a little long at a few points.
It's mainly the post-ARR patch quests that get the most flak.
comparatively with the rest of the game, it's bad. By the standards of most MMO's, it's fine. The stuff between HW and the end of 2.0, though, is just clearly so much filler.
@@petriew2018 I deign to disagree with the end of 2.0 (2.3-2.4?) It set up a LOT of things going into Heavensward.
@@zoroarkdx4491 gameplay wise it was a lot of fetch quests and busy work to unlock stuff. It wasn't terrible, it was just grindy as hell until HW kicks in. The story was fine, the gameplay elements were lackluster, IMO
Ehh when playing through it 2.1 to 2.3 i could take it or leave it. 2.4 and 2.5 are really good. BUT at late game you just learn how important ARR really was for laying the groundwork even if it was a slog at times.
Seriously pumping out some good content lately, mate. Glad to see you doing something other than only WoW and seeing your excitement instead of your previous moods. Looking smooth,Mike!
You have to remember that with each new expansion, the old content is nerfed. Also you will have a few jobs that are doing the fight that didn't exist when the content was created, throwing off the fight dynamics a little and most groups are now very overgeared for the fight. I think almost all fights allow you to do them with min ilvl, that would make it feel much more like the original fight. All that said, most "base" content was never overly hard to complete in ARR.
Especially Cape Westwind which even when it was new had people in the highest level 50 gear that could use it to their full potential since it's a level 49
they don't actually specifically nerf a lot of content, they just don't adjust them for general changes that make the players stronger overall. Echo being added to trials and savage raids being the regular exception and that happens during the course of the expansion already.
Only things I can recall them going back to old content to nerf it specifically would be Eureka (mostly the early zones), Orbonne Monastery (TG Cid got nerfed TWICE along with an echo buff for the first time in an alliance raid) and them adding AoE markers to Coincounter in Aurum Vale.
As for the new jobs they are actually very deliberate in barring the use of certain abilities in older content (Red Mage doesn't get Verraise until 64 for example). They don't generally throw out the fight dynamics that much except in terms of DPS (Dancer getting their insane AoE at level 15, even after the nerf).
You'll probably love doing Coils of Bahamut which is the real major level 50 8 man raid, and it even has a savage mode but even the normal mode isn't a walk in the park either. And there's a huge chunk of story related to it too with several major cutscenes that happen as you progress through it and it fills in a lot of backstory you may not quite understand yet. Hope to catch you do it on stream.
Cant wait to see him do Coils and watch the cinematic there + the final Coil and music , he will not stop playin FF after that point !
Stream needs to tell him to turn off voices tho, oh god the Coil's Alisaie voice acting haunts my dreams. Thank the spirits for the voice actor replacement of Heavensward.
@@val7885 Her part was cringe but Louisoix was good , cant turn that part off
To be fair, the Praetorium dungeon used to be a decent challenge. It is outgeared by huge margins now, plus all of the balancing changes over time also made a change, but it still can be pretty tough on minimum ilvl, just barely anyone does it that way, understandably
I felt the same way my first trip to the Golden Carousel / Saucer. The scale and scope of the place is just so huge and after 20 minutes it was like "wait, why doesn't WoW have this?"
The Darkmoon Faire starting with the Cata revamp where they made it its own zone is kind of like the saucer. The big difference is the Golden Saucer is constantly updated (new minigames, rotating out the old GATEs, etc.) whereas the faire is 90% the same as it was ten years ago. If WoW had constantly kept updating the faire like we originally hoped when the island first came out, it could've been a pretty substantial diversion to play in. So there was a missed opportunity there.
@@troyen3869 The faire is also timegated. Like everything else in WoW.
@@troyen3869 As Skyblade responded, DMF it time gated but I'll also add that it's purely transactional. You go there to turn stuff in to get a reward, then you leave, maybe stopping briefly (in the old days) to skill up a crafting profession to save on some mats.
The Saucer, on the other hand, is fun. The reason to go to the Saucer is specifically to do Saucer stuff. Let's put it this way, nobody has said "I can't wait for the DMF to open this month" so they can go participate in the _actual_ faire.
@@andrewshandle That is true today, that wasn't true when the faire released. There have been maybe two or three minor updates to the faire in the past ten years or so. Blizzard could have made it into so much more, but they chose not to. In contrast, while the GS at release was way bigger than the faire, it still gets stale after a while. SE knows this and continues to add new things to the saucer in each expansion, to keep the place alive even though it doesn't contribute to player progression. The state of DMF is a reflection of WoW's overall game direction and design priorities.
It's a shame too because there are actually a lot of fun little side things interspersed throughout WoW. I remember the plants vs zombies mini-game, the Joust callback in Cata, pet battling tournaments, and a number of other things that are there for fun. They're just treated more like easter-eggs (or turned into dailies) rather than bundled together in a giant carnival/casino.
@@troyen3869 The biggest issue with WoW is that everything they build for an expansion is designed to be temporary for just that expansion and it really hurts the game. Instead of housing, we get the Garrison. Instead of a really cool class guild hall with new quests every expansion, we get the Order Halls which were amazing (for the most part) for 2 years and never used again. The same will be for Torghast...all that work, and it'll never be used again, and for the most part it seems like they don't want to invest in DMF for the same reasons.
I don't really understand why they want to spend so much time building things that instantly become unused the second an expansion is over, it feels like such a tragic waste of time. I would love if every expansion they'd say "here's the content, and we know that is going to be used up...but here's this cool thing we added that will be useful/fun/relevant going forward".
Good to see you enjoying your time here Mike! Looking forward to seeing your adventures through heavensward
The thing about BLM is that when you hit 80 and realize how great the class plays, you won't ever want to sync down to anything below 74
The level 72 trait needs to be built into the class at 50 it's too good
@@denofpigs2575 i think they actually are making it a level 1 trait actually, might be misremembering though
@@wtfisawohde3660 They did. It is a level 1 trait (For Black Mage so it's not available from the start as Thaumaturge) and nothing else in EW made me happier. They made the change I wanted the most and did it better than I asked lol.
I love Alphy. He is one of the characters that have a really big growth throughout all of the expansions
Quin69 embodied WHY so many people in this game disagree with boosts. Doing the MSQ boost is fine, but doing a level boost is not... unless you are okay with yelling "WHERE ARE MUH EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS".
From one WOW raider to another, pretty stoked to see you playing this game. Look forward to your opinions on raiding Ultimates (non-boosted hopefully, but highly doubtful), if you ever get to that point.
There is nothing wrong with boosting of any kind.
Look at those raider groups who boosted but don't blame others when they fail mechanic's.
Well also him trashtalking the story... when he boosted at level 15 past it all and acting like he knew it and was experienced enough to be an expert
@@Crusina You mean the people who play wow raids competitively and have tons of time to devote specifically to raiding and min/maxing and with zero other interests in the game? Sorry, I tend to forget that 99% of any games player base are those kinds of players. Silly me.
The level 50 raids are so fun! Not hard but definitely fun, with amazing music and visuals.
as you stated you mainly want to focus on a caster now, I would suggest Red Mage, they have a faster rotation than Black mage due to having Dualcast, which makes every other spell instant. and has a few OGCDs, it also has a melee combo with an engage and disengage.
He's happy with BLM, why should he change? RDM is such a straightforward job too.
@@UnwrittenNoise Because he complains the gameplay is slow and then plays the slowest job. Not knocking it or anything, but would be good for him to at least see what other jobs are like i guess
@@barsonik3855 But he straight up says he wants to continue on with Black Mage? I don't get how he can be clearer.
Note I didn't expressly say he should change, I merely suggested a job he may enjoy as well as BLM. At worst he could look into it for whenever he MAY want to in the future
Thank you for giving the game such a fair review with all of its highs and lows. I am looking forward to seeing you do some raid content. Just a tip. When you open the dutyfinder for the raid you can click a gear icon on the top left. There you can change some settings like minimum ilvl (scales you ilvl down to the lowest needed) or no echo (turns off the stacking buff every time you wipe up to 30% more dmg/health/healing). If you want to just see the story of the raid you can leave these turned off. If you want to see the mechanics turn on min ilvl. If you want a challenge turn on no echo.
Oh, he thinks he is near Heavensward, how cute!
Glad to hear you sticking with one job . I thought I was the only one. In WoW I mained Dk and Lock, and always was messing around on my other ten alts. Now, FF14: I rolled Lancer/Dragoon. At 30, and again at 50, I tried a couple others, but within a few minutes, I was missing my Dragoon. I'll probably take it to level cap before getting giving a fairer try on anything else. Dragoon just clicks for me.
Leveling a BLM is not bad, I leveling it on an alt and having a _blast_ . But it is very weird, because you keep changing rotations, you have a rotation now and when you reach 60 chuck it in the bin, because after that it changes completely.
BTW you should play red mage, best job ever.
Don't worry about the weird Anime friendship blast thing at the end with Hydealyn. Most of FFXIV players also found it really cheesy and weird, and there's really no other scenes similar to that after that point. The story starts getting much deeper and more complex in the post ARR stretch and then truly peaks in the expansions, so I'm legit hyped af to see you experiencing all that if you decided to stick to it!
I mean, at the core there are still a lot of "power of friendship" moments throughout the whole thing. They just continued to get infinitely better at building up to and executing them as development went along, so people actually like them. One of the biggest things that really pumps this game up over time people gloss over is the advancing of the cutscene camera tech. They seem to also be really going hard on custom character animations for scenes that aren't all big action moments in the post 5.0 content, so hopefully we'll see a big improvement there in endwalker.
"I wanna do the raids first before we go into Heavensward" Ahahahahahaha. He doesn't know!
2.X sprout here, what am I missing?
@@AnaseSkyrider Well. He finished 2.0 and thinks that after doing the raids he can go straight to Heavensward.
@@MidBoss2998 And when he says "raids", does he mean the extreme trials or is he thinking of the actual alliance raids? Because he seems to think full parties are raids. Because if he means the actual raids, at least Crystal Tower isn't far off. Getting the higher difficulty trials requires actually doing a lot of 2.X content.
@@AnaseSkyrider There are two sorts of raids.
Alliance Raids are basically story driven theme park rides. Not very difficult.
And then there are the 8-man raids. Categorized (at least after ARR) in Normal and Savage (and Ultimate but that's a different story altogether)
The 8-man raid in ARR is the Binding Coils of Bahamut. The 24-man alliance raid is the Crystal Tower.
I think the patch content for ARR is fine now, they trimmed a lot of the filler out of it some time back. It also now diverts you to the first raid content at level 50 which it used to not do so that becomes part of the experience. I'd say for an MMO you won't be shocked in either way, it's fine. I am a fan of the raids though for sure and I think you will enjoy them and the extreme trials if you feel like giving those a shot.
I honestly think that people exaggerate a lot about ARR , if you are used to older mmos grind ARR is NOTHING , yeah there is some fillers here and there but overall it felt just like a lot of other mmos or rpgs in pace .
@@guerravpb I'd wager it's more to do with veterans that did the original 2.1-2.55 patch quests. They did recently rework them and they cut out pretty much all of the filler that existed in those quests. Most of what's left is the stuff that's relevant in future expansions. Originally though, it was absolutely awful where it was so obvious they were putting stuff in there just to waste your time and keep people busy between patches.
*obligatory "SUCH DEVASTATION"*
Looking forward to seeing you go through the post-expansion arcs. 2.1 to 2.5 is a mix of some of the most tedious stuff in ARR (it has been termed "The Seventh Astral Slog", though I understand it's been trimmed a lot since I did it in late 2019 or so), and one of the most epic and, to me, unexpected endings I've experienced in a game (and my first game was "Pong" when it was something only your rich friends (who were only your friends 'cause they were rich) had).
My man, I fully understand your perspective because I just went through this about two months ago as well. I promise you there will come a point where you realize “oh this is why people don’t want you to skip the story” and also “oh this is why people want me to try other jobs” when the gameplay actually does open up. The biggest weak point of this game is the early pacing of making that apparent. My entire friend group got filtered out and lost faith. The gameplay will eventually scratch that wow itch or at least come close. It will not disappoint I promise.
That's the real reason Heavensward is free tbh. The devs now ARR is a slog, so they're hoping if people make it to Heavensward they'll stick the whole way.
Awesome job Preach! Glad to hear you finally made it to 50 and are now going to try the raids! For sure, get a group and do them synced down or at minimum item level to really have some challenge! Congrats on getting this far and soon, Heavensward awaits!
Just want to echo the other comments- I think you'd enjoy trying a melee out! I really like lower level monk and ninja gameplay compared to other jobs, definitely feels faster
(and fwiw neither of those are even in my top 3 preferred jobs at level 80, I just think they're fun to level. All jobs start slow but no other job has quite the same "quirkiness" as black mage. but if it's still fun, then that's obviously fine too lol)
It's genuinely great to see you having a good time, Preach. Love the content.
Would definitely recommend trying out Red Mage at some point. It is a caster sort of like black mage but also has an interesting twist, every other normal spell is instant cast. Plus their huge damage burst involves charging into melee for a few hits before vaulting back. Also it starts at level 50. Favorite class is Paladin though, I love tanking.
thanks for giving this game a fair chance. much love and I hope youre ready for an experience yet to come I will be here for it!
wow objectively has more intuitive gameplay but ff objectively has more impressive cinematic fights and bosses. Some are even sad and tell a story while youre fighting them. you will see man.
It humors me how much his audience is concerned that hes going to dislike something. Just let the man live
Cant wait to hear your thoughts on the extreme primal trials!
"FF14: FINISHING A Realm Reborn - What an ENDING!"
Nononononononononono! *waggles finger at you. This isn't the end! You're only, just over, half of the way through, wait until you get to the REAL end of 2.x!!!
Also you MUST do the Hildebrand Questline, Anime Tropes galore but also Comedy Gold 👍
There is _a_ _lot_ between the end of ARR and the start of Heavensward, but because you can do the Crystal Tower raids during that time, it's not all that bad...and honestly there was more plot development than I thought there would be including some stuff that is pretty shocking, so it's worth the time....that being said, I was told "welcome to the worst part of FFXIV" by my friends when I started the trek, so it's a common complaint.
CT is now required as part of the 2.x MSQ, has been since 5.3 released
@@redwitch95 it’s a separate fork/branch of the MSQ. Eventually you have to finish it, but you can start it pretty much right after ARR after you move the Scions HQ. So mixing in CT while doing the 40+ quests to unlock Ishgard is a nice mix.
The mistake I made (and a lot of people make) was trying to unlock Ishgard and hitting a wall where you have to do the CT quest line despite it being avaialbe for days (or weeks depending on your speed), so then you have to go do all the entire CT. Mixing and matching CT + all the story quests to unlock Ishgard would (and Heavensward) would have been a better mix and really made the slog of doing all those fetch quests/message quests more bearable.
Fast gameplay? Monk, ninja, maybe even current summoner haha.
I think what he means is dealing with the GCD, which is annoying on almost every job pre 50 due to the lack of oGCDs at that level. BLM circumvents that by having long cast times, so you never bump up against the GCD because you're almost always casting something.
Lots of classes are significantly faster paced and less clunky than BLM at 50. This is only more true later on, but projecting that the “slow caster” archetype is playing very…slowly onto the rest of the game isn’t fair.
@@ZephWraen
He is playing one of the slowest classes when he could play a much faster one, and only because he thinks it's better for some reason
@@TheSilverwing999 I know that. You know that. But Preach is Preach and he's stubborn so let him play what he wants *shrug*
Great video Mike.
I just finished the Praetorium tonight and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
I oddly got stuck at level 47.5 on my run. I only did MSQ and the first 3 sets of hunting logs + a handful of unlocks like Aesthetician and armor dyes + a few dungeon unlocks (didn't do those dungeons though). After getting stuck I was quickly able to do 2 of these dungeons I had skipped + finish some hunting log/Grand Company challenge log entries in order to hit hit 49+ easily on a Pally so I could continue the MSQ. Just odd that there was that hiccup given I was easily 6+ levels above the MSQ all throughout the late 20's through late 30's.
Every dungeon I've gone into I've just said "hello, I'm new" and I have not had a single toxic experience the entire time. The worst that I got was a wipe on Garuda b/c I didn't know how to tank it and a DPS pulled before going over what to do. We smashed it on the 2nd pull and there wasn't any raging in chat, just quick explanations and off we went. Very kind community during the group leveling content.
The game REALLY does play like a single player RPG 1-50 with maybe 3% of it involving even a single other person. 100% feel your thoughts on the MSQ run-over-here nonsense. They should cut/change like 2/3 of that content. Level 25-40 or so was definitely unenjoyable busy-work run-around boring-stupid story content that I will never ever do again.
It's crazy how Preach's experiences so closely mirror my own with FF14, I remember making basically all of the exact same comments about the game. I guess it's not that surprising, but it's always nice to hear other people feel the same way.
Make sure you do the Normal Raids as well as the Alliance Raids! "Coils of Bahamut" has such a great story for one of the characters you'll interact with a lot later on (Alisaie, Alphinaud's twin-sister), and you get a great story for what happened at the end of FFXIV 1.x and the intro video of FFXIV ARR. Well worth it just for the story.
Preacherman, consider one of the jobs that start at lvl 50 or 60 to help mitigate that "syncing down" problem, since you'll be spreading your msq exp out and be less over levelled.
BLM also gets shafted the most by syncing down. Other classes don't generally make you change your rotation that much. Usually just adds an ogcd here and there or makes your combo a bit longer.
Glad you've had fun!
Re the patch content... it's not actually bad. But it's long. Something like 80 quests? And in the back of your mind you're constantly hearing a whisper saying 'I could be in the award winning Heavensward expansion if I get through all this filler.' Oddly the content IS relevant and does pay off in a major way. But at the time as you go through it its easy to feel you're just killing time.
When you do coils be sure to do them Min ilvl no echo, to atleast get a sense of difficulty level.
That's super sweaty and terrible advice. Because that requires the entire party to be that trihard and usually you'll get a few people new to the experience or not used to it being synced
Tbh coils normal is pretty much savage for 2.0
There's no point, the fights in coil don't even have the same mechanics they had at release anymore.
@@BreakBarrier its right. And I know because I got pressured into doing it and apparently I was good at my job so I wasn't the problem. The whole ordeal only really works if everyone is prepared. If no one is, you find yourself doing 1 turn for over an hour only for a few guys to leave quietly.
Its super sweaty and people who only did it unsynced have nothing to measure it to. And turns 1-4 are honestly not worth the hassle of doing it min item lvl. It tends to sound like a bunch of "I'm bored, I need a challenge" talk from players who probably shouldn't be making playthrough suggestions to new comers/first timers.
Even weirder considering the fact you commonly read the phrase "its basically savage content" and yet apparently "only no echo, min I.lvl,shirtless, debuff the run if you want to have fun"
Like. Something is clearly off if the conversation looks like that
@@PrincessNine Hmmm says that making the content more of a challange is a sweaty thing to do... also brags they were a good player tho... yup deff someone who wants to do harder content but cant cause they suck but will make up stories out "oh thats sweaty behavior oh btw I can do sweaty stuff just fine but I still hate it"
Like cmon man... that'd be like saying you were just fine at ultimates but ultimates are sweaty... I'd advise you to grow up a bit and learn its okay you aren't as good as you'd like to be, cause people who are good at the content dont need to say "the issue wasn't me" only insecure people do that :P
And now comes the fun part, you will see the coils and hw. I am sooo excited to see your reaction to what is to come.
The 2.1-3.0 stuff to me was split into 2 halves. First half, boring running back and forth and I couldn't care much. Second half and especially the ending with what happens in Ul'dha, really good, and pissed me off in a good way though.
Minor spoiler
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I have never forgiven SE for not letting me kill that little shit personally. I wanted to dig the knife in and twist. You'll know who I'm talking about.
Regarding classes, you can try out the levelled up classes such as samurai or dancer to understand where players are coming from without going through the levelling process.
I am glad you are having fun! stay safe.
"Black mage is so terrible to level"
"He plays WoW"
"Oh god.. im so sorry. Carry on"
Just commenting before 2 mins in. Just wanted to commend you on your solid stand on playing what you want to play, how you want to play it. If the job feels good then it feels good! Of course everyone's experience is not always the same but as long as you're enjoying the game that's what matters. Kudos and here's to Heavenward! Looking forward to more content!
"I like blm but the gameplay is a bit boring"
"Understandable, you might enjoy ninja or something faster, then"
"PeOpLe WaNt Me To PlAy ThEiR ClAsS"
Jokes aside, I'm glad he's enjoying the game
I LOVE that preach is trying out all these new games man
Imagine comparing the LEVELLING gameplay of the slowest most boring class in ff14 to mythic raiding game play and concluding "WoW has better gameplay." What unbelievable ignorance.
glad you enjoyed it so far. Couple points:
- Even though story mode is always easy, there is a bit more weight to it on the expansions, because a lot of adjustments made to the game over the years resulted in ARR being absolutely trivial (Min ilvl no echo raids, even though they're still easier than they were, are fun nonetheless, cause you still gotta learn them).
- playing other jobs is something players recommend just because its a feature which is not present in wow. I love this feature and it feels great to have, for example, BLM, a healer and a tank, without having to re-do story, covenant, renown, legendaries, etc.
You've probably heard this but the slow gameplay is not as slow as you'd think at high level. Most classes have a lot of button presses, so it kinda goes back and forth between very busy windows and slower windows. BLM as a caster kinda doesnt, which makes it the ultimate caster experience.
I literally just finished ARR last night lol, it’s pretty cool I get to experience the game with you, anyone else on this boat?
Also definitely going to try Eve now that you mentioned it!
gonna be fascinated to see Preach's view on gameplay once he does Eden and SHB as a whole.
Its good to see Preach enjoying the game :D 8 year veteran here, hope you continue to enjoy your time in Eorzea
You can't keep any secrets on the internet... except cape westwind, where all humans suddenly decide that this is the time and place to cooperate perfectly towards a common goal.
Re: boosting.
There are two things to keep in mind.
First: an experience I've seen many people have with FF14 is going from "I just don't care about the story in mmos" to "I hadn't realized the story in the MMOs I was playing was so bad/the story in an MMO could be good". Furthermore the story you do get by boosting (ie. the latest expansion) is built on top of everything that came before, and as a result is greatly diminished by starting it from a boost, like starting a book from three quarters through. There is an argument there for trying the story even if you normally would have gone straight to boosts.
Second: while the battle content is fun and good, and due to level syncing it remains sort of evergreen which also makes it plentiful, just doing endgame raiding may not be worth the cost of game+boosts+a sub fee to people versus cheaper options, especially with the context of fights being an important part of their overall feel. In a sense, if you're going to skip the story, you might ultimately be better served spending that money on two heavily combat focused games instead of on one FF14. The value proposition is good for the whole game, not so much for the disjointed sum of its parts, and what joins it all together is the story.
You are all set for the Coils of Bahamut, the first really difficult content in ARR. Looking forward to watching you try it after you get back from New World!
Hi Mike... I had 'Unsubbed' from you awhile back, not because I didn't like you as a content creator, it was as though I felt you just were an unhappy guy, and it sorta felt it in your videos. I don't know if you were just "Burning Out" with all the seriousness and stress of WoW? Since you stopped creating just for WoW, I have 'Subscribed' again, and how you are in your videos is great! You truly seem less stressed and just having fun with video games again. That makes me happy for you, and I think in the long run, its gonna be the best thing for your channel. I am a WoW castoff to FFIXV... and the transition was a struggle. What you have to remind yourself when playing FF, is that they just want you to 'Have Fun'. If you take anything too seriously, you just won't have fun! AND.... yeah, Raiding in FF can get pretty darn good at the endgame!!! It is a blast to be honest.
The rest of arr can be a bit of a slog, yes, but the finale is soooo worth it. And then heavensward is an absolute joy to play from start to finish.
You'll love it!
Also to make the rest of arr less of a slog - you can just do the raids and extremes without easy mode.
Also also, i really recommend doing both Crystal Tower and Coils of Bahamut before moving on. Not only theyre fun raids gameplay-wise, but both are also important for the story of future expansions.
Have fun!