Screenshot credit: Illeana Grace
This idea sprung from people on stream and private DMs asking questions so it sprung into this article and we plan to do these every month while there’s a small content drought. Also Famfrit raid chart should be coming out in the next week or so but we just have to get the final screenshots. I’m mostly a casual player but I feel like I bring a very different perspective since I come from a very different background of games.
Why play PLD as opposed to any other tanks? – Alesha Phoenix
I originally play as Paladin in other games so I was drawn to playing Paladin again in XIV. In XI, I played a paladin there as well. My brother originally wanted someone for his raid team so he asked me to pick the game up and give it a try but what he needed was a paladin so I just chose it. Although by the time I was raid ready, Heavensward was coming out and he took a break from the game so I joined a static.
Has raiding become easier or have we become better or did they evolve how the jobs work to the point where it’s possible to pug clear w/o having to rely on statics? Or is it a combination? – Kya Purrcy
I have a lot of thoughts about this but I’ll type them out to answer this question. My answer might be complicated to follow. I’ll just type out my thoughts here so you can follow along.
Raiding Omega savage has been easier than raiding Alexander if we’re comparing the first two tiers. Most people couldn’t pass A3S and A6S because they were harder mechanically and had extremely tight DPS checks. Most casual groups ended up beating Omega Deltascape savage and are soon to beating Sigmascape savage when they couldn’t beat the first two tiers of Alexander before.
I had different answers typed out but it’s a combination of a lot of things. Raiding is much more manageable now and the player base did get better. There’s a lot of self-improvement tools to help players up their game when it comes to increasing their DPS or just overall awareness. The actual content getting easier has some truth to it but it’s mostly because the developers made huge mistakes in the past that made it extremely intimidating to raid. For example, Faust used to intimidate so many people to the point where raiding was nearly dead because they couldn’t pass the different types of checks the Faust brought. In Stormblood, the “Faust” now exists on the last floors as a gateway to the true boss fight.
Stormblood has Ultimate which satiates the hunger a lot of hardcore players have for wanting harder content and it’s been successful so far and I’m sure they are looking forward to the next encounter in the series. The smartest thing they did was making sure players cleared O4S before they got to access Bahamut Ultimate so people have to be at least remotely competent to be able to do Ultimate. Not many people will beat Ultimate and that’s fine but there needs to be content like that in this game.
There’s still a lot of class balancing issues that need to be addressed. People have cleared with all kinds of comps but they still need to look at buffing specific classes just so they can have viability. I stopped having balance complaints long ago.
One thing I am finding interesting though as a possible topic is the evolution of the raiding system in FFXIV. Once upon a time you were server bound to find people then during late HW you could use Cross World PF – Kya Purrcy
It’s interesting to me because I survived the Great Gordias Migration where I was the guy the statics left behind. Midas with Raid Finder coming out was also really cool because we could have friends snipe us in queue which was hilarious when we did it (thanks Maguro!). You could sense that cross world party finder was on its way.
For servers like Famfrit where raiding was nearly extinct, it was important that cross world party finder came out because groups were dying and there was no way they could replenish their ranks quick enough. Some people also don’t want to pay money just to be able to raid. It’s actually hard to imagine a world without cross world PF even though I’ve experienced it.
What is it like to be looked up too the way you are in your FF community? – Akane Oto
People look up to me? I don’t think I’m good at this game but I’d like to think I play an “exciting brand of raiding” although it can come at the expense of damage because I want to see how certain ideas would come into play (Tank LB after Grand Cross Omega). The decision making of raiding and hearing it on stream also stuck out for some people because of how I was describing my thought process and then getting to execute it even if it ends up terrible. When I was teaching, I know a lot of people really liked how I broke down a lot of mechanics which helped a lot of people learn Deltascape. My commentary and calls for certain mechanics are hilarious and I like to keep things a little more light-hearted but I also know when we need to focus. I definitely know people find what I have to say hilarious.
I think on Famfrit people really liked the raid charts Kal and I did for the server to give a more tangible incentive to raid. We’ll do one this tier but only one because we want to save the other chart for Ultimate but no group on Famfrit has cleared. The idea came to me when I was looking in the official forums and the raid progression chart that servers had inspired the graphically updated ones that are posted on the site. When it comes to ideas, I just keep grinding despite the nature of where the ideas come from.
You reminded me that I have to set up a spreadsheet for book runs.
What is it like trying to copy someone else’s strategy that’s widely used versus discovering your own through persistence? – BobaTime
I’ll only answer this from an XIV perspective and not SC2 or Dota because it would take hours of text just to describe builds, nuances, and adaptations.
I think if we went into content blind and did world progression this would be a very different answer. We’re a casual to midcore group that watches guides and streams just because we want to know what we’re dealing with. We learn the pug strategies because we go to other groups to sub a lot and we like going in with a general familiarity with what people are using.
While discovering our own strats sounds cool, it just doesn’t work when we work with the general public. We run into new issues like “well my group does it this way” and that person is normally the first to die because they didn’t adjust to the other seven players and end up wasting everyone else’s time. In raiding with pugs, time is a precious commodity and people like knowing that everyone around them is on the same page as strats go.
How do you determine playing time for raiding? – BobaTime
They have to earn it by killing the dummy and now we check their gear to see if they have the right melds because we’ve ran into too many problems with people not doing enough damage or they melded their gear wrong. There are special circumstances where we could take anyone if we’re just farming for books and assuming the gear gets unlocked because of the weekly cap. I know for Shinryu EX we just took random groups just to learn how each phase works.
A lot of times with players we think are good, there just isn’t enough playing time for because the slots are limited so we have to set a day where they can raid. Last tier, we had two groups going with people playing for both and it was hard to find a time for everyone else that wanted to progress. It did suck knowing that people were being left out but because I had obligations to two statics and two FC community groups that were progressing, I had to keep pressing forward with the two community groups that were close to beating the raid tier.
How do you keep from getting burnt out from the game after clearing savage raid content? – Kira Kitsune
Honestly, I just raid log and PvP and I don’t really remember the last time I did a roulette outside of Frontline. Once weeklies are done, I just log out and watch basketball or play another game. Sometimes seeing another game or doing something else can be really refreshing and can help with burnout. It’s hard to answer this question because I’m trying to bring back Sunday raiding which adds more days but it also helps me to play with other people which can also be refreshing.
I also took a break for a bit after I took some of the FC community groups through O4S. Taking so many groups through it really took a toll on me mentally so I had to take a break.
What would it take to get you to play WHM in raid? – Alesha Phoenix
This is hilarious. It would have to take a giant miracle and we would have to literally not have any healers available for me to take up WHM in raid. I think the situation actually happened a few times in Gordias, one time for Scarlet Walker’s group in Creator Savage, and Shinryu EX. It isn’t impossible but I think we actually lack tanks sooooooo I have my tank slot locked. Honestly speaking, we might have a shortage of healers pretty soon so I might take up WHM if it comes down to it.
What types of esports have you been exposed to and how are they different? Is one more fun than the other to be apart of? – Kal Jhin
Wow a non-XIV question! Dota 2 and Starcraft 2 extensively. StarCraft 2 is a strategy game with an emphasis on 1v1 while Dota 2 is a 5v5 team game. I don’t think one was necessarily more fun than the other to be extensively involved in because I was doing both at the same time mostly because I always involve myself in more than one game at a time to prevent myself from getting bored. Both games are fun to play but they present their own seriousness which can make the experience extremely stressful.
Commentating wise, StarCraft is easily the better game to cast because there’s always something happening even in the driest games. Dota was alright but I think making content for it was way better than actually casting just because I can pick and choose what I want to highlight whether it’s a jungling guide or top/derp plays for Machinima Realm. Competitive Dota can be extremely dry because the most epic team fights are only ten seconds tops and there really isn’t anything going on after that.
Has socializing with players within a game(s) community caused you to enjoy the game a lot more than you would have playing it alone? And why? – Kal Jhin
Yes! I’ll only answer this from an XIV point of view. It’s a whole new game in itself and I want to talk to people and make some new friends. It keeps the experience fresh and exciting. If I played a game like XIV alone, I probably would’ve quit a long time ago just because I would have gotten bored doing roulettes. I attribute a lot of how I built the raiding house because I was socializing with other people and now we have a lot of people to do book runs with. We’ve actually discovered new players this way and now I’m raiding them them.
I’m sure you have different groups of friends in FF14 that don’t clash well, how do you manage these situations? – Kal Jhin
I just limit their exposure to each other. There’s always going to be some awkwardness but if I know people have real problems with each other then I’ll make sure they never get into contact with one another. Most people understand that they need to work together to clear things and these people will understand that there is a greater common goal. Separating people would be the most extreme if it came down to it and it has happened.
Considering your experience in the game with your current Job class: If you were able to start XIV as a brand new player would you do a different Job class or would you go and continue with your main Job class? – Khatylana Steelmane
I had to give this a lot more thought because it’s hard to find myself playing something outside of tank and occasionally White Mage. My original answer was that I would have tried to pick up bard or machinist because I would try to pick up a ranged class to get a different viewpoint. In this game, there isn’t a true supporting role just because of the game design otherwise I’d play the class with the most support auras for the group although it would be game breaking. I did try black mage for a while but I could never learn the fights from a DPS point of view so I gave up on that.
I mostly play tank because it’s just needed. It’s not about the feeling of being useful but it’s just needed and I just want to play. You just reminded me that I need to jump my alt that’s going to be a tank!
Have you ever had a moment where you considered quitting the raid community? – Erika Thorne
The Gordias Migration and Midas killing raid groups didn’t deter me from quitting. Although it was sometimes hard to log in because the game was just dead. I did take a break a bit after the summer ended just before 3.1 dropped although I was always in contact with my FC at the time.
In the time before Stormblood, I wanted to quit because I was losing interest in the game and I was growing apart from my Creator savage group and my raid support crafters. The dissension mostly stemmed from me leaving ROR to join AVLN and our raid meeting where I said that everyone needed to improve since we lacked a lot of key things (healer DPS/healing in general and NIN needing to get better). It took too long for them to beat A12S when I had four or five clears before the group got their first one.
I’ll touch upon this more but I think leaving ROR to join AVLN actually helped me stay in the game after experiencing what it felt like to be in a real community. A lot of people in ROR were very selfish and it created a very toxic culture especially with the raid groups that were there because they all saw each other as competition instead of a community. My only regret was not discovering AVLN, RF, and the rest of you sooner because we could have rolled together for a very long time. So joining AVLN definitely extended my lifeline in this game and it’s been wonderful. Now that I think about it, I’ve been in AVLN longer than ROR in the time that this gets released.
On the topic of FCs, I did consider joining Omega and Reign. I didn’t think Reign was the right fit for me and I already didn’t get along with some of the people over there because of previous static issues but otherwise there were some cool people I wanted to hang out with. Another thing is that their line of thinking just seemed to be really dated when it came to certain situations and things like streaming. Reign could take a lot of lessons on what a real community looks like. If I didn’t join AVLN, I was joining Omega because I love all the people there and I was extremely close to joining but I wanted something new so I went to AVLN.
Bellator Lucis and his FC definitely kept me playing at the beginning of Stormblood which is 90% of why I stuck around. I think it took us all of half an hour to down both the primals when they came out. When I heard other groups were taking days to clear Susano, I was surprised because we all thought it was brain dead easy. Joining Alesha and Hrist’s static kept me in the game mostly because the group as a whole were pretty cool and full of memes. Avis and Viri’s group became my alt group and I thought they were all cool and the drama along the way made it far more entertaining than it should have.
After Avis’ group beat NEO, I thought about stopping for a long time but then I didn’t because all of you wanted to raid so I kept going. I definitely needed a break after all of you beat NEO because my wrist injury was getting to me. Although I’m fine I just have this wobbly feeling occasionally.
IF you were masked rose, what would your outfit be? – Avis Dreaming
What food in game would taste the best in real life? – Viridiana Maus
That Takoyaki raid food that gives Crit and Skill speed. There’s a lot of other food I feel like would be pretty good like Eft Steak. Actually Takoyaki and Baked Pipira Pira would both tie it for me.
Do you think FFXIV needs savage 4-man content? – Jojomun Kokomun
I think you touch upon a greater issue and there is a lot of 4-man content that’s missing but that there’s a lack of content to do in the game’s downtime. 4-manning Alexander Savage would be interesting if there was an achievement attached to it and the rewards were worth it. The bigger issue with what I just said is that there are also no rewards for min ilvl runs. Savage dungeons sound interesting on paper but there would have to be a lot of balancing involved and the rewards would have to be good but not better than running 8-man savage raids. If the 4-man dungeons had save points and were built exactly like going through the 24-man raids, that idea could be something cool they could look into. I will say that the game really misses an updated POTD.
Thanks for reading! That’s going to wrap it up for this Question and Answer session and I’ll be back with these monthly.