This post will pretty much be a summary of how I got into Feast and how it sort of got out of control, Plus a bit of first impressions of the new expansion Shadowbringers, where early access started at the end of June 2019.
Just a thing to start with is that I've never really been into PvP in MMO's. Apart from a bit of 1v1 in FFXI with some friends for some fun, I've always avoided it.
However, It was getting towards the end of Heavensward and I saw someone on the Gloria mount, which is the airship/boat which your character stands on with their arms folded. I'd never seen it before, and after enquiring with some FC members, I learned that it was from 200 wins in The Feast.
It was at that depressing moment of the expansion, where everything had pretty much been cleared and there was no worthwhile content to come until Stormblood. Therefore I decided to give it a go for something to do before 4.0. The Garo event had also started, so I thought I would kill 2 birds in one stone.
I initially started off as NIN, as it was what I was playing in raid at the time, However I grew frustrated at dying so much and having little success, One of my FC members suggested I played BRD as it was really strong and could pretty much solo the right target in 8v8.
After learning the burst, I grinded through about 350 games, and eventually got my mount and all the Garo titles. I had no intention of continuing as I got what I wanted so I took a break from XIV until Stormblood.
At some point during Stormblood, I found myself looking at ranked feast leader boards for some reason, And saw this:
I absolutely loved the look of this armour, But sadly It was pretty much near the end of the ranked season and Diamond rank was needed to even have a chance at getting it. Disappointed, I continued to raid. But all was not lost, as I learned that it was being offered as the Season 6 reward, but in a different colour scheme. I knew I had to get this set, So I dusted off my Bard, and started to play ranked Feast.
I stumbled across a Discord server called Wolves Pup Den (Now PvPaissa) which was a server dedicated to helping new players learn how to play. I joined immediately and picked up a lot of helpful tips.
My first season was rough, and I struggled a lot. It was a lot harder back then. There were no light medals, people could overstack heavy medals, you couldn't see additionals of the players in the game, There were 2 maps to learn which had a different feel and play style to them, People rarely did countdowns and there was no such thing as a highest rating on the leaderboard. Therefore, if you went on a losing streak, you would slip down the rankings quite quickly.
I remember being stuck in gold for the longest time. I had a terrible attitude in season 6, thinking that because I knew how to burst, that I was a good player. However there is so much more to Feast and after I hit platinum and started to get matched with the big boys, I realised this.
Throughout this season, I must have been the most annoying person, I would constantly ask Sycko who people were, Are they good players? Should I care about their opinion of me? Looking back, I don't know how he put up with me but I'm forever grateful that he did.
I remember pissing a couple of people off who I am now good friends with. I remember Dan ignore marking me, after confirming with Sycko who he was, I added him as a friend and asked why he did this and what I did wrong. He was actually really nice and helpful and I learned a lot.
I learned of a player named Angelus Demonus, who was known in the community for being one of the top ranged players. He offered to look at my game play if I recorded it, This was a huge help and it corrected a lot of things I was doing wrong.
It got to the end of the second to last week of the season, And I clawed my way up to around 1735 points. This was where I started to panic, I was about 135 points above the 100th spot, and learned that the leaderboard did not update in the final week of the season. I was faced with a dilemma, Do I keep playing? Or do I sit on my rating and pray it was enough. The majority of people assured me that I was safe, and that playing further was a huge risk.
It was a nail biting week wait, I actually started dreaming about Feast. I remember dreaming that I queued up as AST by mistake and lost a lot of rating, and then didn't make the top 100. Eventually, the season was over, and I was sat at work at 10AM refreshing the ranking page, praying I had enough to get the armour. I breathed a huge sigh of relief as the rankings were published and saw that I was sitting at rank 81. That was the longest shift ever at work as I wanted to run home and get the armour.
Sadly, I can't find the screenshot of me wearing it for the first time, as it is on my hard drive on my old PC, But I remember being so happy and proud of myself. Plus I had got what I wanted and could continue PvE as normal.
How wrong I was...
I then saw that this was the next reward. Oh shit, here we go again...
I remember really struggling this season, mainly due to my attitude and ego. I thought that I was a top 100 player, and really good, when in fact, I was very mediocre. I cringe whenever I see clips of myself playing in seasons six and seven. It's not something I am proud of.
Eventually I hit a point where I was at 1300 points and hated playing. I was also hating PvE. I didn't want to play NIN and I was 4-5 months deep in UCoB prog which again, I was not enjoying. My life was revolving around FFXIV, I was waking up, going to work, coming home, eat, raid/feast, and then going to bed. Rinse and repeat for nearly every day, I was hating every minute of my day and it was making me ill. I was getting migraines on a weekly basis.
As much as I really wanted this mount and a UCoB clear, I decided that it was too detrimental to my health and well being to continue. With a heavy heart, I stepped down from my raid group, and unsubbed from the game in order to give myself a break. The season was another diamond one and it was the right decision, as there was no way I would have made it with my skill level and attitude.
A couple of months passed and I decided to return to the game to play casually. Season 8 began and it was the chair again but in a blue and silver colour scheme. As I was no longer raiding, I decided to give it another go with the condition that I would not have a repeat of season seven.
The season started off a lot better, and the break clearly worked wonders on my game play. I managed to make it to around 1750 points but then got stuck in a rut again. I really wanted diamond for the title and to prove myself but I kept losing any gains I got at around this point mark.
My poor attitude started to surface again, I was incredibly toxic, I was getting into a lot of arguments in PvPaissa discord and found myself getting muted frequently. My main point of frustration seemed to be my melee not doing countdowns or communicating with me.
Eventually I got into a game with Dan as my melee. I always synced well with his DRG and we ended the game in about 2 minutes. I sent Dan a message on discord to show my appreciation, It turned into a conversation about my frustration of being stuck in mid platinum and he gave me a really good piece of advice around attitude. He essentially said I was a good player but need to step up when my team mates don't, such as doing countdowns and making calls. I had always just left it to my melee and if they did not do this, I would consider the game lost.
This was a huge turning point for me, I followed his advice, and started to learn how to do countdowns. I won game after game and I think I only lost 2-3 games between 1750 and my diamond promos. I also did my diamond promos on my first attempt which I don't think I had ever done in a promo before and I was finally diamond!
This gave me a lot of confidence, So I continued to play to test myself. I really felt like I was pulling my weight and playing well. In the final week I was actually aiming for top 10 but fell short and finished 17th.
People were starting to notice me and saying positive things about how I did in that season. I was asked by Sycko if I would be interested in joining a Light Party team for the Feast Regional Championships. I was really nervous, as Sycko was pretty much my mentor, and I would be playing with Taru, Naxam, Jin and Sheria, who were all really good and established players.
The team was initially called 'Salut' (I have no idea why) but unfortunately, we learned that Taru was not eligible to participate in the tournament. Therefore we renamed to Hashtag Freetaru in tribute to him.
I remember our first game, Me and Naxam synced incredibly well and were melting the other team. We had our off days, as all teams do. But we managed to finished 2nd in the leader boards. We were eventually bumped up to 1st, as Wasted Potential could not attend Fanfest to play should they had qualified, The semi finals were due to take place in September 2018. We practised as much as we could until the day finally came.
Before the game, I was incredibly nervous, as were my team mates, but we all wanted to go to Paris so badly so we were determined to make it happen. Our first game vs FeelsGladMan was incredibly close. We had to deal with a really good PLD, but we managed to pull through and secure the game 2-1 followed by a 2-0 victory over Season 8 starters. We were so happy when the games were over, We had done it! We were going to Paris, and for free!
It took a while for it to sink in what had just happened. I had gone from starting a bit of Feast for a mount and some titles, to going to Paris to play on stage in front of thousands of people. I felt a bit overwhelmed, as I was one of the newer people participating in the grand finals. However I thought I had nothing to lose, we had got what we wanted by winning this trip, and anything else we got there was a bonus.
I won't go into detail about Fanfest, as I've already wrote a long post about this trip. But I'm incredibly proud of what we achieved.
I also went on to earn "The Devourer" title (1000 overall wins) and "The Unseen" (1000 wins as BRD/MCH). These were titles I dreamed of back in 8v8 Heavensward and I never thought in my wildest dreams I would get them.
Shadowbringers is now here, I love the expansion, and was super hyped for it when it was announced at the fanfest events.
However, I currently do not like the new changes that have been made to feast, It an absolute mess at the moment and needs changes to make it a lot more balanced. I'm hoping this will happen, but in the event that it doesn't. I will likely retire and focus again on PvE.
My current plan is to take it easy on the PvP side for a bit and focus again on PvE. I'm back raiding with some friends, and we are planning on throwing ourselves at savage mode for long hours when it is released in 2 weeks time.
And that's about it! Damn this was a long post! But I've been meaning to type this up for a long time. I hope Feast will continue, regardless of where I participate or not.
Until next time, this is Audacity, signing off.
