A Summary Of Shadowbringers.

                           

Hello everyone. It's been a while. I've wanted to type up a summary of Shadowbringers for a while now. A lot has happened!

I've also built a new keyboard (as per title pic) which I'm eager to try out. So what better way to do so than to type up a long old post!

I won't be mentioning Feast, as I've already covered my thoughts and feelings in a previous post. Not much has changed PvP wise. I still don't enjoy it and I don't play. I just stick around to chill with friends in smaller discords at the moment and try to support the community where and when I can.

So let's get on to the PvE side of things.

Rewinding to the end of Stormblood. My group had pretty much farmed the shit out of Omega and therefore took a break until the release of Shadowbringers. We had agreed to going as hard as possible in week 1 in order to get a full clear for Savage in the first week. This involved raiding every day, with 12 hours each day on the weekend.

I was really hyped for Shadowbringers. I was at Fanfest in Paris when it was revealed and got to see first hand all of the details. I was looking forward to the Nier raids especially.

I've always just rushed to new level cap upon a new expansion and skipped cutscenes. I got DRG to level 80 in about 26 hours (I think I was the first on Phoenix but can't confirm) and went to bed to get some rest.

Eventually, the rest of the group caught up so we decided to get farming some extreme primals. I had also leveled Dancer to 80 by this point and was really enjoying the job. Therefore we agreed to run a triple ranged setup for when savage came out.

Unfortunately, our WHM decided shortly before the tier was released that we weren't the right group for him, and left to join another group. But luckily we managed to get someone as a replacement in time.

I was really determined to get this week 1 clear. Therefore I took the week off work, and did as much crafting as possible. I crafted everyones armor sets, along with a shit load of food and potions. i think I did 30 hours of crafting in total in week 1 which Is the most I've ever done

E1S and E2s went down pretty quickly and easily within the first few days. But we then hit a snag on E3S. We were missing some DPS. To remedy this, I agreed to switch from Dancer back to DRG. We managed to clear it the next day. We found what was going wrong and our GNB switched to WAR as he was more comfortable on this job and our caster went RDM instead of BLM.

We had done fairly well, so now it was time to see it out. Up next was Titan:

This was where the problems began to start. We spent the remainder of Friday just dipping our toes into the fight to see just how bad it is. We were wiping a lot but it was early days so that was to be expected. When we finished on the Friday, Our raid leader found a guide and asked everyone to read it before we started Raid again the next day. I also asked everyone to send me Mats for any food/pots that we needed and also gave away about 10m of my own gil for any materia people needed. I think I stayed up until about 4AM on Saturday morning crafting so many potions and food so I was pretty tired the next day.

Saturday then arrived, after a few hours. We were still wiping consistently at the same point, It was clear that some people had not made any effort to read the guide and were incredibly unprepared. When we did have a clean run, were were still behind on DPS before phase transition. So I decided to check everyones gear.

I noticed that people were not using the best ilvl gear, nor was it fully melded, which is crucial for a week one clear. At this point, I was incredibly pissed off. I had everything melded and crafted and I even did this for 2 sets of gear as I swapped from Dancer to Dragoon. while others clearly didn't give a shit. I was really angry, I was tired from being up for half the night preparing for other people and they repaid this by not reading the guide of preparing their gear.

At this point, I hung up the discord call, and typed a message in our raid chat. I told the rest of the group that I was not happy about how some people were clearly not taking this seriously, I told them that I was going for a nap to catch up on sleep and for people to read the guide as they should have done in the first place, and meld their damn gear.

I woke up and went back a few hours later. Some people had sorted themselves out but a couple hadn't They didn't have the money to buy more materia and the money I gave wasn't enough to cover everybody. I was really annoyed, as we knew pre expansion that this was our objective, and people had plenty of time to farm gil and prepare. I considered just saying fuck it and going to another group. but considering we came this far, I thought it was easier to just continue and see what happens.

At the end of the week, the closest we got to a clear was a 0.4% enrage on a clean pull. If people had prepared properly in the first place, we would have got our clear. We eventually got it at the start of week 2 with a bit more gear from reclears.

Needless to say, things didn't get much better. Reclears were taking ages. I also wanted to do Ultimates this expansion but felt like there was no way that this was going to happen with some of the people that we had. One member didn't want to do it anyway. So I decided to take who I trusted in the group and fill slots later to make my own ultimate group.

A few weeks later, there was an argument over loot. Our system was that you got priority on your main job (obviously) and you could choose a second job as an alt for loot. We also said that you get priority on weapons that match the role that you play. So since I was playing Melee, I should have got priority on MNK, SAM and NIN.

One of our members said that they weren't getting enough loot one day when we weren't raiding, and wanted to roll on the MNK weapon if it dropped. I still hadn't got it so told them that they would have to wait. They then said that our loot system was unfair and so the raid leader changed it so I would have to lot against them instead of what we initially agreed.

This person was part of the problem during prog and this was the breaking point for me. I told the group that I have had enough and that I would be going to look another group that fits my expectations. This upset my raid leader, as he is an IRL friend of mine. but I was fucking miserable at this point and eventually he understood it from my point of view and took a break himself.

I already had my DRG weapon, so helped a couple of friends with some reclears. a friend of mine from 2.0 had come back to the game and had just cleared Titan. I asked him if they were looking for a Melee and luckily for me, they were. He explained to me that it wouldn't be doing hours like I had just done for prog and it would be a bit more casual. I said this was fine, As I never wanted to go through what I just did unless I really trusted the people I was playing with again.

That person was Memento Mori. I didn't really get on with him for most of 2.0 as he annoyed me by poaching a member of my static back then. But we put all of that behind us when we met in person at London Fanfest before Heavensward. I honestly wasn't expecting much. But joining this group would turn out to be one of the best decisions I've made in this game.

I dissolved the Ultimate group I was going to put together, As it would have been awkward doing it with some of my former group, And Memento wanted to do TEA anyway. Therefore we filled the rest of our group and made a start when we had enough gear from reclears.

At first, it did not go very well, we spent many raids wiping to Living Liquid or the start of Cruise Justice. A couple of people were incredibly inconsistent.

We also then started to struggle to find time to raid. There were just too many conflicts. Me working shifts, someone else not being able to do certain days, and someone in our group just not turning up randomly or having to go AFK for long periods during a raid.

Eventually, we came to the conclusion that we weren't going to get anywhere unless we made some changes. Memento said he would be remaking the group, and thankfully, I was one of the people invited to resume prog.

We replaced our caster, white mage, and my co melee for the above reasons. And instead we bought in Konata on caster, who had already cleared TEA, a friend of Mementos as MNK, who was actually fairly new to the game, but Memento assured us he can learn fast and is decent at MNK. and lastly, a new WHM, we we all didn't know, but initially impressed us with how far he learned and that he took notes during a raid.

Thinks improved massively. I honestly can't recall how long it took us to clear the fight, but I don't think it was longer than a month. The group was working really well. everyone was on the same page in terms of dedication and teamwork. Everyone read guides, asked if they were not sure of a mechanic, knew their job and eventually, it died!

 

I think this was the happiest I have been while playing this game. I had always wanted to clear an ultimate, and tried so hard back in 4.0 to do ucob, but it just didn't happen. This gave me the confidence that I was capable of doing it, TEA is arguably the hardest one out of the current 3 and it gave me the motivation that we could do the other two as well.

We had also cleared the 2nd savage tier of the expansion, and did reclears once a week while doing TEA. it wasn't a week one clear. But we never aimed for it, and did far less hours than my previous group. however we cleared faster than my previous group doing so, at the very start of week 2:

Needless to say, I was on top of the world at this point. We recleared until we had all of the TEA weapons:

  

Saldy, there was a conflict between our WHM and other members of the group personality wise, so we made a mutual agreement for him to leave. A friend of ours was looking for a group so we slotted him in, and quickly made a start on UwU:

 

 

It went down super fast, a couple of weeks if I recall correctly. The Gae Bolg Ultima was my dream weapon in the game and I had to pinch myself to check to see if I wasn't dreaming as it was now mine!

 

Again, we farmed all of the weapons, so we could leave with no regrets, took a short break, and made a start on UCoB

 

However this was where things started to get a bit awkward. UCoB is a lot more punishing mechanically than UwU and one day after raid, our MNK started to complain that another person in our group was holding us back because he kept making silly mistakes and wiping us. I pointed out to him that while this person was wiping us a bit more than they should have, it wasn't massively impacting on our ability to clear and reclear fights. We had cleared 2 Ultimates and a savage clear very quickly compared to other groups. Plus I liked this person, they had a good personality and tried their best, and always showed up on time. I would rather raid with people who I like and have it take a bit longer than clear faster with people who are dicks.

 

I learned that the MNK felt this way for a while, so I challenged him on why he didn't say anything sooner and that if he has a problem, he should say something, not complain about it behind our backs. He said that it's the raid leaders responsibility to sort it out and not his.

 

I was quite pissed off at his attitude. Especially since he was no saint himself when it came to mechanics, and the fact that we were finding ourselves struggling to raid again because of his schedule. I told him a few home truths, that he was equally responsible for holding us back as no raid time is worse than people making mistakes during raid. He did not take this well and left the discord.

 

I started to become concerned that I was cursed to never clear this fight, as something always seem to happen. Eventually we came to an agreement that we would see UCoB out before making any final decisions on who is staying and going.

 

I think the conversation was needed to clear the air a bit. And not long after. We managed to down UCOB as well:

 

I couldn't quite believe it. I had gone from dreaming about an ultimate clear the previous expansion, to being a triple legend with all of the weapons.

 

 Our MNK eventually left, as he pissed off some other people. a couple of other people felt the same way about the person in question, although they went about it a lot more maturely. So we decided to sadly let them go as well.

The 2nd ultimate of Shadowbringers had been delayed until 5.5, so we decided to rebuild our group in preparation for the last savage tier, and then this ultimate as well.

This was when I decided to try out something new. Konata who is our caster, had rarely been given the chance to play BLM which is his main job. He had always kindly played RDM or SMN, as these are super useful for prog due to having access to raise. so I decided I would play RDM for the last savage tier so he could get some time on his BLM.

It didn't go too badly at first. but my muscle memory and knowledge of the job was far from the level that my melee jobs were. We cleared quickly, but I felt It could have been faster if not for me. However I still had fun and it was nice going out of my comfort zone for a bit to try something new.

This was a super fun tier, Especially E12s which is one of my fave fights. and music.

The global COVID-19 pandemic was already well underway at this point. and sadly the 5.5 Ultimate was cancelled. Everyone in our group was really disappointed, as we felt we had done a lot of preparation for nothing. We eventually agreed that we would do some more reclears each week, and take a well earned break for a few months or so.

I took this time to go back to FFXI for a bit, and play some single player games. I particularly enjoy Yakuza: Like a Dragon. It's made me want to play the other games in the series a lot.

FFXI was starting to dry up a lot and eventually a big streamer called Asmongold said he was going to start and play the game. Watching him start as a new player was interesting to watch, and made me realise. I haven't actually experienced any of the XIV story after 2.0, as I just skipped all the cutscenes. therefore, I made a new character to go through the story with.

Intorducing my Hyur, Rai Luminous of Spriggan. I've actually enjoyed playing a taller character for a bit! but i doubt I will switch from the trademark lalafell on Aud. I'm currently nearing the end of the stormblood 4.0 part of the MSQ, and I've had a lot of fun just chilling and taking in the story.

 

 Our current plan is to do some more ultimate reclears for our newer members who joined during/after E12s, and then just chill until endwalker comes out.

So in summary, a very successful expansion for me PvE wise. I had pretty much achieved everything I had set out to do. just a shame PvP didn't follow the same theme, but we'll see what 6.0 brings.

 

I'm really looking forward to Endwalker. I'm going to take my time this time around and watch the cutscenes.

Thank you for reading. This keyboard is so fucking nice to type on! Hopefully I will update more regularly in the future.

Until next time,

-Aud.

 

 

The Decline Of Feast.

This is not a post that I hoped to make anytime soon. But sadly the time has come.

I'm aware that I've said this before, but I've retired from Feast now and this time I mean it. I've tried my very best to persevere and adjust to the 5.0 iteration of the mode, but unfortunately it's time to admit that it's just not going to happen, I clearly don't enjoy what's become of the mode, the changes and my interests in game are currently elsewhere with raiding. I've relinquished my staff role at PvPaissa, as I hadn't played to any degree of seriousness for most of 5.0.

I was really looking forward to how feast would develop in 5.0 following how it had done so in 4.0. FRC was received very well in Europe and NA, they followed this up with Chaos Showdown in Europe, which again was also really good. Membership in PvPaissa skyrocketed, surpassing 10k pretty quickly and 11k shortly afterwards. It seemed that people were finally taking notice of PvP in FFXIV and new people willing to give it a try were doing so.

Also this was said by Yoshi-P during an interview following the conclusion of FRC:

JeuxOnline:Players are already holding several non-official tournaments, what is the position of Square Enix concerning these events?

Naoki Yoshida:Not only are we very thankful, but ideally we would also like to create some kind of support program if it were at all possible. And of course, for those doing this, please do operate whilst ensuring to closely follow gameplay agreements and laws.

Needless to say, Feast was looking very promising going into 5.0. Aside from light medals, and Monk and Scholar needing some love, it was mostly very balanced, and very fun to play.

So where did it go wrong?

I don't recall there being anything mentioned about Feast during any liveletters, fanfests or anything Shadowbringers related before it was released. So we went into it not knowing what to expect.

As expected, it was a bit of a mess when 5.0 dropped. Ranged LB was broken and could one shot an unmitigated target, dancer was pretty broken, Gunbreaker was pretty unwhelming considering it was a new addition to the expansion and many jobs were severely lacking in damage. But hey, it's big overhaul and change, this is to be expected right?

To give SE some credit, they did fix the majority of things that were clearly broken. they also said that they were making "Big Changes" to the mode, and that they would announce more soon.

So we waited.

Waited for 6 months actually with no season, or any further updates. I think they eventually caved in and released a season after enough complaints and pestering, but they did so with no wolf collars as rewards for whatever reason, but anyway. It was time to invest some real time in adjusting to these changes in something other than training.

The theme of seasons this expansion, is that there's always mostly been a job, or a combination of jobs that have been overpowered. First it was Monk/Dragoon/Dancer, due to dancer still being pretty overpowered. And Monk/Dragoon having a powerful burst already. Then it was Dark Knight and scholar, as Edge of shadow and Biolysis combined gave the target so much healing potency down that it was nearly impossible to heal through a good burst. They then for some reason, decided to buff addle to a 40% damage reduction, which paired with Phantom Dart, an ability which isn't even an additional for casters, made it so that anything non caster was not worth playing in solo queue.

Dancer was eventually nerfed, which took some of the spotlight off of monk, but this gave way to DRG being the king of melee, it's the easiest job to play, you can play it as a ranged DPS on steroids, as piercing talon refreshes blood of the dragon and it has abilities such as Mirage Dive, Jump, Geiroskogul/Nastrond, Spineshatter Dive, and Stardiver which are all ranged or can be used at a distance. It was a common playstyle for a dragoon to get the first kill, and then play behind the wall in their base for the rest of the game and just kill the ranged DPS when they had no choice but to push up to try and start a comeback.

Ranged DPS have the lowest HP pool of all the job roles, and the least means of defending themselves or keeping themselves alive, therefore it's easy to see why this worked so well.

I think the final straw for me was going into a high elo game with two dragoons, each team trading a kill, and then each team just stood there as if someone had disconnected as each dragoon refused to leave the wall to actually fight. This lead into a culling time with 5 stacks, and whichever melee used their LB first without getting interrupted would win the game. I was the tank in said game, didn't interrupt the LB, and therefore we lost. It was the most ridiculous and boring game I've played since started Feast at the end of 3.0 and needless to say this killed off any sort of motivation I had to try and make this work.

I hated how tanks were changed. The changes to tank stance in PvE meant that tanks in PvP no longer had a tank stance, as the PvE version only increased enmity generation for tanks and no longer gave a permanent damage resistance when you put it on. This meant that tanks could melt like a hot knife through butter, couldn't be relied on to keep medals safe for their team and the responsiublity of a tank changed from that to just stunning at the right time and throwing a shield on a party member taking damage.

Tanks also lost their identities. Back in stormblood, each tank was unique in what they bought to your team. A PLD would make your team super hard to kill through the user of cover and clemency, but in exchange it made it harder for your own team to kill as it gave no damage up boost to a party member. Warrior was the aggressive tank, through the user of butcher block giving the target a damage taken up debuff and being nearly impossible to kill in tank stance unless the healer died, and even then it was still difficult. but in exchange you lost any protection for your party as warrior had no shields. Dark knight was a mix of both. With use of TBN to shield the party and Soul Survivor to give the target the same effect as butchers block, but was not the best at keeping medals.

Now all tanks are the same, you have a shield, and aoe shield, and a stun. The only unique quality is that debuff that the tank places on the target.

Next up is ranged. They were stripped of safeguard which meant that they can die easily, especially when out of position, this bought in an era where you just farmed the ranged over and over and there was little they could do about it without the support of their team. As a phys ranged main in 4.0, this was the change that put me off the most. As I've already mentiuoned, Phantom Dart and Addle made phys ranged practically not worth taking into solo queue as they had little to offer in comparison.

And lastly, Dragoon. It's broken, piercing talon is broken, but SE have never listened or refused to nerf this, and as a result, 80% of games were just dragoons playing a ranged DPS which made games really boring. The most fun I had was participating in a customs tournament where we banned DRG and melees were actually made to go in and fight.

Months went by, still no mention of said changes. SE remained silent on anything Feast related. No signs of any engagement with their community like in 4.0, where we had regular streams where we played custom/party finder games on the FFXIV Twitch Stream. So it had either not been announced, or had already happened and very underwhelming.

Then they recently announced, over a year after the release of shadowbringers, that they will be releasing a new PvP mode, that was more catered towards casual players. Although they haven't specifically mentioned that Feast will be deleted/discontinued, It's pretty clear that this is likely to happen following the lack of any sort of communication or interested expressed from SE this expansion, and that they chose to take an older reward from Stormblood and add a new paint job to it.

And I think what's been the most disappointing is the response of some of the players who have managed to somehow invest their time in this new version, and how they've spoken or treated veterans with valid criticism of the changes:

"Haha, don't be such a doomer"

"Well if you don't like it, don't play. Nobody is forcing you."

Well, that's fine. I won't. But neither will 80% of heavensward/stormblood vets, and as a result, even when a season in underway, it dies after a week, and people who are interested are left having to pick a datacentre to queue on to get any games to pop. The last seasons rank 100 on Light was around 1200 points, which is the lowest I've ever seen it, and says more about how far downhill it's gone than I can ever say.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and that time has come for me. I'm really glad I decided to get into playing The Feast back in 4.0. It was really fun, kept me playing the game, I've met so many amazing people, both in game, and at Paris Fanfest. I wish all the people whoa re still trying to keep it going the very best of luck. but it's time for me to concede on this one.

If you need me, I'll be tryharding in savage/ultimate raids instead.

-Aud/Dom