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