Final Fantasy 14 - A Review of the new most played MMO in the world

earlier this year it was reported that world of warcraft was no longer the most actively played mmo in the world having been surpassed for the first time in its long 18-year history the game which accomplished this impressive feat originally launched to critical disdain and a lowly metacritic score of just 49 when it first released in 2010 and yet its latest expansion has the highest user score of any game released in 2021 and it currently has over twice the number of active players of world of warcraft and world of warcraft classic combined the tale of final fantasy 14 might be the greatest comeback a video game has ever made and its rise over the last 12 months is a genuine piece of mmo history it is the first time since its release in late 2004 that world of warcraft has not sat atop the mmo world looking down at its lesser peers it is the first time it's ever had to look up but this video isn't about world of warcraft and unlike a lot of people who have been talking about final fantasy 14 this past year i am not a wow refugee only now seeking asylum in the green up pastures of eurzia in fact i'm pretty close to a final fantasy 14 veteran as although i didn't play the largely unsuccessful and later abandoned 1.0 version of the game i have been playing the realm reborn version on and off since not long after its release in 2013 in total i have over 6 200 hours playtime which is around 260 days of logged in game time meaning final fantasy 14 is my most played game of all time probably by a few thousand hours i've also played nearly every mainline final fantasy game including some of 14's predecessor final fantasy 11 as well as many other big name mmos released in the last 15 years suffice it to say this is a game which i have a lot of opinions about but beyond that it's also a game i believe is worth talking about and a game of some significance within the industry in a time when the entire mmo genre has seemed to be suffering a slow agonizing death of new disappointments and old disillusionments final fantasy 14 is one of the only overwhelmingly positive success stories it might be the only mmo released since world of warcraft which has been able to consistently grow its player base year on year rather than just stem the flow of players leaving after an over-inflated launch and right now its biggest problem is the kind other games can only dream of having which is that there are actually too many players since the release of the latest expansion end walker every server has been at max capacity for most of the day leading to queues of up to five to six hours just to log in during evenings and weekends in the first couple of weeks and the recent popularity has become so much of a problem that square enix has had to suspend all sales of the game oh and until recently those queues of five to six hours could also give you errors forcing you to have to re-cue multiple times enjoy on the day end walker released i was there at 9 00 am when the servers came back online but after queuing up once and then soon getting kicked from the game i had to re-cue multiple times and didn't actually get to play until just before midnight almost 13 hours later that day i may have been unlucky but i've still never seen a q situation quite this bad in any game before and this problem while no longer quite so bad is still ongoing and affecting everyone and yet despite that end walker still has the highest metacritic user score of the year hours and hours day after day of people not being able to play a game they are paying a monthly subscription for and the player base is still pretty overwhelmingly happy which begs the question of how has this happened how has final fantasy 14 become so beloved how has this game done what no other mmo could and what does this mean for the genre and with over 6 000 hours of game time i feel i am in a position to at least try to answer those questions before that though a quick thank you to this video sponsor 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to talk about before we truly begin and that is a little bit about the genre itself there is no feasible way to tell the entire history of the mmo genre in a couple paragraphs so i won't but if you were to skip over almost everything and still wanting to understand what the hell's been going on with the genre for the past couple decades then i think it's best to think of it like this you can divide mmo history up into two parts the old school era and the modern era with one game sitting in the middle as a bridge between the two and as a landmark everyone recognizes that game is world of warcraft and when it was released in 2004 it was noteworthy for being more accessible less grindy less punishing and with a more engaging quest design than the mmos of the past which preceded it if you were to compare that 2004 vanilla world of warcraft to modern world of warcraft or any other modern mmos those descriptions wouldn't make much sense anymore because compared to most mmos that came since including the game but wow has become vanilla wow was decidedly old school in its design and that's why it's helpful to think of mmos in two eras with world of warcraft being the changing point when the genre started taking major steps towards accessibility and player convenience in the way these games were fundamentally designed some examples include the introduction of dungeon finder raids of multiple difficulties including looking for raid the widespread use of plugins and ubiquity of dps meters cross server grouping and sharding or mega servers more focus on instanced pvp rather than open world pvp and so on other changes came about not through the actions of developers but just as a result of the evolution of the internet age like the widespread use of guides for raid content or wikis to tell you where quest objectives were or optimally calculated dps rotations to tell you exactly how best to play your class or streamers existing the main consequences of this were a rapid increase in accessibility and convenience but as these increased the importance of community decreased alongside them as new game features and the internet replaced the need to talk to and interact with other players for example to find a group for a dungeon you used to have to shout in chat to recruit and manually invite people then all travel together to the dungeon while watching out for being attacked by members of the opposing faction then they added the dungeon finder and all you do is click to queue up wait for the queue to pop and then click to teleport straight inside hopefully you can see the difference between these two experiences one is simple and convenient the other is not but it does encourage socializing as not only do you have to talk to people to get anywhere you also have an incentive to befriend those you meet to make the process of finding a group easier in the future what you really need to understand here though is that this kind of fundamental change wasn't limited to a few one-off examples it was widespread and existential in nature it was like the industrial revolution had come for the mmo genre where the old ways of doing things were replaced by this new more efficient machinery of the modern age and you had to get with the times or be left behind and while many people myself included still remember and might have a preference towards how things were in the past it doesn't change the fact that mmo's changed and world of warcraft led the way then along comes final fantasy xiv which was originally released in 2010 and was nothing like world of warcraft instead it was a spiritual successor to square's earlier mmo the more old school yet also quite console focused final fantasy xi but this version of final fantasy 14 proved unsuccessful with critics and fans alike mostly because of its outdated design features so a couple years later it was shut down only to be rebooted in 2013 as final fantasy 14 a realm reborn many details were kept like the setting and races but many things changed as this time instead of being inspired by final fantasy 11 the developers instead took inspiration from the king of modern mmos world of warcraft and that's not just conjecture on my part there are quotes from reliable sources confirming as much they make it sound like wow became their holy bible in learning how to design a modern mmo and so the final fantasy 14 of today is a modern world of warcraft inspired mmo through and through but unlike world of warcraft which changed heavily along the way this version of final fantasy 14 was built from the ground up with modernity in mind and accessibility and convenience became a part of its dna this makes comparisons between these two games fairly sensible as there are many ways the games are similar but it's also worth remembering that final fantasy xiv is by no means the only game inspired by world of warcraft in fact in the years which followed its initial ground-shattering success there were several high-profile wow clones which at the time were sometimes ambitiously referred to as wow killers but none of them achieved their desired regicide and the other mmos which have went on to be successful over the last decade have tended to be those that are less inspired by world of warcraft like guild wars 2 the elder scrolls online black desert and the still surprisingly relevant runescape and by the way that is basically every moderately sized mmo in existence right now this genre is not as crowded as it once was and the days when mmos were seen as the future of gaming and were being compared to hardcore drugs on national television for the threat they posed of the youth of today are long past in fact the last decade has not been kind to the mmo genre with success stories being few and far between there was once hoped for a new wave of kickstarter mmos but it's now almost 10 years later and most either still haven't released yet or should just never have released in the first place generally things are bleak for mmo fans which makes final fantasy 14 all the more significant it has succeeded where others have failed grown at a time when the genre has seemed to be shrinking and overtaken that which for a long time was seen as untouchable so why what exactly has this game done right what sets it apart from its less successful peers well let me tell you exactly why in five parts spread out across two hours and delivered alongside some healthy criticism of the game in its current state and other observations about what the game does well hey i give you answers to questions people may or may not care about on this channel i don't make those answers easy so let us begin [Music] every experienced mmo player knows that the early hours of these games are rarely the best and final fantasy 14 is no exception still compared to some games in the genre final fantasy 14 is fairly easy to get into although that might depend on where exactly you're trying to enter it from once you get past the minor annoyance of having to make a square enix account you then create your player character in a character creation that is overall good but has some clear room for improvement four faces per race and gender isn't really enough particularly when some of them look like this and who decided beard option should be face specific that's not how beards are meant to work still for most things there are plenty of options and it's easy to make good looking characters at least and with that done your adventure begins from here your experience will vary greatly depending on whether you're familiar with mmos or not really you could categorize all final fantasy 14 players into three not mutually exclusive groups you have mmo fans here to try out a new mmo final fantasy fans here to try out a new final fantasy and fans of games with good stories here because someone told them this game has a good story and probably then continually pressured them to give it a go until one day they finally relented even if justice shut them up and for the most part this is a game that has been designed to appeal to all three of these groups but which you're in might heavily impact your initial impressions so why not consider each in turn for those only here for this story you're in luck both in regards to how much story there is and how soon it gets underway with the player taking the role of a new adventurer freshly arrived in one of the three different city-states of eorzea from here the story goes on to place a large focus on world building introducing you to the state of affairs within your initial surroundings then the rest of the aussie before the primary focus settles on the beast tribes of the land and their tendency to summon powerful magic creatures known as primals who they worship as gods and who the player tends to get tasked with taking care of this is a big part of what you do in this game initially you go around killing other people's summoned gods which is not a bad way for an mmo story to create a near endless supply of raid bosses things are further complicated though by a new attack from the hostile garlean empire who deem the presence of primals popping up in eurozia as a threat and by a mysterious group of robed figures known as aseans as well as many other things one of which being the five years before a realm reborn begins there was something called the calamity where a garlean general brought down the moon which was actually hiding an ancient elegant prison containing the elder primal bahamut within it who then unleash devastation on the land almost destroying everything including maybe you this is what you see in the opening cinematic and it's also the way final fantasy 1.0 the unsuccessful version of the game released in 2010 ended in late 2012. yeah the reboot of the game was an event written into the law and something legacy players actually got to play through over the course of several months oh and this is actually the seventh calamity and you can hear about the rest and many of their accompanying civilizations as you play through the game alongside all sorts of other things there are many ways you can describe the story of final fantasy xiv and complicated might be one of the most obvious there is a lot of lore and world building and most of it is delivered by way of dialogue in the main story and side quests this results in a very text heavy story driven game and it's hard to imagine many people will really enjoy the overall experience if they're not prepared to at least take the time needed to read through the main questline and if you do read through this questline it will eventually take you to the stars and beyond in a journey of such extravagant scale depth and emotion but the only word to truly describe it is epic but that's not quite what you get in the early game final fantasy xiv story is slow its beginnings are humble and compared to most other non-mmos its presentation can seem a little lacking this is something which has improved over time with each expansion receiving more voice acting and higher quality cutscenes but even now there's still a heavy reliance on recycled animations particularly with the player's own character who is mostly limited to in-game emotes as a means of expressing themselves within the narrative the realm reborn section of the game is even more behind the times though even the opening cut scene is only partly voice acted and from then on voice acting is infrequent with even the relatively high effort climax of a realm reborn the praetorium still only getting voice acting for the final battle with gaius as for the quality of the voice acting it's not great as while some characters are fine many feel a bit amateur and when you get to the game's first expansion heavensward the entire english voice acting cast just gets replaced from here the quality drastically increases but the sudden change is jarring particularly for new players who go straight from a realm reborn to heaven sword without the several month break in between past players experienced at the time for any who have forgotten just how jarring this changes here are a few examples to refresh your memory well far be it from me to boast but i do have the ear of certain influential individuals you are more than generous my friend on behalf of my fellows i humbly accept your offer of hospitality we both know i can do no such thing it isn't safe for you here alone if we sever these supply lines we should at least be able to slow the escalation and in addition to the speed and manner in which it's told the story in a realm reborn also isn't final fantasy xiv strongest the robes aseans who play the role of shadowy puppet masters come across as hammy and uninteresting the garlands have some cool armor but otherwise seem like your typical generic militaristic empire and the main characters who support the player in your adventure the scions of the seventh dawn feel flat and underdeveloped so if you're only here for the story a realm reborn doesn't show the game at its best but it does provide an introduction to this world and it's a world worthy of introducing say what you like about the base game but you can't deny that it's world has a certain free spirited high fantasy classic jrpg charm to it particularly if you're a final fantasy fan and here we come to the second type of player if you are a fan of the series 14 goes to great lumps to serve you with plentiful references that span the entire main series and start immediately and for the most part they are done quite tastefully there are some exceptions for example i have long hated the veteran reward outfits of classic final fantasy protagonists and the fact that the cloud outfit is from the movie not the game doesn't exactly help matters if this was a single player game this wouldn't be a problem as you could just ignore them but i resent seeing these outfits around the world it detracts from immersion and feels like a cheap and lazy way to implement fan service but most examples aren't like this i still think final fantasy 14 occasionally tries too hard with its fan service and there's a fine line between an enjoyable reference and something that just feels forced to show what i mean just look at the previous two eight-man raids eden and omega during the omega raid the entity that is omega basically creates replications of powerful foes to test the player and the foes it creates just happened to be four bosses from final fantasy v and then four from final fantasy 6. the problem with this is that it comes across as overly deliberate and for anyone who isn't familiar with these games these bosses seem disconnected and uninteresting in their own right i mean i remember sabin suplexing the phantom train just like everyone else but fighting a train as the first boss in sigmascape is just weird for anyone who hasn't played the original game meanwhile the next raid ethan is full of final fantasy 8 references but they're handled more subtly and the overarching story is designed to be enjoyable on its own so in eden the references enhance something which would otherwise still work without them whereas deltascape and sigmascape rely on familiarity with the source material for their appeal and the former is better in my opinion for the most part though final fantasy fans are in for a treat with 14 and even though this side of final fantasy 14 isn't really what makes it good and its original concepts and designs have always been on par with any of those taken from the rest of the series there is something to seeing so many references from material many players will be familiar and fond of in a way this game can seem like a celebration of the entire final fantasy series and even as someone who usually doesn't care much for fan service i'd be lying if i didn't admit that as a big final fantasy 7 fan when knights of the round showed up in heaven's ward it was incredible it was both so unexpected and yet fit the story so perfectly and it remains one of my favorite moments in the entire game however even the biggest final fantasy fans as well as anyone just here for the story will eventually have to come to terms with the fact that final fantasy or not this is still an mmo if you've never played an mmo before it's a genre that can be a bit intimidating for starters the amount of systems and ui elements players soon get introduced to might seem overwhelming but compared to some games in the genre the default ui doesn't look too bad here and while the onslaught of tutorial pop-ups is initially rather off-putting at least there is lots of information in-game to teach new players including what to do in group settings players will also need to get used to combat which might not be what most are familiar with final fantasy 14 has tab targeting combat which is something with a long pedigree of mmo tradition which basically means most people these days might consider it outdated at a basic level it works by manually targeting enemies and then using abilities for their assigned to your hotbar the higher level your character gets the more abilities they accumulate leading to complicated rotations of combos reactive skills offensive and defensive cooldowns and so on originally tab target combats became the system of choice mmos due to net code limitations for early games in the genre but these days its main advantages are accessibility and eventually depth the downside is that it's not very dynamic or impactful as the player plays little role in aiming or executing their attacks because as long as your foe is targeted and you happen to be in range everything is just a single button press in some ways it can feel a little like you're giving orders to a character rather than being the one actually controlling them yourself as the mechanical execution for every ability is the same and i imagine the younger generations have a strong preference for true action combat systems as they feel more exciting still while it might not be as engaging in some of its alternatives it is easy to pick up and neither jrpgs nor final fantasy games are exactly known for their great early game gameplay anyway the other thing new players will need to get used to is that as this is an mmo it means at some point you will need to play with other people i know i know other people how disgusting who would want to play with them well don't worry my anti-social friend final fantasy 14 is one of the most solo friendly mmos you'll ever find you can even do most group content with npcs instead of players and gone are the days of actually needing to talk to people to get anywhere in mmos anyway you do have to group up with people to complete dungeons and trials sometimes and you do need to complete many dungeons and trials as part of the story but the process is effortless thanks to an easy to use automatic group finder the skill requirements are always rather low to avoid excluding anyone and the people you will meet are probably pretty quiet it's rare to see more than the odds hello and thanks for the group in most group settings and there's certainly no need to socialize just ignore the people you see around the main square of limbs and la minsa you will never find the more wretched hive of scum and villainy we must be cautious and if you do find yourself talking to another person you'll probably find them reasonably helpful which is partly a result of the sprout icon all new players get branded with this might sound more like a curse than a blessing particularly if you have any preconceived notions about mmo player elitism or you just really hate small plants but the reality is people tend to be very forgiving and understanding of new players and with a sprout icon above your head you don't even need to say anything for everyone to realize this is what you are and there are other ways this game incentivizes positive interactions with others as well like the commendation system used to reward players in group settings or the first time completion bonus ensuring new players in most groups are usually more of a boon than burden so for new players who lack mmo experience final fantasy 14 offers something that is relatively speaking very easy to get into and waste no time showing off its final fantasy theming and throwing you into its long and beast days highly acclaimed story the generous free trial also allows players to try all of the base game and first expansion without spending any money and as monthly subscriptions are generally considered rather off-putting to non-mmoa players this also probably helps convince new people to give the game a chance that's not to say that mmo's final fantasy or otherwise are a type of game that will be for everyone and aspects like the tab targeting combat the ui design the infrequent voice acting and so on might still turn new players away but final fantasy 14 has clearly been designed to ease new players into the experience and the strong branding the final fantasy name gives it and the lack of mmo competition these days have likely helped ensure that there is a constant influx of new players willing to try the game out for themselves this is the first albeit least interesting reason for why i think this game has been so successful it is an accessible relatively polished and new player friendly mmo with a strong reputation in a time when competition is fairly scarce and while this doesn't provide the most exciting way to kick our list of reasons off sometimes life isn't always about the most exciting ways that's just how it is there is still one last group of players worth considering here though and that is those who are already experienced with mmos this group won't have a unified set of expectations but most will still be judging the game on how it compares to other mmos so how does the early final fantasy 14 experience compare to its peers well firstly as already mentioned it is more story focused this is particularly true now the rate of experience point gain has been increased meaning you can level almost the entire way by just following the main story quest but even before this final fantasy 14 was always very story heavy by mmo standards this also impacts the leveling experience as there's less focus on doing tasks within the game world but mmos don't always have the best reputation when it comes to giving players fun tasks to do within their worlds as for the world itself it does look good particularly for a game released in 2013 but the main downside to this is frequent loading screen separating areas this game was originally designed to run on the playstation 3's very limited amount of ram and while ps3 support has luckily been abandoned since storm blood certain scars still show like the way that the three original cities are each split into two distinct areas as for new zones while they might have continued the trend of looking good and have grown larger in size in other ways even less care has been placed on world design in the realm reborn zones there is a lot of variety to enemies with both non-hostile foes and the occasional higher level enemy as well as more consideration placed on enemy layout or making sure enemies feel like a part of an actual ecosystem in later zones however all enemies feel overly similar in strength and behavior and their layout seems very evenly spaced with little consideration given to realism and this lack of attention to detail might be a little disappointing for anyone coming from an mmo which places more focus on the world itself as for the combat tab targeting will likely be nothing new but something you will hear a lot particularly from world of warcraft players are concerned over the global cooldown or gcd this is the time between each use of a normal ability the standard gcd in final fantasy 14 is 2.5 seconds which is slower than wows 1.5 and for years this has been a widely referenced data point when making comparisons between the two games with the 2.5 gcd of final fantasy being used as proof that the combat is slow and therefore bad and at low levels when your character only has access to a small portion of their overall skill set the difference in speed is very noticeable however by max level the difference in combat speed is less apparent and the 2.5 second gcd of final fantasy can be quite misleading firstly it can be lowered by the stats skill speed as well as other class specific buffs for example on monk one of the faster melee classes i currently have a base gcd of 1.87 seconds which isn't really that far off the 1.5 of wow secondly final fantasy features many instant abilities which are not on the global cooldown and can instead be interwoven between two gcds making combat feel faster than the gcd implies for example here is the current opener for dragoon one of the melee classes with the slowest gcd in the image the gcds are on the bottom row and as you can see not only are there lots of additional off gcd abilities but you also need to sometimes press 2 off gcd abilities between each gcd so the difference in combat speed is smaller than the gcd makes it seem and comparisons between actions per minute for each game shows that they are quite similar while it's still overall slightly faster but final fantasy also tends to have slightly longer rotations to make up for this there is still a slightly different feel to combat though with wow's rotation seeming more frenetic thanks in large part to the heavy reliance on procs or reactive abilities whereas final fantasy rotations feel more methodical due to their more static and deterministic nature but in terms of both speed complexity and overall skill required to perform i have always found the two games not really that dissimilar but final fantasy can feel slow at the start particularly if you have spent lots of hours playing an mmo with a faster gcd a bigger and yet less talked about combat difference between these two games is when abilities actually trigger final fantasy 14 features many high quality combat animations which are very pleasing on the eye although they can also be overly flashy in group encounters because of this there is an option in the settings to reduce other player's battle effects which i highly recommend you turn down as while four-man content might look okay 8-man content becomes messy and 24-man content or highly populated open-world events like fates or hunts feature so many particle effects and flashing lights that it can feel like a war crime is being committed against your eyes each time you have the pleasure of grouping up still while final fantasy xiv's flashy combat animations are usually a positive these animations aren't always that responsive if you press an ability in wow it feels like it happens instantly with the damage number and sound effect triggering straight away but if you press an ability in final fantasy it often feels like there is a small delay to account for the animation and even instant effects can feel like they take time to trigger something you can easily notice on abilities which lock you in place for their duration like dragoon's jump there's also possible differences in net code and recognition of ability server site this is hard to compare between games and i've seen a lot of contradictory information about this from players over the years but any experienced final fantasy 14 player can surely remember times when you use your instant oh ability like benediction hallowed ground home gang or living dead only for it to go on cooldown without actually triggering in time this is annoying and potentially very costly and that kind of thing doesn't seem to happen in wow because wow's combat is very responsive it is one of the best things about it finally there's also a difference in enemy ability timings that many new players will find strange until they're used to it which is that these abilities trigger instantly based on when the enemy finishes their cast however this is also when the animation for these abilities starts and animations always take some time to play out meaning the animations are somewhat delayed from when the attack effect actually happens what this essentially means is that if you are just inside an enemy aoe when the cast ends then you'll always be hit by that aoe even if you move out of it by the time you actually see the animation and the reverse is also true meaning as long as you are outside the aoe when the cast ends you can move back into the aoe area straight away without being hit as the animation plays this is at least a fair and easy to understand way for enemy abilities to work but it's not intuitive for new players and it can look and feel very unnatural there are plenty of other differences between final fantasy 14 and other mmos too in aesthetics and content in the class system and character building in party size and etiquette and so on some of these differences i'll come back to but i think it's the two previously mentioned that are the most notable for mmo fans which are that final fantasy 14's combat starts slow and can take time to get used to and that this is a very story focused game with more emphasis placed on storytelling than other potentially important aspects like world design and so for all three different types of potential new player we can see that there's always one thing tying everyone's different experiences together one thing you can't escape in this game no matter who you are or what you enjoy and that is the importance of the main story this is an mmo maybe the only mmo where story truly takes precedence over everything else and so i guess it's only fair to talk more about that story before anything else [Music] mmos are unique because unlike other games in mmos you are not the main character instead you're just one of many players who have to work together in this collective world all sharing the spotlight but someone might have forgotten to tell that to final fantasy xiv because here you are not just the main character you are the most main character character who has ever main characters a video game and that's not an exaggeration you are the warrior of light hero of eorzea blessed of heilin ender of the dragon song war liberator of alamigo in the eastern front and vanquisher of countless primals guardians asians and anything else stupid enough to get in your way you are beloved respected worshiped and praised by all and you kind of deserve it here everyone is your simp if you look up the word hero in an eorzean dictionary you will find a small picture of yourself and every npc you've never talked to dreams of the day may get to share a cut scene just one not even voice acted cut scene with you the warrior of light and as for all these other people you see running around dancing in the main square of limsa sitting in the housing districts crafting potions camping out rare spawning fates for just 15 more minutes who are they who cares compared to you the warrior of light they're nothing just extras lucky enough to make a cameo in your story who are only really there to stop the world feeling empty and keep you company as you wait around for the next time you're needed to save the day there is a part of me that believes mmo should always play to their strengths and that includes in how they tell their stories mmos are unique because of the other people you share the world with and it therefore stands to reason that the best mmo stories should incorporate this aspect into their narrative to tell a story only games of his genre can most modern mmos don't do this however maybe because creating a narrative without a defined main character for events to revolve around is challenging and final fantasy 14 proves it's not really necessary either an mmo can work with a single player style story and while that might be a little disappointing from a theoretical standpoint it's hard to argue with results there are some major caveats to any praise given to this game's narrative however the first of which has already been mentioned when a realm reborn first released reviews actually tended to be very positive about its story but compared to each expansion released since the difference in quality feels clear in storytelling writing and originality but a realm reborn does lay an important foundation which each subsequent expansion has built upon the first heavensward makes for the most noticeable jump in quality where a realm reborn's primary focus is on world building and its action is split between various primal obsessed beast tribes ongoing eosium politics and the latest ghalian invasion heaven's ward is instead more focused telling the story of the isolationist city-state ishgard and its thousand-year conflict the dragon song war you begin by leaving the base game behind literally and metaphorically as you're forced to take refuge in ishgard before setting off on a journey through the surrounding lands to discover the truth of the long wars history while accompanied by a small group of relevant characters who each provide a different perspective on events in this way heaven's ward feels like a classic jrpg tale of a band of adventurers coming together to travel through fantastical lands to try to eventually save the day [Music] and whereas a realm reborn featured many characters none of which received any real development heaven's wards is where that starts the change this is most notable with alphano who is almost unbearable in a realm reborn if you haven't played through this section in a while you may have forgotten this but from below quality voice acting to his knight or personality to his young age and mary sue like status he really comes across as annoying and unlikable and it almost feels like the writers realize this because between around reborn and heaven's ward some major things go wrong for him leaving him greatly humbled in heaven's wards we then see him have moments of self-reflection through which he has a chance to grow and mature and suddenly his self-importance and idealism is tempered against his newfound sense of perspective and he actually becomes quite likable heaven's heavenswards is also where the supporting characters first start to feel like you're friends there's a moment early on i've always liked where tataro and alfono are accused of heresy and demand a trial by combat except tatro has no combat experience so she calls on you to be her champion and it feels good to stand up for someone who you know has been wrongly accused games always act like everyone is best friends with the main character but it's moments like this which actually allow you to feel that friendship and it makes sense that the struggle the main cast of heaven's wards go through would ultimately bring them together most of these positive trends continue with each later expansion stormblood is the black sheep of the post-realm reborn family but its story is still a lot stronger than the base game it continues the overarching plot of the guardian empire as the player seeks to liberate the city-states of alamigo and doma from guardian control the way the narrative is split between these two distinct and far apart front leaves the story feeling slightly fractured its depictions of war never truly managed to live up to the grand scale an event like this should have and storm blood's attempt to focus on a single important character lease feels like a less successful repeat attempt of what heaven sword did with alphano but in other ways the story has plenty of fun moments and its relatively simple and action-driven nature makes for a nice change of pace from the frequently exposition heavy and sometimes convoluted story elements seen in so much of the rest of the game it might be the weakest overall expansion in terms of narrative but it's had some strong competition speaking of which the next expansion the fan favorite shadowbringers has the player journey to an entirely new dimension which is being drowned by light this forces the main character to take up the role of warrior of darkness in a subversion that feels instantly engaging and also gives shadowbringers a really strong aesthetic identity that comes across as wholly distinct from anything else in the final fantasy series initially i was turned off by shadowbringer's seemingly unnecessary isakai-like premise of being teleported to another world but by the time the journey is coming to its close it's almost impossible not to be won over by certain aspects of the tale it tells still the single greatest achievements of shadowbringers is how it took the worst part of final fantasy xiv story the ever-present over-the-top and always annoying shadowy robed aseans and fleshes out their backstory to humanize the group and give them clear and understandable motivations which instantly makes every part of final fantasy 14's greater narrative better as a result finally there is end walker which provides an apocalyptic finale to the entire overarching story the rest of the game has been telling and it is stunning in its grandeur ambition and sheer unexpectedness as it's still relatively close to release and the events of end walker carry such significance i'll avoid talking about them in detail to avoid spoilers but i will say that the trailer for ant walker shows the player's character going to the moon a feat with some tradition in the final fantasy series but while you might expect something like this to be the finale of end walker it is not it isn't even close you are going to places and defeating enemies that you would expect to be a normal game's final boss before you even make it to the expansion's halfway point and then it just keeps going to more places and greater things that no one would have predicted and when the ending finally does come it is truly special that's not to say that everything about this story necessarily works but at the same time i can think of few things in gaming quite like it there are problems with final fantasy xiv story and the way the game chooses to tell it but i do think it needs to be stressed but while this story does have its lows its highs are also some of the highest you will ever see in a video game and it provides a journey like few others still about those problems you know call me old-fashioned here but one thing i do value in a video game is feeling like i am actually playing it and there are long stretches in final fantasy 14 where that feeling is lost because while the narrative quality might have increased over time interactivity has decreased and it wasn't that great to begin with so much of this game is spent watching cut scenes or reading dialogue and outside of the occasional dungeon trial or scripted single player set piece there just isn't any meaningful gameplay and no going to an ominously glowing circle to kill a couple enemies that spawn in is not meaningful gameplay but often you don't even get that every quest just contains so much writing which is fine when the events the writing is covering feel important enough to justify this but even when the main story slows down and sends you on relatively unimportant errands for a while but density of dialogue just continues in the end this can be exhausting even if you enjoy the story and throughout the last two expansions i found myself always longing to get to the next dungeon or trial just to get a brief moment of respite where i could feel like i was actually playing the game again the irony is that while around reborn has the weakest story by far in other ways it also had the best questing experience as you were regularly sent out into the world to fulfill some objective which afforded the player small breaks from the constant barrage of text boxes but heaven's ward started the trend of more story and less gameplay and then shadowbringers ramped this up several degrees further to the point where the gameplay is barely there anymore and then end walker goes even further and the few new attempts at gameplay-focused quests like the sections where you target something with a crosshair or end walker's new trend of following missions have largely been unsuccessful killing enemies and finding objectives in the game world isn't great but it's better than this and at least it can be used to highlight interesting areas and make players feel like they are actually interacting with the world in this regard i've come to really appreciate the dialogue choices that have become more frequent as the gamers went on as they at least make dialogue feel slightly more interactive and despite not changing anything major some are still used to really great effect with one in particular at the end of end walker being a great example of how a small touch of player agency can add so much meaning to a particular scene but these choices still aren't enough ultimately a good story is always better when it's supported by good gameplay which final fantasy xiv's main quest often fails at and for some players in particular this lack of gameplay might really detract from their enjoyment the second major problem i think needs to be at least acknowledged is that the story sure can be a bit convoluted there is now aether dynamis the echo the blessing of light summoning teleportation tempering sundering reincarnation time travel memory transferring alternate dimensions and on and on these elements aren't just lazily thrown in for a cheap twist or overly convenient plot resolution usually i'll always resent link pearls but in some ways this can actually make these things even worse as every little element is accompanied by scene after scene of exposition to try to explain it all which can bring the story's pacing to a cruel there's also a risk that with so many different elements involved the writers will end up building a house of cards which will one day grow so tall but it collapses in on itself as different elements start to contradict each other and there are times things already look a little shaky but i think for now most are willing to forgive this aspect to enjoy the story's better qualities and one could have other issues with the story as well like the overuse of certain narrative tropes namely the fake character deaths and succeeding through the power of friendship but how players will respond to these will be up to the individual for the majority of the current playerbase these flaws are worth overlooking to enjoy the narrative's positive qualities and of those there is no shortage there is something unique about final fantasy 14 story in its vastness of scale and scope and the way it has grown year after year patch after patch expansion after expansion it is a true journey of epic proportions where we witness the story of an entire continent that is interwoven with a large cast of recurring characters and an increasingly well-developed sense of history the main story alone takes hundreds of hours of game time to complete and it's worth pointing out the final fantasy 14 story isn't limited to the main quest there are in-depth storylines for every class including crafters every 24 man and eight-man raid every optional trial every new batch of relic weapons and so on even if equality does vary the sheer amount of story content in final fantasy 14 is almost unrivalled and if you're someone who loves this game or its world or characters for never ending hours of story content is something you just can't get in many other games and having witnessed this story grow since a realm reborn's release and seen the playerbase's response to it i've often wondered whether story might actually be more important to an mmo than people usually admit this is a genre where people spend weeks months even years with these games and their worlds and so why wouldn't we want our time and experience to be given more meaning through narrative to be invested in the story of a game has always made other parts of the experience better and why should mmos be any different for years people have read static paragraph long text dumps as the primary means of delivering story in mmos and no one would think this is acceptable in any other game the same is true for tedious quest objectives that ask us to kill a few too many balls or gather more sporadically dropping items than should realistically be needed and the glacial pacing and viscous cutscene density of final fantasy xiv might just be another example of this we put up with the bad because we want to care about this world and its characters and our character we want our experience to have meaning because it isn't an experience like that of a normal game something we pick up on a whim one day and are finished with by the end of the weekend it is instead something that becomes a part of our lives a journey measured in years something we watch grow alongside our own growth and a good story can only enhance every other part of the experience i've seen several people declare final fantasy 14 story to be the greatest ever told in a game and i don't agree with that opinion but i can understand why so many hold it there is something special about this game's story and if you haven't experienced it for yourself you might not be able to understand this in some ways you just had to be there and so we have arrived at the second reason for why final fantasy 14 has become the biggest mmo in the world because it successfully utilized its story to create something that thousands of players have been able to fall in love with which has grown and expanded as times went on whether that is unique is up for debate other mmos also have stories and other mmos might even have good stories but one thing's for sure is that no other mmo has ever been this committed to telling its story in final fantasy xiv story really is king and nearly all other aspects of game design have been made to kneel before it for example dungeons aren't just cool locations end game groups of adventurers head to to search for worthy foes and long-lost treasures since heavensward almost every dungeon is a moment in the main storyline they are the game's main form of cinematic set-piece they exist for the story the same is true for most trials which are the most epic raid boss fights in this game and are usually there to accompany the most epic story moments the same is true for the world design as where other mmos might decide on which areas of the world to add next and then write a story to justify their inclusion in final fantasy 14 the story is what informs the world and it is what decides where we go and when and the same is true for the multiplayer aspects of the game which are asked to fit into a story rarely willing to compromise or give them all that much real consideration in final fantasy 14 story is king and i'm not sure most of the fanbase would have it any other way and as broadly accessible as this game has been made to be with countless quality of life updates and casual and solo friendly design the one thing that doesn't apply to is the story it is the one part of the game but doesn't seem interested in holding the player's hand in fact almost no effort is made to ensure the player is keeping up this is a story designed for those who read everything and if that's not you then tough you will do it the final fantasy 14 way or suffer the consequences of always being confused how this thing works or who that guy was or what the last cutscene was actually on about still there is one final thing that needs to be said about final fantasy 14 story which is that outside of spending real money in the out of game online store the story can't actually be skipped even the base game by comparison every world of warcraft expansion since warlords of draenor has come with a free level boost potion to take you instantly to the latest content and this has become the norm for mmos in the past decade where no one is left behind and getting to max level is always made as easy as possible but not in final fantasy 14 as while the speed you gain experience points has been increased a cutscene is still just as long no matter the player's level and so if you want to get the latest expansion or participate in endgame you will have to play through hours and hours of non-stop story as you journey through all of the base game every expansion and every single post expansion patch it is a massive undertaking and this might be a problem for new players particularly because the base game just isn't that good anymore [Music] what is the biggest mistake world of warcraft ever made i'm sure there are lots of varied answers to that question and i'm not going to try to convince you mine is the objectively correct one but i do want to share it with you anyway because in my opinion the greatest mistake wow ever made was how each expansion was designed to invalidate older content it has been 18 years since world of warcraft first released and there is 18 years worth of content in that game at least some of which is very good but almost none of it is relevant to the game as it is today i guess no one knew at the time but wow would still be going fairly strong 18 years later and you can't blame anyone involved for not thinking of an 18-year plan when the burning crusade first entered development but would be always helpful benefit of hindsight you cannot convince me for the short-term oriented only one expansion matters at a time design of that game was the right one world of warcraft has had plenty of good content over the years which should never have been treated as simply disposable in this regard final fantasy 14 has done something very clever whether intentional or not because while world of warcraft is at its core and end game meaning pvp and raiding oriented game final fantasy 14 isn't its greatest focus is and always has been as was just discussed the story and with each expansion released that story has only grown it has been expanded bit by bit into something greater than what came before and so the release of a new expansion isn't to the detriment of the rest of the game and so for those who enjoy the story which is the majority of the player base final fantasy 14 has become better and better and will likely continue to do so in the future this is the third of my reasons for this game's success and this doesn't just apply to the story either a big part of final fantasy xiv's group content is roulette these are dungeons and easier difficulty raids that are divided into different categories which the player can then queue for to play through one at random for a bonus reward if you want to level a different class or gather end game currencies roulettes are one of the best ways to do so both due to how enjoyable they can be thanks to their large and ever-expanding amount of variety as well as how rewarding they can be thanks to the daily bonus if there is a particular type of group content you don't want to do you can always ignore that particular roulette and so overall this content makes for a nice relaxed endgame activity but you can also do alongside friends but even more importantly this also ensures new players doing old group content for the first time will still have people to complete it with while also keeping older group content relevant no matter the expansion this is clever game design that benefits the whole player base and final fantasy xiv is ahead of many of its peers in this regard as group content is not just forgotten or doomed to a relevancy the moment it falls out of the current expansion spotlight however for both story and group content it's hard to deny that a realm reborn which is the base game and therefore the first thing new players will experience is letting the team down a bit in both its story group content and overall leveling experience the story's problems aren't that drastic and it's worth remembering but it did receive a positive reception in most reviews when a realm reborn first released really it just feels a little too generic it's characters too one-dimensional and it's pacing too slow this is made worse by the fact that many new players lured in by the promise of a good story will specifically be looking forward to playing through the later expansions as this is when they hear it actually gets good while mmo veterans are probably just looking forward to reaching endgame as that's usually an mmo player's main objective while levelling in this way around reborn's average story becomes a barrier to players but gets in the way of better things still to come which might make it seem even worse as for a realm reborn's group content its main problems have to do with scaling and difficulty more so than the quality of the content itself over time there are certain things square enix has improved that such as designing unique and interesting boss mechanics but in some ways aroma-borne's group content still stands out as being some of the most immersive and non-linear in the entire game and the overall quality isn't that bad particularly as the simpler mechanics make sense as a way to ease potential newcomers into the mmo experience however the difficulty of this content in the current state of the game is incredibly lacking with each expansion old content has been made easier due to a range of factors such as changes to skills and the impact of scaling down higher level players the end result of this is that every fight in a realm reborn is far easier than it was on release to the point where they can feel like parodies of their former selves and a realm reborn wasn't a particularly difficult game to begin with from a gameplay perspective this makes this content boring for most players particularly those who have played other mmos before but it also diminishes many story moments i don't want to spend too long showing examples but i do want to illustrate how bad the issue is as i don't think many players realize just how drastic the difference is these days so let's look at two fights one early into a realm reborn and one towards the end the first is ifrit the earliest primal the player takes on and one of the most recognizable final fantasy icons it starts with a still really cool cutscene and at this early point in the game this is by far the most interesting thing to have happened yet in the story then you get into the fight and it's over in one minute and 20 seconds during this ifrit doesn't get a chance to use his main aoe attack radiant plume because the fight ends too quickly and this was in a group with three low-level sprouts by the way so this isn't even the effect of high-level players by comparison i don't know exactly how long the fight took on release as i can't find a full video of it but i did find a video guide where they had over one and a half bars of limit break when the nail spawns whereas today you have less than one quarter of a bar and the fact that there used to be video guides created for this fight i think speaks for itself still ifrit normal mode was never an interesting fight and this encounter is very low level so let's look at something else how about the final boss fight of a realm reborn's main story ultima weapon this fight now lasts 55 seconds there is still healing to do and aoes to dodge because all dps players just ignore the actual mechanics to rush the boss down instead one thing you don't see anymore however is the boss's final attack ultima the story behind this enemy is that it's an ancient super weapon designed to cast the ultimate magic which is the spell ultima and that's why it's so important you defeat it here and this used to be what happens in the final phase of this fight as a climactic dps check the boss trying to cast this spell is basically part of the story and there are several lines of dialogue to go with this but now the boss dies so quickly it doesn't even enter into this final hit point percentage based phase even worse than this though is that as this fight now lasts less than a minute it means you only get one minute into the boss's theme song which means you don't get to the best part this is what it should sound like this is what players are missing out on [Music] wait for it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this piece of music might be the single best thing in a realm reborn and they've ruined it this part doesn't even come close to playing by the way you'd have to fight ultima weapon three times as it is right now just to reach it so in terms of story music and gameplay this fight has been destroyed in video footage i found this fight used to take 5 minutes and 30 seconds by the way and you could make similar comparisons for almost all older content i feel i need to repeat my earlier point but this content was never particularly challenging and it was already at a good difficulty level for new players this content did not need nor could it afford this reduction of difficulty and this isn't just a realm reborn problem either it affects all older content to some degree including other important story moments like the final boss of heaven's ward or stormbloods i'm sure some max level players are listening to this right now thinking it's a good thing everything is so easy because it means quicker roulettes but roulettes could be changed to give more xp or tombstones if the time they take is an issue and the quality of the content should always be the priority this doesn't help new players either as the complete lack of challenge just removes all incentive to actually learn to play your class or take boss mechanics seriously while ensuring that when challenging content does finally appear the spike in difficulty might be too sudden for people it is an asset that older content is designed to stay relevant but it can't be neglected in this way and that's what's happened here the lack of difficulty isn't a deliberate change it is an unintended consequence of many other changes made as the game has evolved but new players and the content itself deserve better this isn't the only problem with low level gameplay however as this content is also helped by the lack of player abilities due to the increased rate players gain xp this isn't much of a problem for new players at least for the earlier levels as new abilities are unlocked frequently however by level 50 every class is left feeling rather basic this makes things less interesting for new players but the real problem is for max level players doing level scaled content as they lose so many abilities when scaled down that every class feels bad to play the reality is classes have evolved over time with each new expansion but at the same time every class was basically better to play at level 50 in a realm reborn than it is now in end walker when players are scaled down to level 50. for a quick comparison using dragoon in a realm reborn you also have the following skills heavy thrust internal release lobotomize leg sweep impulse drive power surge ring of thorns and maybe also fracture if you were a fracture using kind of guy that's at least seven less dps related skills in addition to the more advanced bass rotation and the much more important positionals and what have they got in return true north and arm's length skills which exist to allow you to do less dragoon wasn't particularly difficult or interesting to play in a realm reborn but it was a lot better than it is now when scaled to 50 and this becomes even more apparent when you compare how classes were in heaven's ward to how they are at the moment when scale to 60 or in storm blood to how they are now scaled to 70. the reason this has happened is because each expansion has added new skills for every class but in order to prevent overall skill bloat each expansion since storm blood has also removed some skills and while players may each have their own favorite ability that has been axed that we missed dearly to this day generally the way the developers have went about this skill compression has been fairly intelligent with both targeted often being unimportant and with many skills simply being combined however this has still left lower levels feeling pretty empty particularly for max level players who have grown used to having access to their full range of abilities the simplest solution to this would be to just give players more skills earlier so that by level 50 each class has most of their core spells and abilities basically change it so that the skills each class has right now at level 60 are what they have at level 50 and then tweak the remaining skills currently gained from 60 to 80 to be gained earlier this would mean players would unlock fewer skills as they level from 50 to 80 but so what the small loss in sense of progression that comes from this would be more than made up for by the improvement to gameplay gained by giving players more abilities and this would also make level scaled content much more enjoyable for max level players as scaled down classes wouldn't feel quite so gutted it's a win-win solution and while this would mean low-level content is made even easier that just means it's finally time to stop neglecting this content in the first place and have a major re-evaluation of the current difficulty level and finally we come to the leveling experience originally leveling to 50 was quite slow and players had to engage with a wide range of content to not run out of sources of xp including optional dungeons the hunting log fates guild tests and levy quests since then the rate of xp gain for players has been greatly increased so now you can level almost the entire way to max by just following the main quest line increasing the rate of xp gain is logical as this game has plenty of content so it doesn't need to be padded however this means there's no need to engage with other content anymore if i were to ignore the quality of the story the best leveling experience i've had in final fantasy 14 was leveling 250 for the first time this was because there was more variety to what i was doing than just reading dialogue and watching cutscenes and because there was a much greater sense of interacting with the world around me in particular i have fond memories of completing the hunting log for the first time because it tasks you with going out into the world and hunting down specific enemies vlog does provide a general location but you still have to search this broader location yourself which leads you to paying attention to the world around you going to places you've probably never been and seeing sites you may never actually see otherwise it felt a bit like you're actually off exploring the world and that sense of exploration is something that is very rarely felt in final fantasy 14 otherwise you can still complete the hunting log of course but i wonder how many new players actually do as there's no real xp extensive to it anymore in preparation for this video i created a new character and went through velar levels again and in many ways the experience isn't bad as you level fast you gain new skills quickly the run reborn zones still look great and the main quest line isn't quite as slow paced as it becomes in later expansions however one thing i did find was that i was very quickly overlevelled even though i was mostly sticking to the main quest this became particularly noticeable after the main quest sent you to the first three dungeons sastasia tamtara deepcroft and the copperbell mines after which i found myself 10 whole levels ahead of the main questline and that 10-level gap continued into the future being so over-leveled so quickly doesn't feel very good as there's no longer any sense of reward to gaining xp and it almost feels like you're being rushed through the world without the chance to engage with the things around you like fates or side quests that you might at least want to check out still leveling to 50 and following the 2.0 main quest line isn't the real problem right now as at least for this section there's still a good sense of progression it doesn't take too long you never run out of things to do and you're always seeing new parts of the world the problems really begin in the post-realm reborn pre-heavensward section from patch 2.1 onwards originally there were major patches released every few months and each came with new content including the main story quests in total there was 103 of these quests and playing through some of them every few months after each major patch wasn't that bad but playing through all of them in one go after you've already completed the round reborn questline and reached level 50 is a tedious slog to remedy this the developers reworked the entire realm reborn main quest line to try to shorten it in patch 5.3 this removed a grand total of 45 quests while shortening some of those left with the post-romer born section being decreased from 103 to 80. this wasn't a bad effort to try to fix what by that point had become a well-known problem of the base game but it still isn't enough cutting content is difficult as some quests can't simply be removed without other quests making less sense but after playing through most of the two point x main quest line i still felt there was room for further streamlining for example in the patch 2.1 questline you could remove the pointless trip to mordona and instead go straight into the mughal king quest in patch 2.2 you could remove the first two quests that focus on the missing crystals and instead go straight to uddar to meet yugiri then remove the entire return visit to the walking sands where you look for hiding children and help out with the coach then when you move on to the leviathan questline there's a couple more steps that could be removed and so on you get the idea i won't go through every patch the point is there is still room for shortening these sections it just might require some minor text rewrites to allow the rest of the story to still make sense however if you really want to streamline the realm reborn main quest the real space where fat is begging to be trimmed is in the 2.0 quest line which is for level 1 to 50 content where you are still frequently sent on unimportant tasks that serve little purpose beyond giving the player busy work these negatively impact the story by slowing its pace and at this point the best solution to the realm reborn problem might be to further reduce the main questline particularly the 2.0 content and then change the original main quest line to take the player to level 45 with the 2.1 to 2.5 content being adjusted to take the player from 45 to 50. the 2.0 main quest line already only has five quests higher than level 46 so this wouldn't require many changes to enemy levels outside of perhaps an adjustment to the two eight-man main scenario instances and it would give new players a much smoother and more natural leveling experience where they won't have to feel like they're always overlevelled early on or that they are stuck in the endless level 50 post 2.0 slog but currently feels like it exists only to block unexpected new players from reaching heaven's ward where everyone says the game actually gets good still there is an overarching point i'm trying to make here which is that a realm reborn can and probably should be improved fixed for difficulty of group content give players more skills sooner and streamline the main quest line if i really had my way i'd also include redoing the entire english voice acting for this section the current voice acting is not good and the actors will change at the start of heaven's world anyway so just pay the cost and redo all of it because no matter what the future has in store for final fantasy 14 the story will always be relevant and there will always be new players stepping foot into aussie and judging the game based on their impression of a realm reborn so make it better fix the realm reborn problem by simply improving it of course there is another solution to the realm of one problem which is to make it skippable either in its entirety or just the main story but i think this is the wrong solution for several reasons firstly heaven's ward's story is good but it begins in a realm reborn basically patch 2.4 and onwards is focused entirely on ishgard and the current state of european politics and people who skip this would be at a complete loss as to what's going on at the start of heaven's wards this problem would then continue into the future as there are countless references callbacks and direct continuations of plot elements raised in a realm reborn throughout the entirety of final fantasy xiv's narrative and this story can be confusing enough as it is without players just skipping a big chunk of it in the first place secondly a realm reborn does have some good qualities and that includes the story it is the only part of this grand narrative where the stakes are relatively low and your character is not yet a famous hero in many ways it's your origin story and it represents an integral part of your character's journey and growth it also features a lot of lore and world building that even if not strictly necessary still enhances the rest of the experience and so around reborn lays an important foundation that each later expansion then builds on and even if it doesn't do the best job at laying that foundation that doesn't mean it's not needed so don't make the mistake of other mmos don't prioritize the short term over the long don't throw away valuable content in an attempt to let new players catch up faster around reborn does have its problems but it's not beyond saving and in the long term such efforts might be worth it and it's not like the problem of too many main story quests would just go away after a realm reborn anyway each expansion asks the player to take their time reading and watching the story and then the stretch of post-expansion story quests slows leveling down even more and that experience understandably won't be for everyone but that experience is a large part of final fantasy xiv with the benefit of hindsight i do think the post-expansion story quests those introduced after every expansion in patches 0.1 2.5 should have been designed to be much shorter with more of a story they feature being told in optional supporting questlines in order to allow players who come later to have a better catching up experience going through these patch questlines one at a time when they come out is very different from playing through all of them together at a time when you're just looking forward to the next expansion already still it's too late for that now and final fantasy 14 is the game it is there is always a limit to how much of an experience can be changed to appeal to people who might have problems with it and if you go too far you risk changing the core appeal of the game itself something other mmos might have encountered in their hopeless quest to make their games appeal to everyone still if you do get past the many hours of story content there is one last side to final fantasy 14 that films worth discussing [Music] if there's one mmo related saying i have always hated it's that end game is whatever you want it to be this is something repeated by mmo players journalists developers marketing teams and just about anyone else whoever says those three little letters and it's not actually helpful i mean sure in theory you can do whatever the hell you want in an mmo just like in any other game or any other aspect of life we all have free will and the potential to entertain ourselves in unexpected ways but so what all you're saying is that different things are theoretically possible in your game but different theoretical possibilities are a universal facet of life and all you're really doing by parroting this statement is avoiding a very reasonable and probably earnestly asked question so next time someone asks what the endgame is like or what is vetted to its endgame just tell them it's not some impossible to answer conundrum what are the main things players do when they reach max level and what are the main types of content being added to the game to support this so what is the end game like in final fantasy xiv well that's the great thing about this game the end game is whatever you want it to be now i'm just messing with you let me actually answer that question for once if we consider that the main story and initial experience leveling is the not end game part of the experience then end game is the various activities one might do after finishing the story there is of course all sorts of different potential activities this could include and this game does have a lot of content but i think we can nevertheless still categorize them into three broad groups without being too reductive these are leveling other classes or alts acquiring collectible items including but not limited to outfits minions mounts cards songs and housing items and finally there is also the classic endgame activity improving your character's gear so let's deal with each of these one at a time almost everyone who plays final fantasy 14 will spend at least some time leveling other classes in the past there used to be a strong gameplay incentive to do this due to the cross-class skill system which allowed players to use certain skills from one class on others but this has now long since been removed meaning there's no longer any actual reason you need to level any other class in this game and yet everyone still does anyway and that's probably because in final fantasy 14 unlike most mmos you can level all classes on a single character and changing class is as simple as one quick button press this removes much of the barrier of entry to levelling alts as you no longer have to create a whole new character and go through the various busy work that comes with it like rearranging your ui repopulating your friends list re-unlocking travel locations or redoing story quests and many other inconveniences also leveling other classes in final fantasy 14 is quick and easy as you get boosted xp if you already have one class higher level and without so many story related cutscenes in your way the leveling speed feels fast in fact i know many people who level every single class in the game to max each expansion which still seems excessive to me but in this game it's relatively common and with little reason not to level other classes you might soon find that playing other jobs and roles can be quite fun final fantasy 14 does have a bit of a problem with classes of a similar role feeling overly homogenized this is something that's increased over time as more classes have been introduced and more changes have been made to ensure all classes feel balanced and to its credit final fantasy 14 does have very strong class balance and you can play whatever class you want in raids without seriously disadvantaging the average group and don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise if you think the difference in class strength in this game is bad all you're really revealing is that you've no experience with other mmos and i remember when storm blood first released and every monk was crying about how hopelessly weak they are compared to the newly released samurai and how no one would ever use monk again and then the raids came out and the world's first group used the monk instead of a samurai because hey what do you know i guess the difference was actually pretty small you bunch of absolute babies however the downside to this higher degree of balance is homogenization and weak class identity but even when what a class does feels very similar to what another class of the same role might do the way each class does what it does is at least always quite varied and there is something satisfying to learning a new set of skills and feeling the different pieces come together at max level and playing multiple classes adds a lot to the gameplay variety by keeping group content fresh while giving you more flexibility when playing with friends and it can even give you a greater understanding of the game or your specific role in groups by providing you with a greater sense of perspective as for how you level other classes in this game well the main ways are repeated rounds of level appropriate dungeons the already previously mentioned daily roulettes completing side quests including repeatable reputation-based beast tribe quests completing fates which are short simple scalable open world mini-events and completing other unique group content such as palace of the dead or bossier this provides a good amount of variety although many people will find themselves preferring just one or two methods and mostly sticking with them still it's always good to have different options and while none of this content excels at providing truly memorable or unique experiences it is fun enough to do as a side activity particularly if you want some more relaxed gameplay and if it does start to get boring there's no reason why you need to keep at it leveling other classes is as optional as an activity can be second on our list of core end game activities is acquiring collectibles and there are a lot of things to collect in this game how you collect them varies but a lot of things can be bought and costs tend to add up want a house that's a lot of money or luck the housing system isn't great in that regard want your house to look good that's a lot of money want the latest revealing outfit to glamour your virtual waifu in that's probably a lot of money is it i don't actually know i've never felt the need to dress my character in the latest sexualized outfit for reasons you can probably tell because my character already looks perfect just the way he is want every minion mount card song and other miscellaneous collectible then what is wrong with you you know you'll never have everything get some priorities in your goddamn life and also get some guilt because that stuff is a lot of money money really isn't that important in final fantasy 14 and the costs required to raid in consumables and repairs isn't very high but optional things can be very expensive this also connects to crafting and gathering which can be a way to make money or just create your heart's desires and sets itself apart from other mmos in the way its focus is on self-sufficiency and how it involves genuinely complex rotations which some people really enjoy you might also need to run old group content or do other time consuming endeavors to get items you're trying to collect how much enjoyment people get from collecting this stuff is something i can't really say i do know people sometimes take their glamours very seriously but i don't and don't get me wrong i have been known to make some very fashionable outfits in my time but mostly i just don't care actually i usually just leave all my characters unglamored in mmos as i kind of like just seeing their real gear and i miss the days when that was the norm i also don't care about mounts or minions or anything like that really and while i did once have a house just to own one i also never bothered to decorate it and ended up losing it through inactivity without even realizing so it's probably fair to say none of this stuff is for me and i am the wrong person to talk about it i can say the glamour system surely isn't as good as the equivalent in world of warcraft or guild wars 2 if you want an easy to use tool to play around creating different outfits with and that the housing system while fun for many land owners is some kind of kafka s nightmare for new prospective buyers but really how much enjoyment any or all collectibles provides in final fantasy 14 and how this might compare to other mmos is a mystery to me i still think it's worth acknowledging that this stuff exists and to some it is important but mostly i think it's worth acknowledging but you can very easily ignore this stuff if you like me have a character that already looks so perfect you don't need to waste time chasing material desires moving on we get to a topic i am more qualified to talk about gearing up which happens for a few different ways but i will foolishly attempt to explain final fantasy 14 uses an item level system which if you're not familiar with the term is basically a numerical representation of a piece of equipment's overall strength generally the higher the item level the better and final fantasy 14 sub stats and itemization is actually incredibly simplified so item level is the only big thing you need to focus on a character who has just reached next level can find some equipment upgrades through max level dungeons of which there are three at the start of an expansion with one more being added each patch currently this dungeon loots would give you item level 560 accessories and you get some item level 560 armor through the story so getting to an overall item level of 560 is very quick and easy from here you can upgrade to item level 570 gear for a form of currency called tombstones these are given to you for completing max level dungeons as well as doing roulettes or any other max level group content meaning this gear is also very easy to get but it takes several dungeons worth of tombstones for a single item so this isn't really quick but if you want to just farm away at this you can and if you don't you'll still naturally accumulate tombstones for most group content so really item level 570 is just a matter of time next we get to item level 580 and it's here where the experience gets a bit more interesting there are currently two extreme eight man trials and one four boss eight man raid which comes in a normal and savage difficulty normal is designed to be done by normal groups meaning you can queue up for this content to run through it with a group of strangers and you should be fine you may see some wipes but everyone should be able to regularly complete this content with a little bit of persistence this rewards item level 580 items although you can only get a few pieces per week meanwhile the extreme trials give item level 580 weapons and accessories and these are also the first really challenging fights you'll encounter you won't be able to just queue up and power through these fights without knowing how to play your class and perform the boss mechanics for an encounter but these are still very doable if you're willing to take the time to learn the fight and find a group of players through party finder and with that you potentially have a full set of item level 580 gear good job i knew you could do it if you tried then we get to item level 590 which comes from a special type of tombstone currency which you can only get a certain amount of per week just like for normal tombstones this is given to you for most max level content making it very easy to get but as there is a weekly cap it will take quite a few weeks to get a full set of item level 590 gear this way still this gear is accessible for all even if you don't want to step foot in any raid finally we come to item level 600 the final tier of gear which comes from the savage raid this raid will be quite challenging and if you want to clear all of it you'll probably need to find a raid group to play with weekly rather than relying on strangers to get a full set of item level 600 gear it will take several weeks of clearing the raid but there are tokens from bosses you can trade for specific pieces in addition to the normal loot drops for killing a boss so it really won't take too long to get everything provided you keep clearing the raid and that is basically it until the next big patch is released which is always designed as a catch-up patch in this there will be a new dungeon a new extreme trial and a new 24-man raid that is much easier than the savage eight-man content and so can be completed with strangers by queueing up these will give gear below item level 600 but which can help you to clear the previous savage rate easier at this point you'll also get access to items used to upgrade the item level 590 weekly tombstone gear to 600 as well and so even people who don't want to raid can still get the highest item level gear in time then when the next big patch comes along there is a new four to five boss savage rage released alongside the usual new dungeon and trial and the cycle effectively repeats and that's basically it i have simplified a few bits like ignoring the relic weapon and crafted items but this is most of it the key point is that you don't need to raid all this effect is how fast you gear up and once the new savage raid is released gear is mostly reset anyway meaning at every new raid it's easy to catch up with everyone else and be on equal footing also nothing takes an overly long time to get and luck plays a small role thanks to bosses dropping tokens this means that loot isn't very exciting as it's all rather standardized and predictable but this system does work well at meeting the game's objectives it's easy to understand by mmo standards it's accessible to all types of players including both more casual players and returning players there's little frustration involved from needing to farm or having bad luck and there is still a gradual sense of gear progression so players can feel like they have something to work towards over a longer period of time this fairly toned down gear treadmill becomes the objective of most max level group content and so we could group all this content together as the final category of endgame so how is the actual quality of this content well here it makes sense to break things down again so let's start with the dungeons or four-man group content first things first there are no hard dungeons in final fantasy xiv there used to be i guess or unveil the final leveling dungeon in a realm reborn was quite tough back in the day not so much in terms of mechanical complexity but everything did pack a punch and wipes used to be very common still these days there are no hard dungeons and everything is designed at a rather standard level of difficulty which new players will probably find enjoyable and more experienced players will find a little easy this isn't the end of the world as dungeons don't have to be hard particularly those designed for leveling players and dungeon bosses in final fantasy xiv still have interesting mechanics making them fairly entertaining to do generally it's not that these fights are actually mechanically easy it's just that their mechanics aren't very punishing usually if you make a mistake you take some damage and get a vulnerability debuff if you keep making mistakes these vulnerability debuffs quickly stack up and you'll die but you do get quite a few chances and the opportunity to learn from your mistakes this system works well as it means total group-wide failure is very rare but that individuals still need to pay attention to perform the mechanics that said i do think it's a missed opportunity to not have any truly challenging dungeons in the game as dungeons have a different feel and a different group size to the 8-man content and i think many players might enjoy the occasional challenging dungeon over time final fantasy 14 has developed a bit of a problem with how predictable his endgame group content is every two patch cycle is basically the same with a couple dungeons a couple trials one eight man raid and one 24 man rate and the difficulty and structure of each type of content can also feel very similar the longer you've played this game the worse this problem can become but what it basically means is that endgame lacks surprises and excitement as you always know what's coming in the future and nothing feels completely new the developers have clearly found a progression system and content structure which works and don't want to risk tampering with it too much but challenging four-man dungeons are the perfect example of a type of content that it makes sense to at least try out even if it's not strictly needed just to give more experienced players something that feels new to do its end game as for the design of dungeons the visuals and often the soundtracks are very high quality and are probably some of the best you'll find in an mmo but dungeons still have a big problem in my opinion which is that if you ignore the visuals soundtrack and boss mechanics every dungeon since a realm reborn is basically the same dungeon if you're not sure what i mean by that consider this every dungeon has three bosses no more no less every dungeon has a few groups of trash mobs between each boss which are arranged in a way so that you can always do two decent sized pools but every trash pool is also the same as all of them you just aoe everything with no need to worry about dps order or crowd control or anything like that every dungeon is also the exact same shape which is just a straight line even if they sometimes try to pretend otherwise every dungeon also has the same simple loot every dungeon gives the same amount of currency relative to when it's released every dungeon takes roughly the same amount of time to complete every dungeon is in some ways the exact same dungeon if you've never played a game where this isn't the case maybe you can't truly understand what i mean by this but hopefully you can at least see where i'm coming from the final fantasy 14 patented dungeon works but the way it's repeated patch after patch expansion after expansion is boring and it also harms immersion dungeons don't feel like real places we're exploring they're not an adventure there are no surprises and for me there will never be a great dungeon experience in this game that's not a deal breaker by any means the dungeons are consistently fun with none since the very low levels that ever feel truly bad and there is much more to this game than dungeons but there have been a grand total of 69 new dungeons released since 2.0 and it is a great shame in my opinion that square enix never felt the need to actually experiment a little with them and try to create something outside this one standard template final fantasy 14's dungeons are okay but they could be much more next we have the 24 man raids and these are basically bigger dungeons but better in every way so they're a bit harder a bit less formulaic a bit more rewarding a bit more creative mechanically and quite a lot more visually impressive these raids provide some of the best looking content in the game and unlike the next piece of content they actually feel like real locations with fights for interconnected to give more of a set piece feel to the overall encounter the only problem with 24 man raids is that they are infrequent and unimportant they exist to help players catch up but if you're already raid you probably don't need to do any catching up and just like with the dungeons it likewise seems a shame that we've never had a truly challenging 24-man piece of content i don't think the core progression of final fantasy xiv should move away from its eight-man focus as this is what the raid scene in this game has come to be all about and introducing 24-man progression into this would cause problems for existing groups but i do think an occasional optional harder 24-man fight say of a similar difficulty to an extreme trial could enhance final fantasy 14's end game by once more giving players something which truly feels new and exciting finally though we come to the eight-man raids and trials and here is where final fantasy xiv's endgame shines brightest this content isn't without its flaws but overall final fantasy 14 savage raids and extreme trials are some of the most fun group content i have ever done in an mmo the radiant experience in this game is still quite different to that of world of warcraft or other games which took inspiration from wow however for starters the group size of 8 is far smaller than the 20 man groups of other games and this alone has a big impact as in final fantasy 14 the raid scene is built of static groups this means every raid night the same eight people turn up and play together whereas in 20 man raiding there should always be more than 20 people in your overall raid team and positions won't be fixed which of these you prefer will mostly come down to preference and circumstances for example in final fantasy you never experience the disappointment of turning up to a raid only to find out that there are too many people and it's your turn to sit out this week but it also means if one person can't make it to a raid it will be a bit of a problem and anyone with an unreliable work schedule is at a big disadvantage a static team of less people also means more opportunities to get to know those you raid with and it provides a more cosy and intimate raiding environment but it also means less meeting new people and it's overall a bit less exciting when it comes to the actual raid content an eight-man fight can be designed so that every single person is fully involved everyone can have a defined role everyone has to consistently perform mechanics and you can't afford any dead weight in an average 20 man group you'll be lucky if there's no deadweight and i killed plenty of heroic and even some mythic fights in wow during progression without even having a full group sometimes you just don't have enough people online and that doesn't have to stop you but in final fantasy it does everyone matters and because they matter the difficulty is made to feel more constant from the start of a fight to the end you always have things to do and you always need to be paying attention there are also differences between final fantasy and world of warcraft beyond group size final fantasy has less raid bosses per tier but it also has longer encounter durations final fantasy has more diverse mechanics in my opinion but wow often has more thematically logical mechanics final fantasy has a smaller focus on loot both in terms of how much it helps during progression and in how exciting it is to acquire but it also has less loot-based rng final fantasy has more relaxed consumable requirements less downtime between wipes and no need to grind other items or currencies outside of raids to keep up with progression meanwhile wow has more fights at the highest difficulty i.e mythic whereas final fantasy is designed to ensure the hardest encounters the ultimate fights while fewer do at least stay relevant forever as a result of their unique rewards and the minimum item level system really there are lots of differences and you could go into this subject in much greater detail if you really want it one of the most important and under-appreciated differences is that in final fantasy you don't need any plugins to raid most people use a dps meter some use more than that but you don't need any plugins whereas in wow plugins play a huge role in the raid scene and there is an expectation in most groups for players to have them this is a big positive towards final fantasy in my opinion as it makes raiding a bit simpler a bit fairer and there's no loss in satisfaction from an add-on playing a big part of the game for you one of the hardest to explain differences is between how encounter design and mechanics feel in each game final fantasy tends to feel much cleaner to me whereas wow always seemed somewhat more chaotic it's a bit like the difference in dps rotations where final fantasy feels more methodical and wow feels more frenetic in final fantasy fights really do feel like a precise dance but you're being asked to learn piece by piece and all you have to do is take it one step at a time and execute things like you practiced and eventually you'll triumph meanwhile in wow fights are less scripted and feel more like actual fights they can be messy a lot of things can happen at once and there can be more variation between pools and again which you prefer will come down to preference when it comes to what wow does better than final fantasy there is one thing that stands far above all others though and that's how it creates raids which feel like real locations in final fantasy each raid boss is its own instance you just teleport in and start when ready there is no trash no exploration and no large area to move through as you progress through the raid what's more every raid arena feels rather artificial they can look quite impressive but most are just floating circles or squares with some kind of weird elemental effect in the background and after a while this soon feels rather noticeable these arenas really do feel like raid arenas created for a video game rather than places that might actually exist within the game's world this can be quite immersion breaking and it makes the whole raid feel less alive and special and while raiders might seem like the type of players who only care about the gameplay and rewards and don't need anything else i'm not sure that's actually true maybe people don't technically need trash mobs or diverse boss arenas but that doesn't mean these factors don't enhance the experience just take something like icecrown citadel final fantasy xiv may have villains as memorable as arthas and it certainly has some better designed encounters than the lich king but there is no icecrown citadel in final fantasy xiv there's nothing that even comes close a raid can be more than just a series of boss fights it can be an actual place which holds meaning within the game's world and gives meaning to the player's actions within it and considering how important raids are in terms of the time players spend with them and the memories they bestow it is very disappointing to me that final fantasy 14's raids really are just raids despite that if i were to choose which game i preferred raiding in between final fantasy 14 and world of warcraft i would always choose final fantasy 14. this has long seemed a bit paradoxical in my mind because on paper if i were to write down all the differences between raiding in these two games and choose which one sounds better i would always choose world of warcraft i mean for things like 20 man verse 8 it's no contest 20 wins all day and yet i'm not judging these two experiences on paper i'm speaking from experience and in practice i enjoyed final fantasy quite a lot more you might think this is a reflection of how much i enjoyed the rest of the game or a result of the people i played with but i don't think it is i think i enjoyed raiding in final fantasy more because it was more consistently enjoyable wow provides more excitement it has higher highs and there are ways it clearly does raiding better but also sometimes in wow i was bored during progression or felt like i didn't really matter whereas in final fantasy 14 i found that encounters were always well designed and consistently challenging and that just ended up being a better fit for me personally and that's what i think it ultimately comes down to each game does different things well and which someone will prefer will come down to personal preference but honestly that itself says a lot and that's why i focused so much on world of warcraft in this section because there is no higher praise for an mmo than to be able to go toe to toe with world of warcraft's raiding and walk away with it seeming like a fair contest wow was the undisputed raiding champion for years and years and it's one of the main things that game has always focused on and whether or not final fantasy 14 is actually better it is at least capable of giving it some real competition and there have not been many games ever able to do that and so that i guess is final fantasy 14's end game i mean there is pvp but it's not very good and most people pretend it doesn't even exist there is erp but i don't know if it's any good and i like to pretend it doesn't exist there is the golden saucer which has several mini games but these aren't particularly well developed on their own so they mostly fall under collectibles and so on end game is whatever you want it to be as everyone says but in general endgame is leveling alts attaining various collectible type items and gearing up through dungeons and raids and i'd say overall it's pretty good is there enough end game activities in final fantasy 14 yes is there enough endgame activities for you personally i don't know who are you honestly though when it comes to mmo players in general it doesn't matter what there is to do at endgame or how much content there might be it is not enough because it is never enough there will always be players out there who want more those who would play every hour of every day every day of the year devouring any and all content you put in front of them and these people will never be satisfied not in the long term anyway and a game shouldn't be designed to cater for them i'm sorry if this is you and i hope you know that i don't judge you for your life choices you have no idea how much i respect certain overly time consuming mmo achievements but regardless it's still true that no end game can last forever and they probably shouldn't try to and final fantasy 14s certainly doesn't it is very easy to walk away from this game and come back to it whenever the hell you feel like it you don't have to worry about not being able to catch up most important content stays relevant and the game steers away from overly demanding grinds or rng dependent progression systems game director and accidental cult leader yoshi p has famously said that if a player runs out of things to do then they should just take a break play some other games and come back later when they feel like it and as someone who has stopped playing this game multiple times i appreciate that forcing players into overly long grinds may keep them subscribed a little longer but it doesn't keep them happy and perhaps in this more so than anything else final fantasy 14 gets end game right you're never pressured to do things you don't want to do in this game just to gain an advantage somewhere else its end game is inclusive for players of different types with different amounts of time and different tastes and content and that is reason number four still none of these reasons mentioned so far are what i think is actually the most important for why final fantasy 14 has become so successful and why it has done what other mmos haven't for that we're going to have to talk about something everyone knows is important but nobody seems to ever mention [Music] when i returned to this game recently i wasn't really feeling it i'd been away for just over two years which was enough time to lose some of my interest in the story and it's always a little weird returning to an mmo because of how complicated their systems are and because of how much there is to do in them meaning you always feel a little lost initially it's a bit like returning to work after a long period of absence when nothing comes naturally anymore and you miss your past familiarity that you once took for granted things quickly changed for me however when i was reminded of how good some of the boss themes are in this game and then went on a several hour long youtube binge of many pieces of old boss music if a game is out there with better boss music than final fantasy 14 then i don't know it probably because it doesn't actually exist and this isn't just my opinion i'm stating this as a fact if anyone disputes this feel free to head down to the comments and show me evidence to the contrary and i mean that bring your best we can have a boss battle themed showdown i'd even offered to stream it here on youtube but it seems i'm not actually allowed because apparently murder is against the youtube terms of service really though final fantasy 14 has some of the greatest boss music you will ever hear it does epic like few others here is an example from one of my favorite fights foreign extreme it starts like this just to set the stage a little [Music] then it builds with time then you get a little taste of the good stuff but not too much we've got a whole fight to get through here remember just needs to be enough to make sure you're feeling it [Music] and then it changes completely with this more calming intermission for the ads phase where it almost sounds like a separate song but then this starts to build and build and build as you move towards the end of this phase and prepare for the boss's biggest attack and then after you survive that attack and move into the last phase this starts playing as the final showdown begins and could you ask for any better music to wipe to [Applause] and there are many themes this epic what about shimryu [Music] [Applause] [Music] what about ultima [Music] but okay music is subjective and maybe you have bad taste and can't appreciate an epic boss theme when you hear it but don't worry that's not all this game has in fact there is a staggering amount of diversity to the different music you will hear in different boss encounters want some j-pop we got you [Music] feeling a little edgy today and want something a bit heavier no worries [Music] [Music] want something just unlike anything you've heard before well we have that too [Music] or maybe you don't really care about genre and just want something catchy well if you insist [Music] you can tell how confident the developers are in their boss music when they make dancing to it a part of the mechanics and the thing is there are so many different examples i could choose here i could drag this section on and on and thanks to how good the music is everyone watching probably won't even mind i won't do that though but i do at least want to mention how the music can also be a part of the story for example when the story is sad you might get these quieter piano moments [Music] when the fight is a good spirited competition between great warriors the music then reflects that or how about those times when the music from the trailer comes back just at the climax of the story just before the final showdown and then suddenly you realize that the trailer music that you've probably already played the hell out of because you're the kind of loser who listens to video game music in your free time don't try to deny that by the way i know what kind of people watch my videos then you realize that this trailer music that you already like wasn't just there to sound cool during some fancy cg cinematic used to promote the game no all this time it actually existed just to describe this moment and every line makes perfect sense now that you know the context it was all for this instant for this boss fight and how the can you not be hyped after something like that does life get better than this you have your great story your great boss fight your great music and i haven't even used any example from end walker which arguably does crazy boss music setups even better or mentioned any of the many remixes from other final fantasy games or even the non-final fantasy stuff like the final fantasy infused mashups from near what i'm saying is that this is not just a matter of opinion in its widely varied and continuously rich totality final fantasy 14's boss themes are as good as it gets all of this comes from sound director masayoshi sokon by the way and you should make a note of that name if it is one that deserves to be remembered for a long time to come still if you haven't played this game you probably can't understand how great this music is i mean sure you can hear these themes as pieces of music and maybe think they sound pretty good but that's not actually why they're so special what really makes them are the memories we associate with them all i need to do is go to youtube and start listening to any of these themes for a flood of happy memories to come rushing over me players spend time with these boss themes potentially hours and hours and those are hours they won't just spend alone but with friends working towards a challenging objective together having a good time enjoying the music enjoying the gameplay enjoying the company creating memories and memories are a huge part of mmos and i don't think anyone ever acknowledges to what extent they shape our experience with them everyone who is a fan of mmos has a vault of happy memories locked away in their minds that they can't help but return to at times we all remember the first mmo we lost ourselves within or that one guild that was just so much more fun than any other we've been a part of or that raid kill we never thought we'd finally manage to nail down or that time we did something crazy in pvp that normal believe actually happened if someone wasn't there to witness it with you but what happens when things change try to play almost any mmo you used to like and the experience will be different to what you remember you are returning to a childhood home to find that life has moved on without you and this isn't the place you grew up in anymore and it's sad because of the memories because you remember what was lost because the game you care about is gone and everything you do in that game now is a reminder of that empty servers offline friends vacant cities and forgotten guilds but it's not just the people it's the games themselves with their new conveniences and missing features and links to an in-game store that didn't even used to exist and the old raid content no one does anymore but used to mean everything and now means nothing and even if by some strange miracle you aren't struck by that melancholic nostalgia everyone else sure will be you cannot play world of warcraft without hearing people talk about how things used to be about the good old days and what a travesty the game is now by comparison and you will hear this again and again and again and it's not a recent thing either this is by no means unique to whatever the latest disappointment of an expansion was world of warcraft has been trapped by its own past since as long as i can remember since before i even first played the game and that is already over 10 years ago but final fantasy 14 is the rare example of an mmo which isn't ever since the release of a realm reborn this game has stayed true to its vision the things this game used to be good at its presentation its story its final fantasy themed fan service its accessibility and new player friendliness its inclusive end game and its challenging group content the game is just as good at today if not better and the things this game used to be bad at the open world content having immersive dungeons and raids the gameplay and pacing of the main story everything pvp related etc well they are still pretty bad today but that's okay no game is good at everything what's important for an mmo is to find your own audience and then stick with them cater to the people who actually like your game and if you stand by them you might just find they'll stand by you too even when there are bumps along the way and this game as it is right now proves that world of warcraft never had it easy it was always torn between two different eras of old mmo designer new group finder or shouting for a party in chat server communities or cross server grouping and sharding finding things out by talking to other people versus looking everything up online content that asks you to dedicate hours to it versus content designed for people with jobs and families and countless other examples but final fantasy 14 is an mmo designed for a modern player base through and through for better or worse and if this game was for you when it came out then it probably still is today and tomorrow and every day after that and if it's not it's probably you that has changed since not it the final fantasy 14 playerbase doesn't have that baggage that other mmo players seem to be defined by they haven't been scarred by their own game they don't obsess over that which was lost and so instead of that nonstop looking back to the past in final fantasy players actually look to the future where will the story go next what are the next classes that will be added who's going to be the next scion innocent questions earnestly asked with not a care given to what might be lost along the way the future is bright here the best always seems to be yet to come and people are happy they love their game they love their games director and they have pride in their community and maybe they can go a little too far in these regards but that's okay you can hardly blame them it is a rare thing for an mmo player base to actually be content and that positivity can be infectious you will feel it within the game today and god what a sight that is to see in a genre as marked by disappointment as this one final fantasy 14 is a game that is remarkable not because of its lack of flaws but because of its great success despite them it is a game that truly did things its own way and still does and it is proof that the mmo genre is not dead yet and won't be anytime soon most of all though it is a game built on happy memories that are not just relics of the past final fantasy 14 is a childhood home you can actually return to and it's not over yet thank you for watching my video [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 435,385

Keywords: final fantasy 14, final fantasy xiv, final fantasy 14 review, final fantasy xiv review, final fantasy 14 critique, final fantasy 14 analysis, final fantasy 14 retrospective, final fantasy 14 good, ff14, ff14 review, ffxiv, ffxiv review, ff14 vs wow, ffxiv vs wow

Id: UnbEzDJYgBg

Length: 122min 24sec (7344 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022