First Impressions with Final Fantasy 14

what's up boys today i want to talk to you all about my first impressions about final fantasy 14. i just got done playing the game for about uh i'm really not sure about how many hours i think i played it total about 30 40 hours maybe a little bit less a little bit more and i'm like level 43 almost done with the realm reborn and i wanted to give those real actual legitimate first impressions of the game what i thought was good what i thought was bad and everything else in between now overall i want to say that the experience of playing the game and like the meta around it not just the game but like me streaming the game people talking about me playing the game that [ __ ] has blown me away holy [ __ ] you guys love this like i didn't expect to get like over 200 000 viewers playing the game on my first day that was incredible thank you if you watch that stream i really appreciate it and people have come back they've come back every day to watch i really do appreciate that too that is incredible it's so weird to me right because for the longest time i just streamed wow i just played wow and now i'm playing final fantasy as well and then oh [ __ ] now new world's coming out and then oh wait a minute ashes of creation alpha is coming out before that and it's like oh my god you know when it rains it pours that's basically the way that i feel so uh that's a good thing by the way uh a rainy day keeps a shower away so anyway i want to kind of talk a little bit about the positives and negatives about the game i think that the worst thing about the worst thing about final fantasy 14 is buying the game and i really mean this i think that is the genuine worst thing about it using their website and trying to figure out the oh well you have a square enix account but you don't have a final fantasy account oh well you have to buy this but if you buy it on steam then it's different like what the [ __ ] like just make it simple it's like blizzard okay like one thing that they do right is they make it easy they make it easy to give them money okay and i would love if square enix could at least get their [ __ ] together a little bit with that because i'll be honest it took me uh two or three hours to try to figure out all how old to do all that stuff i had to buy one of the games twice it was really annoying and just overall it's confusing it's contrived and it's hard to understand i think for many people and i think that also especially with so many people coming into the game now because at the state of wow and just in general people talking about it and end walker coming out in november there's gonna be a lot of people excited to play the game and what an awful barrier to entry if giving them money is hard to do so i really think they need to redo their uh their payment system and the way that that works and just make it easier for people to understand but other than that uh there aren't really a whole lot of like really big negatives i remember the 2.5 second gcd this is something that i was kind of uh i was very skeptical that this would be a problem because i assumed that whenever you have a gcd that's quite long like that there are always going to be abilities like interrupts like stuns etc that have to be split second abilities that you would use in between that so it's not really like a 2.5 second dcd it's like every 2.5 seconds you use a main ability and then you can use filler abilities inside of that which is effectively the way the game works and i think that the combat seems fine uh the lack of add-ons is definitely uh odd for me as a wow player it's harder for me to get used to that because as well player the first thing you do if you're playing a game it's like oh i can't play this on your computer because it doesn't have my 15 different add-ons with my 50 different settings and my 30 different weak auras and my eight different uh you know like calibrations here like it's very very complicated and with final fantasy you're just using the base default ui and of course there are a few things you can get that are more advanced that are apparently add-ons etc but i haven't really wasted my time doing that because i just don't really find it necessary well anyway i want to go through each of the different i guess tenants of the game and talk about what my first impressions of them were now the first thing is the story and i think the story is actually very interesting in a way that it's told because i was thinking of a lot about this and what is the difference and why is it the final fantasy it's easier to tell a story in final fantasy and why why does it do that because people told me that a realm reborn was gonna suck and i'm like if the questing sucks there's no way it can be worse than classic wow and i was right it wasn't that bad it was completely fine and people i i read a few threads about this and people are talking about oh man he's never gonna be able to do this three quests that are super boring it's like what are you talking about like i've done that for weeks on like 10 levels before in class squad it's been no big deal for me personally as a uh as you know one as an older player but uh i can definitely see where the monotony would absolutely set in but um anyway why is it why is it that the dungeons why there's not dungeons excuse me the white requests and the story in final fantasy why is it those things are told in such a more easily digestible format than what they do in wow and i think the difference is very simple it's the difference between a tweet and a twitlonger and wow tells their story and twit longers and final fantasy tells their stories and tweets basically what i mean by that is that whenever you are listening to the final fantasy dialogue is giving you information and this about this much of a little box right meanwhile whenever you do wow it's this much of a box and you read the first two lines and you're like okay what's the objective but in final fantasy because many times the information isn't very short and it's presented to you in very bite-sized formats it makes it easier to digest for the user and i think that it also makes it easier for people to uh to understand the story because it's being given to them in these very specific increments and i think also creating the dialogues uh between the different characters and the end game cut scenes does give people a better way to personify who those characters are and give a better idea of who's saying what and who feels what way so i do think it really matters to do that and in final fantasy i really do feel that they've done a very good job with that now another element with this so storytelling overall i think that is it is great i like the storytelling and one of the things about the storytelling that i think is very interesting and this is something that probably one of the main reasons why i wanted to make this video is to share this idea that i've had is that i believe that storytelling is actually one of the reasons why final fantasy doesn't have as much of a quote toxic community as world of warcraft and i don't necessarily think this is maybe entirely true in all ways but i want to draw a distinction between the way that final fantasy deals with antagonists versus the way that world of warcraft deals with antagonists almost every single time in final fantasy especially in the early quests that you have an antagonist there is a point where the antagonist comes to a realization that they have done something wrong and then after that there is generally a point of mercy where people think oh well you know he he gets it he understands we're going to give him a second chance so in so many cases in final fantasy there is a element of forgiveness there is an element of redemption whereas in world of warcraft there is an element of retribution and execution much more often than there is and i think that just telling a narrative in the way that you create the idea that people are you know redeemable and you have somebody does something really bad everybody's really mad at them and they're given forgiveness i think that in a very very subtle way sets the tone for interactions in the game and i think in a way that does kind of create a a paradigm in which to interact with each other in the game and i think that having that narrative where players are not just instantly executed for doing something wrong or you know most quest lines do not end and the person that's causing the trouble uh being put in jail or destroyed or killed or something like that i think the the end result of that is a more understanding player base because they've been conditioned to feel that way through the narratives in the game and i find it very interesting that that's the case and i've seen that more and more and more because whenever i was first questing it's like oh this guy's doing some stupid [ __ ] man all right i can't wait to kill him at the end of it and then at the end of it they just give him a pat on the back and they say listen man we knew you were misunderstood hopefully you can get your [ __ ] back together and i'm like wait a minute i thought we were going to take him to the back of the barn and shoot him and it doesn't even happen and i think it's a it's a very subtle and it's a very uh it's a very removed way of thinking about things especially whenever you're taking uh narrative decisions in the story and comparing them to player behavior but i do think that it does rub off in a very specific way especially with how important many of the players in final fantasy view the story so let's go ahead and talk about combat combat i actually think combat is it's about the same really i think wow has great combat that's really the truth i think that it's got really really well designed combat it's extremely responsive when you hit a button it does something and there's no delay at all about it and i think that even some of the most staunch uh blizzard uh dislikers let's just say not haters just dislikers uh some of the most staunch boys or dislikers can they're gonna have to admit that like blizzard and world of warcraft is an extremely responsive game unless you have more than five players in an area but other than that if you're just playing with a few other people it is extremely responsive when you hit a button your character does something immediately and i think that that is one element of uh blizzard quality that has actually stood the test of time so uh final fantasy i think is close to that it definitely is but especially with like off dcd abilities like interrupts and stuns i don't think that they have the same responsiveness that world of warcraft does but that could also just be me not really understanding it quite as well i think i'll probably have to give you guys an update on that once i hit level 80. now in terms of goals in the game my goal is in final fantasy i think that some people before i started playing the game did not believe this but my goals in final fantasy are to clear ultimate fights i'm not planning on hitting level 80 and then quitting the game and i think more and more the more that i know life the worst parts of the questing experience and still somehow manage to enjoy them the more that some of my more more fervent detractors will have to come to the realization that that might actually happen so um i i'm very excited about that honestly i've been watching some of the fights uh just on different people's channels etc and i am so excited to do the raids i think they're so cool and it's the thing is with me and wow is like i used to really really love to raid and uh the worst part about raiding for me is the other people right like i love doing the fights but whenever i've got billy the [ __ ] who just keeps standing in the fire and i'm spending three hours of my day three days a week waiting on billy to figure out the fire's hot i'm not necessarily having a good time so that's been a big problem that i've had with uh with wow raiding and final fantasy you have less people and ultimates i think it's eight people instead of 20 and mythics so hopefully we can be a little bit more uh a little bit more specific in who we're going to invite in and who we're going to let in and i really am actually looking forward to progressing through the uh through the mythic system or not mythic the ultimate and uh savage and uh i think extreme systems for some of the older fights uh in final fantasy like this is something that i'm genuinely excited about and genuinely looking forward to it's not even really about the armor like the armor is cool and don't get me wrong like we're definitely gonna be talking about the armor a little bit here but it's mostly just about being able to do the fights i feel like many of the fights in final fantasy have not really challenged me i feel like as a player and so i'm really waiting to get to that point to where i'm like [ __ ] okay this is actually hard and um i'm not you know the greatest player ever so i think that it will probably happen at a certain point uh probably soon um other than that i think mounts uh mounts are definitely very interesting in final fantasy considering the fact that all of them can fly and it's not just the uh the ones with wings there is literally an elephant that flies so uh this is a little bit is a little bit silly to me i'm going to be honest with you it is a little bit silly to me but it's one of those things you don't really think about a whole lot i don't really i don't really give a [ __ ] that much it was something that i thought would be more annoying than it was and the reason why i think it's not that annoying is final fantasy is like it's basically the highest form of uh fantasy fiction that there is so you have like these giant airships these giant monsters with metallic metal swords that are coming out and they're like katanas and there's fire coming off of them and then you see an elephant flying around and it's like yeah of course the elephant's flying it's not that big of a deal so in the scope of final fantasy elephants literally flying pigs flying is actually not that crazy at all so i don't really worry about that too much uh then in terms of the community the community has been uh you guys know my community of community experiences and final fantasy have been very colorful and um i there has been a lot of people that have been a little bit annoying but uh shout out to square enix they've actually done a good job at trying to at least try to give me as much of a normal experience as possible there are a number of people trying to grief me and uh just stream snipe me and just generally be annoying as possible like try to get on the screen and cover up as much of my screen as possible so i couldn't see anything and uh they did do a good job the gm's did a great job at uh kind of taking care of those people and putting them in timeout which is something that i was very very glad about and something that in my opinion should happen in all games and uh either way community has been i think completely fine i think final fantasy definitely has it's hit the mark of being that place that you can log in and hang out in and i think that's one thing that a lot of the more casual mmorpg players definitely feel uh feel at home with because they can log in hang out with their friends maybe do a quest maybe do a dungeon or something like that and there's not as much of high stakes with it and i think that high stakes is another element this is probably the last thing i want to talk about with the final fantasy first impressions is high stakes is definitely a uh it's a spectrum and so let's talk about really really really high stakes let's talk about classic wow with full world buffs if you wipe the raid in classic wow with full world buffs people are [ __ ] pissed they are furious because they've spent hours preparing for this especially before the chrono boone displacers they had to log off all week to make sure that they didn't lose these buffs so they could do the raid the following tuesday and then finally they get to the raid and somebody [ __ ] it up and they lose all of their work that they've been looking forward to for the entire week so you have that much loss and you can lose that much and you get massive toxicity you have people that get really really angry about that because they lose so much through wiping and also i think a little bit of a lesser extent here let's talk about mythic plus why is mythic plus a little bit more toxic than let's say dungeons and final fantasy it's very simple because if you [ __ ] up a dungeon in final fantasy you just get somebody else in the group and it's not a big deal but if you [ __ ] up a mythic plus you lose your key and it gets depleted so the element of scarcity the element of loss is a little bit more prevalent in world of warcraft and because of that that scarcity creates pressure and that pressure creates toxicity and i think final fantasy takes the pressure off in a lot of those cases and doesn't create those lose conditions that are so punishing for players that it makes them resent each other and i think that is a very very impactful thing and i actually think that blizzard should look at that and try to create more challenging boss fights and rather than creating more punishing boss fights i'd rather be challenged than punished i guess that's kind of a good way to look at it but of course there's a lot more to it as well but anyway my experience overall with the game has actually been very good i've i've had fun with it i've enjoyed it my stream has enjoyed it and it's a great feeling as a streamer i'm sure you guys you know if you streamed before you'd know this but even if you haven't it's very easy to to relate to this or understand this then it's a great feeling that you you get involved with a game and you really like playing a game and it turns out that your stream really likes watching it there's no weird thing where you're playing this game that you don't want to and you're doing it because of your stream no or it's no thing where you're you know playing this game that you uh that you do want to and your stream's hating it and they're complaining about it and uh i think that's great i'm really happy about it and i've also like one thing that's really been a heartening for me and and very positively uplifting is the fact that i've had a lot of people that are you know they're first time final fantasy viewers and they're willing to try out you know and give my wow content a chance you know watch a transmog comp or you know watch a new dungeon or something like that and just try to enjoy the content and appreciate the genre of mmos for what it has to be rather than tribalism that i think has actually just made the uh it's made the entire space worse it's made the community worse as a whole and i think one of my main goals with all of this is to try to give people uh the perspective that you can love multiple games you can have fun in multiple games and you can appreciate multiple games it doesn't necessarily have to be a zero-sum environment and i've really enjoyed playing this other game it's been super fun for me i'm super excited for ashes of creation i'm even excited about other games like palya and crowfall 2 and uh as well as like other rpgs too i think that playing final fantasy has given me a lot of confidence with streaming and um i'm very glad that it's gone so well and i look forward to doing other games similar to that as well in the future so i want to say thank you guys everybody who's been so supportive and everything i've really enjoyed playing the game and also uh i i look forward to continuing uh playing as well and so uh overall it's been a pretty fun experience it's been more fun than i had expected and uh i've actually just enjoyed myself it's really just that simple so anyway guys that's pretty much all i've got thank you very much for watching i'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on about it i know a lot of people have talked to me about it already but i wanted to make a video and just kind of share a little bit more of a expanded view of how i felt about the game so anyway guys overall tldr game good thank you all very much for watching really appreciate it i'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: ZackRawrr

Views: 930,843

Keywords: asmon, asmongold, zelpa, final, fantasy, ff, ff14, first, impressions, viewer, stream, livestream, sniper, ban, drama, twitch, play, warrior, world ofw arcraft, warcraft, shadowlands, 9.1, experience, gamer, gaming, video, game

Id: nQMI0caiJvo

Length: 18min 43sec (1123 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Kabooa]

"I'm level 43, almost done with A Realm Reborn."

You are technically correct.

[u/Hrafhildr]

He's 100% right about navigating SE's sites when you want to make an account and buying the game etc. They really need to sort that out.

[u/PokePokiChan]

Actually, when the flying system came out there are flyable and unflyable mounts. But a lot of players wanted their favorite mounts to be able to fly (back then, that elephant and non-wings are unflyable) After a while, Yoshi-P finally makes that happened. (IIRC, he did ask how those mounts gonna fly too.)

[u/ebi_gwent]

For myself and everyone I've recruited buying the game and navigating the site has always been the hardest part. The site reminds me of when I used to live in Japan in the early 2000s and browsed the net on a pre-iPhone smartphone. Every page is designed for browsers that haven't existed in 30 years and before UX design existed as a concept.

[u/archiegamez]

Yshtola has converted him

[u/bpfinsa]

The mom and pop Chinese restaurant near my house has an easier to use website than SE does.

[u/Tidesson84]

His eyebrows... are dormant? What kind of sorcery is this?

[u/DraikoGinger]

So tab targeting, I find it not good in FF. When a new mob spawns in a fight, I’ll be in front of it looking at it and tab, and it targets something to my left, tab again, mob to my right, tab three times more and finally get the correct mob. Are there tips or settings which can help with the accuracy of tab targeting?

[u/Bauti23]

The fact that when he talks about the storytelling and its themes, based on a brief moment on "ARR", it blows my mind. If this are his early impresions, HW will be a hell of a ride.