This is back when I started playing. I specifically remember hitting 50 Ninja and entering "The Wanderer's Palace". The group was like: "Woah, a noob - I thought this game was dead." Of course, as a noob, I had NO idea why they were saying this; I thought it was the best game ever. Probably because it was my first MMO.
Also the buffs didn’t reset when you wiped in an instance(be it raid or dungeon) just to add to the misery Still have great memories, because that’s when i’ve started and everything was new and a lot of things to do because of that
Post Heavenward story up until...arguably 3.2 is easily the lowest point of the game since the original failed game. Apart from the story and the thordan Extreme trial it was a really rocky time. My friend network from 2.0 collapsed along with my raid group and nobody wanted to bother fighting the boringly designed and overtuned Savage bosses, and those that did fled to "unofficial raid servers" in a pre-crossworld landscape. And the job balance was awful and wouldn't stabilise until about 3.2 either, not to mention community pressure to do unintuitive stuff like not use your tank stance. Add in a really dank alliance raid, diadem, Verminion....ugh. It really was a steep drop after the high of beating the 3.0 story
To answer some comments in here. When talking about why this expansion is so popular in contrast to how this video series make it look you need to take into account that the wast majority of current players, didnt play heavensward and its patches when it was current. For most it was a good story with overall better content than ARR that they just slogged through . For most heavensward is/was a refreshing piece of major content on their way to either stormblood or shadowbringers end gane. This is fine, thats how MMOs work. One persons "grind and lack luster/bad balance patch" is someone elses "passing through and see the vistas" experience. Peace and stay safe folks
3.1 is arguably the point where the game was at its most difficult, with both the raid, trial and general job design at that stage making it the hardest we've ever seen (and probably will see). I think this is the reason why vets look back on it fondly
It's actually wild to me that streamers talk about this expansion with love and good memories. Watching your last 2 retrospectives gave me the exact same anger and disappointment I had when they made me quit the game back then
3.1’s Diadem actually didn’t even have objectives when you went in! It was just a free for all. It wasn’t until 3.5 when they “reworked” the Diadem where they added the mission objectives and added the Aetheric Weapons for the Emergency Mission rewards.
Listening to you is wild. I raided in HW, but like 2-4hrs once a week. We were SLOOOOOOOOOW and took weeks off and it took us forever to get thru the content. Me & my friend group loved HW and didn't experience ANY of the discontent that you're talking about. We loved 3.1 and everything that came with it and honestly other than knowing about how stupid Gordias was, I didn't know that any of this was your chunk of the community's PoV. Everyone I interacted with enjoyed the patches and our biggest point of concern even thru 3.1 was the stupid tornadoes from the 3.0 dungeon ahah
There was one really good thing about Anima weapons: they released early in the expansion's lifecycle. It was a godsend especially because otherwise there wasn't much to do. It still annoys me that the relic hasn't released that early in any other expansion after this, because no matter the expansion, the early parts ALWAYS lack things to do on the side.
In the context of when it was current, Thordan is still my favorite extreme. It may not seem like too much now cause we've seen those mechanics in so many other places at this point, but at the time it was awesome.
I never bothered to even watch these before this one and i was surprised by how intresting this was, since Mr Happy had so many stories to tell us about the ups and downs
I like this series! I started playing in 3.3 so I’m really interested to see what the state of the game was because I was completely obvious to any gripes because I was running around doing ARR.
I think this was about the time that I first started figuring out how the endgame worked... fresh off of a long grind all the way through like part of 2.4 through HW to current because I got distracted with an ARR relic instead of doing my MSQ after starting years ago. I also started the trend of sacrificing a fully fledged out Zodiak Zeta for the anima weapon because the relic quest really did feel like a sequel... so while I have a collection of recreations, not a single ARR relic remains.
As someone that game back to the game in 3.2 and was caught up finally by 3.4ish, I saw a LOT of "throwing shit at the wall and seeing if it stuck" and lack of any non-raid endgame made people come up with their own fun (and with not that MASSIVE of a fanbase, I stuck to leveling and doing quests and paying attention to the lore), and maybe thats why I have such a unique perspective on the game now whenever it lacks content lol
Ah yes 3.1. I remember those days (cause thats the patch I gave in and transferred to gilgamesh). I also remember trying to get anima fates done and looking at the Sarg PF and seeing a grand, whopping, huge total of...1 PF...yeah dark times lol
Ah yes. I started playing in 2.2 and I remember this time. It was around the same time that Fallout 4 came out, and I just let my sub lapse and played that game for, like, 5 months. It's the longest time I've ever been away from the game... I also remember users on Reddit actually arguing that this was one of the best patches that had come out to that point.
I had forgotten how long ago all of these features, gpose, vermillion, Diadem, were made available. 😅 I focused on the story, as usual, and at that point it was all good for me lol. Until Heavensward ended…. Can’t wait to see the next video! Thank you MrHappy. 👍
I remember trying to do gathering in Diadem 1.0 and it was TERRIBLE. Trying to gather things and not die was nearly impossible. And a lot of crafts required stuff from there (you can buy them now with white scrips). They fixed things a bit in Diadem 2.0, but it still sucked.
Some notes you forgot about 3.1 Diadem It was spammed by end game raiders and everyone else because the pink gear had a chance of getting good random substats. Back in 3.1 the substats weight were still pretty good and didnt get outscaled by main stat just yet so if you got lucky you could get pink gear with great substats for your job. I managed to get pink pants that the stat weight was greater then the BiS pants for 3.0/3.1 The devs then nerfed those drops and immediately after that, Diadem died. People were in spamming for pink gear and once that was nerfed, dead content. Sometimes people would go in and gather but it was nothing special.
From what I remember the pink gear wasn't until a later version of Diadem in HW when they did the Secret Mission. The 3.1 version was only FATE grinding or gathering. I could very well be mis-remembering though.
We were so starved for content from 3.0 endgame that I remember being hyped for 3.1 from its trailer…then it came out and woof…. Looking back I can’t believe I stuck it out and kept my sub rolling
If i recall correctly the GS mining and logging mini-games are exactly what mining and logging jobs were like in 1.0. I was maining a miner job / class in 1.0 (yeah it was possible to start with non-battle class).
I think part of the problem going into 3.1 was the unexpected month wait that we had between 3.0 and 3.1. So, when we finally got it and there was so much negative feedback it probably didn't help. The thing that was even worse for Diadem was you could get good stats on the pink gear. Just it was random as the ilv was one you could take into savage. Many raiders however didn't feel the very small chance of getting something good was worth the effort you had to put in.
There was a middle step in the Anima quests that was doing 10 dungeons. Very basic and not that bad. The thing about the third Anima step that was so egregious was you needed more than the 80 Unidentified items, those alone would have been fine. The straw the broke the dhalmel's back was you also needed 16 High Quality Crafted items that REQUIRED Specialists to craft and NEEDED materials from the Diadem. You needed 4 items of 4 types and each one required a material from a second Specialist Crafter. As a reminder a player could only have 3 Crafters registered as Specialists and while changing your Specialist Classes was possible it was not cheap or easy. This effectively forced everyone to buy these items from the Marketboard where they were stupidly expensive. It was this forcing in of high end crafting, which at the time was extremely hard to get into, that made everyone give up and wait for the nerfs in a few patches.
OG Diadem Emergency Mission was cool. Things used to be harder in Heavensward: dungeons, 8man raid, craft. Today is everything so easy, there is no fun in doing things twice, we need more Ozmas.
Feels like we've gone full circle. In 6.x, there hasn't been much to do. Island sanctuary for the casual crowd. Savage/ultimate for the raiders. If you are looking for something in between, content has been very light.
Nah, at least 6.x has those, 3.1 had next to nothing for anybody, Diadem and LoV were DOA, Savage was a mess, Void Ark was fine, but no reason to do it more than once a week, that just only really left dungeons as your day to day content.
Heard haps saying "3.05 doesn't have alot if you're not raiding" it felt like current post 6.0x ngl. I mean sb and shb has exploration relic and this is actually the first time not much going on, atleast for me. I also i wonder if people still doing eureka orthos or criterion these days
The worst part of the Anime Quest were the HQ crafting materials you needed, like 4x Kingcake etc. I started the game in 3.0 and knew no crafters at this point and the items were so incredible expensive that there was no point for a lot of people like me to actually get the items.
My FC kinda liked the original Diadem a bit. It was nice having a source of tomes that wasn't expert roulette. But yeah, overall I'd say this was the lowest point of the relaunched FFXIV. I remember reading that apology from the devs on the loadstone forums about Gordias being overtuned causing everything else to be overtuned. For all the complaints I see now about Endwalker having nothing to do, it doesn't compare to how little casual players had back in 3.1. Although I'd say EW has a similar issue with failed experiments.
I remember absolutely hating this patch by week 3. Thankfully I was in an FC that was super fun to hang out with plus I was casually leveling my WAR at the time so I at least had stuff to do…even if I was still getting Neverreap in my roulette….oh and this patch’s relic step caused me to not attempt relics until late Shadowbringers/Early Endwalker.
I've done all the single-player challenges for Verminion, but I stopped there since I don't really enjoy it enough to do the multiplayer stuff. I only ever use it now if I want to get some easy MGP for the challenge log. I will say though that I'm surprised that they've never implemented a minion battle system similar to pet battles in WoW. I feel like that would be fairly popular in the game, so it's weird to me that they've never attempted to make it.
I remember enjoying the diadem when it first came out, then I spent 45 minutes in a queue just for everyone to switch to gatherers and tell me to go f*** myself when I kept asking for help with monsters
I remember jumping into LoV and I wanted to like it soooo much it was so boring. I literally blocked out the Anima quests it was traumatizing. I made the most Gil at this time though I was selling low level accessories constantly with my husband we needed up with over 100 mil
Oh baby. Nothing makes players happier than having to kill 20 giant-ass dinosaurs with one hit kills on the OFF CHANCE of getting a Best in Slot weapon (whose stats are randomly generated) Still can't believe this was a decision they made. Diadem has to be in the top 3 most contentious content choices they've ever created
Ah, 3.1, the only patch cycle I've ever unsubbed for. I had been afflicted by the "what's the point" mindset after months of 3.0 as a new player to the game and not wanting to delve into hardcore raiding after having done so for years prior in WoW. 3.1 is the only time I've ever been unsubbed from XIV in all my time playing this game. Btw the anima weapon first quest was originally 6 crystals/atmas from each zone; it was lowered to 3 per in a later patch (3.25 or 3.3 iirc). Second step was running a bunch of dungeons...not that bad. That third step to get 210 weapons tho with all the unidentified stuff plus crafting...awful as it was, it motivated me to start leveling DoH/L jobs when I returned in 3.2.
I'm over here feeling like endwalker's patch content has been kind of disappointing but because i was new during 3.1 I didn't notice how lackluster the patch was. Maybe things aren't so bad.
As a masters rank 1 Protoss and masters 3 random on sc. (only game I played more than ff is star craft series) I absolutely loved/destroyed people at LoV 😂 I’m sure I put a lot of people off by stomping and unit trolling them. Good times
You forgot one small thing about Diadem. It was REQUIRED for the Anima weapons. All of the crafted items required at least one diadem material each, and they all required specialists to craft. Yeah the Anima sucked on launch.
This kinda makes me laugh going through the HW stuff. I was on a break during some of this. MY static was slain by A3S like many others. i was losing interest, and the static thing left a bad taste in my mouth. I even think this was round the time I did my first break from FFXIV to do the Everquest TLP server for my first time. I sit an laughed when you mentioned Gpose because if memory servers, its reception at the time wasnt the best. People were like, oh neat, whatever about it. Unlike today where people do it professionally. I think this really was the expac, until near the end, I pretty much patch logged.
A great point. Especially in today's world, when Endwalker enthusiasts make GPose look like the best thing ever. When it feels like its all half of them ever do.
Wasnt this anima step when we needed 4x of 4 specialist crafted items which each needed other specialist crafted items? And changing specializations was an ordeal and a half? You couldnt buy them with GC seals at this point. At least personally, the grind gor anima wasnt the issue. It was the need of multiple crafters to get in on the action, at a time where interacting with the crafting system meant spending all the gil, unless you had 3 omnicrafters with different specs? Being stonewalled by crafting was what frustrated me, not to he grind itself.
So, I missed most of the Heavensward patches upon release since I was away at college at the time, and didn't have a gaming laptop at the time. Definitely sounds major rough. I will say though, since this patch began the long haul of mounts being made able to fly, every time I saw which mounts were made able to fly pissed me off more and more and more. Why? CAUSE THEY WAITED UNTIL THE VERY LAST MOUNT UPDATE TO MAKE THE ARR EXTREME TRIAL MOUNTS ABLE TO FLY! Like, even looking back on it, it STILL pisses me off. You spend all this goddamn time going and grinding out to get all of the mounts from the ARR EX trials, and you can't freaking fly with them. But they made it so the behemoth mount and a stupid freaking CHRISTMAS BEAR could fly first?! Still mad. Still very tilted.
I know there is a number of people that complain “EW sucks, the game is dying” (don’t get me wrong there are PLENTY of valid criticisms for current 14) but i still don’t think it compares to the low point that was Gordias and 3.1(and kinda still 3.2, but to a lesser extent), it was a ROUGH time. A long wait after launch with the current raid tier at the time being the games most controversial, and after that wait we got what i think is easily still the worst major patch ever.
Man i remember og diadem. When I could do things in it, it was fun, but man sometimes the cool bosses never spawned when I was in there or died before I could go there. Definitely miss it over the gatherer hell it is now though.
Not that Stormblood was the best expansion, but it's always funny to me when folks talk about how bad SB was when they weren't around for the dumpster fire that was the near entirely of the 3.x patch series, and don't have the context or experience of waiting 3 months between content drops.
I quit after spending a few weeks with this patch, not gonna lie. I think I came back somewhere in Stormblood. Had the exact same feeling after doing 6.3 as well and immediately unsubbed. Haven't been back since, hopefully they give me a reason to play again.
It feels like Happy, Arthars, and Xenos are the only ones who push back against the idea that HW is this flawless masterpiece when the reality is that it practically undid all the goodwill that ARR built and nearly destroyed the game.
Because Happy, Arthars, and Xenos actually play the game at a somewhat high level and don't confuse the game being obtuse (as it was in HW) with it being hard.
But when will Happy criticize *Endwalker* and the flaws in its content? Because IIRC, he does nothing but gush about it. Honestly? This new "series" feels like it has an agenda behind it.
I love the schizophrenic nature of the final fantasy 14 player... we currently have a series of relic weapon that all you have to do is whatever you want to do earn it, and then an old series where you had to do this specific grind to get them (that was apparently hated)... and people want to go back to that, because what we have now isn't grindy enough for them?
You say Void ark is one of the easiest 24 man raids. and yet its the only one ive done day one that came down to the wire on clearing it, like 2 minutes left on killing last boss. now its brain dead easy, back then saw quite a few wipes on it.
Oh man, 3.1. It wasn't as terrible for me since I was lucky enough to be in a static capable of farming Gordias Savage, but yeah it was a rough rough time...at least one of the best Extremes in the game came from it tho.
You know what sucked on HW when DRK was released? The Tank would deactivate the Tank Stance just to be able to use "Blood Weapon" (regenerates MP on Melee hitting enemies). You think that's okay and funny? Ask the Healer again. It was only usable when the Tank Stance was off and those WoW Kiddies who pick Death Knight as their Main didn't want the job to be soley a Tank. Instead, they wanted to be awesome as DPS with it. No Tank Stance means obviously unmitigated damage. Thanks for nothing.
Warriors did that aswell. It was the stance dancing meta. The idea was use cooldowns to replace the 20% stance mit and avoid taking a dmg reduction from having tank stance active.
The sad thing is, going into DPS stance was optimal, and if you didn’t stance-dance in high-end content with your group, you were literally griefing. I’m just glad we can DPS *and* Tank at the same time now.
It's a shame CBU3 won't even consider horizontal progression. Say what you will about FFXI, there was something for everybody. You didn't want to join a potentially toxic HMN endgame linkshell, static up for Nyzul, Limbus. You get very good gear this way. Relics were optional yet they had some competitors from normal weapons that were equal if not better than the relic counterpart. Only downside of XI was the horrible job balance. XIV has all this content but they only think about casual v hardcore and that's about it. Give people options to gear up the same time, none of this even/odd patch nonsense. It all gets obsolete in 8-9 months anyway. I'd be for weapons to drop from 24 man raids too via a weekly system.
players at the end of 3.1: oh boy, that Thordan EX sure was hard! I hope the next one's a bit easier
-fiend plays in the distance-
This is back when I started playing. I specifically remember hitting 50 Ninja and entering "The Wanderer's Palace". The group was like: "Woah, a noob - I thought this game was dead."
Of course, as a noob, I had NO idea why they were saying this; I thought it was the best game ever. Probably because it was my first MMO.
Interesting to hear how even though Heavensward is fondly remembered, it seems like it wasn't always the best experience from a day to day basis.
Wait can you still do the exploritory combat missions?
@@one_eyeddd473No, but the map was reused for The Firmament/Ishgard Restoration for gathering jobs.
Also the buffs didn’t reset when you wiped in an instance(be it raid or dungeon) just to add to the misery
Still have great memories, because that’s when i’ve started and everything was new and a lot of things to do because of that
Post Heavenward story up until...arguably 3.2 is easily the lowest point of the game since the original failed game. Apart from the story and the thordan Extreme trial it was a really rocky time. My friend network from 2.0 collapsed along with my raid group and nobody wanted to bother fighting the boringly designed and overtuned Savage bosses, and those that did fled to "unofficial raid servers" in a pre-crossworld landscape. And the job balance was awful and wouldn't stabilise until about 3.2 either, not to mention community pressure to do unintuitive stuff like not use your tank stance. Add in a really dank alliance raid, diadem, Verminion....ugh. It really was a steep drop after the high of beating the 3.0 story
I remember the "get a lv 5 full gear set" quest. Thought at the time: "teaching people to actually upgrade gear and that vendors exist"
To answer some comments in here. When talking about why this expansion is so popular in contrast to how this video series make it look you need to take into account that the wast majority of current players, didnt play heavensward and its patches when it was current. For most it was a good story with overall better content than ARR that they just slogged through . For most heavensward is/was a refreshing piece of major content on their way to either stormblood or shadowbringers end gane. This is fine, thats how MMOs work. One persons "grind and lack luster/bad balance patch" is someone elses "passing through and see the vistas" experience.
Peace and stay safe folks
3.1 is arguably the point where the game was at its most difficult, with both the raid, trial and general job design at that stage making it the hardest we've ever seen (and probably will see). I think this is the reason why vets look back on it fondly
It's actually wild to me that streamers talk about this expansion with love and good memories. Watching your last 2 retrospectives gave me the exact same anger and disappointment I had when they made me quit the game back then
Come on it was t that bad😊
When people praise this expansion its mostly because of the story. The story was amazing
Better to gush about Heavensward than to gush about Endwalker.
This is when I first started playing, I had no idea the game was having problems at the time, I was really enjoying it.
3.1’s Diadem actually didn’t even have objectives when you went in! It was just a free for all.
It wasn’t until 3.5 when they “reworked” the Diadem where they added the mission objectives and added the Aetheric Weapons for the Emergency Mission rewards.
Listening to you is wild. I raided in HW, but like 2-4hrs once a week. We were SLOOOOOOOOOW and took weeks off and it took us forever to get thru the content. Me & my friend group loved HW and didn't experience ANY of the discontent that you're talking about. We loved 3.1 and everything that came with it and honestly other than knowing about how stupid Gordias was, I didn't know that any of this was your chunk of the community's PoV. Everyone I interacted with enjoyed the patches and our biggest point of concern even thru 3.1 was the stupid tornadoes from the 3.0 dungeon ahah
There was one really good thing about Anima weapons: they released early in the expansion's lifecycle. It was a godsend especially because otherwise there wasn't much to do. It still annoys me that the relic hasn't released that early in any other expansion after this, because no matter the expansion, the early parts ALWAYS lack things to do on the side.
In the context of when it was current, Thordan is still my favorite extreme. It may not seem like too much now cause we've seen those mechanics in so many other places at this point, but at the time it was awesome.
Something to note about their comment of arboretum originally being a savage dungeon, the first adds in criterion includes belladonna, the final boss.
I never bothered to even watch these before this one and i was surprised by how intresting this was, since Mr Happy had so many stories to tell us about the ups and downs
I like this series! I started playing in 3.3 so I’m really interested to see what the state of the game was because I was completely obvious to any gripes because I was running around doing ARR.
I am almost the same. :). I started at the end of soul surrender and start of the far edge of fate almost with stormblood coming.
I think this was about the time that I first started figuring out how the endgame worked... fresh off of a long grind all the way through like part of 2.4 through HW to current because I got distracted with an ARR relic instead of doing my MSQ after starting years ago. I also started the trend of sacrificing a fully fledged out Zodiak Zeta for the anima weapon because the relic quest really did feel like a sequel... so while I have a collection of recreations, not a single ARR relic remains.
As someone that game back to the game in 3.2 and was caught up finally by 3.4ish, I saw a LOT of "throwing shit at the wall and seeing if it stuck" and lack of any non-raid endgame made people come up with their own fun (and with not that MASSIVE of a fanbase, I stuck to leveling and doing quests and paying attention to the lore), and maybe thats why I have such a unique perspective on the game now whenever it lacks content lol
FWIW: The Lords of Verminion theme absolutely slaps.
Ah yes 3.1. I remember those days (cause thats the patch I gave in and transferred to gilgamesh). I also remember trying to get anima fates done and looking at the Sarg PF and seeing a grand, whopping, huge total of...1 PF...yeah dark times lol
Love these videos happs, thanks for doing them as specially after 10 years all these falls and sucesses are to be remembered xD
Ah yes. I started playing in 2.2 and I remember this time. It was around the same time that Fallout 4 came out, and I just let my sub lapse and played that game for, like, 5 months. It's the longest time I've ever been away from the game... I also remember users on Reddit actually arguing that this was one of the best patches that had come out to that point.
The hardest part of the lvl90 alliance raids is actually seeing the mechanic.
I had forgotten how long ago all of these features, gpose, vermillion, Diadem, were made available. 😅 I focused on the story, as usual, and at that point it was all good for me lol. Until Heavensward ended…. Can’t wait to see the next video! Thank you MrHappy. 👍
I remember trying to do gathering in Diadem 1.0 and it was TERRIBLE. Trying to gather things and not die was nearly impossible. And a lot of crafts required stuff from there (you can buy them now with white scrips). They fixed things a bit in Diadem 2.0, but it still sucked.
Some notes you forgot about 3.1 Diadem
It was spammed by end game raiders and everyone else because the pink gear had a chance of getting good random substats. Back in 3.1 the substats weight were still pretty good and didnt get outscaled by main stat just yet so if you got lucky you could get pink gear with great substats for your job.
I managed to get pink pants that the stat weight was greater then the BiS pants for 3.0/3.1
The devs then nerfed those drops and immediately after that, Diadem died. People were in spamming for pink gear and once that was nerfed, dead content. Sometimes people would go in and gather but it was nothing special.
From what I remember the pink gear wasn't until a later version of Diadem in HW when they did the Secret Mission. The 3.1 version was only FATE grinding or gathering. I could very well be mis-remembering though.
I loved everything, the grind was the fun part for me. Especially the pink gear for pvp when stats mattered at the time.
I still remember listening to the Limit Break Radio episode about lords of verminion and actually cried with laughter 😂
We were so starved for content from 3.0 endgame that I remember being hyped for 3.1 from its trailer…then it came out and woof…. Looking back I can’t believe I stuck it out and kept my sub rolling
If i recall correctly the GS mining and logging mini-games are exactly what mining and logging jobs were like in 1.0. I was maining a miner job / class in 1.0 (yeah it was possible to start with non-battle class).
I think part of the problem going into 3.1 was the unexpected month wait that we had between 3.0 and 3.1. So, when we finally got it and there was so much negative feedback it probably didn't help. The thing that was even worse for Diadem was you could get good stats on the pink gear. Just it was random as the ilv was one you could take into savage. Many raiders however didn't feel the very small chance of getting something good was worth the effort you had to put in.
There was a middle step in the Anima quests that was doing 10 dungeons. Very basic and not that bad. The thing about the third Anima step that was so egregious was you needed more than the 80 Unidentified items, those alone would have been fine. The straw the broke the dhalmel's back was you also needed 16 High Quality Crafted items that REQUIRED Specialists to craft and NEEDED materials from the Diadem. You needed 4 items of 4 types and each one required a material from a second Specialist Crafter. As a reminder a player could only have 3 Crafters registered as Specialists and while changing your Specialist Classes was possible it was not cheap or easy. This effectively forced everyone to buy these items from the Marketboard where they were stupidly expensive. It was this forcing in of high end crafting, which at the time was extremely hard to get into, that made everyone give up and wait for the nerfs in a few patches.
"If you were around, post your memory. If you weren't, be glad." That's an oof.
OG Diadem Emergency Mission was cool. Things used to be harder in Heavensward: dungeons, 8man raid, craft. Today is everything so easy, there is no fun in doing things twice, we need more Ozmas.
Feels like we've gone full circle. In 6.x, there hasn't been much to do. Island sanctuary for the casual crowd. Savage/ultimate for the raiders. If you are looking for something in between, content has been very light.
Nah, at least 6.x has those, 3.1 had next to nothing for anybody, Diadem and LoV were DOA, Savage was a mess, Void Ark was fine, but no reason to do it more than once a week, that just only really left dungeons as your day to day content.
Heard haps saying "3.05 doesn't have alot if you're not raiding" it felt like current post 6.0x ngl. I mean sb and shb has exploration relic and this is actually the first time not much going on, atleast for me.
I also i wonder if people still doing eureka orthos or criterion these days
I liked the relic back then, it gave you something to work on and feel like you accomplished something, instead of giving away free relic now.
The worst part of the Anime Quest were the HQ crafting materials you needed, like 4x Kingcake etc. I started the game in 3.0 and knew no crafters at this point and the items were so incredible expensive that there was no point for a lot of people like me to actually get the items.
My FC kinda liked the original Diadem a bit. It was nice having a source of tomes that wasn't expert roulette. But yeah, overall I'd say this was the lowest point of the relaunched FFXIV. I remember reading that apology from the devs on the loadstone forums about Gordias being overtuned causing everything else to be overtuned. For all the complaints I see now about Endwalker having nothing to do, it doesn't compare to how little casual players had back in 3.1. Although I'd say EW has a similar issue with failed experiments.
I remember absolutely hating this patch by week 3. Thankfully I was in an FC that was super fun to hang out with plus I was casually leveling my WAR at the time so I at least had stuff to do…even if I was still getting Neverreap in my roulette….oh and this patch’s relic step caused me to not attempt relics until late Shadowbringers/Early Endwalker.
I remember the anima weapon quest and the thankfully skippable step... also I remember diadem and only went in once.... never again until SB.
I've done all the single-player challenges for Verminion, but I stopped there since I don't really enjoy it enough to do the multiplayer stuff. I only ever use it now if I want to get some easy MGP for the challenge log. I will say though that I'm surprised that they've never implemented a minion battle system similar to pet battles in WoW. I feel like that would be fairly popular in the game, so it's weird to me that they've never attempted to make it.
My first static disbanded because we got walled by both A3S and Thordan.
I remember enjoying the diadem when it first came out, then I spent 45 minutes in a queue just for everyone to switch to gatherers and tell me to go f*** myself when I kept asking for help with monsters
I remember jumping into LoV and I wanted to like it soooo much it was so boring. I literally blocked out the Anima quests it was traumatizing. I made the most Gil at this time though I was selling low level accessories constantly with my husband we needed up with over 100 mil
Oh baby. Nothing makes players happier than having to kill 20 giant-ass dinosaurs with one hit kills on the OFF CHANCE of getting a Best in Slot weapon (whose stats are randomly generated)
Still can't believe this was a decision they made. Diadem has to be in the top 3 most contentious content choices they've ever created
Ah, 3.1, the only patch cycle I've ever unsubbed for. I had been afflicted by the "what's the point" mindset after months of 3.0 as a new player to the game and not wanting to delve into hardcore raiding after having done so for years prior in WoW. 3.1 is the only time I've ever been unsubbed from XIV in all my time playing this game.
Btw the anima weapon first quest was originally 6 crystals/atmas from each zone; it was lowered to 3 per in a later patch (3.25 or 3.3 iirc). Second step was running a bunch of dungeons...not that bad. That third step to get 210 weapons tho with all the unidentified stuff plus crafting...awful as it was, it motivated me to start leveling DoH/L jobs when I returned in 3.2.
I'm over here feeling like endwalker's patch content has been kind of disappointing but because i was new during 3.1 I didn't notice how lackluster the patch was. Maybe things aren't so bad.
As a masters rank 1 Protoss and masters 3 random on sc. (only game I played more than ff is star craft series) I absolutely loved/destroyed people at LoV 😂 I’m sure I put a lot of people off by stomping and unit trolling them. Good times
You forgot one small thing about Diadem.
It was REQUIRED for the Anima weapons. All of the crafted items required at least one diadem material each, and they all required specialists to craft. Yeah the Anima sucked on launch.
This kinda makes me laugh going through the HW stuff. I was on a break during some of this. MY static was slain by A3S like many others. i was losing interest, and the static thing left a bad taste in my mouth. I even think this was round the time I did my first break from FFXIV to do the Everquest TLP server for my first time.
I sit an laughed when you mentioned Gpose because if memory servers, its reception at the time wasnt the best. People were like, oh neat, whatever about it. Unlike today where people do it professionally. I think this really was the expac, until near the end, I pretty much patch logged.
A great point. Especially in today's world, when Endwalker enthusiasts make GPose look like the best thing ever. When it feels like its all half of them ever do.
Ah this was around when I joined.
Wasnt this anima step when we needed 4x of 4 specialist crafted items which each needed other specialist crafted items? And changing specializations was an ordeal and a half? You couldnt buy them with GC seals at this point.
At least personally, the grind gor anima wasnt the issue. It was the need of multiple crafters to get in on the action, at a time where interacting with the crafting system meant spending all the gil, unless you had 3 omnicrafters with different specs?
Being stonewalled by crafting was what frustrated me, not to he grind itself.
Luckily I quit raiding after final coil to level every job to 60 which took like a year. Nowadays you can do it in like 2 weeks T_T
I wish theyd use the brachiosaur monster more than just that one really easy battle in bozja. I remember those assholes in ff6
So, I missed most of the Heavensward patches upon release since I was away at college at the time, and didn't have a gaming laptop at the time. Definitely sounds major rough. I will say though, since this patch began the long haul of mounts being made able to fly, every time I saw which mounts were made able to fly pissed me off more and more and more. Why? CAUSE THEY WAITED UNTIL THE VERY LAST MOUNT UPDATE TO MAKE THE ARR EXTREME TRIAL MOUNTS ABLE TO FLY! Like, even looking back on it, it STILL pisses me off. You spend all this goddamn time going and grinding out to get all of the mounts from the ARR EX trials, and you can't freaking fly with them. But they made it so the behemoth mount and a stupid freaking CHRISTMAS BEAR could fly first?! Still mad. Still very tilted.
I know there is a number of people that complain “EW sucks, the game is dying” (don’t get me wrong there are PLENTY of valid criticisms for current 14) but i still don’t think it compares to the low point that was Gordias and 3.1(and kinda still 3.2, but to a lesser extent), it was a ROUGH time.
A long wait after launch with the current raid tier at the time being the games most controversial, and after that wait we got what i think is easily still the worst major patch ever.
Cool.
Man i remember og diadem. When I could do things in it, it was fun, but man sometimes the cool bosses never spawned when I was in there or died before I could go there. Definitely miss it over the gatherer hell it is now though.
Not that Stormblood was the best expansion, but it's always funny to me when folks talk about how bad SB was when they weren't around for the dumpster fire that was the near entirely of the 3.x patch series, and don't have the context or experience of waiting 3 months between content drops.
Every time someone says HW is the best expac I am gonna send them this video
I quit after spending a few weeks with this patch, not gonna lie. I think I came back somewhere in Stormblood. Had the exact same feeling after doing 6.3 as well and immediately unsubbed. Haven't been back since, hopefully they give me a reason to play again.
I hope so too
It feels like Happy, Arthars, and Xenos are the only ones who push back against the idea that HW is this flawless masterpiece when the reality is that it practically undid all the goodwill that ARR built and nearly destroyed the game.
HW also introduced Gun Mage ... Im so fortunate I didnt pick up the game until 5.2...
Because Happy, Arthars, and Xenos actually play the game at a somewhat high level and don't confuse the game being obtuse (as it was in HW) with it being hard.
But when will Happy criticize *Endwalker* and the flaws in its content? Because IIRC, he does nothing but gush about it. Honestly? This new "series" feels like it has an agenda behind it.
Guess who unsubbed for the 1st time at 3.1? Yeah me.
Same
Such good memories, I came back to the game during this patch from 1.0.
so we are in a 3.x again in 6.x?
I love the schizophrenic nature of the final fantasy 14 player... we currently have a series of relic weapon that all you have to do is whatever you want to do earn it, and then an old series where you had to do this specific grind to get them (that was apparently hated)... and people want to go back to that, because what we have now isn't grindy enough for them?
I miss Diadem. I don't care if I'm the only one.
You say Void ark is one of the easiest 24 man raids. and yet its the only one ive done day one that came down to the wire on clearing it, like 2 minutes left on killing last boss. now its brain dead easy, back then saw quite a few wipes on it.
OG Diadem still better then island sanctuary change my mind
Oh man, 3.1. It wasn't as terrible for me since I was lucky enough to be in a static capable of farming Gordias Savage, but yeah it was a rough rough time...at least one of the best Extremes in the game came from it tho.
You know what sucked on HW when DRK was released? The Tank would deactivate the Tank Stance just to be able to use "Blood Weapon" (regenerates MP on Melee hitting enemies). You think that's okay and funny? Ask the Healer again.
It was only usable when the Tank Stance was off and those WoW Kiddies who pick Death Knight as their Main didn't want the job to be soley a Tank. Instead, they wanted to be awesome as DPS with it. No Tank Stance means obviously unmitigated damage. Thanks for nothing.
Warriors did that aswell. It was the stance dancing meta. The idea was use cooldowns to replace the 20% stance mit and avoid taking a dmg reduction from having tank stance active.
The sad thing is, going into DPS stance was optimal, and if you didn’t stance-dance in high-end content with your group, you were literally griefing. I’m just glad we can DPS *and* Tank at the same time now.
This is when I started losing interest in the game. Have never came back at quite the same level since.
ewww come on
lords of verminion isn't that complicated
feels like they complained just because they wanted to
Lords of Vermillion...I really hoped they would just copy WoWs Pet Battles, which are even more FF unlike our Vermillion 😢😅
MCH was so weird to play and AST was crappppp
It's a shame CBU3 won't even consider horizontal progression. Say what you will about FFXI, there was something for everybody. You didn't want to join a potentially toxic HMN endgame linkshell, static up for Nyzul, Limbus. You get very good gear this way. Relics were optional yet they had some competitors from normal weapons that were equal if not better than the relic counterpart. Only downside of XI was the horrible job balance.
XIV has all this content but they only think about casual v hardcore and that's about it. Give people options to gear up the same time, none of this even/odd patch nonsense. It all gets obsolete in 8-9 months anyway. I'd be for weapons to drop from 24 man raids too via a weekly system.