Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Was baldman a prolific WoW raider prior to him jumping ship? I cannot understand the mistakes he's making.

I've been told that he was a server first tier raider back in the really old days up to I think WotLK, then he was a mythic raider for a couple of expansions before he dropped it because he thought Mythic raiding was boring stream content and he hates scheduling with guilds. He was a raid leader too back in those days. I think baldman is just obnoxiously stubborn and hates getting advice, so he is just winging it the entire time and learning his own way. I assume WoW vs 14's gameplay with how optimal dps is achieved is just too different so it isn't as intuitive when you go beyond Warrior's mechanics and very simple opener, to something like Machinist or Red Mage who have their own quirky little things and way more stuff to care about. Mix that in with what I assume is barely reading tooltips or practicing anything on a dummy, and here we are.

He's also really insecure about asking for or seeking out help, he believes if he looks up guides people will undermine his accomplishments which is why he didn't boost a character and why he still refuses to read guides for any fight. Like as much of a blow harded gamer neckbeard "Asmongold" is, "Zack" comes off as someone who's one solid bad day away from doing a flip. I've tuned into his Zack streams every now and again and all he does is talk like he's barely awake and gets into stupid arguments with people who are I'd assume 99% of the time trying to bait him into an argument.

 

[Fcret]

To anyone who's actually played WoW. Does WoW's narrative quests (whatever is closest to FFXIV's MSQ) just require you to do absolutely nothing in terms of combat mechanics or something?

I ask because I got a WoW veteran who recently came over to FF14 at the very start of the exodus a couple months ago, but he hates a few specific solo duties to death and thinks they're bullshit game design because they make you do a few mechanics. He's so ass mad he's considered going back to WoW a few different times even though he hates Blizzard for all the sexual allegations.

The one he's at now is the one in ShB for the level 78 tank role quest, I'm keeping this vague for all the new people who browse this thread but you probably know the one if you have a level 80 tank. Anyway he doesn't like that the enemy does something like "okay tank take this tether or your healer dies" and when he just tries to bull rush through it he auto fails the duty because his allied NPCs die. He doesn't heal himself when he's at 20% hp and dies? Game's dumb, this is bullshit, why does this game make me do mechanics, this is supposed to be the STORY. He's even failed when he puts it on Very Easy because he just wants to unga through the mechanics. This is like DSP levels of bad at this point and its embarrassing to watch.

In my eyes this is easy as hell, you heal yourself when you're low, you do mechanics the NPCs tell you to do or you just fail. Like he knows how to do most of these mechanics, he just chooses not to because he wants to get through it as fast as possible. Even if it wasn't braindead easy, every story mode of any RPG worth a damn always has a few somewhat hard moments that may game over you once or twice, but apparently that is just bad game design because the story is supposed to be braindead.

You can level to cap in WoW just by doing the equivalent of FFXIV overworld quests. The overworld is, on the whole, a little more dangerous than XIV, but there's absolutely zero required group content to reach endgame. Hell, there are people who have alright gear at endgame (think the equivalent of current allegory gear in XIV) who have never set foot in a dungeon or a raid simply because you can gear through world quest weeklies (think FATEs but usually more tedious).

Group content in WoW is also kind of a joke until you hit a certain difficulty level anyway. Normal, Heroic, and even Mythic difficulty dungeons can often be solo'd by tanks and the only reason they queue with other players is for insurance against wiping. The power curve during an xpac cycle is extremely steep and it's not unusual for characters at endgame to effectively double in power during the first raid tier of an xpac in WoW.

One reason for this lack of required group content is simply because the WoW community is downright unpleasant even on good days. GCBTW became a meme primarily because XIV's general ethic of "don't openly be a dick" contrasts so sharply with how people play WoW. Dungeon groups in WoW will often be a mixture of hyper-elitist midcore spergs, third worlders who see every wasted second in terms of gold they need to farm for more game time, and cliquish douchebags who'll votekick outsiders at the drop of a hat for a larger share of loot. This perpetuates a cycle where people don't want to get into group content because they don't have a lot of experience with it and they can't get experience with it because group content is either utterly braindead (normal/heroic dungeons and LFR) or impenetrable (mythic+ or proper raids).

Oh, and there's also no consistent visual or mechanical language for WoW encounters, which necessitates things like DBM. That's a whole other can of worms though.

EDIT: I decided to go and get an example to illustrate how steep the power creep is in WoW.

This is a plate mail drop from a level 60 story quest in Shadowlands (this drop scales with character level so this is it at its strongest iteration):

This is a plate mail drop from the first raid tier (Castle Nathria) on LFR difficulty (think E1N but half the party is allowed to be drooling retards):

This is a piece of catch-up gear for 9.1 (no dungeons or raids required, only overworld content):

To put this into perspective, the jump between the Weathered Armor you get at the end of Shadowbringers and the current Exarchic set is only about +50% main stat. Numbers-wise, WoW does nearly an entire FF expansion of number creep during its first raid tier and it only gets more retarded from there once you start adding in soulbinds and covenant powers and domination sockets and what have you.

 

[Drunken Fox]

So basically most the standard FFXIV overworld quests. Do they have things like FFXIV's solo duty instances where you fight a scripted encounter with basic raid-like mechanics while NPCs do stuff around you for narrative effect?

No, they really don't. There's a few 'solo instance' type parts of the story that were only added into the game quite recently, but they mostly just consist of some normal mobs to mow down. Maybe a mechanic that can be interrupted here and there, but even that can be ignored. Really all of the story content in WoW is so easy because they want to cater to the lowest common denominator of player.

I came over to FFXIV a few months ago during the big content drought before patch 9.1 and one of the things that has surprised me is that you actually have to kind of know how to play to get through the story. I mean the fights are very lenient, but at this point you do not even have to do any group content to see the story in WoW. You used to at least have to do some basic dungeons to progress the story as a capstone to each of the zones, but they've even moved away from that. I'll be honest, I really do like that FFXIV does not treat me like a complete imbecile and actually expects me to do mechanics. It's a nice change of pace.

If I was to criticize anything about the solo duties it is that some of them just feel way too long. Like I know they want it to feel epic and the enemies to feel hard, but many times I feel like it isn't difficult at all and more or less just overly time consuming. The mechanics aren't that hard to do, the boss just seems to take forever to die.

 

[Tomtit]

Was baldman a prolific WoW raider prior to him jumping ship? I cannot understand the mistakes he's making.

Asmon is by no means a bad WoW player, but in recent years he's been more widely known as a collector of stuff in the game. WoW has an addon called All The Things, which tracks every single item, mount, achievement, etc in the game, even stuff that isn't available anymore. We're talking tens of thousands of items. Asmon has a really high percentage of these, somewhere in the 90's. A big part of his streams was farming old content, either alone or with groups, depending on the difficulty. I haven't played since the end of BFA, but I believe the Shadowlands squish fucked up farming old raids? i had something like 60% completion for Hunter stuff in Legion myself, but I don't play anymore.

Been playing 14 for a month or so, really wish I hadn't slept on it for so long. If nothing else, the music is fucking phenomenal.

 

[Zilortha]

Was baldman a prolific WoW raider prior to him jumping ship? I cannot understand the mistakes he's making.

He was in prior expansions? Or at least that's how he bills himself, often talking about his prior experience as a high-end raider in wow.

Most of the mistakes he's making really just involve the way he is approaching difficult content, refusing to adapt to the way XIV does things.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

To anyone who's actually played WoW. Does WoW's narrative quests (whatever is closest to FFXIV's MSQ) just require you to do absolutely nothing in terms of combat mechanics or something?

The narrative barely makes any sense because they've put no effort into making it cohesive, and you level so quickly that you don't really need to learn to do anything. I gave Shadowlands a try and got from 1-50 to unlock the Zandalar trolls in a few days without anything like heirlooms or whatever, and I mostly had no idea what was happening. I don't know if it was really even possible to challenge myself as to where I needed to actually know anything about the class I was playing during that time.

Granted, it isn't as if FF14 does a great job at this per se. Funneling you into dungeons -should- teach you some basics, but a lot of shitters get carried hard. Or they just skip, then try to get carried hard through the last ten levels.

 

[Peasant]

To anyone who's actually played WoW. Does WoW's narrative quests (whatever is closest to FFXIV's MSQ) just require you to do absolutely nothing in terms of combat mechanics or something?

I ask because I got a WoW veteran who recently came over to FF14 at the very start of the exodus a couple months ago, but he hates a few specific solo duties to death and thinks they're bullshit game design because they make you do a few mechanics. He's so ass mad he's considered going back to WoW a few different times even though he hates Blizzard for all the sexual allegations.

The one he's at now is the one in ShB for the level 78 tank role quest, I'm keeping this vague for all the new people who browse this thread but you probably know the one if you have a level 80 tank. Anyway he doesn't like that the enemy does something like "okay tank take this tether or your healer dies" and when he just tries to bull rush through it he auto fails the duty because his allied NPCs die. He doesn't heal himself when he's at 20% hp and dies? Game's dumb, this is bullshit, why does this game make me do mechanics, this is supposed to be the STORY. He's even failed when he puts it on Very Easy because he just wants to unga through the mechanics. This is like DSP levels of bad at this point and its embarrassing to watch.

In my eyes this is easy as hell, you heal yourself when you're low, you do mechanics the NPCs tell you to do or you just fail. Like he knows how to do most of these mechanics, he just chooses not to because he wants to get through it as fast as possible. Even if it wasn't braindead easy, every story mode of any RPG worth a damn always has a few somewhat hard moments that may game over you once or twice, but apparently that is just bad game design because the story is supposed to be braindead.

If he's such a brainlet that the MSQ are hard for him, then he should play a healer so there's literally zero risk of dying ever.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Power creep was a lot worse back in Legion. The first raiding tier people were doing 500-600K dps and by the end of the expansion 2.5Mish dps. There had to be another squish when BFA came.

Also you need a third party tool like raidbots to properly gear up in WoW, and to make things worse there are mid-patch nerfs/buffs to consider. In FF14, ilvl is most of the time king.

 

[Hammr]

The one he's at now is the one in ShB for the level 78 tank role quest, I'm keeping this vague for all the new people who browse this thread but you probably know the one if you have a level 80 tank. Anyway he doesn't like that the enemy does something like "okay tank take this tether or your healer dies" and when he just tries to bull rush through it he auto fails the duty because his allied NPCs die. He doesn't heal himself when he's at 20% hp and dies? Game's dumb, this is bullshit, why does this game make me do mechanics, this is supposed to be the STORY. He's even failed when he puts it on Very Easy because he just wants to unga through the mechanics. This is like DSP levels of bad at this point and its embarrassing to watch.

In my eyes this is easy as hell, you heal yourself when you're low, you do mechanics the NPCs tell you to do or you just fail. Like he knows how to do most of these mechanics, he just chooses not to because he wants to get through it as fast as possible. Even if it wasn't braindead easy, every story mode of any RPG worth a damn always has a few somewhat hard moments that may game over you once or twice, but apparently that is just bad game design because the story is supposed to be braindead.

Imagine playing like the third expansion of the game and thinking the game asking you doing "basic" mechanic is stupid.

But I can see why he is lazy on doing mechanic for that role quest, since I kinda remember similarish quests where you have to use pet hotbar instead of your usual character hotbars, are so easy. The ones playing as Y'shtola and/or Hien in Stormblood, not sure if hr has even reached that part playing as Thancred.

Also I wonder if he actually bothers assigning hotkeys for the pet bar, because "WoW veteran but not doing mechanic". Otherwise he'll be in a fun long ride at that post-Shadowbringer quest where you have to play as different Scions.

 

[Lammy]

To put this into perspective, the jump between the Weathered Armor you get at the end of Shadowbringers and the current Exarchic set is only about +50% main stat. Numbers-wise, WoW does nearly an entire FF expansion of number creep during its first raid tier and it only gets more retarded from there once you start adding in soulbinds and covenant powers and domination sockets and what have you.

There's also a huge factor that gearing is pretty much the ENTIRE GAME in WoW. WF Raid is mostly only so hard because they're so undergeared; the first half or 2/3rds of Mythic bosses in an instance are usually made a joke by overgearing them, and almost ALL the player retention systems don't relate to anything meaningful, just gear/power gating to make it artificially take so long to be the power-level that the content you want to do is balanced for if you're not dayraiding.

FF is pretty phenomenal by comparison that HQ crafted gear is probably equal to full Heroic gear in WoW, and you can get a full set of it in a day for pretty much nothing if you have 80 in all crafters/gatherers, a decent set of crafting gear, and a bit of gil to spend on the lesser tomestone mats. Then, from there, that the weekly-capped Tomestones (equal to Valor) gives you gear upgradable to BiS ilvl from either the raid, or from non-raid sources as a catchup mechanic later. Then with augmenting crafted gear, and later alliance raid catchup gear, the game showers you in near-BiS gear if you're willing to put in a small amount of effort.
It all adds up to the conclusion that, in actuality, gear pretty much means nothing in FF, and encounters are all about skill. Consequently, the WF raid completions are done pretty quickly, and the playing field is pretty even since there's no benefit to be gained in insanity like doing splits or spending 5-6 figures on WoW tokens to buy BoE's.

All in all, I rather enjoy the game that lets you defeat the hardest content asap with no catch as long as you have the skill, instead of the game where you grind your weekly chores for slivers of power which eventually add up so that mediocre players can beat the hardest content after they've been ringed up 75$ in sub fees.

 

[Gravemind]

I kinda remember similarish quests where you have to use pet hotbar instead of your usual character hotbars, are so easy. The ones playing as Y'shtola and/or Hien in Stormblood, not sure if hr has even reached that part playing as Thancred.

Also I wonder if he actually bothers assigning hotkeys for the pet bar, because "WoW veteran but not doing mechanic". Otherwise he'll be in a fun long ride at that post-Shadowbringer quest where you have to play as different Scions.

Are those different if you actually have hotkeys assigned to a pet hotbar? Because Role-playing Duties always just replaces my default Hotbar 1 with the character-specific actions. I've never had to specifically set up a pet hotbar just to play those.

It all adds up to the conclusion that, in actuality, gear pretty much means nothing in FF, and encounters are all about skill.

No, gear still does very much play a not-insignificant role, as stat checks can and will neuter you no matter how skilled you are. Just because the gear is far more accessible and easier to attain doesn't make the gear any less important.

That said, because you can't regularly just overgear (especially not in any current content) and then either faceroll your keyboard or only press one button to clear content, skill also plays just as much of a factor, so I feel it's more accurate to say that it's a decent balance between the two. You can't have one without the other if you want to get things done.

 

[Fcret]

Asmongold is apparently giving up Necromancer for now (~1:21:00 in this VOD). I dunno why he decided to shackle himself to this autismo shit anyway when he's only been playing for a month or so.

Anyway, what's the next unrealistic Asmongold challenge? Feast top 100? Ocean Fishing mount? Duty Incomplete+min ilvl+no echo Orbonne Monastery? Eureka perhaps?

 

[Hammr]

Are those different if you actually have hotkeys assigned to a pet hotbar? Because Role-playing Duties always just replaces my default Hotbar 1 with the character-specific actions. I've never had to specifically set up a pet hotbar just to play those.

It's probably because how I tweak hotbar game options, I don't have the game sub right now to check. But in my case, these quests assign the skill set as a separate pet horbar for me, so I can't use them with usual hotkeys.

 

[BarberFerdinand]

Eureka perhaps?

Ozma is one of my favorite bosses from the FF series, so getting that mount is a priority for me. I wonder if him doing Eureka stuff and the inevitable flood that follows will make the process better or worse...

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Ozma is one of my favorite bosses from the FF series, so getting that mount is a priority for me. I wonder if him doing Eureka stuff and the inevitable flood that follows will make the process better or worse...

The main struggle will be that you pretty much need to get on a Discord to do Baldesion Arsenal properly, luckily you don't really have to interact with anyone from what I've asked. You effectively listen to some leader call stuff out and coordinate forming a group, beyond that you just do your part. Asmongold doing Eureka won't change that Baldesion Arsenal is just a mess if you don't coordinate at all.

Asmongold trying to blind run BA wouldn't even be fun chaos because he'd probably wipe within about 5-10 minutes into the run. It'd be like a firecracker that only lasts 2 seconds.

Asmongold is apparently giving up Necromancer for now (~1:21:00 in this VOD). I dunno why he decided to shackle himself to this autismo shit anyway when he's only been playing for a month or so.

Anyway, what's the next unrealistic Asmongold challenge? Feast top 100? Ocean Fishing mount? Duty Incomplete+min ilvl+no echo Orbonne Monastery? Eureka perhaps?

Asmongold is a collector and from what I can tell of what Asmongold has explained that he does to collect shit in WoW, the achievements Asmongold tries to go for in 14 aren't just mindless grinds that take a year they actually have gameplay and skill requirements beyond that. I think Asmongold unironically believes he'd just go into PotD and "just do it" for several dozen hours and he'd just eventually win.

To add onto this list, I think the Bozja duel solo achievement (before EW!) would be a clown fiesta. Not only does he need to one shot the fights with no mistakes as most failures auto kill you he needs to handle being griefed by his orbiters some of which might try to snipe his duels from him.

 

[Zilortha]

I think Asmongold unironically believes he'd just go into PotD and "just do it" for several dozen hours and he'd just eventually win.

And in his defense? For a lot of the collectibles in WoW, that's exactly what would happen. WoW generally asks of you your time, not your skill.
So I can't even be that annoyed by him assuming XIV would be the same.

 

[A-Stump]

I need someone to give me lots of gil because I like free handouts

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

And in his defense? For a lot of the collectibles in WoW, that's exactly what would happen. WoW generally asks of you your time, not your skill.
So I can't even be that annoyed by him assuming XIV would be the same.

To be fair, FFXIV has a lot of that too with its rare stuff. The hunt mounts and the diadem mount are both effectively massive time sink grinds that you can turn your brain off the entire time and just do the thing. Maybe Triple Triad is that way? I know some ARR npcs had annoying rules, but I don't know how hard the more recent NPCs are.

I think PotD and its younger brother HoH's titles aren't tied to raids or raid looking content, so it can come off like they are just mindless grinds that you just do because they aren't a raid. I assume Bozja duels will look the same too if he catches wind of that, as Bozja is just considered brainless grind content by the general community save for duels and Delubrum Savage which I find most people just ignore when talking about Bozja.

 

[Fcret]

Asmongold is a collector and from what I can tell of what Asmongold has explained that he does to collect shit in WoW, the achievements Asmongold tries to go for in 14 aren't just mindless grinds that take a year they actually have gameplay and skill requirements beyond that. I think Asmongold unironically believes he'd just go into PotD and "just do it" for several dozen hours and he'd just eventually win.

He's not a terrible player, but as he said in one of his more recent streams, his skill has declined since he leaned into his streamer persona to get help in content. XIV doesn't really let him get carried the same way he can in WoW and there's very little content that he wants to do that can be 'outgeared' to the extent that is normal in WoW, so he has to readjust to actually having personal responsibility and stakes in content.

I think PotD and its younger brother HoH's titles aren't tied to raids or raid looking content, so it can come off like they are just mindless grinds that you just do because they aren't a raid. I assume Bozja duels will look the same too if he catches wind of that, as Bozja is just considered brainless grind content by the general community save for duels and Delubrum Savage which I find most people just ignore when talking about Bozja.

He went into PotD with the idea of it being like Torghast afaik. There's no idea of item level syncing (well technically there is but it's hardly used and barely works) in WoW so at this point you can really just steamroll it with good gear. I don't think he expected for the enemies to become so strong past floor 100 and he even drew a little mspaint graphic explaining how little power PotD metes out to you compared to Torghast.

There's ways you can cheese Bozja stat scaling by populating an instance and then having everyone leave once the instance server marks it for pruning so I imagine he might be able to do that if he's sufficiently motivated to do so.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

He's not a terrible player, but as he said in one of his more recent streams, his skill has declined since he leaned into his streamer persona to get help in content. XIV doesn't really let him get carried the same way he can in WoW and there's very little content that he wants to do that can be 'outgeared' to the extent that is normal in WoW, so he has to readjust to actually having personal responsibility and stakes in content.


He went into PotD with the idea of it being like Torghast afaik. There's no idea of item level syncing (well technically there is but it's hardly used and barely works) in WoW so at this point you can really just steamroll it with good gear. I don't think he expected for the enemies to become so strong past floor 100 and he even drew a little mspaint graphic explaining how little power PotD metes out to you compared to Torghast.

There's ways you can cheese Bozja stat scaling by populating an instance and then having everyone leave once the instance server marks it for pruning so I imagine he might be able to do that if he's sufficiently motivated to do so.

I legitimately don't think Asmongold is a bad player, I think he can clear everything in the game if he tries hard enough because he has a fairly good mindset when he isn't being a stubborn ox and trying to progress in the stupidest way possible. He has a better mindset than most this community and that can take you far when applied well.

His main issues are just being stubborn and insecure that he refuses to make this even remotely easier on himself just because he feels chat will say he sucks or whatever. I legitimately didn't think he was getting that carried for most of his forays (Ifrit EX was painful to watch though) into ARR content, because when he knew how to do divebombs and twisters he just did them and he did them fine. Something about HW is just fucking with him because he has somehow regressed to using CDs as emergency buttons instead of proactively.

My concern with Bozja is more so people are going to try and fuck with him on stream and try to take the duels (unless they somehow fixed that issue) from him and purposefully wipe to fuck with him being able to progress the fights at all.