Now that A Realm Reborn is on its tenth year, let’s look back at some of the major features that have been removed over Final Fantasy XIV’s lifespan. Nostalgia-seeking veterans and curious new sprouts can re-live the pains of sprint-based TP or reminiscence over old astrologian cards!
I have no idea if this video will be of big interest to people, but it has strong series potential. A LOT of content has been cut from this game.
Timestamps are as follows:
0:00 – Intro
0:20 – Number 1
1:05 – Number 2
1:45 – Number 3
2:21 – Number 4
3:05 – Number 5
3:47 – Number 6
4:26 – Number 7
4:58 – Outro
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The old funny link that used to go here is broken. Farewell, funny link.
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On TP – MP used not to be a set value of 10,000. Which made it WAY less weird when you were level 1 with 150 HP and 100 MP instead of 150 HP and 10,000 MP. It was variable based on some combination of MND and INT, I think.
Also on TP, there used to be some abilities that BRDs, MCHs, and I think NINs had to throw on team-mates to restore their TP some. Goad may have been the NIN one and Tactician the BRD one, but I don't remember their names to be sure.
There used to be Materia for main stats (VIT, STR, DEX, INT, MND), and just like the Elemental Resistance Materia, this went away (but you can still buy/sell/trade them on the MB or in person)
Up to level 50, you can find 1 handed weapons for WHM (wands) and BLM (maces) along with Caster/Healer shields.
Up to level 50, leveling gear was a lot more combined. For example, there's not Caster gear and Healer gear (other than weapons). Rather, the mage robes give INT and MND both, so you can use the same piece while leveling a Caster or a Healer. This is also true to a lesser extent with other DoW Jobs. BRD, NIN, and MCH (again, up to level 50), and DRG and MNK have basically the same gear, and this can also be used by tanks to level 50, though there is tank specific gear (PLD, WAR, DRK) that has better armor. I'm not entirely sure why, but in HW, they stopped doing this, instead splitting even the leveling gear we only use for a zone or three and then junk as sub-role specific. Interestingly, there are two semi-exceptions. One is the "…of Slaying", which is generic STR accessories used by DRG, RPR, MNK, and SAMs, and the "…of Aiming" accessories which are DEX and used by both Ranged and NINs – JUST NINs. So if you main Ranged and want to also dabble into a Melee, if you pick NIN, you only have to get left side gear for it since you already have all the right side pieces. Likewise, the other four melees can share right side gear, only needing the "…of Maiming" for DRG/RPR or "…of Striking" for MNK/SAM.
The ENTIRE Cross-Class system. Including having to level other classes to get some pretty essential skills. For example, as a WHM main, I didn't have Swiftcast for the longest time because I hadn't leveled BLM up to level 37 or whatever it was when you learned Swiftcast.
…including having to get level 30 in one class AND level 15 in another class to unlock Jobs. For example, WHM required 30 levels in CNJ, but also 15 levels in Arcanist. SCH was Arcanist and Conjurer while SMN was Arcanist and Thamaturge. As a healer main, PLD was the first tank Job I unlocked since I already had the CNJ levels.
There used to be a specific quest, "I believe I can fly", I think was its name, you had to do before you could teach your Chocobo to fly. This also taught all your other mounts to fly. Until you did it, the only mount you could fly with was the Black Choco that Broherfant gives you as a sign of friendship.
Not a lost thing, but RDM's Vercure is based on INT while SMN's Physic is based on MND. This was from when Physic was a CLASS (not Job) ability of Arcanist. Both SCH and SMN used the same ability. With ShB (and now EW), when you get on SCH and open the Actions & Abilities page, you'll only see Resurrection under Arcanist. The rest are under SCH as Job abilities. So there's really no reason for this anymore. BUT on SMN, you could use Cleric Stance (yes, THAT Cleric Stance) to swap your INT and MND values. While healing under Cleric was at a -20%, the INT swapped for MND meant that SMN's Physic was a bit more powerful that way. And even now, up to level 40-50, SMN's Physic is still…vaguely functional.
SMN and SCH pets used to have health and their own agro tables. So Eos/Selene could be KO'd and need to be resummoned. Likewise, Ifrit and Garuda could draw agro. Titan was the tank pet, and was designed to draw agro. This made SMN nice and easy to level, and you could even somewhat carefully fight trash packs in 4 mans if your tank dropped using Titan for tanking. He could even tank simple bosses (like Tam-Tara) if your party was good with agro management. Also, SMN had an ability that would heal their pets. I forget the name, but it was fairly powerful, like 8% of their health per tick or something. SMN naturally also had this ability. SMN also could do some interesting tricks like Succor the party, Adlo Eos, and then deploy Eos's Adlo across the party after their Succor shields were consumed to deal with boss mechanics that did two large AOEs in a row. This was because, they made pets only take 10% damage from AOEs because they were dying to raidwides too much, but because they still had their own health bars, SCH's could abuse this by shielding them. Then they made them into their modern form where they have no health and all agro they generate is passed straight onto the SMN/SCH now.
PLD is next on the proverbial chopping block, with AST probably being next after it. At some point DRG and BLM will probably be up next as well. Other than AST, these are the three Jobs that have the most consistent damage profile (as opposed to everyone else with the 2 min buff window silliness that most everyone hates but the devs seem to love), and AST is just generally regarded as kind of a mess. SCH would be on that same block, but much of its clunk was successfully massaged out of it without needing an entire rework, but Faerie Gauge…
Poetics was originally the higher and then lower tier Tomestone. It eventually dropped to be the lowest of three. For whatever reason, when HW came around, they came out with new ones and started retiring old ones, but they kept Poetics. Now Poetics are the generic "old content" Tomestone, and are used for gear, old Relics (in the case of 5.25, the then-current ShB Relic first step), and stuff like orchestration rolls and the like.
The Grand Companies still completely exist and are still important to the narrative, but in a gameplay sense, haven't really been relevant since HW. In ARR, the ranks opened new levels of gear, but this seems to cap out at 50. People kept expecting a new rank, and they did add the mission squad stuff you can do and get your rank up a bit higher, but we never got new gear, I don't think (level 60). Regardless, they haven't touched the system since, instead going with MSQ characters for the Trust system, even though the GC squad might have fit into that rationally enough. Likewise, which team you were on in Frontlines was which GC you were assigned to. When you enter now as not your GC, you will see the message "You join <team> as a freelancer." This is because so many people joined Maelstrom, I believe it was, that they would have horribly long wait times (and it's not like PvP ques WEREN'T horribly long already) vs the other two, and they wanted to get the ques to go faster. This is also why there are the three different horse mounts for 100 wins as a given GC vs the generic 100 wins, which nets you the glowing Allegan ball mount. Oh, and those horses are among the rarest mounts in the game even now, with Mael being the least rare (remember when I said more people played Mael?) then the Ul'Dah one then the Twin Adders one, I think.
…oh, and before I leave that topic: The ARR Relic has the famous (or infamous) Light Farming step. Because the Shatter Frontline was in the game at the time (the one where the nodes spawn on the mid plateau and that has the 6 bases around the outside teams fight for control over), it also gives Light on completing one. So if you're ever on that step of an ARR Relic and also working on Frontlines for whatever reason (Garo mounts, whatever), Shatter days you can get double duty by swapping over to your Relic Job WITH THE RELIC EQUIPPED to get Light out of those matches. And also speaking of Light, in addition to the many changes for ARR Relics (shorter respawn CDs on the FATEs instead of some being multi-day waits, a now greater than 0.2% chance of getting Atma from FATE completion [that…wasn't a typo], only needing 3 of each enemy type instead of 10 from the book step, final boss drops being guaranteed for the later 4 quests step as opposed to being only a chance of dropping), at some point the Light amount was also doubled. This made Syrcus and World of Darkness completely pointless vs Laby because a Laby run generating 48 would cap an Atma itself. And if the others were in bonus hour, it would completely be pointless in terms of the overcapping.
WHM use to have a weird kind of Adlo in Stoneskin that would make a shield for 10%/18% (above level 40 something there was a Trait) on a 3/2.5 sec cast. This was most useful on high target allies, like Tanks. Interestingly, it had a 30 minute instead of 30 second duration, so it could be fun to cast on people you found leveling out in the field…even if, since it was based on THEIR max HP, it probably wouldn't last that long. Unlike Protect, which decreased physical (and with a Trait also magical) damage by 10% for your whole party, but was a party-wide cast that couldn't be used on non-party members like said leveling people. It also lasted 30 mins on its recipients, though.
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I'm sure I can think of some more as a grizzled vet who started the game in 2.2 or 2.3 or so, but that's it for now. : )
Been playing since ARR launched, here's a couple of things I could remember:
SMN and SCH summons' stats scaled off the player themselves. If a SMN wanted a tankier Titan-egi (as was done for Ramuh EX cheesing), the SMN would equip VIT accessories with melds and summon the egi with higher than normal HP, then swap their accessories back and keep those values until desummoned or KO'd.
Summons for both SCH and SMN could also be affected by buffs and debuffs. Now, however, they cannot be target and do not gather these changes. To clarify: mantra used to affect fairies and no longer do, but buffs like trick attack will still buff a summon's damage.
Before TP was even visible in Heavensward, TP was a resource that could only be seen by that particular player. Meaning BRDs (the only sources of TP at that time), required macros to tell them when to ask for Army's Paean and Battlevoice it. Playing these songs also came with a hefty damage reduction to the BRD.
Bards were the true MVPs and had healer LB3 before Heavensward.
Berserk used to apply a pacify debuff on Warrior at the end of the buff, rendering them unable to use any actions. BRDs were begged to remove it constantly with the Warden's Paeon.
Astrologians could generate negative enmity, causing an aggro overflow to happen. The result would be NOTHING could out-enmity the astrologian, even when multiple attemps of provoking were done. This was a combination of lucid dreaming, quelling strikes and their sects all having enmity reduction; when used at the same time, this caused the overflow to happen.
SCHs could dissipate, and if they were fast enough, resummon their fairy while having all of the benefits of dissipate.
Paladins used to apply strength down at the end of their 1-2-3 combo. Monks used to apply intelligence down at the end of their 1-2-3 combo. If they were still kept, this would be the equivalent to a 100% uptime feint and addle.
Astro's cards were simplified because, although liked, in application, everything outside of balance were just exceptionally niche. Arrow cards would cause TP resources to drain faster than they could be replenished, so the card was only favored on BLMs. Bole had no use if mitigations were properly planned and would otherwise be relying on RNG to 'save' the run. Spear's cooldown reduction only applied to skills used WHILE the card was up and messed up rotations and buff line-ups. This pretty much led to all cards not being ewer, spire or balance to be clicked off until spear became critical damage.
In ARR, due to the cross-class system, it was better to bring a Marauder than a Warrior.
Racial stats used to impact jobs. Objectively Lalafells were the BEST black mage class due to having high enough MP to cast an additional Fire IV before returning to umbral ice.
You used to be able to distribute your attributes wherever you wanted. However, there was a lot of gripes as SCH and SMN shared their attributes and required an item to reset them if you wanted to have all of your points in one main stat. This is one of the reasons why the attribute system was removed (another being most of us just put our points into our main damage stat).
There used to be accuracy caps. Tanks needed the highest amount of accuracy due to attacking the boss from the front; melee needed 'flank' accuracy to hit rear and flank caps, and BLM needed the least accuracy as they could always hit the rear. SMN, however, required 'flank' accuracy due to their pets. Healer gear came with 0 accuracy and would often not meet rear caps at all. Along with strict MP regeneration, it was more acceptable to not see a healer DPSing in ARR.
Cleric stance was a double edged sword in ARR; it had a cooldown when initially used to go into it, and no cooldown to come out of it. Meaning it was extremely easy to want to come out of cleric stance and double tap the button, causing you to immediately go back into the stance. The only healing abilities, as opposed to spells, were benediction and lustrate then, so all of your heals then took a huge penalty that often caused wipes if the co-healer wasn't paying attention or also fell for this double-tap-trap.
Deaths used to reduce a player's VIT as well as apply reduced damage dealt. Unless that player was paid special attention to, and had protect reapplied, they were guaranteed to die again to the next raidwide or target mechanic.
Dragoons used to have less mdef than the botanist class (and still do). Added with blood for blood, which increased the damage they took as well as damage they dealt, this often killed them as well as not understanding how Jump worked/works.
Bosses have a DoT cap that extends to two rows below their HP bar. Back in ARR, these rows often maxed out. If your DoTs did NOT appear on the boss, you effectively did nothing and you would have no DoT damage tick. This was mostly seen in alliance raids up until Stormblood when the first of the DoTs were massively culled. Shadowbringer saw these DoT caps impossible to hit after and you're unlikely to even see the first DoT row ever come close to capping.
There was a brief point in time when all tank damage scaled off of Vitality (and healers rejoiced) ONLY. Right now, I think it's something like 2/3 strength, 1/3 vitality for tank damage.
I am glad they removed tp. Makes it alot easier for speed runs and spamming aoe attacks
Also 1 thing I really don't like with Ninja now is your Mudras used to be off gcd, make it alot easier to weave these, now it kind of sucks and makes Ninja feel slower
If they want to appease the RP crowd, they could always bring back underwear from 1.0
Something else quirky about 1.0, it started with the shields leveled separately, so you could get shield exp from using a shield with gladiator, conjurer, or thaumaturge. I think this mainly affected the block rates and amounts but may have also unlocked skills.
It's not exactly a removed game feature per se, but, at some point, they massively decreased the variety of items that your retainers could find on Quick Ventures. I have full AST and DRK Liege sets that I have from never playing PvP.
With every sentence of this video I feel younger and younger. One more watch through and I might find myself back in high school chem class.
Real informative and entertaining video as always
Not mentioned but back in 1.0 we also had a stamina system along with the TP system but was removed around the time Yoshi took over the game and also weapon damage type was a bit more complex in 1.0 since weapons could have all three types of damage but in different percentages (A halberd had all of them and claws had a mixture of blunt and slashing)
Two really dumb things related to the duty finder that they should remove/fix. firstly some Trials do not have a minimum item level and you can be dropped into them when quing as long as you meet the level requirement. it can cause problems for people like me that only gear up alt-jobs every 5-10 levels when leveling them up. secondly when you que for something it checks your class and gear level. when it pops it only cares that you are on the right class and so you could get into a lvl 90 dungeon in level 1 gear. (i dont reccommend it thou). at least last time i checked it worked.
I remember the good ol' accuracy stat, imagine being at a raid and you didn't clear it because you literally MISSED. I remember it with anger because the DRK raid weapon was det/accuracy back in the day
Also, old pvp! The Fold and pve skills in pvp with a couple pvp specific actions were a thing too, I kind of miss those tho
What's the bgm going during "Number 4"? I feel like I'm constantly finding new music in this game even after playing for years.
I really enjoy the way you present these fun facts. I hope you keep doing more.
There was a time when OGCD (such as Hallowed Ground) don't reset its counter even on death. We have to wait for it when clearing Thordan Ex 😂
I was expecting you might talk about the ability to add certain abilities from other jobs to your action bar! My memory is a bit rusty from when I played in 2.0 (I played then for a while, then came back pre-Endwalker), but back when you had to hit level 15 in a secondary class in order to qualify for a full job (e.g. in order to advance from Thaumaturge to Black Mage, you needed to level Archer to 15), you could also take a limited number of actions and skills from other jobs to use. A prominent example was that Paladins were the only job to get provoke, meaning pretty much all tanks were required to level up their Paladin job a bit in order to get at least that skill. This has been replaced with Role Actions in more recent iterations of the game.
They really shouldn't have gotten rid of tp
What's the point of reclaiming belts from the calamity salvager?
I will not subscribe to a lalafell :^) (looks away from the mrhappy sub)
I remember when Machinists could Reload and had a gauss barrel attachment, Summoner/scholar pets could die, stance dancing and enmity combos as Tank and loving the old Astro cards, Monk had stances too (mandatory Riddle of Fire) and could sometimes tank dungeons if the main tank left (thank you Riddle of Earth), Ninja's had to apply Kiss of the Wasp/viper cuz DPS, Warriors would compete to see who could get the most Fell Cleaves off in the short ability time window, Dark knight would halt mana regen during darkside, Paladin had a no-damage AOE aggro ability that applied blind, healers had to stoneskin and protect at the start of any content and every job had 2 class requirements. Oh and Paladins could use raise. (out of combat)
I actually miss the old Astro card system. Yes.. the 'top tier savage raiders' focused purely on Balance for the extra DPS… but it was 'fun' to throw a 'boosted arrow' onto a Ninja and watch them turn into mini-blenders.
Simplification and homogenization, kinda loaded terms, cause I feel like each job still has a lot of visual and mechanical flavour that makes them stand out- And besides the game's more popular now than it ever has been so they must be doing something right.
I'm willing to trust the devs won't go "too far" with trimming down unnecessary clutter on the jobs.
For one I know for a fact that BLM would not still be my favorite job if Enochian was still a buff you had to maintain manually instead of a passive that lasts as long as you have 3 fire/ice
And I'm not certain how much fun old SMN really was- I would've liked to have tried it but I know I enjoy the current SMN just fine even if it is a little over-simple, maybe it'll get some touch ups with time.
As an old school WoW player and new school FFXIV player I can honestly say that these changes are all for the better. Elemental resistances and overly complicating stuff just made the game unfun for the majority of players. Some people loved min-maxing stuff like this but for the rest of us, it was annoying as hell.