Evolution Of Final Fantasy 14 Combat Each Expansion – Is The Game Getting Stale?



Is the FFXIV Combat getting a bit stale? Xeno believes that Square Enix used to make way more changes to the PvE combat back in Heavenward and Stormblood. Endwalker feels more like an extension of Shadowbringers rather than a fully fledged expansion. In this video Xeno goes over the history of major changes in Final Fantasy 14 from A Realm Reborn to Endwalker.

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35 thoughts on “Evolution Of Final Fantasy 14 Combat Each Expansion – Is The Game Getting Stale?”

  1. We also got charged actions going into Shadowbringers.

    One of my favorite new additions. Not having to spend a oGCD right away to spend at a better opportunity is nice.

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  2. Stormblood player, and for me the thing that’s disappointing since that expansion is just how easier everything has gotten. What I mean however is moreso tied to classes now being too simple for the most part(as a Machinist, my hotbars have so many duplicate skills to fill in the blanks), and how you don’t have to consider the other roles anymore.

    Back in the day, you had to consider Healers and Tanks as DPS and this thought process applied to every role. Things like Mana Shift on Casters was clutch for Healers but also other Casters or even Bard for Foe’s Requiem, Diversion was great for threat management and not getting bonked first when tank dies, Erase was great for healing and DOT cleansing for an OGCD, and so much more.

    Some changes like Enochian no longer being a button is fine, and fixing the button bloat is something I want to see more of(Ley Lines button turning into Between the Lines when active for example), but now we lost the cool stuff like stance dancing and role consideration as well as just not having much buttons anymore. The Summoner Rework is a perfect example where it’s just extreme on easy play.

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  3. The dumbest comment i've read was someone saying "ARR was shit", ARR actually was the foundation for HW became what it became, what was pretty good and made really good players in the actual game playing the game, not roleplayers. But square enix straight up made the game and roles the same, and soon probably will be a second life social game, it is fair for them as a company to seek for money, so for sure they will make the game easier for those whom spend their entire wallet in Mogstation.

    Aggro management was the best thing in this game, if you overdid something, made huge mistakes and stuff, you were punished, people needed how to play the game, not turn off their brains and do not even read skills and were able to clear end game content.

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  4. I think they spent Shadowbringers experimenting with a base playstyle for roles that they feel good about and in Endwalker they created a foundation for the jobs that they're still figuring out but some jobs they knocked it out. I think the next expansions will see more variety now that they've established a foundation they like.

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  5. Chat forgot about removed primary stats materias. As someone who played multiple WoW expansions I very much prefer the EW way, in wow the keep changing classes every expansion just for the sake of change and A) makes a LOT of people unhappy B) throws any balance the previous expansion achieved (mostly by the end of said xpac) out of the window. Not to mention that they completely destroyed class identity for many classes
    On the other hand at EW launch most people were happy with the changes, and it took one patch to regain job balance. If ain't broke don't fix it.

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  6. I only started around 5.4, (January 2021) so I had the least amount of experience with the old jobs and mechanics. A bunch of my FC mates have been playing since 1.0 and even moved to 1.0 from XI. From some of the stories I've heard, I'm kind of glad I joined late.

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  7. Only thing i want is for them to rework some skills animations, redo the sound to make it more satisfying to use. Drk doesn’t have any button that feels so satisfying to press, it doesn’t feel like it is holding s big ass heavy sword. The 123 combo feels so boring snd weightless, they need to revamp the animation.

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  8. "They're gonna tune the ultimate so there's 0 DPS checks, it's all mechanics, and every single job is gonna be viable."
    This aged so poorly and so well at the same time lmao, the DPS checks in DSR are absolutely crazy, but honestly it just goes to show that people ranting and raving over the job balance because X job does a little bit less than another job in the same role are just wrong sometimes. I like having the job options be "play what you enjoy" and not "people force you to swap because muh optimization". Play the job you like and you're good at, don't swap to another job and force yourself to learn it just because it's "more optimal".

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  9. Also, personally, being a GNB player and a former SAM player, I feel like they really suck at iterating on jobs sometimes. With exceptions like RDM a lot of the newer jobs just get weirder and more janky over time. I really loved GNB in ShB and now it feels jank with Double Down and the more restrictive cartridge management, and SAM is just completely fucked at this point. I'd take stale job design over pointlessly fucking it up.

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  10. Good video, but I get the feeling the opportunity to discuss the issues of HW jobs was missed; WAR pacifys off Berserk, forcing a shitty macro screaming for cleanses, tanks using dps accessories because fending didn’t mainstat and making most DF/PF tanks a wet paper, healers locking Cleric Stance and wiping parties because of it, the influx of parties that wanted DRK/AST/BRD/NIN/DRG because meta was very much a thing, the list goes on.

    I have fond memories of HW, but good god do I never wanna go back to a time where a single raid tier nearly killed the entire raid scene lmao

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  11. ARR/HW
    I hated accuracy stat so much, I wanted it gone since day one. it was the worst for healers in endgame raids dpsing. Either meld acc so your attacks have a chance to hit or use piety mats to increase your max MP back then. Either way you were fucked, missing attacks or running out of MP quicker ugh.

    Tank stances reduced their own dmg dealt and dmg recieved.
    Tanks dmg stat was STR can could increase it further using melee dps accessories. you'd have tanks max HP be around same or even lower than a melee dps doing giant pulls cuz they were more concerned with their dps than actually tanking lol. I hated healing in 2.x/3.x era

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  12. Everyone spread word of mouth about how good Shadowbringers is. I joined late ShB, I remember Larryzaur's video on Seat of Sacrifice marking the beginning of my starting FFXIV. EW feels like ShB but I hadn't had that much comparative time on ShB compared to people talking about their time in SB and how their gameplay has changed over the decade compared to me just playing for a year at the time.

    I just don't have the contextual history with the game. Green DPS Scholar is just a dusty old meme to me, not my history or past.

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  13. Gotta tow that line between making things feels good, getting things to feel fresh, and not making it feel too hard or too easy. I do not envy game developers lmao.

    I feel like the changes from ShB to EW didn't HAVE to be big.

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  14. I was going to be real mad and thought this was just some clickbait rant from Bald Strummer but the points raised here are all true. The game used to be a completely different game, like a much harder less-handholding kind of game. As he also said, it's not necessarily a bad thing either. It's actually good that it's more accessible, but if nothing has changed since the previous expansion, then is it really an expansion? Most jobs aside from a couple have the exact same flow, the exact same rotation (with a couple added finisher buttons and QoL like ranged attacks not dropping combos), so there hasn't been any drastic changes like when we went from Stormblood to Shadowbringers.

    This might just be a weird thing that I'm thinking of, but I'm half-convinced that PvP is their insanely huge experimental testing grounds. Every job has an identity there, and I wonder if they're testing the reception to how those jobs feel to be used later in a job rework patch, or on another expansion in the future.

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  15. Yeah most jobs are definitely 95% the same and, other than QoL, the changes they made to certain classes are subjectively worse by my measure. They basically didn't touch SAM and then in the first major patch were like "whoops, we forgot to make this feel worse than it did 6 months ago as well, hold my beer" and basically gutted the whole class fantasy. Some of you may argue with that and that's absolutely fine but the big Samurai finishers felt thematic and job defining to me. Like in anime and almost every depiction of a samurai in media they are all about that single killing stroke. SAM had that and now it's "death by a thousand cuts" basically. It feels bad to play to me now. So that's where I'm coming from when I say they didn't make many changes and the ones they did make are mostly not great imo.

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  16. End Walker was largely developed during Covid, and SE is a story based company not a gameplay base company. So they DID play it safe and developed a fantastic story and didn't rock the boat to much in the combat sense of things because that would require a lot of time spent on balance.

    FF14 is the most overly tuned and balanced game as far as class balance is concerned in the genre, and has the most mechanically demanding fights in the genre. WOW ain't got shit, GW2 ain't got shit, ESO ain't got shit etc etc etc.

    Ill sacrifice my "combat experience" for the overall experience all day…every day.

    Overhauling combat is a MASSIVE change to the game, because you literally need to adjust for every mob and every mechanic in the game at every level of content for every job…and it was all done by people working from home because of Covid.

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  17. Darkness Damage is still in some of the Alexander raids. This came to be a problem recently because with the stats nerf going into 6.0, they forgot to nerf Darkness and one of the Alexander Savage raids became uncompletable synced because of it. It's still there even now, they just went in and nerfed the calculations to match what they did to the rest of the game.

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  18. Im glad they use shadowbringer as the foundation because man i sucked at this game in ARR and HW. Then i quit during STB because i was exhausted getting my ass kicked in savage and got no result to show for it.
    After they use SHB as foundation i can clear whole tier of savage in a few weeks with a PF

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  19. EW does feel like an extension of ShB combat-wise. Most jobs' gameplay loop stayed mostly the same and only got 1-2 more new buttons. On one hand, Not necessarily a bad thing or anything. It could mean they've found the sweet spots for how they want the combat to turn out. On the other hand, it does feel kind of disappointing that some jobs are getting a little too simplified.

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  20. i cant really agree with HW raids being harder. Sure, the NUMBERS were higher. The jobs were more intricate. But the fights? Not really, most of the mechanics were pretty easy to get and easy to just sheep after the raid callouts. I would know, sheepled my way through gordias and midas on BRD without even knowing what a GCD is

    Reply

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