Pray for Durmin.
An extra special thanks to these players for coordinating this whole Eureka effort!
-Ellis Shire
-Eos Fuyu
-Lionel Runetail
-Nijiru Gonnehild
-Scath’an Uisce
-Telum Caeli
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FULL SERIES playlist! ► https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvFQJa1XAXzzXrfl_cbsGvEl4AbTt5SMG
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0:00 – Introduction
0:44 – UNLOCK QUEST: Baldesion Arsenal
3:03 – Some explanation…
7:00 – STEP ONE: Gaining Entry
14:49 – RAID: Baldesion Arsenal
20:54 – BOSS: Art & Owain
22:48 – Baldesion Arsenal (continued)
26:39 – BOSS: Raiden
29:29 – Baldesion Arsenal (continued)
45:59 – BOSS: Absolute Virtue
50:49 – Baldesion Arsenal (continued)
53:34 – Scary Boss Explanation Time
1:00:33 – BOSS: Ozma Prime
1:09:56 – THE STORY PART
1:17:45 – Afterparty!
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Dan’s Twitter (@DanFloydPlus) ► https://twitter.com/DanFloydPlus
Carrie’s Twitter (@CarrieFloyd) ► https://twitter.com/CarrieFloyd
PlayFrame Twitter (@PlayFramePlus) ► https://twitter.com/PlayFramePlus
To hear Dan talk MUCH more about game animation, check out New Frame Plus! ► http://www.youtube.com/c/newframeplus
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Edited by Daniel Floyd
♫ “Pray Return” by Chris Logsdon
https://lnkfi.re/pray-return
#PlayFrame #FFXIV #FinalFantasyXIV #Stormblood
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Happy Final Fantasy Friday everyone 🎉
Today's question is what did y'all think of the Eureka story?
i saw that "Subscribe" single frame lol
Can confirm that Black Hole sucks. My first two BA runs ended in failure bc the mechanic was not solved correctly and everyone got booted. 3rd time was the charm tho! /o/
Alright, so, that warning up front on the Baldesion Arsenal deeply amused me, of course – but it also reminded me of one of my favourite things I ever saw in a game.
See, once upon a time, I played Echo Bazaar (known as Fallen London these days – a definite step down, I thought), and around the very edges of the content of that time, people spoke, in hushed whispers, of the most bonkers content in the game – Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name.
The full lore of Mr. Eaten is heavily intertwined with the setting of the game itself and the mechanics of those early days, so I won't get into it here – the important point was the interface elements surrounding it. This was because, as indicated, Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name was absolutely the unimaginably punishing thing that the Baldesion Arsenal presents itself as. However, unlike the Arsenal, it was not a rewarding venture in any way, nor one intended to further the common good.
Rather, Seeking the Name was a fool's errand to the Nth power – a terrible, ill-understood, poorly-signposted, arcane, cryptic, and (above all) self-destructive endeavor. The one grace that it granted anybody stupid enough to try, however, was that it was up-front about this. However, part of Echo Bazaar's charm was that all the game text – action and results text, yes, but also interface and item-description text – was written as though from the point of view of some disembodied somebody living in the eventually-eponymous Fallen London – a turn-of-the-century Londoner whose city had been dragged into a comically-Lovecraftian underground cavern.
As such, the modern version of the quest begins with the following text: "Seeking Mr Eaten's Name" is a story of misery, obsession and self-destruction. It doesn't play by the same rules as the rest of Fallen London. It is capricious, difficult and very unfair. And there will be no happy ending, unless you abandon the quest. Don't begin the story unless you are prepared to regret it." And much like the Baldesion Arsenal, you must indicate that you understand this in order to proceed.
Further warnings – both from the interface and from characters in-game – only get more urgent from there. As an illustrative example, all quest progress and states are treated, more or less, as inventory items in-game, and as such each of them tends to have their own mouse-over description, potentially in addition to further text specifically associated with your progress through the quest. Seeking the Name is of course, no different – only its quality description is simply "Why? In God's name, why? What can you possibly hope to gain? Stop now. Before it's too late."
(In case you were wondering – no, things do not get better from there, in terms of the stridency of the warnings OR the events they warn about. Progress in the quest requires you to – repeatedly, deliberately, tediously – set your hard-earned game progress on fire, destroy what you have built, and ignore all warnings or inducements to the contrary. Success in the quest leads to – as far as I can tell – the only way in the game to render your character no longer playable. They weren't kidding.)
Hopefully the Arsenal turns out better for Durmin et al.! (Then again, it would be pretty hard for them to go worse.)
Oh! The story part where they’re describing how Ejika can “sacrifice” himself? That’s basically how it works when you select his path in the previous story bits! He seems to sacrifice himself prior, then clearing BA means he returns after all of that. Sneaky, he is!
I have to ask: is there any of these Baldesion's Arsenal experts who jjust spends their time hinding in the corner of a tavern until players come up to them and ask for help with "the Eureka raid"?
23:52 Just to expand on this a little bit for non-MMO players and to nerd out about dungeon design a bit:
"Hugging the wall" is a classic MMO tactic that you do not see a lot of in MMO's nowadays due to more accessible (and, frankly, better) dungeon design.
Yes, it is just "running forward by putting the most distance between you and enemies so they don't attack you" so it's not the most… elaborate strategy, but I have to stress how common this was in dungeons in old MMO's, even into World of Warcraft and its first few expansions (my frame of reference mostly).
There are parts of dungeons even in low level dungeons in WoW where you had to time it exactly right when you ran past a room of enemies or you would all die and need to walk back to the dungeon entrance. There was no charging in and killing everything or even just picking one off and cc'ing (crowd control, rendering an enemy useless for a short period so they don't attack) the rest unless you were very well organized or overleveled for that dungeon. There simply were enemies you were expected not to be able to fight and beat, but sneak around.
In most MMOs I've played nowadays, every challenge is overcome by the main language of the game: usually hitting things hard until they are dead.
And that's fine!
Again, I think the dungeon experience is a lot more smoother and creates less friction between players when everyone isn't expected to perform the skills of "precise reading of invisible aggro radiuses and timing your movement perfectly on a 300ms ping connection". MMO designers have found other ways to make those jaunts between bosses more engaging.
Some MMO dungeons give you the option to bite off more than you can chew, pulling group after group, but reward you by getting through the dungeon faster and a feeling of accomplishment by doing that big pull (especially as a healer or tank). In fact, that's the highlight of [Insert Spoilerific Shadowbringers Dungeon Name Here] for a lot of people.
Another big one XIV uses is using dungeons as *spectacle*. You already see this a bit in Stormblood dungeons. Hells' Lid, the dungeon before the Four Lords trial series, starts off in this huge volcano, having the players jump into where the lava was and fighting enemies in there and then transitioning to this hidden temple underneath. I won't spoil anything, but expect XIV to lean into this spectacle even farther going forward.
The last trick a lot of MMOs spice up dungeons with is making them more important to the story. To bring up Hells' Lid again, you weren't just going through that dungeon to beat a cool dungeon, but going through and finding the Auspices and their temple at the very end of it. Discovering of that place in the dungeon lead directly into the rest of the story for the trial series. And when you pull that trick a lot, you get a playerbase that is paying way more attention to the small details in your dungeons because who knows what part of it might come back into the story later.
So, yeah, dungeons and raids serve a very different purpose in modern MMO's than early MMO's. End rant.
37:25 literal jaw on the floor at how unintuitive this mechanic is. As a player, it makes me fear what XIV designers are capable of… and as a game dev admire them for their cruelty.
Wowie, that raid sounds so mean! And very fitting that Ozma would be at the end
Playfriends, welcome to the Baldesion Arsenal. This is your spoiler free lore comment!
Baldesion Arsenal is the largest raid (or raid like thing) currently in FFXIV. Up to 56 players may enter a dungeon with invisible traps (detectable via Logos Actions), hard hitting bosses, and a fight that occurs OUTSIDE THE RAID that is essential to continuing inside the raid.
5:00 – This is the particularly punishing bit of Baldesion Arsenal. The only methods of being revived are the Logos actions "Spirit of the Remembered" (70% chance to auto raise) or "Sacrifice L" (Healer only, Raises target player, but casts an unclearable Doom on you, killing you a short time later). Well, there is a third: Healer Limit Break 3 during combat. As a result, you can end up with a dwindling party as you venture through the duty. Every time someone dies, the healers will have to take a 30% chance that raising them using these actions might result your party losing a healer. With good RNG, another healer should be able to get them up. It is possible to get very bad RNG and lose two healers on top of the original death.
Notably, "you cannot be revived" is a mechanic that used to be more prevalent in the game. Titan's Landslide attack, which pushes anyone caught in it off the platform, used to also prevent players killed by it from reviving. If you fell off the platform, your party had to continue without you. You get to watch the rest of your team either accomplish the fight without your contribution, or watch as they eventually die. Fortunately, this mechanic is slowly being phased out as it's seen as overly punishing and not fun. Other fights where this "fall off the platform and no revive" mechanic showed up were in Leviathan, Bismark, and Ravana.
6:15 – Dan commenting that he doesn't need the Aetheric Stabilizer kinda glosses over this step. You can buy one two ways: 100 crystals from each of the three previous zones, which you have to grind for/ensure you got them during the progression grind (Durmin has these), or exchanging for a Hydatos crystal (from local FATEs), a Sharlyan Oil (random reward from lockboxes), and an Aetherially Conductive Plate (reward in the treasure chest of a very special FATE where you follow a bunny and try not to die from monsters as the bunny keeps running away from you). As Dan will explain, it's only really important if you want to guarantee your place in the raid, as the portals will allow you to enter later if you don't have it.
20:54 – Art and Owain are not a Final Fantasy reference, but references to Acallam na Senórach, an Irish epic poem and a central part of the Fenian Cycle. The really confusing thing here is that in Acallam na Senórach they are called Art and Eógan, with Owain being a Welsh equivalent. Art and Eógan are brothers who wield the spears In Órlasrach 'the Gold-Flaming' and In Muinderg 'the Red-Necked', given to them by the legendary Fionn Mac Cumhaill. The brothers repel an attack on Fionn by sons of the late King of Lochlann at the expense of the men under their command and their own lives.
26:39 – Raiden is the Japanese god of thunder, lighting, and storms in the Shinto tradition. But that's not what this boss is actually a reference to (although the localization is evoking the thunder god). This depiction of Raiden, along with its slightly odd Japanese name, seems to be a reference to FF6's Raiden, who comes from the Odin magicite. As a result, this boss is mostly just the horseman Odin! This is very obvious by the use of the Zantetsuken attacks, which is associated with Odin (Zantetsuken is usually a fatal move if it connects). Odin is the Allfather of Norse Mythology, and does usually have the horse Sleipnir as his mount (Sleipnir usually has 8 legs). How Odin came to the Final Fantasy series as a mounted knight with a sword instead of his Gungir spear is confusing, but he dates back to FF3. Odin is in FFXIV as an optional level 50 trial and as a FATE, with the FATE having the unusual aspect that Odin is actually depicted as the player who landed the killing blow on the last time the FATE appeared (the player's name even shows up as a subtitle of Odin!). The lore of this is that Odin is not actually the Primal: it's the blade Zantetsuken, which then tempers those who wield it into becoming the next Odin.
41:48 – The FATE boss that Dan is talking about is named Tristitia, Latin for sadness.
45:49 – I needed some help for this boss's lore, and Playfriend JunJun was there to recue me! Absolute Virtue was a Notorious Monster superboss from FFXI, part of Chains of Promathia expansion's end. Players had a heck of a time figuring out how to kill the thing, with some reporting a marathon sessions running into double digit hours (Absolute Virtue has the spell Benediction, which recovers most if its HP!). Three years after its initial release, SE responded by releasing a video of the dev team defeating Absolute Virtue… but the video had cuts and edits because they wanted to keep some mechanics a mystery for players to discover. This meant the video was significantly less helpful than expected. Eventually players developed some specific methods that burned it down using brute force, which the devs subsequently nerfed because it was not the tactic that was intended. Players would then find new tactics, some of which were also not the devs intention, and the nerfs would come again. Fun bit of trivia: Absolute Virtue is a dragoon! You can tell this by some of its Jump moves.
53:34 – And here it is. Proto Ozma. If you thought the boss in the Shadows of Mhach storyline didn't live up to its FF9 namesake, Baldesion Arsenal is here to pick up the slack. Ozma was a FF9 superboss which was also known to be an extremely difficult death ORB. The boss is named after one of the characters from L Frank Baum's Oz novels. Dan does an ample job explaining just how terrifying this ORB is, but the greatest depiction of its terror is that Ozma is the symbol of Baldesion Arsenal. Completing this questline gives the Ozma mount, which you might have seen members of CAFE and the DTC sporting at the start of this episode. The Ozma mount is ultimate badge of having cleared Baldesion Arsenal, and the envy of many players.
1:01:50 – Oof. Some poor soul over at C is heading back to Kansas.
1:12:22 – My understanding of Ejika's route is that he initiates his sacrifice at the end of the last episode. Thus, Baldesion Arsenal is an attempt to prevent the weapons from absorbing the aether from Eureka.
1:14:15 – Both storylines end with this outcome.
And that's it! The most grueling storyline in FFXIV!
Congratulations everyone! I really enjoyed this stretch of the series and the work was evident and appreciated!
(Shout out to Chaos's BA group, Late Night!)
yaaay! i've never done the baldesion arsenal since it seemed too scary, but after watching this i think i might try it someday!
Hey Dan- really like to thank you for going through this Eureka content. I mean, I have it unlocked myself, but… damn, it’s SO long and SO grindy, and that’s even before… all of this. I can’t say I won’t do it, they say Dawntrail will drop next summer, and it’s not going to take me that long to get through the MSQ… but just in case I don’t, I now know what happens, behind this particularly high gameplay wall 😊
Thanks also for your discussion on the MMOs of eld, and the reasons why some people might actually miss them/keep up the tradition. Newer MMOs might be more accessible, but not everyone looks for that, and inaccessibility does in fact breed community. (As Fromsoft and Yoko Taro probe whenever they release a game…😅)
54:35 We did it everyone: we have finally hit the point where we have diagrams for raid mechanics in the Story Mode playthrough.
Love to see it. Literally hooting and hollering as soon as this popped up on screen.
I fully understand the fear and stress in Dan's voice. It's stressful enough being in a raid the first time. It's even worse when its one as punishing as Baldesion Arsenal. It's worse by another nth degree when you are recording AND commentating on top of that.
Bravo to Dan for a job well done!
1:18:15 I heard The Grand Duchy of Jeuno playing and for a second wondered if I'd left FFXI running in the background.
Happy to have been able to help this happen!
I had a blast helping out with this, and love that people enjoyed it. ❤❤❤❤❤
I love this! I wish I had a reason to go back to BA because the coordination and organisation required is something I really enjoyed.
DAN WINS!
That was a ton of fun to help durmin run through
16:40 that scrolling 'logos logos logos anxiety logos' is very good 😂
To anyone that wants this "throw yourself at stuff, learn the mechanics, share information and that way figure out how stuff works" back in your games, I recommend Path of Exile. It's not an MMO, it's a diablo-like, and it's very intimidating for new players, but if you like figuring stuff out, there always beings some mechanic you don't understand and community coming together to deconstruct new stuff, boy is it a good game for that.
I refused to go into Eureka for the longest time just because it's such a huge grind. I especially had no interest in Baldesion Arsenal as being like Super Extreme difficulty. But then I found out you get an Ozma Mount for clearing it. Final Fantasy IX is my favorite game in the series. I had to do it.
Baldesion Arsenal is both my proudest XIV achievement and the most horribly stressful thing I've ever done and I never want to go in there again.
I'm picturing everyone in the raid jumping in front of attacks for Durmin, setting off traps he's about to wander into, and just doing a whole 'Baby's day out" routine, while he just calmly wanders through the place giving us the guided tour.
Yeah, "Absolute Virtue" was said and I was like. wait. isn't that the nigh impossible FF11 boss? (no personal experience with it, just once was listening to a compilation of infamously hard bosses. pretty sure three of them were FF and two of those have now appeared in this series, the other one being Yiazmat)
I do enjoy that you're showing this off, Dan! I've decided I might try poking at Eureka for fun, but I feel Baldesion Arsenal is beyond me. Perhaps once I am way further in ff14 (currently I've just reached the azim steppe, by which I mean I am procrastinating and finishing my neglected job quests because I've gotten all my frequently played jobs to 70 already)
"…so were you born with that redwood up your arse Ejika or did you put it there yourself?'
I like that even Dan is so not infused to see Ojika alive.
Thanks for showing this to everyone… I played FF14 for 5 years and never did the Eureka stuff. It did not look as hard as I thought it would be.
19:06 i find it odd for Playframe to try to do subliminal messaging? Especially as a screen flash.
I want people to know that the theme for this final boss fight is called "Anxiety". I barely remember what my winning fight was like except that I lucked out with two very lucky revives going off, and one was my own fault as I walked off the edge of the platform like a lemming. :'D
People who want to try the arsenal themselves, there's a group called the CAFE that I ran it with who have guides to help people traverse it. 10/10 do recommend them. I made it through only thanks to them.
Edit lol dan called them out too haha. But theyre good folk.
by now ff14 even puts up one of those "click yes to agree" before your first dungeon. and ofc the ones you got before entering eureka and before entering the ShB equivalent of eureka
@6:40 Durmin looks like he's in one of those snap interviews with stage actors right before they go on stage, where the makeup dept is dressing them up while they answer questions.
@9:02 Yowza, that timing is tight.
Man, you can feel the FFXI-style trepidation from Durmin & co's utter abundance of caution while progressing.
BTW, for anyone who's interested in the game but blinded by all the effects, you can reduce the visibility of effects and reduce the size of the summons in the options. Also, there are usually monthly guided tours through BA if you're up for the challenge (you masochist, you), just ask around on your DataCentre.
1:16:56 "You've gotta be our most tsundere friend yet"
well, its literally in his last name <.<
1:54 Wow, never seen something like that in 14.
2:15 Unless it's Warframe. They implemented all kinds of "Type CONFIRM to proceed"… and people still don't understand or something.
3:35 I'm sorry HOW MANY!?
42:02 I'm sorry, but please tell me "the soup team" is the avatar. Otherwise, this makes no sense.
1:08:45 What a peculiar achievement name.
1:09:32 People just leaping off the platform is very amusing.
1:11:51 I mean, that's still super risky, given what happened to Y'shtola and Thancred.
1:15:01 Small? Really? When Y'shtola used Flow it was a huge deal.
1:19:24 Of course one would be Fuyu. Wouldn't be right if it wasn't so.
You cant ALL leave BA to take care of the Soup FATE; only 8 portals spawn after a kill. Typically, those slots go to anyone who didn't get the Ovni buff proc (we had 2 in this run) who signed up for the raid, followed by anyone else. Since we did BA on Dynamis (to not conflict with a planned run on Crystal) meant we couldn't rely on outsiders for the FATE, so four left, and six re-entered.
I'd like to say that Hyperion has the most refined methods for doing it. Folks in the Helplines could get a reasonably smart ROCK to pass it these days. The downside is it asks WAY more of the experts running it. Other servers have produced methods that ask more from each person, but are easier to run and organize.
"Seen everything" … and then acceleration bomb hit… the most dangerous mechanic.
I have to be honest, the slow grind of running around Euraka killing random mobs doesn't sound super appealing to me. I don't have that much time for gaming, so I try to only do stuff I really enjoy. But. But this raid. This looks AWESOME. Stressful? Sure. But so rewarding! I imagine it's a great feeling, when almost 60 ppl come together to pull this of!!
…maybe I have to look into Eureka (and my own DCs CAFE equivalent) after all.