Board 8 > Bout to start ff14 stormblood (spoilers as i go)

(+) Yeah! (+)

oh yeah dude that song is killer. soken is definitely a worthy successor to nobuo

also

just now realizing kaian = cyan

honestly i played this side by side with ff16, and the villains in stormblood are just cooler. zenos and yotsuyu > barnabas and kupka.

actually just about all of the political war drama stuff is cooler in stormblood lol

and ya know what? as an old skool ff fan, the "true spirit" of this series lives on in ff14. straight up.

Zenos is very divisive, though I think people have warmed on him somewhat as time has gone by and landed more on the appreciation side.
Yotsuyu is great though.

Xiahou_Shake posted...

Stormblood is great - not remotely as great as the expansions sandwiching it, but it's still good stuff. Definitely underrated, or at least conversation and rankings tends to make people think it's far less good than it actually is. For whatever it's worth, it's also the expansion where the gameplay starts to be actually cool and fun, at least as someone who played through all of FF14 during ShB.

Can you elaborate on what stormblood did to fix the gameplay? I keep hearing this from multiple sources. Do you mean like interesting new mechanics like catching Susanos sword?

EDIT: to clarify, its hard for me to get a feel for what each expansion was doing right or wrong at time of release. Everythings been patched so much across the board. Like, my experience with a realm reborn was far different from people who experienced it at the time it was originally released for example

I always get all the player commendations just because i have a funny looking character

TomNook7 posted...

Can you elaborate on what stormblood did to fix the gameplay? I keep hearing this from multiple sources. Do you mean like interesting new mechanics like catching Susanos sword?

Stormblood was the start of them streamlining a lot of job mechanics, something they've continued to iterate on in each expansion. Mechanically, Stormblood at release was probably the sweet spot between jobs being complexity and simplicity. There used to be useless or poorly designed stats that no longer exist (accuracy, for example, you could miss enemies unless you had enough, was deleted in Stormblood). Red Mage and Samurai were both well received new jobs. And yeah, the fight design has that added flair you're talking about because they spent the back half of Heavensward learning a lot of lessons, and Stormblood gets to be the first expansion where they can implement all of them from the beginning. If you compare the raid fights between it and Heavensward (where it took them two tiers to figure out what they were doing), you'll see what I mean. Or even specifically within Heavensward - in the Warring Triad questline there's one fight where you can fall off a platform and you're just fucking dead forever, Titan-style. The fight after that is where they changed that so your corpse can be revived, and that's affected every fight going forward (and maybe they've patched those old fights, idk).

Mechanically there weren't a lot of problems except they really fucked up a couple of job rebalances at release. Besides that the game had already been a well-oiled machine since 3.4. The problems people have with Stormblood is pretty much all the story.

Thats actually very insightful, thanks! Im the kind of guy who cares about gameplay far more than story, so thats very interesting. I might end up being the rare outlier who enjoys stormblood more than heavensward. Even something simple like bardams mettle felt way more involved than most the shit ive previously encountered

Do you do any of the side content? The 24-man raids in Stormblood are peak FF14 gameplay

I do side content here and there. My wife generally guides me on what's worth doing. I'll ask her about the 24 man raids and get back to you. I definitely wanna do the FFT, Nier, and Monster Hunter stuff for sure.

I fought Sephirot the other day. The music was lit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9f44iJftVM&ab_channel=hungrychad

It also totally copies Powerman 5000, which I aint even mad at lmao:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsV500W4BHU&ab_channel=Powerman5000VEVO

Remember that Stormblood was still when we had the TP/MP split, and certain class rotations weren't based on their cooldowns but rather their regeneration windows for these. For instance, Bard having no use for MP except for "Foe Requiem" which gave every enemy nearby it a Vulnerability Up debuff.

The Stormblood 24-mans are also a really good example of how divisive the expac was.

First of all the story is terrible. Not a big deal, it's just a transparent excuse to have an Ivalice crossover, but it was extremely boring.

But the fights themselves are pretty spectacular. Only thing is...they made them too difficult for casual content. Especially the final tier which had to be nerfed multiple times. They're easier now due to gear and class changes, but at the time failed runs were very common. People would literally remove gear to make sure they didn't get them in roulette, and it was a huge pain for new people trying to complete them. So those also get plenty of hate even still.

Oh god and then there was Eureka. Do not even get people started on that

The disparity between the quality of the Stormblood Alliance Raids and the story around them is quite frankly unreal.

We're talking just skip all cutscenes here. It's beyond no value, it legitimately negative value. Ivalice, as a brand, is harmed by the existence of these cutscenes.

But the actual raids and music....so fucking good.

Isquen posted...

Remember that Stormblood was still when we had the TP/MP split, and certain class rotations weren't based on their cooldowns but rather their regeneration windows for these. For instance, Bard having no use for MP except for "Foe Requiem" which gave every enemy nearby it a Vulnerability Up debuff.

Yeah it was good. I miss Foe Requiem.

TomNook7 posted...

I do side content here and there.

Important: Have you done the Hildibrand quests?

JackMan posted...

Important: Have you done the Hildibrand quests?

im making my way through them slowly but surely. Theyre hilarious

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/7/AAK53VAAEtW_.jpg

it took a lot of work to get hauchefants card whew

Wow the nadaam was so cool

Azim Steppe >>> anything else in Stormblood. I love everything that happens there.

MacArrowny posted...

Azim Steppe >>> anything else in Stormblood. I love everything that happens there.

As far as Main Story content goes...yeah pretty much.

Yeah Azim Steppe was a real highlight for sure

TomNook7 posted...

Wow the nadaam was so cool

The Nadaam was so cool that the best Frontline uses it again. :)

GOSETSUUUU

He went down like a god damn BOSS

Perfect ending for Yotsuyu too

Lmao alphinaud: its a pleasure to once again see your smiling face, tataru. Less so yours, hancock

I love Alphinaud.

oh god THEY GOT KRILE

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/6/1/AAK53VAAEtxd.jpg

Zenos: just kill that little piglet so we can silence her lips until the moment i flay the fat from her body lmao

Oh shit, you've now reached where I'm at in Stormblood.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/9/AAK53VAAEt_9.jpg

triple triad players know the struggle.

my brain is fried from trying to do plus combos with -2's and shit. computer can just automatically do any plus combo because theyre god. AND you gotta use the shittiest deck possible to get the lowest numbers possible

all for ysayle's card which has less than 7% chance of popping up. took me like a whole hour.

i dont even feel like a person anymore

oh yeah and i just beat snake goddess. cool fight.

Lakshmi's theme, much like a lot of FF14 boss music, is a banger

it really was

also

i fought like 20 extreme shivas and still havent gotten the card

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/9/6/AAK53VAAEuAE.jpg

just kind of having an existential crisis wondering what im doing with my life

Triple Triad

Not even once

When you get it with roulette it sucks, but otherwise reverse actually makes things easier because you can easily make a great reverse deck with your worst cards (and the opponents are like never optimized for reverse)!

Triple triad yuck

Doman Mahjong yes

Gonna try to grind through the msq this weekend

RIP Conrad

To be fair to the guy he WAS raising death flags left and right.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/5/7/AAK53VAAEujZ.jpg

Gyr Abania is the dullest designed location in FFXIV.

Aight getting the wolf guys to turn against the empire was a pretty cool moment. The fight with hakuro whitefang was like surprisingly badass out of nowhere. Triumph is such a great boss theme

And then suddenly hien and the domans show up to help with our siege and theres a giant aerial battle

And now the next mission is just called Stormblood aw shit

TomNook7 posted...

And now the next mission is just called Stormblood aw shit

Wellp.

aight sorry ive been busy and havent had time to post

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/7/8/AAK53VAAEuuq.jpg

who are the people who dont like zenos? this guy is the shit

and then lyse was like "all this meaningless death and destruction... just so you could feel something?"

and then when he went to kill himself i like that alphinaud was like "COWARD!!" alphinaud like FACE ME LIKE A MAN

I really think Stormblood is pretty damn great. I liked it about as much as Heavensward, even though I know I'm in the minority on that one. Gonna play through patch before i add it to my FF ranking tho

Personally I think Zenos is Vegeta except without all the stuff that makes Vegeta an interesting, compelling character, but to each their own I guess.

No fuckin way THEYRE BOTH STILL ALIVE??

unfortunately

Radix posted...

unfortunately

Not_an_Owl posted...

Personally I think Zenos is Vegeta except without all the stuff that makes Vegeta an interesting, compelling character, but to each their own I guess.

Lol what are these takes on the stormblood villains? Maybe these characters lack a super amount of depth, but theyre still a lot of fun - which is more than you can say about most ff villains

Zenos is basically the antithesis of a fun villain. Hes about the most boring one I can possibly think of.

I'm with Nook, Zenos is fun! (Although I'm generally a big fan of the archetype 'evil because bored')

I love Zenos and Yotsuyu. What I never got was the Fordola hype.

BK_Sheikah00 posted...

I love Zenos and Yotsuyu. What I never got was the Fordola hype.

Fordola is good too, but yeah, not as cool as the others. I like that her and Yotsu are both still alive which means theyre either gonna get redemption arcs, or become recurring antagonists. Both exciting

I find Zenos and Yotsuyu to both be incredibly boring, one-note characters. Fordola's got a bit more going for her than those two. Give me someone like Sadu if you want a character obsessed with fighting. She's got a lot more depth and a much better sense of humor.