Eorzean Update
Eorzean Update is a behind the scenes discussion podcast about Final Fantasy XIV Online, hosted by the voidsent creatures Violet Cathdraig and Houka Oza.
Two veteran Final Fantasy XIV players breakdown the new patches, discuss their experiences with the content and chat all about what keeps them playing after all these years.
Eorzean Update
UMAD Bro?! Time to talk Ultimate Clown Sh*t!
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It's been one month since the spectacular clear on 6-7-26 (6-7 lol) of the Dancing Mad Ultimate. Violet and Houka go over the win, the world race and what it's like to be in the Ultimate clear mines with special guests Coach Jay and Pimpy Shortstocking.
Hello and welcome to the Aorsian update! My name is Violet Cathed, a mildly feral ancient one.
SPEAKER_01Don't worry, I've had my shots at Void Clinic, and I'll be your host along with Hoka, a no longer a LSN, but now a Makote with a taste of the Ruby Red with behind the scene info of all things Final Fantasy XIV. But in this case, we're gonna be talking about the um Ultimate that came out and was recently beat, and I'm pretty sure more team has beaten it so far.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. But uh it's been a month since the world for first race for the Dancing Mad Ultimate, which came out in 7.51. And there's so much to talk about. To give us perspective and a little insight, we've invited two current tier ultimate raiders to join us Jay, aka Destiny Roads, and Pimpy uh Shortstalk. Thanks for joining us. Please tell us a little bit about yourselves and how long you've been ultimate raiding.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, hi everyone. Uh my name is Pimpy Shortstalking. I'm a mentor from Baumung who's been raiding since 2.0. Uh I have been ultimate raiding since right before Dawn Trail and a little bit before that. Like uh just right before the expansion came out.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and I'm Jay. I go by Destiny Roads in Final Fantasy XIV. I started around Shadowbringers, uh, around like 5.3, right before they called off all the MSQ. I was doing lots of raid content, lots of minimum items, no echo. And then I started getting dipping my toes into ultimate raiding uh a couple years after that. I've done all of them except for the mega protocol and am happily raiding UMAD right now.
SPEAKER_03That's fantastic. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I like uh I got to have the joy of uh in the HJP server, which both of y'all are are um within as well. So we're we're all in the same community. Uh Jay actually um sat in voice chat and helped like talk to us who maybe are only occasional ultimate raiders. Like I've tried my hand at it a couple of times, no clears. Um, and I've basically decided that for me personally, as much as I love watching them, I it's like watching a marathon. It's or it's like, you know, I'm fine with the 2Ks uh or the 5Ks, but I don't know if I could handle a marathon. Marathon's a lot. Um so but watching this was really fascinating, especially since it was really the biggest spectator type event for an ultimate that has kind of come down the pipe. I know that uh Frosty from Mog Talk and his entire cavalcade of streamers did an amazing job of putting together an incredible production um showing it off. And I watched that fairly like strictly for the what five days it went because it started on uh Tuesday morning, 6 a.m. my time, 3 a.m. uh pacific, for like the minute it dropped, like the everything started.
SPEAKER_01Pretty much. Uh I remember waking up and I was already getting like some updates uh from you and everything about what was going on. And I'm like, I haven't had my coffee yet. Can we wait?
SPEAKER_03So how soon after after it dropped that uh Pimpy did you or or and Jay, how how quickly did y'all get into it and actually start your prog?
SPEAKER_00Uh for me, uh, I went in on Tuesday. I just went into Party Finder and I jumped in. Um wow. And then we just started learning. I just started learning in Party Finder. But my group that I'm with, uh, we started on the following Monday um because there were two people in my group that are part of my static from before, but they skipped this raid tier. So we spent like a week just like clearing the raid tier and gearing them up. Um so we had to we had to gear up two other people before we could step in as a group.
SPEAKER_03Fair enough, fair enough.
SPEAKER_00So I so I just did it in PF for the first week.
SPEAKER_03Um so you decided to be like the the raid mentor, you know, get in as soon as possible and learn as much as you could.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, I mean uh the strats have changed drastically. So uh this was before they knew there was other stuff. So uh the strats that I had learned that first week were good enough to get us going, but not uh they have changed so much at that point, and it doesn't matter anymore.
SPEAKER_03How about you, Jay?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean I wasn't able to get in until that evening with my static group, but I think like everybody else, when I woke up in the morning, the first thing I did when getting ready, brushing my teeth, is check out the stream, see where teams are at. Has anybody managed to beat phase one and get into phase two? So there was definitely an electricity about that first day, and uh it took me all my willpower to not jump into Party Finder because I knew I had to save my first couple pulls with my group that evening.
SPEAKER_03Nice. Yeah, I I will admit this one has been really electric. Like I was actually around for top. I remember the like all of the everything that happened with that, but I did I wasn't into raiding at the time. I wasn't a raider, and I had kind of decided that I was putting that off for a while. So while I got a lot of it filtering through the community, it wasn't something that I was like directly involved in. But I this time around, like I get the excitement, I get it. It's like it's like having a favorite sports team, you know, and especially now that there's been so much production value put into the streaming side of it, it really is like being able to go to Raider Olympics and watch your favorite teams.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, for sure. I think that especially because we only get two of these maximum per expansion. And I think I really encourage people whenever the next one comes out, if you're not really into this kind of thing, just you know, watch the charity stream. They do such a good job of breaking things down, especially on that first day. And on that first day, nobody has any idea what's happening, right? We might know what phase one and phase two are gonna be, but there's really this excitement in the air when people hit that third and fourth phases and we find out exactly what those bosses are gonna be. It it's it's really magical. It really is.
SPEAKER_03I it it really feels like this one is also a really good one to like have story-wise, even as as a a like break open to the community as like almost a viewership type event, because Kafka is such a character. Like, in case y'all haven't gotten the the alert, I'll go ahead and I'll put it out verbally right now. There will be spoilers for this fight. Story-wise, as well as for the mechanics and everything, we're just gonna talk about everything. And if that's not something you want to spoil yourself on, if you're a blind raider wanting to hold yourself back, now is your exit. Go ahead and hit the off-ramp. We will absolutely not hold it against you. But Kefka and some of the twists and turns that they added in to the fight for the story. Ooh. Ooh. Okay, so before we get into all of that, where are y'all in your own prog?
SPEAKER_01Uh for me. Oh, go for it. Oh no, uh, I was about to say, I'm like, I haven't even started at all. Like, I've seen like I've seen a good I've seen like a good majority of phase one and phase two, but like uh with the Buccaneers and whatnot, we're still dealing with U. So uh it might be years until we might be tackled Kafka at this point.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, with uh with my group, we are uh as of last night, we've had a well, we've already had a a fake clear. Uh oh no, and then we've done maybe another one fake clear outside of that, but okay, we're just trying to clean up phase two so we can go into phase three. And we had a couple of close calls last night. I think we were like 0.3% or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's the worst.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's just uh optimizing our damage and figuring out getting through Forsaken cleanly, which we could talk about later.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think we'll probably have a lot to say about Forsaken. That's for sure. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Forsaken was the first like big sticking point for even the the people who did clear it in that that five-day period, which um be and so what is it? And I I'm gonna be perfectly honest. Like, I've seen the mechanic, but I do not understand what I'm looking at. This is this is like me being excited to go to a football game, but I'm not calling those shots. Like, I'm telling nobody about playing.
SPEAKER_05I can give you I can give you a brief overview of it. So that would be great. The kind of gist of Forsaken is that at the very beginning of the mechanic, you're going to have a little uh indicator icon above the top of your head. And this will be either uh a a cone, uh a stack, uh small AoE, or that's it, right? And right during the mechanic, Kefka is gonna spawn eight tower, eight sets of two towers each. Um and everybody is also going to get four of this debuff. Whenever you uh step into a tower and soak the tower hit, um, your debuff will go down, and then whatever marker indicator you had on top of your head will activate. So if you had a stack marker and then you walk into the tower as it's exploding, your stack marker will go off and you need to have that stacked with a couple two other people. Because these are all like three-person stacks. So um during that, after you get your stack, whenever you soak a tower, you also get a new uh indicator on top of your head.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So the kind of the the overall goal of this in really kind of a high level is for everybody to soak four towers at some point over this mechanic. Uh, everybody to aim and position their indicators in a way that doesn't murder other people. Right. And on top of all of that, there's a couple of other wrinkles that uh make this really, really difficult. So um, for instance, after every second, after every even tower, uh Kevka's uh clones will shoot out and hit um four of the closest people to Kefka. And then after that even set of tower, depending on the boss cast, um they're either those clones are going to target somebody at random and then either kick in front of them or kick behind them. So they're gonna do this huge half room cleave. So you also have to position your four people in a way that they can kind of bait clones in a specific way, and then the entire party has to bait them uh so they're not kicking the rest of the tower. Um there's a lot of kind of other really particular nuances to that, but I would say that's forsaken in a really, really brief nutshell.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05It really is something that the first time you see it and the kind of few subsequent times you see it on somebody else's stream, you're gonna be like, I really don't know what's happening. And it is visually overwhelming. Yeah, visually. It's super visually overwhelming.
SPEAKER_01Visually, you just explaining it in my head.
SPEAKER_05I don't know what this kind of might spoil some things a little bit later, but I would say I think Forsaken is an incredibly well-designed mechanic. And part of what makes it really awesome is that if you're somebody on the bleeding edge doing this race for World First, there's a ton of different ways that you can solve this mechanic, depending on who goes into which towers, which indicators are going into which towers, which kind of priorities you have for who flexes for who, who adjusts for who, kind of where you put these positions. And if you look at all the different world-first racing teams, they all have these vastly different strategies. You know, I've seen a lot of strategies where two cones will point towards each other and it makes like this kind of diamond formation, which if you've done this fight in party finder, you'll know that that's absolutely not how you solve that mechanic. No. But yeah, not at all. But I think one of the beautiful things is that we have this kind of party finder mechan uh solution that everybody can get on board of, and that even if you're not somebody who is on this cutting edge, you still have this hyper precise, really kind of law mechanic that is super challenging and it's it's it's a blast to do. It's super fun to do, and I think we can all just counter lucky stars that this is a phase two mechanic and not a phase four mechanic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think if it was a I think if it was a mechanic in a much much later phase of the fight, it would be extremely frustrating to prog. Uh it it I even even with how well designed I think it is, progging it would be it wouldn't be fun. I don't think it would be fun. Uh, just because of how demanding it is and having it early on. Phase one's kind of whatever at this point. Um and since phase two is mostly Forsaken and then another whatever mechanic, it's uh well, at least for non-tanks, uh it um it's it's uh I think it's a good spot for it. But if if I agree, if it was later on, it'd be yeah.
SPEAKER_03One of the things that I've always found really interesting about the game design, especially for the fight design for Final Fantasy XIV, is because it is built around this whole like you can try it again and again and again, it has to be this very sort of linear model, right? But that means that you also have to keep in mind, like the human body can only and mind can only take so much in a period of time, um, beyond having to also code for people who are literally set up in their computers across the world, all connecting into the same servers, and then having to balance all of that ping and all of that you know connectivity and different types of hardware and so on and so forth. For for you to have a fight design that's like really innovative and really fresh, but also still kind of follows this linear type design, that that feels like a massive, massive challenge. Like, how do you feel like this ultimate is kind of reaching that point? Like, is it S tier? Is it is it a tier? Is it is it B tier? Like, where are I know a lot of people have kind of put it all over the board?
SPEAKER_00Um I have so I've again I've only been up to phase two. Uh I've looked at phase three and I'm scared. Uh I heal, I I heal, by the way. I'm a I'm uh I'm a healer main, so I'm I'm healing this ultimate, and um it's just phase three is not something I'm looking forward to, but uh but we'll see what it is. What do they make of that? But my but my friend who has seen like phase five in rage a few times, um he and I generally agree on fights in this game, and he said they cooked, so I'm just gonna go with they cooked, uh based on what I based on what I've seen and what he said.
SPEAKER_03I'm just gonna say they could older members of our audience they cooked means it's S tier.
SPEAKER_05No. Yeah, I I think that there's a lot of stuff to really like about UMad. I think that when everything is kind of said and done, there'll be a lot of positive that positive that it's remembered for. I think that from a spectator standpoint, the kind of fake out on phase one, where if you solve some mechanics uh incorrect quote unquote incorrectly, you don't get to pass phase two later. That was a really cool and wonderful surprise to to see on on that uh visually.
SPEAKER_03That was as a spectator such a good. I mean, I'm gonna be so for real. That was I remember when that happened on stream. I was watching, I was just like, what, what, what? They cleared it this oh fake out.
SPEAKER_05And everybody was sharing the clips with with everybody else, everybody was talking about it. I think that as a spectator, that was the coolest thing we've ever seen in Ultimate since DSR's rewind. You know, that was another kind of big moment that everybody was sharing around. And I think that a lot of the mechanics are gonna be really fondly remembered upon. I think, like I said, I think Forsaken is a great mechanic. I think that the healer mechanics in phase three are are really are really cool and really interesting. I think that even kind of phase four, there's a lot of really cool and interesting stuff stuff to do. I do kind of have some reservations about some of the other stuff surrounding the the fight that maybe might not hold up well kind of down the line. So, I mean, even take the the fake clear, right? As cool as it was to see it during the race race to world first, nobody's really gonna see that too much when they're proging, right? I mean, I don't think you said that they got they got a couple of these fake clears, um, but I mean my group, we haven't we hadn't even seen the fake clear once. And I think that it was a really fun surprise, but not something that's super applicable to the vast majority of people that are that are doing the fight.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, as someone on the stream mentioned, they're like, the reason why for uh the one of the things that is good about EMED or and it was mentioned several times, is that it's a good mix of um just pure out and out damage fight design versus puzzle fight design. But any fight that's too much of one or the other starts to have some pretty extreme problems. For instance, UWU is a great beginner ultimate because it is a puzzle ultimate for the most part. And once a puzzle is solved, it's solved. So at that point, it becomes much easier to have a follow the buttons one, two, three sort of setup to be able to learn how to do it, versus having to come in and know that you have to be top of your game on your DPS, and you also have to be able to visually solve all the puzzles as they come through.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_03That adds more complication. So um I was gonna ask, like, what are your your feelings like as someone who's proging it though? Because I I was wondering how often that was gonna show up, like once you had the pop problem, like the puzzle solved, how how often the fake clear was gonna show up? Is that more of an indicator if someone just like failed a mechanic or you didn't get the the um like positioning correct? What does that indicate for you for your team that you might need to work on?
SPEAKER_00Uh so for like for my group, uh so we only raid uh I say only, but we raid um seven and a half hours a week. It's like so two and a half hours, three days uh a week. So we're relatively casual in in that sense. Um so when we got to phase two, even if we didn't solve the puzzle or like someone died or we had a damage down or whatever, we just kept going into phase two to practice Forsaken. Uh, because that was like we weren't we so we weren't really worried about our damage or solving the puzzle at that point. We're just trying to get more consistent um because it's all about consistency when you raid in 14. So we were just trying to get more consistent on Forsaken, and so the two times we've fate cleared was can we be for persistent or can we be consistent in Forsaken? And can we dish out the damage that is required to push to phase three um with or without an LB, preferably without, because we need it later. But um, I don't think like like Jay said, I don't think we're gonna see um phase two fake clear uh anymore. Um we should we should just be if we mess up the puzzle, we'll probably just either if we feel like we need to practice Forsaken more, we'll practice Forsaken and then wipe and then or we'll Um just continue on and start over.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I would say kind of one of the other factors that attributes not seeing too many fake clears is just because when you're starting out on phase one, there's a lot of different ways that you can kind of miss up the puzzles. You know, there you have to carry this uh two confetti debuffs throughout the entire phase. You have to place all of your arrow puddles in this correct uh in this correct formation, depending on how your group is doing it. And if any one of those things gets messed up, and that only sounded like three things, but it's a lot of things. It's a lot of things. And if you're for like for instance, if you're uh somebody who has this confetti debuff and you get a damage down, the damage downs in ultimates are way more punishing than they are in other content. You're talking about, you know, 90 or 95 or 99% damage down damage reduction. So to the point where the it's really much more beneficial for you to find some way for you to die and get hit by a tank buster or some AoE and get resed, but if you're the person with that confetti buff, all of a sudden you've lost it, right? Of course, it's so much better to clear the first phase and not have solved the puzzles. And that kind of leads into the other thing with you do feel like you need all this practice on phase two because Forsaken is such a hard mechanic, because it's so precise, the more reps you get, the better. And because of this huge disparity in the difficulty between phase one and phase two, by the time you're kind of getting to the point where your DPS is really good in phase two and phase two is really clean, you're not really messing up that much in phase one anymore. You're not really dropping these confetti debuffs, and you're not really forgetting where your arrows are because you've seen it so many times, and now all your brain drives in phase two.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'll admit when I first saw it, it was one of those things I was very worried about as far as like for proging's sake, because if this is something that sort of like uh like I've done U, so it's the only thing I have to compare to. So I forgive me for the constant U comparisons. But um there's uh a mechanic in U, obviously, where you have to awaken each one of the primals. And if you don't awaken, then um I know that in the initial discovery of like the puzzle mechanics and everything, uh, it took a while to clear just because people didn't realize until the end that you had to awaken from the beginning. And I was like, well, if this keeps coming up, then that's gonna make Prague like an absolute nightmare because it's a constant, like but what you're saying is that because they put that so early, then it becomes much easier to sort of like skip that that hidden, you know, thing. So it was almost like a visual Easter egg that was just put in for the rest of us to watch.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think uh I I think um something to note here is uh comparing those two is good. Um and then the because the cause the teams that got to or past Titan in in U, and then they got to the part where they all had to use LBs, but they couldn't, um they had to relearn how to do the the beginning of the fight again, and that's similar to what happened here is is they knew they had the confetti, uh the puddles glow in phase one, so you're like, well, what do we have to do with those? And then the arrows, you're like, well, because people were just putting the arrows on top of each other, or people were just having the person with the confetti run out, and then and then they were ignoring the puddles. But once people found out like how much damage the puddles did, um, and how much damage like the confetti did if you were all stacked together, uh you know, we kind of figured it out from there. Um so it wasn't as bad, I don't think, here as it might have been in U. Also, U was the second ultimate we had, so we didn't really have a lot to go off of. Um, you know, I I think the puzzle here was a lot less complex to solve, or didn't seem as complex to solve. I don't I of course I'm not on the cutting edge, right? So I don't I don't know. Right.
SPEAKER_03So you know well, I just think it's I'll be honest with you. I think Uwoo's mean. I think it as a as a fight, it's just mean because you getting all the way to the end before you figure out that you've messed it all up. Um no, but of course, now that it's been solved, like people know that that's something to watch out for and that's something to to do. And again, like now this is solved. So for anybody who isn't a blind raider, like you're going into it with the pre-knowledge of how to skip this. So it becomes not an issue for being able to prog through that point. Then at that point, it's just doing what I imagine every ultimate raider is doing, and that is just doing it again and again and again until the muscle memory builds up so that each phase just becomes easier and easier to pass the more you do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and in in Party Finder, when I was doing the runs on that like first and second day, the groups uh I did join a group that was like, let's try to figure out what the heck this thing is, like the confetti thing, because people were like, it it can't just be the person who has it goes away. It can't just be that. So um, I think it was like a little bit after it was solved on stream, uh, this group and I we had figured it out in Party Finder. Um, not the way that the cutting edge teams found out or like you know, solved it, and definitely not the way PF does it now, but uh we managed to get it, we managed to get it to work um and pass it throughout the whole phase, but the arrows thing we just kept stacking on top of each other, and we were like, these arrows suck, don't bother.
SPEAKER_03Don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And until recently, and they were just patched, so they actually function properly now.
SPEAKER_03Oh good. Yeah, that's another thing I wanted to talk about. Um, there were a few problems with the fight, like they were there were a few bugs in the fight. I know there was one that was on oh gosh, what is that mechanic called with all the triangles?
SPEAKER_05Trines, yeah, trines, trines, trines.
SPEAKER_03There we go. See, I you'd think I'd know that, but the ADHD, it it sits in the rotten brain real bad. Anyway, so trines. There was um, what is it, one of the northern positions had a bug in it so that it it was not, you know, didn't work to as a safe space or something like that.
SPEAKER_05The northwestern trine, it would appear to be rotated one way, but the when it exploded, it was actually rotated a kind of a different way.
SPEAKER_00Uh I think it was I think it was exploding at the edges instead of at the tips of the yeah, kind of depending how you want to say it talk about how how the what the bug was.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So, and then there was the bug with what was it, sprint would have caused you to actually skip over the arrows because there's the one mechanic where confusion hits, and the uh solve from that, for what I gather, was that that was part of the laying down the arrows in the correct configuration so that when a confused player hit it, they would basically be transported into a circle, staying relatively in position to be able to continue to fight. Um, I'm describing it very poorly. Please, someone who knows better.
SPEAKER_05I think um when it came down to the arrows, there was a couple of complaints that that people had. So, kind of the first is kind of what you're alluding to is that when you step on the arrows, it it moves your character in the arrow's direction for a certain duration. Um, you might hear people call this a force march from from other fights. And people were like, oh, you know, if I'm sprinting, it the force march carries my speed, so this what the heck's going on? I will say, if you were one of the people who complained about that, that's a skill issue. All right. There's a lot of fights in this game with force march. If you've ever played with a scholar or you've played scholar, you know not to hit expedient right before one of these force marches. Oh, yeah. Everybody goes right into the wall or to somebody else. This is not the first time they've done this. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Okay. The expedient scholar thing. Go ahead. I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_05No, it is very funny, right? Because um, there was uh there's this one uh critical engagement in the Southern Front or something like that, where everybody has a force march and then you can play scholar and put them into the wall. It's it's pretty funny. Um But the other kind of thing with the arrows was there was a little bit of this network weirdness because depending on the way your character moved and depending on when the uh the server thought you hit the arrow, it could kind of move you maybe a little bit too early uh or too late, kind of depending on exactly this what people call the server tick. So they kind of had and I think that, although it never happened to me, I could see how people were a bit aggravated by that. And so the new kind of this fix is that even no matter where the server thinks you hit the arrow, it will always move you starting from the middle. So then kind of standardize this this whole thing. So there should be no more kind of wonkiness if unless you're sprinting, and like I said, skill issue, skill issue. Right.
SPEAKER_00Well, here's the other thing is that um the uh and I know you said it didn't happen to you, but it did happen to my group where if you popped sprint um and you got the force march, it would make you go over the arrow, like you would completely skip over the arrow itself.
SPEAKER_04But that's how these force marches work. The entire all these force marches work the same way.
SPEAKER_03This particular one that did actually confirm that it was a bug, though, because of the way that it was skipping over. Um, basically what was happening was that uh it wasn't supposed to move your character quite as far as it was moving it, and so technically it was a bug, they did fix it, but of course it is considered to be it was a very subtle fix. It was a very subtle fix.
SPEAKER_00It was the issue was that if if I popped sprint, uh I use I as like I don't know, but not me specifically, but if if I pop sprint and I'm the one being force marched into the first arrow before it starts sending me off wherever, um, I would just sometimes just sprint over the arrow completely and miss it, and it would just make me kill my teammate, like it's or whoever, you know, because I had the confusion debuff. But that was that was the most annoying part um for my team. I mean, I stopped using sprint at a certain point because I figured out you have a hundred thousand hours to position yourself. Uh but um yeah, that was the most annoying part. Is I would pop or I would pop sprint, or someone else would pop sprint, and then they'd forget to click it off before they got confused, and then they would just run straight over the arrow without being sent anywhere, um, and just end up like you know, causing a wipe.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and I mean, even in the savage version of the Kefka fight, they also had kind of a similar confusion tether mechanic. And if you sprint there, you're gonna kill people too. So I like I hear the complaints, I I do understand, but I think you just kind of have to view this mechanic as I'm not allowed to press sprint here. Just like some mechanics tanks aren't. I guess you can't, yeah. I'm saying like some mechanics tanks aren't allowed to involve. It's just you know, a button that you're not allowed to press. Like you said, you have so much time to do it. You have so much time to do it.
SPEAKER_00I mean, the the the other thing I don't remember the savage fight that well, so you might have to remind me.
SPEAKER_05Um, but in the savage fight, you weren't running over something, you were just you had a tether and you were was you running so in the savage fight, uh similar to the ultimate, you had four people with confusion tethers and four people with sleepy tethers. So the common solve was to get all the sleepy tethers in the middle, all the uh confusions out to the cardinals, so they walk towards the middle, but because of the duration, they won't reach there. But if you were sprinting to your to your uh destination, then the sprint would carry you all the way to the middle and you start murdering people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I guess I guess the problem, the specific problem here is that if there's an arrow between you and the other person, the arrow should have caught you. But because of how the server ticks work and you're sprinting, it would make you go over the arrow completely. So I don't know if I'd call that a skill issue, but I would say that it is it is uh avoidable.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I think that's actually one of the things that that came up quite a bit with the bugs that did appear in this particular fight was it was it was one of those things where yes, if you had enough skill and enough knowledge of how the game kind of works, you could definitely work around them and you could definitely I mean, obviously, because we didn't get a fix until after the world first had been cleared.
SPEAKER_02True.
SPEAKER_03Um but at the same time, it's something that was acknowledged by Square Enix that it was not working as they hoped or they wanted it to. So I would kind of put it as yes, if you're skilled enough, you know that you can avoid this particular problem by just not sprinting. But at the same time, if you do accidentally sprint and it's still supposed to pick you up and carry you and it doesn't, I would still classify that as a bug. So um that's kind of my middle ground feelings on it.
SPEAKER_00No, but Jay's right. Like if you're rating at this level and you're like, oh, this is a even if it is a bug, if you're rating at this level and it's like, oh, you have you could just not use sprint, uh then just just don't use sprint. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That seems like the obvious solution. It really does. You're absolutely correct. And and Jay's spot on with that. And at this point, when you get to where your ultimate rating, especially at that level, you would hope that you would be able to like recognize when is and when isn't an appropriate use of any skill that you have. Yeah, in fact, um, one of the things that's intimidating that I will I will fully admit I get I get a little a little scared by ultimate rating by is the charts and the the actual like full breakdowns. In fact, I got introduced to a whole new concept, and that is the ninth man uh for rating. Um where I I know that that of course Square is very big on not having um any third party uh and that'll factor into something else we'll talk about in a minute. But um, you know, third-party add-ons, nothing like that. And of course, that means that the world first, which by the way, I would like to clarify for people who are not aware, world first for Final Fantasy XIV is an entirely community-run event. It is not sponsored by Square, it is not overseen by Square. Square has exactly zero to do with it. It is entirely something that the rules are decided upon, the rankings are decided upon by the committee members of people who are just volunteering their time to do it. So this is not the same situation you would have in, say, fighting games or even World of Warcraft or a bunch of other games where their developers oversee their world first races.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think that a lot of the let's say criticism of the world first event, I think may be a little bit misguided once you start to think about those things in that kind of lens, right? And you know, I'm not saying we have to excuse every everything that happens there, and we can't we are allowed to be critical, but we also have to think about okay, look, this is again, like you said, a community run event. It was literally one person back in the day, and now it's grown a little bit, but it's still something that's just people who are doing it for the love of the game.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, right. Nobody's winning money, like nobody's really getting like cash and prizes, and like you're not world first. Right. There's no sponsorship. There's this is not the same kind of level as people who are like being a world first rater for a job. This is still their hobby that they are paying money to do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So that's my attitude on it. But by the same token, it's one of those things where you have to kind of look at the world of ultimate rating, especially in this cutting-edge world first environment, is very different investment-wise. Because not only do you have uh ninth man, you also have like having to make sure everybody has is on the same level with like ping, with computers, with you know, having all of that, you know, set up, making sure everybody's operating at the same level, it becomes a lot even if you are not invested in a in a financially beneficial way into the environment. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So um, but even still, like how what are your feelings? Do your teams have ninth man? Do you have somebody like overseeing and helping like have like a top-down view or or well not literally top-down, you know what I mean? Somebody who's just like watching a stream and helping like figure out plays, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_05Or do you just like how do you I think I think for teams that are kind of after the world first race, that's not really something that really needs to be done. Um, I think really the the the core role of that ninth band is to do problem solving and mechanic solving. And after that first week, the mechanics are pretty well understood, and there's lots of people out there making guides and Google slides and uh paste bins and um uh raid plans, and those are the things that people tend to follow now. So I guess in those ways, those are kind of like the ninth man. Um, but I would say there's also kind of a shared responsibility for people to kind of own their own mistakes. Um in a world racing scenario, you might have extra people to uh review over previous polls while the players in-game are still kind of making progress. But I think in a static or static uh rating scenario, you would it's not uncommon for people to just review their own footage, review their own uh data, and say, okay, this is where we messed up. This person was too far left, they should have been stepping a little right. And I think that is usually uh also a role of a ninth man sometimes in these role-first racing teams.
SPEAKER_01So would you say, like, especially in 14 right now, where we have a feature called the strategy board, would that be something that is actually useful in this case?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, there are lots of people using the strategy boards for for uh for this ultimate. Um uh I've seen a lot of people use it for the arrow mechanic in phase one. I see lots of people using it for the uh tether mechanic in phase three. So this is something that it does get a lot of use. It is very super valuable to just have something in your eyeline that is reminding you of where to go. Uh I know for myself I have like a little laptop where I can go go through slides and say, okay, we're on the arrows, I can pull up the slide for the arrows, and I can just match whatever I have. And even later on, you have your Forsaken placements, you have all these kinds of things. It is super useful, and I think the strategy board is getting a ton of use for that purpose exactly. It's not a good thing.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god, are you are you telling me that it's are you are you telling me that there's a use for strategy board began memes?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, surprisingly.
SPEAKER_03Write that down.
SPEAKER_05I I think the original envision envisionment was maybe to you know literally share strategies with each other to say, okay, these are seven random strangers, this is how we're gonna solve the mechanic. And I think at least in North America, we've kind of maybe moved away from that because we have these other centralized resources of raid plans or pace bins or Google Slides, and people aren't really using it for the purpose of this is how we're going to solve this mechanic, because there aren't really a ton of different ways that are popular to solve these mechanics, right?
SPEAKER_03So it's also really kind of different. Isn't it a difference also in like how the uh the breakdown of how people play the game? Like, for instance, I know that throughout Southeast Asia and Japan and even through Europe, playing on console for 14 is far more common than it is in North America.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I mean I play on console, so I mean I understand the I understand all these console struggles.
SPEAKER_03Right. Yeah, so I I understand that too. I play on computers, so I kind of get uh because World of Warcraft is a very it is a computer based MMO, and that was kind of like the default MMO, I think a lot of people In at least the United States. I think MMO and they think computer game versus console game. But console MMOs have been super popular in lots of other parts of the world. And so this being, of course, a Japanese-based game, um, they I could totally understand where they would want to make sure that there was a strategy system that was particularly useful to people who played through a console. Um so that you could share those strategies without having to have like a second monitor or an iPad or some other like device that would like show you what you needed to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they've been uh I know my group uh we used an arrow one until people were more comfortable with you know putting their arrows down. And I don't think anyone, I don't think anyone on my team uses controller or is on console. I think they're all on PC. But in PF, PF very helpful. Um and it's just nice to have it on your main screen rather than because I have I have three monitors, so I wouldn't have an issue with that. But some of my some of my teammates or uh my static members, like they don't have three monitors, so it is useful for them.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Um or you know, sometimes they'll pull it up on their phone if they need if we need something that we don't have a strategy board for. Um personally, I just think the strategy board is like really clunky to use. So I just go find someone who was a lot more patient than I was that made it, and then I I copy the share code. So it's useful in that sense. I'll grab their share code and I'll use it to share with people in game. But I I I don't think I'll ever see myself making one unless I'm very adamant about showing someone how something works.
SPEAKER_01I'm pretty sure we probably got this the strategy from the same website, but you probably use it for way different reasons than why I go into that site.
SPEAKER_03Everybody knows who when when that character starts coming because the minute they enter the party, there's like a strategy word shared, and more than enough of us have gotten completely tricked. We're like, oh, do we have a strategy for the oh it's okay, it's a meme. Yep, it's just me.
SPEAKER_00I uh I have four folders of memes strategy boards. Uh, and then I have like a few folders for different savage fights, and then a couple for UMAD that have like one or two strategies in them each, but like all my I had to make multiple meme strategy board folders because I kept saving those instead. Uh and now I just the only thing I wish was there was if I wish there was a way to just disable the feature uh so that I don't get strategy boards here with me anymore. Because uh having a having the several pings becomes an issue.
SPEAKER_03It does, and I'll I'll admit I've I've kind of run into that too. What's actually what has kept me from doing a lot of party finder stuff recently is um I'm like I I appreciate the strategy board feature, but I don't I'm I'm really tired of the memes, actually. I'm a little tired. I know, I know, I'm all I'm old, but anyway, uh so moving on to okay, so I know that the fight itself, of course, it's an ultimate, it's but it's very visually interesting to watch more so I would say, even than some of the pre like it was almost built, you could tell, with a very visual sense of mind. I know a lot of that has to do with the story of the of the Cafkit character, but when you were watching, um because I imagine that you both did, uh, what mechanics when you saw coming up were just you looked at it and you were like, wow, that is gonna be either a lot of fun or truly terrifying to take on.
SPEAKER_00Forsaken.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean Forsaken.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Forsaken.
SPEAKER_05I mean, let's not let's not mince words. Forsaken is the hardest mechanic they've ever put into a fight. Bar none. I I I don't think that's like a controversial statement, right?
SPEAKER_00I don't I that is absolutely the coldest take I think you've ever had. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05It's it's really it's real I don't think it's up for debate, really. And part of what makes it kind of a crazy thing to watch is just how much is going on. You have all these uh towers, and then if somebody messes up, you just have all this orange everywhere and everybody dies in an instant. I mean, um, you know, we kind of had this issue before in uh in in the various Shiva fights where with light rampant, and all of a sudden you hear that like uh all the lights go off and you hear the glass shatter, but this is that to like a whole nother degree. It's it's it's crazy to watch, and it makes you if you're somebody who's going to do the raid, watching people do it, it makes you terrified and excited at the same time. I think that's the best way to describe it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I felt that way when I first saw that, and like I I remember watching it at work, and like literally my my eyes were glued to my monitor, and I think I teared up and like had like a small chuckle because like I I was like terrified, but at the same time, like one of these days I will probably tackle this, and I will probably remember this, and then probably will die instantly because I know it's coming.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'll watch, I will not participate.
SPEAKER_05I I think that uh as you get enough experience for these for a lot of ultimates, there's a lot of really skilled players out there who can see a mechanic for the first time and maybe don't understand it a hundred percent, but they understand the underlying machinations of how the mechanic works, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and like the game theory snaps in, like sure, exactly, right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. And and you you kind of see patterns and you're like, okay, there's only so many things they can do, right? And I think that mechanics like Forsaken and mechanics like Crystallized Time from uh Futures Rewritten Ultimate, it was all the experienced Raiders are joining the newbie raiders and going, What just happened? I have no idea what just happened. We need to slow these things down and and review all the footage we have because everybody is confused.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Like it like knowing that like figuring out that the tower cleanses your debuff, and then figuring out, oh well, there's eight of these towers if you get that far. Um, because if some basically if somebody dies during that mechanic, you're kinda you know there's no coming back. There's no there's no coming back from it, really. Yeah, because it messes up the debuffs, they have to be resed and get to their spot in time and have to know what they were while they were getting res, and there's a black screen when you get res, so it's hard to like see what's going on, you know, like you're not coming back from it. So everyone has to be alive.
SPEAKER_05I think one of the funniest things about Forsaken is when somebody messes up and then the hero's like, Okay, I got this, I'll LB3, and everybody is alive, and then everybody kind of stands around and be like, What do we do? Where do we go? Yeah, everyone is lost. There's no way. There's no way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's not there's no coming back from it. It's it's a big body check as well. So it's uh, and for those of you who don't know a body check, it means these amount of people have to be alive for you to succeed in this mechanic. In this case, everybody, everybody needs to be alive.
SPEAKER_03That's one of the things about ultimates that that seems to be like the the hyper complication case is that uh I've done Savages uh on on mine, I've done I've done a fair amount of rating. I'll admittedly not as much as I would necessarily like. Uh, but um body checks can many times in Savage, it means that so long as there are at least four people who can take theirs, or at least there's you know, uh there's six people, or or even if while you're doing the body check, one person dies, you can usually raise them and you can usually get past it. But ultimate, it's like if it's a body check, everybody's gotta be alive, everybody's gotta be there, and you've got to be healthy enough to make it through the mechanic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd agree with that for the for the most part. Um, maybe there's a couple cases here and there uh where it doesn't apply anymore. Uh UCobb being being a very silly I think that was the hundred plus res of UCOB that I saw the video of. I can't remember. It's just people just constantly dying and resing.
SPEAKER_03Um, especially as a person who is watching the U Mad fight, is so have y'all been keeping track of like all of the different voice lines that Kevka has?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, of course, of course.
SPEAKER_03Of course, of course, because you have to do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. This is my first time. So please take it easy. I've heard that more times than I like to count.
SPEAKER_01So what what do you guys think about that? Do you do you think more fights should have like more dialogues like that to uh to make the fight more interesting, or does it just get really annoying like real fast?
SPEAKER_00I think every fight should be voiced. Oh nice. I don't I don't think that's a controversial take either. I think every fight should be voiced, uh, regardless of if it's a ultimate raid or if it's like a dungeon. I think dungeon fights should also be voiced.
SPEAKER_03You heard it here! Hear more voice actors square, do it, do it, do it!
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean, I think it just gives the fight and the characters just so much more character. I mean, even if you look at the Arcadian, a lot of people like a lot of those kinds of voice lines that come up, and they're funny memes or they're a little more serious, and I think it's just from way more memorable moments.
SPEAKER_03I love the I'm I'm sorry, I'm so in love with the Arcadian fights. Like I I love them so much, and yeah, Matem is the whole reason why I love them so much character.
SPEAKER_00My reading. He's my yeah, he's my mahjong match narrator. So oh, that's awesome! I love it, I love it. I love it. I I think that is probably the biggest thing I'll miss from Arcadian. Aside from the fights were good, uh, but aside from that, like met him as like a commentator to the fight. I don't know how they're gonna top that.
SPEAKER_03I I really want that moment where in the f in UMA where where everything just stops into the cutscene and you see Kefka literally looking at the camera and talking to you. Why?
SPEAKER_02Oh you you so great.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, you know, these kinds of things they matter, right? I mean, we're not hitting a amorphous blob, right? We're we're not looking at a vast whiteness of of a background. These these these trappings, these dressings, the the fight, uh aesthetics, they they do matter. I mean, even if you're somebody who is uh very mechanics driven, and that's not all you care about, right? Like you do care about the thing that you're fighting, you do care about the story that's being told, you care about how it looks, how it sounds, and these things they really add to the experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I uh and and uh even like outside of that first um outside of that like camera grab thing, right? Like knowing that you did the puzzle right from phase one because he says something different, transitioning into phase two, or like it just having like a confirmation like that is nice, um, because sometimes it's hard to see like, oh, did we get all the arrows? Because you can you can live even if somebody doesn't hit all the arrows, so sometimes it's hard to check for that. So having a like a voice confirmation line that says, you know, this clearly isn't your first time, um right. Even even having that is very nice, uh, just to take a little bit of a mental load off.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I imagine that also kind of adds to it, because it's like um playing on a team like you're playing a sport or whatever, and a lot of times having that sound of of like a score was was one or or a point was made. Um I know auditorially, like I used to play a lot of sports in my my uh childhood. So having that sound, even if you're someone who's on the other side of the arena playing defense or you're you're doing your part, knowing that the score was made because the strategy worked is actually incredible. It actually adds a whole lot to the experience.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So one of the things that I did want to talk about is like, um, I know that when it the so you've seen the mechanics that come near the end of the fight, right? And we've seen how long the fight is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um how how are y'all feeling about going into the I mean, they feel more like ro like puzzle mechanics closer to the end? Like they're easier to just sort of figure out what your team is going to do to solve them and to kind of get through them. But what what do you think? Are you already pre-strategizing for that or are you just staying in the moment where you're at?
SPEAKER_05I think you always have to do a little bit of both, um, to be honest. I think that you do have to make sure that you're being focused on the places that you're at. But it doesn't hurt to look forward every now and then. It doesn't hurt to be starting to think a little bit ahead about okay, um, where are the spots I need to be, where are the things I need where are the places I need to be for various mechanics. And I think for UMAD in particular, um kind of the vibe is that once you're past phase three, it's it gets a little bit easier from there. Um this there's certainly a lot of other ultimates where the penultimate phases are the really tricky ones, the really tough ones, and it doesn't really seem like UMA is one of them, and really the phase two and the phase three are kind of like the apex of difficulty. So obviously there are no slouches, it's still they're still tough, but um it gets maybe breathe a little bit easier in phase four than you did in phase three.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I've the the big thing about the later phases, um like phase two has Forsaken, so that's rough. Phase three has a bit of a healer like check, I guess. Uh but at the same time, after or once phase three starts, your tanks are crying, your tanks are getting pummeled constantly. Um so if you're as a healer, you are baby like I don't use regen that much anymore on tanks. Um I suspect I'm going to have to babysit that tank a lot. The last time I had to do that was in in DSR for the was it phase six with the double dragons. Like you you have to you have to take care of your tank pretty pretty closely, um, because they're getting like absolutely destroyed by Nidhogg and Hraisfelger.
SPEAKER_03But outside of that, like usually your AoE healing or privilege only takes you so far, and in Ultimate, it doesn't take you far enough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like Tank Privilege will be like you're gonna be the last one alive when everyone dies. Uh but in in phase three and on. Yeah, but in phase three and on, like you are your tanks are like the autos are hitting for almost I would say a third to almost a half of their HP per auto auto attack. It's it's hitting really hard. If they're not mitigating it, right? I'm not I'm not saying like yeah, so if they're gonna be rolling their mitts, the the DPS have to be helping out a lot. And then especially at the end, I've seen I just my friend actually just messaged me and he just cleared the fight. So congrats to him. Um congrats to him. Yeah. Um, but I watched him do phase five, and they just died to a raid-wide just because they didn't have enough mitigation. Um so like and and it's not like they were doing anything super difficult, it's just they they just didn't have the mitts up because somebody missed it or they had used it earlier for something else, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it the mitigations and and actually one of the things that I ran into, granted, my end of the scale of teaching people how to play the game is much lower than what y'all are talking about, but trying to remind people that they have like Samurai has a shield and Reaper has a shield, and um you have things like Faint and you have things like Adl and all of those things can contribute to the overall mitigation for the entire team, and those become, I would imagine, like so much more important when you're talking about ultimates and having to do like you know raid-wide mitigation and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_05I mean, I wouldn't even say important, I would say in a lot of times it's mandatory.
SPEAKER_00Mandatory, absolutely, because like you have uh teams putting together mitigation sheets. Um, you could do I've seen people do it for Savage. I I know my team does it for Savage just to make sure we're all on the same page. Um, but you have mitigation sheets, it's like this move at this time you're pressing faint. At this move at this time, you're pressing add or at this move at this time you're pressing planary indulgence as a white mage, or you're putting your sage shields up or whatever. Um, and if you look at the uh if you can find it, it's like the Ikuya MIDI uh is I think what most people are using right now for party finder. Um that mit sheet is like your Bible uh going into this fight, because if you miss a mit, you'll probably die uh just because of how hard things hit. Sometimes it's a little bit over mitigated because of party finder, um, just in case somebody does miss their mitigation. But on some of those, if somebody misses their mitigation, like their party's gonna wipe.
SPEAKER_05I I mean I I can think of a bunch of times in our raids when the a bunch of people died and it was just one person going, oh my bad, I missed the mit, right? And it was just one, it's just one. Sometimes for certain mechanics, all it takes is just one missed mit and then a bunch of people fall over.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Oh, that's that that happened to me uh was it a few weeks ago uh in U, where I missed my mitigation uh and damage reduction and whatnot, and like I just saw a couple couple people fell. I'm like, oh great. The one time I missed it. I like the one time I missed a button a couple people fell. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay, this is another thing that I would like to just very briefly talk on because of course my whole like you know knowledge of rating and everything is is much lower scale. But as ultimate raiders, like it feels like one of the first things you have to tackle is not even making sure your DPS is perfect or or even making sure that that you're you know, it's just the bravery it takes to know that you could be just totally screwing everything up for everyone and being able to push through that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's I think where you have to go into like you said, you're running a marathon with these fights, you're not you're not sitting here like, oh, we're gonna clear this in like a day or two. Like it's gonna take us maybe at my level, it's like it's gonna take us a few months, right? Like you're not gonna be sitting, you know, two weeks from now and be like, we did it, easy. Um uh so you have to be prepared for that. You have to be uh you're gonna make mistakes. Like nobody knows the fight, you're gonna make mistakes, um, and you need to um have a little bit of a you know self talk introspection and like maybe a little bit of an ego check for some people, you know, like you could be you could be the best raider out there, but you also don't know what's going on, so you need to be able to communicate that clearly. With your team and kind of keep a good attitude about it. Because the second somebody starts getting salty, it just brings down the whole group. It doesn't uh it's not just affecting you, it's affecting the other seven people or whoever else you're raiding with. Especially in Party Finder, especially in Party Finder, because you're working with literally you're working with strangers and you're like, I don't know you that well, so we need to, you know, figure things out quickly. Either figure things out quickly or just like come to an understanding, it's like this is a hard thing.
SPEAKER_03Assume positive intent.
SPEAKER_00Uh and you know, you need to also be respectful of their time. So if you're if you're the one messing up and you're like, sorry guys, like I'm the I'm the problem. Um you need to respect their time, and sometimes you might need to dip out because you're just like not performing well, and then you just need to dip out, take a breather, come back.
SPEAKER_05I mean, the one yeah, I I think so much of ultimate rating is mental, right? I mean, I think basically everybody can go into a striking dummy and hit their rotation perfectly, and it's really adding all these other layers on top of it that it's not usually it's not really a physical thing, right? Usually it's a kind of a mental thing. And I think what Pippy said is is true. You really have to approach it with the right mindset. Um, there's so many mental hurdles that you have to overcome when it comes to rating. I mean, we talked a little bit about the last phase difficulty. The last phase difficulty is not mechanical at all, it's all about nerves, right? Anyone who's done in Ultimate knows what it's like to reach that final phase. And it's never about okay, can I do this mechanics? It's can I slow my heart rate down to make sure that I can do all these things properly.
SPEAKER_00Can I stop shaking? Yeah, can I stop shaking? You're shaking, you're shaking a lot.
SPEAKER_05100% is. And I think that it's also about making sure that you're honest with yourself about kind of your ability of okay, did I mess up? That's okay, and just kind of making sure that these things, what did I learn from that? How do I make sure it doesn't happen again? And set kind of setting yourself yourself up for success in the best way possible. Um, a lot of things they kind of teach you in when you're going through school is kind of figuring out how do you learn best, right? And everybody's gonna learn best in kind of different ways. And I think a lot of that also applies to Ultimate, right? It's nobody's gonna learn at the same pace or in the same way when it comes to mechanics. Some people like to watch videos, some people like to read these raid plans, some people prefer a more hands-on approach. And I think as long as you're honest with yourself about your progress and you find the right people, it can be a ton of fun. Because at the end of the day, it is a game, right? So if you're not having fun and you're feeling super stressed out about it, that's that's okay. Maybe it's maybe ultimate rating is not for you. I mean, we keep going back to the marathon analogy. Not everybody runs a marathon.
SPEAKER_03It's it's perfectly not everybody, it's not healthy for everyone to run marathons. Yeah, I'll just be perfectly honest to you. Running marathons isn't necessarily healthy, it's just something that people do to push and challenge themselves because they feel like they want to try to do something that is like the pinnacle of human capacity, right? And so, like one of the things that, especially as a disabled gamer, that that I'm both super impressed and very intimidated by when it comes to ultimate rating is let's talk about how, um, and I wanted to bring this up very briefly, but it's I think it's important. We had this streamed world race, right? And we got to see so many teams doing amazing work, right? But these people, it was over five days. People still had to sleep, they still had to eat, many of them still had to go to work and then come back and then try to do this because this is not a job for them, this is their hobby time. And I know that that one of the teams, I think it was the uh the Chinese team, wound up actually getting having to stop, even though they were so close, they had just pushed all of their members so far that people just were falling out from exhaustion, like yeah, and that is not for everybody, let me tell you, right?
SPEAKER_05That that's that's even when you're describing like that, that doesn't sound healthy to me. And no, that's it's it's just not for everybody, right? And I remember there was one tier where I was doing a static where we were raiding every evening, and the amount of planning that I had to put it because I was working in the day, then basically as soon as work was done, maybe an hour or two, then hop on for a raid, then go to bed, and then wake up the next day to repeat it all over again. So you have to do tons of planning about okay, what am I gonna eat? I let's maybe make a couple of freezer meals, maybe make a big, you know, uh something that can last for leftovers, but it it adds so much stuff. And then at the end of the day, you're thinking, okay, was it worth it? And for a lot of people a lot of people the answers the answer is no. But for some people, the answer is yes. And again, that's per that's perfectly okay, right? Not everybody is gonna be able to raid 16 hours a day, go to bed, wake up and raid. And in the same kind of vein, not everybody is gonna be in a position where their best way of doing an ultimate is in party finder, and not everybody is also gonna be in a position where their best way of doing an ultimate is in a static. It totally depends on how you best want to tackle this content, your schedule, all these kinds of things, and your own mindset of it. The way your mindset has to be in Party Finder versus static is so so different. It's so so different. Like it's so much easier to have forgiveness for the people you're in a Discord call with, the people that you're hanging out with on in all these kinds of things, because all these things they humanize these people. And then when you go into Party Finder and you just see seven other names and you're like, ah, this bozo stood in the AoE. What are they doing? Do they not know any of these mechanics? And then you don't just have to step back and say, okay, yes, they messed up, but that doesn't mean they're horrible. This doesn't mean that they don't know what they're doing, they just made a mistake. The same way that anybody else could make a mistake.
SPEAKER_00I will I will say a lot of the a lot of the times when I'm doing Party Finder, I mean, especially this this first the first week that this was out, I that's you doing ultimate raids in Party Finder is usually when I find the people that I think should um take a step back uh from their keyboard before they type something out. Because uh there's a like there's people that are that are in Party Finder at least going to be very cruel um because they don't do what we're saying. Like they they they um they're like you made a mistake, it is your fault, just quit, you're the worst.
SPEAKER_03And like that's not one, that's not helpful to anybody, and two, like you're you're just actively like pruning out people that could that have potential to do the content that you're doing, and you're you're you're not making it a fun experience because again, it is a video game, you should be having fun, and you're not having fun because you're you're just being mean spirited, and that person's and now nobody's having fun because right, unless that is somehow your sick way of having fun, at which point please I beg of you, go find another game to play. Oh go outside. Yeah, go outside, go pet a puppy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, but yeah, so like yeah, like Jay say, like you need you need um a certain amount of mental fortitude, not only for yourself, um, but for the potential of people you're playing with, um, and just being able to like roll with the punches sometimes, because sometimes you're gonna have those days where you are not making prog. Like you're you're hard stuck on you're hard stuck on Forsaken, or like you're joining a I'm I'm joining a group that's fresh phase three, and you're dying to arrows in phase one. So like you know, it's um it's a lot of work.
SPEAKER_05And it happens. This is just a natural part of learning something, a natural part of progressing something. And you know, you're compounding that issue by eight people, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, right. I think honestly, I think the takeaway is that especially when it comes to to anything that is a challenge, we must all understand that it's not just a challenge for ourselves, it's a challenge for every other person in the room. And everybody is attacking and approaching that challenge in their own way, and we all need to have grace both for ourselves and for others, and that's the way to maintain actually being able to a have fun and b um actually build our own, you know, uh self-satisfaction in the challenge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I had the same the it's the same mindset I had to have when I was doing um Satan of the firmament, because like that was that was like my first time doing something like quote unquote challenging in 14. Um, because I I hadn't done ultimates up to that point, but that was 10 days of like I did meal prep. I did I was working while I was doing it, so it was like I was doing um I was doing um I was working from home while I was on my other monitor crafting in 14 for 10 days. So and I think I it was like 20, I did like 20 hours a day, so I slept like four four hours a night. Um and again, that is not for everyone. I look back on it and I'm like, it was worth it to me, but would I do it again? Absolutely not. So when the new cosmic stuff came out, I was like, I'm I'm good, I'm I'm not gonna craft for a week.
SPEAKER_03It's it's actually not even structured the same way, but like I get yeah, so so that superstar. I was like, I want to get that superstar, and I'm like, Oh, I understand that is, I will admit it, having a leaderbulb board for that was just babe, does it not feel like it? Um in fact, let's talk about leaderboards. Now we're gonna come to the controversy section, dun dun, dun. All right. Um, so of course, this was one of the most visually interesting, and of course, Kafka has a great character to have visually to watch, right? I know that there were some disappointments that people in the community had. There was no warring triad. Um, instead, we got what was it, ex death and chaos. Chaos, that's what it was. So it was still very much a kefka, still inside the uh the Omega machinery sort of situation, right? So I know there were a lot of people disappointed that we didn't get more references to other Final Fantasy games. Um but then of course we had uh what I consider to be like the grand outside controversy, which is we had this massive production, Mog Talk uh literally put together this huge charity stream. There were dozens of streamers that volunteered time to go on and and not only uh talk about the actual fight itself and ultimates in general, uh in an incredibly entertaining way, but also uh wound up um helping to build up a charity. I don't know if you're familiar with Games for Love. Um Games for Love is a charity that um provides gaming equipment for kids who are going through ongoing treatment in hospitals, so things like um cancer treatments, leukemia treatments, any ongoing long-term in-hospital care, this provides video games and gaming equipment for them. So, because distraction therapy, as a person who is disabled myself and understands at least ongoing chronic pain, distraction therapy is incredibly important. Having something that can distract you from the awfulness, I guess I just know better description of what it is to go through those things. But previous World First, they as streams that they've been able to do their uh, I think their record was fifty-three thousand dollars, which is still an amazing amount. It's spectacular that the gaming community, especially the 14 community, comes together and is able to donate this amount. Um, but this time around, we got up to $113,000 for this charity. Um and of course, the the the production value led to a huge amount of watchers, probably the largest watchers that have ever seen an ultimate viewed live. So when uh I think it was 45 minutes from the first world first, or no, two hours. It was two hours before uh DN um actually cleared uh live on stream, we had an announcement that no name or name TBD were cleared um and that they had submitted video, but it was off stream. And of course, the community went insane. So what are your thoughts? As this is I mean, there's there's a lot of back and forthing about it. Personally, I understand why it's unsatisfying as a viewer, but at the same time, I also understand that this is the community just trying to keep tabs of who is and who isn't clearing.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I I mean, um I again I get why it's unsatisfying. You we people have been watching these on-screen on-stream teams for days and days and days, and all of a sudden another team kind of comes in and swoops in. But I really do think this was way overblown and really spoke to what you were saying is there's a lot of new people who are watching. And everything that happened was fully within the rules of the world race. Nobody did anything that wasn't understood or agreed upon by the other teams, everything was done above board, everything fall named TBD, they followed all the rules, and yeah, as a spectator, it sucks to see somebody swing in the last minute, but those were the rules. Everybody agreed to it. Yeah, there shouldn't really have been any controversy whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't I don't I I don't really watch the world's first race to see like who gets worlds first. I just like watching to see the fight progress. Um so when I saw them come up, uh I was like, I I was immediately like, oh, the community's gonna not like this uh because of what happened last time, right? With with uh fru and the red dot and the whatever, because this it was the same team, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_03It was it was the same team. Um supposedly the member that was using that uh wound up being removed from the team. So it was considered a non-issue. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like uh I don't know.
SPEAKER_03But there are also other members that had also been involved in the top um controversy that happened. So it was one of those things where it it was a tainted team, it was a team of people. I think if it had come through, and if it was a team of people who were all fresh or at least had not had any controversies in their past, it may have been considered to be more acceptable. But now, unfortunately, because it's the team that had controversies in the past, those controversies are tainting their future. And that's unfortunately if they have replaced those people, but yeah, I think here's here's my take.
SPEAKER_00If if you are if you're a person who's watching the stream and you're like cheering people on for the world first, even if you see a name up there that is like, you know, like these people cleared first, but they didn't do it on stream. But here's all their video that they recorded and whatever put out, like right. I I don't think it's a huge mental hurdle to to tackle, especially if you're enjoying watching the stream, to be like, okay, well, they cleared, I didn't see them, um, but I'm still cheering for this team to be the stream clear or whatever, right? Like the like the live stream clear.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And then like regardless of if they're worlds first or not, like I feel like if you're there to participate in the stream and you're cheering them on, and like that that should be your focus, and like this other group that came out of nowhere, I guess not out of nowhere, but like they followed the rules, like Jay said, like they did what they were supposed to do, and they cleared, like they did first, right? Um, but I think the people who go, Oh, you didn't clear first is is ridiculous. I like they put in the work and they did the thing. So that's my I can understand.
SPEAKER_03I think I think the solution that they're going forward with, which is really funny because it's the solution that used to exist and then it went away because there were complaints. So I I think this may be one of those situations where the community has decided that there is no winning. But I'm hoping that maybe this mitigates a little bit more in the future because quite frankly, being able to come together as a community and earn this much money for um uh a wonderful charity that does so much good, and also just having something where we can kind of come together as a community in any fashion for the game that we love and the things that we we care about, I think is something that's very important, especially in the world we live in today. Uh but I would say the the the solution is is you have the overall win uh leaderboard, and then you have the stream leaderboard, and then we have the two things kind of with a very gentle, like dotted line in between the two as far as leader creation. Sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I I think that you're also bringing up a really a really good point here is that I think the people who are maybe a little bit upset about this, right there or wrongly, I think maybe you should take a little bit of a step back and realize what was kind of accomplished, right? It was for all intents and purposes a really great stream. They organized they raised a ton of money for a really great cause. And I think but the teams that are streaming, they didn't have to do that, right? They didn't have to stream. And it's so unlikely for a streaming team to get world first on an ultimate because you're giving up so much information by streaming. You're yeah, right. Everybody else gets to look and see what you're doing. And if you're not a streaming team, you get to hide all of your own strategies from everybody else. So the teams that are streaming, we should really just kind of appreciate what they did. You had teams like DN and Poikos, you know, they put on a heck of a show over the five or six days.
SPEAKER_03Well, then they're also technically performing because there's always the watched aspect of it. You will perform differently if you know that you're watched versus unwatched.
SPEAKER_05100%. 100%, right? And I think that kind of rather looking at the team in first place, being kind of angry at them and swooping in to take in that first place, I think maybe we should kind of flip the script around and say, okay, wow, that was a really great event. I'm really thankful that there are teams out there who are willing to take this handicap. And that's really what it is. It's a handicap to entertain everybody and raise money for a great cause.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. 100% agree.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I 100% agree with that as well. I think that's I think that's absolutely the way to go for forward because I want to see more streams of this because it was not only just an amazing production, but I want there to be more opportunities for us to come together as a 14 community and do something that's positive because we seem to all come together really quickly. When there's something to get angry about.
SPEAKER_00But sure. I think that's just the human condition.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, 100%. We all love the drama. We love the drama. But having something that's also like really fun to watch that can be dramatic for other reasons is also, I think, spectacular. So I'm I'm I'm excited to see what comes of this. Are you just taking your time, not worrying about it? Or what is it about this one in particular that's kind of grabbed you?
SPEAKER_00Um I mean, uh my my group did a vote uh when when it was announced, and we said, do we want to do this one or do we want to do one of the other ones that we haven't cleared? Because we haven't done top or fru yet. Um and the whole group was just like, let's just do this one and then we can go back. So in the next six months, hopefully we'll have cleared it. I I sure hope we would have cleared it. Um, but we're definitely we're definitely just aiming to clear it before ever cold, because outside of that, it's like what I'm gonna do Beastmaster, maybe. We'll see how that goes. Um Right.
SPEAKER_03We are in that last year of like the trickle of of content before the next expansion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so like I I get on, I raid, I do whatever else I feel like doing, but honestly, like I just play something else or or I'll come back and do some roulettes or play with my friends, or yeah. So I mean, like in 14, um I I'm gonna clear this fight before Evercold comes out, and if I don't, I will cry.
SPEAKER_03The installation going Pippi, the one tier. I'm like, I understand. I I have a lot of goals that I'm trying to meet. I'm an achievement hunter, so while my achievements for ultimates will be coming way later, um I'm I my goals for for before Evercold are that I want to get to um I'm at 13 right now for kraken for points. I wanna I want to get to 10 before Evercold. So I I believe in goals. I think they're important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I've been so stressed out because of work and everything, but uh I literally log in, do a couple roulettes, and then I'm sitting there going, what what what do I do next after that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So what about EJ? How how's the next six months for your static going?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, uh well, hopefully we'll have cleared by six months, that's for sure. And I think whenever I think about high-level eight player content, I always want to clear before the Hector guy comes out. And I think we're probably gonna clear before Hector puts a guy out for you. But I I think I think for me, you know, we kind of talked about it earlier where you see the fights and you see them being done by other people, and you just get so excited. Um, whenever I do ultimates, I always have this kind of vicious cycle where I get really excited, I go, yeah, I want to do this, and then I'm really excited, and then as the prog starts to slow down, you're like, uh, why did I sign up for this? I'm never doing another ultimate ever again. And then I'm like, sign me back in, and the cycle continues. Yeah, and the cycle continues. But uh yeah, I think like everybody, um you know, there's motivations both uh intrinsically and ext externally, you know, the weapons are cool, the title is cool, but it's really just being able to say, I have done this, this is the one of the biggest challenges you can get in Final Fantasy XIV. And the satisfaction of clearing one, it never leaves your body. Um I remember exactly where I I remember exactly where I was and my like mental state and all these other things of each ultimate the first time I cleared them. And it's just this adrenaline rush, and the there's nothing like it in in 14 for me. It's it's it's it's indescribable, really.
SPEAKER_00It's like winning your it's like winning your own personal little Super Bowl every time.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Like you the amount yeah Yeah, the amount of times that like like how we were saying earlier, when you get to the last phase of a fight, your your goal is to survive, and your blood is like pumping, your heart's pumping, like you're just like I remember in DSR, I think it took us like four or five months of proging that to get it done. And the first time we got to like that last phase, and we I'd practiced it in my head over and over and over again, and just like my hands are shaking, my whole body is shaking, like I'm like I'm hyperventilating a little bit, like it's it's a lot. Like you just have your like adrenaline like pumping, and there's like no feeling like that. Yeah, there's no feeling like that.
SPEAKER_05And that's everybody's experience, right? What PP is describing is everybody going through all of this, right? And yeah, that's not even talking about the actual feeling, like when the boss is casting inrages, when you know you have it. Oh, yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so one of one of HGP members uh took me to another group uh that was doing Uh that day. And so for me, for my experience, like it um that group took me all the way to uh ultimate, uh ultimate weapon. So at that point, I'm like, you what you guys were uh describing was what I was feeling during that time. My I'm like I was panicking, my heart was racing, I was shaking. I'm like, what am I supposed to do? I am scared. I was so terrified. I'm like, uh uh okay, I'm and I'm done.
SPEAKER_00It's like you can you can and the thing is like you can like Jay said again earlier, like you can practice your rotation on a target dummy as much as you want. The second you get into that like state, it feels like you've just forgotten how to play the video game sometimes. Pretty much, yeah. Because you're just so it you're like so excited. You just it's like, oh, what am I supposed to do? Right, what am I supposed to press? And you're just like trying to run through the mechanics of your head again and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01It's like it's it's it's a it was it was pretty much like it was like I forgot what I was doing, I forgot what class I was playing, and then I was getting I was getting orders barked in my ears. I was like, wait, what? I was supposed to go where you said left, I'm going right, and and it was just chaotic from that point. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So it's okay. So how how do y'all feel about like are y'all a one and done type people? Or like you got it's like I cleared the ultimate, I got to the top of Mount Everest, I don't want to do this again. Um, or are you like, Woo, let's go on the ride again. Uh how many clears are we talking?
SPEAKER_00It depends on what my group wants to do. I like to do at least four or five clears before we like back off, because I'm not I'm not in it to get every single weapon as much as I would love that. That's a lot of time, and I'm like, I've I've gone through the motions enough where I'm like, okay, I'm alright. Like, I know I can do this fight, and if I want to do it again later, I can. It's gonna take some like time to ramp back up, but you know, that's fine. I'm willing to deal with that if that time comes, but like I'm satisfied. Um and like even now, like I've gone back to do uwoo in PF um as a summoner, which I I don't play DPS classes usually in in most content, let alone ultimate content. But it's I've done that fight enough where I'm like, I can I can do that, and then I'm like I'm so close to getting all the weapons, I'm just getting them all anyway.
SPEAKER_03So nice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think for me, I'm not really somebody who's motivated by the weapons or the titles or things like that. Uh we kind of I kind of mentioned way back in the intro that I started my rating on minimum item level content. And for a lot of people, they just do that because they want to. There's no in-game reward for doing it, there's no even check mark to say you did those kinds of things. It's just doing it for the sake of doing it. And I feel that kind of way with ultimates. I just do them because it's fun to do, it's uh cool to say that you beat it, and yeah, I'll certainly do some re-clears because probably other people are interested in doing them, but that's not really what motivates me. Um I'll I still like to hop into older ultimates to do party finders sometimes. It's really cool to help other people get clears, and honestly, the fights themselves are still really fun to do, at least I I think they are. So hopping into a party finder for like T or DSR or Futures Rewritten, like yeah, I'll do that. Um but yeah, I wouldn't really say I'm motivated by the weapons or the title. And if I'm being honest, don't really love the look of the weapons. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02Fair enough. Don't love them, don't love them.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure I'm sure we can find a glam that works, but there's a glam for everything.
SPEAKER_03And there have been, trust me, fru is one of those that I keep looking at and I'm like, I don't know. They are pretty enough. I might, I might. But uh yeah, the new ones I looked at and I was like, don't get me wrong. The idea of being able to do this sort of stuff just sounds cool and it sounds awesome to be able to to try. And I have kind of tried my hand at it a little bit, but I don't yeah, I'm it yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it. But yeah, the challenge mode the stuff is that's fun. That's one of the reasons why I got led into doing like my own personal challenge mode stuff is that I do um uh I do solo Palace of the Dead and I do Blue Mage. So Yeah. But that's as far as I've gone with like challenge mode stuff. Uh I did clear mine with the Buccaneers a few times though, so I guess maybe I could start doing that. You never know.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean everybody gets motivated by different things, right? And there's no wrong motivation. Okay, maybe I shouldn't say that, but at least when it comes to these kinds of things, at least when it comes to like in games, right? There's no wrong reasons. If you want to do it because of the glam, if you want to do it because of the title, if you want to do it just for this internal feeling of something.
SPEAKER_03As long as you're not doing it just to troll people.
SPEAKER_05Exactly, exactly. These are all perfectly valid reasons to hop into an ultimate or any other content. And again, it's a game. As long as you're having fun, it doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I agree. I think that the the main thing we all need to focus on is the fun that we're having with the game. And even if Ultimate is um not a challenge mode, that's for you. 14 is one of those games where you can find your own challenges. There are so many to choose from. Um, I have to say thank you so much. Uh Jay Pimpe for coming by and talking to us about this. You've given so much insight. I know that me and uh Hookah would have been in a little lost in a couple of these spaces. So um the mechanics themselves are just well, maybe not you. I'm lost.
SPEAKER_01No, I'd be like, I'd be sitting in a corner, be like uh uh.
SPEAKER_03So um this has been really great talking to you. I really love every single time I get a chance to talk to y'all in the community. Um, as and this has been this has been great. So I hope that we have opportunity to talk to y'all about future stuff that's coming out. Um can you you do anybody want to leave any words of like where we can find you or you know, maybe don't find you, uh little little outro to to the the audience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sure. Um I stream on Twitch every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Uh that's where I'm doing my ultimate prog. Um and I've recently started putting some stuff up on YouTube, uh Pimpy Shortstalking for both on Twitch and YouTube. And otherwise, uh you know, if you guys are gonna be tackling ultimates, uh, this is for anyone else out there. Just remember, go in with a good mindset, get good rest, eat healthy, uh, don't like eat burgers and fries every night for uh for for progging um ultimates. Otherwise, your body so you can raid. Yeah, you gotta take care of your body so you can raid because it does mentally help you out a lot.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, and I'm not I don't really have a big footprint on the internet, if I'm gonna be honest. So don't find me, don't find me. I don't really care. Um, but uh yeah, if you're interested in doing hard content, if you're interested in doing ultimates or savage or whatever you can consider hard content, uh I suggest give it a try, see if it's right for you. Uh I always like to think about uh the uh the words of advice from Rocky, it's always against you versus the person in the mirror, right? Like it's never about you versus anybody else, it's about how you can be better and be better for yourself. And you know, the last thing is just treat everybody the way you want to be treated, treat people with kindness, treat people with respect. Yep.
SPEAKER_03Absolute words of wisdom in any context, I think. So thank you so much, y'all, for joining us, and uh, we will be seeing and hearing from all of y'all in the comments, and we'll see y'all later.
SPEAKER_01And may your etheric travels be free.
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