7 Removed Game Features [Final Fantasy 14]

Now that A Realm Reborn is on its tenth year, let's look back at some of the major features that have been removed over Final Fantasy XIV's lifespan. Nostalgia-seeking veterans and curious new sprouts can re-live the pains of sprint-based TP or reminiscence over old astrologian cards!
I have no idea if this video will be of big interest to people, but it has strong series potential. A LOT of content has been cut from this game.
Timestamps are as follows:
0:00 - Intro
0:20 - Number 1
1:05 - Number 2
1:45 - Number 3
2:21 - Number 4
3:05 - Number 5
3:47 - Number 6
4:26 - Number 7
4:58 - Outro
________________________________________
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[@SubduedRadical]

On TP - MP used not to be a set value of 10,000. Which made it WAY less weird when you were level 1 with 150 HP and 100 MP instead of 150 HP and 10,000 MP. It was variable based on some combination of MND and INT, I think. Also on TP, there used to be some abilities that BRDs, MCHs, and I think NINs had to throw on team-mates to restore their TP some. Goad may have been the NIN one and Tactician the BRD one, but I don't remember their names to be sure. There used to be Materia for main stats (VIT, STR, DEX, INT, MND), and just like the Elemental Resistance Materia, this went away (but you can still buy/sell/trade them on the MB or in person) Up to level 50, you can find 1 handed weapons for WHM (wands) and BLM (maces) along with Caster/Healer shields. Up to level 50, leveling gear was a lot more combined. For example, there's not Caster gear and Healer gear (other than weapons). Rather, the mage robes give INT and MND both, so you can use the same piece while leveling a Caster or a Healer. This is also true to a lesser extent with other DoW Jobs. BRD, NIN, and MCH (again, up to level 50), and DRG and MNK have basically the same gear, and this can also be used by tanks to level 50, though there is tank specific gear (PLD, WAR, DRK) that has better armor. I'm not entirely sure why, but in HW, they stopped doing this, instead splitting even the leveling gear we only use for a zone or three and then junk as sub-role specific. Interestingly, there are two semi-exceptions. One is the "...of Slaying", which is generic STR accessories used by DRG, RPR, MNK, and SAMs, and the "...of Aiming" accessories which are DEX and used by both Ranged and NINs - JUST NINs. So if you main Ranged and want to also dabble into a Melee, if you pick NIN, you only have to get left side gear for it since you already have all the right side pieces. Likewise, the other four melees can share right side gear, only needing the "...of Maiming" for DRG/RPR or "...of Striking" for MNK/SAM. The ENTIRE Cross-Class system. Including having to level other classes to get some pretty essential skills. For example, as a WHM main, I didn't have Swiftcast for the longest time because I hadn't leveled BLM up to level 37 or whatever it was when you learned Swiftcast. ...including having to get level 30 in one class AND level 15 in another class to unlock Jobs. For example, WHM required 30 levels in CNJ, but also 15 levels in Arcanist. SCH was Arcanist and Conjurer while SMN was Arcanist and Thamaturge. As a healer main, PLD was the first tank Job I unlocked since I already had the CNJ levels. There used to be a specific quest, "I believe I can fly", I think was its name, you had to do before you could teach your Chocobo to fly. This also taught all your other mounts to fly. Until you did it, the only mount you could fly with was the Black Choco that Broherfant gives you as a sign of friendship. Not a lost thing, but RDM's Vercure is based on INT while SMN's Physic is based on MND. This was from when Physic was a CLASS (not Job) ability of Arcanist. Both SCH and SMN used the same ability. With ShB (and now EW), when you get on SCH and open the Actions & Abilities page, you'll only see Resurrection under Arcanist. The rest are under SCH as Job abilities. So there's really no reason for this anymore. BUT on SMN, you could use Cleric Stance (yes, THAT Cleric Stance) to swap your INT and MND values. While healing under Cleric was at a -20%, the INT swapped for MND meant that SMN's Physic was a bit more powerful that way. And even now, up to level 40-50, SMN's Physic is still...vaguely functional. SMN and SCH pets used to have health and their own agro tables. So Eos/Selene could be KO'd and need to be resummoned. Likewise, Ifrit and Garuda could draw agro. Titan was the tank pet, and was designed to draw agro. This made SMN nice and easy to level, and you could even somewhat carefully fight trash packs in 4 mans if your tank dropped using Titan for tanking. He could even tank simple bosses (like Tam-Tara) if your party was good with agro management. Also, SMN had an ability that would heal their pets. I forget the name, but it was fairly powerful, like 8% of their health per tick or something. SMN naturally also had this ability. SMN also could do some interesting tricks like Succor the party, Adlo Eos, and then deploy Eos's Adlo across the party after their Succor shields were consumed to deal with boss mechanics that did two large AOEs in a row. This was because, they made pets only take 10% damage from AOEs because they were dying to raidwides too much, but because they still had their own health bars, SCH's could abuse this by shielding them. Then they made them into their modern form where they have no health and all agro they generate is passed straight onto the SMN/SCH now. PLD is next on the proverbial chopping block, with AST probably being next after it. At some point DRG and BLM will probably be up next as well. Other than AST, these are the three Jobs that have the most consistent damage profile (as opposed to everyone else with the 2 min buff window silliness that most everyone hates but the devs seem to love), and AST is just generally regarded as kind of a mess. SCH would be on that same block, but much of its clunk was successfully massaged out of it without needing an entire rework, but Faerie Gauge... Poetics was originally the higher and then lower tier Tomestone. It eventually dropped to be the lowest of three. For whatever reason, when HW came around, they came out with new ones and started retiring old ones, but they kept Poetics. Now Poetics are the generic "old content" Tomestone, and are used for gear, old Relics (in the case of 5.25, the then-current ShB Relic first step), and stuff like orchestration rolls and the like. The Grand Companies still completely exist and are still important to the narrative, but in a gameplay sense, haven't really been relevant since HW. In ARR, the ranks opened new levels of gear, but this seems to cap out at 50. People kept expecting a new rank, and they did add the mission squad stuff you can do and get your rank up a bit higher, but we never got new gear, I don't think (level 60). Regardless, they haven't touched the system since, instead going with MSQ characters for the Trust system, even though the GC squad might have fit into that rationally enough. Likewise, which team you were on in Frontlines was which GC you were assigned to. When you enter now as not your GC, you will see the message "You join as a freelancer." This is because so many people joined Maelstrom, I believe it was, that they would have horribly long wait times (and it's not like PvP ques WEREN'T horribly long already) vs the other two, and they wanted to get the ques to go faster. This is also why there are the three different horse mounts for 100 wins as a given GC vs the generic 100 wins, which nets you the glowing Allegan ball mount. Oh, and those horses are among the rarest mounts in the game even now, with Mael being the least rare (remember when I said more people played Mael?) then the Ul'Dah one then the Twin Adders one, I think. ...oh, and before I leave that topic: The ARR Relic has the famous (or infamous) Light Farming step. Because the Shatter Frontline was in the game at the time (the one where the nodes spawn on the mid plateau and that has the 6 bases around the outside teams fight for control over), it also gives Light on completing one. So if you're ever on that step of an ARR Relic and also working on Frontlines for whatever reason (Garo mounts, whatever), Shatter days you can get double duty by swapping over to your Relic Job WITH THE RELIC EQUIPPED to get Light out of those matches. And also speaking of Light, in addition to the many changes for ARR Relics (shorter respawn CDs on the FATEs instead of some being multi-day waits, a now greater than 0.2% chance of getting Atma from FATE completion [that...wasn't a typo], only needing 3 of each enemy type instead of 10 from the book step, final boss drops being guaranteed for the later 4 quests step as opposed to being only a chance of dropping), at some point the Light amount was also doubled. This made Syrcus and World of Darkness completely pointless vs Laby because a Laby run generating 48 would cap an Atma itself. And if the others were in bonus hour, it would completely be pointless in terms of the overcapping. WHM use to have a weird kind of Adlo in Stoneskin that would make a shield for 10%/18% (above level 40 something there was a Trait) on a 3/2.5 sec cast. This was most useful on high target allies, like Tanks. Interestingly, it had a 30 minute instead of 30 second duration, so it could be fun to cast on people you found leveling out in the field...even if, since it was based on THEIR max HP, it probably wouldn't last that long. Unlike Protect, which decreased physical (and with a Trait also magical) damage by 10% for your whole party, but was a party-wide cast that couldn't be used on non-party members like said leveling people. It also lasted 30 mins on its recipients, though. . I'm sure I can think of some more as a grizzled vet who started the game in 2.2 or 2.3 or so, but that's it for now. : )

[@specstreTV]

very well earned pin of effort. I had a larger list when putting this video together and pruned it down for the sake of presentation, but even that list didn't have half the stuff on here. You did, however, unlock a core memory of me being strong-armed into originally joining the Maelstrom by the friend who got me into the game (briefly) in Heavensward. Before I eventually quit the game that first time, I left for the Flames because I liked Ul'dah more in the story. Anyways, it's always nice to see someone who's been around for so long! :D No doubt you have a LOT of memories/lived experiences with these systems.

[@jovenc4508]

Urgh, don't remind me of carbuncle's aggro. My first forray as an ACN was a run through Sastasha. The first fight with Captain Maddison when he ran away had my carbuncle chasing after him through the rest of the dugeon pulling everything back to me. We wiped most spectacularly. At least the rest of the party understood and laughed it off.

[@VideogamesPang]

Max MP was determined by Piety, which used to be a main stat before Shadowbringers.

[@tciddados]

If you really wanna get into the nitty-gritty history, the BRD TP restore ability was originally Army's Paean (which is now just a DPS rotation ability, alongside Mage's Ballad, which used to be the MP regen ability). Then when cross-class abilities were removed + replaced with role actions, they replaced ballad+paean with Refresh+Tactician (also used by MCH then) as the resource-regeneration abilities.

[@Miyao05]

@@jovenc4508 ah yes, the titan tank, i remember when i was leveling tank begging smn to dismiss them because they would constantly taunt and if they die and it wasn't within my range the smn or healer would die, it was annoying lol.

[@Gwydion_Wolf]

I actually miss the old Astro card system. Yes.. the 'top tier savage raiders' focused purely on Balance for the extra DPS... but it was 'fun' to throw a 'boosted arrow' onto a Ninja and watch them turn into mini-blenders.

[@UltimegaSeven]

Its a buff job. If you arent fishing for the most beneficial buff for the team youre playing the job wrong. Has nothing to do with savage.

[@Kag001]

Boosted arrow on monks and having them rip aggro off the tanks *innocent whistling*

[@alphamaccao5224]

@@UltimegaSeven It's an MMO you dribbling idiot. "chase the meta and nothing else" is the wrong way to play unless you are intentionally going for savage. You taking another minute on your roulettes is not worth being an asshole about it. As the age old saying goes: "the content is getting done, you aren't paying my sub, shut up"

[@EVE-Muutaras]

Yeah it was a brilliant times, but now we lose two on ast perfect stuff, cards and nocturnal sect. At least now PvP cards on ast like old one +-

[@Gwydion_Wolf]

@UltimegaSeven yes, actually it does have everything to do with savage. Because the 'only' thing that mattered to savage was damage. They didn't care about haste, they didn't care about mana regen, the 'only' thing they cared about was raw damage boost. So that is what every single card was turned into. You can literally remove the entire UI and card system away from ASTRO. Give them 1 spell that is a single target damage buff with a 15 second recast, and an aoe group buff on a 2 minut cool down and the class will play exactly as it does now.

[@LarzAluphe]

I can't believe you didn't mention the biggest, most important cut feature. Even the most minor of sidequests used to have full, detailed journal entries.

[@Cloud7050]

Will that not be a thing in the endgame anymore? I've been taking my time progressing, and I go back to read all the journal entries for stuff I complete.

[@CunnyMuncher]

He didnt mention the cut ass slider from 1.0, god I wish I had that on my lalafell

[@SurrealLumberJack]

@@CunnyMuncher They took that from us? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[@CunnyMuncher]

@@SurrealLumberJack YEP, the 2b leggings actually USE that feature and put it at max

[@Vistouf]

​@@Cloud7050 Ya, they've started cutting on those in Stormblood 😭

[@iChannelz88]

Another removed feature from 1.0 is that bards used to have to equip actual arrows to use their skills and if you ran out you were left fisting the boss until the fight ends and you had to run to town to buy more.

[@lezard2102]

dear god why

[@MacHorz]

@@lezard2102 cause its make sense? you use a bow,so you nned arrows

[@lezard2102]

@@MacHorz i know genius, but it's terrible game design when one class has to spend more than the others and potentially become useless midway through the raid. i'm all in for realism but when it compromises gameplay experience some sacrifices should be done

[@MacHorz]

@@lezard2102 I think there would be more options, for example: BRD would be best dps but u have to spend more money/items or/and u can use your abilities if u run out of arrows BUT they do less dmg or limited. Also could be that arrows give extra dmg, lets say "normal shot" does 100 and if u use high quality arrow, the "normal shot" does 200 dmg. And with all the inventory upgrades we got, it would be no issue to carry so many arrows these days. I still play ffxi and there u need arrows/bullets for ranger/Corsair. so my hope is, that we get a corsair in ffxiv which use bullets,which u have to craft/buy :)

[@jdgjordan]

@@MacHorz and that's why you're not a game dev

[@Arturius]

As someone who's main healer class is Astro... I personally miss the old cards. And not just 'cause of The Balance. It was FUN! That bit of RNG, the need to remember what card did what and whom to apply it, not to mention the sheer badass buffs you could get back then. I miss old AST.

[@jovenc4508]

One of the biggest changes for me was when they did away with cross class skills. I used the MNK's old skill Featherfoot on DRG to great effect. That and being able to use Cure on THM got me through most early content.

[@specstreTV]

Cross class skills were huge. I had a section on it, but it was just so cumbersome (especially talking about which classes could use what and how upgrading to a "job" actually limited your cross-classing) that I decided to save it. Definitely a key part of the "old" game that's no longer with us.

[@jovenc4508]

@@specstreTV It's been so long ago I barely remembered most of what you covered already. I remember allocating skill points were a thing too. Flash is also a skill I miss from ye olden days.

[@jovenc4508]

@Phoenix I had heard that THM was going to be the original CNJ and vice versa.

[@Moheeheeko]

yeeeeeah, but then you had healers without swiftcast, because it was a thaum spell. and Warriors without Provoke, because it was a gladiator ability.

[@jovenc4508]

@@Moheeheeko Except you didn't need those skills for normal content as those classes.

[@yoshikoizumi7851]

cross class skills and having to level other classes to unlock your job crystals were a nice way of telling people to try different things and find what playstyle/class fits them the best I totally understand why they removed it, streamlining everything and such, but still it was a very nice flavor

[@diersteinjulien6773]

It went hand in hand with the need to have a sub-class leveled to upgrade to the job, and the slog of level 30 msq that was there to encourage players to not rush it

[@GuiltyKit]

I think they really dropped the ball by not going Whole Hog with the system. It could have been what Final Fantasy 11 wanted to be but didn't quite manage. But they decided to go the safe route instead and basically gut the system before the game was even fully developed in 1.0. I know it's really hard to balance that kind of thing because people are always going to find out the optimal solution and combination, but I think it could have been a lot of fun if we had more complex classes.

[@DarkZodiacZZ]

I think that idea goes back to ff11 where you could use your subjobs skills and abilities to 50% of your main job level. If I remember it correctly war or rdm with nin as subjob was popular one since you'd gain dual wield and clones from it.

[@diersteinjulien6773]

@@DarkZodiacZZ indeed, FF11 subclass system was very rich in possibilities and opportunities. But FF14 couldn't replicate it, because it has two big limitations made for the sake of streamlining the game: First is the holy trinity of class roles, in association with roulettes. If some class/subclasses associations are two unbalanced, it can lead to a lot of toxicity (you can imagine the "why are you playing WHM/SAM when BLM is the only good subclass"). Having players unable to fill their role would wreck the game, and it's very difficult to balance all the possibilities. The second, of course, and the reason they got rid of cross-classes skill in FF14, is the almighty MSQ. Since everyone's main goal is to finish the story, which takes a LOT of time for newcomers (and it's not going to get better), spending time on leveling subclasses is a very secondary task and making it obligatory could turn new players away. So while I think it's a shame, I understand why they made those choices... but still, I would love to have more of that feeling of freedom. They killed the concept of branching jobs, leaving it only for SMN/SCH, and we only have one limited job...

[@Zeithri]

@@diersteinjulien6773 I mean too be fair, you still find people that can be insulting and toxic if you aren't playing " _your class optimally_ " . So that wouldn't really be a huge problem. Nor would balancing either be. It's just laziness when it all comes down to it, and a fear that all these things 'overcomplicate the game'.

[@CTN404]

Ah! TP! You’re bringing me back…. Melee jobs couldn’t sprint in Dungeon’s or else we would lose TP and couldn’t attack. Good old days 😊 and healer Cleric Stance….

[@Qamikace]

Healers have had a couple fun changes too. Everyone will tell you about Cleric Stance and how great/awful is was, but there were also things like Protect, Astrologian having some time magic spells that increased buff durations or having to level Thaumaturge to about 30 so you could get Swiftcast.

[@jovenc4508]

I miss Stone Skin and Protect.

[@specstreTV]

i am desperately hoping 7.0 addresses healer dps. i doubt we'll see cleric stance version 1.0 ever again, but just a crumb of something other than our generic spam, lord yoshida... also, that grind to swiftcast made at least 1 of my WoW friends quit back when we first dabbled in FF. good memories.

[@Ziyanani]

I still actually have protect tucked away on my cnj bar, along with buttons for cleric stance and a number of other bygone skills. I for one hated cleric stance but I know a lot of people really liked the dedicated 'i'm the off healer' button

[@Qamikace]

I've heard several times the same thing about people wanting healers and tanks going back to to what they were before, but they (and maybe you) seem to think the simplification of the roles was accidental to the progress of the game design, when it was clearly intended. People are naturally scared of playing tanks and healers in these games because of the responsibility they incur, so the devs saw fit to make them less complex to increase their playerbase. We're never going back to how things were: things are going exactly as planned.

[@Orih9]

@@Qamikace I know that feeling, but I think it’s more beneficial and reasonable to look at how we can use HW/SB to inspire healer changes for the next expansion. A lot of old tools were clunky, and pruning was fine, but instead of pruning the tree, we cut off all its branches. But we can think about what made healers feel fun back then, and how do we revive that feeling and breath new life into the healers? It’s really not difficult per say, but it requires the design team acknowledge the problems with the current healers.

[@ColorOfSakura]

So an interesting thing about the chart you posted for AST's cards: That's actually the original 3.0 versions of the cards, they actually changed nearly all of their effects in some way over the course of Heavensward and into Stormblood: - The Ewer and Spire only had their Cost Reduction original effect only up until Patch 3.05 released (the addition of Gordias (Savage) to the game). These were changed to be MP and TP Refresh, respectively, instead of cost reduction. - In Patch 3.4, they changed Balance and Bole's effects from 10% to 20%, which basically made AST one of the best healers in the game specifically because of Balance's huge jump in utility. - I can't remember WHEN it was changed, but eventually the Spear was also changed from "Reduce Recast Time by 20%" to "Increase Target's Critical Hit Rate by 10%". - Originally the Arrow specified "Skill or Spell Speed" and then they changed it to "Attack Speed" to also include auto-attacks and make it easier to understand.

[@firby7341]

thanks for the comment. when i saw the effects on screen i was really confused bc i remembered them different xD this explains it! (i started a month before ShB)

[@tetsuo3k]

I thought I remembered the cards changing a little bit during Heavensward! Astrologian used to be my favorite healer, but it's been so long since I played it properly. I've got it at 80 now, but if I'm being honest I don't recall much about it from Stormblood onward. These days I rock the sage class if I'm healing, but I ought to give ol' astro another go some time.

[@deebug96]

I miss my huge MP bar Summon dot master I use to have. I miss my carbuncles having brains and the need to switch between them dependent on what you were doing. (Ruby for single target, Topaz for tanking when soloing stuff, and Emerald for multiple enemies). The skill I miss most though is Shadow Flare.

[@HORSEMANFOREVER]

For me, the worst change will always be what they did to DRK. God, i miss carefully managing my MP and being rewarded with spamming Dark Arts like a madman. That, and spamming Low Blow to just DESTROY an enemy's crotch.

[@Dawn0]

Each time I see an enemy conjurer cast stoneskin I cry not to forget the older Scolar way or playing the class I miss that too but I guess it was to complicated to manage your Eos or Selene depending what you would go for buffing or pure heals.

[@CaptainSkylocke]

Protect and stone skill were stupid busy work. They basically had to be on so just always have them on or it's just pointless

[@28cappuccino21]

i 100% understand why AST cards were reworked, but there was honestly nothing better than the dopamine rush from having the luckiest balance draws ever.. love this video, looking forward to the next one! and happy new year

[@specstreTV]

definitely a different era of the game, but that 10% dps buff is so nutty. the royal road AoE balance was truly something to behold... anyways thank you cappuccino!!! happy new year to you too

[@bentwomey384]

I recently unlocked AST myself, and was really disappointed that all the cards do the same thing. It makes the whole thing feel pointless and bloated. I wish the jobs were more gimmicky, like how summoners (apparently) used to ACTUALLY summon things, instead of just temporarily changing your moveset.

[@blindfoldedchaos]

@@bentwomey384 yea they used to summon egis on a perm basis instead of a rotation but it just boiled down to 'single target? use ifrit, aoe? garuda, emergency tank? titan' problem is that xiv's pet system is wonky af

[@laxxboy20]

It's not exactly a removed game feature per se, but, at some point, they massively decreased the variety of items that your retainers could find on Quick Ventures. I have full AST and DRK Liege sets that I have from never playing PvP.

[@Rovan84127]

You used to be able to get rare-ish items like Onion Helms and Gysahl Rings from QVs too; now that they’re presumably not in the pool, they skyrocketed in price.

[@TheCossu95]

@@Rovan84127 Gysahl Ring is still there, Onion Helm on the other hand doesn't appear to be

[@dataunknown]

@@TheCossu95 I got Onion Pattens toward the beginning of EW from a quick venture, so other Onion pieces might still be in the pool.

[@kayomarsali]

another removed feature from 1.0 was weapon skills and some combinations of them would cause damage to specific body parts, you were able to break monster parts and it would effect loot tables and enemy attacks. enemy models and animations would change based of what body part got incapacitated. For example: you could break a Dodo's Head to stop it from using Belch to debuff you, or break an Aldgoat's horns to add them to the loot table, I don't remember if it was removed completely by the job inclusion update in 1.21, or if it lasted all the way to the end of 1.23c

[@kyubeycoobie3568]

That actually sounds pretty cool

[@DarkZodiacZZ]

I can't remember it either. I think one lance skill (impulse drive?) could break Iffy's right horn.

[@crystalgoddess4085]

There's one change I'm glad happened, and that was the change to materia extraction. It's always had the same requirement, that piece of gear hitting 100% Spiritbond, but originally, it didn't reset the Spiritbond to 0% like it does now, it *_destroyed_* the gear in question.

[@ZantePrayer]

AST still doesn't feel the same without that initial card system. A true luck-of-the-draw system was SO much more fun to play with, even in high-end content, and most of the cards were nice to draw in some way. Really wish they'd just adjusted The Spire with the TP change and kept the whole system how it used to be. Have found it depressing to play AST ever since, now that there's no dopamine rush at all 'cause you'll always get the same thing.

[@eW91dHViZSBpcyBjZW5zb3JzaGlw]

yep AST was dead to me since the change, boring no?

[@pudding2675]

@@eW91dHViZSBpcyBjZW5zb3JzaGlw Do agree. Used to be an AST main during HW era and it completely gutted me hearing about the streamlining AST got. Half of a good AST was good probability management, like a poker player does, since you could also hold a card while drawing more, so you could prepare that sweet balance boost for the DPS spike moment in the raid. AST wasn't broken, or unbalanced, or even unfun due to RNG. It was especially fun BECAUSE you had to do RNG Manipulation/Management, and there was a huge difference between good and mediocre AST players due to this very skill - and it makes me sad that the FFXIV team keeps opting to remove features they can't handle rather than reflect themselves and improve on their game system design skills and rework them appropriately. Same with the 10k MP system which just feels extremely jarring. At least they could've made the whole thing scale linearly alongside skill cost. So it would effectively be the same backbone it is today under the hood, but gives you a sense of progression and not some really weird off-numbers in the lower levels as was mentioned with 100 HP but 10k MP... While the game is certainly great, SE for sure are very scared of making fun changes to the game, rather than eliminate anythig that could have the remote possibility of being unfun even to an absolute minority. :/

[@nizizumi]

@@pudding2675 Unfortunately some people who have both too much time and none at all find any form of effort insulting to their time. As such I'm pretty sure that loud minority caused the change.

[@firby7341]

not only did astro lose a fun portion with the cards rework, they also removed diurnal and nocturnal with astros choice for either shielding or applying hots

[@zeroxvii17]

Surprised that you didn't mention skill points is this. I believe it was prior to HW that you got skill points for every few levels that you went up and, like many other RPGs, you could allocate points to boost certain stats like Mind, Int, etc. Though everyone just dumped them all into the most beneficial stat(s) for their main job so they were taken out early in HW's patches (I think. It's been years).

[@DearLilBunBun]

They were gotten rid of in 4.0 (Stormblood) I can't believe I completely forgot about this lol

[@ulaladiva]

And if you enjoyed both SMN and SCH, you'd have to go buy a book to respec those points every time you switched.

[@jemm113]

@@ulaladiva before SB I never touched SCH for that very reason! I started as SMN and didn’t touch SCH for so long because of it!

[@ScorchingFalcon]

I still have 50 of that skill point reset books sitting in my retainer's inventory. yes, I bulk buy them and redo my points every time I switch.

[@dracotias]

@@DearLilBunBun wait they were around for that long?! Like I must have actively erased them from my mind post ARR

[@haxtontemeraire2966]

The belt thing is funny. In 2.0 the Chef's apron you can craft comes with both the apron and the belt with the cooking tools attached on it. In 1.0, they were different things, so you could run around with a pot and pan at the hip in a full set of artifact gear. TP is a weird thing, in 1.0 before the autoattack implementation, you had to use abilities to build up TP and use other abilities to spend TP. Like, PUG would use bootshine to build up enough TP to go into the next part of the combo, then go back to bootshine to go into the next next part of the combo. Also, the panty slots on the gear UI screen. All spells in the game were single target unless you pressed the AOE button. Being able to wear any armor without negatives. Armor not having any real stats on them besides damage resistance. Wands being ranged weapons that didn't need ammo (post auto attack implementation). Being able to throw potions and items. Being able to flag items in your inventory as an item you can sell to another player if they inspect you. Crafting having a Minecraft grid. Crafting having a weird relationship with elemental resistances that no one was able to really figure out. Crafting also needing to rely heavy on other crafters to get crafting parts. Different kinds of crafters being able to make the same things but as different crafting classes. Class points being spent to equip different class skills and spells. Gaining more leveling exp if you have one class at level cap. Not having quest markers. Notorious Monsters (now moved to being FATE bosses). Getting more MSQ stuff for the MSQ roulette (people hated it so much, they dropped plans to add more). Skipping cutscenes in MSQ roulette. Starting as a crafter or gather at character creation. Dungeons not being instanced. Coerthas not being covered in snow. There's so much to list.

[@sunstonespice]

One thing I DO NOT AT ALL miss from the older versions was how much you had to micro manage Scholar's fairy. You had to place her in a static location so she could continue to cast heals since she would interrupt her own spells to follow you, and Selene and Eos had different spells. What we have now is closer to Eos's build, but Selene traded the AOE heal for an AOE haste and had a silent/interrupt... which she would spam if you didn't set her to manual control. Even then, there was a notable delay after issuing a fairy a command that isn't nearly as bad anymore. Scholar was very hard on controller during HW with the button bloat. The community had many long discussions over which fairy was best, and the general opinion that Eos was always useful no matter the situation while Selene could miss her stun and thus had a dead skill slot. I actually favored Selene since I never played high-end content that required whispering dawn. I just preferred her colors! Also, the pets had HP and had a party slot! They could take damage and die! It's funny, I play Sage now, and as a grizzled old Scholar main from all that time ago, I can feel how much they learned from old Scholar when they designed Sage. I'm betting by next expansion the fairy will just be an accessory and follow you around like a minion instead of having delayed AI at all.

[@MoreKrisOver]

YES, I remember that i had to put Eos literaly in the middle of the arena so everyone recieved heals and stuff, it was weird.

[@jaysaber9054]

On the flipside having that level of control made for some cool interactions as a Summoner. Being the offtank in Ramuh and using Garuda to split damage on Twintania made it feel like you weren't just a mindless dps bot.

[@chrystalclear500]

I hope they don't make the fairy JUST an accessory! Because of how much more streamlined SCH is now, placing and moving your fairy when appropriate can actually give you some clutch healing range in unsafe floor areas that no other healer (except maybe AST's current HUGE Earthly Star) can match! I don't mind that they simplified the fairies down to a single skillset, but every time there's a situation where half or more of the party has a cleanseable debuff, I think longingly of Selene's old AOE cleanse....

[@MythrilZenith]

Love all the outfits, your video editing is getting so much better in such a short amount of time! I started in ShB so I only remember belts, but tbh outside of making the obvious joke that Tetsuya Nomura is rolling in his non-existent grave at a FF game removing belts I honestly had forgotten about them almost entirely. Their removal has not been sorely missed.

[@specstreTV]

Thank you so much!! :D It's been a battle, but I find the editing really fun so I've been practicing and trying to get better. But yeah, I'm with you. Belts were kind of... nothing from 2.0 on. I do think it's neat they used to be a "real" piece of equipment that showed up, but I'm surprised they didn't axe them entirely in 2.0. The decision to make them invisible but still be an equippable piece of loot feels... scuffed.

[@DoomsdayR3sistance]

Having played FFXI, I can sort of see where some of these features originally came from. TP for example in FFXI was also used for performing "techniques", being power moves you could preform and combo with other players (called skill chains, which then leads into other mechanics like magic bursts, it required a fair bit of coordination) tho in FFXI was a resource that built up from auto attacks, playing FFXIV you could almost entirely remove auto-attacks on many classes, if not for the very low levels 1~15ish. I believe early FFXIV also had cross-class skills, which is kind of a bit similar to the FFXI sub-job system, where you levelled your main class but could put another class down as your "sub-job", you'd get the bonuses and levelling up to half of your primary job's level or the sub-jobs current level (whichever is lower). So in FFXI, a White Mage/Black Mage could cast 'Fire II' for example if the black mage sub-job were high enough to access that spell. I didn't get into FFXIV until Shadowbringers came out, so I missed most of these mechanics but have heard of them. As a fun story from my FFXI days, when the FFXI expansion of ToAU(Treasures of Aht Urhgan) came out, a lot of parties started to form to take advantage of the higher rate of EXP gain from the new areas, I was a WHM which was not desired in these types of parties, except I had two specific things, I had the Ninja sub-job and had unlocked the Club Technique, Hexa-Strikes, only WHM could get a high enough Club skill to execute that particular move. Hexa-strike for WHM was usually considered a light closure (light skill chain) but in the parties forming, Hexa Strike was actually a good light opener and the party I found also had a Black Mage (for ancient spell magic bursts). The ninja sub-job was required to hold two weapons, so I had two clubs, which TP built slightly faster and had some gear that slightly lowered target TP gain (mobs gained TP too, when they hit and when they were hit). FFXI also had kill chains like FFXIV had, the reason ToAU switched things up so much was normally before ToAU, the highest chain you'd normally see was about #20, in ToAU, within a few days, some parties were basically breaking chain #1000. The couple of parties I got into over those first few days each broke #300 and racking in significantly more EXP than had ever been seen. Mix this with a new mechanic that allowed you to trade excess EXP for perm buffs... a lot of people eager to grind these new areas.

[@Moheeheeko]

"tho in FFXI was a resource that built up from auto attacks" it was in 1.0 as well, which is why ARR had it at all

[@dgm5617]

I miss the busy days of FFXI, brought back good memories 😁

[@SwitchxA]

WHM club parties were so OP and so fun.

[@DoomsdayR3sistance]

@@SwitchxA I vaguely remember going to the Yagudo headquarters and beating them down to skill up club! Only the 2nd most embarrassing thing to happen to the Yagudo... after what Shantotto did to them!

[@ExplosiveBolts]

XIV 1.0 was much more similar to 11. Yes 1.0 needed a rework, but Yoshi P butchered it and turned it into a WoW clone that's somehow even more dumbed down.

[@sorakun555]

Let's not forget accuracy! Everyone needed to hit thresholds, and different positions on the boss had their own requirements. Healers basically had to meld only accuracy to hit these, or else risk some dot ticks (yes, the damage after the dot was applied) missing

[@porelius3429]

Despite how clunky a lot of stuff was back in heavensward, I still miss a lot of the combat flow from back then. Healer rotations involved more than a single damage button + dot every 30s, and every job, from what I remember, had burst windows every minute or so, where the bursts were unique from one and other

[@jaysaber9054]

WHMs just casually topping the dps charts during dungeons was so much fun

[@tanagerie]

With every sentence of this video I feel younger and younger. One more watch through and I might find myself back in high school chem class. Real informative and entertaining video as always

[@specstreTV]

welcome to the ffxiv fountain of youth ty for the kind words!

[@Rurounin00]

Not mentioned but back in 1.0 we also had a stamina system along with the TP system but was removed around the time Yoshi took over the game and also weapon damage type was a bit more complex in 1.0 since weapons could have all three types of damage but in different percentages (A halberd had all of them and claws had a mixture of blunt and slashing)

[@specstreTV]

Wow, that's some deep loremaster stuff. Good share! :D

[@papershark443]

They took the fatigue system and reworked it into Rested EXP. Rested EXP is just fatigue in reverse, using up a bonus of EXP until it's out and then gaining a reduced amount after. Of course it's not even close to as punishing as fatigue was, in 1.0 you could play enough to drop your EXP gain into single digits making it pointless to keep playing for that day.

[@Xerkrosis]

DRK could have both tank-stance and damage-stance enabled simultanously. The latter also had this red aura-effect, and were easily spotted in the cities because of it. There was also an ability, which depended wether tank-stance was on or off. They also had a ability with lightning-attack that empowered certain attacks. You had to decide when and what to use it for, because pretty much any attack had a bonus-effect when using that ability.

[@Rhyl3x]

If I'm right. DRK had a Tank Combo, Attack Combo with stance, Attack Combo when stance was off and Mana Reg Combo on top. When tanking was fun.

[@trustytrest]

Old DRK was a fun mix of MP management without depleting yourself entirely. Too bad they just made it into a 1-2-3-oGCD job nowadays.

[@breadgehog]

Some of these had slightly more nuance than can be presented in a shortform video, so some extra info: - Not only did damage types have a pigeonholing effect on the meta, some of them were genuinely pointless or bordered actively harmful; while piercing made it so you effectively needed a DRG to justify a BRD or MCH (but realistically, a BRD due to ping concerns for 95% of players), slashing was genuinely so ubiquitous that it was almost redundant; WAR and NIN both had slashing vuln baked into their kit as did SAM, but it was very, VERY rare not to have both in a party comp for content where the synergy actually mattered. Blunt was also a problem because it only interacted with MNK, which meant that the only thing Blunt resistance down did was... enable a second MNK in your party to forego a button in their rotation? - While some of the tank stance changes were surely to make it less intimidating for people to pick up the role, a large reason why it was so contentious to have them was because it made tank damage very, very reliant on the willingness of other members in your party to press buttons that didn't affect their DPS, typically melee DPS because casters, healers, and ranged jobs used their aggro reduction abilities natively as part of resource support. A tank's ability to stay in DPS stance was somewhat dependent on the player's skill as well as techniques like voke-shirks and the legendary circle-shirk (offtank provokes, main tank shirks, main tank provokes, offtank shirks) along with NIN's ability to both reduce an ally's aggro and also transfer their own aggro to the tank, but at the end of the day, DPS players refusing to press Diversion meant it was a losing battle and you'd eventually have to lower your damage, either by resorting to aggro combo or changing your stance entirely, meaning that tanks in uncoordinated settings were effectively punished for not being in a static. I miss stance dancing on paper as a form of skill expression, but in practice it's nice to have a much more active say in my own performance!

[@yeebit]

Something else quirky about 1.0, it started with the shields leveled separately, so you could get shield exp from using a shield with gladiator, conjurer, or thaumaturge. I think this mainly affected the block rates and amounts but may have also unlocked skills.

[@KnTenshi2]

Yep, and it was only for those three classes because they were the only ones with access to one handed weapons (Arcanist didn't make it into 1.0 and would have been VASTLY different anyways). Sentinel was also the only class removed from FFXIV 1.0 (said class was the original source of the shield and it's abilities), it just got sucked into Gladiator (and later, Paladin).

[@Phyllion-]

@@KnTenshi2 you could argue that Thaumaturge got removed as well as it no longer exists at all in the form it did at release and is now instead one half of Conjurer.

[@daggersnight1373]

The skill points you would get at certain levels you could pump into your stats is a small mechanic that some people forget use to be in the game. It didn't do much, only giving about 3 points to your stat of choice, but it was still a thing.

[@SkandiTV]

After that Summoner rework, hoo boy, please don't let Paladin get gutted 🥲

[@Calculusman1084]

Paladin main here o/ sweating and shaking profusely! Check.

[@Boyzby]

I'm pretty sure they equated the changes to the NIN rework and not SMN.

[@ArchieGamez]

Doubt they will change that much mid expac, at worse say goodbye to spamming holy spirit and atonement 4 times (lets be real, who likes spamming that when Confiteor combo exists)

[@specstreTV]

wishing you guys the best...

[@Ashgrom]

I agree. I recently hit 90 and I love the paladin rotation and feel. Fast rotation going into the Blades combo is so epic. While Warrior is just a dps really, Paladin really feels like a tank. I sure hope they don’t screw it over…

[@gadomoya]

I started playing FFXIV in 4.5 so all the different systems and abilities were so amazing and fantastical for me to learn. I remember studying AST card sheets while leveling through ARR. And then so many things were gutted in Shadowbringers, was not the best feeling 😢

[@PalaZ000]

I really like how much effort you have put into this video. Thanks KZbin for showing me this. Cant wait for next one. :)

[@specstreTV]

ty so much!! glad you enjoyed :D be happy to see you on the next one!

[@SilvanCleric]

Here's a fun one, having your chocobo summoned used to take up a party slot so you could technically see and heal everyone's chocobos. So you would have to desummon your chocobo to add another person if you hit the max of 8. Made for fun times during hunts back in the day especially considering PF wasn't a thing either.

[@Winter_RainVT]

Great editing there. I also appreciate how much of the footage was just your lala talking to the screen lol. its a good filler image when info dumping.

[@nukfauxsho]

Just found your channel! Great content. time to binge watch.

[@IMAPOTATOZ]

I remember when you could put certain skills on all your classes, like provoke. Going into WoD as a bard with provoke on made for some fun (but eventually getting kicked) fights.

[@kio4896]

You couldn't get provoke as a BRD. BRD could only cross class from Pugilist and Lancer and provoke was a Gladiator skill. You could take it if you removed your job stone and went in as Archer, as base classes could cross class amongst any other base class, but you had more problems than taking provoke at that point.

[@owlamancer]

I love the style of your narration, having your lala stare at the camera in different situations and converse.

[@specstreTV]

thank you so much! :D glad it’s entertaining LOL

[@bransonchic678]

That's really cool that the Ast cards were all different ! Wish i could try it lol thanks for the video as always hope you have a Happy New Year to u and yours

[@Sephtyx]

I remember when ninja had two skills were you could either place someone at top of enmity list and one you can decrease enmity for someone. Don’t even know why that was a thing felt so weird

[@dracotias]

back in the day Ninja was reallllly bad for accidently grabbing aggro from less experienced tanks because of their attack speed, it also had utility in raids before shirk was a thing

[@okllo]

I still miss Nocturnal Sect from AST, and it's been a hassle to play 6.0 AST on controller 😔

[@specstreTV]

6.0 AST is kind of a nightmare... I had a decent handle on it in Shadowbringers, even though it was kind of scuffed, but EW AST has been a mess for me to re-learn. It feels like they *tried* to make it simpler, but it is... not. It feels bloated, even with the removal of Crown Play (which was some SERIOUS bloat). Hopefully 7.0 AST is... better? But I worry they might swing in the other direction and give it the SMN treatment.

[@mattstanford9673]

I played Nocturnal Sect religiously on Astro before they removed it in favor of being a HoT healer. But aside from that, I'm actually really liking Astro right now, so I don't fully get why it's "a nightmare." I also play exclusively on controller, so I've never had issues with that. (If I were forced to play keyboard I'd have to relearn the entire game. I'm sitting on three and a half years of controller muscle memory.)

[@kelestriamoonbowk.mhammers407]

I too miss Noct and Diurnal. I miss being a FLEXIBLE healer but NOOOOO they let sage take our place! ; ; Why couldn't they just let Ast and Sage be 'flexible healers' and Scholar be the shield and White mage be the regen type? UGH. I miss being able to adapt to my tank/pull type. Some tanks pull a bit hard and some don't use mitigation so I was able to 'feel' out what was needed on AST. (and fit into 8 man groups better adapting to my co healer) Plus they have the PRETTIEST spells in game IMO. Even with cards simplified sometimes the RNG gets ya and you don't get your three symbol types lined up right. I've redrawn several times on a fight and can't get the right type. (Solar, Celestial, Lunar) to get my triad.

[@Peshyy]

what an awesome video to start 2023 with. happy new year!

[@specstreTV]

thank you! :D happy new year to you, too!!

[@Notics2]

Tons of great comments here. I figured I would add something. Both of these are leftover from FFXIV 1.0. The Mun-Tuy Cellars - For anyone who has ever thought the Cellars were strange, this is because they are leftover from 1.0. In the current game, you can zone into them from East Shroud/South Shroud. In 1.0, the cellars was a kind of open world mini dungeon lite, primarily used for guildleves, the battle kind mostly. Lore wise, they were ruins from the time of Gelmorra. Another cool little easter egg so to speak was that two Notorious Monsters were found inside here in 1.0. Prince of Pestilence and Alux. Both of these monsters can still be found in the game today as Fate bosses. Many NMs that just roamed the world in 1.0 were turned into Fate Bosses in ARR. I believe Alux (Imp) was moved to Central Shroud as a Fate, and Prince is in East Shroud. The look of the 1.0 Cellars was kinda like classic Toto-Rak, in other words, nothing special. Which is pretty true for almost every single zone or map in 1.0. Just a copy/paste disaster. Google FFXIV 1.0 Gridania Maps if you are brave to see what I mean. I could go on, but in the game now the "Mini Dungeon" is a zone divider and NPCs describe how the Twin Adder cleared the cellars of all monsters and such, so they could be safely used for fermenting and brewery, etc. Another quick but interesting one - Airship Ramps - So, 1.0 had tons of ideas that never really amounted to anything. Some content was saved and brought into ARR and turned into something at the very least. Lots of music from 1.0 was carried over, which most current players are aware of. One interesting feature that never went anywhere in 1.0 was Airship Travel to camps, for example, taking an Airship to get to Camp Tranquil or something. I think the lore idea was that the airships made stops at camps along the way to the major cities to drop off supplies for trade, etc. The ramps were added into 1.0 in La Nocesa, The Black Shroud, and Thanalan, but the feature was scrapped. You would think a scrapped feature didn't make in into ARR, which it didn't, but one Airship Ramp managed to survive the calamity. In the current game, if you teleport to Tranquil in South Shroud, head down to the zone line where you would zone into Eastern Thanalan. On the map it even shows a spot called South Shroud Landing, where you can find the last surviving Ramp from 1.0. Poachers turned it into a camp, but the ramp itself still stands. It seems like they named it the way they did on the map as a cool little easter egg, but that's just speculation on my part.

[@atkascha]

Great video! Stumbled across this, and subscribed. Its just a theory, but the simplification of jobs, where they fit into their own neat little boxes, allows for other jobs to be created. If you had a job that could _kinda_ do 3 things, and another job that did sorta the same 3 things "with a twist", jobs started to blend together too much. Additionally, you get this way-too-involved mathematical quest to figure out which job does the best dps based on given openers/scenarios/etc and while that's appealing to the top 3% of players, the other 97% don't want it/don't care/are apathetic towards it, and SE has to find a middle ground somewhere. Its why most msq trials/dungeons, on normal, lean to the easy side. Random note, jobs fall into tank/phys dps/ranged dps/magic dps/healer categories. I would love a new "status mage" category, but that's also because I'm a big fan of FF Tactics, and a Time Mage/Mystic/Orator/Arithmetician to solely buff the party/debuff the enemy, doing little to no heals/damage, would be fun.

[@Tarutokun]

Fun fact from a 1.0 player here...back in the day... *Whispers* Monks used MP for their abilities and Black Mages could heal other party members with a spell called "Sacrifice" even had multiple tiers of it. Do with that what you will. Hehehe... Also, we didn't have market boards. If you wanted to buy something you got dumped in a room filled with like 70 retainers and you had to sort through them listening to an annoying song on loop. Everyone always fought over the counter rentals, where if you were lucky, you could pay to jam your retainer in an actual shop kiosk for a set amount of time to sell your fire crystals. Fun times. Also also, level 99 enemies in the starting zones that would murder low level players, and Coerthas wasn't a snow field, it was green and very....highlands like. In the final days of 1.0, Garlean armies would invade the cities, and the players would appear in droves to kill them. Even going so far as to create the "Great Goobue Wall" outside of Ul'dah once upon a time. Aurum Vale was more of a nightmare then, than it is now. Warriors were the only true tank, Paladins couldn't hold hate well, Dragoons were... basically off tanks. Warriors were the richest players cause they would charge folks to power level them to 50. During the final days, when you logged off in an inn room, when you logged in after the daily reset, there would be a relic weapon under your bed to help you fight the Garleans invading the cities. You didn't get to keep them after the servers went offline on the last day. All buffs from mages had a button to make them Single Target, or AOE to buff your party members. Don't ask my why, it was just built that way. Such spells included Shock Spikes, Stoneskin, Protect, Shell, and so on. Yes, I keep editing this...expect more. My brain has to really dig deep to get these memories out. Is there a character limit? I feel like I might reach it if I keep going. Lol...

[@specstreTV]

now YOU are a true loremaster

[@Tarutokun]

@@specstreTV There's a lot rattling around up there. I spent a lot of time in 1.0 -_-;

[@PollyEdaline]

Genuinely I am saddest by far about the old AST card system. It was so cool and unique and I had never played anything like it in any other MMO. I wish they had just changed Balance's effect to not be straight damage so I could still fish for and hold appropriate cards for the right situations. Especially being able to change their effects by Spreading etc was so cool.

[@scottishboy112]

Sadly, even if they just changed the Balance to something not damage related, the ‘Savage Raider optimisers’ would’ve then just begged for the Spear, etc until there was absolutely no damage related buffs period there. I miss the old cards too. Even the Bole was useful for damage in that there was less healing needed, especially in dungeons so a Potency Enhanced Bole could net you extra Gravity casts. But ‘Balance or nothing’ ruined that. Worst part? They even removed the dialogue in the intro duty to AST that explained the cards and the effects meaning Lore and stuff was removed. No “The Bole fortifies your allies against damage that your attackers wish to deal” dialogue.

[@Dharengo]

The problem isn't with the players. Optimizing the fun out of the game is inevitable if you let it happen. This is why you don't give players 6 options of which one is objectively better. Such is reality. It may be 'more fun' to use the bad cards, but they do not contribute to optimal play.

[@CidVeldoril]

@@Dharengo You could always make a mechanic that causes redraws to inflict a raidwide damage debuff. Then nobody would want a redraw and work with what the Astro has instead. People who are only in it for "optimal play" are weird to me. They always seem the most butthurt and least enjoying the game.

[@Dharengo]

@@CidVeldoril You introduce a mechanic that punishes people for wanting to do well and yet you complain about anti fun.

[@CidVeldoril]

@@Dharengo The "Elitists" are the worst players in any MMO. The sap the fun out for everyone else. So yes, I would gladly sacrifice their optimizing capabilities for others to be able to just play in a way that's fun. Sadly this usually takes place in discord, otherwise you could report such people easily and have them take a mandatory break. :)

[@wollyram6248]

An interesting look back, the simplification and homogenization is the main reason I play less and less of FFXIV, I understand why it's being done, but lack of variety is dull.

[@specstreTV]

I can totally understand that. I still really like raiding and endgame content, but I don't feel the same joy I used to in learning other jobs/roles. A lot of the time it's just hunting out which of your abilities are a reskin of something you're already familiar with. It's not particularly exciting, especially as a healer, LOL.

[@superhello443]

I think the biggest, outside of the Sprint/TP reworks, was classes having a much bigger function in the game. Back then, you had to level up other classes to access a Job. You also also had to level up other classes to access cross-class skills, now Role abilities. For instance, every single mage type, including healers, had to get Thaumaturge 26 because that's how you got Swiftcast. It also meant that sometimes, your healer didn't have that button lol. Same goes for every DPS's second cooldown. Wild times (but I liked it).

[@darkmirror21]

Every time I see TP, my eye twitches. Also, one of the big ones not mentioned is cross class skills. I miss doing offtank monk.

[@specstreTV]

I wasn't SUPER into the game at the time cross class skills were in, but it was a shocking removal for me. I thought they were SO cool conceptually, especially coming from WoW which had nothing of the sort. Kind of a shame, but I also understand WHY they decided it was too much of a headache to balance/plan around, especially with most modern jobs being JUST jobs and having no "class" actions at all.

[@Miyao05]

@@specstreTV it was a pain in the ass, because if you wanted to be a decent player it force you to play other jobs you may not enjoy for certain skills. (Although I still leveled it all anyway but lets be honest, some jobs just so much more fun to play)

[@Zaffirus]

another little fun thing most people forgets is when they added Rescue to Healers,you could use it outside combat. i will always remember people pulling everyone around XD sadly was promptly fixed :(

[@specstreTV]

amazing - that sounds like absolute chaos

[@Reinshark]

I was expecting you might talk about the ability to add certain abilities from other jobs to your action bar! My memory is a bit rusty from when I played in 2.0 (I played then for a while, then came back pre-Endwalker), but back when you had to hit level 15 in a secondary class in order to qualify for a full job (e.g. in order to advance from Thaumaturge to Black Mage, you needed to level Archer to 15), you could also take a limited number of actions and skills from other jobs to use. A prominent example was that Paladins were the only job to get provoke, meaning pretty much all tanks were required to level up their Paladin job a bit in order to get at least that skill. This has been replaced with Role Actions in more recent iterations of the game.

[@OfficialBrandonEmeka]

Wow. I love your little outfits for each point you make, even if it lasts only seconds. That’s dedication.

[@Silverias]

Role actions used to be cross-class skills, and you had to level other classes/jobs for some abilities that were utterly core to basic mechanics. For that matter, to unlock a job at all, you originally had to level a secondary class as well; for example Archer, if you were a Thaumaturge looking to move up to Black Mage. Direct Hit used to be Accuracy, and was required to 3, 5, or 7% breakpoints depending on what side of the boss you hit. Piety used to actually increase your total MP, before it was a fixed number, and 2.X raiding Black Mages would actually meld a little of it to make sure their rotation didn't stall empty at the end. Except for Lalafells, whose racial stat bonus gave them the extra MP to begin with (because yes, there were racial bonus stats, in addition to deity resists). And for that matter, time was you gained bonus stats as you levelled up, which you could assign manually. This was a pain for Arcanists, who ended up needing to buy reset items whenever they wanted to swap between Scholar and Summoner, and also for tanks depending on whether they wanted to raise vitality or strength. All of these seemingly odd or short-sighted development choices pale, however, to how in 1.0, there was no auction house. Retainers stood in the streets of the cities, and when you needed to buy something, you had to check them. Individually. All of them.

[@seraphimaether9264]

Chocobos taking party slots. Gold Saucer games based on Emotes and finding lookalike characters. Stat points. Healers not being able to rez during battle before a certain level. Cross class skills and learning more than one class to get different jobs. WHM not being the only stunner. AST being able to change their card's benefit range/duration/strength based on sigil.

[@BongSwansong]

TACTICAL POINTS?! Thats what TP stood for? Something I never questioned but am surprised none the less. Side note, I dont miss begging ninjas to goad me.

[@PatchyTesla]

I thought they where technique points

[@gameprose4293]

I played Summoner for a bit before Endwalker launched (just last year I started expanding out of my usual Red Mage and Dragoon job preferences). As an Affliction Warlock main on WoW, I found Summoner enjoyable. Kinda iffish on how it is now. Just kinda feels like a more mobile version of the standard mage you see in other MMOs.

[@PH03NIX96]

The issue always was that Summoner NEVER fulfilled its job identity. Now it does, and because it does, it's amazing even if the rotation is slightly simple. It's like having a Dragoon that can't jump or a black mage without fire magic. Overall Square Enix has removed most Damage over Time abilities and is cutting even more with the upcoming Paladin changes. We may be seeing a dedicated job like Chemist revolve around DoTs but the game is very dependant on pure raw burst damage.

[@gameprose4293]

@@PH03NIX96 Like I said, my experiences in another MMO is what initially drew me to Summoner. I wasn't saying I hated how it was now, just that I'm kinda meh about the change. It's not like I'm ranting about how the change shouldn't have been done or was a mistake. My first FF game was the original Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1. In FFT, Summoner, Lancer (Dragoon), and Time Mage were my favorite jobs. When I started playing other FF titles, Red Mage and Blue Mage would get added to my list of favorite jobs in the franchise. So I'll admit that Summoner now works similar to how it has done in other FF games, with the summons simply being instant large bursts of damage instead of just pets. As for new Jobs, maybe getting a more dedicated pet Job, like the Beastmaster from older games, might scratch that particular itch I have. I tend to play the more pet focused jobs/Classes in MMOs that have them. Although I also doubt it'll happen. From what I was told, they wont be adding Jobs that existed in previous games anymore. I will say this, though. I've leveled Dark Knight, Samurai, Red Mage, Scholar/Summoner, and Machinist all to 80, and Reaper to 90. Of them all, the Scholar and Summoner questlines have been most enjoyable to me. I like the idea of uncovering some long lost lore of a fallen civilization. So even if I'm meh about the Summoner changes, Summoner along with Scholar are still some of my favorite story telling in the Job quests. TL:DR - Don't hate Summoner, just Meh about it gameplay wise. Wouldn't mind seeing a proper pet Job, such as one based on Beastmaster from previous FF titles, for a new job. Of the classes/jobs I've leveled, Scholar and Summoner are my two favorites in the Storytelling Department.

[@lumaro9704]

@@PH03NIX96 IIrc they're trying to phase out DoTs entirely due to players hitting the DoT cap in content like Eureka, Bozja, FATEs, Hunts, etc.

[@PH03NIX96]

@@lumaro9704 Kind of dumb to make all jobs burst centric imho

[@mikaruyami]

Honestly, the changes to simplifying SMN feels like so much lost potential. The DoT arn't really much of a loss but instead of just ousting the pet skills could have used changed it so the pet skills were better used.

[@hexxidelux6224]

Watching your char emote without moving her arms reminds me of how you could stack and combine emotes in EQ2 and Landmark. Say what you want, but it was fun to mix and match and macro emotes for comedic effect. Dancing while on a horse looked hilarious. 1:40 This is a tunic, not a dress.

[@FoxKit]

Another interesting change was to pets which used to have health, aggro enemies, and take damage from floor effects. Aurum Vale was frustrating to heal as a scholar since your fairy would gain stacks of burrs in the bosses, but weren't able to eat the morbol fruit to heal them, so would be expected to die 2-4 times a fight in the first and last bosses. And resummoning them was a 5 second cast back then. Scholars also had up to 4 dots to manage if you cross classed one from whm, and even more in Heavensward.

[@FoxKit]

Also, in 2.0, Mor Dohna used to be a field and a couple tents. It was built up gradually over the 3.x patches, I believe.

[@MakoYoushida]

Another removed game feature is cross-class abilities, and that you had to level up a different class to gain some abilities to use on your main. You had to level Thaumaturge to level 26 to learn swiftcast for all casters, or level archer to I think 40-somthing for raging and quelling strikes that's useful on Black Mage. This was replaced by role abilities which automatically unlock as you level. Also, attribute selection as you level. This was class based, and not job based, and this caused some frustration among people that wanted to be decent in both SCH and SMN at level 50 in ARR. As you level you got to choose which attribute you can buff up each time you got a point. However, the best thing to do is to put it toward your class' primary stat. However since Scholar and Summoner we both based on the Arcanist class, you had to choose between going full INT or full MND, or compromising between the two. The whole concept of the job was meant to be the same as a spec from other games. Classes were originally designed to be more flexible for solo play while jobs were specialized around roles and party play. This concept was abandoned very quickly after ARR's launch as newer jobs became self-contained. This is also one of the reasons for jobs not having specs, as jobs themselves are the specs.

[@TheAuron32]

if memory serves, Ifrit Egi did deal blunt damage at one point, the ONLY synergy Monk had and they removed it... before removing the damage types entirely.

[@NuclearWaffle0]

Can't forget about accuracy. Each positional of an enemy had had different accuracy ratings and if you didn't meet the required rating there was a chance you would miss your attack entirely lol. And it was also heavens' eye materia

[@papershark443]

I totally forgot accuracy used to be in the game.

[@rhael42]

the positional differences in accuracy only applied to melee attacks. ranged attacks were fixed to the value of the flank accuracy and spells were fixed to rear accuracy.

[@knightzix_01]

geez your commitment to changing location every time you go from sentence to sentence is impressive

[@lilywalker2560]

RIP Protect. I still have you in a corner on some random bar. I still haven't let go...

[@mallowhoney]

Genuinely surprised sometimes how much I miss there being more risk of ripping aggro when you dps or heal. If the tank is even moderately doing their job there's no risk of it anymore.

[@LadyMulti-InfinityGrandPalace]

You forgot: Stat pointttssss

[@angeldark127]

What's the bgm going during "Number 4"? I feel like I'm constantly finding new music in this game even after playing for years.

[@specstreTV]

I don't know the official name of it, but it's the duel theme from the Wolves' Den Pier! It also plays in PoTD at one point, apparently. Searching "dueling theme ffxiv" here on YT should bring it up!

[@Corosar]

Main stat Materia was another thing that was lost on transition between stormblood and Shadowbringers. Back in stormblood Summoner was able to play as a red healer with the Mind materia. especially when pentamelded. I should know. I went into Orborne monastery with my friend's group as a summoner with penta-melded highest level mind materia. It bumped Physick on summoner from about 600Hp healing to around 9k. The loss of the main stat materia made me switch over to scholar permanently. I miss my 9k physick summoner.

[@Karatarari]

Still crushes me that I started playing in Shadowbringers and didn't have enough time with Summoner since I only got to playing it a lot around the last big patch. As flashy and cool New SMN is, old SMN felt a lot more satisfying to play right, while now its feels like half a class under 80 and the rest of it after.

[@Zeithri]

Old SMN was the dream if you love Pet classes. A good SMN like myself always knew where we had our pets and they were trusted allies and companions. Titan was the nr 1 solo artist' best friend. Solo'd so many dungeons with it. It's AoE in conjunction with Shadowflare, DoT's, Fester and everything was so much fun. But Noooooooooo. The raiders had to whine and cry " _My pet dies in raids all the time and it's so annoying to resummon it._ " I wanted to get more egi's, I wanted a Leviathan, a Shiva, a Ramuh. But nope, never got any. Huge bummer. Only got Bahamut that flexes it's wings and Phoenix that I just don't really care about. Oh and Psychic. WE STILL HAVE PSYCHIC. It feels like an insult and a joke-meme that it hasn't gotten buffed, and that we still have it. We also is one of the classes that retained our Resurrection spell while so many others lost theirs. Incompetence, thy name be Square.

[@bentwomey384]

I feel you. I started playing the game in 5.0, but found it dreadfully boring and didn’t even leave the city until I picked it up again several months after 6.0 released. I mained summoner but was really disappointed when I found out that if I had properly played it a little earlier, I could have actually summoned things.

[@Karatarari]

@@Zeithri I felt like they made good class niches with the 3 casters, but now SMN is just another RDM type. Fast casts, allowed to move a lot while dispensing burst damage, and it just doesn't feel as good as RDM tbh especially with earlier levels. I have no idea how they could "Fix" SMN when they probably think its in a perfectly fine state, it just means that I don't play it and thats that.

[@PrincessofKeys]

You mean before Endwalker update? Heck I don't even remember how it played and even so I did started playing the game in the same year Endwalker came out so I was still learning how to play SMN. I started to get used to it and then they decided to change it. Suppose its a reason I really didn't have such a big opinion about how different it was as I truly do enjoy it. SMN will always be my main and I will never switch from that no matter how bad it is. Its th job I started with and its the Job I will end with when the journey is done.

[@Karatarari]

@@PrincessofKeys Just like me getting into Dark Knight before the Shadowbringer changes, its up to how people feel on classes and how they enjoy them which I respect. People love the new SMN, but most people who aren't fans are the "older" players who played around with what SMN was previously or the people scared of the devs "Smoothing out every class so anyone can play them". There was just a lot to do with older SMN which felt satisfyingly without it being heavy dedication like BLM rotation and positioning knowledge, and it was different enough from the two casters we had that it felt like it was in its own zone and niche due to pet mechanics and DoT management.

[@Veoviss]

Just wanted to comment to tell you I really like the presentation and the style of your videos! Made sure to sub so I can see the channel grow!

[@specstreTV]

thank you so much!! genuinely motivating to get comments like this :D

[@matthewshimabuku]

Thing I miss most is the animation for Monk's Touch of Death. an old DoT that had to be weaved between stance cycles. It sounded like Kirby sucking up his enemies and you'd punch into the enemy and rip out some of its essence.

[@TheAuron32]

i miss my 3 DoTs... then again we would probably be too powerful with the other 2 now lol

[@TarossBlackburn]

I miss our unique interrupt animation. Ye Olde Standard kick doesn't have the same oomph as looking like you're driving your elbow into someones kidneys.

[@shykorustotora]

My biggest cut feature was cross class skills. Who else remembers, no matter what class you played, you always leveled Pugilist for second wind? Or leveling Archer for the damage boost?

[@rhael42]

Or thaumaturge for Swiftcast and lancer for Blood for Blood

[@Avenaur]

I don't think monk has suffered from it's EW rework, on the contrary i would say! You still get the fast paced gcds and having to think ahead but now with an actual pay off in what nadi you get leading up to your finisher. It's freeform style is still instact and well, it's been popular and strong in EW.

[@bladeworksmaster]

God, I tried to Savage Raid as MNK in Shadowbringers, and losing my Greased Lightning stacks because of a simple mistake was the worst feeling in the world, it’s all fine and good to have complexity but sometimes it’s just not worth it when you’re punished as severely as MNK was with Greased Lightning stacks.

[@maninthemists2299]

It's not just combat classes that lost things that are missed. The crafting classes had Steady Hand and Steady hand II, which increased the success rate of other actions which made Hasty Touch and Rapid Synthesis work decently often. They also had Reclaim as a cross class from Culinarian. This skill made the chance of retaining crafting material from a failed craft jump to 90% and was vital if RNG was giving you an extreme close-up of its middle fingers.

[@matthe8154]

Steady hand was eventually worked into most of the base actions instead, so instead of basically every action having a chance of missing, it's just 100% on everything except risky things.

[@maninthemists2299]

@@matthe8154 Unfortunately, those risky things are exactly why Steady Hand was used so much. 80% chance was far better than 50%.

[@matthe8154]

@@maninthemists2299 I was around that time, I know this. However it was used for basically everything though.

[@Edanite]

I remember when the element and race stats caused a divide in the community where high level play required buying fantasia potions because players wouldn't let you enter end game content with them due to not having the right race for the class and the right element resistance for the content. Basically min-max elitism.

[@fairlyenjoyable]

This is *so* neat! Thank you for sharing this.

[@moof1315]

1. Stat related buffs based upon char creation God selection 2. Belt slot 3. TP as a 3rd resource besides health and MP. 4 tank stances, dps vs enmity 5. Physical dps types. Slashing, piercing, and blunt. 6. Astro cards had different effects and required more card fishing. 7. Massive changes to machinist, monk, and summoner

[@coldReactive]

1.0 also had Battle Regimen, which was basically a system that allowed you to combo actions together between players. Kind of like a Limit Break, sort of. Also, while the debuffs/etc. are gone, the melee jobs still do their appropriate damage. This can be seen by the type of auto attack "hit effect" they do. Like how AST Cards do slashing damage when they auto attack.

[@FrozenSolid90]

4:00 Some of the AST cards shown there are different from what I remember... I remember Spear gave increased Crit chance, Ewer gave MP regen and Tower gave TP regen. Spear's extra crit chance could be really strong for Bards in Stormblood who's Repertoire effects from songs that got added in that expansion triggered off of DoT crits.

[@LagunaL8]

The +1, +2, +3 HQ items back in 1.0, thank god they removed that feature

[@ericmoll1530]

Note: This is just teasing and adding more neat bits of old combat info to add to the video, I'm not being serious about any of the "for shame" bits. Talked about old tank stances but no talk about how NIN was basically required for every group for shadewalker (transferring your threat generated to another target, preferably the tank unless you wanted to troll :P ) and smokescreen (target had their actions enmity generation reduced for a bit), for shame! Also Goad, the only TP regen that didn't nerf your damage (I mean, I guess spire counts but... ew, playing old Spire), where aoe skills would cost you around double your passive TP regen rate (iirc it was 60/tick, and aoe skills all used in the ballpark of 110-140). Also not talking about old AST and not bringing up using cards for royal road. Gotta get them spire/ewer RR so you can spread your balance to the whole party when you draw it! (pretty sure it was the regen cards that were spread, it's been a bit obviously XD ). Honestly I miss royal road, it was a really cool mechanic that I kind of hope makes a return with the AST rework coming. I'd much prefer that over the frantic card dump spam we do now. Edit: Oh, and trolling MNKs by giving them spear so they'd burn through their tp and end up unable to do anything was hilarious :P (done sparingly of course, don't be that guy :P )

[@BoltFraction]

RIP Pre-Endwalker Summoner. Say what you will. I miss my galaxy brain, DDR controller mashing, Carby-juggling, two-minute-long-opener, EXTENSIVELY macro'd-and-refined-just-to-be-simplified-enough-to-be-streamlined Summoner. It was flexible. It had options. It felt great to by able to alter your DPS and multi-task on different targets with your pet as the situation demanded. I once tanked an entire dungeon (Xelphatol, circa Heavensward) with Topaz when our tank ragequit and left. No one knew that shit was possible. I was riding that high for a week. The job used to demand more of the player than crudely smashing two neurons into one another to play. Maybe that dissuaded people from picking up the class. Perhaps it caused the learning curve to be steeper compared to other jobs. But, getting good at Summer felt _good_. Now, I just feel like a caveman with a book, a match, and a bag of magical fireworks. They massacred my boy. (ಥ﹏ಥ)

[@hupiscratch110]

My feeling when I started to play with gladiator 1 week before ShB debuted. Suddenly everything was completely different, but I like current tanks

[@alenonimo]

I remember when healers had to cast Protect on the party. Not only that, but Protect, Esuna and the other skills were optional and you had to activate them to make them available to put in your hotbars. And you could only have 4. At the time it was already a holdover of a system where you had to level up a job to a certain point to learn these skills and make them available to the other jobs. All of this mess caused a lot of toxicity, as people wouldn't wanna play with anyone without these skills. Did you enter Duty Finder without Protect enabled because you're a new player? Brace yourself.

[@Ahnyks]

Fantastic video! Love it!

[@specstreTV]

Thank you!! :D

[@Kamuyy]

Having to level a 2nd class in order to gain skills have also been axed. Most notable is Black Mage needing to level Archer to an ungodly high level in order to get Quelling Strikes, as you will rip enmity from your tank without it. Other choice examples include Swiftcast for all casters, Raging Strikes, even Provoke for Marauders since that was a Gladiator skill

[@Nekrotix12]

That's weird cuz I started FFXIV BEFORE Endwalker and I can't even remember belts being a thing.

[@Zerosenpai25]

I had a group of sprouts actually ask me once how the game was back then and i explained them the changes that i witnessed. I joined the hame when stormblood was still the newest expansion so i still knew stiff like belts, tp and tank stances. So when i told them about this still the were so impressed by it as if it just have them the bible xD

[@mjyfs]

I started playing a few weeks after ShB came out, so that was after resistances had been removed from the game. yet I still somehow ended up with a low-level ring that gives +1 Hit Rate and +1 Blunt resistance (I still have it).

[@GunBlade666]

That moogle censor was all I needed to subscribe. Keep up the hard work.

[@TheKarishi]

As someone who mained Summoner in the early days of 2.0, it was more Green Mage from XII than, y'know, SUMMONER. While I like the idea of (and had tons of fun with) the DoTs and the spreading of them and the way Fester could hit for massive damage if a target had both DoTs at once...none of that was related to summoning. I love the new Summoner, even if I do miss the "Pikachu, use thundershock!" feeling of Egi Attack 1 and 2 and their silly delay as carbuncle ran up to the mob to strike them. But boy do I not miss positioning my carbuncle by hand in boss fights. Leave that kind of mechanic in turn-based games where it belongs.

[@Taylor_Lindise]

one scrapped thing that I'm surprised didn't come up was the requirements to go train and level jobs to get specific spells and actions like swiftcast. I hated playing dps back then, and was forced to thaum just to get swiftcast... ugh

[@Null_Experis]

Summoner is more like an actual Final Fantasy summoner than a WoW Warlock, and that's a GOOD thing.

[@EmperorZ19]

I feel like the tank changes were a little misrepresented. You weren't expected to only use your damage stance. However, you were expected to use your tank stance as little as possible, which was a nontrivial task. And because changing your stance used a GCD and interrupted combos, you wanted to generate exactly as much enmity as you would need and then turn it off for the rest of the fight, rather than switch frequently. As part of its role as the support-melee, Ninja had abilities which reduced and redistributed enmity, allowing tanks to further minimize the amount of time spent in tank stance. Enmity is almost a non-mechanic now, as modern tank stances boost aggro so enormously that a DPS has no chance of pulling aggro off of a tank unless the tank dies or simply forgets to turn on tank stance

[@Brendanj101]

Ah tank swaping, ShirkleVoking, Diversion and other stuff to allow the tank to stay in DPS stance. Also each tank had its own buff/benefit. WAR gave more HP, PLD gave damage reduction but was anti phys and DRK was anti-magic. So certain fights had other tanks become the main tank due to the damage type. There was also the crossclass skils one that reduced crit damage which was used on some fights like Hali Savage.

[@willowm.8444]

omggg doman mahjong so goood . wait what. yay christmas and new years video this is so epic!!!!!! thank you ! good video once again he dont miss

[@frostmagemarii]

Honestly, they cut a lot of things because they were unwilling to rework them into something that still remained unique while being fun. They take every chance they have to remove depth and replace it with more glowing circles on the floor or another button tacked on with barely any synergy to the rest of the class.

[@BeingBedlight]

I know people really didn't like 1.0, but man I loved it. I really miss the first few weeks of 1.0 And that comment on stances how we were only supposed to use the tank stance, nono. That's what separated the good tanks from the mediocre. Stance dancing was the single best thing about warrior and made it a ton of fun to play. I remember doing early extremes and my party would have to count me as a dps and change up phase pushes because of how much damage I pulled as a warrior in dps stance. Pally, sure they only ran tank since they lost the damage reduction and all that, but warrior's only had three benefits from tank stance, 1. aggro which should never be even close to a problem for a decent war, 2. 20% extra health, and 3. 20% extra incoming heals. So if you weren't at max hp, or actively getting healed, then that tank stance was only nerfing your damage by 25% without helping you at all. With Convalescence and Thrill of Battle you can basically manually add those buffs back and have a pseudo tank stance while being in dps stance, making stance dancing even easier too. Just tank stance for the tank busters, then go back to nuking with fell cleave.

[@jaeleighxxx7829]

I despised TP abilities. I've played through all the changes from 1.0 to the present day. I found your voice to be perfect for this video btw, super professional.