Any HW 3.0-3.55 players? Tell us your experience during those times.

[Tetsujin]

Machinist was incredibly fun, Dark Knight too. I still say Machinist should've kept the stance dancing and ammo system, but let's not get into that... or DRK for that matter.

Classes had important buffs, debuffs, played important roles. Homogenization was not yet a thing, DPS were expected to actually do at least moderately well, positionals were important, one could actually FAIL their personal mechanics, and enrages still existed. Imagine that. I think the battle system and class design peaked here, honestly. Very engaging for every class I played at a high level back then. (DRG, DRK, MCH, MNK.)

We were still able to do cross class skills, which lead to some hilarious things. I had friends who came up with the idea to run base classes but take the 'role' of another. So, for example the rogue was a pseudo healer with res and heals, IIRC. I tanked as DRG by using some of WAR's migitation and the 80% parry rate skill to get through some dungeons, I think I had provoke too but it's been so long. Very goofy but good fun.

Raiding was initially a nightmare in terms of difficulty, AS3 was absurd. I actually cleared AS4 before that, lol. All because the fights were tested piece by piece at first, instead of the dev team clearing from start to finish. Thordan EX was also harder than AS1 and 2 IMO, and if it weren't for gear checks, AS4 would be easier as well.

MSQ was godly, the gameplay still shined, things like Nidhogg took effort and were wipefests on day one. I think the bits of inconvenience like that added flavor rather than taking away. Most fun time in FFXIV overall, IMO.


One thing though. MEGA shitty servers. The NA servers were all in Canada, I experienced severe lag often on raid day. Had to circumvent using a VPN. But those problems went away soon after 3.1 for me. Oh, and no one talked! People were barely social back then for some reason.

[MikkoAkure]

Other stuff I've remembered from transition to HW and early HW:

I had been around since 1.0 beta and we were told Musketeer class was going to come later, in the actual 1.0 release. When that didn't happen, they kept pushing it back until Tanaka left and Yoshi-P came in, when it was dropped. 2.0 still saw no Musketeer but we finally got MCH in 3.0. I immediately rushed to level it up, thinking that it would get better once it's level 50, and then level 60, but I never got around to liking the RNG proc combat style and dropped it. Like modern DNC, your rotation revolved around fishing for procs, but you had 3 abilities that each had a 50/50 shot (lol) of proccing off each other and it was not fun to sit there pressing 1 over and over and not getting a proc. Still not a fan of wildfire either to this day either.

People complained in-game and in the forums about DRK being a tank and not a DPS and that it wasn't a scythe class. Subsequently, there were a lot of bad DRKs, played by people trying tank for the first time.

AST wasn't that great in patch 3.0 either. A few healer main friends got super excited over it, got it to level 60, and then back to whatever was meta back then. Cleric Stance was still around though and I think it was after HW that it, stoneskin, and protect ended up disappearing. People are still divided on Cleric Stance to this day since stance-dancing gave you better DPS but you had to do more and some people felt that healer shouldn't be responsible for contributing that much to DPS checks. My main problem with it was that I'd go from a phase where I needed to DPS to a phase where I needed to heal and forget I had it on and wondering why everyone is dying.

After these jobs, it feels like SE decided that 2 at a time is better and they've all been much easier and less complex.


The biggest thing I miss from HW is the title screen. I think you can change it manually after already getting the current title screen, but it's not the same as launching the game and getting that song immediately.

Retroactively, it also feels like it was the last time we had a really good hub city. Everything was usually nice to look at and it didn't feel like there was a lot of wasted space like in Kugane or Crystarium, which are expansive and have a lot of neat things, but even in the height of their popularity it felt like they were still partly empty because they were so big. Sharlayan feels busier than Crystarium, but it doesn't fill a lot of vertical space on the screen like Kugane and especially Ishgard had.


I didn't raid in HW but I heard that there was a specific part of Alexander that broke a lot of static parties/friendships.

[Illy_Peridot]

ah yes, the time I quit trying to craft in because they decided crafters having weekly-capped scrips was a Good Idea (it was not).

also hw was the time they decided to start making Very Big aoes more common. I remember this because my potato of a machine caused me to die from not leaving them fast enough.

Warriors' Raw Intuition would parry from the front and crit them from behind. To nullify crits, Awareness was always cross-classed and combined with Raw Intuition. But parry is parry which also only worked against physical attacks.

this was amazing because heals from behind would always crit with raw intuition up.

[MagiusNecros]

Cross-class skills that weren't useful

Yeah this is kinda a big issue. They wanted to do a job class system similar to FF3, FF5 and FF10-2. But the problem they run into is none of job classes have any job class skills or traits you can slot in for other jobs using any similar point system they put into any of their FF games. You don't have for example a Black Mage casting White Magic. Or a Melee taking Jump. Or assigning supportive traits to amp up your base job especially since they tie all jobs into their weapons through their armory system.

To do something like that you can only feasibly do that in Bozja/Zadnor with essences to buff yourself, heal, increase movement speed(haste).

Very much decreases build variety.

Traits in general are pretty lame too being much more class defining in other games.

Closest thing you have to your typical FF job is Blue Mage on virtue on learning different skills that have different effects in different roles. Mimicry was an amazing addition that changed up playstyles a lot.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Three hour queues for the first two wings of Alexander because I hit 60 late, nobody was doing anything but Creator, and normal raid roulette didn't exist yet. Void Ark and Wiping City weren't as bad since people still needed all three coins for gear upgrades, though.

I remember not knowing what Extreme meant, queuing for Ravana Extreme, and still managing a clear. And winning the bird on my first run. Did the same for Bismark, but didn't get the bird there.

[Pyro2hell3]

story i wise there was the lvl50 dark knight quest and that one event in the vault we don't like talking about and there was the was the pain that was week 1 orzma from wiping city see orzma had this thing where if a group died its death lazers would switch from that group to the other groups and kill them so when some idiot botched meteors they would wipe they entire raid so runs would often get to orzma and just stop because idiots would wipe the raid every time

[FadingCosmos]

Gathering mateirals for end-game crafting was a complete mess and glad it never seen the light of day in Stormblood to now.

There was a long and dumb proccess of getting materials. There was two systems in place: Folklore and Favors

Folklore books back then requires 99 tokens compared to the 16 books cost today. Also the tokens costed 100 red scripts each (red is current white scripts these days)
Favors cost 1 token but you only have 5 minutes to gather while using these.

So Folklore works the same as it does today so i'll skip to the Trader's Favors. When using this item in the specific zone it says, you have a 5 minute buff window to spawn a rare node to gather rare mats. In order for this rare node to spawn you have to gather and depelete nodes in the zone till it spawn (this is all a chance btw). When the node spawn, then you can gather the material from it...but only 1 time as its a rare item Due note you need 10 of these from these node. Have a look at this handy guide I dug up from the depths of the internet! Video link on how favor work and a picture guide on what you need to trade in materials to make the crafting materials!



So glad favors are not a thing anymore

[ArchlordPie]

I joined like a month before Stormblood released and mainly played Arcanist/Summoner.

--My pets had to be managed. Titan could tank in world content, Garuda was the primary DPS pick due to it having certain cooldowns, and Ifrit was useless.
--You built UP to Dreadwyrm Trance via spending Aetherpool, instead of popping DWT or the equivalent on pull the way you do now.
--I waited until level 47 to start doing job quests and unlock Summoner because I wanted "certain cross class skills" available for when I leveled Thaumaturge. Most of which never got pressed once in 15 levels.
--Speaking of that, you couldn't get a job stone without leveling an alt to 15. Kind of sort of made sense from a thematic / "let's make sure you have at least SOME cross-class skills available" perspective but also made certain actions (SWIFTCAST -> RES) require people to level classes they had zero desire to ever play. In that sense, Role Actions are superior, though I do still miss the cross-class system.
--There was a separate questline you could do after unlocking flight that taught your company Chocobo to fly. RIP that little piece of immersion.
--Tomestones of Scripture were the latest and greatest at the time and I was half convinced that once Stormblood launched, only Scripture would be used for level 60 gear the same way Poetics were used for level 50 gear. I did NOT expect them to deprecate Scripture entirely and roll them and their gear into the Poetics economy.
--My story playthrough of Wiping City resulted in a vote abandon at Ozma. I went back in and still ate floor the whole time, but I did get carried through it and Dun Scaith eventually.
--I got through A12N for story and ran out of stuff to do, so the WoW player in me thought "time to learn A1S I guess". I was so confused by people telling me to start at A9S that I wound up not doing Savage at all until I came back to the game at the end of Stormblood.
--To this day I have no idea how I got through Steps of Faith or how many queues/attempts it took. I just know I was the world's worst Summoner at the time, probably geared to the bare minimum required to get in because I didn't know what Poetics were or how to spend them, and having absolutely zero knowledge of the dragonkillers or what targets to prioritize or how to not get stepped on. Same with Chrysalis.
--I was super excited to do the Crystal Tower storyline because I loved FF3. Except Alliance Roulette didn't exist at the time so I spent roughly an hour and a half in queue for each section, only for it to be about as much of a faceroll as it is nowadays.

[TaleraRistain]

Bowmage

*shudder*

Transitioning from ARR gathering to timed-nodes was a huge adjustment and at the time I hated it. The idea of having to be in the right place at the right time, and hope my skill was enough to extract the resource, was a massive pain in the butt.

The super short timers were infuriating, too.

[Gemina]

I joined along with patch 3.1. There were still a lot of ARR elements to enjoy and gripe over. Behemoth, Svara, and Odin FATEs were still ran pretty regularly. There was still attribute points you had to allocate. The cross class system (role skills now). Needling to level multiple classes in order to unlock jobs. Elemental resistances were also around. I remember a lot of those things because even then, they were antiquated mmo concepts that bled over from FFXI.

A lot of what is standard today was established in HW. Patch cycles, ilv increases, NM/Savage mode versions of raids split into three tiers with four instances each, tome circulation, etc. all started the trek during HW, further solidified in SB, and set in concrete in ShB. I bring that up because even though I don't go as far back as an ARR or Legacy player, it was still interesting to be part of the game during its adolescence stage.

Crafting was a giant convoluted mess back then. Cleric stance was... 'fun' to sugar coat it a bit. Sadly, the CT raids were still the snorefest they are today. Yup. They have been this way for years. I wonder when players actually had to do the mechanics in those fights. It was before my time.