Any SB 4.0-4.55 players? Tell us your experience during those times.

[kevin_satron]

Can be any, like something fun/weird/annoying/stressfull/boring/etc experience and transition from HW to SB.

Also something that you missed during those times, like systems/job skill/etc

(2.0-2.55 post) https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ng-those-times
(3.0-3.55 post) https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ng-those-times.

im guessing it's not a big different if u compare it to current state of the game

[Wyssahtyn]

there was that time the devs had the "bright" idea of making alliance raid loot greed only.

[Kozh]

o/ start playing around 4.3 release.

It was very exciting and fun. FF14 is my first serious mmo (i've tried RO before years ago but very briefly), so nearly all mmo concepts are alien to me. I read a lot of reddit post for new players to make sure I don't grief people unintentionally. As for my most memorable experiences, there's few.

First is when I clear Shinryu EX with PF. I think it's two months after 4.4 release. It was hard and very fun, we're bunch of sprouts with minimal experience in EX content. There are veterans who help us too. Shinryu is my first EX kill.

Second would be when our alliance disband multiple times because of good old Cid XD
I don't hate it tbh.

Third is unfortunately an unpleasant experience. I met a jerk during O11S, who blame me for killing him when it's clear that he's the one who stole my safe spot.

[Jeeqbit]

The MSQ was fun. I have fond memory of spending a lot of time in the Ruby Sea doing sidequests and then some time going through the villages in Yanxia and Azim Steppe doing all the sidequests. It made it really fun getting to know all the struggles of the people there. I was doing this with hundreds of people around me in the first few weeks so the areas felt really busy like they should.

The next fun thing was the Omega raids. They are all really good. There isn't a lot to say because you can go and do them yourself to see. They were great on savage as well and I had fun with the ones I did.

The dungeons continued to get better and better, with examples like The Burn and Ghimlyt Dark topping the amazing dungeons they had already made.

I didn't really like the Japanese aesthetic, but I knew it was just for 2 years and I'm here for the experience, so I tried my best to enjoy it and I was able to enjoy trials such as the Four Lords. They did some really creative things we hadn't seen before and you will know what I mean if you've done them.

The biggest one, for me, is Eureka. It's probably some of the most fun I've ever had in the game. I especially enjoyed the terrain of Anemos, navigating past dragons to NMs in Pagos, using stealth to get to NMs I shouldn't have been able to at low levels in Pyros and the conclusion we got in Hydatos. The time it took between NMs and the variety of grinds people were doing led to a lot of social interaction in shout chat and at NMs you would see bosses covered in battle effects unless you disabled them. If there is a definition of what Massive Multiplayer Online is then it's Eureka. 144 people talking and playing together, working together to rez eachother when they died to the extremely powerful enemies that were everywhere. You could in fact say that you died in shout and someone would always come and rez you (usually multiple people).

Stormblood saw the introduction of Role Actions and the removal of most of the useless and clunky abilities or effects that remained. Most, not all, because that got taken care of later. Previously, you had to level other jobs and cross-class from them. So you had to level a Paladin to have Provoke on a tank. This put some people off the game because it forced them to play classes they didn't want to and it got grindy. Not anymore. You could play any tank now and you would have Provoke.

Stormblood also saw the removal of the Parry stat and almost anything that used it, which was attacked for being RNG mitigation. It was replaced with Tenacity, which is guaranteed mitigation. It also saw the removal of Accuracy, which reduced the chance of missing an attack. Instead you were guaranteed to land an attack and it was replaced with Direct Hit Rate, which are like smaller but more frequent crits. Elemental resistance was also removed because it was useless and they didn't want anyone melding it or buying damage potions for it (especially since this was going to play a part in Eureka).

We still had stance dancing for the last time in this expansion, which is where tanks could switch between tank stance and a damage stance. Typically, in a dungeon I had to do 3 enmity combos in tank stance and then switch to my damage stance, whereas I only had to do 1 in Heavensward. This depended on the damage output of the party or if they were reducing their enmity for me too. Explaining stance dancing to a new player made tanking sound complicated and it created a big skill gap between those who only used their tank stance and those who only used their damage stance. But it was fun because it allowed you to express some skill while tanking and made tanking dungeons a little less boring. I currently feel that skill and experience still shows through even without this, but many of us miss it as well. It was one of those things that needed to go to remove the skill gap, but it was hard to accept it going as well.

A lot of improvements and most clunky stuff was removed, so it was a good expansion. The next expansion is what got rid of the little remaining clunky or problematic stuff, but depending on your perspective, at a cost. But we'll elaborate on that if you make a 5.0 post.

[VentVanitas]

It was the most fun I had with the game, only time where I mained a healer and even took one into Savage. The fights of Stormblood were genuinely some of the best the game had to offer, fantastic music and personality like Byakko, Seiryu or some of the Ridorana/Orbonne fights. (O11S is peak savage fite me) Job design/balance wasn't the best, but it offered a good middle ground between the positives of both HW and ShB job design, with some jobs being at what I'd consider their peak like SMN, BRD, SCH or WAR. Easily the best expansion when it came to PvE gameplay, made a lot of positive memories from that era and it made XIV feel like an actual MMORPG.

The biggest one, for me, is Eureka. It's probably some of the most fun I've ever had in the game. I especially enjoyed the terrain of Anemos, navigating past dragons to NMs in Pagos, using stealth to get to NMs I shouldn't have been able to at low levels in Pyros and the conclusion we got in Hydatos. The time it took between NMs and the variety of grinds people were doing led to a lot of social interaction in shout chat and at NMs you would see bosses covered in battle effects unless you disabled them. If there is a definition of what Massive Multiplayer Online is then it's Eureka. 144 people talking and playing together, working together to rez eachother when they died to the extremely powerful enemies that were everywhere. You could in fact say that you died in shout and someone would always come and rez you (usually multiple people).

Big agree, loved Eureka even if it did have a very rough start. I have very fond memories of all the conversations and jokes I had with people on the NM train in Anemos and all the whacky shenanigans we did while waiting for bosses to spawn. (Also wanted to mention that a lot of kind people with the FFXV car mount let people who hadn't unlocked mounts yet ride with them! Shoutouts to the taxi folk)

[VictorTheed]

The 2 main things I remember from that era was who was revealed as the person who started the garlean empire, don't wanna spoil it for those who haven't got there yet, plus I don't know how to put up those hidden Spoiler tags were it hides your text unless u click on it, seen it in the lore threads and I must say those look handy I'd like to use em, this post is a perfect example of why.

Also that's the time I fantasia'd from Highlander male to Lala male, most of SB I was a high lander until Jan 2019, also for me SB was Kugane, hanging out with friends,playing RDM & SAM.

[Knot_D]

I hate o10s because of the bulwark mechanic... Also as a Warrior main back in SB, there's one time where Middie decided to TB me for 4 times and no tank swap at all, which resulted me a death because all my defense button still on cooldown

[Espon]

I don't remember a whole lot except that I originally did Eureka when there was no giant echo buff and mounts were locked behind max level. This meant getting around was really slow unless you were in a party with someone with a multi-seat mount (not too hard to find, people were more than happy to ferry people around and the FF15 event recently ran so everyone had a 4-person mount), and enemies that were the same level as you were challenging. Most NMs (FATE bosses) would 1-shot you with almost any attack you failed to avoid.

[rainichan]

Raubahn. Savage.

Gilgamesh and Balmung were still on the same DC, and I only got through Raubahn Savage at like, 3am because Gilgamesh crashed and everyone was flocking on to finally get past it lol. If you'd like to live that experience, Denmo's video for it is basically it. On Balmung, we were seriously trying the line up method to try to get through the line and every time I go out to the Fringes I kill That One Leshy. If you know, you know.

Also from Stormblood's Greatest Hits was the worst queue times ever to actually play! If you weren't on before like, noon, you just... wouldn't get on. Balmung's queue times were 9000+, it was terrible. There was no server hopping at this time, but there were Preferred servers as this was when they were beginning the "move from Congested servers, we're begging you" initiatives. This was also the only expansion for them to ask everyone nicely to not try to circumvent the AFK kicker so it could keep the queues moving and let people who were active actually play and when people wouldn't stop circumventing it, they said "Fine." and it is the only time they actively did rolling server restarts for every server to kick everyone off. The problem was resolved in a week.

Eureka was the FFXI zone within FFXIV, and before they dropped the challenge log into Eureka - no, it wasn't already there! - it truly was like playing FFXI prior to the Abyssea xpacs. The amount of afkers was insane though, and smaller groups would be the ones spawning the NMs to fight. Lots of "is Pazuzu/Louie/Penny/Watcher up?" shouts. It had the overworld danger so many people kept asking for, and it was a good start... Bozja was better, though.

[Curisu]

I've started with Stormblood.
Raubahn Ex was not a problem anymore when I reached it and the last SB trail was also already nerved.

I've started raiding in the first tier and cleared the third fight before the alliance raid started.

The best part of SB was/is Eureka.
To explore and to figure out how things works. To then use the Tracker website to lead a whole instance to efficient NM kill order.
And the awesome dungeon BA which is my most run content for me.

It was the first sub MMO I've played and I was not used to play something with constant new updates.
There was so much to do and I was motivated to do everything.