What was the Feast Like

[SyncWeaver720]

So I've been playing CC for awhile now. Has its ups and downs. But a thought came to mind. I never played PvP during the Feast. What was it like? The good and the bad. I'd like to know.

[Towa-Musa]

So I've been playing CC for awhile now. Has its ups and downs. But a thought came to mind. I never played PvP during the Feast. What was it like? The good and the bad. I'd like to know.

just straight up TDM.

[brancinaed]

It was a bit more than team deathmatch because players collected coins from dead players so there was some strategy about who to focus target because of the points per player system.


There were various maps and various modes at the start but in the end we only played ranked on one map Crystal Tower Training Grounds


Other maps were
Lichenweed

The Feasting Grounds



4v4 solo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkT1ulryRm8

4v4 customs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk79Dx-y6ng

8v8 matched party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xyaTj8yR54


There were some destructible objects that gave bonuses



You can still read about it at https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...sden/thefeast/ though the page is starting to break and may be removed eventually.

[Nubrication]

So I've been playing CC for awhile now. Has its ups and downs. But a thought came to mind. I never played PvP during the Feast. What was it like? The good and the bad. I'd like to know.

Basically you had 4 players on each team. 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 melee, 1 ranged (magic/phys). It was an arena style PVP mode. Basically you won by having a higher score at the end. You increase your score by killing people and pickup up their medals. Medals dropped by deaths are all the same at first but they lower based on how often they die (and eventually if they picked up medals or not). The more heavy medal stacks they had, the more damage they took. Tank's job was supposed to pick up preferably up to 4 stacks of medals, CC (crowd control) and give shields or peel players off their team. Healer was supposed to heal and keep their team alive but ALSO manage their mana. Melee was the carry (big bursts/ LB). Ranged was the damage support (CC but also sustained damage depending on class).

The point was to focus down 1 player (preferably not the Tank in the beginning for obvious reasons) as a team. To do this, you needed to bait (make them waste) their defensive CDs or healer's/tank's defensive CDs and then swap to the target when he has "nothing" left to sustain himself (or his team has nothing to sustain him with).

It was great because it taught people how to:
1. Focus the same targets (you only see this in high tier CConflict games now)
2. Know when to use certain OGCDs
3. Use your intuition to guess when their team is going to swap to you or to a certain party member
4. Pay attention to enemy/party list
5. It taught people that if you're outnumbered and in a bad situation, to back away as a team
There's probably some more things that I forgot to mention. Diamond (and Platinum) Feast players have atleast these 5 skills and it carries really well into CC. Feast players are generally better than CC players (a Diamond CC player is basically a Platinum feast player - generally). Even in CC, gold feast players made it to Crystal. Highest tier in Feast was Diamond, there was no Crystal tier.

It was bad because:
1. It was toxic
2. Definitely high pressure on the healer
3. If your melee sucked, it made it harder to win (unless your healer was a god)
4. 1 mistake can easily cost you the game (accidently getting 10 stacks of heavy medal)
5. Diamond games basically relied on getting your healer the "mana pot" (I forgot what it was called). It was so important that the range would sometimes LB it to secure it for their healer.

[Novani]

People who missed Feast, missed nothing of merit; everything you were supposed to learn in it, you learn through general PvP practice and team coordination. Sorry if this was a bit blunt, but if SEnix dropped the ball anywhere, it was here.

Basically take everything bad about current CC, except the lack of diminishing returns and executions (as they didn't exist), and amplify it in the most ridiculous way.

That was Feast.

Suffice it to say, while you were supposed to be tactical in the mode, frequently, the only thing that mattered was timed bursts. That's it, and this was just people's normal rotations. The coin objective was more an afterthought (this likely differed between DCs), though you did need to be careful about being too overloaded.

Whoever got singled out as the unlucky person to endure it all literally couldn't do anything against it except pray their team could do something instead. No cover, no healing, no defensives, would save you.

In fact cover and Line of Sight itself was such a joke to the netcode that in the end it was a coin toss as to whether or not you'd be allowed to do anything at all. When the Crystal Tower map was the only choice it wasn't uncommon for players to be downed in their own base constantly either, right from the start. And yes long respawn timers and spawn camping was omnipresent.

Videos of old matches are interesting watches for sure. But they do not represent the true scale of how toxic the mode was in its end days, it was even harsher on players with high pings, they don't even get to play the game.

So honestly, if I was to recommend a deathmatch in any game to a prospective player, despite it technically fulfilling the requirements, Feast wouldn't make the list.

Why? It doesn't challenge you to get better, more reflexive, coordinated or responsive, it just conditions you to accept meta status quo and get better server connection. And fun only exists if you meet those two. That's it.

All its supposed good points exist in literally every other game and mode.

Crystalline Conflict by comparison, while not flawless, at least tries to be a fun mode that requires a bit team coordination to excel at. They absolutely need to get away from the whole push the cart nonsense, or at least make it more interesting, but comparatively, it's just healthier and everything good people got from Feast is just standard there.

This post was meant to be way shorter...

[Kansene]

I only remember one thing:
Playing rdm, running and screaming the entire while as the other team made it their life's sole purpose to end me and me alone.

[Valence]

So I've been playing CC for awhile now. Has its ups and downs. But a thought came to mind. I never played PvP during the Feast. What was it like? The good and the bad. I'd like to know.

People already explained how the mode worked mechanically, so I'll only give my subjective opinion and feeling on it and the meta that developped around: the roles of feast: Healer, spamming heals to keep the allies alive while trying to stay alive on its own. Melee DPS: the pivotal point of the burst since half the team DPS was concentrated in that role, and was the one giving the tempo on which target to attack and burst down and when. Tank and ranged DPS: same-ish role in terms of support, with lower dps than melee dps, and supposed to disable the proper targets when the burst starts (tank stunned the target, ranged dps disabled the healer usually), while tank also had the responsibility to try and cover the allied going under enemy burst.

Bad:
- Everything relied on your healer, and below plat-diamond (there was no crystal rank) essentially 99% of the games were decided by who had the best healer, since team composition was fixed with pve styled trinity roles. At plat-diamond the melee dps was the second most important job because skill gaps between healers were a bit less sharp and more manageable. The skill level of the healers and melee DPS almost unilaterally decided the outcomes of games unless mistakes happened.
- It required pin-point precision in execution and know-how, meaning that most players didn't really know the mode was supposed to be played like this and lead to high clown fiestas under plat level. Gold was somewhat in between both worlds. Also extremely sensitive to the stupidest or smallest mistakes.
- Very heavily scripted scenario, once you knew what to do with your role and had your macros sorted out, it didn't require that much practice to perform at a basic level. High skill floor, although yes obviously, where the true skill ceiling lied was more in being literally glued to party lists because everything happened there. Overall, extremely unfriendly to newcomers, very obscure to get into.
- People already listed the insane weight of some roles (healer, then melee dps), but also of some gimmicks like the mana potion.

Good:
- The good for me was mostly in the mode itself, which was a deathmatch, which I usually prefer to that new push the cart mode.
- The medal system could have used refinements but proved to actually be a catchup mechanic for the losing team a bit. In comparison the current catchup mechanics of CC are wonky and sometimes can feel very wtf


edit: on the role weight discrepancies some may even recall the shift between SB's model and ShB's model where they introduced medkits (like our modern recuperate) to alleviate the weight of healers, not only in feast but also in frontlines. All in all it was a good thing for the modes, but it also backfired spectacularly in the feast meta where before the introduction the targets to kill were constantly shifting to take the enemy team offguard, when suddenly it wasn't possible a lot anymore due to the amount of self healing people now had, which then turned into huge attrition games where the same stupid target kept being pummeled to death again and again and again until they ran out of mana, and the healer couldnt keep up. Ultimately it was which of the two teams would run out of resources first.

[Oni_Akuma]

Imo the best thing about Feast was it was very close to your pve counterpart. Just like weaving combos, setting up burst phase, and self healing button leading to a combo like [bloodbath]. I prefer it because the high skill ceiling involved.

Also many barely knew how to efficiently survive and keeping your med kit refreshing.

They had a good thing going and ruined it. PvP isn't meant for a general audience. It has to have salt for you to season up your gameplay. If not frontlines your way for tomes.

It's still the same story today too. Less buttons and people still barely know how to make their skills work to maximum efficiency. You're just playing a MOBA version of PvP now. Spamming Ults [Lbs] after a certain burst combo or rotation.

Tanks and healers were easy to kill if you know for to work your rotation and coordinate effectively.

Hell... even Dueling 1 v 1 was a great thing at that time during certain seasons and skill reworks.

[Iceboy]

Unironically like this.

[Chelsee]

It sucked and they should bring it back $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ sorry cat stepped on my k eyboard