My experience with the game started back with the PS3 beta, (phase 3 I think it was). I don’t even remember how I heard about it. It could have been from a newsletter sent out to members with an SE account, or it could have simply been some random link I came across while exploring the internet. Either way, without knowing anything about the game, I signed up for the beta simply because I like betas. Honestly, when I ended up participating in it, I wasn’t impressed….
I can’t really remember that many details about it, because it was what seems like a long time ago at this point. I do remember that I played as a Thaumaturge in Ul’Dah during my short time that I participated, simply because I prefer casters in most games. Ultimately, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the gameplay or the graphics or the story, or really anything. It was somewhat enjoyable, but it was an MMO which I was never much of a fan of to begin with. What did interest me though was the talk on the XIV main web page about the upcoming Arcanist class that would be in the full release. It sounded interesting to me, and despite being the manly man I am, I could not deny the sheer adorableness of the Carbuncle pet depicted in the class artwork. I ultimately decided that when the game came out I would pick it up and give it a try just to play as the new class. I then promptly forgot that the game even existed, and never even gave it a second thought until well over two and a half years later….
In early February 2014, circumstances prompted me to move into a house that once belonged to my great-grandparents, which is located in the countryside of Mississippi in the Southern US. Because of this location, high speed internet via landlines is completely unavailable. The only such internet has an abysmal speed of less than 5mbs download while costing more than most 20mbs internet services would for people who lived within major cities. The only other real option is satellite internet which is completely unsuited for gaming in any way shape or form, and which for the most part has equal or even slower speeds at an even higher price for the same amount of monthly data. Due to this and the extremely unfriendly costs of attempting to use phone data for all but the lightest of gaming, I decided that I would simply have to do without internet at my home…..
For Black Friday of 2014 I ended up spending what little spare money I had at the time on a PS4 bundle and a couple of games. Almost a month later, I bought Dragon Age: Inquisition for the PS4. It was in part the combination of wanting to play Inquisition’s multiplayer, as well as wanting to play Warframe that made me once again look into the idea of getting internet at my home. By chance, I found a satellite internet provider that had escaped my previous searches. This provider boasted 12mbs download speeds, (among the higher tiers of speeds for even cities around my part of the country), while reports from consumers put it closer to the 15-20mbs range. What’s more is that this provider had reasonable pricing for their internet as well as several hours of free time after midnight that would allow for unlimited data usage without counting towards the monthly total. The only downside of course was that being satellite internet, it would likely make playing many games difficult, but as they say, beggars can’t be choosers…..
It was at this time when I was debating on whether or not to have this internet service provided to my home, that I somehow entered a discussion with a friend about XIV. He and another friend of his played it quite often. I vaguely remembered the game, but upon looking it up I remembered my desire to play as the Arcanist class, almost purely due to the Carbuncle. Seeking to expand my options of playable games for my still relatively new PS4, I decided that I would give XIV a try once more. Upon this, my friend told me that because of the job system within the game, I would lose the Carbuncle upon level 30. I told said friend that I’d say screw it and play without a job crystal. He gave me a look and told me that it simply couldn’t be done. Presenting it as not being an option of course did little but challenge that portion that exists within every gamer’s mind that says “Well since it ‘can’t’ be done, I absolutely have to give it a try”…….
And so, over the course of the next couple of months before I got internet, I focused on doing a bit of research into the game, and concluded that while it probably
shouldn’t be done, it was absolutely viable for me to play as a full time Arcanist who traded a bit of raw attack power for more support capabilities via the cross-class system. So, armed with my idea to do the “impossible”, I got my internet installed in early February 2015, and went out and bought the game later that day......
While I was in town to get the game, I ended up going by Walmart after instead of going straight home. While there I did what every sensible gamer does, and went straight for the electronics department to look at the games they had despite having just come from a separate store that specialized in video games. While there I ended up engaging in conversation with another consumer who was browsing the PS4 games and since I had just bought XIV I ended up bringing it up in conversation at one point. That particular person had no interest in the game. However, a different customer came up and mentioned that he played the game. We discussed it for a bit, and he mentioned that if I couldn’t get onto the server that my friend played on, then I should join his server instead, and we exchanged PSN information.
Later that night after getting home and installing the game and patches, I logged on to create a character, and you’d never believe that I couldn’t get onto Gilgamesh where my friend played, (big surprise there, huh?) So, I took the advice of a random guy I met mere hours earlier, and joined Shiva instead. Truthfully, I have no idea if I’d even still be playing the game if it hadn’t been for that chance encounter. I sent a message to that guy on PSN that I was joining his server along with my character name, since he wasn’t online at the time, and jumped straight into Eorzea.
I’ll admit. It was all a bit much at first. While I had tried out quite a few before, I was never a fan of MMOs, and as such was fairly unfamiliar with all but the most basic of terms, (and even unfamiliar with some of the basic ones). I had no real clue what I was doing, relying purely on my experience with JRPGs in the past to guide me. As I’m sure all of you are aware, MMORPGs, even one that is as “casual friendly” as XIV, play almost nothing at all like regular RPGs. Combine this with seemingly endless tutorials, text bubbles, terminology, lore, ect, and with it being early in the morning for me, and I was left more overwhelmed than I had ever been with a game before. So naturally my one instinct to more familiarize myself with the game was to go around mass-murdering the helpless furry animals I found outside Limsa……
When doing a FATE, (I think it was the one with the Aurochs in Middle La Noscea), I received an invite to a Free Company. I had received a few prior to this despite having only played the game for an hour or so, but had turned them down either due to exceptionally poor grammar, (even though I myself am far from perfect in that regard), or because I simply wanted to stay solo for a bit. This one though I just decided that “sure, at least they know what a period and capital letters are”, and joined. I didn’t know at the time, (and to my embarrassment didn’t realize until several weeks later), that the person who invited me was the same random person who had invited me to Shiva in the first place….
I joined and he welcomed me, as well as invited me to a party. I joined that as well and we discussed the game for a bit. I had been having fun, just as I usually do when first starting a new game, but it wasn’t quite clicking for me as being anything particularly good or enjoyable. It was just a game, and was nothing special. I decided that maybe I should take a break and get a little bit of rest and come back to it after. When I mentioned as much, said man mentioned that I should visit the FC house before I logged off. I decided that I might as well and navigated the menu until I discovered the teleport option that would take me there, (how expensive that ~80 gil fee seemed back then, lol)….
After entering the house itself, I talked to my newfound friend for a bit more, and decided that it was time for me to log off. He told me to wait because his in game wife was coming. I decided to acquiesce. I am glad that I did. When the two of them began talking back and forth the simple nature of their conversation started to show me something that I hadn’t really seen before in a game. In most games, and particularly other MMOs I’ve played, the other players were just that, “other players”. They were simply other gamers with their characters, killing monsters and completing quests. The simple nature of the conversation between these two though was different. It wasn’t two gamers discussing the game, or even two role-players crafting their “story”. It was two people holding a conversation…..
That may not seem like anything to most of you, but to me, that was the turning point that brought me from not being too fond of the game to being a big fan of it. It was the first time that a video game had made me feel that the other players weren’t simply other faceless gamers trying to play a game, but were actual people simply enjoying the game world and the friends they made within it. It was this simple conversation that showed me that Final Fantasy XIV had the potential to be more than “just another game”…..
Over the next few months I made a few friends in the game, went on a few grand adventures, got caught up in the middle of a bunch of drama as the neutral adviser, slew a few mighty foes, became a skilled fisherman, got a lot of criticism over my play style, (particularly when I attempted to discuss it here on the forums), and on the opposite side of the spectrum even managed to get a lot of praise for still out DPSing some players with full jobs while performing a bit of support. I had no trouble meeting DPS checks for any content I had participated in, (granted I never got into Coils or even EX primal at the time since I had so much content to catch up on), and even had a few debates where I managed to convince naysayers that while my methods might not have been conventional, they were against all odds, effective. In time though, with the upcoming release of Heavensward, my role as the Jack of All Trades simply wasn’t going to be an option anymore…..
My methods worked in the 2.xx cycle because the additional five cross-class skills allotted to basic classes helped balance out the five job specific skills granted to jobs. It was a trade off of damage, (along with the damage from the slight stat increases of being a job), for more skill options and more support. This, however, was slated to change come 3.xx with the fact that there would be no new cross-class skill slots, and all the new skills would be obtained from job quests. This change from previous options was also accentuated by the fact that basic classes would no longer have access to the level 3 LB, (which was a bit pointless of a change if you ask me, since I was apparently the only player in the world who didn’t take on a job). While I was excited about the upcoming content, I was also worried that these changes would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for me to continue playing as I had been enjoying playing for my entire experience with the game thus far. Looking back on it, and looking at the 3.xx cycle content so far, I am absolutely certain that the DPS checks in place now completely eliminated all options to have a more “support oriented” set up as my Arcanist had been, at least unless your party is overgeared for all the content you participated in. I still would have attempted to make it work though, in part because I’m a bit stubborn, and in part because I had been told that it was impossible to begin with, but had made it work before. Luckily, I didn’t have to come to this conclusion the hard way and end up forced to change, thanks to something else added in 3.0….
When the addition of three new classes to Heavensward was announced, everyone and their grandmother was excited about Dark Knight. I was no exception simply because FFIV was one of my favorite FF games, and the main character from it spends the early stages of the game as a Dark Knight, (bonus points for Cecil’s DRK helmet being one of the Collector’s Edition bonuses). From a gameplay perspective though, I was more interested in AST since I use SCH as my secondary class after my Arcanist, and had enjoyed healing in this game. As such, my priority from hearing about the classes was to level AST, then DRK, then MCH. Later on though when I saw the gamplay teasers for the three new classes, MCH caught my attention and I decided that it would be the class I checked out first when I entered the 3.0 areas…..
So, when I first entered Ishgard I headed straight for the MCH guild. I’ve never looked back since. MCH to me is that one class you get in maybe one game out of a hundred. It’s that class that just “clicks” and feels as though it was built for you in particular. You don’t need any real instruction on how to play it, because it just seems to come to you naturally. You never question whether you’re using a skill properly or how to do even a basic rotation, because one look at all the tools in your arsenal, and they just seem to fall into place like one of those four piece puzzles you give to a toddler. For me, MCH is that class…..
I won’t deny that the 3.0 changes affecting my playstyle didn’t push me a bit to consider a different class for my main. I’m still certain though, that even if they had buffed my Arcanist play style somehow, I would still be maining MCH at this point. After the events of the 2.55 story, I went into HW with a great deal of excitement about seeing how it progressed. After playing MCH for just a minute, I only touched the story briefly to unlock Coerthas so I could fish later, before focusing entirely on leveling my Machinist up to 50…..
Over these past few months since HW released, I’ve become one of the best MCH players there is. I’m absolutely certain that there are better out there than me, but I still have no doubt that while I may not be
the best, I am
one of the best in terms of skill. My damage output with my MCH has often led to me out performing even DPS players who should be able to do more damage than me in their sleep simply due to raw potencies on attacks. I won’t deny that MCH has the lowest over all damage output potential of any class in the game, particularly on sustained damage over a long fight. I also won’t deny that it is one of the most complex classes to perform well with in the game. I, however, love every second of it…..
In addition to my newfound love of MCH, these past few months in XIV have been a great deal of enjoyment for me. I’ve fought even more difficult foes, cleared content while it was still new and no one had a clue what they were doing, met new friends and lost old ones, had Godbert Mandervile help me kill Bismark, (well, a player with that character), spent countless hours sitting around doing nothing while waiting for people to get online, gotten frustrated with bad groups, had my heart warmed by good ones, helped out new players and returning veterans alike, and had a blast doing it all, even at the bad times……
Recent events though have shown me just how far I’ve come since I started playing this game. During the first day I started playing this game, the guy I ran into at random in a Walmart convinced me to come to Shiva. At that time, he invited me to his FC, helped me get used to the game and all the new content, and gave me 10k gil to help me out. Not long after that, he stopped playing the game. He came back about a month or so ago. Around that time, I realized I have about 15mil gil in savings despite frivolously spending my money on minions and useless items on a whim, and when he came back, I helped him get used to the game and all the new content, and invited him to my FC……
At some point along all this time, I went from being the noob who knew nothing about the game or the world of Eorzea, to being a veteran player who’s constantly teaching and helping all those I encounter. I went from being some crazy gamer who just wanted to play the game in an odd way because I was told it couldn’t be done, to being a major fan of the game who actively tries to work with other player to better their skills and who actively works to better my own skills at the game……
It’s odd to look back at yourself and see where you were so long ago and how much you’ve changed…..
But more than that, it’s odd to look back and see how similar some other things are….
Originally Posted by TouchandFeel
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