Thanks for the XIV feedback. The idea was the present it as raw as possible and see everyone's reaction. At the moment, it seems to have appeal with hardcore XIV players, but as pointed out, it doesn't have a hook with the average gamer. Also I hear you loud and clear on the "please explain stuff more" feedback. Will definitely keep that in mind. The "2nd" episode was supposed to be Tam-Tara, but I'm thinking now about re-thinking the content we do and how we experience it together.
The main issue is right now, Brad, me, Ben, and Brandon actually play XIV enough to do much of the content competently. Ian has dabbled in the game a bit, too. But everyone else would need serious training wheels, but more importantly, they haven't put in the time to unlock most of the content in the game. And in fact, aside from me, I doubt any one else in the EZA team has current stuff unlocked. Even racing through the MSQ of a single patch takes ~ 30-60 mins depending on your familiarity with the game. So most of the EZA staff would have to put in a significant amount of time to participate as a group.
There we some good suggestions thrown out, like for us to start over and do this as an RP/Story experience where you play/react to major events/fights. However, I'm worried that the story is more of a solo experience than a group experience, and not sure how it will translate into a video with group commentary. I think it would work as a Retro/Timeline style video, though. Any attempt at a commentary style video would probably end up like a Depths on the lore of the game or something. However, as much as I like XIV's story, I don't stay playing it because of the plot. I wouldn't feel very interested in just doing a show solely about XIV's story each week, so the main driver for this XIV show isn't too interested in this concept.
Another idea was to start over, but sorta make routine videos explaining people the game and easing them into FF XIV. While this actually is a great idea for video content, my concern here is this has already been done. There are amazing guides/walkthroughs that explain just about everything in FF XIV that you can find on YouTube done by great people in the community. And to be honest, they are aimed at people who are going to be invested in XIV, not a casual player who just wants to dip their toes into the pool. And making a more, sorry to say, shallow video explanation of the basics isn't going to really set the world on fire or be that entertaining, IMO.
I'll be honest, I saw these videos (latest one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o723bHrZoUo and was like, "we need to do something like this but with EZA guys who aren't as hardcore into the game, and the hook will be that it's just a bunch of casuals trying to do MMO stuff and failing miserably". But yea, these players have been together for awhile, so they have good chemistry. So that's something that needs to be worked on from our end.
So, some good suggestions for what to do, but an idea I am considering...
1) Bring the allies together at Jones' place for an hour or so, and try to have the allies go through hard content and see how well the fare. And we would all play on my account (shhh, don't tell SE) so they'd have access to the content. Basically they would queue up or I'd get 7 other friends online to make a party with my character, and then give each EZA member like a few pulls to see how they fare. And since I have most every job at 50 or 60, there's a lot of content they could try out. Would just record their reactions and gameplay, and cut a highlight real.
Otherwise, we'll just have to work on the chemistry of the existing format and do a better job of explaining what's going on and maybe trim down the videos even further to reduce the repetitive nature of combat a times. We also need to get Brad on (he had PC issues) since he has a great personality and fits well with Ben, and also we need to get Huber tanking for us on Episode 3 (or the next episode if we scrap/redo Tam-Tara). We can add in a bit of lore behind the dungeon - like why we are there, what's going on, and explaining the basic mechanics we're using. I'l also make sure my camera (and others) are a bit more zoomed in -- I am so zoomed out because that's how you play MMOs, but it doesn't make for a very entertaining viewpoint.
Anyway, will mull this over and think about what to do next, but definitely going to keep this going. We have to at least do the Titan EX episode...
