If you've taken a look at my YouTube channel (also listed on the sidebar), I've kinda just posted whatever I made either out of boredom or fun. See, when I was a young teen in the late 2000s and early 2010s, I was enthralled by the GMVs people made of my favourite video games. I didn't have the resources to do it myself (our home computers were fairly basic, for example) and often I had to share with my sisters. Only until the last few years I've been able to record my FFXIV gameplay without turning the graphics down. In summary, I can finally express my creativity through video edits.
My aim for this page is to take a video, explain my thought process behind the edits I've included, and share why I decided to make it. I'll skip anything that is self-explanatory.
[FFXIV] (Guardian Arkveld and) The Paper-Thin Viper
I was not recording at the time, so I had to resort to the A Realm Recorded plugin. Fortunately, this was preferable because I could focus solely on the Viper and not hope I catch a glimpse of him from my POV. The only thing missing is our voice chat.
- I remembered how to overlay videos using the crop effect, which I first used several years ago. It's applied graceously here. The video was originally double the length, but in the end I decided to cut the fat. Their gameplay was honestly just terrible, but that wasn't the point of the video.
- Life 1: The Viper has terribly low HP because his armour is 15 iLevels below the sync. It's important to note he starts off with 114 544 HP. The first raidwide doesn't affect him much. Until he gets slapped with one vuln up and is left with 7 085 HP. With a Protraction his HP totals to 125 998. A second vuln up is applied with damage bringing him down to 55 275 HP. With 2 vuln ups, he gets slapped by two mechanics: 93 420 damage and 3 vuln ups; 108 382 damage with 4 vuln ups. This kills a man.
- Life 2: He gets resurrected with 69 017 max HP. A good chunk of his gear broke, so it must have been less than 5% remaining (I don't know how much a death drops your gear durability). He's given an Adloquium which almost eclipses his entire HP bar. The tower deals 3 344 damage with a Heart of Light, which removes the Adlo and 2 654 HP. A tower is missed which deals 56 817 damage and applies a vuln up, taking him down to 9 546 HP. Next, a spread marker deals 87 596 damage on top of a vuln up and Shield Samba.
- Life 3: The raidwide deals 38 836 damage with Adlo. A spread marker deals 82 148 damage and kills him even with a Protraction, which increased his HP total to 75 919.
- Life 4: An Adlo and Catalyze is applied, surpassing his total HP bar. At this point, someone mentions his HP total and I go into shock. The first Chainblade Blow deals 27 183 damage and applies a vuln up, bringing his HP to 41 834. The second deals 141 206 damage. Since our White Mage and I'm also dead, we're given priority res. He tanks the floor for over a minute.
- Life 5: (I screwed up the editing and forgot to increase the death counter, which fucks up the rest of the video...) He's back but with 51 999 HP. Unfortunately, he explodes with 112 250 damage over an Expedient.
- Life 6: The raidwide deals 55 002 damage over a Troubadour, killing him instantly.
- Life 7: Divine Benison almost covers his entire HP bar. Then an Adlo is applied, covering it entirely plus some. Some times later, a critical Adlo is applied doing the same thing. This saves him from what should have been his sixth death. Unfortunately, it means nothing because he dies 12 seconds later. Rush deals 164 317 damage over a vuln up. Meanwhile, the Gunbreaker has taken their eighth vuln up and is still going.
- Life 8: A healer Limit Break 3 is used, his new max HP 29 285. Just after a Divine Veil is applied, almost covering his HP bar. IIRC, he decides now is a good time to mention he forgot to repair his gear. After staring into the abyss for a while, he joins the stack at the last second killing him once again. Divine Veil and Troubadour mitigating damage, he takes 78 369 damage.
- Life 9: A regular Adlo shields more than his HP bar. The raidwide removes the shield entirely with 18 413 damage. Yet another Adlo is applied.
- Fortunately, Guardian Arkveld is felled here. In total, he died 8 times and his gear broke 3 times. Without party composition buffs, his real max HP is 5 512. Absolutely insane.
[FFXIV] M6S but it's just adds prog (Part 1)
This will be the last time I downscale the resolution to 1080p because I completely forgot to change the settings when I upgraded my setup. This should reduce the oatmeal visuals.
- We start off with a random GNB (and PCT, but they're irrelevant here) we obtained through PF. They are equipped with unaugmented crafted (i740). This is fine normally, but when it's this late in the tier, it's kinda griefing. Their logs also did not exist for any current high-end content. Perhaps they were playing an alt and so we gave them the benefit of the doubt (we also had been waiting in PF for some time). It plays out as you see fit. I edit in a cute little reverse clip and slow down the footage to highlight the GNB running to join the "stack". Then they drop the bomb (hah). Yeah, no. Get out.
- Getting music for this first section was a bit difficult; I couldn't think of a song that fit the paint vibe. Then this Pokken OST dropped on my/our head(s). Kinda like the tank busters.
- Desert phase: I had several music options for this, but I ended up going with Quicksand from FF XIV itself. Right at the start, I narrowly manage to avoid the overlapping cactus AoEs by a pixel. Felt powerful. Our healers did not want to be separated and I completely understand. More bad overlapping AoEs with the bombs is really annoying.
- Add phase: the meat and potatoes of the video where I somehow managed to cut this segment down to about five minutes. The time it takes for the Ray's Water III cast to end, it actually attacking, and dropping the puddle down is really fucking stupid. Warrior's Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash can very easily pull Yan aggro because it's so broken with multiple targets. You really have to time it properly - like not using it before the off-tank can even get their first hit on the Yan... This happens several times until we get a kind random that informs us of this "quirk". Watching the wandering Yans using Headbutt on its enemies never gets old. It's a Normal type move and yet, it's super effective. Holmgang saved my ass when Ace is unable to hit the her Ray in time. The 92 635 damage from Primal Rend also hits the sweet spot. I hate tab target in this game so much. In terms of music for this section, I could not decide whether to use fear-inducing music or go completely silly. "Why not both?"
- The final clip is my favourite of it all. I could not remember if Yakety Sax is still copyright, so I couldn't fulfill Ace's dreams. I'm sorry. (It's not like my channel's monetised, but I don't want the video to be muted.) I look forward to finishing this fight. Eventually.
- [GREEDY]
[FFXIV] Necron Extreme But We Catch These Hands
For the longest time, I never really figured out how to separate in-game sounds, Discord voice, and my voice, and keep them in one video file via OBS. I finally looked into it and was like, why did I leave it until now, when it was so easy?
- Aceso (Ace) did some scouting before Thursday, so their first words were a perfect way to start the video, as it was proceeded by Dharmayama (Dharma) taking the TB and none of us realizing it would hit again. Ace's words and laughter should have been a red flag, but we ignored the bright red flag. Was that a mistake.
- There is the clip of me and Alvette jumping up and down for like 10 minutes and I set to 500% speed. The music syncing up to me almost dying then dying alongside (Guessing) Giga was unintentional but perfect.
- Then...the hell that was Grand Cross. I finally found a use for that Chef Boyardee edit I found. Cessali running and jumping back and forth is my brain when someone begins to explain something, though not because I'm bored. Dharma falls off during Grand Cross twice. The first time I had a question mark follow him down, then the second I can barely speak while laughing.
- The first time we hit the solo add phase, I didn't know it starts right when 2 minutes comes off cooldown so I was pissed. Now, my brain has lots of trouble with rotating things, so the Crop Rotation mechanic is impossible for me to parse within a reasonable amount of time. You could probably hear the gears turning in my head as I try to reorder the ins and outs. We saw our first Mass Macabre at the end of the first night which ends the initial footage.
- The remainder of the video is the day of our first clear. I would have added more clips from the other days of prog, but too long a video and you lose the attention of your audience. Shakes fist Those darn kids!
- As stated in the credits, the video was supposed to celebrate the clear, but Dharma and Svet had announced they were stepping down from the static's leadership position. They'd still be a part of the group, however.
[FFXIV] Brute Abominator theme but something seems familiar...
When I first heard this song, something about the guitar bit at the beginning felt incredibly familiar - I thought perhaps something DMC or MGRR related. After several repeat listenings, I felt that it was a more recent Pokemon battle theme. So I went through my (definitely legally obtained) Pokemon game OSTs, and there it was: the Johto Champion battle theme. It was obviously not as "heavy" (sorry, I'm not very familiar with music terms) as the FFXIV song, but it was quite similar. I chose the HeartGold/SoulSilver version and made a quick edit. I wish I had the knowhow to make a full seamless edit of the song and made the graphics to go with it. Oh well.
[FFXIV] Healers Sending Their Best (of the Worst)
Not much to explain here other than I loath these kind of players. Why are you "playing" a game by not actually playing? Go play Cookie Clicker or something.
Anyway, this took a bit longer to set up because I had to replay the duty with a plugin that records your gameplay. The neat thing about this is that it uses the in-game recorder and applies it to every duty you do. The in-game version also allows you to change perspective to the other players in your party, but not alliances. Initially, I felt like I should have cut it down a lot more, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of the video. I really tried to make it slightly more interesting by using upbeat music, but nothing can really make this so-called gameplay entertaining.
[FFXIV] Gaius Digivolves
Every time I got Prae, this is all I could think of every time Gaius gets a paint job.
[Argylle] Neon
Soon after Argylle released in theatres, I saw this clip being shared around on Twitter with people saying it looked stupid. I was irked by this, because when I watched the movie I loved it. The fight scenes were choreographed by people who had done similar work to several Chinese action films like Jackie Chan and John Woo. Even the key stunt coordinator, Brad Allan, had worked directly with Jackie Chan (unfortunately he passed away in-between filming and the movie's release). Aside from that, I remember thinking during the movie that RWBY's Neon might work well with the scene. I downloaded the clip and went to work. My main takeaway from all this is that people take movies way too fucking seriously. Who cares if it's campy or silly, especially if it's a comedy (Argylle is classified as an action comedy). Stop analyzing it like it's your homework.
[FFXIV] Duty Finder Mishaps: I've Made a Miscalculation
The first silly FFXIV compilation I uploaded to the channel. This is the first major use of the positioning and scale functions to help direct the viewer to the important things.
Seat of Sacrifice going as well as one would expect. Some players are certainly strange, particularly this Red Mage in Euphrosyne running around aimlessly not DPS'ing. At the time, my controller cord was becoming loose, so sometimes it would "cut out" and I'd have to wiggle it back and forth until it worked again. It was extremely irritating. As a Warrior player, I was disappointed by a Warrior not using Primal Rend, AKA one of their coolest abilities. In the Voidcast Dais, I forget the Double Meteors and the healer targetted line AoE casts end at the same time, so I falsely assume I can Hissatsu: Yaten out of there in time. Nope. I zoom out and there are three other dead people. Back in Euphrosyne, I yet again think I can greed safely. Nope. The rest of the video is pretty self-explanatory. It ends with a classic World of Darkness wipe.
I've watched a lot of Duty Finder compilations and they tend to get pretty samey. Recording prog with a voice chat is more fun and unique.
[Kingsman: The Golden Circle] Car Chase - A Cold Call
A quick edit overlaying A Cold Call from Arknights on top of the car chase in the second Kingsman movie. I honestly didn't expect the song to sync up so well by only cutting off the beginning.
[Kingsman] Twilight (Short Ver)
I love the Kingsman franchise and with all the cool fight scenes, I made a "tribute video". This was around the time the key stunt coordinator, Brad Allan, passed away so I kinda made it in memory of him. Timing the clips with the music and lyrics is always tough but fun.
The process: I took the second half of the song, Twilight. It starts soft, so I pair it with preparation shots and very few dramatic scenes. Once the lyrics start, James Spencer rolls forward to "rotate". "Chains" goes with the rope around Harry Hart's neck. "Chronologically" is timed with James picking up the glass from the tray. "Bomb" when the grenade explodes in front of Orlando Oxford. Now when the music really kicks in is where several high energy scenes play. "Wrong or right" is paired with Harry using his left and right hands, respectively, to shoot his targets. When the lyrics "never end" are said, pay attention to how the vocalist pronounces "end" and the hits the two fighters deal. Finally, "forethought nor hindsight", Eggsy Unwin is focused on what's in front of him, then turns over focusing on what was behind him.
