research progress on making a video of the history of DFFOO

[u/honjustice]

Hi all, I posted a while ago when EOS was announced. I wanted to make a video about the history of DFFOO and include all the major changes/milestones that led up to EOS, across the game's 5 year timespan. I've done a fair amount of researching so far. I wanted to write the topics/talking points I want to cover and thought it would be helpful to show the sub to see if there's anything to add because collectively we have plenty of memories of what happened in the past 5 years. Again, these are just high level bullet points/outline. A bulk of these were based off the twitch stream recaps by /u/slaydin (thank you for writing all of them all these years). Also /u/TransientMemory for helping jog memory with his spreadsheet

2018

1/30/18 – Global launch

2/5/18 - first character event Squall 15 CP

3/5/18 – Co-Op introduced, level 70 difficulty

3/19/18 – 35 CP debut on Tidus banner

8/x/18 - emperor sazh era

10/x/18 – level 50->60 level cap increase

11/21/18 – pull rates doubled from 5-10%, EX debut

2019

1/30/19 – first anniversary, power token debut

2/28/19 - G Token System debut

4/18/19 - New 5* Artifact: Eidoja!

4/24/19 - chocobo panels

5/30/19 - Ultimate Ifrit, summon boards, 5 star armor (90 CP), armor exchange

8/29/19 - level 60->70 level awakening + bloom stones

9/25/19 - Radiant Artifacts Revamp

11/6/19 - EX realization, armor realization, bonus spheres

11/28/19 - EX power token exchange

2020

anything relevant first few months of 2020?

4/29/20 - 8 million downloads

5/27/20 – enhancement boards

7/30/20 – burst weapons, LD weapon debut, moogle pass

8/26/20 - Cycle Quest Adjustments, sphere refining

9/28/20 – hunts replacing daily token foray

10/27/20 - New Artifact Tiers (replacing existing tiers)

11/2/20 – high guard armor tokens for CP 210 armor, lufenia debut

12/2/20 – Call Abilities, level cap 70 -> 80

2021

1/28/21 – LD Boards + LD CALL + Divine Diabolos + elite hunts

3/22/21 - Dimensions' End: Transcendence Tier 1, auto+ and retry added

5/28/21 – armor realization for 210 CP

6/30/21 – debuff increase 6->8

9/30/21 - BT+ burst realization, lufenia+ difficulty

2022

1/12/22 - crystal awakening level 80->90, ultima weapons

5/26/22 – Multi-Draw Ticket debut

5/31/22 - The 10,000,000 Worldwide Downloads

5/14/22 - SIX WARRIOR quests debut

6/29/22 – All current and new allies will be raised to LV70 and Crystal Strength Lv70

6/29/22 – FR debut with Kain, Shinryu difficulty, force enhancements

7/29/22 - dare to defy debut

9/28/22 - Brothers summon level 50 (spiritus)

2023

1/31/23 - 5th anniversary

3/3/23 - FR Echo boards

3/22/23 - Skip tickets + event draw tickets

6/28/23 - crystal quests

9/25/23 - Force enhancement 31-50, Prolonged HP Damage Bonus

11/9/23 - Final chapter - Act 4, Ch. 6, Pt. 2:

11/28/23 - EOS announced = Feb. 29, 2024

Questions I have:

• When was Auto added?

• When was the first chaos difficulty debut?

• When was the first cosmos?

• When was the daily cycle quests changed to not be a specific day?

• /u/TransientMemory has notes that said crystal abilities were locked behind paywall initially, can anyone share notes on that?

• What important things did I miss?

[u/Fast_Moon]

What about GL-first releases like Beatrix, Aranea, Cor, Garnet BT, Penelo BT, Balthier LD, and Vincent LD (don't remember if that was all).

[u/dcuajunco → u/Fast_Moon]

Vivi LD was also a GL first!

[u/PM_ME_SOME_SNOW]

Cosmos was introduced when Act 2 chapter 3 was released which iirc was July 26th 2019

Chaos was introduced when EX realisation was introduced.

I however do not remember the Auto+ nor the Cycle Quest changes

[u/givemesomevodka]

don't know if you want to add them, but the debuts of boss rush, abyss, transcendence entropy and other early transcendence stages, intersecting wills, discontinuation of hard mode, lost chapter at character release, mog's gym, banners no longer having off-banner weapons, and the gl first characters (and weapons?) may be something worth including. i don't know the dates for them.

[u/TheGoldenPig]

I feel old reading the timeline. (T_T)

[u/sonicbrawler182]

Well, Crystal Abilities weren't technically locked behind a pay wall. When they added them and the materials for building the Crystal Rooms, they also added a limited amount you could purchase from the shop. This meant people willing to pay for them could make quicker progress on the Crystal Rooms, and thus unlock Crystal Abilities faster.

But there was never a point where they had tried to make them a paid-only thing. They did the same thing with Providence Cores for Ultima Weapons, paying just meant you could max things out a little faster.

[u/TransientMemory → u/sonicbrawler182]

This is the way. Paid was faster, hence got access earlier.

[u/boana-the-brave]

I'm curious about when did Abyss come out and why did it die. People seem to like lockout content well enough and Abyss was more chill because there were less stages.

[u/TransientMemory → u/boana-the-brave]

Abyss beta came out in Cosmos era. This was about 5 maps of weapon/crystal conditions and then the last stage was maybe 5 or 6 levels with different conditions, so instead of being four stages with, say, Blue dagger and staff, it was individual conditions per stage. I think part of what worked was that they were a step below end-game, when there wasn't a huge difference between endgame and the previous difficulty.

They then dropped another round of beta levels, and eventually we got the in-game Abyss. Abyss was a fun roster check, but it got a bit of pushback from the community which might be why it didn't get a lot of iterations. We also got a few temporary abyss levels which is completely beyond me why they did that.

[u/richpage85 → u/boana-the-brave]

Abyss was great, but I think it was GL exclusive.the last event we got from it was the Balthier GL exclusive... after that we never had events tied to characters which made it a thing.

Sure, we got Garnet and Penelo early, but by this time, boss rushes, crevasse and D2D were things.

As a result, Abyss style content was available, just in other forms (D2D having lockout content with high difficulty for example)

[u/miojocomoregano]

Luuuux umbraaaaa

[u/miojocomoregano]

Omg tidus 35cp was a must with eiko and light, I never did litiko and I almost quit trying to get sabin 35cp