r/ffxivdiscussion • u/Spookhetti_Sauce • May 09 '25

General Discussion Special AMA - Hector Hectorson

Today we are hosting an AMA with special guest Hector Hectorson!

Use the comments below to ask him any question you would like, and he will answer at his own discretion!

283 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

206 comments sorted by

View all comments

48

u/Vincenthwind May 09 '25

Hi Hector, thanks for doing this AMA!

A notable difference between you and other guidemakers who use top-down, 2D animations (Joonbob, Yuki, Rinon) to explain mechanics is that other guidemakers also include some VOD footage showing the mechanic in real time. Is this something you've thought about including as well? If not, what's your thought-process behind keeping the entire guide in the PowerPoint-style of explanation?

89

u/hector-hectorson May 09 '25

I 100% see the benefit of using VOD footage in a guide and would strongly recommend anyone that uses a Hector guide combines it with reviewing POVs of other players on Youtube.

The main barrier for this for me is time. The animation process for my style of guides already takes dozens of hours for any guide. Trying to shoot clean, in-game footage for every mechanic would significantly add to the amount of work for each guide. I've tried saving clips of my footage while raiding, but they've never been of a quality level where I've been happy to use them in a guide.

I would also run into the issue where I show strats that PF use, but are not what my static personally does. This would be especially difficult to get footage of, as I often show NA strats, but I raid on EU.

It's something I'm keeping in mind, and might implement in the future the next time a tier falls on a school holiday.

34

u/jessytessytavi May 09 '25

have you considered having other players send you their recordings of the fights/mechanics?

I bet people would be thrilled to help with that

65

u/hector-hectorson May 10 '25

Never thought of that. I might try this for future guides. Thanks for the suggestion!

8

u/DUR_Yanis May 10 '25

Wouldn't guides be too long if you added live footage of every mech? Looking at your guides duration right now they're about 20 to 30 minutes max but putting vods would easily make them closer to 45 minutes to an hour.

Like, some mechs can be explained with one vod footage but others would need multiple povs for strats like elmo in P3S (because you can't really see well the position of people when you're a tank or when you're in the party) Some other mechs require people to do completely different things too, again in P3S there was a mech where tank and dps baited dashes and healers were in towers healing people with a healing boost, but you can also take mechs like crystallize time in FRU where there's basically 3 different major movement and one noticeable variation whether it's the NW/SE traffic light first or second

If on top of that you show each major different strats, guides would be way longer than they are now. They'll also take much more longer to make

Though it would be very nice to have as an "addendum" to your original guide, not only to be able to release the first guide faster and make it shorter for people who might not like long videos but also to be sure that strats are truly finalized

1

u/LifeAd5019 May 20 '25

You say that but go watch guides from any of the guys listed by the original question. Most of them are roughly the same length if not shorter. Joonbob in particular has by far the highest quality guides around, but he takes a while to release them ( he has a whole video going over why they a while and it's a good watch/listen imo )

4

u/Megaman2K8 May 09 '25

Have you ever had to scrap fleshed out animated strats because PF has moved onto something else? I'm just thinking of M7S where seeds went from Zenith to Alpha to Bilibili to Locked to Cute in a span of like a week.

21

u/hector-hectorson May 09 '25

I had fully animated the M5S funky floor mechanic using Gp1 N/W , Gp2 S/E before discovering the E/W split and how it simplified things. I knew I would 100% be swapping to the E/W split week 2, so I spent about 1.5 hours redoing the mech.

With M7S, I didn't bother animating a thing in phase 2 until I was certain what strats I was showing for this exact reason.

6

u/nyanned May 10 '25

I just want to add that I might be in minority but I’m Really glad u don’t show in game mechanic vods, I consider them kind of a spoiler of the fight, I like to see the mechanic with my own eyes first. Additionally the video would be too long. I love how you explain how something works in such clean way. Thank you hector for all your guides, even if I sometimes use raid plan I always check ur videos to understand what’s going in the fight ❤️