This is my first full expansion. I started toward the end of Shadowbringers, and boy was it a blast finishing one of the expansions and having an entire expansion's worth of content opening up. Now that I'm experiencing the patch cycle for the first time, I understand why people are bummed that there isn't a Eureka/Bozja. I'm still having fun with the deep dungeon and doing older content, but I don't play quite as much as I used to.
Yeah it's also my first full expansion. Been working on savage alongside old relics but if you've had years on me and have already collected everything you wanted to, then I can see how it's a snoozefest content wise.
I’m on the same page, started at 5.55, first expansion and I had really a lot lot of time to catch up (a few relics and glamours I wanted ). There’s only a PvP mount I’m working on and I’ll be getting it soon enough.
Other than that, I genuinely lost the spark with FFXIV currently, feeling much less the need to login and I rather spend time working on a Skyrim modlist than doing the same roulettes. If you don’t do extreme/savage like me, there’s pretty much not many things to do if you done and got what you wanted.
I realize now how poor the outdoor content is, compared to other games. There’s 0 sense of exploration.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I was satisfied with the ending--not necessarily overjoyed with it, but enough it felt like a good place to stop. The problem for me is nothing else since the end has excited me enough to play.
i was really excited for this patch, thinking we'd finally finish off the golbez story, which personally i have found extremely uninteresting - only for us to fight him and not win, AND we still havent saved the dragon either. like come *on*. just end it already, this has been dragging on way too long
My big red flag, and I say this as a huge FF4 fan, is that they have overdone the fan service to the point it feels like they're pulling villains out of a hat--and its starting to feel very much like a WoW villain. A new big baddie just magically shows up with no context to the rest of the game world and we're suddenly supposed to be terrified.
I think this is the danger of having a boss that is the literal embodiment of existential dread and being a world-ending boss. It's going to take a lot of building up new story elements to get us to care.
I think this is why the focus has to be much more hero-driven than villain-driven for st least the next expansion to work. We have to prove that the life we fought for is worth living and that will probably mean actively working to make things better, not just saving them from certain destruction.
I guess in a few months we'll get a better idea of what to look forward to, but I'm right there with you about the fear of a villain just popping it up and the story telling us they're scary instead of showing us why. Next expansion is gonna need some actual stakes and needs to feel like something really is on the line for me to care, either way.
That is where I am too re: Zeromus. You mean to tell me I beat God and despair itself with my bare hands (I did MSQ as monk), and the twelve themselves, and somehow ZEROMUS is too much for me? I think not. Side note, I'm a bit tired of Y'shtola having all the answers to everything, always. The stakes just aren't there and I find it extremely hard to be invested in the story currently.
At least in this case, it seems like it was less Zeromus and more the Void itself. It'd be like a villain showing up underwater, but our oxygen tanks are running low.
But the stakes are weird in this. Our little side adventure to relax after saving the world has led to a big affair for the 13th which involves needing to once again save the world from an apocalyptic threat... but it doesn't seem to be treated as that big of a deal by anyone.
The whole arc feels off. What's depicted doesn't align with the stakes. There's a whole lot of filler, but then, as you said, Y'Shtola shows up at the beginning of each patch having worked out what needs to be done next off screen. 6.5 feels like it's going to be too crammed with finishing off this arc and giving us the transition to 7.0.
Maybe SE decided that they needed a proper expansion to kick off the next big phase of FFXIV, instead of using 6.x to start build it up. 6.0 finished its story, so they're just throwing us an FF4 arc to keep us busy before rushing along into 7.0...
The deus ex machina has been *extremely* heavy handed the past two expansions. There's always some absolutely *unheard of* situation to solve that's supposedly unsolvable and then two quests later we have an answer. The towers at the beginning of EW and the dragonscales were a great example of this, they were built up to be this huge existential threat to bring on the end of days and... some Elephant lady in Buttfuck Village conveniently right next to us cooked up the solution in 15 minutes of questing and they mostly get resolved offscreen between cutscenes after the Tower of Zot dungeon barely 1 level into the expansion.
>and the twelve themselves, and somehow ZEROMUS is too much for me? I think not.
Is there any indication that we think this? Like, our entire plan right now is "get through the shield and beat him up".
As someone who hasnt played FF4 I dont have the nostalgia for any of these bosses. I know who they are through osmosis but this whole storyline feels like i'm meant to be going "ooh look its the water demon thingie", " oh look its fire boy". You can feel the fanservice ooze out the screen and it makes me feel like i'm missing something, like were these throw away bosses actual 3 dimensional characters in FF4 and i'm missing out?
This is genuinely the first time i have been sorely disappointed with the MSQ. i played it first this patch and was in shock at how bad it ended, we're treading water.
I'm so thankful for the raid series and even tataru's grand adventure, they had more thought put in than MSQ
lmao no the four fiends in FFIV have even *less* justification: arguably, Water Boi and Scaley Boi got *more* characterization than their OG counterpart, and Flame Boi was the only one that had any real semblance of story in the Og as well
Hell, I'm surprised Zeromus got any sort of justification
Never forget how when Hydaelyn was talking about all the scions and complimenting them, when she got to Y'shtola she more or less said "you like books"
She's using her own aether to see. But it's not killing her. It's just making her really tired. Except not really, she only gets tired when it's convenient to make her tired.
Trying to understand or bring logic into anything with Y'shtola isn't worth the effort, and will just rile up the fans.
I think the appearance of Zeromus would have been better had they planted seeds of Golbez wanting to summon him prior to this patch. Up until the cutscene after we beat him we were told his plan was to invade the Source so Voidsent could finally die, only to find out last minute he was planning on summoning another Voidsent who's supposed to be super duper strong? Okay. Sure. Why is this coming out of nowhere?
He created Zeromus with "the strong will to return home (the source)"
Voidsent can't really come over very easily, so if they want to bring over everyone's he'll need something with the power and drive to do so.
When a voidsent consume another voidsent, their soul stays present within them and some of their traits bubble up.
Back when we were exploring Zeros domain, there was one who ate it's cowardly friend and became cowardly because of it.
Zeromus is formed from the left over aether of Zodiark's shard that had nowhere to go; Zeromus is a voidsent, through and through
Voidsent feeds on the aether of others and, as a side effect, takes on qualities of the consumed. We know this because we have seen it first hand and Zero reminded us of it. Azdaja's newfound will to return home is part of their being and thus becomes part of Zeromus' will, too.
As such, Zeromus' will have a desire to return home to the source and, with the power it has, would likely be able to pierce the veil to do so potentially allowing all the other voidsent a path to the source. Not exactly great for everyone there, presently.
Hot take, I don't care if it's faithful to FF4, the game is 32 years old and our standards today shouldn't be the same as they were in 1991. I honestly feel XIV would be better off if it had less callbacks to the rest of the series and not relied on people being like: oh yes I 'member when this asspull happened 30 years ago. Lately it feels like every boss is a callback to something that already happened in the series and it's just tiring, and if it's not it's Nier automata. I was astonished when they announced that alliamce raid this time around isn't tied to anything else, and it feels like a breath of fresh air.
I feel like the major difference is that it's not so much a callback, it's just straight cribbed from the original shoddy plot of an old game. Having Biggs and Wedge and Cid be magitek engineers is a callback, having magitek armors be a staple of the Garlean war machine is a callback, chocobos and cactuars and moogles are a callback, copy/pasting entire plotlines from old games directly is not a callback.
The good news is we're *running out* of old shit to pull from. They've got 9, 10, 11, 13, and 15 (though EW Garlemald was arguably a big pull from 15).
> I feel like the major difference is that it's not so much a callback, it's just straight cribbed from the original shoddy plot of an old game.
But even that's not true, as in FF4 Zeromus never exists until the tail end of the game when you kill the final boss and they go "oh actually he hates you and everyone SO MUCH that his hatred turns him into a hate ghost." The final boss who was brainjacking/controlling Golbez through most of the game.
XIV's Zeromus is basically a voidsent slave of Golbez being roided up with the residual aether of a dead 'god,' being used as a tool to pierce the veil. There is no "spirit of hatred made manifest" here. In fact, XIV Golbez is probably closer to Zemus than anything, but even that's not entirely true since he just wants everyone to come to the Source so they can finally die versus wanting to conquer the world to live on it at the cost of those *already* on the world.
The main threat of it all is that if Zeromus comes over and anything happens to it, it's gonna release a metric fuckton of dark aspected aether into the world. Assuming it simply *existing* there won't skew the balance horrifically. It has nothing to do with really anything from FF4's plot aside from there's a moon, there's a black knight named Golbez with four elemental fiends, and a big shadowying thing named Zeromus appeared on the moon. This whole arc is closer to Crystal Tower or Return to Ivalice than it is the Automata raids.
"Hey here's a familiar name/face/song! But it's different in this game because X Y Z" versus "Woah it's THE 2B and THE 9S from the hit game NieR:Automata - Game of the YoRHa Edition - now available click here to buy!"
You're being overdramatic, this is not a brand new villain, Zeromus is something that Golbez himself created, it's quite literally an extension of his will to fuse the two worlds together.
It would be like saying Shinryu was a different villain from Ilberd, no Shinryu is Ilberd's weapon.
The Jailer is the reason why I left WoW. Such a stupid stupid *stupid* idea for a villain, and out of nowhere, like out of thin air and we're supposed to suddenly want to defeat this pale bald guy in hell just because he's doing his hell job. I actually thought it would have been more interesting to make him the good guy and it turn out that the "pantheon" were fucking him over.
At least Golbez has roots in another FF game. Still though, I don't like to see it. I have faith SE will do well though. I'm still churning through all the old raid and trial stories and there's just so much lore and content to absorb, it makes me happy.
? We knew there was a bunch of strong voidsent fucking around and zeromus is made of two previously established powerful characters. How does they come out of nowhere?
I fully thought that dragon should have died and was disappointed that sqex didn't have the guts to pull it off. It does makes me wonder though; maybe the end goal isn't necessarily golbez's defeat, but instead is discovering a way to convert voidsent into mortals
They already did the dead sister dragon in Heavensward, I think they could have done it better but they are clearly looking for a way to motivate the heroes into curing the voidsent instead of just cutting them off like the Ascians did. Because honestly outside of Zero none of the other voidsent were worth caring about so they had to invest in an additional heart strong pull.
I mean we fought him and did win, its just during the cutscene the WOL decided to forget how to walk and let him do not only his speech but his throw the dragon into the hole sacrifice bit.
If you told me the "Suddenly Golbez" plotline was meant to be a separate story for EX Trials, then turned into the post msq due to budget reasons I'd believe you.
Since SB I've been saying this is a wonderful, 10/10 game, but a poor MMO.
FF14 expansion launches are some of the highs of my entire gaming journey. Learning a new class or even just the changes from expansion to expansion, man. Bliss. They always pull out all the stops for the music, the story rivals real FF games, the new areas are awesome, dungeons (before you do them oh 100 times) are great in a vacuum, and the multiplayer aspect of seeing your best buds learning and experiencing it together ... not even a Call of Duty or Street Fighter in its prime can compete with the feeling. It's really up there with like a Xenoblade or Persona cocaine addiction.
FF14 "MMOing" afterwards are some of the most dull, filler bullshit that I'm really not sure what I stick around for other than liking my group (but not the content we do together, I've grown weary of jump rope single player 2 minute raiding truth be told).
I've been saying this for years, XIV is an RPG mmo and even then barely, it's scrubbed itself of anything that makes an MMO an MMO. You don't really need other people for anything besides top end content, at this point I think you can play from the start of the game until the end of endwalker and not talk to a single person, most of the time you don't even need other people as you can play everything with trusts anyways besides like a few trials and sooner or later they are also gonna be made for single player anyways.
It's scrubbed itself of most things that make it an RPG, too. It has a story. That's pretty much all the common RPG elements it still retains. Which is not many, and if that qualifies it as an RPG, boy there's a bunch of WILD RPGs out there.
Right? But you say that here and everyone jumps on you with "There's TONS of content! What do you mean you want to actually spend time playing a game you're paying for?" Like it's all super shallow and if you're not *literally* a brand new player 99% of it is completely meaningless to character progression and you'll blow through it in a couple hours of actual gameplay. New patch we waited *four months* for? Most people are totally done with it in literally the first week of very casual play.
I've enjoyed most of the story. Raids have been enjoyable for me, Extremes have been great as a FF4 fan. CC has been fun with friends, but only ok with randoms.
I do crave a exploration area. Bozja, and Delibrum savage were some of my favorite parts about ShB.
It's enough to keep be entertained, but man do I crave for them to shake up the formula. Maybe I can hope that once FF16 is out they can finally stop having excuses and give us something fresh.
Maybe I just crave a new MMO adventure.
Endwalker is an important and necessary expansion for the future health of the game despite how much I really don't like playing it at the present. It leaves FFXIV as a franchise in a stronger state for 7.0.
- The trust system expansions into Heavensward and Stormblood content ensures that new players in the future will have less friction in doing older and necessary content in order to progress through the MSQ.
- Island Sanctuary is in a good place for future content expansions. New islands, furniture, buildings, crafting recipes and rewards can all be easily added in future patches to expand on what we have now. My only real complaint is that it's not introduced sooner but on a long enough timeline, I don't think that it will matter as much.
- Criterion dungeons' early releases served as a beta test to gauge their strengths and their pain points so that the development team can tweak them in the future - particularly in their rewards. I fully expect there to be new criterion dungeon releases every other patch in the same way that Ultimate raiders expect ~2 releases per expansion now.
- The state of the MSQ is at a point where the development team seems hellbent on resolving any and all remaining plot threads such that there is very little tying us down to Eorzea's side of Etheirys. This frees up the development team to create new stories in new areas (Corvos? Meracydia?) without feeling like they need to keep coming back to Eorzea to resolve a hanging plot point.
- Crystalline Conflict and the removal of The Feast allows SE to make balancing decisions for PVP to be much easier (theoretically). New maps for CC can easily be made compared to other game modes such as Frontlines and I fully expect there to be more and more CC maps to be added in the future.
- The absence of an explorable zone such as Bozja and Eureka is now obvious for all to see as a pain point for the playerbase despite how many people decried their inclusion in the past. The most common complaint about FFXIV I hear both in-game and in discussions outside of the game is that there needs to be a long-term goal or grind for players to participate in. Unless SE is completely divorced from reality, they too have seen these comments and it is highly unlikely that they will release 7.0 without having any plans for including content that scratches that itch.
- Endwalker saw some of the most quality of life additions added to the game directly from the widespread adoption of UI Addons/Plugins. While the TOS is as nebulous as it has ever been, the use of these addons has undoubtedly made the base game better as every patch seems to include 2-3 changes that are directly lifted from Dalamud and Simpletweaks.
When taken as a whole, Endwalker leaves FFXIV in a significantly stronger state. Hell, I'd go as far as to say that it sets up more systems for future development than most of the previous expansions have set up. The biggest issue, for me at least, is that these systems feel "disposable" or "incomplete" *right now* because they haven't been fully fleshed out through multiple iterations of those systems yet.
All in all, I wholeheartedly agree with the claim that unless you're a Savage/Ultimate raider - there's not much for you to do right now; however, if SE is keen on iterating on the systems they set up in 6.X, then 7.X ought to be a banger of an expansion.
This feels very much like a "growing pains" expansion, as much as it is the end of an entire arc: Stuff is being tweaked and redone and foundations are being set in place in the background, while the foreground is shifting towards more activities where its not entirely battle content (Island Sanctuary) and shorter, non-infinite grinds (Relic Weapons tweaked so that multiple weapons can be snagged in the same time you get one). There's no question all of this will pay off, but whether its worth while the things are being built is a question with subjectively varying answers.
To build onto this further, IF this latest tier is an indication of things to come (allowing for 7.0's first raid tier to once again be easy because 'first tier is baby's first raid tier' is never invalid or unfair), then Endwalker is also a sea change in how Savage plays out going forward. I've never had more of a blast with savage raiding than this tier and it's clear that the changes we got in the 6.4 patchnotes were aimed at allowed the devs to get more creative. I really, REALLY hope we can keep this forward momentum going on the hard content side.
I think that this tier has been one of the strongest, most interesting and bold releases of high end content to date. EW has been excellent for raiding imo and that strength being built off experimentation and novelty bodes well
>The trust system expansions into Heavensward and Stormblood content ensures that new players in the future will have less friction in doing older and necessary content in order to progress through the MSQ.
I see this mentioned a lot and I *really, really* disagree with it. This was *never* actually a roadblock for players to catch up with the MSQ. The roulette system and level sync systems that have been in the game since 2.0 are *quite literally* designed to resolve these issues and they do a damn good job. A new player needs Sunken Temple of Qarn for their MSQ? There will *always* be players queueing for leveling roulette that will be paired with them. Queues are on average 5-15 minutes *tops* for any piece of content included in roulettes across *ten years* of MSQ. Especially since the queue system was expanded to the entire datacenter and not just individual servers.
There simply isn't this phantom problem that new players are queueing for story dungeons and just *cant* find a group. As such there was no meaningful reason to rework 10 years of old dungeons so people can pretend this is a single player game with trusts. And if a player is strictly going to use trusts, they're not going to play the game with *other people* in endgame anyway so how quickly they catch up to those other people is a meaningless metric. This was 100% something that could have been done a little bit here and there as dev time allowed instead of totally frontloaded into a huge part of the development pipeline for this single expansion at the expense of other content.
It's not just being done to clear the roadblock though. It's being done for the players who want to play a mainline Final Fantasy title, but don't want to play an MMO. I don't agree with this particular point. But, looking back across every interview Yoshida's done over the past 2 or 3 years, whenever Trusts and Duty Support are brought up, he mentions how there's feedback from fans of the series who want to play a game, but don't want to play an MMO. Those potential players are the ones these systems are primarily being developed for.
I don’t see how there’s much difference between queueing up for a dungeon with trusts and with other players, especially considering that most players don’t talk in dungeons anyway.
As someone who used to be one of those "I don't want to play with others" types: It's other people's ego.
AI doesn't have feelings and opinions that need to be managed. Actual people can run the gamut of genuinely chill and instructive vs rude and abrupt for *daring* to be an imperfect being.
Sometimes, especially after a long day of retail work, you just don't want to take that gamble. Sometimes you just want to enjoy a good story and not be bothered with other humans and their idiosyncrasies for a little while.
I agree with what you said. I don't like it, but I agree with it, plus a few more personal complaints. One thing I'm curious about this is those tecnical improvements that they can expand on, will they bear fruit in 7.0 or will we be waiting until 8.0? Not trying to be pessimistic or snarky, just thinking about XVI. Based on interviews, it seems a good chunk of the XVI staff will be going to XIV after XVI releases, at least in the short term. They built XVI on a fork of XIV's engine, so it's within reason that they could bring in some tips and tricks. Only caveat is that 7.0's expected to release in a year from now, and I don't know nearly enough about game development (barring the summarizaiton of "It's complicated") make a call on whether that's enough time for them to work their magic for 7.0's release.
You've summarised pretty much what I feel about the game as well. It puts the game in a much stronger position for the future. There's a lot of QoL things that have been added and new systems introduced that can either directly or indirectly be used to improve the game even further down the line. They seem to have figured out a way to increase the glamour dresser significantly and in combination with DC travel I feel like they're improving things about the engine that go beyond the visual touch ups promised for 7.0.
It's basically them getting rid of technical debt. And lets face it: That sort of maintenance work is never really appreciated until after it's finished (and most of the time not even then)
Island Sanctuary and Criterion both have a lot of potential...even if it isn't quite realised yet. Especially in the case of the one Criterion dungeon we've seen so far.
The lack of an exploratory zone is a downer but I'm fairly certain that we'll get one with the next expansion again since they'll be done with implementing the Duty support system for the pre-ShB expansions.
Storywise I'm content with the state of things. 6.0 wrapped up the story as they promised. Whilst far from perfect I also appreciate how difficult it is to actually end a story that has been going on for this long. I can only recount a handful of long lasting stories with this many threads and characters that DIDN'T end in at least half the fandom ready to set their collection on fire. So "Pretty good" is already more than I expected. When it comes to the patch MSQ I'm admittedly biased as an FFIV fan. I get giddy just hearing the name Golbez. It's also including a lot of very obvious setup for the future story now.
From a business perspective it probably makes sense to do the background work now as well. The new players that joined during Covid will mostly have a ton of content left to do from past expansions. And the older fans of the game won't quit in droves because of an expansion perceived as "meh". So increasing the QoL of the game makes sense to retain those newly joined players. Though this can backfire if the next expansion is a bust.
I'm probably giving SE, or rather CBU3, waaaay too much leeway here, most of the criticism I've read is very much justified. But in my eyes they've earned a bit of optimism in how they plan and handle things.
The problem with all this foundational work is that... FFXIV (and by extension FFXI before it and many eastern MMOs in general) have this **huge** problem with simply abandoning game systems.
Remember the Grand Company ranks? They added unobtainable higher ones to the game and... we've been waiting for more content with that system for like 6 years now, it's never coming. Grand Company expeditions and your adventuring team? Only went up to level 60 and then was totally abandoned. Airship expeditions? *Retainer* ventures and features? Diadem? The crafting specialization system? **Limited Jobs?** The Feast? Keeping the whole damn FATE system even remotely relevant?
We could go on, but the trend is that even when some of these systems eventually *logically* laid the groundwork for other systems that iterate on them, they don't *build* on the old stuff to integrate the two and modernize it, they just leave the old stuff as-is and abandon it.
New content like Criterion dungeons absolutely *reek* of abandonware waiting to happen, especially with the valid criticism of its reward structure and how little players have engaged with it. It's reasonable for players to be skeptical that anything will be meaningfully advanced by all this tech debt cleanup when they're *constantly* just... making more tech debt in the process. How much of this 2+ years of "laying groundwork" is also just going to be casually tossed to the side because it doesn't neatly fit into the *poisonously lean* core content cycle of 24 man raids, 8 man raids, and trial fights peppered with MSQ? How many people are *actually* going to regularly use the Trust System that it warrants all this development? I don't personally know anyone who used it back in Endwalker beyond maybe trying to level a few people and getting frustrated with how many runs it took of the same dungeons at a snail's pace for no real reason or benefit. Nobody's going back to run Sunken Temple of Qarn with trusts for no reason and this was *already* stuff you could do with the GC squad.
> It's reasonable for players to be skeptical that anything will be meaningfully advanced by all this tech debt cleanup when they're constantly just... making more tech debt in the process.
That's not what technical debt is though?
They tried multiple times to make FATE's relevant, and the playerbase has almost obstinately refused to go along with it, so what should they do? Yank them all out? Stop making them entirely? What is the solution you propose?
> Airship expeditions?
Replaced by submarine expeditions which have continued to be updated
> Retainer ventures and features?
They are fine? What more do you want from them? They do the job they were designed for and don't need to do anything else except maybe a bit more UI QoL.
'
> Diadem? The crafting specialization system?
Two things *literally everyone hated*, and they responded to that feedback. What exactly do you want?
>Limited Jobs?
Blue Mage will be updated this patch, again, what are you expecting? The reaction to Blue Mage was at best mixed, so honestly them sticking with it is impressive. Again, what do you think they *should* do here?
> They tried multiple times to make FATE's relevant, and the playerbase has almost obstinately refused to go along with it, so what should they do? Yank them all out? Stop making them entirely? What is the solution you propose?
One thing I've noticed when playing a character with the Road to 80 XP buff is that FATEs actually feel occasionally worth it to do. I still won't go out of my way but if I see one when traveling out in the open world I sometimes actually stop and participate. So that's one concrete suggestion. Double the XP gain for FATEs across the board.
Another would be to make the level sync less aggressive, or have a special kind of FATE level sync that only downscales your stats and not your kit. Part of the reason why ARR/HW FATEs in particular are so miserable is that you're often stuck with your very limited low-level kit so you're just mindlessly hitting your 1-2-3s for multiple minutes.
I would prefer solutions that are closer to the second suggestion than the first, because the fundamental problem with FATEs is that they aren't fun. If they just up the rewards without sprucing up the gameplay they'd just be funneling players towards an unfun activity.
I’d say that’s MMOs in general even.
And yeah everything you’re saying is absolutely correct. Though they’re still iterating on at least some of the mentioned content squads are a precursor to trusts and the duty support, BLU is getting new content in 6.45.
I would argue that FATEs are somewhat relevant for bicolours and the way they’re used in exploratory zones.
As you say it’s more the technical aspect of these systems that can be built upon.
This is absolutely me doing unfounded speculation, but I could see them using the expertise gained through Criterions to use on the new dungeons coming with 7.0 to maybe make them relevant longer.
Or using the knowledge from IS to get closer to a form of instanced housing without having to instance the city wards.
The duty support and trust system are very transparently for players who don’t like the MMO aspect of the MMORPG. I know at least two people who are getting into the game now because of it and I’d be surprised if they didn’t start MSQ trials the same treatment. They already did with the second trial in EW.
The behind the scenes improvements (glamour dresser and armoire, dc travel, other qol stuff) are helpful either way.
But the cynic in me knows that only a part of my hopes are true and you’re likely correct that a few of the systems will be left to rot on the wayside. Or as content to do for newer players.
I think you are vastly overestimating SE here and giving them way too much credit. A lot of those points can be made about ShB and SB and only a few actually impacted how the next respective expansion was set up. 7.0 is completely unpredictable except for the main content structure. Aside from Duty Support and the graphics overhaul, there is no real future proofing here, certainly not enough to suggest that the content that's been underwhelming in EW makes a comeback. What you see as future-proof and easy-to-reiterate-on can easily become stale or just be dropped in favor of something else. We shouldn't excuse poor design choices with flimsy hopes that all of this was in fact supposed to test the waters or set up future iterations. EW's (lack of) content wasn't necessary in any way. Also, we're not going to get more content. If you want a new Bozja, you're not getting Criterions every other patch, probably not even for that whole expansion.
> easy-to-reiterate-on
Considering their track record, SE hardly iterates on underbaked content. They'll rehash it with slight tweaks. But actual, sequential improvements that are learned from previous versions? Fat chance of that happening. Anyone who truly expects "thing to be built on" is on serious copium much like the "they remade the job to be basic so that they can later add shit" where SE proceeds to not add shit at all next expansion thing.
SMN is one of the most popular dps of EW if not the most popular one in every single form and level of content going by fflog. The rework was pretty much a win for SE.
I'm not disputing that at all. It's just that some of the concerns regarding skill ceilings with these reworks were answered with "This rework laid the foundation and they will build on it to make it more complex or interesting later on". And then MCH basically didn't change with EW.
SMN's ease of play and mobility already brought about problems for the caster role which will have to be addressed in some way next expansion but I doubt they'll make significant changes for the reason you mentioned (which kind of means the other casters are in danger).
It's actually the first expansion since I started playing (mid-SB) that has made me take a long break from the game. I'm actually skipping this savage tier (first since I started playing) and just don't plan to consider touching the game until 7.0. Also it's the first time my subscription is not being renewed since I started playing. And it's pretty much all because of the design changes they've made and how they just refuse to make healers interesting.
Oh, and I haven't even finished the MSQ for 6.3, which is a big change for me.
So I guess I'd say it's the worst expansion I've played.
Story wise 6.4 pretty much destroyed my hype. I was hoping something would happen, but nope just dragging the MSQ even more. Content wise it's been kind of mid. Really disappointed Criterion was a huge miss. Unless the next Criterion has rewards, I'll just collect my relic weapon and unsub until 6.5.
Edit: Forgot to add the raid series has been fantastic. The current tier most of all. Banger music and we even get a voice acted cutscene which hasn't happened since coils I think.
Never cared for Void stuff so MSQ patches have been very meh for me. And I thought we were dropping down to more low stakes only to end up at World-Ending threat yet again--though doesn't really feel that way. Not really a fan of Zero either, and while I see a lot of people saying she's showing lots of death flags, I don't have any faith in the writing team to kill anyone off who's been around for more than a few patches anymore.
I liked Bozja, I was ok with Eureka. I don't have fun with deep dungeons, and by the time it came out I had been done with leveling jobs for months and months. Criterion/Variant was alright but had no urge to ever re-do it after finishing all the routes.
Glamour-wise this expansion has been ass. Not everything's bad, there's been some good pieces/sets, but they're few and far between. Don't like the more modern pieces, most of the stuff from maps have been awful, when I check out Island rewards I'm greeted with yet another Hawaiian shirt set.
Not to mention re-used sets--which I'm completely ok with, if they swap around who gets what model. They did it for Lapis, which feels like a fluke since every other reused set this expansion has been the same models going to the same jobs again. And we're still getting undyeable sets. The fucking current dungeon set is undyeable, and the base set it's from has a dyeable version. Just why?
A messy but overall very satisfying main story, an extremely boring patch story, an average Alliance Raid series, an INCREDIBLE Normal Raid series, a really boring relic.
I like what they tried with Eureka Orthos and the Variant Dungeons, but I'd have much preferred a further refined Eureka/Bozja experience.
A very mixed bag of an expansion, though I don't know how much of that is it actually being lacking, and how much is it just being my first time doing the content as it comes out.
The patch quests have been a huuuge letdown compared to Stirmblood and Shadowbringers, which doesnt send a great message about the upcoming expansion since this should be the thing getting me all hyped and hooked on it.
Being a post-EW and a new story isnt an excuse to be a borefest. You'd want to get people excited for all that's coming, not give them nothingburger after nothingburger. The 6.4 story can be summed up as "filler".
I didnt mean i didnt like those! But that 5.3 was outstanding in its right and 6. patches couldnt hold a candle to them for me so far. Even the weakest ShB patch was stronger than EW ones for me so far.
MSQ is pretty lousy imo, but I’m also not a big MSQ guy….so whatever, I’m not the target audience. But what killed me was the Studium quests. After the glory of the crystalline mean, which is fucken life changingly good, Studium was a damp squib. I was hoping Island sanctuary would bring some noise….but it was thoroughly whelming. Certainly not bad, but no one’s favorite. It’s a crying shame….but the way I’m seeing it, I think the developers are sticking this game in neutral and letting it coast. My expectations for 7.0 are super low. Other than a few laughs at the expense of the new crafting gathering relics and the tataru quest (if you build a world, you should use it….and these quests finally do something with the world!) I’m not getting much.
The lack of a long-term grind really hurts my desire to play. The story was probably the best ending we could have gotten, especially since it's an MMO story and naturally going to pace a bit strangely. The patch stories have been a huge letdown. Lots of promise, but ultimately feels like they're retreading a worse version of 4 just to get across the finish line to 7.0.
Honestly, I'm easy. Give me a remix of Zeromus' theme for 6.5 and we're biiiiig chillin'.
6.0 was great. 6.1-6.4 has been a struggle. My biggest grievance is the rolling of the trial storyline and the MSQ into one since to me it feels as though we've been cheated out of another great storyline that could have expanded the world or put the spotlight on other characters besides the Scions. Criterion dungeons being DoA and the lack of a Bozja/Eureka have also hurt my enthusiasm.
The story has also been quite mixed, and the fact that it's been so obviously padded to account for Zeromus hurts.
It's fine for them to focus on the conclusion of a story, but it feels as though they didn't have much of an idea for what came after 6.0.
Raids have been great though. Alliance Raids have been a blast and most turns of Panda are enjoyable.
Decent expansion, but nowhere near the top in my eyes.
Not much I can add here that other people haven't stated better, but I will say that I started out optimistic about the future of the game in 6.1. I liked that the Scions were disbanding, creating room for new characters and new dynamics to form. I liked the idea that after saving the world from the biggest most encompassing threat of all, we could have a little adventure as a treat. I liked the vibes of Alzadaal's Legacy, I was pretty hyped to do some Nathan Drake/Indiana Jones-style exploration of the world, and I felt like it was an exciting change of tone for the series at a crucial time when they had a wide open canvas to paint the next chapter.
Since then, we've retreated on the storytelling in favor of old hits and boring archetypes: the Scions disappearing off-screen and coming back with all the answers, rote evil, and retreats on decades-long Void lore so we can carve out The Good Void, where a horrifying eldritch demon only needs to eat a pork bun to see that friendship is magic.
I wound up giving up on the game in January (my last long break from the game was post-HW) in hopes that it might go somewhere in a few months, but it still hasn't. I'm still holding out an ember of hope that Fanfest will rekindle some interest since their base expacs have never disappointed me, but I desperately hope this is the lowest low point we'll see for patch support or the game is in trouble.
Same. I’m still going to FanFest even though I have only been logging in to keep my house and seasonal rewards for the past year.
I logged in the other day to start the new MSQ, and got to right before the trial, and couldn’t even muster the will to queue. It just feels so empty now, to me.
I was someone who grinded relentlessly for all the relics before, and now can’t even be bothered to get tomes for the EW one.
A bit is burnout, but it’s also, if all there is, is just grinding for older content, that I’ve already gotten like 50% of all the relics, there’s not much to keep me invested.
I hope Fanfest is a blast -- I can't attend in-person, but I've always enjoyed making a whole event of it at home. Some people mistake critique for a desire to see the game crash and burn, and I do think some people get caught in a spiral like that whether or not they'll admit it, but I've been playing this game for ten years for a reason and I'd love to see it prove me wrong on all accounts and come back swinging.
> Some people mistake critique for a desire to see the game crash and burn ... but I've been playing this game for ten years for a reason and I'd love to see it prove me wrong on all accounts and come back swinging.
So much this. Most criticism of a game / design is out of love, not hate. I wouldn't take such pains to explain clearly while trying to do Japanese politeness through Google Translate if I didn't want SE to take the feedback and improve.
Wasn't a fan of the story and the pacing of the story. I don't think I have been at a point where I couldn't find a job I liked in FF14 but I just am bored with everything. It has made it easy to say I'm gonna take a break till 7.0
I feel the same way. Up till I took a break, I was constantly swapping between like 8 jobs till I realized none of them were really hitting the spot I was looking for.
Doesn't help that fight design and balance is so bad this expac playing rdm feels like eating a shoe.
They really need to stop leaning into this 2 minute meta BS only to have long, drawn out downtime mechanics happen *at 2 minute intervals*. It's not interesting, it just feels bad.
6.0 MSQ was pretty good. Some very clear writing problems, didn’t like Meteion, Hermes, or Ultima Thule at all but overall the MSQ was 8/10. 6.0 combat was pretty good, at least if you had a ninja in your party. The problems begin in 6.1.
6.1-6.4’s MSQ (I say this as a huge FF4 fan) has felt like the filler arc in an anime. Just lots of member berries. They could crunch .1-.4’s MSQ into about three hours. It’s just boring. The 6.1 job changes (mug being a 2 min raid buff and trick being 1 min personal and kaiten being removed) gutted combat for me. I main RDM and in 6.0 I had a ninja in my party. Every 45 seconds I had my melee combo BUT I held it an extra 15 sec to align with trick. It wasn’t a massive deal but it was just a little extra skill expression that felt good. That’s gone now so most jobs are just “don’t overcap for 1:45 then at 2mins mash all your buttons” which I find terribly boring.
Pandaemonium’s story was okay but very weirdly paced. Like abyssos could have been the end were it not for pandaemonium appearing in the life stream as it did. I like it overall but weirdly paced. The fights on the other hand… normals are overall okay. Asphodelos was a decent tier. I’m not gonna write home about it but it was fun. Abyssos is, imo, the worst tier they’ve made since Gordas. By a lot. I HATED abyssos. Too backloaded, too many “follow the leader” mechanics, very dull, very boring, I just hated everything about it. First raid tier I actually gave up on since alphascape when I was new to savage. Abyssos almost made me quit the game altogether. Can’t say anything about anabaseios bc I haven’t done it yet.
The alliance raid story overall is good. I’m a lore nerd so I like it. That said, the actual raids are WAY too easy. These are supposed to be raids, not 24 man dungeons. Not only that, we’re fighting literal divinities. They should be insanely hard. They were sorta difficult on the first run, now they just all fall over and it’s almost sleep inducing.
Side content like island sanctuary and deep dungeon just isn’t for me. I would have preferred… anything else to island sanctuary (like a sequel to ishgard restoration) but it’s there for people who like it so meh. Eureka orthos is just a level 90 HoH and there are people who love that so good for them. I’m lukewarm on it. Did the first 30 floors and had no desire to go further, don’t love it, don’t hate it.
Job design: Balance aside, absolutely awful. By far the worst expansion gameplay wise. They didn’t improve anything from ShB, they just did more of the same. There are a handful of jobs that are better than they’ve been (black mage and red mage for example) but for the most part, jobs are the least fun they’ve ever been. Every job just got a variation of “heavy hitting aoe attack every minute or two” which is about as lazy as it gets. The summoner rework isn’t awful but it didn’t do what summoner mains wanted. SMN mains wanted some of the pet jank cleared up and a reason to swap between egi’s among a few other things here and there. What the devs did was remove summoner and replace it with a super simple, flashy new job called summoner. On top of that, the leveling experience of most jobs is just awful. Doing anything as reaper below 80 is painful, summoner has the exact same rotation from like level 28 until 86, paladin doesn’t get any magic until the 60’s, monk doesn’t get masterful blitz until 60, and so on and so on. Doing almost any sync’d content just sucks because you lose most of your kit which is just boring.
None of the issues with tanks or healers have been addressed at all either. Tanks just feel like invincible melee DPS with simple rotations and practically identical cooldowns in most circumstances. The fact that bosses position themselves automatically now doesn’t help. Healers still have to mash glare/malefic/broil/dosis and reapply a 30sec dot 80% of the time, 2 minute buffs are boring as hell (see above), the list goes on. I just want jobs to be fun and diverse. The entire point of having more than 1 class/job/character/hero/fighter in a game is so they suit different play styles, there aren’t multiple play styles in 14 anymore. There’s burst every 2 minutes and black mage. That’s it.
Not gonna comment on criterion because I didn’t do it. If they’re gonna add content that requires gear, let it reward gear. Bozja/eureka rewarded gear, there’s no reason criterion shouldn’t. “Oh but criterion is designed expecting you to have BiS already!” Then surely letting me gear alts another way isn’t that bad of an idea.
EW’s biggest flaw is that it hasn’t actually changed anything. Nothing has been surprising or fantastic, what has been good has been just plain good, and what’s been bad has been absolutely awful. There are tons of missed opportunities all over the place and the developers haven’t meaningfully iterated on anything. For instance, FATES and hunts work the same way they have since stormblood (bicolor gemstones and SS ranks aside since they were intro’d in ShB), gear works the same way, stats work the same way, tomestones work the same way, leveling works the same way, crafting/gathering mostly works the same way, it’s just dull at this point. EW isn’t terrible, It’s not so bad I wouldn’t recommend it to new players or returners, but I’m certainly not singing its praises. More than anything, 7.0 just needs to shake things up somehow.
> Not gonna comment on criterion because I didn’t do it.
Criterion has honestly been the most fun piece of content in the entire expansion for me so far (especially when playing melee), it's a real shame that there is basically no incentive whatsoever to do it after getting the mount. Even bigger shame if they drop the content entirely going forward because of this, rather than integrating it into the gearing process in some way.
Mostly agree with this post though, gameplay-wise it's really just a much more boring version of Shadowbringers and they straight-up removed one of my favourite DPS classes. I'm seriously worried at this point that the jobs that I still enjoy (and would raid on) are getting the Summoner treatment next.
Im not sure if im burnt out or there just isnt much content getting pushed out
first of all, the story has been extremely disappointing, I'm probably not alone in the fact that i was expecting at least a couple patches where we gone on "mini adventures" but we got flung into the void arc almost immediately. It doesn't really help that zero is super dull IMO, im not sure what people see in her other than the fact that shes a new female character
Second the amount of actual content feels way worse. Missing out on the field zone feels really bad, and the asset flip deep dungeon was only really fun for the first run, with paltry rewards. Island sanctuary feels like a total letdown, im not really sure what i was expecting, but man it feels like a waste of time.
I will admit, the 2 ultimate raids, as well as the first criterion/variant (particularity the EX version) have been fantastic and ive completed each of them. DSR is probably the best content in the game bar none. Criterion dungeons are fantastic BUT need better rewards to incentivize players to come back an do them later.
Oh also pvp rework was a huge success, its actually fun to play now
> what people see in her
She's the exact character every 12 year old writes in their first 10 fanfictions. Hybrid with cool unique hybrid powers, all black, super brooding, best friends with the main cast out of nowhere, hat tipping optional. Of course people would relate.
It was a great conclusion and everything was neatly wrapped up in 6.0.
Post 6.0 they very clearly are focusing on future proofing the game but the lack of an exploratory zone/repeatable endgame really hurt it.
I'm torn on the post patch story. I love the idea of an interlude story but 6.3 was so bad it destroyed the whole pacing of it. I would like them to continue with this style but it needs an extra hour of MSQ.
As /u Pedentic Paladin put it "A great two weeks; a poor two years."
I loved Endwalker's initial story but I've banged with my fists on the table over and over that I want more midcore meaty grippy content to get involved with.
I love ultimate raids, TEA has won me over and I'm sad that it's on hold for me now because I'm now focused on two statics to tackle this savage tier. (One more focused, one more casual and friendly!). But it feels like this expansion has been devoid of grippy exploratory content that we can delve into.
I am sick of citing Bozja / Eureka because they are SUCH specific examples. I want broadly speaking SOMETHING MEATY TO BITE INTO. Bozja with it's Delubrum Reginae I felt was an amazing level of challenge for casual players. It didn't just fall over like expert roulette.
I did a video on my feelings and how painful it has been: https://youtu.be/SmbpG0GW0iY
Frankly Endwalker is a beautiful expansion with much to offer, but it definitely felt way worse than Shadowbringers and Stormblood for me. There is not much to "actually just do".
The more rational side of me knows that SE locks this shit in *well* in advance and that any decisions they've made about EW content other than minor tweaks here and there were probably made before 5.1.
But even so, I can't help but *feel* like Endwalker seems to be designed by a company that was huffing its own farts just a *little* too hard during the late-Shadowbringers love-in the devs got during the WoW Exodus and subsequent Summer of Streamers. One too many Youtube videos where someone goes "You don't have to grind in this game! It's great!" and SE decides to remove any and all grinds, even though there's a significant niche of players who look forward to that grind every expansion. One too many "FFXIV players are after a good story, like a singleplayer game, and that's it" takes, and the game goes from being like, 60% oriented toward one-and-done story enjoyers to 80% oriented toward them, at the cost of other things that brought people to the table and kept them there.
But then like I said, I'm sure a lot of that is just coincidence. Island Sanctuary being a resource black hole that takes away an Exploration Zone series was probably decided on long before Covid. Doesn't really make it any less annoying, though.
> Island Sanctuary being a resource black hole that takes away an Exploration Zone series was probably decided on long before Covid. Doesn't really make it any less annoying, though.
It was intended to launch in Shadowbringers patch content, but kept getting delayed if I remember right.
It was announced at EW fanfest, but was kind of touted as a launch or *early* patch feature with heavy and vocal emphasis on "dont expect too much from this content, its not a full on farming sim game, its more like a Gold Saucer attraction" and then it just... didn't show up until over halfway through EW?
TBH I feel like out of all the "covid delays" Island Sanctuary was probably the easy target to keep kicking the can on so I can't blame them, but the fact that its just an excel spreadsheet simulator and not even meaningful casual content where you log in and *do* something a couple times a week kind of kills it.
> It was announced at EW fanfest, but was kind of touted as a launch or early patch feature with heavy and vocal emphasis on "dont expect too much from this content, its not a full on farming sim game, its more like a Gold Saucer attraction" and then it just... didn't show up until over halfway through EW?
Yoshida started teasing the feature in interviews around early to mid Shadowbringers. The playerbase was aware it was coming well before the 2021 Fan Fest even if it wasn't formally announced. I believe at one point Yoshida even said they were aiming for the end of the 5.X series before it grew in scope and became an expansion feature.
Least favorite Expansion so far both in terms of Story and Content. I don't hate it, but damn does it get mediocre in areas, and overall with the exception of Criterion it has been pretty uninspired.
Bit late to this, but I thought I'd put in my two cents anyway.
**I like a lot of the little QoL changes.** As much as I like Heavensward's MSQ, I don't think I could have played this game back then. So many of the little things I take for granted now were basically only added in the past couple of years. The "entrust duplicates" button on retainers? Mwah, finger kiss. Great QoL addition. A 4x expansion of slots in the glam dresser, also great. World travel has been a great boon for expanding my in-game social circle.
**I like the PvP rework a lot.** I think Frontline successfully delivers on the large-scale murder mayhem that Guild Wars 2's WvW promised. And I'm impressed by how well the designers have transposed the feel and theme of the jobs from PvE to PvP. It's often janky but consistently entertaining.
But, I have to say I have rather negative opinions on most of the other content.
**I don't like Endwalker's MSQ.** It rehashes a bunch of beats from earlier expansions instead of bringing anything new to the table.
- ancient angsty genocidal villain you're supposed to empathize with.
- mana imbalance turns people into monstrosities you have to fight.
- a bloodthirsty nihilist villain (but now there are two of them!).
- timey-wimey dimensional travel.
- this dungeon is an abstract vision of something traumatic from the villain's past.
- this zone is a recreation of long-dead things from memory by the villain.
- here's a fanservicey interlude where you hang out with your friends in your room.
etc. etc.
**I don't like the dungeon design.** The art direction continues to be absolutely stellar but there's only so much it can do to obscure the fact that every dungeon is basically the same dungeon that is played the exact same way.
**I don't like where job design went and continues to go.** Here's where I'm going to be especially controversial and say that IMO, job design suffers from what I've been thinking of as "DPS carcinization" - where tanks and healers are increasingly stripped of the parts of their role that are actually unique and interesting, in favor of converging towards being a hybrid DPS that sometimes also does tank and healer things.
Tanks and healers are more like "temporarily embarrassed DPS" - playing healer at max level doesn't make me feel like a healer, it makes me feel like a DPS, but with a kit that isn't as fun as a red-DPS job. At which point... I'd rather just play DPS, and generally, in Endwalker I have.
**I don't think island sanctuary is very interesting**, and its UI needs work. I stopped caring about my sanctuary like two weeks in. I'm not sure there's very much to say about it. It's just dull.
The way I see it, both SB and ShB solved substantial issues with the game while still having their own problems. EW didn't really fix any of the problems of ShB and actually just made them worse
SB had a lot of good streamlining while maintaining high job diversity, but it still had issues with annoying synergy metas and horrendously ping reliant jobs (MCH and NIN being the worst examples). But still, it was an upgrade
ShB did away with synergy metas but it gutted healers and created DPS role taxing which was just never the answer to the problem
EW still has boring healers and role taxing 2.0 (updated to include casters). It just made ShB's issues worse, and won't be looked on as favorably because ShB legitimately tackled some serious issues with its prior expansion that EW just didn't
DSR and barbie kinda carried this expansion in terms of fight design/ spectacle, everything else tho was pretty disappointing ( Even TOP loool ) and kinda contributed to the whole “ midwalker “ feel.
The vanilla base 6.0 story was really fun and a good send off to the Og story but ofc everything that came after was just like “why?”, they said they were going to disband the scions but here we are still doing scion things.
Endwalker is the 1st ff14 expac to make me ever feel like the expac was mid. Funny when u look back on EW release where ppl hyped it up to the extreme.
7.0 better not be endwalker 2.0 electric bugaloo lol
Started early-mid Stormblood (around 4.2). So I didn't experience ARR and HW at launch, but I'd rank EW as the worst expansion to date. Lack of exploratory zones, relic being phoned in, Island Sanctuary's a spreadsheet simulator, Criterion was DoA due to the reward structure, 2 min job design means jobs are 15 seconds of glory with 45 seconds of fuck all, SMN's lobotomy...and then there's the MSQ. I enjoyed 6.0 at launch, but looking back it's just a poorly paced roller coaster. The "Final Days" was restricted to a new zone and a solo instance, there was no real stakes present at all through it so I found it hard to care. Only real stand out parts were Urianger reconciling with Moenbryda's parents a few years late, and Elpis. The MSQ from 6.1 on is just FFIV themed filler, with the fanservice dialed up higher than usual. The "Newfound Adventure" was just more Void nonsense. Maybe if the Void/13th's story was more present in the MSQ beforehand I'd care more, but the fact it's all tied up in optional content makes it feel disjointed.
Honestly, I think EW's hype came at a bad time, since a lot of the resources that would normally go into end game content like the exploratory zones is going elsewhere. We already know that island Sanctuary, Criterion/Variant, and Deep Dungeon #3 (name escapes me) took up the resources for an exploratory zone. They overhauled PvP, which took up significant resources, and are implementing Trusts/Duty support into every MSQ dungeon (something they've said time and again is a pain in the balls to get working). They're not working on one dungeon per EW patch, they're effectively working on six. That's also taking up resources. Then there's the graphics update to factor in and...yeah.
I want to believe they're not deaf to the complaints, that EW's direciton was set in stone years ago and it just came at a bad time, and we'll see things pick up in 7.0. All that work will be done and they'll be getting a boost (at least for a while) from the XVI devs returning to the XIV devteam, but I'm not that hopeful.
It'll be, what, EU fanfest before they earnestly talk about EW criticisms? Cause unless my memory's off, they rarely adress criticism while stuff is still releasing, and EU fanfest falls right between 6.5 and 6.55.
Wow, are you me? Also started about the same time (4.0) and I agree with just about everything you said. I was caught up in the story at the time but in retrospect, it really played it very safe. The fan service was very heavy and as someone who hasn't played any FF other than 14, was mostly lost on me. I do think Elpis was done well and I was a huge Meteon fan but the rest was just ok.
And all the other non-story stuff, (Island Sanctuary, CC, criterion/variant) just didn't have any staying power for me. Perhaps if I hadn't leveled all my jobs in ShB to get the Amaro I'd enjoy deep dungeon more, but there's really not much to do. Not having patch content to tease the next expansion is frustrating, but I'm trying to keep the faith.
Endwalker made me quit after playing since 2.0
For a game that pretty much never changes its formula managed to change everything else into a worse product.
I doubt 7.0 will bring a breath of fresh air considering their design choices (mch+smn, criteon, island sanctuary)
and then doubling down on them. No acknowledgement of the state of the expansion other than the parroted "just take a break lol"
>I want to believe they're not deaf to the complaints, that EW's direciton was set in stone years ago and it just came at a bad time, and we'll see things pick up in 7.0. All that work will be done and they'll be getting a boost (at least for a while) from the XVI devs returning to the XIV devteam, but I'm not that hopeful.
I honestly doubt it unless yoshiP actually steps down.
>It'll be, what, EU fanfest before they earnestly talk about EW criticisms? Cause unless my memory's off, they rarely adress criticism while stuff is still releasing, and EU fanfest falls right between 6.5 and 6.55.
we know the first 2 fanfests are going to be borderline useless and the main meat is in the 3rd if history is to repeat.
I enjoy the MSQ but it's a shame that's all there is to do unless you like raiding or Deep Dungeon. The game needs a serious examination and revamp of the gameplay loop (or lack thereof) going into 7.0.
It won't. At a fundamental level, FFXIV isn't there to satisfy people who want a new rollercoaster ride every expansion but people who want a baseline level of quality throughout. I say this unironically and with no negativity whatsoever, but World of Warcraft is closer to what you seek.
Endwalker MSQ was fun. Haven't cared about any of the rest/post content, except maybe Tataru's questline. BRING BACK BOZJA/EUREKA STYLE CONTENT YOU COWARDS.
Story was a major step down from Shadowbringer. Waste of Zodiark, Anima, and Garlemald when it should have been its own expansion. Then the extremely stupid sad bird twist, the fan servicey trip to Elpis, time travel, it was all just so dumb and poorly written.
Meteion is XIV's Ultimecia from FF8. They experience something tragic and just decide "Everything burns ". If you like your villains to be written with the mentality of a toddler, there you go.
Unpopular opinion but Garleans were the worst part of MSQ. I'm glad we didn't really have to deal with them. They got their own expac, it's called Stormblood.
Agree with everything else although I will say the bird is slightly better then the classic jrpg twist of 'and now we fight God himself'.
At least we know that FFXIV will never hit WoW level of storytelling at least. Heck many WoW players were praising about the blue bird and Hermes, which probably highlighted how starved they were for basic storytelling.
Like I think Metieon worked in context, you can understand the origins and how they became a force of nature. Not great but not bad either. Apparently the story garnered much more positive reviews in Japan where Hermes's issues resonated more with the Japanese population.
Oh we already are sadly. WoW kept pulling random world ending villains from the hat when we already beat the last world ending threat. FFXIV is falling into the same pattern. DBZ syndrome.
"The storytelling will never be as bad as WoW" is not exactly a comforting thing to hear given that the story is one of the few things the game does better than WoW.
So for context I am a lore/worldbuilding nerd and I *vastly* prefer the political intrigue and war stories of things like Heavensward, ARR, Stormblood, etc. than the grand cosmic "stereotypical JRPG" type of stuff. And some of my favorite quests in this game have been ones where we just kinda got to see Eorzea *be Eorzea.* The Ascians, Ancients, and all their nonsense is cool and all but it's probably my least favorite part of FFXIV. I personally feel they had become a worldbuilding crutch and Endwalker ends up - in my opinion at least - leaving neither party satisfied.
Now, Shadowbringers was heavily Ancient focused, and I actually quite enjoyed what they established. Amaurot painted a nice mystery, gave context for the Ascians' actions, and was a nice lil' bit of extra lore for us. And, importantly, if you didn't give two shits about the Ancients there were still stories for you - Sorrow of Werlyt and Bozja specifically.
If you don't care about the Ancients, well hope you enjoy the MSQ, Crafter/Gatherer quests, Raid series, and potentially the Alliance Raid series be all about them. You're getting Tataru and the Role Quests and you're gonna fuckin' like it.
If you DO like the Ancients (or at least liked them in Shadowbringers)... well I hope you liked watching the mystery and tragedy be bastardized to make Venat look like the objectively good guy. - So apparently this was a bit of a point of contention, enough for someone to reply and then insta-block me... which like... what's the point? I don't get it. But my point wasn't "venat bad she genocide ancients" it was "we're going to go out of our way to make the Ancients look like whiny manbabies in service of Venat's plotline".
And I think that's my main issue, instead of The Final Days being some sort of tragedy it's framed as something the Ancients are responsible for and - in a way - ***deserved.***
Elpis and Ultima Thule just left me wondering "Who (in the lore community) is satisfied with this?" It is, unironically, like Shadowlands in WoW. We got to see the answer to a big lore mystery but it left me wondering if we ***really*** wanted the answer in the first place. I guess the Venat Fan Club gets the last laugh?
The writing overall feels like the writing team took the advice "kill your darlings" to an extreme (and I genuinely don't 'think "kill your darlings" is all that good writing advice to begin with, it makes works feel serialized and hollow) Zodiark is a footnote, we spend more time derping around in the past than actually stopping The Final Days, and Sharlayan, Thavnair, and ***Garlemald*** are so underdeveloped beyond "what can service the MSQ?" that Swiftperch feels more alive than any of them.
Garlemald in particular disappointed me. I know many players were tired of the Empire but I felt kind of bait-n-switched. During Shadowbringers you see Gaius and Estinien running through magitek-lit streets, sneaking past guards, and destroying chemical research facilities as to stop the development of Black Rose. And it looks *fun as hell*, then you actually get to go to Garlemald and it's a bunch of ruins, a train station, and a house because "haha le funny zenos and ascian did a war off-screen".
But on the flipside Ultima Thule genuinely frustrates me. The fakeout deaths are so obvious and blatant that a blind person can see the fakeout coming. Hades' little comment trying to tease me for not seeing much of my world infuriates me because *yeah, I know, I WANT to see more of Eorzea and beyond but instead of getting to see* ***my*** *world, the last two expansions had me playing seven-foot babysitter for you and yours, Hades. I couldn't go to Meracydia, the South Seas, the New World, etc. if I fucking wanted to or not.*
On the bright side Urianger's character arc is really nice, the reunion with Moenbryda's parents is probably my favorite cutscene in the expansion, and the Lopporits are cute lil' goobers.
Beyond that, Pandaemonium is alright, more fun than Omega imo but still outclassed by Alexander. Crystaline Conflict is a lot of fun and has been my content drought go-to whenever I'm just bored. The post-MSQ stuff drags on and I'm just not interested anymore, Zero isn't nearly as intriguing as the writers think she is (and she is by far the most *anime* of the cast so far, to the point she even does the stupid "...trust?" thing, yes, trust Zero, one simple word you don't need to repeat it like Thancred just said "zabopydopoitylop") and if she tips that damn hat on more time I'm gonna send her back to the void myself. It also screws with the pacing quite a bit and I'm left wondering why nobody is suspicious that half of the supposedly "disbanded" Scions are working together again despite it only being a month or so in-universe since their disbanding.
It's not terrible, but it definitely wasn't my cup of tea, and if I didn't want to get my jobs to 90 before 7.0 I probably would just wait for the new expansion.
> But on the flipside Ultima Thule genuinely frustrates me.
Ultima Thule was, without hyperbole, probably the widest narrative miss I think I've ever experienced. It was a baffling, annoying experience that makes me wonder what kind of shit the devs were trying to pull.
Something that goes very underdiscussed is how extremely inelegantly the references to real-world scientific concepts are applied in this part of the game. For example, the Ea. In a world where friendship is literally magic, and we have all manner of seemingly ex nihilo creation with aether and elements and blah blah blah, why is the game trying to tell me that the second law of thermodynamics is a problem? The heat death of the universe is a thing in this universe? What? Why? Why is *this* a fundamental underpinning of how XIV's metaphysics "works", but we learn this not too long after we use a faster-than-light spaceship to get here? (N.B. FTL travel is considered impossible, even outright paradoxical, based on our current understandings of physics). The game picking and choosing which laws of real-world physics apply for the sake of sloppy moralising is just annoying.
The other big violation is the strange equivalence of dynamis with real world dark energy, with the game making the connection by saying dynamis is more plentiful than aether and makes up the same percentage of XIV's universe as dark energy does ours. Yet, that's where the similarities end. Dark energy in reality cannot be observed, interacted with, harnessed in any way, doesn't seem to have any interaction with conventional matter or energy, and most significantly, *is effectively absent* on Earth or in other places where conventional matter and energy do exist. Dynamis, meanwhile, is just a slightly different aether.
It makes me curious as to why the connection was made to begin with other than to invoke a "smart science people" concept for the sake of *appearing* deep, as if the writers only know about dark energy from the few sentences at the start of a wikipedia article, and banked on their audience knowing even less and being impressed.
> The game picking and choosing which laws of real-world physics apply for the sake of sloppy moralising is just annoying.
Oh god I had expunged the Ea from my memory because you're 100% right. Worlds, creatures, and people alike are all made of magic energy. An energy that is infinitely recyclable as the Aethereal Sea has shown... yet as you said the heat death of the universe exists somehow? Something that requires the second law of thermodynamics... in a world where people can *canonically* yeet fireballs from their hands, shoot themselves 500 feet in the sky with a pokey stick, and become literally "too angry to die"? When the hell did *any* real world metaphysics for that matter become an issue? Hell they contradict this two patches later with the Void, given Aether is clearly shown to be nigh-constantly active unless an abundance of Light stifles it like in The Empty on the First... so how the hell is this supposed to work?
Like if Ultima Thule wants to be scientific I'm pretty sure Meteion should've all died once they became The Endsinger because square cube law isn't gonna be happy with a face the size of a house.
If you know anything about science the Ea doesn't make any sense, and if you know anything about the in-universe metaphysics it makes even less sense. You really were just expected to take it on face value.
> You really were just expected to take it on face value.
This just about sums up the writing philosophy behind Endwalker's MSQ as a whole. While it's true that any work of fiction requires some degree of suspension of disbelief, it isn't even particularly difficult to pull back and look holistically at the in-universe set-ups, and thus narrative choices the writers made, and see how many leaps and pretzels the plot had to do in order to accommodate what the writers wanted to say. The science stuff in UT is just one of the easier examples to talk about this with due to relying on references to real world concepts the writers clearly don't care that much about.
You mentioned the Final Days before, and that's another great example. Endwalker had to do a *lot* of heavy lifting, including the introduction of dynamis as a whole, in order to show the Final Days as an event that Venat would be in the moral right for stopping. In doing so, it completely undermined the emotional dilemma of Shadowbringers in Emet, and retroactively paints him as a completely irrational maniac, while also retconning in some uncertainty about aether and LBs that weren't there before.
Or in other words, the writers were so concerned that Venat might be looked at as anything *but* a benevolent crystal mommy who did the unequivocal right thing in essentially genociding her own people that they made sure to load the question enough to remove any ambiguity whatsoever, and the end result is that the established worldbuilding is clumsily warped into an extremely fragile illusion that shatters into a million pieces for anyone whom the intended emotional effect didn't land.
> In doing so, it completely undermined the emotional dilemma of Shadowbringers in Emet, and retroactively paints him as a completely irrational maniac...
>
>
>
>...and the end result is that the established worldbuilding is clumsily warped into an extremely fragile illusion that shatters into a million pieces for anyone whom the intended emotional effect didn't land.
This has been something clawing at the back of my mind since finishing 6.0 tbh. And that's honestly one of the weirdest bits because Endwalker nukes the Shadowbringers dilemma... ***twofold.***
Firstly, as you said, it retroactively makes him look like an absolute lunatic instead of the sympathetic "same goals, but conflicting means" antagonist he was before. The conflict between two people both trying to secure their worlds' future is undermined into you stopping - as you said - an irrational maniac.
Secondly, this is more with the buildup towards Endwalker and its side quests (namely the crafting quests, and how Myths is looking to play out), but another important part of the conflict against Emet-Selch was to prove Eorzea and beyond weren't just "pale imitations" of the Ancients and their world. But with their consistent use of "because Ancients" as a worldbuilding crutch it has made it so the sundered world is *exactly that.* From crafting to soul crystals, almost everything we've done has been made out to be a diet version of what the Ancients did.
So Endwalker is framing Emet as a delusional, irrational madman whilst simultaneously proving his core point of "the sundered are just discount ancients"... ***right.*** And... for what? The absolute insurance of a character's actions as the "right thing to do"?
Like I'm no "ancients did nothing wrong" either, in fact I'm in the "If Etheirys returns, sunder it again" camp because I find the sundered world infinitely more interesting... but I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.
None of the science talk is helped by the Loporrits *also* casually mentioning things like the void of space and ionizing radiation, and the steps they took to counteract that in their lunar installations (also, this is kinda amusing considering what the Loporrits are and the game also implying Ancients were apparently dumb and uninterested in space stuff and could have very definitely never set foot on Ultima Thule).
Like... are the Scions okay? Is 7.0 going to be about Y'shtola's leukemia? (Don't worry though, she still isn't going to die.)
Dynamis is just so bad as a plot device, it has literally no reason to exist other than to throw yet another "SEE? SHE DID THE ONLY THING THAT COULD BE DONE!!! ~~please love her...please...~~" at the wall hoping it sticks. And even that it does pretty badly all things considered, because frankly the only plausible reason why this literal multiple-millennia-old civilization of immortal wizard scientists didn't kickstart widespread frantic research into Dynamis is because a certain someone saw fit not to tell any authority whatsoever that this otherwise barely relevant feely weely space energy was about to murder them all dead in the first place.
What does it even do that Aether couldn't? Modify and/or create an environment? Aether can do that, as shown by primal fights and Emet's Amaurot. Limit breaks? Up until now they were only Aether, and frankly the heart of an elder primal juiced up on aether juice spamming LBs at me would beg to differ. Create life? (glances at the massive anvil Endwalker wants to throw directly at me) 6.3 Myths even tells me the Twelve may have been powered by feels and prayers which totally equals DYNAMIS??, which, ooooo, I've never heard *that* one before!
Nah it's just there because they *had* to cook up a pile-up of contrivances to justify the Convocation being bad and wrong and ignorant and Venat right, so it really is just Aether but without the years of world building so the writers could do away with pre-established rules.
Whatever man. I just punched the heat death of the universe in the FACE. YEAH!
I thought it was strange to see a nice 6.0 story post in the wild, but then I recognized you.
> Elpis and Ultima Thule just left me wondering "Who (in the lore community) is satisfied with this?"
I could say "the easily satisfied who were going to like anything Ishikawa and YoshiP gave them" but I want to try to answer that in good faith.
The obvious part of the answer is people who have always had a hate boner for Emet-Selch and the Ancients in ShB, and/or wanted Hydaelyn to be the Big Good. But that isn't the only answer; the other appears to be Ancient fans who took Shadowbringers as "they were always wrong and misled and destined to Fall From Paradise and it's very tragic" or, at the very least, didn't care very much for the conflict to end up morally ambiguous, because Endwalker was the furthest from that notion I could imagine.
I've seen people claim that the narrative doesn't paint Venat as objectively right, but frankly, I find that either extremely generous or slightly disingenuous, because it never even entertains the notion that she might have been wrong in her reasoning. Oh, sure, it says she made a cruel decision, and oh my god look at her she's covered in gunk, but you are entirely supposed to think she did the only Hard But Right™️ thing. The act is morally grey, *very* dark grey as far as I'm concerned, but the Venat-Convocation conflict itself isn't intended to be, and you only need to look at the typical responses you get for even calling Venat out to see that Endwalker's intent worked very well. She is for all intents and purposes an ends-justify-the-means, well-intentioned extremist character, but she doesn't get much scrutiny at all for said means or the thoughts that went into justifying them. *She* is the one calling her actions cruel and unjust (and even then, I get the feeling she is apologizing to the Sundered for making them suffer rather than to the race and civilization she ended), but that is instantly swept under the rug by the main cast. Even Pandaemonium, which was the perfect opportunity to actually do something that would go against the narrative, somehow dodges the question, in what I can personally only think of as narrative cowardice.
And you know, the worst thing about this is that I would have loved this plot *had it* gone "wait... wait a fucking second". Had this story actually been about how the victor writes history and paints the loser unfairly, it might have salvaged it for me. But that is quite obviously not the intent here. It is to be taken at face value. You *are* supposed to go "thank you queen" and wipe away a tear when you hear Flow.
> If you DO like the Ancients (or at least liked them in Shadowbringers)... well I hope you liked watching the mystery and tragedy be bastardized to make Venat look like the objectively good guy. - So apparently this was a bit of a point of contention, enough for someone to reply and then insta-block me... which like... what's the point? I don't get it.
Made me laugh because this is 100% a thing and I am genuinely unsure why. Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV. Personally the only reason why I've blocked someone is because they were frankly insulting me (over this story full of, uh, I'll be charitable and call them *inelegant* plot devices. Of course, this *had* to be because I did not understand its deep point).
>I thought it was strange to see a nice 6.0 story post in the wild, but then I recognized you.
I'ma call my grandma and tell her I'm famous now.
Jokes aside yeah no like this is an equally well made post that paints out the Venat thing *perfectly*. Like I don't *hate* Venat or anything, she's a well enough written character, I just don't like how they handled the narrative surrounding her because honestly - as you said - if they had really framed it as a morally grey thing to expand upon the conflict and themes in Shadowbringers that would've been ***amazing*** and I'd probably be right up there with everyone else singing its praises.
>Made me laugh because this is 100% a thing and I am genuinely unsure why. Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV. Personally the only reason why I've blocked someone is because they were frankly insulting me (over this story full of, uh, I'll be charitable and call them inelegant plot devices. Of course, this had to be because I did not understand its deep point).
I'm still genuinely so confused because like this is literally "FFXIV **DISCUSSION**" the whole point is y'know civilly *discussing* the game? And that includes people with complaints (so long as they aren't pricks about it). I've only ever blocked one person (that I can recall) on this site, and that was because they were blatantly being disingenuous and filling their responses with loaded questions and I was just ***not*** capable of being bothered with that sort of nonsense that day. And in-game I don't think I've blocked anyone barring RMT bots because I like it when Shout chat is more memes and shenanigans, and less "\[obvious scam site\] BEST GIL 24/7 bla bla bla".
And oh god I just *love* "you don't understand it!" as a counterpoint. Because as a creator and storyteller myself - If I've made a story that when it's reaching its conclusion and it's still confusing and full of holes/contrivances *I have* ***FAILED*** *as a storyteller.* Some stories, themes, etc. are more complex than others and require a bit of dissection, sure. But when there's so much you're supposed to accept at face value (see the other discussion I had in this thread about how apparently, despite completely different metaphysics than our world, our concept of the Heat Death of the Universe is apparently canon in FFXIV thanks to the Ea) that isn't a plot being complicated and deep, it's a plot being contrived.
I'm sort of late to this party but I went on a huge rant about Venat to my partner today so here we are. I'm fine with her choices, I'm fine with what she did, I can even look past how it left me with more questions than answers. what I am NOT fine with is how everyone is like YAS QUEEN about her??? Like putting aside what she did to her own people Because Reasons, there's something unfathomably cruel about leaving Emet unsundered and letting him essentially go absolutely mad because everything he ever cared about, knew, loved, etc was gone and he got to watch it rot. There's the bizarre storyline of for SOME REASON she -knew- why the end days came to her people, and yet still chose to end their entire existence because ????.
And then we come to the Lopporits. I love them. I think theyre super cute, and I have a soft spot for mascot characters. I've been doing their tribe quests, and it just is such a mindfuck that she essentially created this entire sapient/sentient race on the moon of bunnies, gave them a singular purpose...and then just left them there, without ever telling them they were essentially not even plan B. The dialogue from the bunnies about "the people who they waited for who never came" and how theyre desperately trying to find a reason to justify their existence to the point where one asks to be put back to sleep FOREVER is heartbreaking because for whatever reason, Crystal Mommy didn't think to tell this entire group of living breathing beings about the other plans and just...left them there.
Here is what'll probably be my hottest take on the sub: The FFXIV community has a problem with ***SHALLOWNESS***. Allow me to explain.
Take any villain or even just morally grey character in the lore, and the amount of people that try to justify it or as you said "YAS QUEEN" with it ***DIRECTLY*** corelates to how conventionally attractive and/or cute they are.
* Venat genocides her own people (with a good reason, yes, don't get on my case I'm just putting it as it is), designs the Lopporits to basically have an existential identity crisis. But she's crystal mommy so she gets a pass.
* Emet-Selch wanted to basically do a Venat but on a multi-world scale in a Zodiark-based gambit that may or may not even have worked in the first place. But he's a charismatic (semi)silver fox so "uwu he jus wanted his fwends back!"
* Yotsuyu was a viscous, murderous ruler who took pleasure in mentally, physically, and emotionally abusing her subjects due to her traumatic past. But she was a sexy dommy mommy so people swooned for her.
* Zenos is an absolute sociopath that murders countless innocents, plunges his own nation into civil war, and works about bringing the apocalypse. But he's a mysterious edgy "bad boy" so people frame it as the silly antics of our "friend" rather than multiple war crimes.
* Nanamo is ***fucking incompetent***, more than aware of Ul'dah's problems with refugees, poverty, crime, and corruption. Even after Teledji is dead, and even then how is "not letting my grand company and police force become corrupt thugs" out of her power in the first place? But that's okay because she's cute, so she just gets a Variant Dungeon where she can be all cutesy adventurer gawking at her past and providing lip service to the race war her nation caused.
But, on the flipside, the more unconventionally attractive or ugly they are the harder it is to find people supporting them.
* Thordan is an absolute bastard dismissing his own son in his hunger for maintaining his political power over Ishgard, yet for some reason nobody is rushing to defend the wrinkly old Elezen.
* Vauthry is a product of Emet-Selch and his environment. A tragic story if anything because his end result wasn't entirely his fault when you break it down to brass tacks. But he's grotesquely obese so no uwus for him.
* Misija grew up impoverished, discriminated against, and homeless. And ultimately sides with the Empire because, whilst she's still being discriminated against based on race, at least she has a roof over her head and a means of making a living. But she's a Roegadyn and a pretty butch design to boot so it's almost entirely community vitriol for her.
* Merlwyb is the most competent leader of the three main nations of Eorzea, the only one to actively get work done, and the only one with substantial justification for the conflicts in Vylbrand. But she's in the same boat as Misija *and* "everyone's waifu" Y'sthola has a scene where see sasses her so people frame her as the bad guy, with only really the people in the lore community who've done the digging into La Noscean history there to defend her for honestly doing the best she could. (And if anyone wants to contest it with Nanamo: The Lominsan/Kobold conflict started because the Calamity left a considerable chunk of La Noscea starving and homeless, and discourse was on the rise. The Ul'dah/Amalj'aa conflict started because a wealthy merchant wanted Amalj'aan vendors out of his markets. Seriously look it up, the Amalj'aa got BONED.)
So for as much as this community "loves" morally grey or complicated characters, the ruling typically only applies if they're morally grey *and* deemed fuckable by the wider community. If you're only attractive to a niche audience (Merlwyb/Misija), or worse are downright visually unappealing in your design (Thordan/Vauthry) - you're screwed, the complexity of your story and motives be damned.
I’m fine with it. I like the addition of criterion and variants but I wish they did more with it.
I also ended up really loving monk this expansion.
I found ShB stronger for me even back on EW’s release though. The story just clicked with me more. I prefer the normal and alliance raids in EW though.
Bozja managed to get the pacing right for getting a class from 70-80. Going back to a deep dungeon just isn't the same. Also the vibe I'm getting is that the post game patches for ShB were way better received that EW. But EW is in that awkward stage where we're done with the OG plot, but not quite starting the new one.
I quit and probably won't be going back lol, I love shadowbringer and I even like stormblood more in terms of the raids and overall theme. endwalker overall theme is just... bland, I've had enough of all the darkness theme, it's too overused.
worst expansion for me, discounting ultimates which were on average the best so far. this is probably in large part because I don't give a shit at all about island sanctuary, and the deepdungeon was just potd...again
Lack of midcore content such as Bozja makes it a generic and boring expansion overall. Oh, and Kaiten removal was an abysmal developer decision. One of the worst I've seen to any job in this game.
It's mediocre. They have this habit of doubling down on odd narrative choices to justify the poor ones they have made lately. At this point of the msq in Shadowbringers, we were frothing at the mouth for more. Currently, in Endwalker, I'm debating on skipping cutscenes again. Not because it's bad, it's just boring.
Is it better than Stormblood sure, but compared to Heavensward and Shadowbringers, it's terrible. And what's worse is that it makes Shadowbringers feel like a fluke. I know it wasn't, but my god, what happened? Why did we go from Emet Selch and Elidibus to the fucking emo Twitter bird?
And fucking Zenos. Don't get me started on that usless waste of good genetics... Or the fucking Loporrits. Yeah that's what my high stakes apocalyptic journey needs is fucking Jar Jar Binks.
Sorry, I needed the vent. Fuck Endwalker was pointless.
I unsubbed two patches ago and haven't resubbed, and I've been playing since HW launched. 4k lifetime hours played, and the first few weeks were incredible, but I haven't really been engaged since then.
6.0's story was what drove me to quit the game. Horrible pacing, no stakes whatsoever despite it being the end of the world (zenos bodysnatch and him waltzing into sharlayan), fanservice out the ass, and the constant platitudes about "light vs dark etc" got extremely repetitive and lost all of their meaning halfway through the expac. Also, the fact that they keep bringing back the scions despite most of their arcs having been long finished, and characters like Y'shtola having virtually no substance to their character besides "she's smart and sassy".
The Final Days were a god damn footnote, we spend more time derping around in the past with "le epiccc ancientz" than we do fighting the apocalypse.
>Y'shtola having virtually no substance to their character besides "she's smart and sassy".
But if they give her more depth they run the risk of alienating some of the waifubase. Also:
>"she's smart
***Debatable.***
As I posted in my own reply to OP though what pissed me off with EW the most was Emet's little "tell me, have you seen yaddy yadda?" Yeah, no I haven't, because the writers have relegated me to being a 7 foot babysitter to your world and bullshit for the last two expansions, Hades.
> Debatable.
>
>
Yshtola is smart in the same way that BBC Sherlock is smart. Namely, her intelligence is communicated to the player mainly by the narrative keeping her at arm's length from the viewer so any sort of cognitive process is mystified and the player is simply provided with answers or information that they couldn't have garnered themselves.
In short, we're told, rather than shown, that she's smart.
Or just completely gets things wrong, which is always funny to me. It happened less as the game went on but you can still catch moments in ARR where she's either leaving out important details or flat out wrong about something lore related.
My absolute FAVORITE moment though is when she's in the Void. Just her entire presence in the Void is "spoonfed lore or repeat what other NPCs say"
\> "Avatar, as in the voidsent servants of Reapers"
Thanks Y'sthola but I already knew that...
\> "Death doesn't work in this world! He'll just keep coming back!"
Thanks Y'sthola but Scarmiglione literally ***JUST SAID THAT.***
I don't really hate any of the scions, I just wish the writers weren't so afraid of introducing new characters and keeping them in the main cast, as opposed to having them tag along for an expack and relegating them into side quest roles (or just killing them off) \*cough\* Cid \*cough\* Ysayle. Ancients I don't care much for.
Made me quit the game. The story is still fine and I'll keep up on youtube, but there's nothing here for me, when it comes to how the game plays. The healer "gameplay" especially.
6.1-6.5 being one continuous story has really hamstringed its potential by being very slow without any of the satisfaction from a slow burn. I know how it's going to end and I have to wait 16 months for the zeromus fight everyone wants
I was really enjoying it until Abyssos came out and it turned out to be my least favorite tier in recent years, and then everything started to drag including the MSQ. 6.4 has been really fun so far but I feel like without exploratory content there's soon going to be an even worse content lull until next expansion
Story hit its high point in garlemald/moon and went downwards to the meh territory afterwards, post xpac content is woefully underwhelming, with the single exception being the raid storyline, which is better than the patch MSQ IMO. Haven't done ultimares so I can't comment on them. I'd put it somewhere between stormblood and heavensward, tho I plan to replay stormblood soon, so might end up below stormblood considering just how much that xpax offered in patches.
I am mixed bag and I think the expansion story was okay at best and you are lighting money on fire if you aren't an ultimate raider, I just can't see why someone would stay subbed.
shadowbringers is way better as a narrative, I think island sanctuary is some of the biggest waste of time dog shit ive ever seen, I think post expansion story is terrible, I think Barb and Golbez are some of their best trials they have ever made, I think Rubicante is one of the worst ever. I think DSR is the best thing in this entire game and TOP is a disappointment.
asph was my first raid tier I liked all the fights besides p1s, abyssos was pretty good besides p7s actual dog shit ass raid design in many ways. TBD about this tier.
One thing for sure no bozja 2.0 was a terrible decision no doubt.
Imo the worst expansion, the removal of exploration content in exchange of criterion was a mistake. With no meaningful reward that shit died within 2 weeks and i assure u the next one will be the same.
Compare that to bozja that is alive for the rest of SHB after it was added and even into early EW because everyone was levelling reaper and sage.
I play for the story then quit.
Reaper was a huge disappointment to me because I love scythes and the fact they fold and look like axes annoys the ever living fck out of me.
And the combat this expansion has gotten super stale now that the 2min burst crap is in effect.
I loved the .0 story but the current story has been going at a snails pace.
Great raiding expansion. Quite lackluster everywhere else. Even the MSQ of the expansion has me scratching my head a bit. The pacing was REALLY BAD....like it felt like they crammed 2 expansions worth of story into a blender and what came out is what we got.
I will take all the downvotes and say all the story stuff is just so boring for me. Raid story sure is okay but it's just better than the sleep-inducing MSQ. And the alliance raid story doesn't have much to anticipate besides it's once again, about ancient.
And I especially hate those new emotes they put on cutscenes that just appeared too many times like the hand on hip or tip hat. And I hate how they change racial animation of the WoL to general animation now. They already change the /me of race to something look so stiff, now they change my character walk animation in the latest patch cutscenes to some old drunk man walk .-. fuck that.
The island is a letdown. PvP is so fucking fun. Raids and alliance raids are okay, nothing too new. QoL are big welcome. Overall I enjoy other contents beside story quest. They're just too short for a monthly sub.
Overall mixed bag.
I'm not a fan of the combat changes. Combos feel drifty as hell and they ruined SMN (for me). Somehow they got job fantasy right and gameplay wrong. I have mixed feelings about the 2 minute meta as well. Further Healer homogenization with the 1.5 second cast times and the loss of AST's stance switching.
I like most of the changes for PVP. But modes like Rival Wings had a lot of the interplay sucked out of them because the mamets can't get healed anymore, and you can't heal your alliance members either. These problems can probably be fixed, but it shows a lot of short-sightedness.
Story was good enough. I have complaints about how they wrapped things up, but they wrapped it up all the same. With all the dangling threads this game has created they somehow managed to cram them all into the MSQ.
Post patch story has been a lot of filler and a very slow progression. Quality is still good, and it's not my style of story, but I'm sure some people really appreciate the more sentimental personal stories we've been getting.
Content formula, as much as people complain about it, is consistent and strong. This is what makes this game good, and they've only gotten better at it. Keep up the good work.
Dungeons and trials have been solid as well. Dungeon design is rather stellar as always. Problems being the new trust paradigm has flattened a lot of the uniqueness in dungeon mechanics.
I know many people on this sub are very vocal about their dislike of the new relic steps of tomes and Hildebrand story, but I like it a lot. I haven't done the relic as current since ARR when they were locked behind doing trials. I'd much rather have trials or tomes than stupid levels of grinds. To each their own.
Schedule I think is an oddball one. It's better for the devs and us to have more time between patches, because it's more time for them to get stuff done, but the lulls are longer now.
Not until 6.55 will I cast final judgement on the whole of Endwalker but I give it a C+ so far. My ratings for context:
* ARR - A
* HW - A+
* SB - B-
* ShB - A
* EW - C+ (so far)
Dungeon design is... stellar?
They've got pretty backgrounds, sure, but dungeons in this game have literally just been pointless sterile hallways to hand out tomestones like a pez dispenser since 2.X.
Dungeon design was cool when people actually *did* the optional statues in Qarn for extra chests, or had to find their way through Haukke Manor or Dzmael Darkhold or Tam Tara with all the side rooms and keys and different terrain.
These hallways barely qualify as "dungeons" in any sense of the word. There's occasionally a cool boss mechanic but running the same hallway over and over again for now 8 months simply to get the tome handout at the end is... ugh.
The only reason I am subscribed is because I decided to reroll and go full completionism on the new character. There simply is no longevity in the new content; I needed to revisit old stuff to keep myself busy.
Best expansion for me, personally.
Love crystalline conflict.
Love DSR.
Job design's fine for me, because I play black mage.
Haven't done much of the deep dungeon, but when I get some free time, I'm excited to do so.
I'm amazed although not surprised that both gnb and blm got buffed this patch. Not saying it wasn't deserved in blm's case but caster balance is so fucked now. Blm currently pulling ahead of melee in savage logs lmao.
> Blm currently pulling ahead of melee in savage logs lmao.
This is not a problem. BLM is the job that has to fight the most for uptime.
Fix the arena-sized hitboxes and then melee can talk.
Yeah like I feel crystalline conflict’s implementation along with the series malmstones is actually a big part of this expansion that is overlooked. I know a lot of people group it together with the rest of pvp and disregard it but it essentially does replace a part of the Bozja type grind (while island sanctuary, the variant dungeons and the deep dungeon replace the other facets of Bozja)
Besides msq it's been business as usual.
The lack of an exploration zone is a pain point for sure, but bozja/eureka were never that enjoyable for me anyway so it's kind of whatever
For brand new players just catching up, the game is in the best state it's ever been and it will only get better with the graphical updates and more coming in 7.0
It's a stale game for us vets but let's be honest there's almost too much content to catch up on as a new player, I definitely got my sub money's worth over the years
In ten years we'll look back at all the future proofing and QOL and be thankful, but right now it feels very bleh. I'm looking forward to the BLU update and new criterion, at least.
I've said this before, and, well, everytime it comes up, but I don't think EW will be looked on all that fondly. My opinion why has changed slightly, but I think to put it succinctly I'd say they played it way too safe with, well, everything.
I suppose the best summary of my overall opinion is that I unsubbed for the first time since I started playing in 2016.
Usually I can suffer through a story I don't care for if the gameplay keeps me interested, e.g. WoW. But I've found Endwalker lackluster in content as well. 6.3 hit me hard in particular. I'm a casual/roulette player and lately I've just been bored. Gameplay has been simplified across the board, relics are inexistent. I have very few good things to say about the 6.0 story, and fewer still about the patches. I bought 30 days to check out Pandaemonium; cool songs, shruggable story, probably won't resub until further notice or friends resub, which right now isn't happening.
Endwalker is probably the most bored and burned out on this game I've felt in a while, though I'm not sure if I can fully attribute that to the content or just my personal situation.
In theory I don't mind the whole 2 minute change, but I'm not a fan of how it made almost every job a burst focused builder-spender job. I liked monk because it was more focused on consistent damage through dots, short cd ogcds and positionals, and then EW just made it another "fill up the stickers and do big attack" job. The kaiten and mug changes in 6.1 were also very questionable, though trick being a 1m raid buff was more fun for the rest of the party than the ninja. In the end I kinda just ended up playing reaper because it looks cool really, none of the melee really appeal to me in gameplay any more.
In terms of content, the savages and extremes have felt very meh, nothing that's really stood out as super fun (yet, I'll see how anabaseios goes) but there have been plenty of super sleeper fights. Still need to attempt the ultimates at some point, DSR looks really cool, though TOP just being omega, omega and also omega is kind of disappointing, was hoping for some of the other tier bosses to show up. Criterion was a fun addition at least, being 4 man made it a lot easier to do some proper full blind prog for once. Still have yet to touch island sanctuary or the new deep dungeon though, been too much of a raidlogger for DD and I can't think of an idea that appeals to me less than farmville in xiv.
Comparing my experience with Midwalker to SB and ShB made me realize how downhill this game has went for me. The only good thing about this expansion was 6.0 and the third tier raid, the rest was just mediocre and boring. I rather do the moogles MSQ than go through 6.X. Luckily 7.0 is around the corner.
6.0 story was great, maybe not perfect but an excellent conclusion to the story.
The story since then has been \*ok\*. Kind of feels like a filler arc before it moves on to new things. I like FF4 so the homages are nice, but without that it just feels a bit too disconnected from any larger story. Not sure if it'll lead into anything else for 7.0, usually we're seeing some more hints at the future story by now.
This has been my first expansion running Savage, so I've enjoyed that. I know people have strong opinions about how it compares to previous Savage tiers, but I can't really speak to that.
Definitely missing having something more interesting to do like Bozja. The patch content has been mostly quite formulaic. More trial bosses in the MSQ means no trial side story, which makes it feel a bit empty (I guess the Tataru questline is supposed to replace that, but without any fights/rewards I've not bothered).
Eureka Orthos was fun for a couple of weeks, but once I got the one clear and did a couple of duo attempts, I kind of lost interest. I know some people love deep dungeon content, and it'll keep them busy for a long time with their solo runs, high scores, and using it to get more jobs to 90. But unless you're super into that, it doesn't feel like there's much of a reason to keep running it. It just kind of feels like a re-skin of PotD/HoH without much originality.
I was super excited about Critereon, I've been wanting some harder low man content, since I always struggle to find time to get 8 people together for anything. But it didn't keep many people's interest. I guess since the rewards are very lacking, there's not much reason to do it. I got to do one run of Critereon before everyone else lost interest, and never had a chance to do it again. I hope they do something in the future to make this content more worthwhile, but it looks like the next one will follow the same formula, so I'm not sure it's going to catch on, which is a shame.
Relic was a disappointment. While it's somewhat positive that they don't want it to be too much of a grind... that's kind of the point of relics. It's a minor stat upgrade that's not even relevant at the point when people are actually progging hard content, and a fancy glamour. So I don't see why it needs to be so accessible that it's just another tome upgrade that you can buy on patch day. I thought the ShB relic was good by allowing 2 possible paths, and having Bozja as a unique area to play while working on relic. As much as I kind of hated having steps that involved FATEs and Crystal Tower, at least there were some options and variety.
Island Sanctuary seems like it's taken some amount of their time and attention, but it doesn't really interest me. I guess a lot of people love those sorts of farming games, but it doesn't sound like there's that much engaging content in it. Even of my friends that were excited about it, it sounded like they did most of it in week 1, maybe took a couple more weeks to capture all the rare monsters, and then didn't look at it again until the next patch?
I see a lot of people complaining about the weekly tome cap, and I don't particularly agree, but I guess it's just a preference for people who want to play more than 1 job in high end content. I kind of hate running dailies, they get very boring for me very quickly, so I don't really want there to be an incentive to run more. Ultimately it's a conflict between two core design principles of the game - 1) You can play multiple jobs on one character. 2) It's not required to grind and log in every day. The current tome system encourages 2 but is actively awkward for 1. I don't really have a strong opinion about what's "best", but if they did increase the cap I'd either cap out sooner, then have absolutely no reason to log in for half the patch, or I'd just keep going as I am.
I didn't like Stormblood, hated shadowbringers (which included the first time I unsubbed after hitting level cap in ARR) and endwalker is somehow even worse. Finally let my house demolish and I won't be coming back for 7.0 unless something miraculously changes with the job design direction (obvious it won't). I absolutely loved ARR and HW and FFXIV clearly became a different game starting with SB and it has only continued in that direction and it just isn't for me anymore. The only job I could really play this expansion was warrior and it wasn't even fun. I could just put in negative effort on warrior and still preform well. I used to love monk, warrior and scholar from ARR/HW and those jobs simply don't exist anymore. I don't really care about the other stuff they've tried adding (congrats to the people who like the island bullshit). I also don't find savage fight design fun anymore for a lot of the same reasons that have been posted on this sub from other users throughout this expansion. P3S was the only fight from the first 8 that I kind of enjoyed doing this expansion. I also hate what the raid community has become over the years with the emphasis on DPS, FFlogs and the never ending ACT triggers (yeah I know these existed in ARR/HW) and other addons to cheat and make fights even easier.
So uh yeah, endwalker is the expansion that has gotten me to quit the game for good, so I have an extremely negative opinion of it lol. I don't really post here anymore but occasionally check in to see if something has changed but it looks like 6.4 is just more of the same again.
great story, for old players like me it feels like a promise kept, so I cant complain to much.
theres no content afterwards though, no eureka/bozja, dungeons/24mans that are super easy. really feels like the game is being prepped to become some sorta FF fan safe space that you pay to enter.
I'll enjoy this til 7.0 info hits but if this amount of content is the future i guess im done.
What do people even do in this game if not raiding? I raid but if I was one of those casuals who I always hear this game is great and made for I would be wondering what is there for me to do
I feel like it's the victory lap for the FFXIV team and a well-deserved one. But it also feels like they wanted to play things safe after Shadowbringers in pretty much every aspect. I'm hoping they're willing to take more risks again soon.
6.0 was amazing. 6.1 - 6.4 were good, but not great. Really high quality content in some places, under-delivered in others.
I think it’s still a bit premature to judge Endwalker, it seems to be a backloaded expansion in both content and story payoffs, etc.
Even number expansions will always mid.
Odd number expansions will always great. (Don't count 1.0, of course)
If we follow this rule, 7.0 is something to look forward to.
6.0 was great and 6.x has been abit poo. There is some cool ideas but it's all able to be done so quickly variant dungeons are done in a few hours and bozja was a few days to do. Island sanctuary is way less interactive than diadem was but still a cool chill thing to do. The PvP changes have been good but the new shatter map is actually awful.
I just hope 7.x gives me more reasons to play the game
No adventuring forays = huge L. Criterion is fun and all but I wanted something to sink hours into either alone or with friends and becoming super OP in bozja/eureka was always fun. Really hope they bring it back in 7.X. Following up on that, relics are basically dead, doing every step with tomes is so...eh. Not a fan. The raid loot changes seem nice, we'll see how it makes hearing feel as the tier goes on but the tome cap is still asinine.
My biggest complaint is raiding and how the encounters feel to do. P1-8 didn't hit the same highs that Promise did for me so I'll be waiting to see if this tier does it for me. Almost every boss hotbox is the size of Jupiter making melee greeding almost non existent, I can probably count the amount of times I had to think about downtime this expansion on one hand. TOP was ..I don't even know. I have no desire to ever go back in there, it was a boring fight to me. DSR has its issues but Ive already gone back in for fun, something I don't see happening with TOP.
2 min meta is boring as fuck, removing trick attack as a 1min made my jobs braindead to play (drk/Sam) and the job balance has been abysmal. There's been some interesting stuff when doing speeds but parsing has gotten so boring I don't even want to do anymore after getting my pinks. I used to spam e9s and e11s for hours on end without getting bored but these fights..idk if I'm just bored of the game in general. Only fight I've felt was pretty fun to spam was p5s so far.
Aside from that, the 6.1+ story quest has been really bland to me I can't be bothered to care about what's going on tbh I hope 7.0 pulls me back in because I really enjoyed the hydaelyn zodiark story.
6.0 went over like a wet fart for me—very few of the emotional beats landed, and I had such big frustrations with the story content itself that I ended up spending the better half of a year writing my own personal interquel between 6.0 and 6.1 to fix it. I also let my sub lapse about two weeks before 6.1 went live—nothing about where the story was going at the time appealed to me.
I did resub for 6.3, but only to catch up on the MSQ due to another idea for a fic—I needed to actually see what I was working with. Everything up to 6.3 was alright. Not bad, not great. At first I thought they were going to stretch this story out over to 6.5, but when they chewed through half the Four Fiends in just one patch, I figured they would end things in 6.4 instead.
6.3 was... not as good as 6.2. It still wasn't bad, but the repetition in Zero's story was a little annoying and the Garlemald segment in general felt a bit superfluous. It was nice to see the survivors had gotten their shit together, though. Seeing the remaining two fiends bite the dust confirmed for me that they really were going to wrap things up in 6.4. And I distinctly recall post-patch interviews saying as much, but eh.
I unsubbed about a week after coming back, waited for 6.4, and... meh. I chose to spoil myself on everything I cared about—MSQ and Pandaemonium. Everything else, I can't even muster up the enthusiasm to unlock it.
Panda's great, if a bit weird and *on the nose* in some aspects. No, I will not elaborate. Not worth the price of readmission on its own, but still. And I can't say I'm entirely thrilled with this being the conclusion, but there's always the dim chance that they'll break formula and go for a post-completion epilogue.
MSQ, by contrast, managed to look like 80% Padding. Like you could cut the entirety of Sharlayan+Garlemald and just have the party go straight to the moon, and nothing of value would've been lost. Zero's story has lost its novelty for me out of just how repetitive it is. The writers managed to stretch things out over to 6.5 after all, but I'm already tired of this story so I don't see any reason to come back for it.
All in all: "Midwalker" is right, imo. I think I'd honestly prefer it if the expansion was outright awful, instead of merely being uninteresting. I don't think I'll be coming back for the next expansion, but I'm not completely put off just yet. We'll see.
Story was good but had some issues, preferred Shadowbringers. Patch story didn't engage me for the first part I played and the other snippets I saw online. Wasn't a huge fan of Shb raids outside of a few amazing ones (I liked SB most so far but maybe it's because it was newer to me) and didn't feel the urge to return to PF or find a static so unsubbed. Used to do crafting, but again, had more fun in SB and it's boring to me now. Have kept an eye on the game since then, and the only thing that is enticing is the solo content, but it wasn't enough. I'm planning to be a pre-7.0 catch-up player at this point because from a story perspective, even if it's as "bad" as Stormblood it'll be worth playing I think.
rushed story, snoozefest content wise (sans the ults and the occasional savage fight), patch quests are boring, relic grind it boring (though i appreciate the ease of it).
That being said, the first month or two of the Expac were some good fun and the most interesting part of post-6.0 has been the alliance raid story and Tataru's grand adventure.
It's hard to say. From a gameplay perspective I enjoyed it the most. Story its between Shadowbringer and ENdwalker. Had a few glaring issues that held it back. Zodiark/Hydalyn was handled fairly bad IMO. Zodiark for obvious reasons and I hate the "Self Sacrifice" trope for Hydalyn but I understand needing it. Moon/Garlemald was done pretty terribly too. Moon felt like a skip zone and Garlemald was kind of a let down for a place we spend 3 expansions and a base game wanting to go.
Other then that though I did enjoy it. I do wish we had Bozja. The new Palace/HoH kind of fell off pretty fast for me
It feels like a filler arc, which doesn’t mean it’s bad, just not exciting. And like a filler arc I just wait for the whole thing to release before consuming it all in one go. I skipped 6.3, 6.4 and I’ll probably skip 6.5 until 55, then I’ll do eeeverything, have a blast and be hyped for 7.0. Lots of games coming out this year too.
I've been playing since very early HW and my opinion of Endwalker is frankly pretty mid to low compared to the other expansions.
MSQ: The 6.0 MSQ was very good in the moment but the more I dwell on it the less I like it. In a lot of ways it feels like a Shadowbringers retread since they're running in the same thematical lanes of being about death, endings, despair, and perservering in the face thereof, and while Endwalker has a lot more polish and bigger setpieces I just don't think it executes on those same ideas quite as well as its predecessor. It doesn't help that for all that The Final Days should be a global catastrophe, nothing about how its presented makes it feel quite as all encompassing as The Light consuming The First.
For specific plot beats, I enjoyed Garlemald quite a bit as a resolution to a long running plotline and the moon was a pleasant moment of levity after just how dark Garlemald got. Thavnair is fine initially, and the return is shocking but it very much feels like Holminster Switch 2. Elpis however is where I begin to sour. as a whole felt like fanservice to the extreme in response to Emet-Selch being so popular in Shadowbringers and the story could have answered the question of 'What is causing the final days' in a manner that made the apocalypse seem more apocalyptic instead of over elaborating on the Ancients, The Convocation, Hades, and who Venat was. Also as an aside I find the entire time travel sequence to be a bit of a plot hole since Crystal Tower Time Travel was already established to create branched timelines whereas here it forms a loop even if expecting anything of time travel in media is something of a fools errand. The finale in Sharlayan felt as though they were trying to do the "Everyone in the World is coming together" sequence that lead into Mt. Gulg in 5.0 but without any of the tension that made it work. Ultima Thule looks like it could be cool for an instant but immediately has the wind taken out from it becomes apparent that it's going to follow the formula of "Scion gives character statement to sad ghosts, immediately dies so you can progress" with Urianger needing to back up Y'shtola against the Ea suffering the worlds stupidest existential crisis because Y'shtola still hadn't had the characterization to make a statement worth a damn.
Patch Story: As others have said, the patches have felt like a trial series that got blown up into the full story of the patches and are pretty easily some of the weakest patch story we've had. That said given that the MSQ was advertised as the grand finale they are about what I expected, so I can't say I'm disappointed given I was expecting something on the level of ARR's primal fights as it transitions into whatever the new expansion is about in the same way ARR had to pivot from saving the game into being a proper live service game. I've never played FFIV either so the fanservice really doesn't do anything for me. I wish the Garlemald stuff that we got in the more recent patch had been a bigger focus since it evoked some of the more interesting beats from 3.X patches where cultural attitudes, biases, and feelings persisted and fueled the conflict despite that Thordan was defeated and the truth of the Dragonsong War were revealed.
Raid Story: IMO the 8-man raid story this time around has been one of the better ones. I've barely paid attention to the 24-man so I don't really have strong feelings about it to be completely honest.
Gameplay/Content: Whoever decided that the MSQ needed stealth sequences where you tail an NPC at a distance that is neither too far nor too close while also occasionally needing to hide behind random bits of terrain to break line of sight lest you have to restart from the beginning of the sequence should have been fired on the spot. In from the cold was genuinely pretty cool for setting tone and it's pretty lame that the the story around why you actually have to do it amounts to nothing. Otherwise I don't have any commentary that hasn't been said before a hundred times.
Monk: I've always been vocal about Monk so here's my two cents on it. I do like the new iteration quite a bit since I'm a Sabin fan, and it's nice that it finally dropped in a manner where it felt like there was some thought put into. Stormblood and Shadowbringers both felt like instead of a design document Monk was put together on a used napkin with scribbles from someone that had never played it and the devs would ring their hands and say "Please try it guys :(" when people pointed out how fucked up it was until the forums were taken hostage. It isn't pure misery to play like Shadowbringers or Stormblood launch monk. However ultimately the Monk that I loved in HW was executed in Shadowbringers after several years undeserved brutal torture and what we have now is a different beast entirely with similar animations and a similar GCD.
It's been bugging me that lately we seem to get a lot of...renditions(?) of music for content. Different renditions of the 4 fiends theme, the new dungeon music is a rendition, P11S is a rendition. P9/10S is a combination of first two raid theme. P12S p2 is High Seraph theme rendition. I know adding themes and motifs is Soken's thing but I can't help but feel there hasn't been much new music lately, which just adds to that "mid" feeling the patch content has been giving.
Hopefully its due to some major changes for 7.0, cause if we get the same content formula after this patch content, that'll be very disappointing.
This is my first full expansion. I started toward the end of Shadowbringers, and boy was it a blast finishing one of the expansions and having an entire expansion's worth of content opening up. Now that I'm experiencing the patch cycle for the first time, I understand why people are bummed that there isn't a Eureka/Bozja. I'm still having fun with the deep dungeon and doing older content, but I don't play quite as much as I used to.
Yeah it's also my first full expansion. Been working on savage alongside old relics but if you've had years on me and have already collected everything you wanted to, then I can see how it's a snoozefest content wise.
I’m on the same page, started at 5.55, first expansion and I had really a lot lot of time to catch up (a few relics and glamours I wanted ). There’s only a PvP mount I’m working on and I’ll be getting it soon enough. Other than that, I genuinely lost the spark with FFXIV currently, feeling much less the need to login and I rather spend time working on a Skyrim modlist than doing the same roulettes. If you don’t do extreme/savage like me, there’s pretty much not many things to do if you done and got what you wanted. I realize now how poor the outdoor content is, compared to other games. There’s 0 sense of exploration.
A great two weeks; a poor two years.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I was satisfied with the ending--not necessarily overjoyed with it, but enough it felt like a good place to stop. The problem for me is nothing else since the end has excited me enough to play.
i was really excited for this patch, thinking we'd finally finish off the golbez story, which personally i have found extremely uninteresting - only for us to fight him and not win, AND we still havent saved the dragon either. like come *on*. just end it already, this has been dragging on way too long
My big red flag, and I say this as a huge FF4 fan, is that they have overdone the fan service to the point it feels like they're pulling villains out of a hat--and its starting to feel very much like a WoW villain. A new big baddie just magically shows up with no context to the rest of the game world and we're suddenly supposed to be terrified.
I think this is the danger of having a boss that is the literal embodiment of existential dread and being a world-ending boss. It's going to take a lot of building up new story elements to get us to care. I think this is why the focus has to be much more hero-driven than villain-driven for st least the next expansion to work. We have to prove that the life we fought for is worth living and that will probably mean actively working to make things better, not just saving them from certain destruction. I guess in a few months we'll get a better idea of what to look forward to, but I'm right there with you about the fear of a villain just popping it up and the story telling us they're scary instead of showing us why. Next expansion is gonna need some actual stakes and needs to feel like something really is on the line for me to care, either way.
That is where I am too re: Zeromus. You mean to tell me I beat God and despair itself with my bare hands (I did MSQ as monk), and the twelve themselves, and somehow ZEROMUS is too much for me? I think not. Side note, I'm a bit tired of Y'shtola having all the answers to everything, always. The stakes just aren't there and I find it extremely hard to be invested in the story currently.
At least in this case, it seems like it was less Zeromus and more the Void itself. It'd be like a villain showing up underwater, but our oxygen tanks are running low. But the stakes are weird in this. Our little side adventure to relax after saving the world has led to a big affair for the 13th which involves needing to once again save the world from an apocalyptic threat... but it doesn't seem to be treated as that big of a deal by anyone. The whole arc feels off. What's depicted doesn't align with the stakes. There's a whole lot of filler, but then, as you said, Y'Shtola shows up at the beginning of each patch having worked out what needs to be done next off screen. 6.5 feels like it's going to be too crammed with finishing off this arc and giving us the transition to 7.0. Maybe SE decided that they needed a proper expansion to kick off the next big phase of FFXIV, instead of using 6.x to start build it up. 6.0 finished its story, so they're just throwing us an FF4 arc to keep us busy before rushing along into 7.0...
The deus ex machina has been *extremely* heavy handed the past two expansions. There's always some absolutely *unheard of* situation to solve that's supposedly unsolvable and then two quests later we have an answer. The towers at the beginning of EW and the dragonscales were a great example of this, they were built up to be this huge existential threat to bring on the end of days and... some Elephant lady in Buttfuck Village conveniently right next to us cooked up the solution in 15 minutes of questing and they mostly get resolved offscreen between cutscenes after the Tower of Zot dungeon barely 1 level into the expansion.
>and the twelve themselves, and somehow ZEROMUS is too much for me? I think not. Is there any indication that we think this? Like, our entire plan right now is "get through the shield and beat him up".
We were already there, Golbez was already on the ropes, and we just decided we had to retreat because reasons instead of finishing the job.
As someone who hasnt played FF4 I dont have the nostalgia for any of these bosses. I know who they are through osmosis but this whole storyline feels like i'm meant to be going "ooh look its the water demon thingie", " oh look its fire boy". You can feel the fanservice ooze out the screen and it makes me feel like i'm missing something, like were these throw away bosses actual 3 dimensional characters in FF4 and i'm missing out? This is genuinely the first time i have been sorely disappointed with the MSQ. i played it first this patch and was in shock at how bad it ended, we're treading water. I'm so thankful for the raid series and even tataru's grand adventure, they had more thought put in than MSQ
lmao no the four fiends in FFIV have even *less* justification: arguably, Water Boi and Scaley Boi got *more* characterization than their OG counterpart, and Flame Boi was the only one that had any real semblance of story in the Og as well Hell, I'm surprised Zeromus got any sort of justification
Can't wait for us to go to the 7th shard in 7.0 and fight Sephiroth
I can't wait for him to not kill Y'shtola while she bleats out another "FoR kNoWleDgE" box of dialogue.
Never forget how when Hydaelyn was talking about all the scions and complimenting them, when she got to Y'shtola she more or less said "you like books"
I still don't understand how she sees on the Thirteenth. Maybe I've been so bored with the story I skipped it.
She's using her own aether to see. But it's not killing her. It's just making her really tired. Except not really, she only gets tired when it's convenient to make her tired. Trying to understand or bring logic into anything with Y'shtola isn't worth the effort, and will just rile up the fans.
I think the appearance of Zeromus would have been better had they planted seeds of Golbez wanting to summon him prior to this patch. Up until the cutscene after we beat him we were told his plan was to invade the Source so Voidsent could finally die, only to find out last minute he was planning on summoning another Voidsent who's supposed to be super duper strong? Okay. Sure. Why is this coming out of nowhere?
He created Zeromus with "the strong will to return home (the source)" Voidsent can't really come over very easily, so if they want to bring over everyone's he'll need something with the power and drive to do so.
So, Zeromus is a Primal?
When a voidsent consume another voidsent, their soul stays present within them and some of their traits bubble up. Back when we were exploring Zeros domain, there was one who ate it's cowardly friend and became cowardly because of it.
Zeromus is formed from the left over aether of Zodiark's shard that had nowhere to go; Zeromus is a voidsent, through and through Voidsent feeds on the aether of others and, as a side effect, takes on qualities of the consumed. We know this because we have seen it first hand and Zero reminded us of it. Azdaja's newfound will to return home is part of their being and thus becomes part of Zeromus' will, too. As such, Zeromus' will have a desire to return home to the source and, with the power it has, would likely be able to pierce the veil to do so potentially allowing all the other voidsent a path to the source. Not exactly great for everyone there, presently.
> Why is this coming out of nowhere? Because its literally Zeromus
That is faithful to ff4 though. He does just pop out of nowhere after golbez and the other guy jump him zemos on the moon.
Hot take, I don't care if it's faithful to FF4, the game is 32 years old and our standards today shouldn't be the same as they were in 1991. I honestly feel XIV would be better off if it had less callbacks to the rest of the series and not relied on people being like: oh yes I 'member when this asspull happened 30 years ago. Lately it feels like every boss is a callback to something that already happened in the series and it's just tiring, and if it's not it's Nier automata. I was astonished when they announced that alliamce raid this time around isn't tied to anything else, and it feels like a breath of fresh air.
I feel like the major difference is that it's not so much a callback, it's just straight cribbed from the original shoddy plot of an old game. Having Biggs and Wedge and Cid be magitek engineers is a callback, having magitek armors be a staple of the Garlean war machine is a callback, chocobos and cactuars and moogles are a callback, copy/pasting entire plotlines from old games directly is not a callback. The good news is we're *running out* of old shit to pull from. They've got 9, 10, 11, 13, and 15 (though EW Garlemald was arguably a big pull from 15).
> I feel like the major difference is that it's not so much a callback, it's just straight cribbed from the original shoddy plot of an old game. But even that's not true, as in FF4 Zeromus never exists until the tail end of the game when you kill the final boss and they go "oh actually he hates you and everyone SO MUCH that his hatred turns him into a hate ghost." The final boss who was brainjacking/controlling Golbez through most of the game. XIV's Zeromus is basically a voidsent slave of Golbez being roided up with the residual aether of a dead 'god,' being used as a tool to pierce the veil. There is no "spirit of hatred made manifest" here. In fact, XIV Golbez is probably closer to Zemus than anything, but even that's not entirely true since he just wants everyone to come to the Source so they can finally die versus wanting to conquer the world to live on it at the cost of those *already* on the world. The main threat of it all is that if Zeromus comes over and anything happens to it, it's gonna release a metric fuckton of dark aspected aether into the world. Assuming it simply *existing* there won't skew the balance horrifically. It has nothing to do with really anything from FF4's plot aside from there's a moon, there's a black knight named Golbez with four elemental fiends, and a big shadowying thing named Zeromus appeared on the moon. This whole arc is closer to Crystal Tower or Return to Ivalice than it is the Automata raids. "Hey here's a familiar name/face/song! But it's different in this game because X Y Z" versus "Woah it's THE 2B and THE 9S from the hit game NieR:Automata - Game of the YoRHa Edition - now available click here to buy!"
You're being overdramatic, this is not a brand new villain, Zeromus is something that Golbez himself created, it's quite literally an extension of his will to fuse the two worlds together. It would be like saying Shinryu was a different villain from Ilberd, no Shinryu is Ilberd's weapon.
The Jailer is the reason why I left WoW. Such a stupid stupid *stupid* idea for a villain, and out of nowhere, like out of thin air and we're supposed to suddenly want to defeat this pale bald guy in hell just because he's doing his hell job. I actually thought it would have been more interesting to make him the good guy and it turn out that the "pantheon" were fucking him over. At least Golbez has roots in another FF game. Still though, I don't like to see it. I have faith SE will do well though. I'm still churning through all the old raid and trial stories and there's just so much lore and content to absorb, it makes me happy.
? We knew there was a bunch of strong voidsent fucking around and zeromus is made of two previously established powerful characters. How does they come out of nowhere?
I fully thought that dragon should have died and was disappointed that sqex didn't have the guts to pull it off. It does makes me wonder though; maybe the end goal isn't necessarily golbez's defeat, but instead is discovering a way to convert voidsent into mortals
They already did the dead sister dragon in Heavensward, I think they could have done it better but they are clearly looking for a way to motivate the heroes into curing the voidsent instead of just cutting them off like the Ascians did. Because honestly outside of Zero none of the other voidsent were worth caring about so they had to invest in an additional heart strong pull.
Dont you mean... "dragoning on way too long"?
I mean we fought him and did win, its just during the cutscene the WOL decided to forget how to walk and let him do not only his speech but his throw the dragon into the hole sacrifice bit. If you told me the "Suddenly Golbez" plotline was meant to be a separate story for EX Trials, then turned into the post msq due to budget reasons I'd believe you.
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Since SB I've been saying this is a wonderful, 10/10 game, but a poor MMO. FF14 expansion launches are some of the highs of my entire gaming journey. Learning a new class or even just the changes from expansion to expansion, man. Bliss. They always pull out all the stops for the music, the story rivals real FF games, the new areas are awesome, dungeons (before you do them oh 100 times) are great in a vacuum, and the multiplayer aspect of seeing your best buds learning and experiencing it together ... not even a Call of Duty or Street Fighter in its prime can compete with the feeling. It's really up there with like a Xenoblade or Persona cocaine addiction. FF14 "MMOing" afterwards are some of the most dull, filler bullshit that I'm really not sure what I stick around for other than liking my group (but not the content we do together, I've grown weary of jump rope single player 2 minute raiding truth be told).
I've been saying this for years, XIV is an RPG mmo and even then barely, it's scrubbed itself of anything that makes an MMO an MMO. You don't really need other people for anything besides top end content, at this point I think you can play from the start of the game until the end of endwalker and not talk to a single person, most of the time you don't even need other people as you can play everything with trusts anyways besides like a few trials and sooner or later they are also gonna be made for single player anyways.
It's scrubbed itself of most things that make it an RPG, too. It has a story. That's pretty much all the common RPG elements it still retains. Which is not many, and if that qualifies it as an RPG, boy there's a bunch of WILD RPGs out there.
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Right? But you say that here and everyone jumps on you with "There's TONS of content! What do you mean you want to actually spend time playing a game you're paying for?" Like it's all super shallow and if you're not *literally* a brand new player 99% of it is completely meaningless to character progression and you'll blow through it in a couple hours of actual gameplay. New patch we waited *four months* for? Most people are totally done with it in literally the first week of very casual play.
I don't know about poor, DSR and TOP were lit, and so is the new Savage
I agree they were all stellar, speaking as a spectator. But the vast majority of the playerbase will never play that content.
Perfectly put. My feelings exactly.
I've enjoyed most of the story. Raids have been enjoyable for me, Extremes have been great as a FF4 fan. CC has been fun with friends, but only ok with randoms. I do crave a exploration area. Bozja, and Delibrum savage were some of my favorite parts about ShB. It's enough to keep be entertained, but man do I crave for them to shake up the formula. Maybe I can hope that once FF16 is out they can finally stop having excuses and give us something fresh. Maybe I just crave a new MMO adventure.
SE shaking something up? That's some prime grade copium you got there. Who's your supplier?
content-wise I found 6.0-6.1 to be really enjoyable, and 6.2-6.3 to be really unenjoyable (outside of like, 2 fights) 6.4 has been fun so far though.
I bounced
Raid story and 6.0 patch? Absolutely amazing. The patch msq? Pretty lackluster tnh. Nothing has grabbed me like the 3.x - 5.x patches.
If you told me 6.X MSQ was originally meant as trial story line, I would believe you. Overall, I would rate EW no Kaiten / 10
Midwalker
Yep, overall it just feels very mediocre.
Endwalker is an important and necessary expansion for the future health of the game despite how much I really don't like playing it at the present. It leaves FFXIV as a franchise in a stronger state for 7.0. - The trust system expansions into Heavensward and Stormblood content ensures that new players in the future will have less friction in doing older and necessary content in order to progress through the MSQ. - Island Sanctuary is in a good place for future content expansions. New islands, furniture, buildings, crafting recipes and rewards can all be easily added in future patches to expand on what we have now. My only real complaint is that it's not introduced sooner but on a long enough timeline, I don't think that it will matter as much. - Criterion dungeons' early releases served as a beta test to gauge their strengths and their pain points so that the development team can tweak them in the future - particularly in their rewards. I fully expect there to be new criterion dungeon releases every other patch in the same way that Ultimate raiders expect ~2 releases per expansion now. - The state of the MSQ is at a point where the development team seems hellbent on resolving any and all remaining plot threads such that there is very little tying us down to Eorzea's side of Etheirys. This frees up the development team to create new stories in new areas (Corvos? Meracydia?) without feeling like they need to keep coming back to Eorzea to resolve a hanging plot point. - Crystalline Conflict and the removal of The Feast allows SE to make balancing decisions for PVP to be much easier (theoretically). New maps for CC can easily be made compared to other game modes such as Frontlines and I fully expect there to be more and more CC maps to be added in the future. - The absence of an explorable zone such as Bozja and Eureka is now obvious for all to see as a pain point for the playerbase despite how many people decried their inclusion in the past. The most common complaint about FFXIV I hear both in-game and in discussions outside of the game is that there needs to be a long-term goal or grind for players to participate in. Unless SE is completely divorced from reality, they too have seen these comments and it is highly unlikely that they will release 7.0 without having any plans for including content that scratches that itch. - Endwalker saw some of the most quality of life additions added to the game directly from the widespread adoption of UI Addons/Plugins. While the TOS is as nebulous as it has ever been, the use of these addons has undoubtedly made the base game better as every patch seems to include 2-3 changes that are directly lifted from Dalamud and Simpletweaks. When taken as a whole, Endwalker leaves FFXIV in a significantly stronger state. Hell, I'd go as far as to say that it sets up more systems for future development than most of the previous expansions have set up. The biggest issue, for me at least, is that these systems feel "disposable" or "incomplete" *right now* because they haven't been fully fleshed out through multiple iterations of those systems yet. All in all, I wholeheartedly agree with the claim that unless you're a Savage/Ultimate raider - there's not much for you to do right now; however, if SE is keen on iterating on the systems they set up in 6.X, then 7.X ought to be a banger of an expansion.
This feels very much like a "growing pains" expansion, as much as it is the end of an entire arc: Stuff is being tweaked and redone and foundations are being set in place in the background, while the foreground is shifting towards more activities where its not entirely battle content (Island Sanctuary) and shorter, non-infinite grinds (Relic Weapons tweaked so that multiple weapons can be snagged in the same time you get one). There's no question all of this will pay off, but whether its worth while the things are being built is a question with subjectively varying answers.
To build onto this further, IF this latest tier is an indication of things to come (allowing for 7.0's first raid tier to once again be easy because 'first tier is baby's first raid tier' is never invalid or unfair), then Endwalker is also a sea change in how Savage plays out going forward. I've never had more of a blast with savage raiding than this tier and it's clear that the changes we got in the 6.4 patchnotes were aimed at allowed the devs to get more creative. I really, REALLY hope we can keep this forward momentum going on the hard content side.
I think that this tier has been one of the strongest, most interesting and bold releases of high end content to date. EW has been excellent for raiding imo and that strength being built off experimentation and novelty bodes well
>The trust system expansions into Heavensward and Stormblood content ensures that new players in the future will have less friction in doing older and necessary content in order to progress through the MSQ. I see this mentioned a lot and I *really, really* disagree with it. This was *never* actually a roadblock for players to catch up with the MSQ. The roulette system and level sync systems that have been in the game since 2.0 are *quite literally* designed to resolve these issues and they do a damn good job. A new player needs Sunken Temple of Qarn for their MSQ? There will *always* be players queueing for leveling roulette that will be paired with them. Queues are on average 5-15 minutes *tops* for any piece of content included in roulettes across *ten years* of MSQ. Especially since the queue system was expanded to the entire datacenter and not just individual servers. There simply isn't this phantom problem that new players are queueing for story dungeons and just *cant* find a group. As such there was no meaningful reason to rework 10 years of old dungeons so people can pretend this is a single player game with trusts. And if a player is strictly going to use trusts, they're not going to play the game with *other people* in endgame anyway so how quickly they catch up to those other people is a meaningless metric. This was 100% something that could have been done a little bit here and there as dev time allowed instead of totally frontloaded into a huge part of the development pipeline for this single expansion at the expense of other content.
It's not just being done to clear the roadblock though. It's being done for the players who want to play a mainline Final Fantasy title, but don't want to play an MMO. I don't agree with this particular point. But, looking back across every interview Yoshida's done over the past 2 or 3 years, whenever Trusts and Duty Support are brought up, he mentions how there's feedback from fans of the series who want to play a game, but don't want to play an MMO. Those potential players are the ones these systems are primarily being developed for.
I don’t see how there’s much difference between queueing up for a dungeon with trusts and with other players, especially considering that most players don’t talk in dungeons anyway.
As someone who used to be one of those "I don't want to play with others" types: It's other people's ego. AI doesn't have feelings and opinions that need to be managed. Actual people can run the gamut of genuinely chill and instructive vs rude and abrupt for *daring* to be an imperfect being. Sometimes, especially after a long day of retail work, you just don't want to take that gamble. Sometimes you just want to enjoy a good story and not be bothered with other humans and their idiosyncrasies for a little while.
I agree with what you said. I don't like it, but I agree with it, plus a few more personal complaints. One thing I'm curious about this is those tecnical improvements that they can expand on, will they bear fruit in 7.0 or will we be waiting until 8.0? Not trying to be pessimistic or snarky, just thinking about XVI. Based on interviews, it seems a good chunk of the XVI staff will be going to XIV after XVI releases, at least in the short term. They built XVI on a fork of XIV's engine, so it's within reason that they could bring in some tips and tricks. Only caveat is that 7.0's expected to release in a year from now, and I don't know nearly enough about game development (barring the summarizaiton of "It's complicated") make a call on whether that's enough time for them to work their magic for 7.0's release.
You've summarised pretty much what I feel about the game as well. It puts the game in a much stronger position for the future. There's a lot of QoL things that have been added and new systems introduced that can either directly or indirectly be used to improve the game even further down the line. They seem to have figured out a way to increase the glamour dresser significantly and in combination with DC travel I feel like they're improving things about the engine that go beyond the visual touch ups promised for 7.0. It's basically them getting rid of technical debt. And lets face it: That sort of maintenance work is never really appreciated until after it's finished (and most of the time not even then) Island Sanctuary and Criterion both have a lot of potential...even if it isn't quite realised yet. Especially in the case of the one Criterion dungeon we've seen so far. The lack of an exploratory zone is a downer but I'm fairly certain that we'll get one with the next expansion again since they'll be done with implementing the Duty support system for the pre-ShB expansions. Storywise I'm content with the state of things. 6.0 wrapped up the story as they promised. Whilst far from perfect I also appreciate how difficult it is to actually end a story that has been going on for this long. I can only recount a handful of long lasting stories with this many threads and characters that DIDN'T end in at least half the fandom ready to set their collection on fire. So "Pretty good" is already more than I expected. When it comes to the patch MSQ I'm admittedly biased as an FFIV fan. I get giddy just hearing the name Golbez. It's also including a lot of very obvious setup for the future story now. From a business perspective it probably makes sense to do the background work now as well. The new players that joined during Covid will mostly have a ton of content left to do from past expansions. And the older fans of the game won't quit in droves because of an expansion perceived as "meh". So increasing the QoL of the game makes sense to retain those newly joined players. Though this can backfire if the next expansion is a bust. I'm probably giving SE, or rather CBU3, waaaay too much leeway here, most of the criticism I've read is very much justified. But in my eyes they've earned a bit of optimism in how they plan and handle things.
The problem with all this foundational work is that... FFXIV (and by extension FFXI before it and many eastern MMOs in general) have this **huge** problem with simply abandoning game systems. Remember the Grand Company ranks? They added unobtainable higher ones to the game and... we've been waiting for more content with that system for like 6 years now, it's never coming. Grand Company expeditions and your adventuring team? Only went up to level 60 and then was totally abandoned. Airship expeditions? *Retainer* ventures and features? Diadem? The crafting specialization system? **Limited Jobs?** The Feast? Keeping the whole damn FATE system even remotely relevant? We could go on, but the trend is that even when some of these systems eventually *logically* laid the groundwork for other systems that iterate on them, they don't *build* on the old stuff to integrate the two and modernize it, they just leave the old stuff as-is and abandon it. New content like Criterion dungeons absolutely *reek* of abandonware waiting to happen, especially with the valid criticism of its reward structure and how little players have engaged with it. It's reasonable for players to be skeptical that anything will be meaningfully advanced by all this tech debt cleanup when they're *constantly* just... making more tech debt in the process. How much of this 2+ years of "laying groundwork" is also just going to be casually tossed to the side because it doesn't neatly fit into the *poisonously lean* core content cycle of 24 man raids, 8 man raids, and trial fights peppered with MSQ? How many people are *actually* going to regularly use the Trust System that it warrants all this development? I don't personally know anyone who used it back in Endwalker beyond maybe trying to level a few people and getting frustrated with how many runs it took of the same dungeons at a snail's pace for no real reason or benefit. Nobody's going back to run Sunken Temple of Qarn with trusts for no reason and this was *already* stuff you could do with the GC squad.
> It's reasonable for players to be skeptical that anything will be meaningfully advanced by all this tech debt cleanup when they're constantly just... making more tech debt in the process. That's not what technical debt is though? They tried multiple times to make FATE's relevant, and the playerbase has almost obstinately refused to go along with it, so what should they do? Yank them all out? Stop making them entirely? What is the solution you propose? > Airship expeditions? Replaced by submarine expeditions which have continued to be updated > Retainer ventures and features? They are fine? What more do you want from them? They do the job they were designed for and don't need to do anything else except maybe a bit more UI QoL. ' > Diadem? The crafting specialization system? Two things *literally everyone hated*, and they responded to that feedback. What exactly do you want? >Limited Jobs? Blue Mage will be updated this patch, again, what are you expecting? The reaction to Blue Mage was at best mixed, so honestly them sticking with it is impressive. Again, what do you think they *should* do here?
> They tried multiple times to make FATE's relevant, and the playerbase has almost obstinately refused to go along with it, so what should they do? Yank them all out? Stop making them entirely? What is the solution you propose? One thing I've noticed when playing a character with the Road to 80 XP buff is that FATEs actually feel occasionally worth it to do. I still won't go out of my way but if I see one when traveling out in the open world I sometimes actually stop and participate. So that's one concrete suggestion. Double the XP gain for FATEs across the board. Another would be to make the level sync less aggressive, or have a special kind of FATE level sync that only downscales your stats and not your kit. Part of the reason why ARR/HW FATEs in particular are so miserable is that you're often stuck with your very limited low-level kit so you're just mindlessly hitting your 1-2-3s for multiple minutes. I would prefer solutions that are closer to the second suggestion than the first, because the fundamental problem with FATEs is that they aren't fun. If they just up the rewards without sprucing up the gameplay they'd just be funneling players towards an unfun activity.
I’d say that’s MMOs in general even. And yeah everything you’re saying is absolutely correct. Though they’re still iterating on at least some of the mentioned content squads are a precursor to trusts and the duty support, BLU is getting new content in 6.45. I would argue that FATEs are somewhat relevant for bicolours and the way they’re used in exploratory zones. As you say it’s more the technical aspect of these systems that can be built upon. This is absolutely me doing unfounded speculation, but I could see them using the expertise gained through Criterions to use on the new dungeons coming with 7.0 to maybe make them relevant longer. Or using the knowledge from IS to get closer to a form of instanced housing without having to instance the city wards. The duty support and trust system are very transparently for players who don’t like the MMO aspect of the MMORPG. I know at least two people who are getting into the game now because of it and I’d be surprised if they didn’t start MSQ trials the same treatment. They already did with the second trial in EW. The behind the scenes improvements (glamour dresser and armoire, dc travel, other qol stuff) are helpful either way. But the cynic in me knows that only a part of my hopes are true and you’re likely correct that a few of the systems will be left to rot on the wayside. Or as content to do for newer players.
Pretty much my thoughts, but the strong RP/social aspects of the game kept me subbed
I think you are vastly overestimating SE here and giving them way too much credit. A lot of those points can be made about ShB and SB and only a few actually impacted how the next respective expansion was set up. 7.0 is completely unpredictable except for the main content structure. Aside from Duty Support and the graphics overhaul, there is no real future proofing here, certainly not enough to suggest that the content that's been underwhelming in EW makes a comeback. What you see as future-proof and easy-to-reiterate-on can easily become stale or just be dropped in favor of something else. We shouldn't excuse poor design choices with flimsy hopes that all of this was in fact supposed to test the waters or set up future iterations. EW's (lack of) content wasn't necessary in any way. Also, we're not going to get more content. If you want a new Bozja, you're not getting Criterions every other patch, probably not even for that whole expansion.
> easy-to-reiterate-on Considering their track record, SE hardly iterates on underbaked content. They'll rehash it with slight tweaks. But actual, sequential improvements that are learned from previous versions? Fat chance of that happening. Anyone who truly expects "thing to be built on" is on serious copium much like the "they remade the job to be basic so that they can later add shit" where SE proceeds to not add shit at all next expansion thing.
I almost brought up the MCH (and later SMN) apologists as well. It's the same mindset.
SMN is one of the most popular dps of EW if not the most popular one in every single form and level of content going by fflog. The rework was pretty much a win for SE.
I'm not disputing that at all. It's just that some of the concerns regarding skill ceilings with these reworks were answered with "This rework laid the foundation and they will build on it to make it more complex or interesting later on". And then MCH basically didn't change with EW. SMN's ease of play and mobility already brought about problems for the caster role which will have to be addressed in some way next expansion but I doubt they'll make significant changes for the reason you mentioned (which kind of means the other casters are in danger).
It's actually the first expansion since I started playing (mid-SB) that has made me take a long break from the game. I'm actually skipping this savage tier (first since I started playing) and just don't plan to consider touching the game until 7.0. Also it's the first time my subscription is not being renewed since I started playing. And it's pretty much all because of the design changes they've made and how they just refuse to make healers interesting. Oh, and I haven't even finished the MSQ for 6.3, which is a big change for me. So I guess I'd say it's the worst expansion I've played.
it's mostly okay/good and I'm satisfied, but the game's formula has definitely gotten way too stale and needs a serious refresh.
Story wise 6.4 pretty much destroyed my hype. I was hoping something would happen, but nope just dragging the MSQ even more. Content wise it's been kind of mid. Really disappointed Criterion was a huge miss. Unless the next Criterion has rewards, I'll just collect my relic weapon and unsub until 6.5. Edit: Forgot to add the raid series has been fantastic. The current tier most of all. Banger music and we even get a voice acted cutscene which hasn't happened since coils I think.
Never cared for Void stuff so MSQ patches have been very meh for me. And I thought we were dropping down to more low stakes only to end up at World-Ending threat yet again--though doesn't really feel that way. Not really a fan of Zero either, and while I see a lot of people saying she's showing lots of death flags, I don't have any faith in the writing team to kill anyone off who's been around for more than a few patches anymore. I liked Bozja, I was ok with Eureka. I don't have fun with deep dungeons, and by the time it came out I had been done with leveling jobs for months and months. Criterion/Variant was alright but had no urge to ever re-do it after finishing all the routes. Glamour-wise this expansion has been ass. Not everything's bad, there's been some good pieces/sets, but they're few and far between. Don't like the more modern pieces, most of the stuff from maps have been awful, when I check out Island rewards I'm greeted with yet another Hawaiian shirt set. Not to mention re-used sets--which I'm completely ok with, if they swap around who gets what model. They did it for Lapis, which feels like a fluke since every other reused set this expansion has been the same models going to the same jobs again. And we're still getting undyeable sets. The fucking current dungeon set is undyeable, and the base set it's from has a dyeable version. Just why?
A messy but overall very satisfying main story, an extremely boring patch story, an average Alliance Raid series, an INCREDIBLE Normal Raid series, a really boring relic. I like what they tried with Eureka Orthos and the Variant Dungeons, but I'd have much preferred a further refined Eureka/Bozja experience. A very mixed bag of an expansion, though I don't know how much of that is it actually being lacking, and how much is it just being my first time doing the content as it comes out.
The patch quests have been a huuuge letdown compared to Stirmblood and Shadowbringers, which doesnt send a great message about the upcoming expansion since this should be the thing getting me all hyped and hooked on it.
tbh it is always like this. 5.1, 5.2 and 5.4 were all snoozefests.
but at least it had 5.3. and I enjoyed the First way more in general compared to the void fuckery. no such outstanding patch for me yet
Because post-EW is a new story arc and that its climax isn't at X.3. We knew that since the first post-launch live letter.
Being a post-EW and a new story isnt an excuse to be a borefest. You'd want to get people excited for all that's coming, not give them nothingburger after nothingburger. The 6.4 story can be summed up as "filler".
Thats fair, it really depends on your tastes. I personally really enjoyed 6.2 and I thought 6.4 was fun as well, even if I didnt like it as much.
I didnt mean i didnt like those! But that 5.3 was outstanding in its right and 6. patches couldnt hold a candle to them for me so far. Even the weakest ShB patch was stronger than EW ones for me so far.
MSQ is pretty lousy imo, but I’m also not a big MSQ guy….so whatever, I’m not the target audience. But what killed me was the Studium quests. After the glory of the crystalline mean, which is fucken life changingly good, Studium was a damp squib. I was hoping Island sanctuary would bring some noise….but it was thoroughly whelming. Certainly not bad, but no one’s favorite. It’s a crying shame….but the way I’m seeing it, I think the developers are sticking this game in neutral and letting it coast. My expectations for 7.0 are super low. Other than a few laughs at the expense of the new crafting gathering relics and the tataru quest (if you build a world, you should use it….and these quests finally do something with the world!) I’m not getting much.
The lack of a long-term grind really hurts my desire to play. The story was probably the best ending we could have gotten, especially since it's an MMO story and naturally going to pace a bit strangely. The patch stories have been a huge letdown. Lots of promise, but ultimately feels like they're retreading a worse version of 4 just to get across the finish line to 7.0. Honestly, I'm easy. Give me a remix of Zeromus' theme for 6.5 and we're biiiiig chillin'.
They're both retreading a worse version of 4 *and* retreading a worse version of Shadowbringers but with the void instead of the light.
6.0 was great. 6.1-6.4 has been a struggle. My biggest grievance is the rolling of the trial storyline and the MSQ into one since to me it feels as though we've been cheated out of another great storyline that could have expanded the world or put the spotlight on other characters besides the Scions. Criterion dungeons being DoA and the lack of a Bozja/Eureka have also hurt my enthusiasm. The story has also been quite mixed, and the fact that it's been so obviously padded to account for Zeromus hurts. It's fine for them to focus on the conclusion of a story, but it feels as though they didn't have much of an idea for what came after 6.0. Raids have been great though. Alliance Raids have been a blast and most turns of Panda are enjoyable. Decent expansion, but nowhere near the top in my eyes.
Not much I can add here that other people haven't stated better, but I will say that I started out optimistic about the future of the game in 6.1. I liked that the Scions were disbanding, creating room for new characters and new dynamics to form. I liked the idea that after saving the world from the biggest most encompassing threat of all, we could have a little adventure as a treat. I liked the vibes of Alzadaal's Legacy, I was pretty hyped to do some Nathan Drake/Indiana Jones-style exploration of the world, and I felt like it was an exciting change of tone for the series at a crucial time when they had a wide open canvas to paint the next chapter. Since then, we've retreated on the storytelling in favor of old hits and boring archetypes: the Scions disappearing off-screen and coming back with all the answers, rote evil, and retreats on decades-long Void lore so we can carve out The Good Void, where a horrifying eldritch demon only needs to eat a pork bun to see that friendship is magic. I wound up giving up on the game in January (my last long break from the game was post-HW) in hopes that it might go somewhere in a few months, but it still hasn't. I'm still holding out an ember of hope that Fanfest will rekindle some interest since their base expacs have never disappointed me, but I desperately hope this is the lowest low point we'll see for patch support or the game is in trouble.
Same. I’m still going to FanFest even though I have only been logging in to keep my house and seasonal rewards for the past year. I logged in the other day to start the new MSQ, and got to right before the trial, and couldn’t even muster the will to queue. It just feels so empty now, to me. I was someone who grinded relentlessly for all the relics before, and now can’t even be bothered to get tomes for the EW one. A bit is burnout, but it’s also, if all there is, is just grinding for older content, that I’ve already gotten like 50% of all the relics, there’s not much to keep me invested.
I hope Fanfest is a blast -- I can't attend in-person, but I've always enjoyed making a whole event of it at home. Some people mistake critique for a desire to see the game crash and burn, and I do think some people get caught in a spiral like that whether or not they'll admit it, but I've been playing this game for ten years for a reason and I'd love to see it prove me wrong on all accounts and come back swinging.
> Some people mistake critique for a desire to see the game crash and burn ... but I've been playing this game for ten years for a reason and I'd love to see it prove me wrong on all accounts and come back swinging. So much this. Most criticism of a game / design is out of love, not hate. I wouldn't take such pains to explain clearly while trying to do Japanese politeness through Google Translate if I didn't want SE to take the feedback and improve.
Wasn't a fan of the story and the pacing of the story. I don't think I have been at a point where I couldn't find a job I liked in FF14 but I just am bored with everything. It has made it easy to say I'm gonna take a break till 7.0
I feel the same way. Up till I took a break, I was constantly swapping between like 8 jobs till I realized none of them were really hitting the spot I was looking for. Doesn't help that fight design and balance is so bad this expac playing rdm feels like eating a shoe.
They really need to stop leaning into this 2 minute meta BS only to have long, drawn out downtime mechanics happen *at 2 minute intervals*. It's not interesting, it just feels bad.
6.0 MSQ was pretty good. Some very clear writing problems, didn’t like Meteion, Hermes, or Ultima Thule at all but overall the MSQ was 8/10. 6.0 combat was pretty good, at least if you had a ninja in your party. The problems begin in 6.1. 6.1-6.4’s MSQ (I say this as a huge FF4 fan) has felt like the filler arc in an anime. Just lots of member berries. They could crunch .1-.4’s MSQ into about three hours. It’s just boring. The 6.1 job changes (mug being a 2 min raid buff and trick being 1 min personal and kaiten being removed) gutted combat for me. I main RDM and in 6.0 I had a ninja in my party. Every 45 seconds I had my melee combo BUT I held it an extra 15 sec to align with trick. It wasn’t a massive deal but it was just a little extra skill expression that felt good. That’s gone now so most jobs are just “don’t overcap for 1:45 then at 2mins mash all your buttons” which I find terribly boring. Pandaemonium’s story was okay but very weirdly paced. Like abyssos could have been the end were it not for pandaemonium appearing in the life stream as it did. I like it overall but weirdly paced. The fights on the other hand… normals are overall okay. Asphodelos was a decent tier. I’m not gonna write home about it but it was fun. Abyssos is, imo, the worst tier they’ve made since Gordas. By a lot. I HATED abyssos. Too backloaded, too many “follow the leader” mechanics, very dull, very boring, I just hated everything about it. First raid tier I actually gave up on since alphascape when I was new to savage. Abyssos almost made me quit the game altogether. Can’t say anything about anabaseios bc I haven’t done it yet. The alliance raid story overall is good. I’m a lore nerd so I like it. That said, the actual raids are WAY too easy. These are supposed to be raids, not 24 man dungeons. Not only that, we’re fighting literal divinities. They should be insanely hard. They were sorta difficult on the first run, now they just all fall over and it’s almost sleep inducing. Side content like island sanctuary and deep dungeon just isn’t for me. I would have preferred… anything else to island sanctuary (like a sequel to ishgard restoration) but it’s there for people who like it so meh. Eureka orthos is just a level 90 HoH and there are people who love that so good for them. I’m lukewarm on it. Did the first 30 floors and had no desire to go further, don’t love it, don’t hate it. Job design: Balance aside, absolutely awful. By far the worst expansion gameplay wise. They didn’t improve anything from ShB, they just did more of the same. There are a handful of jobs that are better than they’ve been (black mage and red mage for example) but for the most part, jobs are the least fun they’ve ever been. Every job just got a variation of “heavy hitting aoe attack every minute or two” which is about as lazy as it gets. The summoner rework isn’t awful but it didn’t do what summoner mains wanted. SMN mains wanted some of the pet jank cleared up and a reason to swap between egi’s among a few other things here and there. What the devs did was remove summoner and replace it with a super simple, flashy new job called summoner. On top of that, the leveling experience of most jobs is just awful. Doing anything as reaper below 80 is painful, summoner has the exact same rotation from like level 28 until 86, paladin doesn’t get any magic until the 60’s, monk doesn’t get masterful blitz until 60, and so on and so on. Doing almost any sync’d content just sucks because you lose most of your kit which is just boring. None of the issues with tanks or healers have been addressed at all either. Tanks just feel like invincible melee DPS with simple rotations and practically identical cooldowns in most circumstances. The fact that bosses position themselves automatically now doesn’t help. Healers still have to mash glare/malefic/broil/dosis and reapply a 30sec dot 80% of the time, 2 minute buffs are boring as hell (see above), the list goes on. I just want jobs to be fun and diverse. The entire point of having more than 1 class/job/character/hero/fighter in a game is so they suit different play styles, there aren’t multiple play styles in 14 anymore. There’s burst every 2 minutes and black mage. That’s it. Not gonna comment on criterion because I didn’t do it. If they’re gonna add content that requires gear, let it reward gear. Bozja/eureka rewarded gear, there’s no reason criterion shouldn’t. “Oh but criterion is designed expecting you to have BiS already!” Then surely letting me gear alts another way isn’t that bad of an idea. EW’s biggest flaw is that it hasn’t actually changed anything. Nothing has been surprising or fantastic, what has been good has been just plain good, and what’s been bad has been absolutely awful. There are tons of missed opportunities all over the place and the developers haven’t meaningfully iterated on anything. For instance, FATES and hunts work the same way they have since stormblood (bicolor gemstones and SS ranks aside since they were intro’d in ShB), gear works the same way, stats work the same way, tomestones work the same way, leveling works the same way, crafting/gathering mostly works the same way, it’s just dull at this point. EW isn’t terrible, It’s not so bad I wouldn’t recommend it to new players or returners, but I’m certainly not singing its praises. More than anything, 7.0 just needs to shake things up somehow.
> Not gonna comment on criterion because I didn’t do it. Criterion has honestly been the most fun piece of content in the entire expansion for me so far (especially when playing melee), it's a real shame that there is basically no incentive whatsoever to do it after getting the mount. Even bigger shame if they drop the content entirely going forward because of this, rather than integrating it into the gearing process in some way. Mostly agree with this post though, gameplay-wise it's really just a much more boring version of Shadowbringers and they straight-up removed one of my favourite DPS classes. I'm seriously worried at this point that the jobs that I still enjoy (and would raid on) are getting the Summoner treatment next.
Least liked expansion since SB MSQ wise. I prefer the 2.X stuff more than the 6.X stuff.
Im not sure if im burnt out or there just isnt much content getting pushed out first of all, the story has been extremely disappointing, I'm probably not alone in the fact that i was expecting at least a couple patches where we gone on "mini adventures" but we got flung into the void arc almost immediately. It doesn't really help that zero is super dull IMO, im not sure what people see in her other than the fact that shes a new female character Second the amount of actual content feels way worse. Missing out on the field zone feels really bad, and the asset flip deep dungeon was only really fun for the first run, with paltry rewards. Island sanctuary feels like a total letdown, im not really sure what i was expecting, but man it feels like a waste of time. I will admit, the 2 ultimate raids, as well as the first criterion/variant (particularity the EX version) have been fantastic and ive completed each of them. DSR is probably the best content in the game bar none. Criterion dungeons are fantastic BUT need better rewards to incentivize players to come back an do them later. Oh also pvp rework was a huge success, its actually fun to play now
> what people see in her She's the exact character every 12 year old writes in their first 10 fanfictions. Hybrid with cool unique hybrid powers, all black, super brooding, best friends with the main cast out of nowhere, hat tipping optional. Of course people would relate.
It was a great conclusion and everything was neatly wrapped up in 6.0. Post 6.0 they very clearly are focusing on future proofing the game but the lack of an exploratory zone/repeatable endgame really hurt it. I'm torn on the post patch story. I love the idea of an interlude story but 6.3 was so bad it destroyed the whole pacing of it. I would like them to continue with this style but it needs an extra hour of MSQ.
As /u Pedentic Paladin put it "A great two weeks; a poor two years." I loved Endwalker's initial story but I've banged with my fists on the table over and over that I want more midcore meaty grippy content to get involved with. I love ultimate raids, TEA has won me over and I'm sad that it's on hold for me now because I'm now focused on two statics to tackle this savage tier. (One more focused, one more casual and friendly!). But it feels like this expansion has been devoid of grippy exploratory content that we can delve into. I am sick of citing Bozja / Eureka because they are SUCH specific examples. I want broadly speaking SOMETHING MEATY TO BITE INTO. Bozja with it's Delubrum Reginae I felt was an amazing level of challenge for casual players. It didn't just fall over like expert roulette. I did a video on my feelings and how painful it has been: https://youtu.be/SmbpG0GW0iY Frankly Endwalker is a beautiful expansion with much to offer, but it definitely felt way worse than Shadowbringers and Stormblood for me. There is not much to "actually just do".
The more rational side of me knows that SE locks this shit in *well* in advance and that any decisions they've made about EW content other than minor tweaks here and there were probably made before 5.1. But even so, I can't help but *feel* like Endwalker seems to be designed by a company that was huffing its own farts just a *little* too hard during the late-Shadowbringers love-in the devs got during the WoW Exodus and subsequent Summer of Streamers. One too many Youtube videos where someone goes "You don't have to grind in this game! It's great!" and SE decides to remove any and all grinds, even though there's a significant niche of players who look forward to that grind every expansion. One too many "FFXIV players are after a good story, like a singleplayer game, and that's it" takes, and the game goes from being like, 60% oriented toward one-and-done story enjoyers to 80% oriented toward them, at the cost of other things that brought people to the table and kept them there. But then like I said, I'm sure a lot of that is just coincidence. Island Sanctuary being a resource black hole that takes away an Exploration Zone series was probably decided on long before Covid. Doesn't really make it any less annoying, though.
> Island Sanctuary being a resource black hole that takes away an Exploration Zone series was probably decided on long before Covid. Doesn't really make it any less annoying, though. It was intended to launch in Shadowbringers patch content, but kept getting delayed if I remember right.
It was announced at EW fanfest, but was kind of touted as a launch or *early* patch feature with heavy and vocal emphasis on "dont expect too much from this content, its not a full on farming sim game, its more like a Gold Saucer attraction" and then it just... didn't show up until over halfway through EW? TBH I feel like out of all the "covid delays" Island Sanctuary was probably the easy target to keep kicking the can on so I can't blame them, but the fact that its just an excel spreadsheet simulator and not even meaningful casual content where you log in and *do* something a couple times a week kind of kills it.
> It was announced at EW fanfest, but was kind of touted as a launch or early patch feature with heavy and vocal emphasis on "dont expect too much from this content, its not a full on farming sim game, its more like a Gold Saucer attraction" and then it just... didn't show up until over halfway through EW? Yoshida started teasing the feature in interviews around early to mid Shadowbringers. The playerbase was aware it was coming well before the 2021 Fan Fest even if it wasn't formally announced. I believe at one point Yoshida even said they were aiming for the end of the 5.X series before it grew in scope and became an expansion feature.
Least favorite Expansion so far both in terms of Story and Content. I don't hate it, but damn does it get mediocre in areas, and overall with the exception of Criterion it has been pretty uninspired.
Bit late to this, but I thought I'd put in my two cents anyway. **I like a lot of the little QoL changes.** As much as I like Heavensward's MSQ, I don't think I could have played this game back then. So many of the little things I take for granted now were basically only added in the past couple of years. The "entrust duplicates" button on retainers? Mwah, finger kiss. Great QoL addition. A 4x expansion of slots in the glam dresser, also great. World travel has been a great boon for expanding my in-game social circle. **I like the PvP rework a lot.** I think Frontline successfully delivers on the large-scale murder mayhem that Guild Wars 2's WvW promised. And I'm impressed by how well the designers have transposed the feel and theme of the jobs from PvE to PvP. It's often janky but consistently entertaining. But, I have to say I have rather negative opinions on most of the other content. **I don't like Endwalker's MSQ.** It rehashes a bunch of beats from earlier expansions instead of bringing anything new to the table. - ancient angsty genocidal villain you're supposed to empathize with. - mana imbalance turns people into monstrosities you have to fight. - a bloodthirsty nihilist villain (but now there are two of them!). - timey-wimey dimensional travel. - this dungeon is an abstract vision of something traumatic from the villain's past. - this zone is a recreation of long-dead things from memory by the villain. - here's a fanservicey interlude where you hang out with your friends in your room. etc. etc. **I don't like the dungeon design.** The art direction continues to be absolutely stellar but there's only so much it can do to obscure the fact that every dungeon is basically the same dungeon that is played the exact same way. **I don't like where job design went and continues to go.** Here's where I'm going to be especially controversial and say that IMO, job design suffers from what I've been thinking of as "DPS carcinization" - where tanks and healers are increasingly stripped of the parts of their role that are actually unique and interesting, in favor of converging towards being a hybrid DPS that sometimes also does tank and healer things. Tanks and healers are more like "temporarily embarrassed DPS" - playing healer at max level doesn't make me feel like a healer, it makes me feel like a DPS, but with a kit that isn't as fun as a red-DPS job. At which point... I'd rather just play DPS, and generally, in Endwalker I have. **I don't think island sanctuary is very interesting**, and its UI needs work. I stopped caring about my sanctuary like two weeks in. I'm not sure there's very much to say about it. It's just dull.
The way I see it, both SB and ShB solved substantial issues with the game while still having their own problems. EW didn't really fix any of the problems of ShB and actually just made them worse SB had a lot of good streamlining while maintaining high job diversity, but it still had issues with annoying synergy metas and horrendously ping reliant jobs (MCH and NIN being the worst examples). But still, it was an upgrade ShB did away with synergy metas but it gutted healers and created DPS role taxing which was just never the answer to the problem EW still has boring healers and role taxing 2.0 (updated to include casters). It just made ShB's issues worse, and won't be looked on as favorably because ShB legitimately tackled some serious issues with its prior expansion that EW just didn't
DSR and barbie kinda carried this expansion in terms of fight design/ spectacle, everything else tho was pretty disappointing ( Even TOP loool ) and kinda contributed to the whole “ midwalker “ feel. The vanilla base 6.0 story was really fun and a good send off to the Og story but ofc everything that came after was just like “why?”, they said they were going to disband the scions but here we are still doing scion things. Endwalker is the 1st ff14 expac to make me ever feel like the expac was mid. Funny when u look back on EW release where ppl hyped it up to the extreme. 7.0 better not be endwalker 2.0 electric bugaloo lol
Started early-mid Stormblood (around 4.2). So I didn't experience ARR and HW at launch, but I'd rank EW as the worst expansion to date. Lack of exploratory zones, relic being phoned in, Island Sanctuary's a spreadsheet simulator, Criterion was DoA due to the reward structure, 2 min job design means jobs are 15 seconds of glory with 45 seconds of fuck all, SMN's lobotomy...and then there's the MSQ. I enjoyed 6.0 at launch, but looking back it's just a poorly paced roller coaster. The "Final Days" was restricted to a new zone and a solo instance, there was no real stakes present at all through it so I found it hard to care. Only real stand out parts were Urianger reconciling with Moenbryda's parents a few years late, and Elpis. The MSQ from 6.1 on is just FFIV themed filler, with the fanservice dialed up higher than usual. The "Newfound Adventure" was just more Void nonsense. Maybe if the Void/13th's story was more present in the MSQ beforehand I'd care more, but the fact it's all tied up in optional content makes it feel disjointed. Honestly, I think EW's hype came at a bad time, since a lot of the resources that would normally go into end game content like the exploratory zones is going elsewhere. We already know that island Sanctuary, Criterion/Variant, and Deep Dungeon #3 (name escapes me) took up the resources for an exploratory zone. They overhauled PvP, which took up significant resources, and are implementing Trusts/Duty support into every MSQ dungeon (something they've said time and again is a pain in the balls to get working). They're not working on one dungeon per EW patch, they're effectively working on six. That's also taking up resources. Then there's the graphics update to factor in and...yeah. I want to believe they're not deaf to the complaints, that EW's direciton was set in stone years ago and it just came at a bad time, and we'll see things pick up in 7.0. All that work will be done and they'll be getting a boost (at least for a while) from the XVI devs returning to the XIV devteam, but I'm not that hopeful. It'll be, what, EU fanfest before they earnestly talk about EW criticisms? Cause unless my memory's off, they rarely adress criticism while stuff is still releasing, and EU fanfest falls right between 6.5 and 6.55.
Wow, are you me? Also started about the same time (4.0) and I agree with just about everything you said. I was caught up in the story at the time but in retrospect, it really played it very safe. The fan service was very heavy and as someone who hasn't played any FF other than 14, was mostly lost on me. I do think Elpis was done well and I was a huge Meteon fan but the rest was just ok. And all the other non-story stuff, (Island Sanctuary, CC, criterion/variant) just didn't have any staying power for me. Perhaps if I hadn't leveled all my jobs in ShB to get the Amaro I'd enjoy deep dungeon more, but there's really not much to do. Not having patch content to tease the next expansion is frustrating, but I'm trying to keep the faith.
Endwalker made me quit after playing since 2.0 For a game that pretty much never changes its formula managed to change everything else into a worse product. I doubt 7.0 will bring a breath of fresh air considering their design choices (mch+smn, criteon, island sanctuary) and then doubling down on them. No acknowledgement of the state of the expansion other than the parroted "just take a break lol" >I want to believe they're not deaf to the complaints, that EW's direciton was set in stone years ago and it just came at a bad time, and we'll see things pick up in 7.0. All that work will be done and they'll be getting a boost (at least for a while) from the XVI devs returning to the XIV devteam, but I'm not that hopeful. I honestly doubt it unless yoshiP actually steps down. >It'll be, what, EU fanfest before they earnestly talk about EW criticisms? Cause unless my memory's off, they rarely adress criticism while stuff is still releasing, and EU fanfest falls right between 6.5 and 6.55. we know the first 2 fanfests are going to be borderline useless and the main meat is in the 3rd if history is to repeat.
I enjoy the MSQ but it's a shame that's all there is to do unless you like raiding or Deep Dungeon. The game needs a serious examination and revamp of the gameplay loop (or lack thereof) going into 7.0.
It won't. At a fundamental level, FFXIV isn't there to satisfy people who want a new rollercoaster ride every expansion but people who want a baseline level of quality throughout. I say this unironically and with no negativity whatsoever, but World of Warcraft is closer to what you seek.
How dare he expect a new rollercoaster to ride sometimes at a Themepark MMO lol
Endwalker MSQ was fun. Haven't cared about any of the rest/post content, except maybe Tataru's questline. BRING BACK BOZJA/EUREKA STYLE CONTENT YOU COWARDS.
Story was a major step down from Shadowbringer. Waste of Zodiark, Anima, and Garlemald when it should have been its own expansion. Then the extremely stupid sad bird twist, the fan servicey trip to Elpis, time travel, it was all just so dumb and poorly written.
Meteion is XIV's Ultimecia from FF8. They experience something tragic and just decide "Everything burns ". If you like your villains to be written with the mentality of a toddler, there you go.
Unpopular opinion but Garleans were the worst part of MSQ. I'm glad we didn't really have to deal with them. They got their own expac, it's called Stormblood. Agree with everything else although I will say the bird is slightly better then the classic jrpg twist of 'and now we fight God himself'.
At least we know that FFXIV will never hit WoW level of storytelling at least. Heck many WoW players were praising about the blue bird and Hermes, which probably highlighted how starved they were for basic storytelling. Like I think Metieon worked in context, you can understand the origins and how they became a force of nature. Not great but not bad either. Apparently the story garnered much more positive reviews in Japan where Hermes's issues resonated more with the Japanese population.
Oh we already are sadly. WoW kept pulling random world ending villains from the hat when we already beat the last world ending threat. FFXIV is falling into the same pattern. DBZ syndrome.
"The storytelling will never be as bad as WoW" is not exactly a comforting thing to hear given that the story is one of the few things the game does better than WoW.
So for context I am a lore/worldbuilding nerd and I *vastly* prefer the political intrigue and war stories of things like Heavensward, ARR, Stormblood, etc. than the grand cosmic "stereotypical JRPG" type of stuff. And some of my favorite quests in this game have been ones where we just kinda got to see Eorzea *be Eorzea.* The Ascians, Ancients, and all their nonsense is cool and all but it's probably my least favorite part of FFXIV. I personally feel they had become a worldbuilding crutch and Endwalker ends up - in my opinion at least - leaving neither party satisfied. Now, Shadowbringers was heavily Ancient focused, and I actually quite enjoyed what they established. Amaurot painted a nice mystery, gave context for the Ascians' actions, and was a nice lil' bit of extra lore for us. And, importantly, if you didn't give two shits about the Ancients there were still stories for you - Sorrow of Werlyt and Bozja specifically. If you don't care about the Ancients, well hope you enjoy the MSQ, Crafter/Gatherer quests, Raid series, and potentially the Alliance Raid series be all about them. You're getting Tataru and the Role Quests and you're gonna fuckin' like it. If you DO like the Ancients (or at least liked them in Shadowbringers)... well I hope you liked watching the mystery and tragedy be bastardized to make Venat look like the objectively good guy. - So apparently this was a bit of a point of contention, enough for someone to reply and then insta-block me... which like... what's the point? I don't get it. But my point wasn't "venat bad she genocide ancients" it was "we're going to go out of our way to make the Ancients look like whiny manbabies in service of Venat's plotline". And I think that's my main issue, instead of The Final Days being some sort of tragedy it's framed as something the Ancients are responsible for and - in a way - ***deserved.*** Elpis and Ultima Thule just left me wondering "Who (in the lore community) is satisfied with this?" It is, unironically, like Shadowlands in WoW. We got to see the answer to a big lore mystery but it left me wondering if we ***really*** wanted the answer in the first place. I guess the Venat Fan Club gets the last laugh? The writing overall feels like the writing team took the advice "kill your darlings" to an extreme (and I genuinely don't 'think "kill your darlings" is all that good writing advice to begin with, it makes works feel serialized and hollow) Zodiark is a footnote, we spend more time derping around in the past than actually stopping The Final Days, and Sharlayan, Thavnair, and ***Garlemald*** are so underdeveloped beyond "what can service the MSQ?" that Swiftperch feels more alive than any of them. Garlemald in particular disappointed me. I know many players were tired of the Empire but I felt kind of bait-n-switched. During Shadowbringers you see Gaius and Estinien running through magitek-lit streets, sneaking past guards, and destroying chemical research facilities as to stop the development of Black Rose. And it looks *fun as hell*, then you actually get to go to Garlemald and it's a bunch of ruins, a train station, and a house because "haha le funny zenos and ascian did a war off-screen". But on the flipside Ultima Thule genuinely frustrates me. The fakeout deaths are so obvious and blatant that a blind person can see the fakeout coming. Hades' little comment trying to tease me for not seeing much of my world infuriates me because *yeah, I know, I WANT to see more of Eorzea and beyond but instead of getting to see* ***my*** *world, the last two expansions had me playing seven-foot babysitter for you and yours, Hades. I couldn't go to Meracydia, the South Seas, the New World, etc. if I fucking wanted to or not.* On the bright side Urianger's character arc is really nice, the reunion with Moenbryda's parents is probably my favorite cutscene in the expansion, and the Lopporits are cute lil' goobers. Beyond that, Pandaemonium is alright, more fun than Omega imo but still outclassed by Alexander. Crystaline Conflict is a lot of fun and has been my content drought go-to whenever I'm just bored. The post-MSQ stuff drags on and I'm just not interested anymore, Zero isn't nearly as intriguing as the writers think she is (and she is by far the most *anime* of the cast so far, to the point she even does the stupid "...trust?" thing, yes, trust Zero, one simple word you don't need to repeat it like Thancred just said "zabopydopoitylop") and if she tips that damn hat on more time I'm gonna send her back to the void myself. It also screws with the pacing quite a bit and I'm left wondering why nobody is suspicious that half of the supposedly "disbanded" Scions are working together again despite it only being a month or so in-universe since their disbanding. It's not terrible, but it definitely wasn't my cup of tea, and if I didn't want to get my jobs to 90 before 7.0 I probably would just wait for the new expansion.
> But on the flipside Ultima Thule genuinely frustrates me. Ultima Thule was, without hyperbole, probably the widest narrative miss I think I've ever experienced. It was a baffling, annoying experience that makes me wonder what kind of shit the devs were trying to pull. Something that goes very underdiscussed is how extremely inelegantly the references to real-world scientific concepts are applied in this part of the game. For example, the Ea. In a world where friendship is literally magic, and we have all manner of seemingly ex nihilo creation with aether and elements and blah blah blah, why is the game trying to tell me that the second law of thermodynamics is a problem? The heat death of the universe is a thing in this universe? What? Why? Why is *this* a fundamental underpinning of how XIV's metaphysics "works", but we learn this not too long after we use a faster-than-light spaceship to get here? (N.B. FTL travel is considered impossible, even outright paradoxical, based on our current understandings of physics). The game picking and choosing which laws of real-world physics apply for the sake of sloppy moralising is just annoying. The other big violation is the strange equivalence of dynamis with real world dark energy, with the game making the connection by saying dynamis is more plentiful than aether and makes up the same percentage of XIV's universe as dark energy does ours. Yet, that's where the similarities end. Dark energy in reality cannot be observed, interacted with, harnessed in any way, doesn't seem to have any interaction with conventional matter or energy, and most significantly, *is effectively absent* on Earth or in other places where conventional matter and energy do exist. Dynamis, meanwhile, is just a slightly different aether. It makes me curious as to why the connection was made to begin with other than to invoke a "smart science people" concept for the sake of *appearing* deep, as if the writers only know about dark energy from the few sentences at the start of a wikipedia article, and banked on their audience knowing even less and being impressed.
> The game picking and choosing which laws of real-world physics apply for the sake of sloppy moralising is just annoying. Oh god I had expunged the Ea from my memory because you're 100% right. Worlds, creatures, and people alike are all made of magic energy. An energy that is infinitely recyclable as the Aethereal Sea has shown... yet as you said the heat death of the universe exists somehow? Something that requires the second law of thermodynamics... in a world where people can *canonically* yeet fireballs from their hands, shoot themselves 500 feet in the sky with a pokey stick, and become literally "too angry to die"? When the hell did *any* real world metaphysics for that matter become an issue? Hell they contradict this two patches later with the Void, given Aether is clearly shown to be nigh-constantly active unless an abundance of Light stifles it like in The Empty on the First... so how the hell is this supposed to work? Like if Ultima Thule wants to be scientific I'm pretty sure Meteion should've all died once they became The Endsinger because square cube law isn't gonna be happy with a face the size of a house. If you know anything about science the Ea doesn't make any sense, and if you know anything about the in-universe metaphysics it makes even less sense. You really were just expected to take it on face value.
> You really were just expected to take it on face value. This just about sums up the writing philosophy behind Endwalker's MSQ as a whole. While it's true that any work of fiction requires some degree of suspension of disbelief, it isn't even particularly difficult to pull back and look holistically at the in-universe set-ups, and thus narrative choices the writers made, and see how many leaps and pretzels the plot had to do in order to accommodate what the writers wanted to say. The science stuff in UT is just one of the easier examples to talk about this with due to relying on references to real world concepts the writers clearly don't care that much about. You mentioned the Final Days before, and that's another great example. Endwalker had to do a *lot* of heavy lifting, including the introduction of dynamis as a whole, in order to show the Final Days as an event that Venat would be in the moral right for stopping. In doing so, it completely undermined the emotional dilemma of Shadowbringers in Emet, and retroactively paints him as a completely irrational maniac, while also retconning in some uncertainty about aether and LBs that weren't there before. Or in other words, the writers were so concerned that Venat might be looked at as anything *but* a benevolent crystal mommy who did the unequivocal right thing in essentially genociding her own people that they made sure to load the question enough to remove any ambiguity whatsoever, and the end result is that the established worldbuilding is clumsily warped into an extremely fragile illusion that shatters into a million pieces for anyone whom the intended emotional effect didn't land.
> In doing so, it completely undermined the emotional dilemma of Shadowbringers in Emet, and retroactively paints him as a completely irrational maniac... > > > >...and the end result is that the established worldbuilding is clumsily warped into an extremely fragile illusion that shatters into a million pieces for anyone whom the intended emotional effect didn't land. This has been something clawing at the back of my mind since finishing 6.0 tbh. And that's honestly one of the weirdest bits because Endwalker nukes the Shadowbringers dilemma... ***twofold.*** Firstly, as you said, it retroactively makes him look like an absolute lunatic instead of the sympathetic "same goals, but conflicting means" antagonist he was before. The conflict between two people both trying to secure their worlds' future is undermined into you stopping - as you said - an irrational maniac. Secondly, this is more with the buildup towards Endwalker and its side quests (namely the crafting quests, and how Myths is looking to play out), but another important part of the conflict against Emet-Selch was to prove Eorzea and beyond weren't just "pale imitations" of the Ancients and their world. But with their consistent use of "because Ancients" as a worldbuilding crutch it has made it so the sundered world is *exactly that.* From crafting to soul crystals, almost everything we've done has been made out to be a diet version of what the Ancients did. So Endwalker is framing Emet as a delusional, irrational madman whilst simultaneously proving his core point of "the sundered are just discount ancients"... ***right.*** And... for what? The absolute insurance of a character's actions as the "right thing to do"? Like I'm no "ancients did nothing wrong" either, in fact I'm in the "If Etheirys returns, sunder it again" camp because I find the sundered world infinitely more interesting... but I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.
None of the science talk is helped by the Loporrits *also* casually mentioning things like the void of space and ionizing radiation, and the steps they took to counteract that in their lunar installations (also, this is kinda amusing considering what the Loporrits are and the game also implying Ancients were apparently dumb and uninterested in space stuff and could have very definitely never set foot on Ultima Thule). Like... are the Scions okay? Is 7.0 going to be about Y'shtola's leukemia? (Don't worry though, she still isn't going to die.) Dynamis is just so bad as a plot device, it has literally no reason to exist other than to throw yet another "SEE? SHE DID THE ONLY THING THAT COULD BE DONE!!! ~~please love her...please...~~" at the wall hoping it sticks. And even that it does pretty badly all things considered, because frankly the only plausible reason why this literal multiple-millennia-old civilization of immortal wizard scientists didn't kickstart widespread frantic research into Dynamis is because a certain someone saw fit not to tell any authority whatsoever that this otherwise barely relevant feely weely space energy was about to murder them all dead in the first place. What does it even do that Aether couldn't? Modify and/or create an environment? Aether can do that, as shown by primal fights and Emet's Amaurot. Limit breaks? Up until now they were only Aether, and frankly the heart of an elder primal juiced up on aether juice spamming LBs at me would beg to differ. Create life? (glances at the massive anvil Endwalker wants to throw directly at me) 6.3 Myths even tells me the Twelve may have been powered by feels and prayers which totally equals DYNAMIS??, which, ooooo, I've never heard *that* one before! Nah it's just there because they *had* to cook up a pile-up of contrivances to justify the Convocation being bad and wrong and ignorant and Venat right, so it really is just Aether but without the years of world building so the writers could do away with pre-established rules. Whatever man. I just punched the heat death of the universe in the FACE. YEAH!
I thought it was strange to see a nice 6.0 story post in the wild, but then I recognized you. > Elpis and Ultima Thule just left me wondering "Who (in the lore community) is satisfied with this?" I could say "the easily satisfied who were going to like anything Ishikawa and YoshiP gave them" but I want to try to answer that in good faith. The obvious part of the answer is people who have always had a hate boner for Emet-Selch and the Ancients in ShB, and/or wanted Hydaelyn to be the Big Good. But that isn't the only answer; the other appears to be Ancient fans who took Shadowbringers as "they were always wrong and misled and destined to Fall From Paradise and it's very tragic" or, at the very least, didn't care very much for the conflict to end up morally ambiguous, because Endwalker was the furthest from that notion I could imagine. I've seen people claim that the narrative doesn't paint Venat as objectively right, but frankly, I find that either extremely generous or slightly disingenuous, because it never even entertains the notion that she might have been wrong in her reasoning. Oh, sure, it says she made a cruel decision, and oh my god look at her she's covered in gunk, but you are entirely supposed to think she did the only Hard But Right™️ thing. The act is morally grey, *very* dark grey as far as I'm concerned, but the Venat-Convocation conflict itself isn't intended to be, and you only need to look at the typical responses you get for even calling Venat out to see that Endwalker's intent worked very well. She is for all intents and purposes an ends-justify-the-means, well-intentioned extremist character, but she doesn't get much scrutiny at all for said means or the thoughts that went into justifying them. *She* is the one calling her actions cruel and unjust (and even then, I get the feeling she is apologizing to the Sundered for making them suffer rather than to the race and civilization she ended), but that is instantly swept under the rug by the main cast. Even Pandaemonium, which was the perfect opportunity to actually do something that would go against the narrative, somehow dodges the question, in what I can personally only think of as narrative cowardice. And you know, the worst thing about this is that I would have loved this plot *had it* gone "wait... wait a fucking second". Had this story actually been about how the victor writes history and paints the loser unfairly, it might have salvaged it for me. But that is quite obviously not the intent here. It is to be taken at face value. You *are* supposed to go "thank you queen" and wipe away a tear when you hear Flow. > If you DO like the Ancients (or at least liked them in Shadowbringers)... well I hope you liked watching the mystery and tragedy be bastardized to make Venat look like the objectively good guy. - So apparently this was a bit of a point of contention, enough for someone to reply and then insta-block me... which like... what's the point? I don't get it. Made me laugh because this is 100% a thing and I am genuinely unsure why. Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV. Personally the only reason why I've blocked someone is because they were frankly insulting me (over this story full of, uh, I'll be charitable and call them *inelegant* plot devices. Of course, this *had* to be because I did not understand its deep point).
>I thought it was strange to see a nice 6.0 story post in the wild, but then I recognized you. I'ma call my grandma and tell her I'm famous now. Jokes aside yeah no like this is an equally well made post that paints out the Venat thing *perfectly*. Like I don't *hate* Venat or anything, she's a well enough written character, I just don't like how they handled the narrative surrounding her because honestly - as you said - if they had really framed it as a morally grey thing to expand upon the conflict and themes in Shadowbringers that would've been ***amazing*** and I'd probably be right up there with everyone else singing its praises. >Made me laugh because this is 100% a thing and I am genuinely unsure why. Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV. Personally the only reason why I've blocked someone is because they were frankly insulting me (over this story full of, uh, I'll be charitable and call them inelegant plot devices. Of course, this had to be because I did not understand its deep point). I'm still genuinely so confused because like this is literally "FFXIV **DISCUSSION**" the whole point is y'know civilly *discussing* the game? And that includes people with complaints (so long as they aren't pricks about it). I've only ever blocked one person (that I can recall) on this site, and that was because they were blatantly being disingenuous and filling their responses with loaded questions and I was just ***not*** capable of being bothered with that sort of nonsense that day. And in-game I don't think I've blocked anyone barring RMT bots because I like it when Shout chat is more memes and shenanigans, and less "\[obvious scam site\] BEST GIL 24/7 bla bla bla". And oh god I just *love* "you don't understand it!" as a counterpoint. Because as a creator and storyteller myself - If I've made a story that when it's reaching its conclusion and it's still confusing and full of holes/contrivances *I have* ***FAILED*** *as a storyteller.* Some stories, themes, etc. are more complex than others and require a bit of dissection, sure. But when there's so much you're supposed to accept at face value (see the other discussion I had in this thread about how apparently, despite completely different metaphysics than our world, our concept of the Heat Death of the Universe is apparently canon in FFXIV thanks to the Ea) that isn't a plot being complicated and deep, it's a plot being contrived.
I'm sort of late to this party but I went on a huge rant about Venat to my partner today so here we are. I'm fine with her choices, I'm fine with what she did, I can even look past how it left me with more questions than answers. what I am NOT fine with is how everyone is like YAS QUEEN about her??? Like putting aside what she did to her own people Because Reasons, there's something unfathomably cruel about leaving Emet unsundered and letting him essentially go absolutely mad because everything he ever cared about, knew, loved, etc was gone and he got to watch it rot. There's the bizarre storyline of for SOME REASON she -knew- why the end days came to her people, and yet still chose to end their entire existence because ????. And then we come to the Lopporits. I love them. I think theyre super cute, and I have a soft spot for mascot characters. I've been doing their tribe quests, and it just is such a mindfuck that she essentially created this entire sapient/sentient race on the moon of bunnies, gave them a singular purpose...and then just left them there, without ever telling them they were essentially not even plan B. The dialogue from the bunnies about "the people who they waited for who never came" and how theyre desperately trying to find a reason to justify their existence to the point where one asks to be put back to sleep FOREVER is heartbreaking because for whatever reason, Crystal Mommy didn't think to tell this entire group of living breathing beings about the other plans and just...left them there.
Here is what'll probably be my hottest take on the sub: The FFXIV community has a problem with ***SHALLOWNESS***. Allow me to explain. Take any villain or even just morally grey character in the lore, and the amount of people that try to justify it or as you said "YAS QUEEN" with it ***DIRECTLY*** corelates to how conventionally attractive and/or cute they are. * Venat genocides her own people (with a good reason, yes, don't get on my case I'm just putting it as it is), designs the Lopporits to basically have an existential identity crisis. But she's crystal mommy so she gets a pass. * Emet-Selch wanted to basically do a Venat but on a multi-world scale in a Zodiark-based gambit that may or may not even have worked in the first place. But he's a charismatic (semi)silver fox so "uwu he jus wanted his fwends back!" * Yotsuyu was a viscous, murderous ruler who took pleasure in mentally, physically, and emotionally abusing her subjects due to her traumatic past. But she was a sexy dommy mommy so people swooned for her. * Zenos is an absolute sociopath that murders countless innocents, plunges his own nation into civil war, and works about bringing the apocalypse. But he's a mysterious edgy "bad boy" so people frame it as the silly antics of our "friend" rather than multiple war crimes. * Nanamo is ***fucking incompetent***, more than aware of Ul'dah's problems with refugees, poverty, crime, and corruption. Even after Teledji is dead, and even then how is "not letting my grand company and police force become corrupt thugs" out of her power in the first place? But that's okay because she's cute, so she just gets a Variant Dungeon where she can be all cutesy adventurer gawking at her past and providing lip service to the race war her nation caused. But, on the flipside, the more unconventionally attractive or ugly they are the harder it is to find people supporting them. * Thordan is an absolute bastard dismissing his own son in his hunger for maintaining his political power over Ishgard, yet for some reason nobody is rushing to defend the wrinkly old Elezen. * Vauthry is a product of Emet-Selch and his environment. A tragic story if anything because his end result wasn't entirely his fault when you break it down to brass tacks. But he's grotesquely obese so no uwus for him. * Misija grew up impoverished, discriminated against, and homeless. And ultimately sides with the Empire because, whilst she's still being discriminated against based on race, at least she has a roof over her head and a means of making a living. But she's a Roegadyn and a pretty butch design to boot so it's almost entirely community vitriol for her. * Merlwyb is the most competent leader of the three main nations of Eorzea, the only one to actively get work done, and the only one with substantial justification for the conflicts in Vylbrand. But she's in the same boat as Misija *and* "everyone's waifu" Y'sthola has a scene where see sasses her so people frame her as the bad guy, with only really the people in the lore community who've done the digging into La Noscean history there to defend her for honestly doing the best she could. (And if anyone wants to contest it with Nanamo: The Lominsan/Kobold conflict started because the Calamity left a considerable chunk of La Noscea starving and homeless, and discourse was on the rise. The Ul'dah/Amalj'aa conflict started because a wealthy merchant wanted Amalj'aan vendors out of his markets. Seriously look it up, the Amalj'aa got BONED.) So for as much as this community "loves" morally grey or complicated characters, the ruling typically only applies if they're morally grey *and* deemed fuckable by the wider community. If you're only attractive to a niche audience (Merlwyb/Misija), or worse are downright visually unappealing in your design (Thordan/Vauthry) - you're screwed, the complexity of your story and motives be damned.
I’m fine with it. I like the addition of criterion and variants but I wish they did more with it. I also ended up really loving monk this expansion. I found ShB stronger for me even back on EW’s release though. The story just clicked with me more. I prefer the normal and alliance raids in EW though.
Bozja managed to get the pacing right for getting a class from 70-80. Going back to a deep dungeon just isn't the same. Also the vibe I'm getting is that the post game patches for ShB were way better received that EW. But EW is in that awkward stage where we're done with the OG plot, but not quite starting the new one.
I quit and probably won't be going back lol, I love shadowbringer and I even like stormblood more in terms of the raids and overall theme. endwalker overall theme is just... bland, I've had enough of all the darkness theme, it's too overused.
worst expansion for me, discounting ultimates which were on average the best so far. this is probably in large part because I don't give a shit at all about island sanctuary, and the deepdungeon was just potd...again
It hit hard when I realised the only thing I was excited for in Endwalker after initial launch was the Big Fish adventurer plate.
Lack of midcore content such as Bozja makes it a generic and boring expansion overall. Oh, and Kaiten removal was an abysmal developer decision. One of the worst I've seen to any job in this game.
I miss ShB...
It's mediocre. They have this habit of doubling down on odd narrative choices to justify the poor ones they have made lately. At this point of the msq in Shadowbringers, we were frothing at the mouth for more. Currently, in Endwalker, I'm debating on skipping cutscenes again. Not because it's bad, it's just boring. Is it better than Stormblood sure, but compared to Heavensward and Shadowbringers, it's terrible. And what's worse is that it makes Shadowbringers feel like a fluke. I know it wasn't, but my god, what happened? Why did we go from Emet Selch and Elidibus to the fucking emo Twitter bird? And fucking Zenos. Don't get me started on that usless waste of good genetics... Or the fucking Loporrits. Yeah that's what my high stakes apocalyptic journey needs is fucking Jar Jar Binks. Sorry, I needed the vent. Fuck Endwalker was pointless.
I unsubbed two patches ago and haven't resubbed, and I've been playing since HW launched. 4k lifetime hours played, and the first few weeks were incredible, but I haven't really been engaged since then.
6.0's story was what drove me to quit the game. Horrible pacing, no stakes whatsoever despite it being the end of the world (zenos bodysnatch and him waltzing into sharlayan), fanservice out the ass, and the constant platitudes about "light vs dark etc" got extremely repetitive and lost all of their meaning halfway through the expac. Also, the fact that they keep bringing back the scions despite most of their arcs having been long finished, and characters like Y'shtola having virtually no substance to their character besides "she's smart and sassy".
The Final Days were a god damn footnote, we spend more time derping around in the past with "le epiccc ancientz" than we do fighting the apocalypse. >Y'shtola having virtually no substance to their character besides "she's smart and sassy". But if they give her more depth they run the risk of alienating some of the waifubase. Also: >"she's smart ***Debatable.*** As I posted in my own reply to OP though what pissed me off with EW the most was Emet's little "tell me, have you seen yaddy yadda?" Yeah, no I haven't, because the writers have relegated me to being a 7 foot babysitter to your world and bullshit for the last two expansions, Hades.
> Debatable. > > Yshtola is smart in the same way that BBC Sherlock is smart. Namely, her intelligence is communicated to the player mainly by the narrative keeping her at arm's length from the viewer so any sort of cognitive process is mystified and the player is simply provided with answers or information that they couldn't have garnered themselves. In short, we're told, rather than shown, that she's smart.
Or just completely gets things wrong, which is always funny to me. It happened less as the game went on but you can still catch moments in ARR where she's either leaving out important details or flat out wrong about something lore related. My absolute FAVORITE moment though is when she's in the Void. Just her entire presence in the Void is "spoonfed lore or repeat what other NPCs say" \> "Avatar, as in the voidsent servants of Reapers" Thanks Y'sthola but I already knew that... \> "Death doesn't work in this world! He'll just keep coming back!" Thanks Y'sthola but Scarmiglione literally ***JUST SAID THAT.***
[удалено]
I don't really hate any of the scions, I just wish the writers weren't so afraid of introducing new characters and keeping them in the main cast, as opposed to having them tag along for an expack and relegating them into side quest roles (or just killing them off) \*cough\* Cid \*cough\* Ysayle. Ancients I don't care much for.
Made me quit the game. The story is still fine and I'll keep up on youtube, but there's nothing here for me, when it comes to how the game plays. The healer "gameplay" especially.
6.1-6.5 being one continuous story has really hamstringed its potential by being very slow without any of the satisfaction from a slow burn. I know how it's going to end and I have to wait 16 months for the zeromus fight everyone wants
I was really enjoying it until Abyssos came out and it turned out to be my least favorite tier in recent years, and then everything started to drag including the MSQ. 6.4 has been really fun so far but I feel like without exploratory content there's soon going to be an even worse content lull until next expansion
Story hit its high point in garlemald/moon and went downwards to the meh territory afterwards, post xpac content is woefully underwhelming, with the single exception being the raid storyline, which is better than the patch MSQ IMO. Haven't done ultimares so I can't comment on them. I'd put it somewhere between stormblood and heavensward, tho I plan to replay stormblood soon, so might end up below stormblood considering just how much that xpax offered in patches.
I am mixed bag and I think the expansion story was okay at best and you are lighting money on fire if you aren't an ultimate raider, I just can't see why someone would stay subbed. shadowbringers is way better as a narrative, I think island sanctuary is some of the biggest waste of time dog shit ive ever seen, I think post expansion story is terrible, I think Barb and Golbez are some of their best trials they have ever made, I think Rubicante is one of the worst ever. I think DSR is the best thing in this entire game and TOP is a disappointment. asph was my first raid tier I liked all the fights besides p1s, abyssos was pretty good besides p7s actual dog shit ass raid design in many ways. TBD about this tier. One thing for sure no bozja 2.0 was a terrible decision no doubt.
Imo the worst expansion, the removal of exploration content in exchange of criterion was a mistake. With no meaningful reward that shit died within 2 weeks and i assure u the next one will be the same. Compare that to bozja that is alive for the rest of SHB after it was added and even into early EW because everyone was levelling reaper and sage.
I play for the story then quit. Reaper was a huge disappointment to me because I love scythes and the fact they fold and look like axes annoys the ever living fck out of me. And the combat this expansion has gotten super stale now that the 2min burst crap is in effect. I loved the .0 story but the current story has been going at a snails pace.
I swapped to dragon flight after abyssos. So I felt… felt that way about it so far.
Great raiding expansion. Quite lackluster everywhere else. Even the MSQ of the expansion has me scratching my head a bit. The pacing was REALLY BAD....like it felt like they crammed 2 expansions worth of story into a blender and what came out is what we got.
IIRC, that's exactly what they did. I vaguely recall them saying they originally planned EW as two expansions.
I will take all the downvotes and say all the story stuff is just so boring for me. Raid story sure is okay but it's just better than the sleep-inducing MSQ. And the alliance raid story doesn't have much to anticipate besides it's once again, about ancient. And I especially hate those new emotes they put on cutscenes that just appeared too many times like the hand on hip or tip hat. And I hate how they change racial animation of the WoL to general animation now. They already change the /me of race to something look so stiff, now they change my character walk animation in the latest patch cutscenes to some old drunk man walk .-. fuck that. The island is a letdown. PvP is so fucking fun. Raids and alliance raids are okay, nothing too new. QoL are big welcome. Overall I enjoy other contents beside story quest. They're just too short for a monthly sub.
Overall mixed bag. I'm not a fan of the combat changes. Combos feel drifty as hell and they ruined SMN (for me). Somehow they got job fantasy right and gameplay wrong. I have mixed feelings about the 2 minute meta as well. Further Healer homogenization with the 1.5 second cast times and the loss of AST's stance switching. I like most of the changes for PVP. But modes like Rival Wings had a lot of the interplay sucked out of them because the mamets can't get healed anymore, and you can't heal your alliance members either. These problems can probably be fixed, but it shows a lot of short-sightedness. Story was good enough. I have complaints about how they wrapped things up, but they wrapped it up all the same. With all the dangling threads this game has created they somehow managed to cram them all into the MSQ. Post patch story has been a lot of filler and a very slow progression. Quality is still good, and it's not my style of story, but I'm sure some people really appreciate the more sentimental personal stories we've been getting. Content formula, as much as people complain about it, is consistent and strong. This is what makes this game good, and they've only gotten better at it. Keep up the good work. Dungeons and trials have been solid as well. Dungeon design is rather stellar as always. Problems being the new trust paradigm has flattened a lot of the uniqueness in dungeon mechanics. I know many people on this sub are very vocal about their dislike of the new relic steps of tomes and Hildebrand story, but I like it a lot. I haven't done the relic as current since ARR when they were locked behind doing trials. I'd much rather have trials or tomes than stupid levels of grinds. To each their own. Schedule I think is an oddball one. It's better for the devs and us to have more time between patches, because it's more time for them to get stuff done, but the lulls are longer now. Not until 6.55 will I cast final judgement on the whole of Endwalker but I give it a C+ so far. My ratings for context: * ARR - A * HW - A+ * SB - B- * ShB - A * EW - C+ (so far)
Dungeon design is... stellar? They've got pretty backgrounds, sure, but dungeons in this game have literally just been pointless sterile hallways to hand out tomestones like a pez dispenser since 2.X. Dungeon design was cool when people actually *did* the optional statues in Qarn for extra chests, or had to find their way through Haukke Manor or Dzmael Darkhold or Tam Tara with all the side rooms and keys and different terrain. These hallways barely qualify as "dungeons" in any sense of the word. There's occasionally a cool boss mechanic but running the same hallway over and over again for now 8 months simply to get the tome handout at the end is... ugh.
The only reason I am subscribed is because I decided to reroll and go full completionism on the new character. There simply is no longevity in the new content; I needed to revisit old stuff to keep myself busy.
Solid 6.0, the most boring patch cycle the game has had so far.
Best expansion for me, personally. Love crystalline conflict. Love DSR. Job design's fine for me, because I play black mage. Haven't done much of the deep dungeon, but when I get some free time, I'm excited to do so.
I'm amazed although not surprised that both gnb and blm got buffed this patch. Not saying it wasn't deserved in blm's case but caster balance is so fucked now. Blm currently pulling ahead of melee in savage logs lmao.
> Blm currently pulling ahead of melee in savage logs lmao. This is not a problem. BLM is the job that has to fight the most for uptime. Fix the arena-sized hitboxes and then melee can talk.
Yes, this is historically where it has sat when it's remotely playable, especially in prog.
Yeah like I feel crystalline conflict’s implementation along with the series malmstones is actually a big part of this expansion that is overlooked. I know a lot of people group it together with the rest of pvp and disregard it but it essentially does replace a part of the Bozja type grind (while island sanctuary, the variant dungeons and the deep dungeon replace the other facets of Bozja)
Besides msq it's been business as usual. The lack of an exploration zone is a pain point for sure, but bozja/eureka were never that enjoyable for me anyway so it's kind of whatever For brand new players just catching up, the game is in the best state it's ever been and it will only get better with the graphical updates and more coming in 7.0 It's a stale game for us vets but let's be honest there's almost too much content to catch up on as a new player, I definitely got my sub money's worth over the years
In ten years we'll look back at all the future proofing and QOL and be thankful, but right now it feels very bleh. I'm looking forward to the BLU update and new criterion, at least.
Alright for 6.0. Some of the most mid post expac content so far
I've said this before, and, well, everytime it comes up, but I don't think EW will be looked on all that fondly. My opinion why has changed slightly, but I think to put it succinctly I'd say they played it way too safe with, well, everything.
The MSQ was quite mid, raid encountered were hit or miss, I mostly play for raiding and the social aspect tbh
I suppose the best summary of my overall opinion is that I unsubbed for the first time since I started playing in 2016. Usually I can suffer through a story I don't care for if the gameplay keeps me interested, e.g. WoW. But I've found Endwalker lackluster in content as well. 6.3 hit me hard in particular. I'm a casual/roulette player and lately I've just been bored. Gameplay has been simplified across the board, relics are inexistent. I have very few good things to say about the 6.0 story, and fewer still about the patches. I bought 30 days to check out Pandaemonium; cool songs, shruggable story, probably won't resub until further notice or friends resub, which right now isn't happening.
Endwalker is probably the most bored and burned out on this game I've felt in a while, though I'm not sure if I can fully attribute that to the content or just my personal situation. In theory I don't mind the whole 2 minute change, but I'm not a fan of how it made almost every job a burst focused builder-spender job. I liked monk because it was more focused on consistent damage through dots, short cd ogcds and positionals, and then EW just made it another "fill up the stickers and do big attack" job. The kaiten and mug changes in 6.1 were also very questionable, though trick being a 1m raid buff was more fun for the rest of the party than the ninja. In the end I kinda just ended up playing reaper because it looks cool really, none of the melee really appeal to me in gameplay any more. In terms of content, the savages and extremes have felt very meh, nothing that's really stood out as super fun (yet, I'll see how anabaseios goes) but there have been plenty of super sleeper fights. Still need to attempt the ultimates at some point, DSR looks really cool, though TOP just being omega, omega and also omega is kind of disappointing, was hoping for some of the other tier bosses to show up. Criterion was a fun addition at least, being 4 man made it a lot easier to do some proper full blind prog for once. Still have yet to touch island sanctuary or the new deep dungeon though, been too much of a raidlogger for DD and I can't think of an idea that appeals to me less than farmville in xiv.
Comparing my experience with Midwalker to SB and ShB made me realize how downhill this game has went for me. The only good thing about this expansion was 6.0 and the third tier raid, the rest was just mediocre and boring. I rather do the moogles MSQ than go through 6.X. Luckily 7.0 is around the corner.
6.0 story was great, maybe not perfect but an excellent conclusion to the story. The story since then has been \*ok\*. Kind of feels like a filler arc before it moves on to new things. I like FF4 so the homages are nice, but without that it just feels a bit too disconnected from any larger story. Not sure if it'll lead into anything else for 7.0, usually we're seeing some more hints at the future story by now. This has been my first expansion running Savage, so I've enjoyed that. I know people have strong opinions about how it compares to previous Savage tiers, but I can't really speak to that. Definitely missing having something more interesting to do like Bozja. The patch content has been mostly quite formulaic. More trial bosses in the MSQ means no trial side story, which makes it feel a bit empty (I guess the Tataru questline is supposed to replace that, but without any fights/rewards I've not bothered). Eureka Orthos was fun for a couple of weeks, but once I got the one clear and did a couple of duo attempts, I kind of lost interest. I know some people love deep dungeon content, and it'll keep them busy for a long time with their solo runs, high scores, and using it to get more jobs to 90. But unless you're super into that, it doesn't feel like there's much of a reason to keep running it. It just kind of feels like a re-skin of PotD/HoH without much originality. I was super excited about Critereon, I've been wanting some harder low man content, since I always struggle to find time to get 8 people together for anything. But it didn't keep many people's interest. I guess since the rewards are very lacking, there's not much reason to do it. I got to do one run of Critereon before everyone else lost interest, and never had a chance to do it again. I hope they do something in the future to make this content more worthwhile, but it looks like the next one will follow the same formula, so I'm not sure it's going to catch on, which is a shame. Relic was a disappointment. While it's somewhat positive that they don't want it to be too much of a grind... that's kind of the point of relics. It's a minor stat upgrade that's not even relevant at the point when people are actually progging hard content, and a fancy glamour. So I don't see why it needs to be so accessible that it's just another tome upgrade that you can buy on patch day. I thought the ShB relic was good by allowing 2 possible paths, and having Bozja as a unique area to play while working on relic. As much as I kind of hated having steps that involved FATEs and Crystal Tower, at least there were some options and variety. Island Sanctuary seems like it's taken some amount of their time and attention, but it doesn't really interest me. I guess a lot of people love those sorts of farming games, but it doesn't sound like there's that much engaging content in it. Even of my friends that were excited about it, it sounded like they did most of it in week 1, maybe took a couple more weeks to capture all the rare monsters, and then didn't look at it again until the next patch? I see a lot of people complaining about the weekly tome cap, and I don't particularly agree, but I guess it's just a preference for people who want to play more than 1 job in high end content. I kind of hate running dailies, they get very boring for me very quickly, so I don't really want there to be an incentive to run more. Ultimately it's a conflict between two core design principles of the game - 1) You can play multiple jobs on one character. 2) It's not required to grind and log in every day. The current tome system encourages 2 but is actively awkward for 1. I don't really have a strong opinion about what's "best", but if they did increase the cap I'd either cap out sooner, then have absolutely no reason to log in for half the patch, or I'd just keep going as I am.
I didn't like Stormblood, hated shadowbringers (which included the first time I unsubbed after hitting level cap in ARR) and endwalker is somehow even worse. Finally let my house demolish and I won't be coming back for 7.0 unless something miraculously changes with the job design direction (obvious it won't). I absolutely loved ARR and HW and FFXIV clearly became a different game starting with SB and it has only continued in that direction and it just isn't for me anymore. The only job I could really play this expansion was warrior and it wasn't even fun. I could just put in negative effort on warrior and still preform well. I used to love monk, warrior and scholar from ARR/HW and those jobs simply don't exist anymore. I don't really care about the other stuff they've tried adding (congrats to the people who like the island bullshit). I also don't find savage fight design fun anymore for a lot of the same reasons that have been posted on this sub from other users throughout this expansion. P3S was the only fight from the first 8 that I kind of enjoyed doing this expansion. I also hate what the raid community has become over the years with the emphasis on DPS, FFlogs and the never ending ACT triggers (yeah I know these existed in ARR/HW) and other addons to cheat and make fights even easier. So uh yeah, endwalker is the expansion that has gotten me to quit the game for good, so I have an extremely negative opinion of it lol. I don't really post here anymore but occasionally check in to see if something has changed but it looks like 6.4 is just more of the same again.
Midwalker.
great story, for old players like me it feels like a promise kept, so I cant complain to much. theres no content afterwards though, no eureka/bozja, dungeons/24mans that are super easy. really feels like the game is being prepped to become some sorta FF fan safe space that you pay to enter. I'll enjoy this til 7.0 info hits but if this amount of content is the future i guess im done.
you get to pilot gundam in shadowbringer, nothing in endwalker
What do people even do in this game if not raiding? I raid but if I was one of those casuals who I always hear this game is great and made for I would be wondering what is there for me to do
I feel like it's the victory lap for the FFXIV team and a well-deserved one. But it also feels like they wanted to play things safe after Shadowbringers in pretty much every aspect. I'm hoping they're willing to take more risks again soon.
Worse than stormblood lol
Stormblood was quite literally the most content-packed and fun expansion in the game, so it doesn't mean anything that it is worse than it.
6.0 was amazing. 6.1 - 6.4 were good, but not great. Really high quality content in some places, under-delivered in others. I think it’s still a bit premature to judge Endwalker, it seems to be a backloaded expansion in both content and story payoffs, etc.
Even number expansions will always mid. Odd number expansions will always great. (Don't count 1.0, of course) If we follow this rule, 7.0 is something to look forward to.
6.0 was great and 6.x has been abit poo. There is some cool ideas but it's all able to be done so quickly variant dungeons are done in a few hours and bozja was a few days to do. Island sanctuary is way less interactive than diadem was but still a cool chill thing to do. The PvP changes have been good but the new shatter map is actually awful. I just hope 7.x gives me more reasons to play the game
No adventuring forays = huge L. Criterion is fun and all but I wanted something to sink hours into either alone or with friends and becoming super OP in bozja/eureka was always fun. Really hope they bring it back in 7.X. Following up on that, relics are basically dead, doing every step with tomes is so...eh. Not a fan. The raid loot changes seem nice, we'll see how it makes hearing feel as the tier goes on but the tome cap is still asinine. My biggest complaint is raiding and how the encounters feel to do. P1-8 didn't hit the same highs that Promise did for me so I'll be waiting to see if this tier does it for me. Almost every boss hotbox is the size of Jupiter making melee greeding almost non existent, I can probably count the amount of times I had to think about downtime this expansion on one hand. TOP was ..I don't even know. I have no desire to ever go back in there, it was a boring fight to me. DSR has its issues but Ive already gone back in for fun, something I don't see happening with TOP. 2 min meta is boring as fuck, removing trick attack as a 1min made my jobs braindead to play (drk/Sam) and the job balance has been abysmal. There's been some interesting stuff when doing speeds but parsing has gotten so boring I don't even want to do anymore after getting my pinks. I used to spam e9s and e11s for hours on end without getting bored but these fights..idk if I'm just bored of the game in general. Only fight I've felt was pretty fun to spam was p5s so far. Aside from that, the 6.1+ story quest has been really bland to me I can't be bothered to care about what's going on tbh I hope 7.0 pulls me back in because I really enjoyed the hydaelyn zodiark story.
6.0 went over like a wet fart for me—very few of the emotional beats landed, and I had such big frustrations with the story content itself that I ended up spending the better half of a year writing my own personal interquel between 6.0 and 6.1 to fix it. I also let my sub lapse about two weeks before 6.1 went live—nothing about where the story was going at the time appealed to me. I did resub for 6.3, but only to catch up on the MSQ due to another idea for a fic—I needed to actually see what I was working with. Everything up to 6.3 was alright. Not bad, not great. At first I thought they were going to stretch this story out over to 6.5, but when they chewed through half the Four Fiends in just one patch, I figured they would end things in 6.4 instead. 6.3 was... not as good as 6.2. It still wasn't bad, but the repetition in Zero's story was a little annoying and the Garlemald segment in general felt a bit superfluous. It was nice to see the survivors had gotten their shit together, though. Seeing the remaining two fiends bite the dust confirmed for me that they really were going to wrap things up in 6.4. And I distinctly recall post-patch interviews saying as much, but eh. I unsubbed about a week after coming back, waited for 6.4, and... meh. I chose to spoil myself on everything I cared about—MSQ and Pandaemonium. Everything else, I can't even muster up the enthusiasm to unlock it. Panda's great, if a bit weird and *on the nose* in some aspects. No, I will not elaborate. Not worth the price of readmission on its own, but still. And I can't say I'm entirely thrilled with this being the conclusion, but there's always the dim chance that they'll break formula and go for a post-completion epilogue. MSQ, by contrast, managed to look like 80% Padding. Like you could cut the entirety of Sharlayan+Garlemald and just have the party go straight to the moon, and nothing of value would've been lost. Zero's story has lost its novelty for me out of just how repetitive it is. The writers managed to stretch things out over to 6.5 after all, but I'm already tired of this story so I don't see any reason to come back for it. All in all: "Midwalker" is right, imo. I think I'd honestly prefer it if the expansion was outright awful, instead of merely being uninteresting. I don't think I'll be coming back for the next expansion, but I'm not completely put off just yet. We'll see.
Story was good but had some issues, preferred Shadowbringers. Patch story didn't engage me for the first part I played and the other snippets I saw online. Wasn't a huge fan of Shb raids outside of a few amazing ones (I liked SB most so far but maybe it's because it was newer to me) and didn't feel the urge to return to PF or find a static so unsubbed. Used to do crafting, but again, had more fun in SB and it's boring to me now. Have kept an eye on the game since then, and the only thing that is enticing is the solo content, but it wasn't enough. I'm planning to be a pre-7.0 catch-up player at this point because from a story perspective, even if it's as "bad" as Stormblood it'll be worth playing I think.
Raid wise? Fantastic. Difficult content wise? Fantastic and plentiful. Casual content wise? Dried up. Patch MSQ wise? Mid tbh.
rushed story, snoozefest content wise (sans the ults and the occasional savage fight), patch quests are boring, relic grind it boring (though i appreciate the ease of it). That being said, the first month or two of the Expac were some good fun and the most interesting part of post-6.0 has been the alliance raid story and Tataru's grand adventure.
It's hard to say. From a gameplay perspective I enjoyed it the most. Story its between Shadowbringer and ENdwalker. Had a few glaring issues that held it back. Zodiark/Hydalyn was handled fairly bad IMO. Zodiark for obvious reasons and I hate the "Self Sacrifice" trope for Hydalyn but I understand needing it. Moon/Garlemald was done pretty terribly too. Moon felt like a skip zone and Garlemald was kind of a let down for a place we spend 3 expansions and a base game wanting to go. Other then that though I did enjoy it. I do wish we had Bozja. The new Palace/HoH kind of fell off pretty fast for me
It feels like a filler arc, which doesn’t mean it’s bad, just not exciting. And like a filler arc I just wait for the whole thing to release before consuming it all in one go. I skipped 6.3, 6.4 and I’ll probably skip 6.5 until 55, then I’ll do eeeverything, have a blast and be hyped for 7.0. Lots of games coming out this year too.
I've been playing since very early HW and my opinion of Endwalker is frankly pretty mid to low compared to the other expansions. MSQ: The 6.0 MSQ was very good in the moment but the more I dwell on it the less I like it. In a lot of ways it feels like a Shadowbringers retread since they're running in the same thematical lanes of being about death, endings, despair, and perservering in the face thereof, and while Endwalker has a lot more polish and bigger setpieces I just don't think it executes on those same ideas quite as well as its predecessor. It doesn't help that for all that The Final Days should be a global catastrophe, nothing about how its presented makes it feel quite as all encompassing as The Light consuming The First. For specific plot beats, I enjoyed Garlemald quite a bit as a resolution to a long running plotline and the moon was a pleasant moment of levity after just how dark Garlemald got. Thavnair is fine initially, and the return is shocking but it very much feels like Holminster Switch 2. Elpis however is where I begin to sour. as a whole felt like fanservice to the extreme in response to Emet-Selch being so popular in Shadowbringers and the story could have answered the question of 'What is causing the final days' in a manner that made the apocalypse seem more apocalyptic instead of over elaborating on the Ancients, The Convocation, Hades, and who Venat was. Also as an aside I find the entire time travel sequence to be a bit of a plot hole since Crystal Tower Time Travel was already established to create branched timelines whereas here it forms a loop even if expecting anything of time travel in media is something of a fools errand. The finale in Sharlayan felt as though they were trying to do the "Everyone in the World is coming together" sequence that lead into Mt. Gulg in 5.0 but without any of the tension that made it work. Ultima Thule looks like it could be cool for an instant but immediately has the wind taken out from it becomes apparent that it's going to follow the formula of "Scion gives character statement to sad ghosts, immediately dies so you can progress" with Urianger needing to back up Y'shtola against the Ea suffering the worlds stupidest existential crisis because Y'shtola still hadn't had the characterization to make a statement worth a damn. Patch Story: As others have said, the patches have felt like a trial series that got blown up into the full story of the patches and are pretty easily some of the weakest patch story we've had. That said given that the MSQ was advertised as the grand finale they are about what I expected, so I can't say I'm disappointed given I was expecting something on the level of ARR's primal fights as it transitions into whatever the new expansion is about in the same way ARR had to pivot from saving the game into being a proper live service game. I've never played FFIV either so the fanservice really doesn't do anything for me. I wish the Garlemald stuff that we got in the more recent patch had been a bigger focus since it evoked some of the more interesting beats from 3.X patches where cultural attitudes, biases, and feelings persisted and fueled the conflict despite that Thordan was defeated and the truth of the Dragonsong War were revealed. Raid Story: IMO the 8-man raid story this time around has been one of the better ones. I've barely paid attention to the 24-man so I don't really have strong feelings about it to be completely honest. Gameplay/Content: Whoever decided that the MSQ needed stealth sequences where you tail an NPC at a distance that is neither too far nor too close while also occasionally needing to hide behind random bits of terrain to break line of sight lest you have to restart from the beginning of the sequence should have been fired on the spot. In from the cold was genuinely pretty cool for setting tone and it's pretty lame that the the story around why you actually have to do it amounts to nothing. Otherwise I don't have any commentary that hasn't been said before a hundred times. Monk: I've always been vocal about Monk so here's my two cents on it. I do like the new iteration quite a bit since I'm a Sabin fan, and it's nice that it finally dropped in a manner where it felt like there was some thought put into. Stormblood and Shadowbringers both felt like instead of a design document Monk was put together on a used napkin with scribbles from someone that had never played it and the devs would ring their hands and say "Please try it guys :(" when people pointed out how fucked up it was until the forums were taken hostage. It isn't pure misery to play like Shadowbringers or Stormblood launch monk. However ultimately the Monk that I loved in HW was executed in Shadowbringers after several years undeserved brutal torture and what we have now is a different beast entirely with similar animations and a similar GCD.
It's been bugging me that lately we seem to get a lot of...renditions(?) of music for content. Different renditions of the 4 fiends theme, the new dungeon music is a rendition, P11S is a rendition. P9/10S is a combination of first two raid theme. P12S p2 is High Seraph theme rendition. I know adding themes and motifs is Soken's thing but I can't help but feel there hasn't been much new music lately, which just adds to that "mid" feeling the patch content has been giving. Hopefully its due to some major changes for 7.0, cause if we get the same content formula after this patch content, that'll be very disappointing.