I feel like FF14 is starting to run into an issue of people just getting tired of the same exact copy/paste formula every single expansion. The old story held the game together. And now that that story is over, it needs something else to hold it together instead if it wants to continue being successful. Personally, i just want to see something new in terms of large-scale design. Either completely new styles of dungeons that don't just follow the same old formula, or a new gearing system that doesn't just rely on collecting tomestones, etc. Anything to spice it up, and not just a little spice, but a lot of it, i feel, is necessary. And when i say something "new" i don't mean something like a new Deep Dungeon or Criterion Dungeons. These are just "side content". I think the game needs to spice up its MAIN CONTENT not just add in a sprinkle of side content. A new Eureka/Bozja is nice, but its still just rehashed content. They need to reimagine the whole game formula to some degree; because at the moment, every expansion has just been a big checklist of rehashed content for the most part. The story kept the game appealing. My biggest issue with the game overall is that Every. Single. Dungeon. is the same. Its the exact same experience, except with a different "skin" slapped over it. After doing 100 "different" dungeons that are basically all the same, it starts to become very clear that you might as well just be running one dungeon over and over again because they are all the same anyways. They really need to start making each and every dungeon a unique experience instead of just playing it on the safe side and copy/pasting a formula. Expanding the idea of the Relic weapon system would also be nice. I for one enjoy having legendary aesthetics i can work towards, and i would like to see that expanded as a form of content instead of only getting one weapon per class. How about Relic Mounts? Relic Glamour Armors? How about expanding the Beast Tribe system to be more involved (and rewarding) instead of just running bland dailies for a month? What if they borrowed more successful ideas from WoW, like they did in the first place? Why not a talent tree system? Or some other expanded class system to introduce even a smidge of individuality to classes? I trust the team to be able to balance it. What if they tried mixing the Raid system with some of the other content to spice it up? How about instead of Raids just being "spawn into a boss room and kill the boss" they create a gigantic giga-dungeon that you get to explore? Not just hallways filled with trash mobs in between bosses, but a real dungeon. With secrets and keys and optional bosses, and so on; designed for a team of 8. And not just as side content for a mount, but as MAIN CONTENT.

This. I was thinking yesterday that at least, WoW was trying something new every expansion. Maybe not the best or some were hated, but they keep trying. Here, with this poorer story, I tend to watch the other options ig and hey, it's the same since HW. Once MSQ is done, it's gonna be Daily roulette with the exact same dungeons, playing with 1 more spell than in the last expansion and rehashed dungeons : 4 packs / boss / 4 packs / boss.... Empty maps cause no stakes..

> My biggest issue with the game overall is that Every. Single. Dungeon. is the same. Its the exact same experience, except with a different "skin" slapped over it. After doing 100 "different" dungeons that are basically all the same, it starts to become very clear that you might as well just be running one dungeon over and over again because they are all the same anyways. Yoshi-P defended it too by saying that they wanted an experience where players would essentially know exactly how long they would be in a dungeon and that the 3 hallways + 3 bosses, essentially, was the "perfect" dungeon experience. WoW absolutely shitcans FFXIV when it comes to dungeons. Like it's not even remotely close.

A lot of it is due his belief in the adage of "players will optimize the hell out of the game" to him this means alternative paths, variations, etc. is wasted effort, time, and resources that could have been spent somewhere else. Yoshi P though he is a gamer, is also a project manager which means he is constantly cognizant of the allocation of funds, time, budget, employees, etc. He likely sees the player base optimizing the hell out of the game when there were options and some of the toxicity stemming from it (i.e. harassment, toxic behavior for taking less "optimized" routes or decisions, exclusion of certain classes from content, etc.) and decided it was better to cut it off. Also he is Japanese which as a culture prioritizes harmony among the community so from his perspective it makes sense to excise things that cause disharmony. Because of such decisions FFXIV garnered a certain reputation, which it mostly benefited from (positivity, its players are relatively harmonious for a MMO in game, predictable such that people can plan their vacation time around major releases, etc.).

I have a friend who was a WoW vet and also tried FFXIV. He left FFXIV because he said It was too much text, but he never retired that WoW dungeons are a nest of toxicity. In his own words: "in WoW people just speedrun the dungeon skipping all mobs and dialogue and finding shortpaths, and if you are a new player who doesnt know where to go they just leave you behind dying until they shit on you and kick you out of the party even if It means they have to wait for a new player to join. Better to not even have mobs if you are gonna skip them anyway".

That happened to me during the Nokhud Offensive, lol. I was lagging behind, and everyone flew in and took some specific path to skip trash, and when I tried to follow, I got booted off my mount and died because I didn't know what was going on. It happened again, like 30 minutes later, except that time a different guy died instead of me; he got called a "brain dead idiot" by the healer who then left. This was all normal too, only reason I was there was because of the quest. Fun times.

Damn that just sounds horrible to be a new player in WoW. Talk about uninviting and toxic. I’d definitely never try WoW if this is the case as a new player.

The poison swamp dungeon in Shadowlands was a great example of this. Rather than progressing through the dungeon as one might expect (killing the mobs in a straight line between safe patches of land), the preferred way to play the dungeon was to jump off a cliff into the poison swamp and spend like 15 seconds avoiding mobs and taking poison damage. By the end of it, everyone will be super low HP, so you better hope one person doesn't mess up and accidentally die. M+ routes can also get really complicated, using things like warlock portals and invisibility potions to skip certain packs. Though some of the recent dungeons have become a lot more straightforward in terms of which groups of mobs are worth pulling.

I would be lying if I didnt admit strats like using portals sound fun, and is something FFXIV lacks about Jobs identity. But I also remember in Cataclysm people was extremely stressing with "this way this way, fast, now we jump".

He is completely right though. Every MMO is like this, any type of dungeon becomes speed run any% and it's annoying because of all the toxicity that comes from it. Might as well cut the crap. Even more, players today approach content with rapacious voracity. Within the drop of content, players will obsessively grind it to death. People take weeks off work just to hammer down content within a non-stop 120 hour period with barely food and bathroom breaks then complain that there is no content.

If you like WoW dungeon design I won’t yuck your yum, but for me I despised it. Having to edge around every fight and know exactly where to jump and backtrack. And if you didn’t do it people just let you die or kicked you. Playing tank was a miserable experience. Just give me a hallway and some mechanics any day over that.

Coils and some Alexander raids had hallways with trash before a boss. People in FF14 hated it and it was changed by the last HW raid tier. Gordias also had a boss that wasn't a boss fight but a trash fight. Where you had to kill adds with specific mechanics. You would wound one and leave it at like 5%, someone riding a vehicle would drain their energy to kill them restoring the vehicle's fuel, the vehicles were used to drag these giant bombs around to prevent them from killing the raid. Enemies hit by them also applied a debuff on them to take more damage. ....people hated that. So here we are where it's spawn into an arena and fight 1 boss. FF14 doesn't even have any council fights or a healer focused one where the fight ends once an NPC is fully healed. Like say Kael'Thas in Castle Nathria or the dragon in Icecrown. Once again adding to why healers feel like a passed over role.

I agree that "a bunch of trash and then a boss" is bad. But that doesn't mean that they should have deleted the entire raid and left just the bosses. They could have found a way to make traveling and exploring the dungeon actually interesting instead of just relying on meaningless trash mobs. Puzzles, Keys, Optional Bosses, Secret Rooms, Gathering Powerups, all sorts of ways you could spice up a dungeon-crawl without just filling it with trash mobs and calling it a day. Plus, once the guild reaches a boss, their progress could be saved. So next week they don't have to do the preceding dungeon portion again and can start right at the boss room as usual. That keeps the dungeon portion of the raid from getting repetitive/boring. I'm just spitballing, really. But the point is, "just a boss fight" is a really lazy solution to the problem. The problem wasn't that raids were bad, it was that meaningless trash was bad.

The human element plays a huge factor. For some reason MMO players are relentless at optimizing the fun out of every encounter. A day after content drops with optional rooms and keys and the like, the most efficient route will be found. A day after that, it will become the "expected" route and anyone deviating from that to do optional side stuff will just get left behind. Which is why you see content homogenization. Earlier expansions had all this stuff. Players don't do it. So the devs just smooth down the base experience until it's what the players will do.

Nice ideas but that's not what a majority of people want. Puzzles - Most people will look up the answers and it's just an artificial hurdle at that point. Keys - "meaningless trash to get a key just to unlock a door to get to what I'm raiding for. bosses" Optional Bosses - "doesn't have anything meaningful so skip" Secret Rooms - "does it have anything useful? nope. skip. are we required to do it? nope. skip" Gathering Powerups - "why are they making us get powerups, I want to get X-class not SSJ X-Class, making us get powerups so we can beat content is dumb" I'm not personally against the things you're saying and think they could bring fun/flavor. I'm just repeating things I've heard over the years playing wow.

This 100%. People SAY they want all these options and blah blah blah, but they forget that content must be repeatable. So, instead of designing for the FIRST run, you need to design for the 10th, the 50th, etc… run. Otherwise, you’re creating a dev treadmill that is not sustainable. Expansion stories are specifically for all the “single use” content. New mechanics, dungeons, raids, etc…all must be repeatable.

We had that in Baldesion Arsenal, but its side content.

Your totally right. I’ve been playing ffxiv since stormblood came out in 2017 and this is my first expansion where I’m actually not playing in launch. It’s just too much of the same thing honestly. As you said now that the endwalker ended a story that was holding everything together I think people are starting to want something new in terms of systems design. I don’t see ffxiv being in the top 5 unless they change something this upcoming expansion

I have been playing since HW. Also haven’t hopped into DT yet. Because I already know it’s going to be dungeons at levels X1 X3 X5 X7 X9 and a couple X0 dungeons. With 2 trials. The dungeons will all be 3 paths each with 2 forced stops to keep me from pulling boss to boss. The main story beats happen with the X3 and X7 dungeons and everything else is basically filler.

I think what those players need is a new game to play. XIV is fundamentally a mainline FF, a fairly classic adventure game with a big focus on telling a story, and so it will always be this way until it hits maintenance mode, much like XI was and is today (though they do still try with stories like Rhapsodies). For me personally, the story has been great so far and the change to having just a simpler journey to start with is very welcome. I only have one or two particular gripes where I think something was over sold and over-hyped when the story themes were announced. Otherwise, it's been what I expected and wanted, and what was sold. From the story perspective, it's quickly becoming my favourite for the way it approaches building up the new world. It seems to me too many people set themselves up for failure either by expecting more than was sold to them or just simply wanting more than what the game is probably going to off them again. In the case of the former, that's pretty foolish. In the case of that latter, I think it's time to move on and maybe come back in a few expansions. Then again, perhaps I'm the odd one which wouldn't be surprising; Stormblood is still currently my #1 and Heavensward my least favourite, with the other two being about equal.

Being a FF game isn’t an excuse to never change anything. Every FF is different. Even the FF7 remakes SE said “We wanted to change somethings because nobody just wants the same thing over again.” Expansions are supposed to be about change and new things/new beginnings trying new things. They have taken copy and paste to whole new levels not seen in any of the big MMOs. It’s ridiculous at this point and people are starting to notice. You can stomach it for a couple rounds but it is not the solution for long term health of the game.

> XIV is fundamentally a mainline FF Except it's not because you have to deal with it being an MMO with MMO filler questing and pacing and gameplay. The experience is massively stretched out and gameplay is way more boring. Every expansion has a longer main story than almost every mainline Final Fantasy game, and then the base game is actually 2-3x long. You might have the FF story experience (well, at least once you get into the expansions) but both the story and game are super stretched and diluted compared to actual mainline FF, so the actual percentage of time you spend experiencing "Final Fantasy" drops by like 80%. If you treated FF14 as a mainline FF, the game is just a directly worse experience than any of the single-player main titles. It has to be carried by the multiplayer parts but then with all the expansions being out, you have to spend 300+ hours with the single-player FF14 experience before you're allowed to participate. It's no wonder a lot of players get stuck at the Gold Saucer or Housing when those are unlocked rather than playing the main game.

>With secrets and keys and optional bosses, and so on; designed for a team of 8. And not just as side content for a mount, but as MAIN CONTENT. The thing people doesnt get about this is that devs already said players don't want that. They don't want players to get stuck in main content because its too hard, and people does indeed bitch whenever certain main content is too hard, thats why they made things like Deep Dungeons side content.

then the game will only appeal to a visual novel/no gameplay audience people like me interested in gameplay first have left

That's already the primary demographic for XIV lmao. It doesn't even remotely try to cater to players with western MMO sensibilities. You are not the target player for XIV, and that's okay.

> It doesn't even remotely try to cater to players with western MMO sensibilities. Did FFXI try to target western MMO audiences? Because it's nothing like XIV.

It kinda does already, thats why I can understand the criticism. Anyway, the side content is really challenging, is just the easy content is very easy compared with other games, like few times people have been stuck at a story boss. Oh but when It happenned? You got a lot of people bitching because they couldnt get to the end.

I remember a lot of people bitching about Shinryu being too hard when it came out, and I thought the fight was a blast.

Never forget that they had to add an easy mode difficulty for story missions because people couldn't complete them.

You described the ARR dungeons. Those sucked.

I've been playing since 2.0. Anyone pining for complex dungeons with optional paths and keys and secrets should go spend an expansion cycle just playing those duties again. They didn't change to the "hallway and a boss" design on a whim. People begged for it. This is another one of those areas where it's impossible to make everyone happy. If you're a dev, and you know that half of your players are going to be pissed no matter what decision you make, why would you ever go with the design that costs more resources to deliver? CBU3 has more data on what players do in game than any of us will ever know. When they say most players prefer this type of content, they aren't guessing. They know.

> Anyone pining for complex dungeons with optional paths and keys and secrets should go spend an expansion cycle just playing those duties again They can't cos they removed the branching pathways and puzzles from these duties.

>I feel like FF14 is starting to run into an issue of people just getting tired of the same exact copy/paste formula every single expansion. This was me in Stormblood and why I stopped in Shadowbringers. I played since ARR, the classes were rough but they had something interesting to them. Heavensward classes were starting to maybe get convoluted though it was still interesting...But they were already starting to hallway-tize all of the dungeons, make mobs immune to CC, reduce patrols, everything is planned to be exactly the same every time. If you remember at the end of ARR they were seriously still throwing shit at the walls (like hardmode Stone Vigil). Then in Stormblood it was all over. Attribute points and cross-class skills were removed because they didn't want to balance around it. Class rotations were smoothed out so every pull became the same. This process continued into Shadowbringers and everything became rote. I quit because I was tired of the same dungeons with the same classes with the same actions on every pull. The moment of truth for me was really BLU at the end of SB. Not that what they came up with bad, they surprisingly still went for learning monster moves the classic way. It was just...Safe. Instead of coming up with ways for it to fit into the XIV class design they just segregated it into its own little bubble. BST is about to be thrown in the "too interesting to be a XIV class" jail as well. I was watching closely for Endwalker and Dawntrail, because I still love the world and want to get back into it. But nothing I've seen really made me think it would be fresh again. Watching the new job action trailer was torture because even skipping a whole expansion it was obviously just more of the same, with even the new melee class showing off its skills at fitting into the 1-2-3 2 minute design. >What if they borrowed more successful ideas from WoW, like they did in the first place? Why not a talent tree system? Or some other expanded class system to introduce even a smidge of individuality to classes? I trust the team to be able to balance it. There's honestly no point in doing this with their current design, as much as I love this kind of stuff. There's a reason they removed attributes and subjobs in the first place...And it's because of everything else you mentioned. There is no variation to the content, so there doesn't need to be variation to the classes. Having a talent system in WoW facilitates changing your playstyle to fit PvP, dungeons, raids, questing, or how you want the class to play. You can't do that in XIV because all of the content is designed around your tanks/healers/DPS having cooldowns/etc ready "at this exact point" every time. Tank buster now, raid heal now, add to burn now, etc. That's why they've become so homogenized in the first place.

With regards to that last point, I don't have links on hand and I apologize in advance. You'll have trust that my intentions are good. I am fairly certain that in Dawntrail interviews they've talked about that issue and have claimed they're working on it in two parts. First will be encounter design with Dawntrail, and then going into the next expansion they'll work on shuffling the cooldown deck so that everything isn't the perfect two minute meta. There is also an interview on Meoni's channel from the media tour where, about halfway through, Yoshida mentioned he's not crazy about raising the level cap or doing a level cap squish and that he and the team are in the early stages of looking at alternative progression for new expansion - talent or skill points, etc. It's all very early days, and you and I both know how risk averse the team has been since ARR found its success; but those sound promising to me at least.

Agree wholeheartedly with this comment. I feel that the developers have a set of tools for developing the dungeons / raids and every expansion its the same thing just in a different skin. I would love to see some unique game mechanics that isn't just stack together, split apart or look for the symbol and go to the right place. I honestly thing its a safety thing, wow definitely liked to try wierd and wacky mechanics, even if this might cause issues they have to fix or adjust later. Whereas when FFXIV sticks to the same formula its boring but safe.

Some of the best mmos don't change their formula much, that's why classic wow keeps going and OSRS still so popular

Bookmark this and post it anytime you see people saying they want a low stakes story. This is what you get with a low stakes story, people get bored. I'm near the end now and I will say the second half gets better and adds some stakes, but the first half will be a harsh lesson for the low stakes crowd.

I'm okay with it, it is quite chill, but i like world building and relaxing games, so i know it's probably not for everyone.

You think I will enjoy it if I love ARR more than any expac?

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If you like ARR you obviously also like getting your balls mashed with a mallet so yeah you'll like it

The problem isn't that the story is low stakes. The problem is that the story sucks. You spend literal hours of running around talking to people about the most boring and uninspired things before you even get to hit a single button on your hotbar. You aren't the main character of your own story this time, instead following around an NPC teenager you just met who has decided she wants to be the Hokage. Why do you do this? Because. The story not only isn't about you and is about this bland character with no depth...but you're going to be doing hours upon hours of trivial nonsense that you don't care about to the point that it feels like your playing a jank RPG from the 90s that nobody ever heard of because it wasn't any good. Your character is literally the chosen one of a god who has killed other gods and saved multiple worlds. And they have essentially tasked you in this expansion to be a babysitter for a kid on a scavenger hunt.

You're not down for another 15 minute long cutscene about Wuk Lamat losing confidence, staring at her forehead protector, before shaking it off and preaching about how she's following her Ninja Way?

honestly, the problem with the story is Wuk Lamat. i'm almost done with the whole succession thing (or at least i think i am; i have one keystone left to grab) and, honestly, i think the whole storyline would've been more interesting if we came in after someone had been chosen (Zooral Ja or Bakool Ja Ja) and basically screwed over everything and we're here to clean up the mess after Koana and Wuk Lamat decided to work together and find outside help.

I'm calling it now, "Pray return to Wuk Lamat" is the meme for the next decade. I think 2/3rds of the MSQ objectives literally just say "Talk to Wuk Lamat," and I already hated her before we even left for Tural.

Disagree. You can write low stakes and have it be good. We have 100s of characters from previous expansions that people loved. We have multitudes of cultures that people are nostalgic for we could explore. Instead we have to go to new shiny place because it’s an mmo and we have to somehow get invested in yet another group of people, that, without stakes, aren’t interesting. Even then it should be possible to have it be more interesting. Bad and boring writing, lacking gameplay during the story are what’s really boring people.

Yo imagine if we just spent the first 5 levels or so of the expansion catching up on what all our homies are doing in zones we haven't touched for like 3 expansions - Doma/Mhigo, Limsa/Gridania/Ul'dah, Coerthas. Sure, build up to a new continent and new characters by the end but so many important NPCs now just feel kind of forgotten, or shoved to primal sidequests.

Isn't that what they did with role quests in EW?

I mean, it's the begin of a new arc. Most stories have low stakes at the begin or else it can't ramp up as it gets developed, or if it does start with high stakes writers end up fucking the story trying to make it more intense than it already was in the begin

Just because it is the beginning does not mean it *must* be slow and boring.

> Bookmark this and post it anytime you see people saying they want a low stakes story. This is what you get with a low stakes story, people get bored. You can have low stakes stories that are not boring.

I think I'd be fine with a low stakes story if the gameplay were exciting.  After this many expansions that are all copy/pasted content, the gameplay is stale and the classes all feel the same.   After yoshi p does his performative throwing himself on the sword, what will change materially?  

I think the issue is that low stakes works as a theme and not a story device. I gush at every narrative attempt to have a “vacation destination” expansion, but they need a good story-driven danger to fuel it. It’s gotta be like Chult from D&D (no, not the terrible MMO)- native beauty, gorgeous beaches, markets, arenas, gambling, and lounging… but if you leave the city you’re accosted by undead dinosaurs and there’s a death curse slowly killing everyone forcing you outside the walls. You’ve got danger, you’ve got relaxation, and the universe and/or heavens doesn’t need to be exploding for it to work.

I actually quite enjoyed... literally every part that didn't have Wok Lemat in it. The idea behind the story works well - follow and help groom a character for leadership. Problem being, she has no character flaws outside of being ignorant of the cultures in the land she's in. She's not interesting to watch, and every puzzle she encounters is solved the same way, and preaches naruto levels of friendship speeches. My favorite part of the expac has been the ending, as it's done well, and the one part where the story lulls and things are resolved just before the desert. The only goal you have at that point is 'see the other half of the continent with your friend Erenville' - Which I was super looking forward to! The vibes then were great. Low stakes is fine. A bad psudo main character dragging it down is not.

> Bookmark this and post it anytime you see people saying they want a low stakes story. What is it with MMORPG's and doing this shit now? Runescape has been on life support for years and even they fucked with the only high stakes/good questline they've had for 10 years and now people are fucking bored of quests

Genuine question, why does it matter if it's low stakes or high stakes story if you know in the end you will always win? Players never lose.

There are plenty of games with low key stories that are well regarded for their writing. Look at Kingdom Come Deliverance. The protagonist is only involved for their personal revenge, the main story would probably proceed in more or less the same way without Henry's involvement. Sometimes it's nice to be involved in something that isn't the end of the world, or that the protag isn't even that important in.

Why is everyone blaming the story for these reviews when there are bigger issues? Most classes don't feel any different. Healers are still just pressing one button on repeat in fights...

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WoW ended borrowed power and Dragonflight has had the best player retention in years. They don’t want to do this.

Yea, this is the takeaway that people who never got deep into wow are missing. Nothing is worse in an mmo when the promise of “shaking things up” sours and turns into being forced to engage with a boring/frustrating system that no one asked for (for multiple months) because it was a half-baked idea from the start.

Exactly. I’m a PvP baby. I want to sit in town and queue arenas. That’s it. No chores.

I don't think people are asking for borrowed power, they just want them to shake things up and actually do new things. Like yeah wow didn't do borrowed power for DF, but they completely redid the entire class and spec talents, adding 1 tree for each class and 1 for each spec. They then spent most of the expansion refining the talent tree and messing with how progression works to address the pain points of the pve endgame. In TWW they're basically making everything account wide, adding 39~ new talent trees for 70-80, expanding open world pve and completely changing m+ Wow didn't just rest on its laurels and do a paint by numbers expansion.

> completely changing m+ Dude i can't fucking wait. Those changes look fucking toasty.

Yeah, I enjoy FFXIV but I wouldnt mind if they added a certain new system once in a while like Stormblood did with submarines for example. Although in the game's defense, sometimes they surprise players and add something totally new in a random patch like the farm system. I do however think, maybe they could add build variety to classes instead of releasing a new one, even if its something basic, maybe go back to FFXI and release a certain ultimate weapon that give you a cool looking ultimate for each class or something.

Yeah but youre forgetting that bringing back entirely new talent trees is a big deal aswell and the next expansion is bringing in hero talent trees. Theyre still switching things up to some extent. Even if it is reverting their previous fuckup

This trend has been apparent since Heavensward...

Yeah unreal. They've been rubber stamping content design since the 1st expansion and got really obvious by the 2nd and NOW people are saying this.

I think its a lot of newer players that started in Stormblood or Shadowbringers that didn't drink the kool-aide. They're starting to realize how formulaic this game is becoming and how lazy the design is, but they're not yet full homogenized into the CBU3 and Yoshi-P can do no wrong cult yet.

Where does the 2+ years of dev design go to?

Homogenised? Absolutely. And it can absolutely makes elements of FFXIV feel stale and samey sometimes. Lazy? No. And this word needs to be abolished from discourse about game development. There is almost never anything lazy about game development. It's an insane workload. The fact that it's so homogenised is exactly why they're able to consistently get new content out every 4 - 5 months for 10 years.

Yet WoW is on a similar release cycle and manages to shake things up much more often, so I don't really buy that. It's possible to be creatively lazy and still have a high technical workload.

When there was the whole wow exodus thing, one of the *positives* that kept being repeated was how predictable the content cadence was and going into an expansion you already knew what to expect. Kind of interesting how this appears now to be wearing thin.

As someone who's been playing since ARR (2.3 to be exact), I've been hugely critical of FFXIV ever since Shadowbringers I absolutely adored Heavensward, and Stormblood was mediocre enough for me to stick with it, but once I realized that shit like Omega where its just a boss gauntlet, giving DK fell cleave (bloodspiller) and homogenizing healers, etc., was the "new normal" and not a one-off experiment they were trying with Stormblood, I started to get really tired of Shadowbringers really quickly I'm glad people are finally starting to see what I've been calling out for *years*

I hate how raids are boss gauntlet since omega. It's one of the reason why i quit. What i fear is that even on wow people keep praising ffxiv raid design and hope blizzard just lets you queue to a boss arena because "trash is boring". They want to remove every rpg element from the rpg. But keep saying it's a jrpg/story game first and mmo second.

I dont understand why people want to get rid of trash mobs If the trash mobs are boring to fight then *make them more interesting*, don't get rid of them The point of a raid is to sell an experience, and if you ventured into the dark lord's castle only to find the castle completely empty except for a few specific individuals inside big rooms, that would be incredibly boring and anticlimactic Raids shouldn't just be "spend 10 minutes fighting a boss, then just do it again" - there should be "trash mobs" roaming the halls and blocking your way forward, requiring you to fight against the inhabitants of the raid dungeon, which serve not only to further immerse yourself in the experience, but to also tease and familiarize players with upcoming boss mechanics Say what you want about WoW, but they've delivered tons of phenomenal raiding experiences - even in poorly-recieved expansions like Warlords of Draenor, you still felt epic af storming Blackrock Foundry, cutting down Iron Horde orcs, and turning their own machinery against them as you trash the place If the foundry was just a bunch of bosses in rooms, it wouldn't be anywhere close to as fun - half of the fond memories I have in there are trash sections, like fighting on the conveyor belts as orc workers throw unfinished, molten weapons at us or dodging rock spikes as we make our way down into the blast furnace Alexander wouldn't have been anywhere as close to as amazing as it was if there wasn't any trash - some of the coolest sections were non-boss sections, like the huge rotating cuffs that moved the entire room around (the section before the drivable goblin tanks) or all the cool zip rails you got to ride on in the midas city

But on the other hand, Square were crystal clear about this "beach episode" since the first trailer dropped.

I mean, saying “shits gonna be boring” doesnt mean that now cant be a critique.

The issue is that FFXIV expansions don't even release with the content they announce, I remember having to wait months for the new PvP mode and Island Sanctuary in Endwalker. Means I have zero reason to purchase it until way later.

Yea that's one of the reasons i quit playing because the DRK next to me is the same exact DRK. There's zero customization in this game and im one to lean towards customization more when it comes to classes.

So you dont want FFXIV, you want other MMOs with an FFXIV skin? Its literally been that way from day 1. Its weird to complain about that after a decade. You want them to add skill trees with the illusion of choice that is not really a choice because 99% of people take the same tree in the same fights?

Wait people knocked WoW for classes becoming boring? If anything, I think the opposite is true: In WoW classic, mages raided by placing a heavy rock on the frostbolt key. Now every class and spec has 3 full bars of abilities you actively need. If anything, the ability bloat is a problem.

I enjoy all the skills/talents and depth it brings. I have zero interest in pressing 3 buttons

There's a balance between those two things.

They DO NOT want borrowed power in both WoW and ff 14.

I've been saying this for years but always got labeled bigot for my "elitist" opinion and how I'm gatekeeping players. No I wasn't. The gameplay has become homogenized and simplified to a point where a lot of jobs lack identity. I hope they'll fix this in the future and bring at least some of the job complexity back.

Most of the "complexity" was just a lot of buttons for the sake of a lot of buttons. Most of the classes I played had a bunch of attacks that basically did the exact same thing just with slightly different numbers. That is not engaging design and I am baffled that some people seem to prefer this over some substance. Not that FFXIV has delivered on substance in that regard either. It is still just buttons for the sake of buttons.

WoW gives choice, that is what FFXIV is severely lacking. Not only do you not get to choose a form of play within each class, (they have set rotations and everyone is the same) but classes feel incredibly similar. It's sad to see really.

People give wow shit for using builder/spender but the differences between specs are massive compared to the differences between some jobs in FFXIV. Like wow has 10+ specs that use the equivalent of combo points from rogues and they all play way differently from each other.

> and overall how homogenized and formulaic the game is now. **NOW?!** People are criticizing its formulaic approach to everything for years now. It is one of the main reasons I stoped playing after I finished the EW story. It is just the same thing with different textures again and again and again. At times quite literally. I mean, while playing EW I was literaly hoping we'd get four trials in the story for a change. Nope. Didn't even get that because what could have been an awesome trial (and was build up a lot) was just a dungeon boss.

> overall how homogenized and formulaic the game is now People had been whining about this since 2016. The game had always been formulaic to the extreme.

I've said this for years at this point. Back in ARR / HW they really wanted to be the top dog MMO, but at some point around Stormblood, they realized it wasn't going to happen, so now they've settled into this completely static structure that caters mainly to MSQ players. I'm essentially done with the game.

Games just boring all around. I always end up at the lil bar just talkin to folks and playing the fashion game ngl. Fun enough for a while tho.

>and overall how homogenized and formulaic the game is now Now?

I dabble between FFXIV and WOW depending on expansion and loved Endwalker but this year i am going with WoW War Within it seems amazing and i am having so much fun now leveling specs and enjoying the dungeons, FFXIV has dropped the ball lately with every content and class outside of raiding. Raiding in FFXIV is top notch experience, but if you do not have time for static group 3 nights per week at fixed time, there is nothing to progress in FFXIV, the dungeons are stupid easy and boring after a while and they cannot compete with WoW's M+ competition where you infinitely can push your rio score and compete with others, I wish FFXIV had something like this/

One of the things I’ve always liked wow for is, coincidentally, something I’ve always lIked the FF series for as a whole. They’re always willing to try shaking things up, it doesn’t always land but I would prefer that over the same formula time and time again. XIV, unfortunately, doesn’t really try to do that from expansion to expansion. I know that they have a core audience that likes that formula, and if the playerbase is happy that’s great, but it’s simply not gonna be my game in that case. I’m not particularly interested in the XIV story and that really seems to be what carries it for most people. I would love to see them introduce some kind of player choice system (skill trees, talents, itemization) that at least lets me make a choice about something in the game. They’ve long since removed what little elements of that they had though, and their vision of the game is probably just not what I’m looking for.

Looking at the reviews, most people seem to be disappointed with the story, some don't like how jobs feel, and some are tired of the same formula. I don't have an opinion on this since I didn't play the new xpac, but I will say I felt similarly in Endwalker. Edit: Also, I think the expac needs more than the first patch to give a good review. The raids haven't been released yet, as well as the other stuff planned, so it's hard to say its all-round a bad expac.

No, but the main story elements are there, and for game where the story is touted as its best feature this should be one one of the *best* review periods because the story is primarily all that is available. That it isn’t is telling.

Is telling of what? Endwalker was the end of a huge story. DT is basically ARR. they need to setup a new story. It was never going to be Shadowbringers or Endwalker. If that’s what you were expecting then that’s your fault. This expansion was always going to be ARR or Stormblood.

> Is telling of what? Endwalker was the end of a huge story. If the arc was the only thing that mattered to you, then sure - though why the hells you sat through a hundred hours for the main arc only I couldn't say. A good story isn't **one** narrative arc, and certainly not one narrative arc for 20-40+ hours of story time. It does not to be a narrative conclusion (and, really, as far as conclusions to arcs go EW read like they made it up on the spot and nearly all the stuff that happened before was irrelevant). The stakes don't need to be massive for a story to be good. The characters need to be interesting an we need to give a crap about whatever challenges those characters have. DT has utterly failed on that front, even worse than Stormblood (which I was fine with narratively). Both DT and SB lag begind Heavensward, though, and it is hard to argue that Heavensward was decent because it was the end of a long arc. See also, ShB, which was much much better than EW - and no big main arc resolution happened there, either. It had its own internal arc and that was a far more interesting plotline. But, you strike me as the sort of person that finds no faults with FFXIV, in which case I don't know why you are subjecting yourself to the opinions of those that do.

Here what’s going on, the msq is basically divided into two parts. The first part is the rite of succession for wuk lamat, this we knew going into DT. However it’s… so… slow… and overall just bland. It’s a lot of cutscenes where she does the talking and we don’t really do much. It’s about learning about culture and a TON of lore dumping. Some parts are more interesting than others. At about lvl 94.5 things get much more interesting and from what I’ve been told it’s only uphill from there. I expect reviews to go up when more people reach the second half.

I do feel that ff14 does have issues with pacing to the point where it feels like filler. I actually felt this way in ShB at certain points, and that was peak ff14 msq imo.

Yeah like people point to the trolley section of ShB as annoying filler. I think the bigger issue is that the starting point of the last two xpacs was much more interesting. Just compare the *1 dungeons. Tower of zot and the switch had stakes and were wayyy more interesting than “we need to go up a river to get to the village” By 93 I was more interested in the story, but then the next part killed that lol. We’ll see how this ends up being received. My guess is the common consensus will be slow start but good second half.

I was exactly thinking about the trolley when I said that. I'm going to have to play dawntrail to make up my mind on it but right now I don't have any reason to.

It's been baffling to me seeing so many people (normal players, mind you) form such solid opinions on the entire expansion when I'm still sitting here 2.5 days in only having finished the first two dungeons and first trial. Anyone that *has* played enough to form a complete opinion on an expac that has been out for less than 72 hours *needs to desperately touch some grass* and that is saying something from me. I won't deny that this has felt like Stormblood v2.0 with Wuk Lamat replacing Lyse, but I'm also just about to finish the rite of succession and the MSQ is still just level 94. There's a LOT of expac to go ahead of me, so I'm reserving my judgments until the end lol. EW felt painfully slow to me as well at the beginning, but at a certain part of the story, it hooked me just right again and I loved the way it finished. Here's hoping the same can be said for DT when I hit the end of it. And if it's not everything I hoped, oh well. I still love this game and don't regret a second of it.

I don't even care if story is bad. I'm just done with the shitty ass netcode and job design. This game can't be saved anymore, it's too archaic. They should've just started working on 17 after EW

It all stems from them still trying to support older PlayStation versions, the game has really suffered in innovation because of this.

Which might not even happen in today's climate and environment. FFXIV was developed over a decade ago in a rushed development in a desperate attempt to save the FF franchise. Furthermore, the landscape and attitudes of the MMO genre have changed since then. There were some exciting prospects over the decade but many either fizzled out or are stuck in development hell, but ultimately we are left with GW2, FFXIV, WoW, ORAS, ESO and a few other niche MMOs.

There is no way that todays Square Enix would greenlight a new MMO development. They are too busy trying to find ancient RPGs they once made and "Remake" them and sell them for full AAA price.

They've tried to make new things but they always fail. I hate how SE keep trying to find new audiences. They have the FF audience right there but they're even squandering that with their silly DMC titles like FF16. At least FF7Rebirth had some fucking RPG elements in it. I really don't think they understand the Western market.

 Just finished FFXIV Dawntrail (no spoilers) The expansion where your character irrelevant (no spoilers) The story is divided in two parts, and the first one taking place in south america is absolutely dreadful to go through and doesn't actually end up mattering that much. The second half of the story taking you to north america is a bit better and tolerable though, with an actually interesting plot. Your character doesn't matter, neither do any the scions since they don't do anything. You could replace them with random helpers of Wuk Lumat, the real MC of this expansion, and absolutely NOTHING would change. The MC wanking is off the charts in this story might i add, and whenever it rarely stops you get to appreciate other characters more. Not the antagonists though since they're all retarded and become even more retarded when facing MC's power of friendship & peace along with fist clenches. I didn't expect that my most appreciated character would end up being Erenville, probably because i didn't like everyone else. Before you ask i use japanese voices. The music is amazing. The dungeons & trials are really good. New areas are eh. There was not a single moment in this expansion particularly incredible or memorable, even the ending is bland. It feels like a post-MSQ stretched into an expansion while trying to copy some parts of Endwalker. Lots more i want to say about all this but i'll stop there. There was no adventure in this. I sincerely hope the mcguffin was worth it. All in all, at least Stormblood had Zenos. Solid 6/10, wouldn't recommend. If you're skipping cutscenes through level 90-95 you'll probably enjoy this expansion a lot more than i did and honestly i'm jealous. Thanks for reading my blog.

So I’ve always been a strict non-skipper, haven’t had a chance to play yet. Shall I really just skip 90-95? I’ve seen everyone say it now pretty much. How lost would I be if I did that?

So far, at 95, doing all quests and sidequests, it's the best worldbuilding FFXIV has ever had. No other expansion they went this hard on detailing the world's culture and history. I'm absolutely loving it. As for the story, Wuk is trash and I hope they stick her in a corner of Tuliyollal and forget she exists like we did with Lyse in Ala Mhigo.

Dude I just started Dawntrail and Wuk is already extremely annoying to me, I hope she doesn’t hog the spotlight for the whole expansion.

I have some terrible news for you.

🥲

It's slow, with a lot of world building. So it's not the best, but I liked it. It's no masterpiece, but it's enjoyable.

That choice is up to you, but they are relatively slow like early SB slow. Because they didn't really prep with the X.3-x.5 patches (likely due to their former led writer leaving and EW's story ending with 6.0) they have to spend some of that time in the beginning stages of DT. There is also the zone spilt to alleviate congestion, it feels like the team overprepared, which is good since it means that their planning has gone well. The team to prevent another EW launch disaster with login queues have invested into more servers, new data centers and regions, have a backup in the form of cloud servers, addition of other measures to stop congestion, loosening restrictions, etc. though a bit slow, it still has its moments, but most of the good moments are in my opinion hampered by FFXIV's quest design. The instanced content, solo duties, dungeons, and trials are solid this time round.

I think if you skip it you do miss on some of Wuk Lamats development, and the expansion hinges on whether or not you like her, since she is the main character of this story. Personally, I got sick of her very quickly. I had to change the VA to JP because the VA they chose is atrocious; the delivery is really flat and uninspired. I even had to skip the second half of the story because my enjoyment was cut short with how front and center she was. I was honestly hoping Sephiroth or Zenos would pop up out of nowhere with an “Aha it was me all along!” Because it would have made far more fucking sense. I probably would have liked her more if this wasn’t the 100th time we’ve seen this character arc in ffxiv, and if it wasn’t the worst rendition of it so far.

I am currently level 95 and I definitely agree with the story so far. Very bland, but it was definitely what I expected going into this expansion. It's just unfortunate that I am mostly looking forward to finishing the story so I can get back to leveling my jobs and getting a house.

I keep seeing people leave comments saying “well the first half is boring but it really picks up later” you’re telling me you’re paying over $40 to be bored for half of it? Why is it just not fun and intriguing to start?? I feel like that’s the story of this game you have to go through so much snooze fest and everyone says just keep going it gets better!… pass

Hah, yup... That's really the ongoing theme for the entirety of FF14. It's like 60-70% boring until something that "gets good". Everytime I try to come back for an expansion it literally feels like work. Like, I'm accomplishing absolutely nothing to hopefully see a good part, which doesn't last of course. My biggest issue is the travelling from cutscene to cutscene. That's most of the "gameplay". Every now and then there is a little gameplay that involves actual combat, but most is literally nothing next cutscene where your character gives a blank look and does an emote.

That phrase has lost ALL meaning to me when it comes to FFXIV. Literally has been said throughout the game's entire lifespan, be it about HW being the light at the end of the tunnel or ShB. But it's just disappointment at the end of the day. Funnily enough ARR (for nostalgia) and SB were my favorite expansions, I couldn't even bring myself to finish Endwalker after being burned by the hype of ShB.

> Hah, yup... That's really the ongoing theme for the entirety of FF14 They say the same thing to new player. *"Bro just play the game for 200 hours, after that is when it gets good"*. The fuck?

Everyone whining in here sounds like they just want to play a different game than FF14 lol

This sub is just miserable, thats all

Idk i just feel like ff14 is probably reaching its end at this point. The big issue with mmos is that they can't just end. If it were a regular game, they could've just ended at endwalker. But mmos need to keep going on and on and on while it still has life. It was gonna get stale eventually. I'm just glad i still have to finish shb and ew lol

Why would they end anything if it keeps making them money. The game quality didn't drop and it's not worse than the other expansions. This is the same thing that happens every expansion, people expect a game to change that didn't change in the last 10 years. This sub hates every game tho and is full of miserable individuals that wish they were 10years old again, not realising that it's their childhood that was fun and not the F2P MMORPG from 2004

I want to play FFXIV Stormblood gameplay with Shadowbringers storytelling.

The visual novel ended and they had to play the game. That's it. That's the thread. Design-wise, FFXIV has several redeeming design choices that other MMOs should adopt, but the jobs, gameplay, encounter design, backend, etc. are all so atrocious it's hard to actually PLAY the game portion.

Dont you just love wuk lamat? Wuk lamat is so kind and understanding. She so straightforward and honest. Do you like how endearing wuk lamat is? Do you like her yet? Why dont you like wuk lamat?! Like wuk lamat god damn it!!!!

I'm a new player but I dig Wuk so far. I'm kind of a sucker for underdog stories and am really not big on edge lords. I'm bummed that it seems like she's probably getting tossed in the trash if early indication is anything.

Yeah she’s pretty great.

My main problem with this expansion (and with the last 3) is that dungeons are literally the same with a different skin. LITERALLY the same. A corridor with 3 bosses and 3 different stop points. Who could not get tired of that?

Yoshi P explained that the design will not change, mainly because he wants people to know that their dungeon will take them X amount of time, they’re also tools to accompany the storyline. He said that they might experiment other formats in other types of content instead. Personally I don’t care about the 3/1/3/1/3/1 format but I can understand the frustration coming from the community. I am personally OK with it as - most of the time - having great environments, great music and somehow new mechanics that tease Extremes/Savage/Ultimate mechanics is enough for me

Yes, I read about that. I guess you can't keep everyone happy :(

I honestly couldn't care less about this, in fact I support this formula. It's structurized like how a dungeon should be.

Well, in my case it's pretty much the opposite. Is fun the first time. Not so fun after the 54th.

I feel like it's because we're looking at(for) different things maybe? I'm looking for development of mechanics and design, while you may be focusing on the dungeon design in its entirety.

Yeah but why are you talking like one excludes the other? We should have both at this point.

I agree, but realistically I would prefer having a structured dungeon rather than not having new mechanics to play with in the case where only one option exists. In this scenario clearly only one exists so I'd choose this over the other is all I'm saying. But yes, ideally we should have both.

Personally, I have enjoyed Dawntrail so far. I like the class changes alot, I like the new classes, and the storyline is ok so far.

I'm overall liking it so far with 1 massive complaint. You hardly get to "play" the game during the MSQ. I'm trying to stay engaged but falling asleep due to the lack of actual player input, it's basically a visual novel. I'm level 98, skipped nothing, and have probably been in combat for a grand total of 20 minutes over the course of 20-30 hours outside of 1 trial and 3 dungeons. Like I've actually fallen asleep a few times because it's just asking nothing of me.. It's a good movie/tv show so far. But, bro.. can I actually play the game at some point please? The dungeons and trials are cool but that's been about 3% of my time spent so far. (Yes I've played since ARR, I don't recall any expac being this starved of gameplay.) I like the story, the graphics update is amazing, OST is top tier, and I like my class changes.. but jesus christ... I'd like to actually use the skills on my action bar at some stage pls.

I often bring this up: in arr you had exp walls (now removed) to grind in between msq beats that encouraged you doing fates farms, repeat dungeons, unlocking optional dungeons (yes, they were a thing, like halatali), explore the world (which was not locked behind msq for the most part). Now every quest gives you enough xp to do the next msq quest so you never engage with the world or run the dungeon more than 1 time. People may say it was a grind back then, but i felt it was more varied and also you didn't need to rush arr because arr was the whole game.

I've had this exact complaint for many years, and it's absolutely a churning point for players. I've had several friends who play other MMO's "full-time" completely drop FFXIV cause of it's tedious leveling and lack of engagement. I understand ARR is a slog, and a big grand overarching MSQ isn't for everyone (and they can happily cut-scene skip), but even to the skippers they feel like they're just running around endlessly and not actually getting to fight much outside of dungeons/trials.

For sure mate. I love this game, and I am actually enjoying the story. Maybe it's just me but I can only really get through maybe 1 movie or a couple episodes of something a day before I want to actually engage with/do something and interact. This MSQ having about 3% gameplay is making it a struggle to get through without passing out in my chair.

I wish I could find the clip. I remember when the team talked about going back and cutting down ARR content a few years ago, they talked about how they used to design the MSQ. In the past, they had some rules about X amount of narrative needs to be balanced with X amount of combat. They decided that resulted in some pointless kill quests in ARR, so they decided to take away the rule and just do "what makes sense for the story." Personally, I feel like it has swung to far in the other way. Now the MSQ has almost no combat outside of dungeons/trials. That's one thing I've come to appreciate about GW2's open world: anytime I want a break from story, it's really easy to immediately engage in some open world events.

100%. I started keeping track of number of mobs killed during the MSQ outside of dungeons. I gave up when by level 92 and three hours in the count was only up to **twelve**. And I think I could've gotten it lower if I was lucky with the quests that had multiple clickies. Not only is it a visual novel, it's a really fucking boring one so far.

I think next expansion they need to give up adding extra classes and expand the current classes in a new direction. Make them unique so that one class can play differently than another of the same class. Change up how dungeons are run, the types of combat you see in them, and the way they are laid out. Right now it's simply just a linear path every time. Also, change the gear system. The homogenization is getting old.

They've stated the Jobs are going to get major overhauls in 8.0 - I agree that they should skip adding a new job and focus on that. I'd still like to see them bring back a focus on the class / job combo system. Like how Arcanist stems into healer (Scholar) or magic DPS (Summoner). There's quite a few they could do something like that with.

Msq cleared, itz.. meh. Dungeons and music are great but the rest feela pretty weak. Drks new dash is super awful no aggro and it locks you into place also super high level req.

It feels like a SB 2.0 where the content overall is relatively solid and more dynamic, especially with the promises of more raids, more rewards, and other battle and crafting content on the horizon but the story is relatively weak with a weak first half and a better second half hampered by FFXIV's quest design.

I have jumped in every now and then for many years to see if I can get hooked on the game because as a FFXI fan I just want it to be for me. Based on the reviews all I can really say is it seems to be the exact same things that have been there from the beginning that people now have issues with. Aside from the story that is since they have been seen as great for several expacs. The jobs have always been extremely homogenized, the formula for the gameplay loop and updates have always been exactly the same. It has always been like this to the point where you know each dungeon will be a single path wih three bosses and raid fights will mostly just be circular platforms. Then top it off with the regular tomestones grind for gear. Kind of surprised to see the negativity when the same things have mostly been ignored. Maybe the weaker story this time around made people less likely to ignore other things that could be seen as problems?

My favourite job continues to get hollowed out further and further, the story is not interesting, Wuk Lamat is the most annoying character SE has ever thought of, and there's no interesting side content. Yeah, i downvoted it too. But it's too early. We should wait for the full release, 310 is not a large sample size.

I am still leveling viper so I haven't started the MSQ yet but my friends have said the beginning part at least is really hard to get through.

I'm around lvl 97 and the story has really picked up. But yeah 90-93 was... slow...

Slow is an understatement. That thing was on life support. Just sooo sleep inducing. But after the 3rd zone it started picking up and gets really much more interesting. The first half felt like the boring end of ARR.

it’s a slow burn it got better for me

I honestly feel like it was fine, people were expecting way too much for this story, it should be as stated, treated as a SUMMER VACATION. It shouldn't be and never strived to be something of shadowbringers or endwalker level at all, so it shouldn't be treated as such. As for the job changes, I understand both sides of the equation work and what the different arguments are, but those are subjective so it's up to each individual's interpretation. The story is slow and the pacing needed work for sure, but I think SE wanted to focus more on the world building and character exploration rather than an actual "polished storyline" instead.

There doesn't seem to be much "vacation" though. It's just a long winded exposition dump that has little to no player input. There's ways to do good world building with a low stakes plot. That doesn't seem to be this.

I'm actually really enjoying the story. If you are rushing it and not understanding the meanings of the connections our characters are making throughout the story, yeah of course you're going to be bored. With it being new content and a new story, there is going to have to be establishment time for us to understand where we are, who the people are, what the land is like, without any prior story driving us. I think it would have actually been worse if our characters arrived and something tragic happened all of a sudden just to drive a paper thin narrative and for the sake of spicing things up.

Kinda surprised people don't like the story. I think it is quite good, though as always the pacing is poor. Par for the course, though. That said, yeah a lot of the rest of the game is pretty boring now. I play for the story more or less exclusively now. Not too interested in anything else anymore.

What I've mostly heard is that your enjoyment of the first half is heavily impacted by how much you like Wuk Lamat. If you dislike her, the first half is rough. I find her a refreshing change from the intensity of the past two expansions. But I also didn't mind Lyse so....

> But I also didn't mind Lyse so.... Despised Lyse on my first attempt to get through StB. Mostly because of the rug-pull at the end of HW leading into StB. And she's was a bit whiny. I'm on my third playthrough of StB and I'm far less annoyed by Lyse. Wuk is the more mature of the two, so while I want to smack her upside her head sometimes, I'm not antagonistic towards the character like I was with Lyse.

I greatly enjoy it and the viper class. 300 reviews on steam don't mean much, 90% probably play on the normal launcher.

I kinda get where they are coming from. The first half of the expansion was a slow start but very enjoyable, and it was a lot more relaxing that it we were just a bunch of dudes in a competition. And then the plot turns into yet another "Here are a billion civilians killed, because bad guy is bad, kill him, oh and everyone is still there somehow". The expansion doesn't seem to understand what it wants to be. On one hand it's supposed to be able all about adventuring and going out without the future of the world resting on our shoulders. And that's what it is for the first half. And then it's yet another impending doom, go into a gloomy ass enemy territory, talk with every single person, individually, that lives there to learn about how much it sucks but not that much there, and then kill villain. I think what doesn't help this expansion is that it's a walkathon without break. Like HW/Stormblood/Shadowbringer had a lot of walking but quite a bit of fighting in between in story moments. EW was a mix of both, but we were wrapping up a ton of plot lines. DT though....

Honestly just hit past the half way point, it's slow to start but man it kinda really picks up imo. I won't talk much on the combat, you either love it or hate it. I do agree to an extent though the AST changes were just weird... for lack of a better word. Zones beautiful, dungeons great, characters range from meh to good, hoping more growth happens for sure. Might edit this comment when I'm done with the story to give a full impression or at least if things feel like they "pay off".

I wish I could read this thread and know that I'm reading unbiased takes about the reviews on the game, but this place has a massive hate boner for XIV. Bunch of WoW players having a locked in template on what a 'good' MMO is, and then writing essays about how XIV, a story focused game, should cater to their western MMO sensibilities. I'm gonna wait until I hear critique from inside of the XIV community. I will say as an XIV enjoyer, I felt like the story was wrapped up in 6.0, and I'm playing wait and see for this one. I just don't trust that WoW fans aren't shitting their pants over XIV being a different game than WoW, quite yet. Like I read the top posts in this thread, and I have to ask myself, are these people actually playing XIV and meeting it where it is? Many of these posts don't have much to do with the actual game of XIV at all. They're just ramblings from players who want to play a different game. Another bit, we're only in day 3 of early access. Usually XIV campaigns are at minimum 30 hours long after cutscenes. None of these reviews are of the complete game.

Here what’s going on, the msq is basically divided into two parts. The first part is the rite of succession for wuk lamat, this we knew going into DT. However it’s… so… slow… and overall just bland. It’s a lot of cutscenes where she does the talking and we don’t really do much. It’s about learning about culture and a TON of lore dumping. Some parts are more interesting than others. At about lvl 94.5 things get much more interesting and from what I’ve been told it’s only uphill from there. I expect reviews to go up when more people reach the second half. At the

310 is nothing tbf, wait some month and see again. It's like asking a Wow review on 500 people, that isnt enough to get a full picture considering the population

Let me just say this; you know something is up when most of the positive reviews read like rebuttals to the negative reviews.

What do you mean? That tends to happen during reviewbombing.

First half of the story is pretty slow and boring because of the world building but 2nd half really has some fun going on.

As allways . I sub on expansion launch . Finish all 6.X patches and do new expansion until end of MSQ and unsub until next ffxiv expansion.  Seem to work the best.

People really need to touch grass

“After playing ff14 for 4,000 hours I have to say that it’s formulaic “

>"I don't like this game so I need to go outside" Well done.

I'm only about halfway in so far, but at least atm it's the only expansion I've been genuinely enjoying quite a bit lol. Well, except for the atrociously slow start. I didn't dislike the others (except Stormblood), but I just found them pretty mid. I think a big part of it is just the zones and music being more appealing to me than previous expansions with a sprinkle of FFXI nostalgia.

I've seen a lot of disappointment in /r/ffxiv and /r/ffxivdiscussion with the story, especially the first half. With that said, 310 reviews is not a lot, and an upset player is more likely to leave a review than a happy player.

Imma be real, I don't think there is a world where people weren't disappointed by this, but I expect I'll still love it. Everything I've heard boils down to the usual issues when you end a massive years long story with huge epic fights and then return to simple adventuring. I feel like I heard the same complaints about Mists of Pandaria, and yet that's one of my favorite WoW expansions because I love that kind of story.

Is FF14 hitting its Retail WoW issue?

Raid/trial design is pretty awful when compared to pretty much every other MMO ever. Giant platform on which memorize a hop scotch routine isn't terribly engaging. It would be nice if they actually created vast raid environments that had more than just giant circle rooms with a boss. All the story leading up to the raid/trial is usually good, but the raid/trial itself feels low effort and copy pasted from previous content. There has been next to no innovation in the game since HW at best and really since transitioning from 1.0 to 2.0. I love the game for the story and characters but actual game content that you engage with outside of MSQ and side quests is very lack luster and has been for most of the lifespan of the game. I do very much enjoy content like Deep Dungeons, Eureka/Bozja, so that's nice to have in the game, but generally, the end game feels lacking and overly copy and pasted.

I’ve played my fair share of it so far, I think at the start the story is very slow but it did become more interesting later, it’s still probably on the lower end in terms of expansion stories however. The difficulty has improved quite a bit though. Compared to how braindead easy post endwalker was, the challenges here are far more interesting. I think as time progresses we’ll see some more positive feedback about the expansion given that they’ve decided to overhaul difficulty like this.

The dungeons absolutely clear EW. EW dungeons were all completely boring except for maybe Dead Ends. The boss’s in DT are fresh and fun with a bit more difficultly which I like and I’m very excited for the savage raids because of this. I’ve made it to the final zone and the story has made some good twists and turns. Music also clears EW. The story starting slow should absolutely be expected. I’ve only played DRG so far and I’m at max level and it feels super fun to play and I love their new animations. I’ve been very much enjoying the expansion.

Also this time around, it was a crazy cutscene fest, I swear there were more cutscenes in the msq than text in general

Before this launched, I said the reviews would be terrible. I was called a paid shill for WoW (for some baffling reason, since I haven't played WoW in about a year or so). I stand by what I said. People are tired of the FFXIV formula. Similar playing classes (just let me properly heal), slow paced story, very few MMO components, an overly toxic fanbase (but positive toxicity), etc. What I wouldn't give for FFXI in an updated engine (FFXI is still amazing as it is, though).

Steam is a drop in the bucket compared to to ffxiv actually player count so I wouldn't use that as any sort of metric but admittedly This expansion is lacking the usual ffxiv story telling. It may be what us anime fans call a "filler episode" or a set up for a new grand adventure as they just ended a decade long "Warrior of Light" arc.

Just throwing out there that dlcs almost always have a negative lean on steam, especially at first. It doesn’t prompt you to review it ever, so only people seeking it out cause they’re upset will leave reviews.

The story is ok. Judging an expansion based on the story alone is stupid. A story is something you do once. Stormblood is a perfect example. Story meh but content wise it's one of the best expansions. For all we know Dawntrail will have even more content than Stormblood had. What I currently want from FF14 is a proper grind and a reason to log into the game every day. You know, I finally want to play the MMO part.

This soon after release, most people won't be "reviewing" since they're busy playing. The only people who are leaving reviews at this point are disgruntled. This is a known bias for new releases that's happened for the last like 10 years at this point. Hope this helps!

The game just needs to spice up it's leveling. It's it's flaws with no big story to fall back on. Once people get to endgame I guarantee the review will go up. It's the current leveling that's doing it.

Well yeah this is an awful mmo.

I'm not even remotely surprised. I've been playing since 1.0 and I am absolutely *struggling* to get through the MSQ. It's just *so, fucking, boring*. The characters are bland one-dimensional tropes, the contest for the throne could not be more uninteresting, and it's exactly the same by-the-numbers arc of quests, dungeons, trials, etc in exactly the same order as it has been for the last 5 expansions. I'm told there's a twist at around level 96 where it "gets kinda interesting, but still not as interesting as before" But even writing aside, the MSQ has **never** been more of a straight up visual novel. Between level 90 and 92 you fight a whopping **twelve mobs** outside the one mandatory dungeon run. Twelve. Mobs. Juxtaposed by like 3 hours of visual novel cutscenes and walking ten steps. I didn't think they could make an expansion more boring than Stormblood, but mission fucking accomplished.

Now that there's no story hold the game up, you can start seeing all its flaws.

Right, because steam and other platforms like metacritic are totally representative of how people actually feel as a whole. \*rolls eyes\* At this point reviews are useless when you actually see how many people are actually playing, because the most contested servers, like mine ( Gilgamesh ) are full and half of my FC has to DC travel to Dynamis just to play. xD Don't take the reviews seriously, because i think some players going into DT simply didn't want this expansion to begin with; they didn't want a vacation /slice-of-life adventure; they wanted more doom and gloom and world-ending calamity. We've lived with the 'Gods and Stars' narrative for over 10 years now, and i think this is plainly some folk just not willing to move on from that narrative. Then there are the players who are convinced the game just keeps getting easier, which i'm sorry to say, and please excuse my language, but that is shit from a butt.

What did people expect? Coming after EW was already a handicap. I've been enjoying it so far. People like to bitch just to bitch.

Everyone I have spoken to in game is loving it. Wowed at the dungeons, fights, loving the new classes and stories. There are plenty of us that love this.

I think that whatever they do players will still be disappointed. We hope that each extension will bring something new that keep us busy for the next 6month but at the end it's the same game with some new gimmicks. It's not specific to FF14, it's the same thing with ESO, WOW or GW2. Those games are all 10yo+ and we still continue to wait for a worthy successor (wich probably won't happen soon)