[SPOILERS] Heavensward vs Stormblood MSQ Story

[Yuella]

Ala Mhigans better. Yotsuyu had problems with her family and she sunddely wanted to burn every single Doman alive..

There are women who hate all men because they got hurt / cheated on by 1 man

[Alleo]

They do not even have to show them ingame if that is too much for a lot of systems. But if you have the theme of war as your expansion, at least the cutscenes should show this. Show us a large amount of people from the different city states rush toward Ala Mhigo and maybe show some more people in the air.

I mean you do all the things in the Azim Steppe to get the help of the tribes and at the end we have like five Xaela at the battle field? And these small amount of Xaelas can take out the whole air machines? The same in Ala Mhigo. You have like Hien, Yugiri and three ninjas in the air that are taking out all the machines..it simply does not feel like war to me and at least in cutscenes you could do much more. I mean look at the amount of soldiers at the battle of Cartenau. That feels at least like a true battle.

[Okamimaru]

Agreed on the lack of war in the war.... one of vids they released before the sb launch showed us a battle between the ala mhigans and empire with magitek and their new bio weapons all in action out on the battlefield.... yet that cutscene never appeared on game (yet)..

[Zohar_Lahar]

That wqas the benchmark trailer, which deliberately exaggerated the action to test performance.

[Okamimaru]

That wqas the benchmark trailer, which deliberately exaggerated the action to test performance.

Still after seeing that I feel let down by what we actually got

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Hmm 2 months into SB, gave myself plenty of time to reflect. And even though SB is only 4.0 and there is plenty yet to come, for now I stick with HW as the better experience.

Too many things in SB just felt "unnatural", e.g. purposefully scripted, did for a specific intent or to convey a specific point, it's just making it harder to genuinely appreciate the good parts such as the Eastern themes, when you are thrown out of the immersion every now and then.

While SB is quite polished overall, I think it lacks, or didn't really express it's "core" enough. I get that all the themes and ideals look good on paper, with revolutions and Lyse character growth and all that, but the execution just falls on its face from too many awkward plot arcs.

[Aosha]

Hmmm... Yeah, I do feel like SB felt a little weaker than HW. Just a bit though. It's like an 86 vs 84 score.

[Anselmet]

To be honest I think some of the reasons SB felt better than HW is due to it having a bigger budget allowing square to do some things better than HW story wise such as more voiced cutscenes. Now if the expansions had been flipped and SB had come first, I really think that the money would have translated into HW being the hands down victor. HW had a better concept with story and did do things better than SB standard revolution story. But I think this has to do with HW being about the journey of the characters to end genocidal war while incorporating strong interactions and emotional moments with our companions that were that is severely lacking in SB. The best part of SB for me is all the Doma stuff and Zenos. But the weakest character of our main cast who we are supposed to care about, Lyse, really pulls down the narrative. I don't feel she ever had any defining moments that stuck out that should have resulted in her becoming the leader of the resistance.

And honestly, this is where SB really starts to fall short of HW 3.0. For SB it was a nice journey fighting back the Garleans, but with Lyse not being a strong character like Alphinaud or Estinien her becoming leader just felt 'oh yeah this needs to happen but we didn't plan out a good enough reason so let's just shoe horn this here'. Meanwhile, we see the evolution of Alphinaud beginning, Estinien and his hatred, and Ysayle's revelation on what she believed in and what she did. Sure it wasn't smooth and really needed more scenes or dialogue to hit the story out of the park, but everything we worked on was accumulating into a strong ending. (Even if beating Thordan was a joke.) The fact is at 3.0 FFXIV pulled the rug out from beneath us when one of our companions turns into Nidhogg giving us a new challenge we can understand we need to beat and we now have Ishgard politically in upheaval (this upheaval I wish was explored more but once again HW did not have the budget nor time to develop deeply).

Comparing this to SB, we have a weak character who has no leader traits in charge of the resistance and a battle with Zenos that is worse than Thordan because of how they handled such an amazing bad guy. Why did he have to turn into a dragon? Why couldn't they have us fighting him and somehow lose and Zenos flee for some odd reason. Hell if they really needed a shoe horn things in here they could have dropped a nearby Estinien in there who is modified as f from Nidhogg and chase a weakened Zenos away and we still take back Ala Mhigo but we still have that sense of we lost and we would be reunited with a character that many of us love. That would have been better ending than the whole singing and que credits with logo. Just that helplessness would have been better than killing off a bad guy that was amazing.

And I'll be honest here, the best companions were Alisiae and Alphinaud in SB. Due to having personality and meaning something to our character. Lyse we never got anything out of her other than a monologue and she was boring. The side characters, thank god, were not. Also, leading up to taking back Ala Mhigo how Aymeric and the Ishgardians treat us just puts me more into the camp that HW had a better story. Aymeric treats us like a friend and the Ishgardians are ecstatic to see us. I got more heartwarming feels from their reactions than standing at the end singing a song at the end of SB.

In short HW has better characterization and better stakes. I guess the one thing I can say about SB over HW is that the pacing is much, much better and they give us a slow build up. That unfortunately doesn't pay off all that well.

[Okamimaru]

Best SB character imo is Hein, a character I actually want to work with... the worst is lyse, I've hated her as far back as when I first met her as yda... there is literally no reason for her to be the leader of the resistance... command experience? Nope. Geographic knowledge? Not really. Combat ability? Hardly. Hell when was the last time she was even in ala mhigo?

[Balipu]

While I can agree that Lyse didn't ad much to the story beside being irritating and that nobody got as much development and Alphinaud and Estinien got in HW I really liked how much we learned about our companions as we visited the hometowns of most of them. Also loved how much Au Ra lore we got in the Azym Steppes.

I never cared much for Ala Mhigo so I was glad half the expansion didn't focus on them. Zenos wasn't as interesting as Thordan, but the final battle was super epic nonetheless. While Lakshmi wasn't that well integrated into the story as Ravanna or Bismarck, her music and fight trumps both.

I also liked the SB dungeons more. And the zones. None were as exotic as Azys Lla or the Sylplands (I am a sucker for places like those) But Kugane and the Ruby Sea make up for that.