The ending to Stormblood...

Man, I don't know how to use the spoiler tags on these forums.


I also don't get why this had to be split into two parts; this felt excessively short. Even Hildibrand got more attention than this.


The "roleplaying" fights are all extremely watered down versions of the classes' usual kits so that people who don't play the classes themselves aren't overwhelmed; don't know why people are so surprised by that by now. It's no real different than when you do something like hop into a magitek armor or gobmachine; you get at most 4 different commands to use, a very simplified setup of your usual 30-40 hotbar buttons or whatever it is people roll these days.

I'm so disapointed by this ending...

Like for real its bad. reaaaaaaally bad. And not bad in the "haha its going bad for the world mouahahaha" way, no its bad like its not even ending anything. There is no conclusion, they sure need to tease Shadowbringer but as it is for me Stormblood ended with Tsukuyomi and the rest is shadowbringer teasing.

Two scene made me genuinely facepalm because of how lame it was...

Last second save by Estinien its so damn cliché and infuriating to once again having our victory on Zenos denied because plot, give us a break, he's not that cool of an antagonist, time to turn that damn page and have some fresh air.

&

Flash news : garlemald emperor is a bad guy. wow. WOW. No shit Sherlock of the years, just miss a tad more dramatic music and some lightning to make him look even more look like he is evil.

Oh I almost forgot :

Playing Hien is piss poor gameplay experience, 3 skill... what a warrior... what a leader... Playing Y'shtola was fun because it was fresh, playing Alphinaud was already so damn boring "look at me I'm spamming ruin cause I can't do anything remotely usefull please kill me" and now the worst SAM ever. If its for ARR lv 5 class gameplay you can make it a cutscene and spare us that lame attempt at fan-service for uninspired Dev's

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

The "roleplaying" fights are all extremely watered down versions of the classes' usual kits so that people who don't play the classes themselves aren't overwhelmed; don't know why people are so surprised by that by now. It's no real different than when you do something like hop into a magitek armor or gobmachine; you get at most 4 different commands to use, a very simplified setup of your usual 30-40 hotbar buttons or whatever it is people roll these days.

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Yeah the roleplaying fights are bare bones but Y'shtola and Alphinaud's fights felt way more organic for what they were and had unique points to it ( off the top of my head, Y'shtola's 'sending-esque' dance at the end, Alphinaud's carbuncle ) -- they didn't even try with Hien.

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Originally Posted by DududeDude

He definitely seems more competent than what you can do while playing him in his other portrayals. And while I can agree with people potentially being overwhelmed, I think this might have been a good use case of the autocombo system PvP has. Even if hitting that basic melee attack button would have had the same damage, it would seem less immersion breaking if it at least varied up the visuals.

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Oh yeah, they should definitely use the auto-combo thing.

It felt...underwhelming, tbh. In ARR, we're fugitives and run to the literal one place that would receive us, in HW, we prepare to retake previously conquered land because someone reignited the war and we had a lost world-ending dragon to catch/kill, now in SB...

it kinda just ends. Literally it just ends. 'go to Crystal Tower' *rolls credits*. There's no tension, no proper climax, no connection to ShB or becoming a WoD, nada.
Sure, you could start ShB with tons of exposition cinematics about how or why we're doing what we're about to do, but this cliffhanger ending - unlike the others - didn't really felt like an expansion finale hyping the next one, more like a 'next patch' type of ending

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Originally Posted by Anselmet

I dunno guys. I think I'm gonna have nightmares from

Varis sos Galvus's face. Like omg please do not zoom up on his face like that ever again!

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Same here but it's not like I wanted to sleep anyway though...

Same like a lot of people here, I just didn't like at all the ending of Stormblood, could be in the first patch and would be more interesting.

First,

I so wanted to kick ass off Zenos/Elidibus but no, the fate didn't want it or it was just for one moment. Well ok, maybe later.

But after,

to be saved from ZenoEli by Estinien... I was thinking, why Estinien can save us from everything ( aka the time with the cannon on Peaks ). Why can't we just be a real hero at the end.

Then,

Why Varis' face looks so crazy ? I could really like that plot, but why Varis can't just hint us with something ? When we are seeing him in Garlemald, he is never sitting on the throne, just watching it.

To Shadowbringers;

I don't like the end at all, getting up and Aymeric saying we don't need to go back on battle, just rest (in peace). I feel like taking vacancies from everthing in our world. Even accepting to go with the enigmatic figure is "ok we don't know you, but we'll go with you, np".

Real Zenos,

it's the only thing I liked. To see back Zenos who still want to fight with us.

And, yes, the reward is nice at least.

Honestly i thought:

The ending should've had us trying to go to the 1st and fail but during the failure we see either Thancred/Y'shtola or Urianger facing a Sin eater it would give us urgency to go to the 1st and with a failure they could use the excuse we need more time to build up power to send you.

What do people think?

Sorry guys can't post my thoughts because I've been stuck on the credits phase since this morning. Any tips?

Short and anticlimactic... didn't feel like an ending in any sense, and seems to be leading into Shadowbringers like sone kind of sidequest.
"The Garlean threat is exactly where you left off, imminent, impending doom, meanwhile lets go to another world and help them out..."

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Short and anticlimactic... didn't feel like an ending in any sense, and seems to be leading into Shadowbringers like sone kind of sidequest.
"The Garlean threat is exactly where you left off, imminent, impending doom, meanwhile lets go to another world and help them out..."

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It wasn't an ending, really. The Stormblood storyline ended back in patch 4.3 after Castrum Fluminis.
Since then we have been working our way through the Shadowbringers prologue.

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Originally Posted by Allegor

It felt...underwhelming, tbh. In ARR, we're fugitives and run to the literal one place that would receive us, in HW, we prepare to retake previously conquered land because someone reignited the war and we had a lost world-ending dragon to catch/kill, now in SB...

it kinda just ends. Literally it just ends. 'go to Crystal Tower' *rolls credits*. There's no tension, no proper climax, no connection to ShB or becoming a WoD, nada.
Sure, you could start ShB with tons of exposition cinematics about how or why we're doing what we're about to do, but this cliffhanger ending - unlike the others - didn't really felt like an expansion finale hyping the next one, more like a 'next patch' type of ending

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This, basically this. The excitement scratched a wall big time, but its still on the road driving. Hope the start of Shadowbringers will clear things up a ton. Also

The denial of the victory against zenos was kinda triggering imho. But honestly any normal mortal would have been dead at this point

Thank you Stormblood. Was fun overall.

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Originally Posted by Yshal

So as a PLD with an ilvl of 384, I'm having a hard time DPSing down "you know who"s three swords...

Any pointers? Or so I just NEED to gear up a DPS job for this?

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save your burst and offensive abilities for the swords. Requiescat and Holy Spirit should take care of the first two and Spirits Within with a Royal Authority combo should take out the third. Also don't worry that much about standing in a single AoE, they practically do chip damage. The worst that'll happen is you get paralysed.

Joining the disappointed chorus. This was definitely not worth the patch splitting. The only reason why I understood anything that was happening is because I kept up with news about ShB from fanfests and interviews.

I get why we'd be interested in going to the Crystal Tower and doing whatever given the other Scions are in peril, but they should've done a better job of explaining why we can put aside this war we're fighting, especially since we, as the player, know that the entire thing with Black Rose is far from over and things are only going to get drastically worse in our absence. Also, after a main game + 2 expansions' worth of us being the Deus Ex Machina, to suddenly have everyone tell us to take a break is more than a bit jarring. Last I checked, if I close my eyes to sneeze, the Garleans take over two more provinces, so now you're letting me take a nap?
And uh. Aren't we also supposed to rest given how we almost just died? Instead we immediately go off on another adventure that will become an expansion?

It felt like the story had to be cut prematurely, and as ShB's story doesn't deal with Garlemald, it was the equivalent of pushing everything off the table and spreading a new blueprint with everything broken and dented on the floor. It might not have been that bad if it was paired with the first part of the patch, but it wasn't, so whatever hype I managed to build up to and including the fight just dissipated into nothingness. It was at once "this is why I do love this game" and "this is why I don't". A very weird feeling.

That said I was glad to see more of the other Scions, but it felt bad to realize I didn't even remember most of their names because they only show when the main Scions aren't available.

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Originally Posted by Yshal

So as a PLD with an ilvl of 384, I'm having a hard time DPSing down "you know who"s three swords...

Any pointers? Or so I just NEED to gear up a DPS job for this?

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I just did the duty as a PLD with ilvl 373. I failed the first try, but the second try (with the Echo) I had no problem beating him.

Welp, it was relatively short. And it comes to something when...

... Greg gives me more trouble* than Elidinos, Elizenos, ... wait, what we calling him again? Meh, whatever. I'm not inspired.

Anyhoo, I'm cool with the Estinien save. I just want to actually see him do it, however it was done. Totally worth it, however, to have Aymeric pop into the bedchamber. Wouldn't say no to that happening a lot more often. And what? You're going back to the front, Aymeric? Er, no, don't do that! I'm still quite injured and think you should probably stay cause that'll definitely help me get better. Just say words at me some more if that's all there is. So, so very injured still. Yeah. It's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Btw! Thanks for popping in, Second Dad (Edmont). I absolutely adore you. When I was told to go home or whatevs your place was the first place I thought of. Then I thought of my FC house, so went there instead. Nothing happened.

Anyhoo, then it was Tataru being teary, and I had to say it was okay, Mummy Cat is here now. Pls, stop making the little 'tato cry. *hugs for Tataru*

So, yeah, stuff happened, and that's all I have to say about that.


*I really suck at trials and I usually know better than to go in blind by myself because of my anxiety. I'm so sorry to the other 7 people that got landed with me in their party. I didn't panic as much as I thought I would, but oof, I did get very shaky to the point button pressing was a little difficult. Sorry again if you realise it was me with your group.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

It ended rather abruptly.

Should have at least given a face and a name to the guy calling us out, anything more than "Enigmatic Figure" and just a quote about "throwing wide the gates".

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Well, about that.....

There's definitely more to him, if you put together a few details and/or pick up on a resemblance, especially on the 5.0 poster - or you can cheat and look at his character data which gives a pretty definite answer.

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...f21ac1bb76.jpg

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Originally Posted by AxHell

Sorry guys can't post my thoughts because I've been stuck on the credits phase since this morning. Any tips?

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I suggest a long tea break.

It sorta left me wondering "is that it?" but it wasn't bad by any means. I'm usually quick to say whether I thought the story sucked, but for the most part it has been decent the last couple patches. The lead up to the expansion was spread over 4.5 and 4.56, I think, instead of having everything happen at once. Before they would have some pretty major stuff saved for the last bit of the story. Wasn't the case this time around. Like I said, they seemed to have spread things out a bit more.

The whole thing actually felt somewhat tame as an expansion build-up. I feel they should have maybe ended it with the parley because, while things do look not great, we've hit a relatively comfortable stalemate.

It's not like we have a poisoned sultana and every scion scattered to the winds, or we've been dragged into kickstarting open war with the empire while an interdimensional power hungry robot and a powerful primal have been let loose.

Right now it's just "Ok, we have an idea of how to fix this and have driven the empire back for now. They're pretty busy with internal squabbles, too, so things should be good on that front."

If there was maybe a bit more about the First, or a bigger gut-punch it would probably have held more weight.

What was there was good, but it felt like it was missing some spice.

The ending makes a good screenshot.

https://i.imgur.com/Fzmm1fX.png

Overall i was okay with how it ended, i did get a bit emotional during the scene with Tataru. But that's because i'm a big baby when it comes to seeing someone cry.

Maybe it would have been better if "The First" hadn't been revealed at Fanfest? Just think how "wow" that is for the people who didn't know that yet as a major reveal. As for an ending, waiting for others to find something makes more sense than "I'm running around after being charged with regicide" and "I'm on the other side of the wall, time to go back and not bother finding out what is on the other side". This time it is when will Y'mittra's friends find something for me to act on.... to save her sister! Why nothing from her other than smn quests? Did no one tell her?

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Originally Posted by Wynn_Storm

The ending makes a good screenshot.

https://i.imgur.com/Fzmm1fX.png

Overall i was okay with how it ended, i did get a bit emotional during the scene with Tataru. But that's because i'm a big baby when it comes to seeing someone cry.

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Second that, I too got a bit emotional with Tataru. It wasn't the amazing ending as I thought it would be. But it certainly wasn't a major disappointment.

personally this ending was nice, even if i regret we didn't seen how we was saved....but outside this, the fight with Zeno was perfect! (especially with a sam)
personally i did find the build up of 2.0->3.0 to be a bit too big actually, in the end it was resolved in no time almost like if everything was a dream.
by ending the story like this, we have no info, no expectation, true.... but at the same time, if you don't get the info from fanfest or advertissing... you are left clueless about who is this hooded man (yes who is this dude!) but at the same time, the place where we talk with him and where is the device can offer some info.

you see in the place of the meeting with the hooded man, 14 star, the world was split into 14 shard. and if you have done crystal tower, you know we can cross dimension from there, since we did it in the third one.... the world of darkness, remember?
then we can guess that dimension traveling is involved... especially since krill didn't found the soul of our companion in source world... means they are somewhere else? plus from the warrior of darkness story, we did learn that the common way to cross dimension is by being a soul.
i'm curious to see how we will cross dimension... and if we will see our friend from crystal tower story quest.

i'm too happy we will wait before the empire is more developped before enter a full scale war, because right now, even if they come and say....yes eorzea use magic and such for fight.... exept black mage is limited to warrior of light.... they only have acces to thaumaturge soo far... right, i don't see us win... not until they give other people of the alliance access to the jobs! because the army of the alliance only have access to class (exept the one from orient that have access to jobs!)... plus i want to see how they will find a way to balance our power of light and the new power of darkness we will get... it's really really interesting!

ps: we will see our friend the warrior of darkness you think?

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Originally Posted by Corue

Yeah it was quite good. I loved the part where

all tension was immediately removed by an off-screen deus ex machina

and that final scene was just

extremely disappointing because there was no kind of build-up or cliffhanger that left you wanting more. It was just a big cop-out that just screamed "PLEASE BUY OUR NEW EXPANSION FOR THE GOOD STORY". So I'm pleased to know that our story will lack any kind of risk or challenge and we'll just hop on over to another shard and do everything we normally do but with a different coat of paint. .

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Agreed on all points.

YES! I completely agree OP! I really loved it! I was crying because i was worried that my W.O.L wouldn't make it in time!

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Originally Posted by Wynn_Storm

The ending makes a good screenshot.

https://i.imgur.com/Fzmm1fX.png

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I so wanted to take a screenshot there, but I waited too long and it ended up taking it while it faded to black.. lol

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Originally Posted by Esp

I so wanted to take a screenshot there, but I waited too long and it ended up taking it while it faded to black.. lol

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I guess you need to go back to the inn room and try again then

I'd say my overall reactions to this patch can be summed up nicely with the following pic:

https://i.imgur.com/YvEx0vN.jpg

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Originally Posted by swiss_Momo

I'd say my overall reactions to this patch can be summed up nicely with the following pic:

https://i.imgur.com/YvEx0vN.jpg

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xD I love it. What emote is that?

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Originally Posted by Amariel34

xD I love it. What emote is that?

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the new Manderville mambo one

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Originally Posted by Yshal

So as a PLD with an ilvl of 384, I'm having a hard time DPSing down "you know who"s three swords...

Any pointers? Or so I just NEED to gear up a DPS job for this?

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Stay in Sword Oath the entire fight. I was i397, but even Concentravity seemed like a tickle. When the swords pop, hit Fight or Flight, and start each sword with a Riot Blade combo ending with Goring Blade, with the next combos being Royal Authority. Repeat for each sword. That should make them go down fast enough to beat the timer.

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Originally Posted by swiss_Momo

the new Manderville mambo one

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If it's from the quest line, I probably won't get it. I did some of that and I can't STAND that guy. Oh well.

I get and agree with the criticisms, but when I was playing the scenareo I really enjoyed it, and if it worked in the moment on me then I guess the deus ex machina worked :)

Next time though I'd rather if we're going to die and be deus ex machina rescued... Let us roleplay as the rescuer forcing the asshole to retreat, not the guy beforehand.

I do wish this had been before fanfest, but overall very fun patch.

I liked the patch? Yes, I did.
Was it necessary to split in two parts? Absolutely not.

In fact I'd argue that the only reason the patch got divided in 2 is because they also wanted to patch the XV crossover into the game so when the time comes they just turn on the event start switch.

In regards to content itself everything added could have been added with part 1, in a single patch.
I was expecting at least an epic MSQ trial to finish the expansion with a bang. But oh well.

I WANTED HIM DEAD!

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Originally Posted by Corue

Yeah it was quite good. I loved the part where

all tension was immediately removed by an off-screen deus ex machina

and that final scene was just

extremely disappointing because there was no kind of build-up or cliffhanger that left you wanting more. It was just a big cop-out that just screamed "PLEASE BUY OUR NEW EXPANSION FOR THE GOOD STORY". So I'm pleased to know that our story will lack any kind of risk or challenge and we'll just hop on over to another shard and do everything we normally do but with a different coat of paint. .

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sounds like that's what the entire next expansion is though
war goes on while our hero of light diddles around in dimension X being all angsty and dark for a while

I hope other enjoyed it, but I found the ending extremely disappointing.

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Originally Posted by Nihility

sounds like that's what the entire next expansion is though
war goes on while our hero of light diddles around in dimension X being all angsty and dark for a while

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maybe the goal of this expansion is to become not the hero the world need, but the hero it deserve?
more seriously, from the start all the story is about balance that can be broken and make the world a mess.... let's be honest we often win.... too often actually. don't that create inbalance between light and darkness? maybe we need to become a warrior of darkness for get light and darkness in balance inside us?
or maybe hooded man is a traitor!
no i think it's more about find balance between light and darkness, what is strange since i don't see the balance between darkness and light to be soo much broken in the source world.

outside all of this story, i'm conflicted not by patch or the stormblood story, but more where we go.... if we can't win nor loose.... what can we do? because ascien will not stop.all i see is an eternal battle between light and darkness for create balance, but that solve nothing?
i'm extremely curious to see where the game go with this expansion...

I remember when I first cleared "Before the Dawn" in ARR and how much it made me go "Oh Sugar-Honey-Iced-Tea". I was so hyped and at the edge of my seat as I went right into Heavensward.
Heavensward still ended with quite a bang, not nearly as much "oomph" as ARR granted, but still got me ready and raring to go into Stormblood (which was an arduous task because at that point I was up to date with everything so I had to wait those few months).
Stormblood's ending was... disappointingly underwhelming. I've been waiting for that "Sugar-Honey-Iced-Tea" moment like ARR and HW, but... nothing. All I really felt was mild annoyance at -redacting cause I can't figure out how to work the spoiler tag-. "You're calling me at a very bad time, my dude! Knock it off."

Left me with more questions than answers. I don't really get what happened. Where did all the scions go for example.