When does Stormblood get good?[Spoilers?]

Lyse is still fine imo, I think.

Minfilla 1.0 was worse. She keeps getting herself in the damsel in distress situation and often orders around and never gets the work done by herself.

I think that the problem with Lyse is that only Papalymo or someone like him can supplement/compliment a character written the way she is.

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Originally Posted by RokkuEkkusu

I think that the problem with Lyse is that only Papalymo or someone like him can supplement/compliment a character written the way she is.

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I think you hit the nail on the head. Lyse was imagined as one half of a pair and without the other half of said pair her character just felt, flat? That isn't to say she couldn't have worked without her 'partner' character but I don't think the writers quite sat down and tried to tackle the ramifications of fleshing her character out now that her crutch was gone.

That entire expansion was just blah. If it wasn't for certain characters that appealed to me in Doma, I would of fallen asleep.

Imo, only the Doma/Far East parts of SB were good, which is no surprise because it's written by the writer of ShB. Still, it's not as good as HW or ShB.

As pointed earlier, the expansion was eh. Passable.
I mean we went from an epic war between man and dragon, a top notch artstyle, and my favourite raid series,
To a mediocre local conflict in which we do not feel involved because all we do is run around the world.
But at least the end was nice. The set up for the 5.0 plot + ghymlit dark

Didnt like SB in the beginning. Once we get to everything outside of Lyse (who cant seem to make a decision yet did fine when she was portraying someone else) it gets good, especially ytsuyu's storyline.

SB isn't that great at all. The only nice thing about it are the colorful environments. The Omega raid series plot is complete garbage too.

Just stick it out till Shadowbringers, which is absolutely fantastic.

once it stops pretending to be the Ala Mhigo expansion and fully embraces being the Doma expansion.
4 lords trial series is pretty good.
Omega is pretty boring except for the last 2 fights, unless you're a FFVI fanboy I guess (ITT: Characters that remind you of yourself. For me it's Kefka – intelligent, nihilistic and with a wicked sense of humor.)
the Ivalice 24 mans are pretty good, albeit a bit cutscene heavy, also gets soured quite a bit by mocking you with fetch quests at the start. I sure pray to the 12 that you choke on that wine one day, Matsu, errr, dramathurge! But good luck getting queues for it nowadays since people are too lazy/stupid for thundergod
Hildy is Hildy, and finally with a trial again at the end
Eureka was personally worse than a dumpster fire, which ruined the expansion even more for me

it had a few great moments, but all in all Stormblood was pretty mediocre and honestly felt like a filler expansion

I loved Stormblood from beginning to end o_o

PS: Lyse is awesome. Or at least the original Japanese one is.

My fair opinion below, warning, contains major spoiler for 5.0 pre-patches story, so yeah...

In my honest opinion it gets better once Zenos dies, that guy really ruined the expansion by being the worst villain this game has ever seen. After that point we start to have real things happening again with villains who have ACTUAL motives and are not more shallow than the kiddie pool. Lyse doesn't get any better though, but thankfully the game starts to focus less on her as well after 5.0 and more on the rest of the crew again.

Well, I'm on the Steppes and stuff is getting a lot better here, maybe because of how little I get of Lyse?

I'm amazed at how they replaced Estinien and Ysayle for this ha.

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Originally Posted by ern815

Lyse is still fine imo, I think.

Minfilla 1.0 was worse. She keeps getting herself in the damsel in distress situation and often orders around and never gets the work done by herself.

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She gets more hate over that than she deserves. She's only been captured twice - once alongside all the Scions who weren't outright murdered in the raid on the Waking Sands, and then trying to stop Nabriales from stealing Tupsimati (a relic possibly more valuable than her life, if the Ascians got hold of it).

We don't see her work because it's meetings and phonecalls linkpearls and keeping everything running. We see her when she delegates stuff to us.


...oh and this has just made me realise (by a few steps of thought) why I didn't mind the eternal "pray return to the Waking Sands" as a new player - I liked following all the changing dialogue between minor characters in the hall, and being called back meant another step in their conversations. (Which made the raid even more horrifying...)

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Originally Posted by Halivel

Tbh, it could be made so intentionally. I mean... she wasn't a person for 5 years after calamity, and wasn't one either in ARR-SB period, because she was her sister. It would be weird to immediately become a whole new person when you barely regained your own name just some time ago.

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The problem with all this though, is the way she was put into a position of leadership. She was underdeveloped as a character, pretty much one dimensional and what they did portray of her certianly wasn't leadership material. Yet somehow that's Conrad's first choice as a successor? And everyone else is fine with this too? She clearly isn't cut out for the role she was given, which just makes her even more irritating.

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Originally Posted by Rhais

The problem with all this though, is the way she was put into a position of leadership. She was underdeveloped as a character, pretty much one dimensional and what they did portray of her certianly wasn't leadership material. Yet somehow that's Conrad's first choice as a successor? And everyone else is fine with this too? She clearly isn't cut out for the role she was given, which just makes her even more irritating.

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Spoilers for OP's sake.

I always saw it as nepotism honestly given who her father is. Conrad specifically says that isn't the case but let's be honest 'because you're you' doesn't hold much water either as a reason when up until that point Lyse hasn't done any leading or shown any qualities that would make her seem a good fit for that role. Of course logistically there was likely a good chunk of her character development that had to be cut to make the first part of the expansion an acceptable length, so for all we know there were going to be instances where she did show she was perfect for the job. It's just if they did exist they never made it into the game.

Honestly I really wonder how different SB would have been if they had broken up the story more and had the liberation take place in a later patch. It would have given Lyse the time she desperately needed to be fleshed out because out of all the issues with that expansion, Lyse really is the character with the most wasted potential. Good on paper but the writing just did her no favors at all.

Which is a shame because has she been written competently she'd have been my favorite character in the expansion. The time she spends in the Steppes really shows growth on her part and I was excited to see where it went... And learning that Ishikawa was in charge of the Steppes content for SB I have to wonder if she had some hand in that. Because Lyse basically had a full character reversal once they went back to Ala Mhigo and it was like someone else was writing her again. Which then only got worse when whomever was in charge of her basically gave up by 4.2 because any outstanding character growth she could have had is abandoned by the time we get back to Ala Mhigo again.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that part of the story either. If anything, it's that specific moment where I thought they officially dropped the ball

Conrad: Lyse, you're in charge now

M'naago: am I a joke to you?

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Originally Posted by swiss_Momo

it had a few great moments, but all in all Stormblood was pretty mediocre and honestly felt like a filler expansion

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Technically it is. There was an interview I read where they weren't too sure how to continue the WoD's story in 3.x so they took their time and held it off, and in exchange they focused on Ala Mhigo, Doma and the Far East (probably because it was popular demand, like how Heavensward probably happened because players really wanted to visit Ishgard back in 1.0)

Stormblood is a very mixed bag. It tried to do too much and never really gave the regions it focused on the amount of love and attention that they deserved. The Far East was handled far better than Ala Mhigo/Garlemald.

Shadowbringers focuses almost entirely on a single region and the story is much more cohesive as a result.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Stormblood is like a weird off-tone sidequest that got stretched to an entire expansion. I didn't like it anywhere near as much as Heavensward and now Shadowbringers is out, it feels like a continuity from ARR - HW - ShB while Stormblood doesn't fit the sequence. It also feels very heavy on 'dark stories' of the conquered lands and cruel treatment by their conquerors.

The patch quests got more interesting, and started leading into Shadowbringers' storyline.

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This is exactly how I read Stormblood. For me, it's a collection of little stories with the themes of War / Resistance / Revolution, which have their own charm in their particular way, but the Scion's path is an awkward attempt to patch these smaller stories under a bigger narrative.
It ends up chopping them in pieces of storytelling, and it kinda deflates the build up of each resolution. Ala Mhigo is the big victim there. Somehow it's the same with Doma severed between each part of the Azim "bubble".
While if you look individually at the lore around the Azim Steppes or the Ruby Sea, it makes more sense.

Azim Steppe is the only good part of SB.

The majority of people agree that the Steppes is when it becomes really good. Totally agree with that statement as that whole storyline was just fantastic, the cast of characters were great, Hien's debut, and the culture of Mongol Nomadic Tribes is in full bloom. The Danshin Nadaam that takes place in the MSQ was so huge that it's becoming it's own mode in 5.1 for pvp.

Gyr Abania will always be in my books the most underutilized concept of XIV. So many cool things and landmarks between the Peaks and Fringes, but we barely do anything with them since the focus was mainly on Doma.

The problem with Stormblood is that instead of focusing on one region they decided to focus on two, and I don't know if it's only me but Stormblood seems to be lacking the "fantasy" type areas that both heavenward and shadowbringers bought us. (I remember most zones of ShB and HW because they had a magical aesthetic that none of the Stormblood ones seemed to capture, but it's probably just me.)

I never found any of Stormblood good for most part found it completely boring. Only parts found kind of fun was turtle guys and the fish guys quests.

It really makes me sad to see people digging into Stormblood like this. I really liked it. From the more serious story, to the encounter design, zones, music and jobs added, Stormblood was awesome to me. It doesn't deserve this hate.

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Originally Posted by Nemmar

It really makes me sad to see people digging into Stormblood like this. I really liked it. From the more serious story, to the encounter design, zones, music and jobs added, Stormblood was awesome to me. It doesn't deserve this hate.

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More serious story? Huh? HW is better, also in zones and music.

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Originally Posted by Nemmar

It really makes me sad to see people digging into Stormblood like this. I really liked it. From the more serious story, to the encounter design, zones, music and jobs added, Stormblood was awesome to me. It doesn't deserve this hate.

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Story-wise I don't think SB was bad anyway. It's not as bad as ARR at least. It really flopped with the characters, particularly Lyse and Zenos.
As an expansion it's honestly better than Heavensward. There's a lot more creativity in the content than Heavensward (which was mostly forgettable imo) even though most of it was fanservice, and Heavensward's gritty aesthetic was honestly getting old.

Not counting ARR, SB is the weakest link in FF14's story in my opinion. While it's not terrible, it's also not as good as the preceding and following expansions. A few portions of the main story caught my interest, but the most memorable experiences came from specific sidequests and raids, where I felt a lot more drawn in. When I went through it I just hurried along until something caught my attention.

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Originally Posted by Nemmar

It really makes me sad to see people digging into Stormblood like this. I really liked it. From the more serious story, to the encounter design, zones, music and jobs added, Stormblood was awesome to me. It doesn't deserve this hate.

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I like Stormblood as well, but to each their own, I suppose. And well, I enjoyed even ARR with all its flaws. It's impossible to create a story that appeals to everyone anyway. I mean... I saw people who was like "what is this boring mess" about Shadowbringers. /shrug/

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Originally Posted by Allegor

I honestly found the 4 Lords, Omega, and Ivalice questlines more engaging than the MSQ. Heck even Raubahn's mini arc was more entertaining. I wouldn't say I don't like Lyse, but she's pretty much the definition of wasted potential and yet the narrative puts her on this main character pedestal that she herself acknowledges shouldn't be on /shrug

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Honestly, i think changing Yda the way they did was a bad move, all in all. They could have had Yda do all the things that Lyse did with the personality that we came accustomed to.. but there's not much we can really do about that at this point.

I might've missed something but I don't understand her transition from Yda to Lyse. It didn't add anything to the story except for an attempt at a dramatic reveal. Okay, so she's Lyse now...well so what? Nobody knew who Lyse was until at that very moment so why should people care?

The whole "Just kidding I pretended to be my *apparently* dead sister" thing is just nonsensical to me, and so out of the blue.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

nonsensical to me, and so out of the blue.

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Imo, that sums up pretty much 90% of the MSQ up until Shadowbringers.

The problem with SB's story is that the expansion tries to prop up this "big war" that is going on and at NO point do you ever feel like you're apart of a war. Lyse is kind of stupid and Zenos looks cool but meh...

And now Gosetsu had to die
Great
Haurchefant 2.0

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Originally Posted by Noitems

The majority of people agree that the Steppes is when it becomes really good. Totally agree with that statement as that whole storyline was just fantastic, the cast of characters were great, Hien's debut, and the culture of Mongol Nomadic Tribes is in full bloom. The Danshin Nadaam that takes place in the MSQ was so huge that it's becoming it's own mode in 5.1 for pvp.

Gyr Abania will always be in my books the most underutilized concept of XIV. So many cool things and landmarks between the Peaks and Fringes, but we barely do anything with them since the focus was mainly on Doma.

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It's funny but for me, that was my least favorite part of it all... but maybe that's because by that point I was so sick of being in the Far East.

For me, Stormblood going into it was going to be the tale of the liberation of Ala Mhigo, and I felt the story gave me total whiplash when at level 61 it whisked me off to Othard and left me there until near the end of the expansion. The fact that Ala Mhigo was so glossed over in favor of everything happening in Doma and Kugane made me not much enjoy the expansion as a whole. Compound that with the fact that I started in Ul'Dah and the issue with the Ala Mhigans is something that had been presented to me since level 2 of the main story, so there was an added feeling of dissatisfaction with how they handled that story.

So to that end, my answer would be the expansion gets good when you get to start playing Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

I might've missed something but I don't understand her transition from Yda to Lyse. It didn't add anything to the story except for an attempt at a dramatic reveal. Okay, so she's Lyse now...well so what? Nobody knew who Lyse was until at that very moment so why should people care?

The whole "Just kidding I pretended to be my *apparently* dead sister" thing is just nonsensical to me, and so out of the blue.

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There was no build up and no pay off to it. Honestly, if we had found that supposed dead sister somewhere and then she had to take off the mask at that point, I would have enjoyed that much more. You know, something that added to the story.. it just seemed like an excuse to get rid of Yda and Papalymo (in an effort to downsize the scion cast) and move onto the expansion story.

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Originally Posted by AncientCrystal

The problem with SB's story is that the expansion tries to prop up this "big war" that is going on and at NO point do you ever feel like you're apart of a war. Lyse is kind of stupid and Zenos looks cool but meh...

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What's funny is imo...some parts of the Shadowbringers story like that one part where you do a rescue mission for a certain someone, felt more like a war than anything Stormblood did.

Maybe the Nadaam fight was kind of grand but Shadowbringers really took the story fights up a notch.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

What's funny is imo...some parts of the Shadowbringers story like that one part where you do a rescue mission for a certain someone, felt more like a war than anything Stormblood did.

Maybe the Nadaam fight was kind of grand but Shadowbringers really took the story fights up a notch.

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I will say the final dungeon of SB did actually encapsulate the feeling of war and was probably the highlight of the entire expansion for me. It's just a shame it took till the last patch to actually invoke that feeling... After watching our heroes get one more turn with the idiot bat before hand.

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Originally Posted by Enla

I will say the final dungeon of SB did actually encapsulate the feeling of war and was probably the highlight of the entire expansion for me. It's just a shame it took till the last patch to actually invoke that feeling... After watching our heroes get one more turn with the idiot bat before hand.

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Yeah the very final dungeon was pretty good and was a good way to end SB as an expansion, but yeah...I wish they had more of that earlier in the expansion. Plus, it doesn't feel like the war was happening on the sidelines like it did at the last dungeon of 4.0.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

Maybe the Nadaam fight was kind of grand but Shadowbringers really took the story fights up a notch.

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My problem with the whole Azim part is that I was constantly asking myself :
"ok but. why am I here again? Oh right I have to fight a bunch of bullies in the middle of nowhere so they can help me fight for Doma which should keep the Empire busy while I can sneak back in Ala Mhigo to do the exact same thing."
Azim was a comic relief and a shoehorning of Au Ra lore, but while it was enjoyable by itself, it's the furtest point from the main narrative.
The Nadaam was cool though :D

Way too political and its only saving grace in my opinion was Ilberd's maddness. In anycase the politics were reminding me too much of real world BS and that was pissing me off, so I story skipped the latter half.