It's been half a year.

Reading this is funny to me because I can both agree and disagree with a lot of stuff. Stormblood was my favorite expansion, both gameplay and story wise. XIV in my eyes peaked in that expansion, it's where it had it's highest potential. Since then we've gotten a ton of new QoL features, but the story has been progressively getting worse after the conclusion of 5.0 with the bad retcons in endwalker msq. Then there's the whole focus on 2 minute rotation thing out of nowhere, kaiten murder, literally removing content like the feast and locking frontline maps on a rotation, stating that series rewards could be obtained until the series after next but not actually doing so (only if you actually earned them), ignoring certain feedback but listening to others, and a personal gripe of mine regarding the gearing in this game how it sucks and hasn't been improved. (I personally believe there should be no limits on gearing outside of hardcore raids, i.e. tome gear. If someone wants to no-life the game let them, because the weekly limits are only pushing the ones with no time back anyway, because anyone with the time to play this game weekly will still be weeks ahead.

5.0 should have been a proper expansion focusing on Garlemald and the surrounding zones, Shadowbringers should have been 6.0 and Endwalker after that. I think the devs jumped the gun too soon and everything after SB feels really rushed. Another thought that crossed my mind was that FFXVI is probably taking up most of their attention so the ones actually working on XIV right now are either new blood or the old devs just not caring anymore or burnt out.