I had a brief honeymoon period with ARR - I'll be honest.
But I did feel tricked. Probably by December. Around the time Crystal Tower was released.
I think by that first patch a lot of the wonder - a lot of the "new car smell" had gone away and I missed 1.0 and what I hoped ARR would really be.
I hoped Heavensward would make the game better, but it only perpetuated the status quo. Now it looks like 4.0 will just be more of the same.
That's disappointing. Severely.
I loved Coil. Do not get me wrong. Coil is/was the highlight of this game so far.
But Coil is (in essence) a conclusion to 1.0 and everything that made 1.0 remotely interesting.
Honestly - the games true flaws only become jarringly apparent when you hit end game - and your mileage there may vary. The ARR story isn't very good. It isn't as good as 1.0 and it certainly isn't as good as HW. Despite that, I think that the game to a beginner is quite fun. I've started several alts just to level them to 30 and discard them over the years because the early parts of this game are still good. Before you hit the end and fall into a weekly slog of doing the same thing over and over. The sense of discovery and unlocking things and gradually becoming the role you were destined to be (not in the story mind you, but as your skills develop on your class) - all of this is pretty good. Though coming to this game as Legacy with all jobs @50 - I only got to experience this on Arcanist (which due to the whole "Summoner debacle" that I won't detail was a pretty big disappointment). That is to say until I decided to make new characters and really got to experience the game from a new player's perspective.
