Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

Pepperidge Farm Verona strawberry cookies are great.

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Originally Posted by Anienai

Pepperidge Farm Verona strawberry cookies are great.

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Milanos are better. ((ヾ(* ´∀｀)ノ))

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Originally Posted by Ardeth

Most people are selfish and unhelpful. They will claim that they are helpful and nice, but most of them will just ignore you or treat you like a burden. In my almost 10 years of playing this has never changed for me.

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This is true.

This game really advertises the whole "Wow, people are so nice and helpful," idea because you have a lot of people doing really small acts of kindness to sprouts. I don't want to call that nothing but it's really easy to sit there and hand out minions/potions or even gil to sprouts.

Then once you stop being a sprout all of that stops and people only really started being nice again once I became an omin full crown mentor. Then it became "Oh, there's an omni mentor without a FC. Join mine?" or "Can you craft something for me?" or "Hey have you ever tried current ex/sv? We'll pick your job and you can join us."

Or even with stuff like Eureka where I recently got to max level in Pagos. I can't run around in Anemos/Pagos anymore for my weekly challenges without being spammed with party invites. Where was all of that when I was levelling?

People only care when you benefit them :x

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

This is true.

This game really advertises the whole "Wow, people are so nice and helpful," idea because you have a lot of people doing really small acts of kindness to sprouts. I don't want to call that nothing but it's really easy to sit there and hand out minions/potions or even gil to sprouts.

Then once you stop being a sprout all of that stops and people only really started being nice again once I became an omin full crown mentor. Then it became "Oh, there's an omni mentor without a FC. Join mine?" or "Can you craft something for me?" or "Hey have you ever tried current ex/sv? We'll pick your job and you can join us."

Or even with stuff like Eureka where I recently got to max level in Pagos. I can't run around in Anemos/Pagos anymore for my weekly challenges without being spammed with party invites. Where was all of that when I was levelling?

People only care when you benefit them :x

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That's why I keep my crown turned off.

The scions should finally die, especially Y'shtola. There that is my hot take, i am fine with Urianger being now a bunny on the moon but the rest of the scions...i hate them. Especially exposition Y'shtola who has to fake her death in every expansion.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

The scions should finally die, especially Y'shtola. There that is my hot take, i am fine with Urianger being now a bunny on the moon but the rest of the scions...i hate them. Especially exposition Y'shtola who has to fake her death in every expansion.

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I don't need them all to die myself, but they need to stop faking us out. Y'shtola has more plot armor than we do at this point, so the next time she seems dead she should stay that way. Loses all impact and meaning otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Reimar

I don't need them all to die myself, but they need to stop faking us out. Y'shtola has more plot armor than we do at this point, so the next time she seems dead she should stay that way. Loses all impact and meaning otherwise.

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Honestly when they mentioned newfound adventures i was really excited, scions disbanded. We get to see new faces, new areas and maybe people we have to learn to know again. But no it is now just meeting the old cast and teaching a half voidsent the meaning of eating and friendship...

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

Honestly when they mentioned newfound adventures i was really excited, scions disbanded. We get to see new faces, new areas and maybe people we have to learn to know again. But no it is now just meeting the old cast and teaching a half voidsent the meaning of eating and friendship...

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Sadly a lot of players would riot if they went more than a couple patches without seeing their waifu/husbando.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

Honestly when they mentioned newfound adventures i was really excited, scions disbanded. We get to see new faces, new areas and maybe people we have to learn to know again. But no it is now just meeting the old cast and teaching a half voidsent the meaning of eating and friendship...

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I think I said this before but it's even more jarring when you play through the MSQ now and there is no 4 month time gap between 6.0 and 6.1, so you just immediately go from the Scions disbanding to everyone meeting up again and wonder what on earth was even the point of that ending scene.

The "Scions disbanding" thing didn't even make it through the very cutscene that first talked about it (which made it quite clear that they were really just done being at the immediate beck and call of the Eorzean Alliance, they were still gonna be around), and yet people still act surprised that they didn't actually disband. The mind boggles.

That said, while I don't think they need to be killed off, I would love a break from them for a while. I wouldn't object to them becoming brief cameos (hey, we found some arcane thingamajig, let's go ask Y'shtola; okay, that's what it does, see you in a few patches!), but we don't need all of them around at all times anymore. Have some brief scene where they say we can call on them in times of need (justifying using Azem's crystal to summon them for Trusts), then let them go their separate ways.

Being in a frontline from start to finish with zero damage done should result in an immediate and automatic 1-week ban from participating in FLs.

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Originally Posted by Kansene

Being in a frontline from start to finish with zero damage done should result in an immediate and automatic 1-week ban from participating in FLs.

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How about zero damage received? Nobody pays attention to me when I play bard in frontlines, enemies pass through me :3

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Originally Posted by Kansene

Being in a frontline from start to finish with zero damage done should result in an immediate and automatic 1-week ban from participating in FLs.

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This! So many people like this. I gladly report all exp leeches.

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Hot takes:

- This game needs more QoL additions instead of one every half a year. They can do research to find things they could add. I googled it and saw many features that would be nice additions but now I and others have to wait for them to be added.

- healers need fixing.

- blu needs more love. Also not to be restricted.

- we should get more classes especially summoning ones. Plenty of ideas left new and old. Wheres our bst,pup and cor?

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

so you just immediately go from the Scions disbanding to everyone meeting up again and wonder what on earth was even the point of that ending scene.

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Alot of people seemed to have missed or ignored that the "Disband" is a Cover. Its...kind of amazing.
The Scions are still around, but they are just no longer a Public Organization. And with the World Saved currently, they splintered off to go Enjoy the Calm and do some other things...staying in contact, and will very likely group up again should it be needed.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

The "Scions disbanding" thing didn't even make it through the very cutscene that first talked about it (which made it quite clear that they were really just done being at the immediate beck and call of the Eorzean Alliance, they were still gonna be around), and yet people still act surprised that they didn't actually disband. The mind boggles.

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LOL Exactly

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

Alot of people seemed to have missed or ignored that the "Disband" is a Cover. Its...kind of amazing.
The Scions are still around, but they are just no longer a Public Organization. And with the World Saved currently, they splintered off to go Enjoy the Calm and do some other things...staying in contact, and will very likely group up again should it be needed.

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I think everyone got that, doesn't change the fact that it is lazy writing that has no impact and no meaning. Same as all the character "deaths" we had to suffer through so far when it comes to the maincast. Cause at some point people don't believe it anymore, i didn't suspected for a second that they let the scions die in Ultima Thule tbh. cause i have seen Y'shtola rise from the grave so often now.

People yearn for something new, if SE wants to just microwave the same old trash over and over again then please maybe don't call the patches newfound adventures cause there is nothing new to it. Zero is just a discount Gaia and now we have to teach her the meaning of life, friendship and how you go potty. I really don't want to believe that the development of FFXVI is actually taking XIV resources but looking at how rushed and lazy EW was written so far i have slowly the feeling that they really relocated most resources to XVI.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

I think everyone got that, doesn't change the fact that it is lazy writing that has no impact and no meaning. Same as all the character "deaths" we had to suffer through so far when it comes to the maincast. Cause at some point people don't believe it anymore, i didn't suspected for a second that they let the scions die in Ultima Thule tbh. cause i have seen Y'shtola rise from the grave so often now.

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The strength of an FF character's plot armor is directly proportional to their marketability.

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Originally Posted by Kansene

The strength of an FF character's plot armor is directly proportional to their marketability.

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Just XIV has this problem. Even Paper Mario: The Origami King had the balls to

kill off a partner. Hell, his ghost even shows up.

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Originally Posted by SassyAssassin

How about zero damage received? Nobody pays attention to me when I play bard in frontlines, enemies pass through me :3

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You're at least contributing something (i.e. keeping yourself alive via self heal or attacking enemy to waste their resource).

Stormblood is a better expansion than Heavensward in terms of both story and content.

Detachable shower heads are awesome.

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Originally Posted by SomeoneElse

Stormblood is a better expansion than Heavensward in terms of both story and content.

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I think Heavensward has a Better Story. Stormblood was ok, and it gets good in the 2nd and 3rd Arc.
But Stormblood definitely had Better Content. HW had Alexander & the Mhach Raids. But I think just about everything else was better in SB

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Originally Posted by SomeoneElse

Stormblood is a better expansion than Heavensward in terms of both story and content.

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I know you aren't necessarily looking for input in a thread like this... but I'ma toss in my two gil anyway lol.

I do think that SB is a lot more consistent in quality than HW overall, and I think it's more successful at telling a nuanced story about war -- by a wide margin. But for me, I found characters like Ysayle, Estinien, and Aymeric more compelling than pretty much anyone in SB's cast (other than Yotsuyu), which made HW more compelling for me to follow in general. And, anecdotally at least, it seems like that's the consensus among players like me who favored it: they cared more about the characters, so they cared more about the story. SB's just seemed to struggle to hook some of us despite its relative compexity.

In terms of actual content, though, SB absolutely takes the cake, imo.

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Originally Posted by Reimar

I don't need them all to die myself, but they need to stop faking us out. Y'shtola has more plot armor than we do at this point, so the next time she seems dead she should stay that way. Loses all impact and meaning otherwise.

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I fully expect next expansion to be a copy cat of the new Puss in Boots movie where we follow Y'shtola on her quest to wish for more lives and we're being hounded by a Hrothgar Reaper.

Being only able to have 3 Specialist Crafters is cringe when all 8 crafters operate exactly the same, just let us have all 8 at once, as it is it just causes me annoyance when setting up macros cuz I have 3 crafters that have higher stats than the rest, and I need to account for them.

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Originally Posted by Kyrj

I fully expect next expansion to be a copy cat of the new Puss in Boots movie where we follow Y'shtola on her quest to wish for more lives and we're being hounded by a Hrothgar Reaper.

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.......dont joke. That sounds kinda fun
Especially if the Hrothgar takes the form of Runar.

zero would've been better if she stayed in her voidsent form both thematically and story wise at least until i'd say around rubicante fight where upon hearing her words about humanity hydaelyn's light finally allows her to transform to her human form aka current zero

EW's story was worse than StB.

The biggest problem was that EW seems to be so rushed in my opinion, we had no time to see the zones and learn to like people. HW was so great cause it had the focus solely on Ishgard and that for the entirety of the expansion almost.

In Endwalker we go: Sharlayan -> Thavnair -> Sharlayan -> Garlemald -> Moon -> Thavnair -> INTO THE PAST CAUSE WHY NOT?! -> Garlemald -> Sharlayan -> TO THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE!

Stormblood suffered from the same, we saw Ala Mhigo, Doma, the people of the ruby sea, the Xaela, Hingashi and none of these groups of people got nearly enough time. After dealing with Nidhogg who got build up for an entire expansion...Yotsuyu was so underwhelming and not cinematic.

The expansion I like the best was Heavensward next Stormblood. My guess 7.0 going to be about more space travel.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

The biggest problem was that EW seems to be so rushed in my opinion, we had no time to see the zones and learn to like people. HW was so great cause it had the focus solely on Ishgard and that for the entirety of the expansion almost.

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I think another problem with EW is that what they were selling us about it before it was released isn't what we actually got.
With how they were talking during fanfests and live letters, it sounded like we were finally going to Garlemald to bring the fight to Zenos and the Empire but I think they were trying too hard to one-up ShB with things like a bigger, metaphysical threat and Ancients fanservice. (*´﹃｀*)

As for my favorite expansions:

Story-wise
ShB > HW > EW > SB > ARR

Content-and-Gameplay-wise
HW > SB > ShB > ARR > EW

(*•̀ᴗ•́*)و ̑̑

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I think another problem with EW is that what they were selling us about it before it was released isn't what we actually got.
With how they were talking during fanfests and live letters, it sounded like we were finally going to Garlemald to bring the fight to Zenos and the Empire but I think they were trying too hard to one-up ShB with things like a bigger, metaphysical threat and Ancients fanservice. (*´﹃｀*)

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I feel like that was the original plan, before they decided that a purely Garlemald-themed expansion wouldn't be popular enough and just mashed it together with what was planned for later. If you really look at EW, it has the plot structure of one expansion (everything up to Zodiark), a patch cycle (the beginning of the Final Days, up to the 85 dungeon), and then another expansion (dealing with the Final Days, up to the Endsinger). I'd even argue that making peace with the beast tribes was setting up for role quests, where we could've helped the different tribes deal with the Towers and Lunar Primals in their territories, but that got lost in the condensing, so the Towers just go away when Anima dies.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

I feel like that was the original plan, before they decided that a purely Garlemald-themed expansion wouldn't be popular enough and just mashed it together with what was planned for later. If you really look at EW, it has the plot structure of one expansion (everything up to Zodiark), a patch cycle (the beginning of the Final Days, up to the 85 dungeon), and then another expansion (dealing with the Final Days, up to the Endsinger). I'd even argue that making peace with the beast tribes was setting up for role quests, where we could've helped the different tribes deal with the Towers and Lunar Primals in their territories, but that got lost in the condensing, so the Towers just go away when Anima dies.

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They all but confirmed it was the original plan. Anima was originally meant to be the Final Boss of the 6.0 Garlemald expac. The main outline was pretty much always how it happened (even though the details on who would be the Final Boss of 7.0 wasn't clear until they started writing Endwalker. All they knew is that they didn't want it to be Hydaelyn or Zodiark.), but they compressed a lot of their ideas and made many shortcuts to fit it in a single expansion patch.
According to Ishikawa, she had enough story material to last until 8.0.

We don't really know why they chose to conclude the story in 6.0. Perhaps they didn't think people would be interested in a Garlemald expac, or they thought that the story would lose momentum. But I personally think that late decision to remove one expac is the reason EW had so many pacing issues and weird shifts in the narrative.

Okay, new hot take based on the previous posts: Endwalker should've been Garlemald-centric.

Endwalker should've been two expansions as originally planned. Then the stories for both halves might've had a chance to breath and develop.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Endwalker should've been two expansions as originally planned. Then the stories for both halves might've had a chance to breath and develop.

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Definitely would've helped with it feeling rushed. The pacing was strange.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Endwalker should've been two expansions as originally planned. Then the stories for both halves might've had a chance to breath and develop.

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But an expansion isn't just it's x.0 questlines over the leveling experience, and while that may have benefited from some 30-60% more time, once accounting for 6.1 to 6.55, you wouldn't have "both halves"; that pacing would force something entirely new. You could go deep into Garlemalde and themes like (un)deserved loyalty/respect (for leadership, for one's nation) and tenuous alliances, deeper into Thavnair to actually give it emotional substance of its own beyond just the few key NPCs there (smol->young adult dragonboy; elephalchemist) and what happened there (the Blasphemies), but at that point the pacing would place too much weight on those zones to support anything like that overarching post-nihilistic theme that anchored Endwalker. That overarching story needed multiple vantage points and, perhaps even more importantly, needed not to be composed primarily of geopolitics whose moral/emotional themes couldn't/wouldn't extend beyond their own areas.

I'd have loved to see the Blasphemies not be just one-and-done, for Garlemalde not to have been so wrecked from the start, Thavnair to have been more complete and compelling, but if you split them apart they'd necessarily tell a wholly different story, and not likely one that'd hit any of EW's emotional beats, nor likely produce something better than it was. Keeping them together but simply de-limiting the MSQ time to increase the breadth and depth of storytelling available to Garlemalde and Thavnair, on the other hand (at least insofar as could make Thavnair feel less arbitrary and set up later further movement into Garlemalde proper across the 6.1, .2, and .3 patches, etc.) could have added on without taking anything away.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

But an expansion isn't just it's x.0 questlines over the leveling experience, and while that may have benefited from some 30-60% more time, once accounting for 6.1 to 6.55, you wouldn't have "both halves"; that pacing would force something entirely new. You could go deep into Garlemalde and themes like (un)deserved loyalty/respect (for leadership, for one's nation) and tenuous alliances, deeper into Thavnair to actually give it emotional substance of its own beyond just the few key NPCs there (smol->young adult dragonboy; elephalchemist) and what happened there (the Blasphemies), but at that point the pacing would place too much weight on those zones to support anything like that overarching post-nihilistic theme that anchored Endwalker. That overarching story needed multiple vantage points and, perhaps even more importantly, needed not to be composed primarily of geopolitics whose moral/emotional themes couldn't/wouldn't extend beyond their own areas.

I'd have loved to see the Blasphemies not be just one-and-done, for Garlemalde not to have been so wrecked from the start, Thavnair to have been more complete and compelling, but if you split them apart they'd necessarily tell a wholly different story, and not likely one that'd hit any of EW's emotional beats, nor likely produce something better than it was. Keeping them together but simply de-limiting the MSQ time to increase the breadth and depth of storytelling available to Garlemalde and Thavnair, on the other hand (at least insofar as could make Thavnair feel less arbitrary and set up later further movement into Garlemalde proper across the 6.1, .2, and .3 patches, etc.) could have added on without taking anything away.

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Yeah, was hype to finally bring the fight to Garlemalde and severely disappointed to see it in ruins already.

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Originally Posted by Rhaalmog

Yeah, was hype to finally bring the fight to Garlemalde and severely disappointed to see it in ruins already.

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Same. I understood our rushing through Garlemalde on the basis that Garlemalde was never really the big bad, but rather a veneer over an agenda unknown to them (we had hints at things similar since ARR, even if they hadn't been leveraged until late Stormblood) and that Endwalker needed to focus on its particular story (as opposed to "mere plot"), but... I really wanted at least to leave room enough to pick up related beats there later. Allowing at least for remnants of the blasphemies effects and creating a true hellscape of the interior, for instance, could easily have turned into a new take on an Exploratory Mission area that could have easily beat Bozja out of the water atop housing some very interesting sub-plots among the remaining Garlean legions.

It was kind of like our introduction to Doma where we easily could have said "Hey, this is all we can access because the rest is behind that wall, but the OTHER side actually has a decent sized nation behind it!" instead that other side housing only... (ruined) village #2... out of 2... for the whole damn nation that somehow nonetheless built all of Doma Castle and that massive, highly advanced wall. It wouldn't have taken much extra allowance in the original plot/story design to allow for that highly-requested area to be tapped (into) later.

My point, though, was that such still wouldn't be a reason to try to split Thavnair, Garlemald, Space, and the Past into two separate expansions (with who knows which of the four being split into which).

It's more a matter of willingness to cap off the Hydaelyn arc with an above-average MSQ length and, yes, likely spending more resources than would typically be expected. But... on what extra staff could it be spent? They're not shy about trying to get more workers, even if they may still be applying some too-tight of constraints. And lacking an increase therein, with what time? I'd expect that the opportunities thus made available would outweigh the lost hype over delay, but anyone above them looking at that player spike over mid-late Shadowbringers and not wanting to lose it wouldn't be unreasonable to prioritize haste insofar as would be reasonable.

Whenever people talk about the MSQ, leveling a job through it, the length of it etc. they seem to completely forget the patches. Idk why & at this time i'm too afraid to ask