Heavensward the worst expansion

"Heavensward is the worst expansion" is the laziest response to "Endwalker is the worst expansion I have played", which was the title of the infamous Zepla video. Even if it was a good response, it still doesn't change the problems of the present game.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

I meme on hating it sometimes like with Shadowbringers but I also liked Heavensward's story. I just hate people overly praising it to such a high degree because seriously what kind of rpg people played with this expansion? Its the same shit as in ARR just that the setting was more interesting but people act like its the second comong of Jesus or something.

Its stupid. Also Im glad somebody pointed how how awful the HW zones were. Sure Sea of Clouds is pretty but traversing and questing there was one of the worst and boring experiences Ive ever had in an MMO.

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I liked it too but before ShB I actually preferred SB. It was more balanced, I thought. I just went through HW again on an alt and the places where it's just dragging on really drag on. I enjoy the HW story a lot, but the implementation leaves some things to be desired. Things I felt worked better with the SB story.

Splitting the zones was also jarring as well. We're used to it now but we weren't back then. And traversing even the zones that weren't split was a pain. I also remember with timed nodes you didn't see the area on the map and they had an incredibly short timer compared to the timer in ARR. So you could fly (like molasses) across a map and they would despawn on you before you could find them.

I like HW. I think it's a good expansion. I just was here and can remember how janky HW could be when current and see so many of the same types of complaints made about EW.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Stormblood best expansion.

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The funny thing is, nobody really said Stormblood was the best expansion until Endwalker. You can even do a search on these forums where previously Stormblood was regarded the worst expansion for the longest time. This concept of Stormblood being the best didn't change until the 2min meta was introduced and the lack of a relic grind.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

"Heavensward is the worst expansion" is the laziest response to "Endwalker is the worst expansion I have played", which was the title of the infamous Zepla video. Even if it was a good response, it still doesn't change the problems of the present game.

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Except the video(s) referenced by OP aren't even exclusively in response to that though so...

A lot of people have stated that Heavensward is the best expansion, and there are also people that think Endwalker is the worst expansion, period, even amongst those they did not play when the expansion was true to the on-expansion experience, which is not really the same statement as the one Zepla set out.#

Saying it's the worst expansion you've personally experienced (e.g., Endwalker) is actually a pretty solid statement. Saying it's the worst period though and painting rose-tinted glasses on an expansion which many people would arguably say was the worst experience when sticking true to that expansion experience, e.g., Heavensward when it was actually the most recent expansion with many poor systems - Is something else entirely.

It's fine to disagree either way - But there are people that would disagree with the sentiment, and for very good reasons, which is one the main points of the discussion in the first place. Equally, if you're going to say x is the worst thing ever, then be prepared for people to disagree with you or tell you otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Remish

The funny thing is, nobody really said Stormblood was the best expansion until Endwalker. You can even do a search on these forums where previously Stormblood was regarded the worst expansion for the longest time. This concept of Stormblood being the best didn't change until the 2min meta was introduced and the lack of a relic grind.

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I think people regard Stormblood as the worst of the stories but the best of the content and gameplay.

Personally, I really enjoyed and appreciated Stormblood's story. A lot of people don't mean that it's bad, but rather it is the second least good of a good story after ARR.

In terms of gameplay, I agree that it was rich in content like 4 Eureka areas and that jobs had the complexity everyone seems to desire, but there was still a bit of jank in my opinion and tanking wasn't intuitive like it is now, because for example you would get a Paladin that spammed their enmity combo or even just the "Rage of Halone" button in tank stance and nothing else at all. It didn't feel right that the majority of new tanks were so massively off the mark while a raiding tank was using DPS stance and an optimized damage rotation, whereas now a new tank has things to learn but isn't on an entirely different planet with their rotation.

There were a lot of things I liked about Shadowbringers in terms of rotations and content as well though. We had so much social battle content with Bozja.

This is the literal Equivalent of.

Person 1: *Covid sucks*

person2: *THE SPANISH FLU WAS WORSE*

like the fuck is your point dawg.

Mechanist no longer has Rook Turret and Gauss Barrel, Dark Knight no longer has Dark Arts and Scourge, and Astrologian no longer has six different cards and was capstoned with Minor Arcana which may be one of the thoroughly dumbest skills in the game.

This fact alone makes Heavensward better than Endwalker. Yes the multiclassing system was janky af, but jobs still had identities and contours to their rotations back then. The HW jobs are probably the starkest example of jobs being watered down through SbB and EW, although what is *really* sad is that SAM and RDM are also showing signs of "streamlining" away from their core gimmicks, and arguably it was for their sake that DRK lost Dark Arts to begin with. Just watch the same happen to GNB and DNC in DT: GNB will get autochanging combo buttons and DNC will lose random step procs, lol.

Also, for as flawed as the game was back then and a lot of content being imbalanced or sloggish, I still think that Alexander > Pandaemonium, Void Ark > The Twelve, Warring Triad > Four Fiends, and Diadem > Criterion Dungeons, and HW Relics > EW Relics. Across most axes of design. Yes we have had a lot of time to fix and adjust to HW's abuses, but I just don't see EW content aging as well.

Pretty sure if we had Heavensward stuff now you wouldn't bother playing if you were the following jobs.

Monk
Samurai
Reaper
Black Mage
Red Mage
Summoner
Sage
White Mage
Dark Knight
Paladin
Machinist/Dancer depending on buffs

People vastly underestimate how bad the balance was, or did not play the game then. If you did EX and played anything out of meta? Useless. GTFO. Banned from doing any content outside of dungeons. Doomers are weird when we know basically nothing about Dawntrail, or any of the reworks/changes.

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Originally Posted by Enjuden

Pretty sure if we had Heavensward stuff now you wouldn't bother playing if you were the following jobs.

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I played Paladin then and it was fine. Yes, it did significantly lower damage and had trouble against magic damage, but I was still able to do everything. The point is, the balance was bad but people still played the jobs they loved and tried to optimize them as best they could. Sometimes taking the underdog and trying to do well with it is fun.

Objection! *Phoenix Wright Voice*
HW as is flaws but story and casual content was good, however the raid scene suffer a major blow because how they tested the difficulty on savage and certain jobs where a must have for raid with wonky rotation due latency.

EW have a good start with expansion but it gone downhill with tasteless content. Raiding scene is not healthy it use to be. Heck, you have to buy gils for a clear on current savage and thats bad.Ultimate made a lot players quit due how buggy where they are on release (DSR and TOP). The start of story was great due its the ending of hydelyn saga, but follow up was weak, heck I felt I was playing the start of ARR story with better voice acting and fanfic to please the playerbase. Finally, the casual content fell the weakest it never being, sanctuary is a bad harvest moon, relic grind as no grind, the new 4 mans is on pathetic state they cannot fix the hard and savage version and finally POTD as nothing new to it.

To me EW was the worst expansion and if they keep continue to do it I wont buy theyre product on full price. Don't start me with the gameplay. A water down gameplay still with is janky server tick.

Stormblood was the gameplay peek, Shadowbringers was a good ground to make the game better and ARR was a classic.