Expansion is only temporarily enjoyable. Fails to fix all main flaws.
Lengthy read ahead.
If you make a list and compare pros/cons of FFXIV: Heavensward, the bad outweigh the good by far. It's mostly because the flaws are still there which plagued the original game. I know I may get criticized for this because it's the official forums, but I'll do this detailed review anyway. Some things need to get pointed out, the reasons why most players unsubbed before and will do it again.
First, the pros:
+ Level cap 60, this is what keeping most busy at this point with leveling main/alts.
+ Main storyline done much better than original.
+ Massive zones and flying.
Unfortunately, that's all I can say for pros because it seems that's where most of their efforts went. Once you hit 60, it's like now what? Back to what it was like before, which is...
Cons:
- Linear Gear Progression. Back to mindless tome grinding and hunts. Repeat easy dungeons over and over again. How about actual challenge in dungeons and have a sense of progression from the start? There are many MMO's that get this right by making Hard Mode dungeons actually "Hard" and make their gear necessary to obtain in order to start progression in raids. Or have raid attunement, world bosses, rep grinds, open world drops, etc to provide different options for gearing. FFXIV has taken the most boring path possible and it only hurts it further when the gear resets every six months.
- Second flaw, still no challenge anywhere to be found. Raids for example, they're planning "one real raid" every 6 months like before and only 4 bosses. Are you kidding me? We have so many classes/jobs now, but still only 4 bosses to farm to hope for your gear piece. I know this from personal experience as a hardcore raider before, it kept many people unsubbed for months. Raiders get tired of farming same old content for six months straight and only four bosses.
Instead of releasing one billion easy dungeons, how about transfer some of that effort for creating more raids instead? And I don't mean 24 man raids, they're a joke. Typically, MMO's release with couple of raids for progression. One higher tier than the other. Here, we don't have our first raid yet. The last one came out in 2.4, which was October of last year. It's been almost a year. That's too damn long for an active and profitable MMO like this.
- Third major flaw, still no such thing as character builds. The new 51-60 skills only add to your existing rotations, but they haven't done anything to have a variety of character builds. It's an MMO after all. Like the gear progression, the depth in classes are so bland and linear. The rotations are still 1 > 2 > 3. Think about it. If they continue like this till level cap 100, you would need all hotbars you can get to run all available skills. Because a character build makes only certain skills viable, but here everyone is running on same gear and rotation. Speaking of gear, the gear stats are still as bland as they can get. Where are the special powers or pieces that could help with different skills? There are no thoughts invested.
- Fourth flaw, glamour and inventory systems are still a mess. Instead of giving us some more storage to gather all new crafting materials, glamour etc like MMO expansions normally do, here we have more retainers to "purchase". Are they so desperate for money that they have to nickle and dime on every opportunity? Glamours are a huge mess. It will clutter up your retainers like crafting mats do. Why couldn't they do come up with a transmog system like Blizzard does? Then there are other issues like crafting still can't take materials directly from your bank/retainer. Can't manage multiple retainer storage at once to search and manage items. Everything is so archaic here.
- Fifth flaw, too much recycling/re-skins. New jobs were a huge disappointment.
It started with 2.4 when the raid bosses were re-skinned mobs, crappy Bahamut fight and the efforts seemed lazier compared to 2.2. Now in expansion, majority of enemies are recycled from original including even raid bosses. Same old recycled mechanics, nothing refreshing as seen on new Extreme primals. Again, it makes me question where their efforts were spent.
Then to make it worse, the new jobs were pretty much copy/pasta of another job with their silly gimmick thrown in.
Take AST for example, re-skinned WHM skills with the card gimmick. I really expected better thoughts put into new jobs.
I can go on forever with more issues, but these were the top five I wanted to point out. I know FF games are all about storyline, but this is an MMO with monthly subscription so it wouldn't hurt to fix the flaws I mentioned. Maybe next expansion, I hope they focus on fixing/improving rather than "more of the same".
