Dark Ages of the game - My opinion on the state of the game

Hi guys, since FF14 is going through its lowest point (i call the Dark Ages) in terms of new content, stale jobs, story etc. there has been many who are sharing their thoughts on the game and I wanted to provide my honest opinion about the state of the game pre patch 7.3.

Story -
Regarding story, the arcadion series was really good, alliance raid story has yet to be explored in details however the introduction was pretty good although I am not a fan of fighting hologram enemies.

The MSQ story was initially fun and exciting pre-Heritage Found arc, ever since the train scene and Smile OST it went to bad real fast and felt all over the place and rushed. I dont like it when they use random robots fighting people in the source, and Koana throwing his life for a cow, felt watever. The story could have been more fleshed out and done properly, the reason why I think a lot of ppl found it boring and bad. Wuk Lamat isn't that bad of a character personality when compared with Lyse. Post 7.2 the msq is somewhat good, and I think going 7.3 onwards it might pick up again with the Azem chalice mysteries.

My personal take on story is, its decent and good enough for the plot to continue although very low effort, I know the community as a whole is on outrage calling it a bad story but it has some highs when u look deeper into it, I hope the devs stick with the same writers it might turn out good eventually. I also dont think Sphene belongs in the WoL's team, she makes a great NPC and should stay like that, as an occasional guest appearance. WoL badly needs a rival of equal strength like Zenos, and more powerful mysterious villains. Heck maybe even turn Wuk Lamat into a villain at this point, the MSQ still has great potential. (I dont get it why ppl hate on Wuk Lamat so much, she really isn't that bad of a personality, there has been worse personalities in the game and our WoL has been taking the spotlight since ARR its good they are trying new things with the story)

While I think the WoL couldn't solo armies of aether users, I think we need a villain that is far more than a "big strong anime bad guy". We need an organization, we need politics back. Strife between countries and areas and the WoL stuck in between them helping people. You can't muscle your way through politics, because the factions both tend to have a leg to stand on.

But I feel like if they let Dawntrails writers return, we will have similar situations like the cooking task. They will pair up the obvious good guys with the obvious bad guys, so it's a stale "good vs evil" situation. Without one side hearing the other, until it's time for a hamfisted flashback instead of sorting it in dialogue. Remember the Varis meeting on the battlefront with the Eorzean leaders? Yeah stuff like that. Dawntrail reduced world politics that were ALREADY BUILT INTO GAME into 5 minute skypecalls to call a dragon army from Thavnair for a impromptu alliance. Vrtra is a dumb leader for accepting before checking things out for himself.

Combat -
I like the 2 min meta as a DRK main. Initially in 7.0 DRK felt really bad since it was a very weak job. After the buffs and improvement to Dark Mind and Shadowstride being more reactive it started feeling better to play post 7.1.

The 2 min meta is braindead and very easy to execute, so I like doing that at the moment since it takes minimum effort to get the content done. Specially when you are playing DPS or Tank jobs, 2 min meta allows you to enjoy the content in a relaxed and chilled manner. When DRK became stronger I had a lot of fun playing the game casually spamming mentor and expert roulettes, while also having a lot of fun doing ultimates and savage raids. At this point I can say I got very used to doing the 2 min meta rotation on not only DRK, but SAM, RPR, BLM, NIN, and many other jobs. I am aware that there are still ppl who will disagree with me on the 2 min meta, they will say that its boring, makes jobs samey, generic etc. but if you think about it, we all just wanna get the content done and there are many ppl who work jobs or have a family IRL, and they want to just get home and log in without having the stress to actually think about what they are playing and how they will have to execute their specific rotation.

However with all that said, I would like to mention that there are still many improvements they can do to the jobs, like why is DRK's Carve and Spit have no Visual Effects other than a lame slash animation, they need to overhaul the visual effects of the job abilities and make them flashier, so that they are more fun to play and feels good to play. The removal of Plunge animation was bad, as it took away the lore/thematic identity of DRK. Same can be said for many other jobs, like Samurai's Kaiten. The devs really need to think about how they can make the game more fun and interesting in terms of feel, such as the graphics update on 3D model was a really good thing for the game they need to do the same for combat skills.

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Originally Posted by Rizlee

Hi guys, since FF14 is going through its lowest point (i call the Dark Ages) in terms of new content, stale jobs, story etc. there has been many who are sharing their thoughts on the game and I wanted to provide my honest opinion about the state of the game pre patch 7.3.

Story -
Regarding story, the arcadion series was really good, alliance raid story has yet to be explored in details however the introduction was pretty good although I am not a fan of fighting hologram enemies.

The MSQ story was initially fun and exciting pre-Heritage Found arc, ever since the train scene and Smile OST it went to bad real fast and felt all over the place and rushed. I dont like it when they use random robots fighting people in the source, and Koana throwing his life for a cow, felt watever. The story could have been more fleshed out and done properly, the reason why I think a lot of ppl found it boring and bad. Wuk Lamat isn't that bad of a character personality when compared with Lyse. Post 7.2 the msq is somewhat good, and I think going 7.3 onwards it might pick up again with the Azem chalice mysteries.

My personal take on story is, its decent and good enough for the plot to continue although very low effort, I know the community as a whole is on outrage calling it a bad story but it has some highs when u look deeper into it, I hope the devs stick with the same writers it might turn out good eventually. I also dont think Sphene belongs in the WoL's team, she makes a great NPC and should stay like that, as an occasional guest appearance. WoL badly needs a rival of equal strength like Zenos, and more powerful mysterious villains. Heck maybe even turn Wuk Lamat into a villain at this point, the MSQ still has great potential. (I dont get it why ppl hate on Wuk Lamat so much, she really isn't that bad of a personality, there has been worse personalities in the game and our WoL has been taking the spotlight since ARR its good they are trying new things with the story)

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Genuinely curious. What highs do you feel are in the MSQ? What was fun and exciting, pre-Heritage Found?

As for Wuk, what I don't get is how people compare her to Lyse. I don't recall, when going through the Stb MSQ "Talk to Lyse", "Talk to Lyse again", "Talk to Lyse yet gain", "Talk to Lyse yet again", multiple quests in a row...

Content addition -
For the addition of content, I personally think that having 13 to 15 dungeons should be a goal for the devs, having more fun dungeons like we had in DT is the way to go, and maybe 8 trial bosses. The 12 normal/savage raids is fine, and they way they are doing the door bosses in Arcadion is also very good. I feel that the chaotic alliance raid should be added way earlier in 7.0, and there should be 1 chaotic raid every even patch (7.0, 7.2, 7.4 total 3). The field operation zone should also be added at least before the ultimate (pre 7.1) for ppl to grind and do content in. Cosmic Exploration is watever, I personally max out all crafter and gatherers in initial patch X.0, so the zone is just a massive grind for rewards nothing else, so they should spend less resource in that, and rather invest more resource in making a NORMAL MODE for things like Forked Tower along with its savage mode. They should make field operation a type of content for casuals/midcore not for hardcore, and more long lasting (it shouldn't require discords for clearing content). There should be at least 2 ultimates every expansion (X.1 and X.3 patches), and the limited job content + last field operation and relic grind should appear in X.5. They should add the relic grind from as early as X.1 patch. They should ditch the treasure maps idea and replace it with something you unlock while doing fates in the open world zones (like a portal opens randomly when you beat a fate boss). They need to make criterion dungeons (4-player content) by reusing the assets from existing dungeons in the game and just making the bosses harder or giving more difficulty options, 1 criterion each odd patch (X.1, X.3, X.5) is ok.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

While I think the WoL couldn't solo armies of aether users, I think we need a villain that is far more than a "big strong anime bad guy". We need an organization, we need politics back. Strife between countries and areas and the WoL stuck in between them helping people. You can't muscle your way through politics, because the factions both tend to have a leg to stand on.

But I feel like if they let Dawntrails writers return, we will have similar situations like the cooking task. They will pair up the obvious good guys with the obvious bad guys, so it's a stale "good vs evil" situation. Without one side hearing the other, until it's time for a hamfisted flashback instead of sorting it in dialogue. Remember the Varis meeting on the battlefront with the Eorzean leaders? Yeah stuff like that. Dawntrail reduced world politics that were ALREADY BUILT INTO GAME into 5 minute skypecalls to call a dragon army from Thavnair for a impromptu alliance. Vrtra is a dumb leader for accepting before checking things out for himself.

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if you think about it then it does make sense when they have access to aetheryte teleportation, dragons being able to fly (midgardsormr literally flying through space to reach eorzea from a different planet), and vrtra having so much trust on the WoL and the scions from endwalker journeys, the only way they can have the ARR situations is if they strip all these off from the story, such as by making WoL go to another dimension like Shbringers, but thats not the case so u cant really complain about it

I still can't figure out why people think Lyse was a bad character while in the same sentence say Wuk Lamat isn't.

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Genuinely curious. What highs do you feel are in the MSQ? What was fun and exciting, pre-Heritage Found?

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Finding the city of gold, it was really cool how they did it with it in the background creeping towards you in Skydeep Cenote.

Learning all about the giants and being on top of the mountain like that.

Fighting Valigarmanda.

Learning about the battle and Wuk's father in Yak T'el.

Pretty much anything and everything that involved Gulool Ja Ja.

If nothing else, Bakool Ja Ja was a fun and comical villain... until he wasn't.

Finally meeting the legendary Ketenramm, long assumed dead and a historical figure.

Although a sudden theme change, I can dig a zone stereotyping westerns.

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As for Wuk, what I don't get is how people compare her to Lyse.

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Mainly in that Stormblood was Lyse's story with her as narrator and the idea seemed like she would eventually lead Ala Mhigo, a similar overall premise, but there was another more qualified person for that job and SE couldn't ignore it - Raubahn. And the fact the story was split between two unrelated sections of the map like Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Genuinely curious. What highs do you feel are in the MSQ? What was fun and exciting, pre-Heritage Found?

As for Wuk, what I don't get is how people compare her to Lyse. I don't recall, when going through the Stb MSQ "Talk to Lyse", "Talk to Lyse again", "Talk to Lyse yet gain", "Talk to Lyse yet again", multiple quests in a row...

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Dont forget in Stmblood we went to save the ppl in Doma and fight in Gyr Abania on our own accord, however in DT it was Wuk Lamat who personally came to recruit a champion who will assist her in claiming the throne, so in DT it makes sense that the story revolves around Wuk Lamat and WoL interacts a lot with her since it was WoL's choice to journey alongside her. The initial adventure itself in Tulliyolal was very fun and exciting, it was like exploring a brand new place meeting ppl and doing the story there (one of the high points). The moment when Gulool Ja Ja personally requested WoL for a fight was badass, and there are several moments like Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja who made the journey fun.

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Originally Posted by Rizlee

if you think about it then it does make sense when they have access to aetheryte teleportation, dragons being able to fly (midgardsormr literally flying through space to reach eorzea from a different planet), and vrtra having so much trust on the WoL and the scions from endwalker journeys, the only way they can have the ARR situations is if they strip all these off from the story, such as by making WoL go to another dimension like Shbringers, but thats not the case so u cant really complain about it

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Vrtra does trust the WoL and the Scions but he's also been displayed as a responsible leader and he would be remiss if he didn't go investigate personally and confirm the full details of the agreement.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Finding the city of gold, it was really cool how they did it with it in the background creeping towards you in Skydeep Cenote.

Learning all about the giants and being on top of the mountain like that.

Fighting Valigarmanda.

Learning about the battle and Wuk's father in Yak T'el.

Pretty much anything and everything that involved Gulool Ja Ja.

If nothing else, Bakool Ja Ja was a fun and comical villain... until he wasn't.

Finally meeting the legendary Ketenramm, long assumed dead and a historical figure.

Although a sudden theme change, I can dig a zone stereotyping westerns.

Mainly in that Stormblood was Lyse's story with her as narrator and the idea seemed like she would eventually lead Ala Mhigo, a similar overall premise, but there was another more qualified person for that job and SE couldn't ignore it - Raubahn. And the fact the story was split between two unrelated sections of the map like Dawntrail.

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Fair enough. Personally, I found nothing about those zones or the MSQ exciting.
City of Gold was actually probably the only part that was a highlight, granted. The travel into Mamook and the literal travel to the Gold City. It's such a pity the actual MSQ part was so rubbish...

Ketenramm had no meaning to me. He might have been a historical figure in the story but, really, was a nobody to me. When was Ketenramm first even mentioned, in MSQ?

Personally, I hated Shaaloani. Absolutely boring to me, with it's western setting and overall MSQ plot. The whole western vibe seemed like such a strange thing. Just because there is some South/Central America themes, some Native American - well, better have Cowboys and Indians. Maybe there are other places, in FFXIV like that, and I just haven't noticed them. But that zone, in particular, just felt like lazy design.


But Lyse wasn't a overpowering figure, present in practically all quests, requiring you to speak to her and accompany her throughout the MSQ, from start to finish. It is not really a similar comparison to their presence within the MSQ.

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Originally Posted by Rizlee

Dont forget in Stmblood we went to save the ppl in Doma and fight in Gyr Abania on our own accord, however in DT it was Wuk Lamat who personally came to recruit a champion who will assist her in claiming the throne, so in DT it makes sense that the story revolves around Wuk Lamat and WoL interacts a lot with her since it was WoL's choice to journey alongside her. The initial adventure itself in Tulliyolal was very fun and exciting, it was like exploring a brand new place meeting ppl and doing the story there (one of the high points). The moment when Gulool Ja Ja personally requested WoL for a fight was badass, and there are several moments like Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja who made the journey fun.

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Yes, I distinctly remember being asked by Graha what I thought about being recruited by Wuk. In fact, here's the text from that post-EW dialogue with the option I chose:
> I'd rather not get involved in politics.
G'raha Tia: If only others had the same good sense.
G'raha Tia: If the prospect troubles you so, why not consider what you stand to gain instead? That is, an exciting journey to a faraway continent.
G'raha Tia: In the course of seeing new lands and meeting new people, you might find yourself moved to help Wuk Lamat after all. And if not, well...you quietly take your leave.
G'raha Tia: A brazen plan, perhaps, but one that befits a veteran adventurer, you must agree!


Yea.....

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Originally Posted by Rizlee

I am aware that there are still ppl who will disagree with me on the 2 min meta, they will say that its boring, makes jobs samey, generic etc. but if you think about it, we all just wanna get the content done and there are many ppl who work jobs or have a family IRL, and they want to just get home and log in without having the stress to actually think about what they are playing and how they will have to execute their specific rotation.

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This has to be bait.

we need a villain who actually wins in the conclusion of the story like even if we defeat them an they die their plan still succeeds an it has lasting effect upon us and the world. and more importantly we need to have a reason to hate the villain they need to do things which make us resent them and also it should be a villain who trys to convince us their actions are justified and necessary and that our path is false or the wrong way to go etc.
the best told villains are ones who are irredeemable not ones who kill for the thrill of it and not ones who do it cause of a traumatized past while such characters can be interesting narratively characters that really make your blood boil or sit on the edge of your seat cause you're terrified of which awful thing they'll do next are what really sells that "Bad guy" vibe.
they way the portrayed that Vallens Van Varro guy in the Wyrlet content was perfect evil in that regard he was absolutely despicable in everything he did or said we need more evil like this but in the main story this time around

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Fair enough. Personally, I found nothing about those zones or the MSQ exciting.
City of Gold was actually probably the only part that was a highlight, granted. The travel into Mamook and the literal travel to the Gold City. It's such a pity the actual MSQ part was so rubbish...

Ketenramm had no meaning to me. He might have been a historical figure in the story but, really, was a nobody to me. When was Ketenramm first even mentioned, in MSQ?

Personally, I hated Shaaloani. Absolutely boring to me, with it's western setting and overall MSQ plot. The whole western vibe seemed like such a strange thing. Just because there is some South/Central America themes, some Native American - well, better have Cowboys and Indians. Maybe there are other places, in FFXIV like that, and I just haven't noticed them. But that zone, in particular, just felt like lazy design.


But Lyse wasn't a overpowering figure, present in practically all quests, requiring you to speak to her and accompany her throughout the MSQ, from start to finish. It is not really a similar comparison to their presence within the MSQ.

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Worst part is that the whole Ceruleum / progress vs the natives plotline belonged to the Whalaqee, one of the only things we knew about the New World before we entered. Whalaqee were reduced to a crafting sidequest in this expansion, and we didn't get to see their ceruleum rich home turf. And what was the reason? A 100% because they were too scared to tackle a natives vs progress storyline, stealing natural resources from a tribes holy land. Because people on twitter would have started to screech. Look at how they are already doing it because of armor someone is wearing (The conquistador saga). Instead we got soft cowboys who shoot soft rubber bullets to solve their disagreements, and chill natives whose problems with traintracks are solved with 5 minute trainwhistle tech. The MSQ has become soft, it used to tell nuanced stories from multiple angles, now we get this.
If you don't want to tell "sad stories" anymore, like Yoshi P said after 16, then pass the baton to someone else, because you can't earn happiness in stories without setback. You can't respect the intelligence of your audience if you tell soft non-stakes stories with horrible pacing.

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Fair enough. Personally, I found nothing about those zones or the MSQ exciting.

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I do all the sidequests too, so I got some extra context on the giants outside of the MSQ as well. But there was a lot that was part of it as well. I fought Valigarmanda with Duty Support and it likely takes away from it if you don't do it with the characters present.

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Ketenramm had no meaning to me. He might have been a historical figure in the story but, really, was a nobody to me. When was Ketenramm first even mentioned, in MSQ?

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I forget where specifically but I remember it was mentioned in the lore over time as him being the person who found the new world and brought items home, but any quest or lore piece about him just implied how he must have perished by now. So I was really happy, that just for once, something in this game was present-tense. To me it was like seeing things about the allagans and then the twist is they are still around actually.

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Maybe there are other places, in FFXIV like that, and I just haven't noticed them.

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There are. Ishgard is a stereotype of the UK. Kugane is a stereotype of Japan and its apparent "ninjas and samurai". They absolutely take every opportunity to add the common tourist destinations to the game that are popular purely due to stereotypes, and their own country isn't immune to that as Kugane proved.

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But Lyse wasn't a overpowering figure, present in practically all quests, requiring you to speak to her and accompany her throughout the MSQ, from start to finish. It is not really a similar comparison to their presence within the MSQ.

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Right so I think what most people must be drawing comparions to is the other aspects which I mentioned.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

This has to be bait.

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the goal with my post is I want the devs to know that I want them to keep the 2 min meta and job rotations the way it currently is lol

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Worst part is that the whole Ceruleum / progress vs the natives plotline belonged to the Whalaqee, one of the only things we knew about the New World before we entered. Whalaqee were reduced to a crafting sidequest in this expansion, and we didn't get to see their ceruleum rich home turf. And what was the reason? A 100% because they were too scared to tackle a natives vs progress storyline, stealing natural resources from a tribes holy land. Because people on twitter would have started to screech. Look at how they are already doing it because of armor someone is wearing (The conquistador saga). Instead we got soft cowboys who shoot soft rubber bullets to solve their disagreements, and chill natives whose problems with traintracks are solved with 5 minute trainwhistle tech. The MSQ has become soft, it used to tell nuanced stories from multiple angles, now we get this.
If you don't want to tell "sad stories" anymore, like Yoshi P said after 16, then pass the baton to someone else, because you can't earn happiness in stories without setback. You can't respect the intelligence of your audience if you tell soft non-stakes stories with horrible pacing.

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Having done the Blue Mage questline I was expecting the tensions introduced there to appear in DT. It really did feel like cowardice by the writers that they were completely ignored. It also added to the sense of dislocation mentioned in other threads that the MSQ barely acknowledged its own lore.

I guess part of the point of DT was to create a clean break with the previous arc, but in that case the writers need to add future mystery and a compelling reason to care about what happens next.

The fact the Arcadion series is mentioned by many as a story highlight is pretty telling when it was a weak knock-off of WWE.

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Originally Posted by Lufir

I still can't figure out why people think Lyse was a bad character while in the same sentence say Wuk Lamat isn't.

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Lyse didn't have cat ears.

Wuk Lamat is not a bad character... potential wise. The problem are mostly how she's being utilized throughout the story & how her presence is warping the rest of the story to accommodate a predetermined outcome that the writer wants us to witness without even trying to support that outcome with a believable progression. If they make any attempt at all to do that, it's either heavily contrived or nonexistent.

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• Do you expect people to believe a sheltered princess who had lived her entire life in her own city to... somehow not know one of her own people's standard way to greet another?
• Why does an artisan who just arrived in Tural at the same date as WoL knows more about the potsworn than this princess?
• She admits having good amount of flaws but these are rarely explored. If any, they're irrelevant to the story and her own development. Speaking of flaws... height fear is one of them but then there's that one 6.58 where she rode aetherial rope unbothered at Isle of Haam... yeah... one from many inconsistencies.
• Why are we not given an explanation the reason behind the Vanu forgetting their own 'magicked boat' despite there's a "plot device"-the character who conveniently walks in and says "People here just forgot and I don't even bother to tell them lmao also Third Promise you are educated if you know about this boat woooot!!"
• Her character progression starts at 6.58 and never leave that spot ever since then. Going from "I must protect papa's peace." to "I must protect papa's peace!!!!" is ain't it.
• On top of all that's been mentioned so far, the quest designer also forces us to interact with her way waaaaayyy too many times. Tone it down, sheesh. We get it, you like papa's peace lol. No need to wake me up at the butt crack of dawn to tell me what you said before boarding the boat to Tural lel...

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Could probably fill an entire essay but nevertheless, a character that's 10km wide but 1cm deep isn't going to be well received no matter how you slice it - especially when good amount of us had been exposed to ARR-ShB writing standards.

EDIT: I do have to add that these inconsistencies and contrived development isn't only exhibited on Wuk Lamat specifically. There are other examples like how there's an attempt to sell Koana to players as the claimant who does not respect the culture, and yet the story didn't do any justice in presenting this element. We were mostly just being told rather than shown. In the same vein, there are also times when we're told (i.e. Erenville telling us Koana isn't as bad as people who thought of him as disrespecting their culture - they even praised Koana for bringing Dirigibles and the Aetheryte!) and even being shown the otherwise (i.e. asking if the submit of Worqor Zormor holds a special meaning to the Yok Huy). So which is it, now? lol. If that's not off putting enough, fast forward to "I just want to make people smile" lv85 MSQ CS. Really :/? That's a lot of potential to flesh out a character and they just skipped all of that?

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

This has to be bait.

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The good ol' "People have jobs and 10 children and 25 minutes of gametime daily so please make the game braindead as possible so my boss and wife dont yell at me. Dont forget I have to walk the dog 10 times a day"

Why the hell are you playing an mmo if you dont have time or the motivation to get in deeper.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

The good ol' "People have jobs and 10 children and 25 minutes of gametime daily so please make the game braindead as possible so my boss and wife dont yell at me. Dont forget I have to walk the dog 10 times a day"

Why the hell are you playing an mmo if you dont have time or the motivation to get in deeper.

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I can assure you that people do anyway and always have, and that this is a big part of why people find the content not long-lasting and systems overly simple and stress-free. You don't have to agree with people playing it in those circumstances nor the developers catering to it, but they frequently say how they are designing it "because people have limited time nowadays" - words to that effect were in the last live letter digest even.

ya pretty much

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

We need an organization

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An organization? An organization 13 perhaps?

Regarding the stories for the alliance raids and 8 man raids? I typically let the fights themselves be my decider. I also wasn't a huge fan of the Eden raids, but enjoyed the story. I hated the Ivalice quest line, but the raids are great. Never played the FF the current AR is based on, but the actual raid is fun.

I am one of those people that found Wuk Lamat annoying. She is only worse than Lyse because Lyse was not around as much, but similar personalities. I don't feel it was WL alone that hurt the MSQ so much as she's just the biggest and easiest target. We also had the know-it-all twins following us around, so for me we had 3 annoying characters follow us around and doing most of the talking rather than the 2 characters I think most of us wanted more of (Krile and Erenville). The story for me got more interesting after the poor train plot. We need to break through a barrier made from an unknown technology so do we call Cid and Nero?? No, we strap some wood and crystals to a train. :confused: I wish the writers wouldn't completely forget old characters and what they are known for.

The quest design was also pretty bland this expansion. I think every area had a quest where we have to follow/be followed and chat? Maybe EW did as well, but the story was better? Either way, if you are going to have a boring story then you need exciting quests. If you are going to have an exciting story people are invested in, then you can risk bland quests.

Some scions had a change of ethics. For example, people are dying and 2 pupils of Louisoix are like "do we want to save people or win?" Many say "they made it Koana's decision", but I just don't see Thancred and Urianger pre-DT possibly letting people die just to bolster some guy's self-esteem. They would set the example. Others have made similar comments regarding Y'shtola walking away from the portal device. I am not one who thinks the scions need to retire, but if they will be used as props whose personalities change based on the writer's needs? Then yes, retire them and preserve the character.

I did not expect this to be an amazing story which is likely why I have peeves, but wasn't extremely disappointed. I would still play through DT before StB if only because DT MSQ feels slightly faster. Also, this the only expansion that had me skip cut scenes.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

While I think the WoL couldn't solo armies of aether users

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They might <.< I have no doubts in my mind that at this point the WoL could quite literally destroy the world with relative ease. And are powerful to the point that conquering the world is almost a trivial matter, especially considering the powers we wield. Such is the consequence of the infinite power scaling that's plagued gaming for the past 20 years. In Eorzea proper, you can walk through at lvl 100 and 1-shot everything but the most elite threats (you have to hit them twice, but it's clear that one hit would grievously wound them and in a real world scenario you're just getting their inevitable death over with by hitting them a second time so you can collect your hunt currency), and you can easily go head-to-head with Bahamut themselves without so much as breaking a sweat (unsyncing turn 13). The same Bahamut that brought the latest umbral calamity upon the source, and completely destroyed a large portion of the world as we knew it.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

I think we need a villain that is far more than a "big strong anime bad guy". We need an organization, we need politics back. Strife between countries and areas and the WoL stuck in between them helping people. You can't muscle your way through politics, because the factions both tend to have a leg to stand on.

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Truest thing that's ever been said. Promoting the writers into positions where they're not writing anymore was the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. Because now you have these far lower-quality, less skilled writers cooking up a shonen fanfic as an expansion and delivering it to us like it's a premium product. It's been nothing but hot garbage with horrid, glaring issues from start to finish. I think the people who actually read and internalized the story without relying on context and skipping have felt insulted the most by this. We don't just need a change in how conflict is approached, we need the entire writing team revamped, actually trained, or straight up replaced at this point.



EDIT: Actually, what I said about the WoL's power being one that could conquer the world and bring it to ruin? That thought was explored in the 6.55 Hildebrand quest around when you fought the trial. It was handled comedically, but you could quite literally say "yeah I could do it, I could rule the world" and it's played off in a funny way. Just thought that was interesting