What does Heavensward actually bring to the table as an expansion?

[Vickii]

snip

My point was, the £24.99 was for the content you got. Which was a good story and nice big zones to level in.

The subscription is another thing entirely. You're asking what heavensward brings.. why it was created. It's that 24.99 story and zones and flying mounts. The subscription, is for you to continue playing with friends and have access to the servers. You don't need to continue to play if you don't feel you're getting value for money. But thats nothing to do with what HW brought or didn't brought. To a new player, HW brings tons of things. You exhausting the content is another issue entirely and could happen in any expansion, not just this one.

You've completed the game essentially, that's what it boils down to, doesn't make the expansion bad. Would you say FF7 is a bad game because you've beaten it 5 times but now it's boring?

[Felis]

and the big new zones are pointless once you hit 60 unless you want level up another class as there's nothing else to do in them

This is one of the main design of this game, leveling up multiple classes.

[Kosmos992k]

That is actually my biggest issue (along with somehow losing an interesting story by making it more accessible, here's hoping it gets better). Of course it was expected, but I at least thought that normal mode wouldn't be as stupidly easy as it is and it doesn't mean that I must like the decision.

Coil has always been the only content made for the raiders and now we get to fight the same exact bosses with a few added mechanics, taking away a big part of the thrill of entering and progressing on the hardest content in the game.

Well, I don't think that having exclusive story elements in Savage would work, because it creates the same problem that existed with Coil, which is what sparked the complaints and subsequent changes with Alex Normal and Savage. However, I can't see why the battle content in Savage is little more than Normal on steroids. I mean could they not have thrown in additional Bosses? Maybe added a couple of side passages or similar additions to the original version? At least the drops are the best in game gear. I do understand that there is an issue there, though I don't feel it is a massive issue since I am not, and never will be a raider, it's not my cup of tea.

Still, I don't think exclusive story is the way to go. More challenging fights yes, but not simply the originals with higher damage dealt and HP stats.

[Arashmin]

I honestly get confused when people complain about grinding in MMOs because that is what the genre itself is built on-- grinding, whether it be for levels, gear, gold, reputation, or what have you. Compared to a lot of earlier MMOs, FFXIV is not grindy at all, and it certainly offers you a larger variety of ways in which to grind than just killing the same mob over and over.

If you don't enjoy grinding of some sort, then MMOs probably aren't the game genre for you, as you aren't going to find an MMO out there that doesn't eventually boil down to "grind stuff to get things."

For what it's worth, I enjoy grinding, but I enjoy it more when the grind is made to feel more interesting or worthwhile. I think FFXIV is getting there with it for sure, but still that it has some things that could be better.

[T2teddy]

Excuse me? I was under the impression normal Alexander came first and Savage followed. Seems to me they could simply have created completely different bosses for the Savage mode to avoid this griping.

And to all of you griping about grinding out all the class/jobs. You would have had tons less of it if you hadn't tried doing it all on just one character, although for crafting it may be better to have them on just one. Not into that so idk.

[FoxyAreku]

Expansions are always merely continuations of the game with a large chunk of content up front. I'm surprised anyone expected them to change their already working model.

[Evtrai]

This is one of the main design of this game, leveling up multiple classes.

For what reason? You can't buy gear with Esoterics for other classes other than your main, because you are locked from it, unless you want to just use it just for the novelty, but unlike FFXI that adopted this system, say that at this point, you regret gearing a DPS class, and would like to play a Healer class and raid with a healer class, you screwed up, because no one will want to grab an undergeared healer, in contrast there wasn't such limitant in FFXI, and if your group needed a bard, you could switch to bard if you had it, or healer, or dps, tank, whatever it was needed, as long as you had it leveled it up and decently it was good to go for everything, that's not the case here, this is another issue I have with the game and the pointless armory system, that all it saves you is creating another character and not redoing the story or other stuff, but you might aswell just level another character because the game is punishing if you want to play another class, as it forcibly locks you into one in especific.

[Lemuria]

Unless you're actually a hardcore raider, there is nothing mandatory there, the relic quest brought sidegrades. People created a BiS meta around that too, but unless you raid or do EX primals, it really doesn't matter and you can implement whatever sidegrades you want in your relic.

There's nothing 'mandatory' in the game. Everything is optional, but when those options are better than your current gear people will want them and it's silly to assume otherwise.

The relic sidegrades were pathetic at best, offering nothing much over a weapon of the same item level. The 'secondary' stats have such little impact that it really doesn't matter in the long run. In fact during their early stages, the relics weren't even the strongest weapons in the game. There was always a higher item level weapon which would overshadow it in terms of raw damage for DPS, which is all anyone truly cared about.

And so we hit this endless cycle of having them release gear, only to overshadow it in 2 updates with a brand new set of level X gear which remains functionally identical to every other item in the entire damned game! Boring doesn't even begin to describe it. I've played dozens of MMO's, and almost none of them have gear this uninteresting. The only reason half the items in the game even exist is for glamor at this stage, since you can automatically tell BiS gear by it's item level.

For a game published by a developer who gave us FFXI, which has some of the most colourful and unique equipment ever seen in an MMO, it's a sad state of affairs. People can argue their ridiculous case that BiS means choosing one benefit and sticking with it, but I've seen too many examples where that simply was never the case to believe a word of it.

[Kosmos992k]

It's impossible getting a good statistic or sample because there's no control of how much people leaves or stays, what I do know however is that people quits without voicing that they do, because for a lot of them, they forget about the game and never touch it again or remember it, but the people I knew and had the chance to ask why they retire, are pretty much the same issues I currently have, I probably wouldn't have bothered to just not post here and just forget about it.

As Vickii points out, you have effectively finished the game, until the next patch, you have beaten the game. When that happens some people go play another game until there is more to do, some return, some don't. However for players who do explore the whole game, there is no beating the game because it is open ended.

however I want the game to improve in the future, and the game doesn't improve unless people starts voicing, this is actually from what I remember the same stance people adopted in 1.0 when someone pointed out 1.0 flaws issues with it, and you had an army of people defending it, saying that it's fine, they are having fun with it and see no problems

That's not the same situation. The majority of issues with FFXIV 1.0 were not related to the story, were they? The things that 'killed' the game were the ridiculous platform requirements and performance. I'm not aware of what complaints there were about content or battle system - or whatever else - because a) I never played v1.x and b) they were not the primary reasons for the problems that FFXIV 1.0 faced.

SE has forgotten that there's a middle between hardcore and softcore, and they are just doing the extreme opposite of both, really hard content or super easy content, and neither party is interested in the opposite as there's no middle ground.

I don't agree with this at all. If you are running Alex Savage, then even just looking at the recent census statistics, you're part of a pretty small minority of players who have step foot in Alex Savage. Judging by the ilvl 200/210 pieces of gear you possess I presume you are in fact raiding Alex Savage. In which case, whether you like it or not, you are in fact part of that hardcore group.

I think your perspective is not at all that of a "mid-core" player, you are in fact a very capable raider which to be honest places you within that hardcore group. But, yes, from that point of view, FFXIV doesn't really cater much to you.

There's nothing 'mandatory' in the game. Everything is optional, but when those options are better than your current gear people will want them and it's silly to assume otherwise.**snip**And so we hit this endless cycle of having them release gear, only to overshadow it in 2 updates with a brand new set of level X gear which remains functionally identical to every other item in the entire damned game! **snip** People can argue their ridiculous case that BiS means choosing one benefit and sticking with it, but I've seen too many examples where that simply was never the case to believe a word of it.

If we boil the game down to it's essentials, armor protects, weapons do damage (or heal) and nothing else matters. weapons are little more than sticks that accomplish their function. In other words one set or armor is functionally identical to another, it can't be otherwise. The same is true for weapons, they fulfill the same function, so by definition they are functionally identical.

The problem is that everyone is afraid that if side-grades or horizontal progression became a thing, it would cause balance problems and break content. Honestly, I don't see how that could be any worse than the degree to which over gearing breaks content already.

[Souljacker]

My point was, the £24.99 was for the content you got. Which was a good story and nice big zones to level in.
.....Would you say FF7 is a bad game because you've beaten it 5 times but now it's boring?

I'd suggest not comparing offline games with online. FF7 might have gotten boring around the 5th time I beat it, sure, but five years later I can pick it up again without having to reactive any accounts and shell out any more money. The two models don't really compare, so we shouldn't compare them.

With an MMO you are paying for that "chunk experience" but you also lose access to it forever without shelling out more and more money, provided the servers are even still running at all. For that, we expect an excellent, extremely well-crafted experience that we will remember forever and always, because it will be gone one day. So far Heavensward hasn't lived up to what I expected that well-crafted experience to be. Even flying was a disappointment aside from the interesting side-quest of hunting down currents (which was probably the best way to introduce it and brilliant on their part).

Flying itself is just a disappointment because you aren't really free to explore the entirety of the world. You still can't land on surfaces you should be able to land on and you still have to go potentially out of your way to find the "doorway" to the next zone. There's many aspects of this game that just aren't up to the standards of a modern mmo.