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

[DawnSolaria]

I never said that I din't enjoy the game before, but for the fact that it's an expansion hence my topic title "what does heavensward bring to the game as an expansion?", it's lackluster, let me put it in this analogy, you go to this place where they make fantastic vanilla icecream and this is the only flavor to make, I liked the vanilla ice cream a lot, but after a while I got tired of just tasting the vanilla icecream, then the company to keep people interested in their product they say: we'll have a new product soon, please look forward to it, you get excited you liked the vanilla ice cream but to your surprise all they do is add sprinkles on the same vanilla ice cream, it's the same vanilla ice cream, but it now has sprinkles on it, that's basically what the heavensward expansion is.

But thats what an expansion is, more content and sometime extra feature on an established core game. WoW released so many expansions and every one is pretty much the same deal. Sure they may have added mastery or odd stats like multistrike, but those end up just an extra variable in the simcraft and tbh isnt anything special. Its probably unwise to expect a new game with every single expansion.

I also have to disagree with the poster that said additional skills made classes more clunky. SMN got many times more interesting, some bard loved and some hated WM. Complexity is only clunky when you are not used to it.

[Evtrai]

But thats what an expansion is, more content and sometime extra feature on an established core game. WoW released so many expansions and every one is pretty much the same deal. Sure they may have added mastery or odd stats like multistrike, but those end up just an extra variable in the simcraft and tbh isnt anything special. Its probably unwise to expect a new game with every single expansion.

I also have to disagree with the poster that said additional skills made classes more clunky. SMN got many times more interesting, some bard loved and some hated WM. Complexity is only clunky when you are not used to it.

If you are gonna bring WoW, at least WoW has variety on their job system, talent trees, gear variety, different builds you can try, as far as I played which was the Lich King it did have more variety than what is palpable on FFXIV and at least WoW has an actual working PvP system or had that you can fill your time with when not end gaming or raiding, more variety on endgame was well and dificulty levels, I'm not sure right now but well, I will only comment on what I actually experienced, another example if you would, FFXI pretty much innovated in their content in each expansion, which actually made it feel like an expansion, not just a plain extention of what's already existent, Chains of Promathia was significantly different than Rise of Zilart, and Treasure of Aht Urhgan was even more different that CoP adding new systems to the game, so looking at the other games examples and Square Enix's OWN previous sample, Heavensward is lackluster and it's future is bleak, if they intend to continue with this clone stamp of content.

[Tyla_Esmeraude]

But thats what an expansion is, more content and sometime extra feature on an established core game. WoW released so many expansions and every one is pretty much the same deal. Sure they may have added mastery or odd stats like multistrike, but those end up just an extra variable in the simcraft and tbh isnt anything special. Its probably unwise to expect a new game with every single expansion.

Except to put an example on a game that in my opinion, did expansions right, was FFXI. Each of their expansion not only added more content, but that content DID NOT play exactly the same as the old content. They always spiced it up with different design in terms of dungeon mechanics. Like for example, Sky did not play the same as say, Limbus. Sea did not play the same as Dynamis. Nyzul did not play the same as all of these. Salvage played completely different from Sky, Sea, Limbus, etc and I could go on with the rest of the content from that game. They always released diverse content (and a lot of it) with each expansion which made players super excited about what new ideas they'd come up with. Hell, not even the add-ons/mini expansions played exactly the same way as the expansions. Like I said before, just because something is a trend because of one popular MMO, doesn't mean it's always good.

FFXI may have had a much smaller playerbase than WoW (FFXI wasn't that much advertised on the west, which was a very impacting reason on subscription numbers) but it did so many things better. In its humble existance, it created a powerful, long lasting (10+ years yikes) community. It brought a lot of fun and created tons of bonds between players across the seas. Can people honestly say the same about FFXIV. Honestly. Imo, it'll be long forgotten as time passes by, because it follows trendy games and we know how a trend ceases to exist after a while then something new comes around.