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

[Obysuca]

It was HM primals, Amdapor Keep, Wanderer's Palace... was BCoB in 2.0? I honestly can't remember.

>_> And 3.0 is Ex primals, Neverreap, Fractal and Alex. See a change? I sure don't. Same things, different names.

2.1 added CT. 3.1 adds void ark. Still no difference and hasn't been for 2 years.

Like someone said in another thread, the point of an MMO is to keep you hooked so you keep paying your subscription, more steady money for the company. Not unsubscribing until the next patch comes out... just because that's a trend that's been the norm because of how "modern" MMOs are doesn't necessarily mean it's good, at all.

Pretty sure I'm that someone lol said that about 4-5 times in the last week and a half

3) I like the 'prestige' of having completed it.

There is no prestige, there might have been within the first month of 2.0 or so, but after that, practically everyone had one. Everyone and their mother got a relic. It's nothing special. It has about the same amount of prestige as going out and buying an i115 white weapon from a npc.

[Daralii]

>_> And 3.0 is Ex primals, Neverreap, Fractal and Alex. See a change? I sure don't. Same things, different names.

2.1 added CT. 3.1 adds void ark. Still no difference and hasn't been for 2 years.

That's my point. You could have said the exact same thing of ARR when it went live. HW could and probably should have had more content at launch, but I wouldn't be surprised if the release timeframe was decided by Square's higherups or the shareholders.

3.1's also bringing the airship stuff, which is supposed to be pretty extensive.

[Kosmos992k]

>_> And 3.0 is Ex primals, Neverreap, Fractal and Alex. See a change? I sure don't. Same things, different names.

2.1 added CT. 3.1 adds void ark. Still no difference and hasn't been for 2 years.

I see, so, what exactly would you have added that would meet your requirement for "difference"? It's an MMORPG in a fantasy setting. In an expansion you add trials and dungeons, you add new jobs, you add new zones, new modes of travel/play. All these things they did and more. With patch 3.1 the are bringing a new 24-man raid, dungeons and more. I don't honestly see a problem unless you simply hate new content. This is rather like people complaining that new armor is just functionally identical to old armor. Well of course it bloody is, it's armor, what did you expect it to do sprout wings and confer flight? The same is true of the new content added with HW. They expanded the existing story, and added new zones, new dungeons new level caps, new jobs, new trials and a new raid with a story mode for casual players and a Savage mode for raiders. What were you expecting them to do, transform the game into a squad based shooter?

There is no prestige, there might have been within the first month of 2.0 or so, but after that, practically everyone had one. Everyone and their mother got a relic. It's nothing special. It has about the same amount of prestige as going out and buying an i115 white weapon from a npc.

Practically everyone? Good grief, I'd love to see the census stats on that because in my experience it's far from practically everyone who has a fully upgraded relic, and those that do are quite happy and proud of it. I think your reality bubble must be populated with a compeltely different kind of people than the ones I meet every day.

TL;DR: While FFXIV has a solid base of systems it does a poor job of taking advantage of or keeping many of those systems relevant, leaving many players at certain levels of content completion only doing a handful of activities on a repeat weekly basis that encourages content locust mentality and burnout. Many players (especially those who have seen what Yoshida and his team are capable of in the 1.19-1.23 patches) are wondering when we're actually going to see more substantial content (and core system design) additions to the game considering this is supposed to be an MMO expansion.

I didn't quite get the same sense from your full post as I do from your TL;DR: version. You described at length how in your opinion it doesn't take long to get to 60. If it takes players weeks to get to 60, then pray tel how are they saying there is not enough content? Any game that takes weeks to complete is more than worth the cost of the HW expansion, but hitting lvl 60 on a job is hardly completing the expansion is it? I'm actually kind of confused by your post because you spend so long describing how you can level up, and then what happens after you level up, but you're not really addressing the point made.

The point being, for players who play in a very focused and time intensive manner, they can cap their level at 60 within a small number of days, and be farming Alex Normal for Alex Savage, then onto Savage before many players have surpassed lvl 52. Playing in such a tightly focused manner skips huge amounts of content in the game, but there are a fair number of players who only desire to raid, and don't bother with anything else in the game. These are the ones speeding to the end-game and then burning out by voluntarily farming content for gear drops to use when raiding. When those same players start complaining about the content in the expansion not being enough, or being copy/paste from ARR (which IMHO is a completely ridiculous assertion to make), they are complaining from a position that they inflicted on themselves.

If people burn through 10-20% of a game, and get bored, then why should we pay any attention to them for their complaints when they haven't touched the remaining 80+% of the game?

I'm really not sure what it is that people expect to see in an expansion. The expansion of FFXIV added;

New race
New jobs
New level cap
New crafting system
New trials
New raid (with two modes)
New Dungeons
New (and much larger) zones
New FC content (Airships)
New mode of travel (Flight)
New monsters
New gear
New side quests
New leve quests
New hunts
...

All those EXPAND the original game significantly. How is that not an expansion? Seems pretty good to me, it definitely expands the game from what we had with ARR 2.55. Especially considering that this development work was done in parallel with the continual schedule of major patches every 3 months and minor patches every 4-6 weeks in between, along with hot fixes.

What is it that you who are complaining would consider extensive enough or different enough, to satisfy your expectations?

There is a lack of medium-core content....extreme primals fill that role well

Unless the world has changed significantly, EX mode primals are not "mid-core" content. When released EX primals are end-game, hardcore content, and only become mid-core once nerfs, echo and overgear puts them within reach of the less elite players. This was how it was with ARR, and I have seen and heard nothing different with regard to HW. I think this idea that EX mode primals are less than hardcore comes from hardcore players who have burned out on existing end-game content and won't play other non-end-game content in the game. Seems like people's expectations rescale dynamically as they overgear content and burnout.

Adding Alex normal wasn't the big mistake. The big mistake was

...expecting hardcore players to do anything other than burnout on farming and start complaining...

[SendohJin]

In an expansion you add trials and dungeons, you add new jobs, you add new zones, new modes of travel/play.

they didn't add new modes of play. i would've added the flying race thing at launch, make B Rank hunts a daily bill and A Rank hunts a weekly bill. that would've gotten people out flying a lot more and diluted the zergfest of hunts.

[Ryel]

I didn't quite get the same sense from your full post as I do from your TL;DR: version. You described at length how in your opinion it doesn't take long to get to 60. If it takes players weeks to get to 60, then pray tel how are they saying there is not enough content? Any game that takes weeks to complete is more than worth the cost of the HW expansion, but hitting lvl 60 on a job is hardly completing the expansion is it? I'm actually kind of confused by your post because you spend so long describing how you can level up, and then what happens after you level up, but you're not really addressing the point made.

Read that part again:

This means that anyone with 30 minutes to an hour a day (queues provided when doing dungeons) can easily make their way up from 50 to 60 over a period of a few weeks if their main form of enjoyment is battle content (which btw is required to unlock the crafting / gathering content).

If your pace is faster or slower than that then obviously your personal play experience will be very different, but this game isn't like a lot of other games where leveling to cap often took extended periods of time.

It takes maybe 2 weeks at a mere 30 minutes to an hour a day at it's most casual, but any more than that and you are rapidly approaching the level cap, in fact given that the game was released over summer vacation for a large number of NA players it was quite easy for many of them to hit 60 over the course of a weekend due to how easy the game makes it to get leveling exp.

which means that statements like this:

The point being, for players who play in a very focused and time intensive manner, they can cap their level at 60 within a small number of days, and be farming Alex Normal for Alex Savage, then onto Savage before many players have surpassed lvl 52. Playing in such a tightly focused manner skips huge amounts of content in the game, but there are a fair number of players who only desire to raid, and don't bother with anything else in the game. These are the ones speeding to the end-game and then burning out by voluntarily farming content for gear drops to use when raiding. When those same players start complaining about the content in the expansion not being enough, or being copy/paste from ARR (which IMHO is a completely ridiculous assertion to make), they are complaining from a position that they inflicted on themselves.

If people burn through 10-20% of a game, and get bored, then why should we pay any attention to them for their complaints when they haven't touched the remaining 80+% of the game?

Ignore the fact that you don't actually have to be playing in a focused manner to achieve what you're saying, in fact you just need to be slightly above the most casual of casual play hours.

Game content should not be so shallow that by playing more than 30 minutes to an hour here and there you are essentially on the fast track to invalidating 80-90% of the game's content because the majority of it doesn't have real roadblocks or staying power to make it worthwhile.

If leveling takes virtually no time to get done, and endgame takes virtually no time to get done bar the one raid, then there is an issue with the volume and worth of your overall content, something an expansion is supposed to add more substance to. Instead the beginning of the current expansion not only gave us more of the same while invalidating 99% of the previous content that was released in ARR (ayyyyy coil) but it also further streamlined it so it takes players even less time to blow through multiple ilvls worth of gear sets and content additions.

And yes the content is very much copy pasted (in format) from ARR, lets compare this to systems from the game that shall not be named:

Dynamis
Limbus
Salvage

Over three expansions each one of those were added as a form of endgame content (1 per expac), and while they all followed the same theme of kill mobs, then kill bosses, and get loot they all took very different approaches to how players went about doing so, this doesn't even include the various other endgame events each expansion added like Sky, Sea, and Einherjar or even ENMs, BCNMs, ZNMs, or Nyzul Isle.

The purpose of an expansion is meant to enhance and add more to the game systems that were established as a base foundation (2.0), but in this case the endgame (excluding Savage) has actually become obsolete at a much faster pace than 2.0's initial batch due to various features like easy mode Alex instead of baseline Coil, Lack of a 3.0 launch relic quest, the rapid ilvl climb, and new weekly limits (sup red scrips).

I'm really not sure what it is that people expect to see in an expansion. The expansion of FFXIV added;

New race
New jobs
New level cap
New crafting system
New trials
New raid (with two modes)
New Dungeons
New (and much larger) zones
New FC content (Airships)
New mode of travel (Flight)
New monsters
New gear
New side quests
New leve quests
New hunts
...

All those EXPAND the original game significantly. How is that not an expansion? Seems pretty good to me, it definitely expands the game from what we had with ARR 2.55. Especially considering that this development work was done in parallel with the continual schedule of major patches every 3 months and minor patches every 4-6 weeks in between, along with hot fixes.

What is it that you who are complaining would consider extensive enough or different enough, to satisfy your expectations?


Unless the world has changed significantly, EX mode primals are not "mid-core" content. When released EX primals are end-game, hardcore content, and only become mid-core once nerfs, echo and overgear puts them within reach of the less elite players. This was how it was with ARR, and I have seen and heard nothing different with regard to HW. I think this idea that EX mode primals are less than hardcore comes from hardcore players who have burned out on existing end-game content and won't play other non-end-game content in the game. Seems like people's expectations rescale dynamically as they overgear content and burnout.

You are correct in that the expansion added many of those things, but they are added as framework which is something any MMO expansion is expected to add, things like new zones, races, dungeons etc.

The point the OP, my TL;DR, and many others are getting at is that expansion framework doesn't really mean anything if the systems and the pacing are the same or in some cases worse than it was in 2.0. while the zones are amazing to look at and have great potential so did plenty of the ARR zones that players hardly even return to now. Sure you can praise the new dungeons but that novelty wears off realy quick when the game expects you to run the same 2 of them to cap Eso each week. And a normal raid with no bite not only lessens the appeal of the savage raid as much of it becomes old hat as far as story and exploration goes, it's actually turned off many of the raiders who previously ran coil in the 2.x series.

I said before that i personally enjoy the Bismark Ex fight, but that really doesn't mean anything if i have virtually zero reason to ever run it again because the game gives me no reason or incentive to.

They have amazing framework laid down, they've had it since 2.0; the world looks cool, the battle system is fun, they've been getting better at balancing loot rules (token systems are finally back from 1.0 btw) but now it's time to take larger steps forward and so far we're just seeing more of the same. A game from the same company made over 10 years ago should not have more ambition and substance than their current flagship product, especially after all the attention and commercial success it's now receiving, hence why many players keep hoping they step it up but are disappointed when they just receive more of what we had before.

Also as to your comment about Ex primals not being midcore content, sure they are.

The difference is just the amount of the playerbase that is actually willing to attempt the content, unfortunately so many players are unaware of their actual performance due to things like the lack of an in-game parser (seriously there are like 20 other threads on this), and the fact that the game itself doesn't really encourage players to become more proficient at their jobs (just throw echo at it).

There's also this strange boogeyman mentality when it comes to people putting up Party Finder groups for learning but that's a completely different rant, the point is that outside of savage a vast majority of the content available isn't as hard some try to make it out to be, but many players either don't attempt it at all (cause reasons?) or get discouraged by a handful of unskilled or unlearned groups and give up until echo is added.

[Obysuca]

I see, so, what exactly would you have added that would meet your requirement for "difference"? It's an MMORPG in a fantasy setting. In an expansion you add trials and dungeons, you add new jobs, you add new zones, new modes of travel/play. All these things they did and more. With patch 3.1 the are bringing a new 24-man raid, dungeons and more. I don't honestly see a problem unless you simply hate new content.

There'd be a difference if it wasn't the same junk we've gotten every update for the last 2 years. There's been no difference whatsoever. Besides the scenery, tell me. What's so different about CT from void ark? Or Neverreap/Fractal from any of the other expert dungeons besides scenery and very few different boss mechanics? Nothing. They're all single paths, no branching paths, no boss options. Just a straight path with trash, boss, trash, boss, trash, boss. Sure, flying was different, but there's 0 use for it. There was no new mode of play, again, it's just the same rehash of what we've gotten. The new jobs play almost identical to pld, whm and brd with very, very minor differences.

Like I said, 2.0 at cap had 2 dungeons, some primals and coil. Know what 3.0 has? 2 dungeons, some primals and alex. I really don't get how you don't see a difference. I feel like you must be blindly following Yoshi, thinking he can do no wrong, or maybe this is your first mmo, idk. But 2.0 is exactly the same as 3.0, different scenery, same content, nothing new, nothing build upon, just replaced.

Thing is, none of the things in HW actually expanded on anything, they just replaced the same exact stuff. Alex replaced coil, void ark is replacing CT, neverreap/fractal replaced the last 2 expert dungeons. "They are bringing a new 24 man raid"? Not really. It'll just be LotA, which will then be replaced by the new "ST". Other mmos actually add new content in expansions, rather than completely replace everything, making 80% of the game useless, as XIV is right now. Coil? Ex primals? CT? Any of the 15-20 lvl 50 dungeons? No one touches those unless they get one of the 50 dungeons in roulette. So yes, HW added nothing new, it actually removed a lot of the content we had and gave us less. Take XI for example with it's expansions, it added a new type of endgame that was different from the others that were out and know what? It build upon that and even continued to build upon the other endgame, so it kept everything relevant, resulting in everyone having more options of what to do and not getting bored with being stuck with 2 expert dungeons which then get replaced by 2 more like XIV does.

The content is just a rehash of what we've already had and they're only adding the bare minimum every single update. 2 dungeons, 1 raid. Then it's replaced by 2 dungeons and 1 24 man raid, which is then replaced by 2 dungeons and 1 raid. There's 0 variety and nothing new.
HW was just an update with the same (if not less) content than we normally get every 3 months or so. They could have added more ways to get eso, rather than force us to just do 2 dungeons over and over and over. Doing alex and ex primals are in no way, a reasonable way to cap eso. Sure, you can do only those, but you're only getting 5-10 eso a run, when a single expert gets you about 30-40.
New zones? Ask yourself, does anyone even actually go to them anymore except for a daily hunt mob? Not really. A/S rank hunts practically died out weeks ago.

They could have easily added more options to get eso that were actually on par with doing expert, so you could have more than one obvious choice of which to do. It could have been "Should I do X for some eso? or should I do expert? Or perhaps Y?" because right now and every single update, it's been "I guess I'll do 1 expert a day and cap by Saturday".

Like I said in another topic, they could have gone from 2 expert dungeons, 1 raid (4 bosses in a straight line) and 1-2 ex primals to something more like 2 expert dungeons, alex, 1-2 ex primals, another type of endgame (savage doesn't count since it's almost the same as normal alex, but harder), a different type of raid from alex and the 2nd type. They could have easily gave all those raids i200 gear, but with varying stats, so you could have more options than them releasing content that's a lower ilvl than the current tome gear.

Practically everyone? Good grief, I'd love to see the census stats on that because in my experience it's far from practically everyone who has a fully upgraded relic, and those that do are quite happy and proud of it. I think your reality bubble must be populated with a compeltely different kind of people than the ones I meet every day.

Read what I said. I said within the first month of 2.0, meaning the original relic. That person never said zeta, never said nexus, never said novus. They said relic and judging by their join date of being only a month, they obviously haven't gotten zeta yet. Learn to read before you assume crap. So yes, practically everyone had a relic, you know, the base i90 one. Let's talk about zeta then. How many people actually had one before it got nerfed to the ground? Not many and the main reason wasn't how grindy it was (part of it), the main reason was that you could spend some tomes to get a better weapon for 1/10th the effort.

[Vickii]

snip.

Are you really complaining about content having the same structure (i.e 4 person dungeons, 8 person trials, 24 person raids) as previous raids? Can you not see the difference between every raid and dungeon? I'm sorry but this is kinda a ridiculous complaint. If you don't enjoy the base core of the game, then it probably isn't the game for you.

Also people would hate it if they varied this up too much. Look at wow, going from 40 person to 25 person to 10 person, back to 25. Far more people/guilds quit the game or complained than ever complained about the structure in the first place. People don't like change. More content is a viable argument, but you just seem intent to dislike everything.

[Obysuca]

stuff a new person has no idea about

Again, as many people have pointed out, you've only been on XIV for a month and don't have 2 years of experience as the rest of us, which is why you think theres a difference. You haven't even experienced a single update. Give it a year when you've experienced the same things we have and then come back and give an opinion because right now, your opinion holds as much weight as a lvl 1 giving assumptions about endgame.

I'll tell you exactly from experience, that alex is basically the same as coil, just different scenery and bosses (actually coil felt bigger, even though they're both single straight paths). The 2 dungeons out now are exactly the same as the last 2 dungeons. Void ark will just be another faceroll CT. Different scenery does not mean new content. New and varied content means something that feels different from the last content.
The thing is, thats what XIV does right now, goes from 8 man raids, to 24, then 8, then 24, each update cycle. What we're asking for is more options in EACH update, so we have the option of a new 8 man AND 24 man at the same time, so theres more variety thats relevant rather than a single raid with 4 bosses that gets thrown out in 3 months.

[Kosmos992k]

The 2 dungeons out now are exactly the same as the last 2 dungeons.

"Exactly the same"? Step for step? Mob for mob? Boss for boss? Mechanic for mechanic?

Really? I mean, really? Come on, you can do better than that. Obviously the 2 most recent dungeons are NOT exactly the same as the last two.

Last time I'm going to say it because it really feels like you're not getting it and just blindly defending XIV. But yes, replaced. Everything pre 3.0 was replaced. Do people do coil? Do people do ex primals? Do people do any of the lvl 50 dungeons if they're not doing high lvl? Do people do CT? No. No they don't. You can even see this with other topics popping up about people trying to do pony farms and no one's joining. All of that content was replaced. If it wasn't replaced, like you're saying, then people would still be doing those, they'd still be relevant, the gear would be useful, but it's not. None of it is. Just like the content we have now, will be replaced in 3.1, hardly anyone will touch Neverreap / Fractal or alex.

Your outlook and cynicism is quite stark, I hope I never have the displeasure of running into you in-game. Oh, and as usual, you repeat the same empty statements.

[aurace1095]

"Exactly the same"? Step for step? Mob for mob? Boss for boss? Mechanic for mechanic?

Really? I mean, really? Come on, you can do better than that. Obviously the 2 most recent dungeons are NOT exactly the same as the last two.



Your outlook and cynicism is quite stark, I hope I never have the displeasure of running into you in-game. Oh, and as usual, you repeat the same empty statements.

Except.. they aren't empty statements, they're valid, legitimate concerns. People AREN'T doing old content anymore, making it essentially "replaced" with the new content. As far as I can tell, you're just ignoring everything he's saying in order to insult him.