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

[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...