Been playing this game for ~3 months now. My thoughts so far

[Mwynn]

...

Not like just because we have defeated three Ascians means they're all gone. We have still 8-10 left, if not more. Who said they're not able to replace the ones that are dead, ... with newer ones?

Like I said before, just because we have the Echo and the Blessing.. makes us even strong to scratch them. Yet... we still need the Tools to completely erase them from existence or else they will just keep running away and cause more Chaos.

Ascians are the "Real" Bad Villains in this Game, heck one knows how long they exist? They basically caused every seven Calamities and living that long would cause me to become a Psychopath aswell like Lahabrea.

They're "Trolling" us in fact, like I said before, in ARR they explained the Beast Tribes to summon even stronger Primals (Primals tend to suck up the Aether from Hydaelyn herself which weakens her), so we slay them and they're getting more afraid and attempt to re-summon again.

Weaker Hydaelyn = She gets too weak = Zodiark Time it is

The entire "Lore" behind FFXIV can't be explained in some Sentences. Heck, 2.5 even explains us the structures of the Ascians, how they're able to live, what happens if their Host Body dies, what happens to their Soul?

[Laerune]

I just want to point out real quick that I've only finished HW yet.
Haven't played any post HW story yet because I didn't find the time for it yet.

The problem I have with the games story probably is that it doesn't feel connected enough for me.
The story seems so random.
I get that the Ascians are behind all of this but then again they are just there.They aren't something we can really grasp and they didn't really do anything that makes me hate them yet.
Summoning primals and all that stuff isn't a big deal to me simply because I don't feel connected to the world.
The game is failing to make "bonds" that are crucial for good story telling in my opinion.

I don't really know how to explain it.

I understand what you mean,the reason is probably, because they made those characters (Ascians) to last alot of patches, if you have the Ascians show up everytime and doing bad things then this would turn them into Team Rocket, you will start to predict when they show up and encountering them will become predictable and boring. Hence why they show up from time to time.

Another thing we should remember is that as a mmorpg, the story will take a long time to conclude, it might take 6-9 years before we see the WoL vs Ziodark. In singleplayer RPG's its alot easier, you will meet the antagonist few times and you know that the hero and the villian will be fighting to the death in 40-60 hours of playtime. With a mmorpg this will not happen. The ARR storyline 2.0 (not 2.1-2.55) took an average 60 hours (according to Yoshida) and the Heavensward takes around 60 hours aswell (3.1-3.5 are not included.)

They could turn the Ascians into the villians that you meet often and you defeat them alot sooner, but then this means that they will not to invent another villian that surpasses the Ascians and right now we do not know if there such a creatures in the game.

[Blackcanary]

But you could do so much more with the Ascians.Right now they just feel like a plot device.Something that somebody just put in there so that everything is connected.
Give them more presence, show us that they are the baddies.Make us hate them.Make us want to defeat them.
The Ascians are like every other enemy in the game right now, somebody tells us they are bad so we kill them.

The Ascians are like a fly on the wall you know it's there watching you, but because it's not in you face 24/7 it doesn't really bother you at all. To me it seems like SE want us to focus more on the Warriors of Darkness. They are now slowly making me more and more interested in them like what happened to them. They use to be the Warriors of light how did they get corrupted. Will that happen to us? Are we being tolled with?

[Mendalas]

the healers job is to keep everyone alive period end of story. If they decide to do some dpsing then consider it extra but do not expect it. I main healer and I do not DPS, if I wanted to DPS I would play my DPS job not healer. This is a heated debate on the forums.

You main scholar? But you don't dps? You must literally fall asleep in front of your computer. You have more dps than any other healer and your fairy heals for a tremendous amount allowing you to dps longer. You can cast an adloqium on the tank before a pull and dps for a good 10-15 seconds until he needs to be healed. Even longer if you pop Rouse which has a fairly low cooldown. You also have an instant cast heal and a spell that makes your adloqium a bit heal instead (emergency tactics). What do you do in between the 15 seconds that the tank doesn't need to be healed? Stand there? I just don't get it, it must be so boring. You are causing expert roulette dungeons to last 10 minutes longer than they should by not dps'ing when you have nothing else to do. Even if you are not a scholar main, this is do-able on any other healer. If you are not using all of the resources available to you (mp, cd's, etc.) you are not playing your job properly.

[Laerune]

We still have some unfinished business.

- Omega Weapon, what happend to it?
- Ilberd and the Crystal Braves traitors
- Warrior of Darkness
- Urianger and his relationship with the White Ascian

Alot of stuff needs to be answered.

[FoxyAreku]

No connection with Ysayle? What?

I got the opposite impression, I felt really attached to her.

[Exidrial]

No connection with Ysayle? What?

I got the opposite impression, I felt really attached to her.

Really? wow.
I couldn't care less about her...

[Moomba33]

Looks like you're pretty much the opposite of me Exidrial.
The story is by far and away my favourite thing in this game.

[bass9020]

No connection with Ysayle? What?

I got the opposite impression, I felt really attached to her.

Same here, when we see her do the summoning scene back in 2.4 I was sold.

[Lewtskie]

OP, is there any way to convince you to move to Cactuar? Hell, I'll pay for the transfer, cause I need you here. You're probably the only person who's hit every point how I feel about the story so far in this game. Kindred spirits, you and I.

Not even sure what more I could add that you didn't touch on already. Just... I wanted this story to be so much more and to me it has just fallen flat on its face at every chance to impress. And I've tried to argue this with myself, thinking maybe I'm too harsh, but then I think "What moments do I remember that actually made an impact on me?" Like, nothing from 2.0 comes to mind. I draw a blank. This falls the same for 2.x content. Nothing stood out, and that's terrible. Now come HW things did improve, the story started having some more meat on its bones, We dropped the shitty Saturday Morning Friendship is Magic bullshit that was 2.0-2.x and gave our character plot and development, making that start to feel lifelike. But then they started dropping the ball again. Ysayle is probably one of my most hated characters. One point its because I just found her overall character annoying and terribly written, and then also because they gave her a good premise but floundered it. Harchefaunt they made feel like a real person, not another special snowflake given a special role. He was a down to earth guy trying to be better, and that made me like him so much more than all these other flashy toons. They are getting better; fleshing them out here and there and giving SOME development, but still Thancred feels like the most down to earth among the lot, and that's saying something.

Outside of Characters I found the ...plot? of HW okay. I mean, I found the setting of 2.0/x interesting too. The whole war with the beastman and their primals was a good setup, just executed terribly I feel. With HW it was a bit better. The way I saw it, by providing amnesty cause everything in the Alliance went to shit for the moment we took on a bit of their burdens because we cared, or were supposed to anyway, and from there we realized we are the only things strong and competent enough to actually change anything. But tiny moments and thing bothered me throughout the entire campaign and in the end what few good parts there were had been overshadowed by mediocrity and what could have been.

I wish more development could go into the story, because what's there could be fucking awesome, but they constantly trip over themselves. I would love story that takes several missions and cutscenes and has you doing things that are substantial. Drop the side-quest HM dungeon in every patch, take what people you can from there and put them into the story branch. Hell, throw out some "side-quests" that involve the main folks so we can just see them fleshed out. People can take or leave those, but having them there would be grand. I don't want to hate the story, but it makes it so hard to even try liking it.