I guess that's that, no more expansions for me.

[-BlueGreen-]

For the sake of my friends, I'll go ahead and play through this expansion, but patch 4.1 basically is the final nail in the coffin. Heavensward was honestly pretty bad in several areas, but Stormblood looked to be rectifying some of the issues I had until this patch did a 180.

Why?
1. Crafting specialist recipe locks. This was bad the first time around, totally putting many items completely out of reach. Remember items for a relic weapon totaling to way more than a small house at full price? Be prepared to see that all over again. The crafting system was really the selling point to me back in 2.0, and I suffered 3.0 only because of friends I had made. Now? Forget it, I'm not dealing with this again.
2. Housing issues. This is now made worse because of the server balancing initiatives meaning that there's really not as much of a difference between large and small servers which really helps to highlight even more so now than ever before that the way housing is set up in this game doesn't really work.
3. The dev team's addiction to RNG. Look no further than wondrous tails fails. You have to love the irony of gear with 5-materia slots locked behind worse RNG than forbidden melds. To top it off, especially in terms of crafting equipment, the grade VI restrictions on overmelds mean that this 5-slot gear not only removes the failure chance normally associated with it, but actually allow for higher stats than you can get with the usually 2-slot gear no matter how many grade VI you have to throw at it.
4. Insane inflation. This magnifies #2 because of the fixed housing prices, but outside of that it's amazing just how much gil people have. A big part of that is just how useless gil is and how laughable gil sinks are. Back at 2.0 launch the balance was pretty darned good. I can't place all the blame on SE here, though, except that they gave in to player demand and broke the economy.
5. Inventory issues. Housing store room? Thanks, but where's the tackle box that's been requested since 2.0? Crafting recipe requirements are so out of hand that in some cases you can exceed 99 of a single item when crafting a single set of gear. Stack sizes being bumped up would help some with that, or more simply sane quantity requirements (3 skins for one leather, really?). The sheer number of tokens taking up space is pretty mind-boggling, too. Having the beast tribe currencies moved to the currency tabs kind of helps, if it wasn't for the fact that I already avoided having any currencies stored outside of Moggle and Ixal. It also only solves the problem for a small number of token items. Still plenty of primal tokens, raid parts, fate drops (atma-like, especially) taking up space.
6. Customer service. To be fair, this has been bad the whole time and is unrelated to expansions or patches. When your CS team can't even be bothered to really fix an issue related to paying the subscription fee, it really makes me, as a customer, wonder if a: you really even care if I'm a customer or not and b: if I can trust that the system won't screw up and overcharge me or something. Seriously, I once played an F2P with much better customer service where a glitch in their system caused my card to be billed not once, but seven times at $50 a pop. It didn't take long for it to be resolved and my money refunded for the duplicates and it actually felt like they cared to keep me as a customer. It really feels like the CS reps only know two phrases "nope, it can't be done" and "try again in 24 hours". (Note, I'm not talking about GMs, but I can say that thanks to 'privacy' it's hard to tell if the GMs are little better than counselors that say things to help you feel better but don't really do much beyond that).
7. Cash shop in a game with a subscription. Name change and fantasia? Fine, because it would be pretty chaotic if people could radically change their characters without any kind of real barrier that without that barrier would make it hard to keep up with who's who. Cash shop exclusive items and items that are only available by purchasing physical items? No, this is just pure greed. Past event items could also be sold by the NPCs that show up at events to sell things related to that event.

And before people start picking this apart, a few things:
* On #1, don't tell me that this is an mmo and to just make friends with crafters. A large part of the reason why I craft is for the sake of my friends who don't enjoy crafting. I like the friends I have, and I spend a lot of my time online with them. Who are you to try and tell me that my friends should be crafters just because I happen to like crafting? I'm not going to give the cold shoulder to my existing friends just so I can seek out and make friends with various specialists which I could only hope would happen to be online and available to help with various crafting concerns. After all, they would probably be like me and have other friends which might tie them up with non-crafting activities.
* On #2, I currently have a small house in the mist that I was happy with and wasn't planning on moving. The FC I'm in does currently have a small house in the goblet, but we feel like it's too small for how many people we've had active lately, most of which hang out around our house. More than 3-4 people in a small at once starts to look really crowded which probably explains why we've basically taken over the area just outside of the FC house.
* On #3, I expect some RNG, and have pentamelded plenty of pieces. With the materia availability generally improved it has made pentamelding more accessible, so this isn't really a complaint about that as much as it is a complaint about other systems. With pentamelding, when you fail, you don't make progress (but you don't lose progress), but when you succeed a single meld, that progress stays and doesn't go away if you fail the next meld. Contrast that to WT and what do you see: RNG to determine the rewards available for the week, RNG to determine what you do to earn stickers, RNG to place stickers, an RNG-based tool to shuffle the stickers, but restricted in such a way that you can't even hope to spam it to guarantee 3 lines, so ultimately a final leg of RNG to see if your hard work goes to waste or not. Finally, win or lose, the next week it gets wiped out and you get to start over again.
* On #5, I currently have 3 additional retainers that I pay for and was considering a 4th. Now that my motivation to really take this game seriously has been killed, I'll probably work on selling just about everything I have that's sellable to get down to 2 retainers and cancel the added subscription cost for the remainder of my time here. I do have to wonder what I'll do with the gil, though...

[Teraluna]

Heavensward was head and shoulders above Stormblood (to date)

[Saint_Angeles]

Bye Felicia

[Lelila38]

I can honestly see where you're coming from. Only thing that's holding me in the game is my static at the moment, cause I just enjoy raiding with them too much to quit yet.

[Legewiel]

If anything crafting is too easy right now, not the other way around XD
Make craft great again!
And if u think this game have too much rng, you have to meet world of warcraft!

[Zigabar]

* On #1, don't tell me that this is an mmo and to just make friends with crafters. A large part of the reason why I craft is for the sake of my friends who don't enjoy crafting. I like the friends I have, and I spend a lot of my time online with them. Who are you to try and tell me that my friends should be crafters just because I happen to like crafting? I'm not going to give the cold shoulder to my existing friends just so I can seek out and make friends with various specialists which I could only hope would happen to be online and available to help with various crafting concerns. After all, they would probably be like me and have other friends which might tie them up with non-crafting activities.

If anything, crafting is still too easy. I was also not aware you couldn't have more than 1 group of friends? Or, even easier, get into a crafting LS. Or, even easier than that, stock up on some Soul of the Crafters and switch specs whenever you please. All of your non-spec needs can be easily met, you're the only one standing in your way.

[CookieMonsta]

If anything crafting is too easy right now, not the other way around XD
Make craft great again!
And if u think this game have too much rng, you have to meet world of warcraft!

This is a great idea! while we're at it, we should build a wall around the non-crafters....and make them pay for it!

[Inuk9]

Ok, see ya.

[Aramina]

If anything, crafting is still too easy. I was also not aware you couldn't have more than 1 group of friends? Or, even easier, get into a crafting LS. Or, even easier than that, stock up on some Soul of the Crafters and switch specs whenever you please. All of your non-spec needs can be easily met, you're the only one standing in your way.

This is kind of how I feel as well. Also, you don't even have to be friends with other crafters.. In HW I just put up a PF "looking to trade <insert crafted item> for <insert other crafted item>. Seemed to work fine. Ultimately specialist in HW was bad because a stable of alts/friends/ls/whatever was the only way you could do it. Now? Red scrips have no cap so you can do everything solo if you choose to.

[ToniRomo]

For the sake of my friends, I'll go ahead and play through this expansion, .

"I'm quiting 2 years from now". This is a new one.