Heaven on High: That's it?

[RukiaFae]

My opinion on it is that the story was very lack luster. It felt short and rushed. 30 floors is not enough. I feel like they should have gone to 50 floors and fleshed out the story. I played POTD a lot back in the day to level and collect weapons. I doubt I will get a weapon from this dungeon. I can't put my finger on it but for some reason I don't care to run this one over and over again. It bores me to death. My main reason to keep doing it is because of the hair. The exp also seems slow. Maybe it is because I'm not excited to run it.

[MuseTraveller]

Part of my issue with HoH is very personal - I'm just not feeling the aesthetics. Even on higher floors it feels... eh. PotD's creepy atmosphere, heck we had hanging bodies around, and then the surreal yet so beautiful 150+ floors just felt more impactful. I will still run it for the goodies of course but I wish they added more story, or had NPCs we actually knew about, or wrap some loose ends. Hologram tree felt out of the blue. Maybe it was just me being all - wait that's it? :l
I hope for something more.
PotD had dead NPC easter eggs that always felt nice to encounter. Here we have lil helpers ...but why? Who and what are they and why are they helping? Did I miss some dialogue explaining them? I don't know, it feels like content with no soul. A lot of content after SB feels like that to me.
Beyond that, yes it was said it will be like PotD and I had no expectations beyond that. I'm not salty over it, I just wish a bit more story and grabby aesthetics.

[RukiaFae]

SNIP.....Hologram tree felt out of the blue. Maybe it was just me being all - wait thaI don't know, it feels like content with no soul. A lot of content after SB feels like that to me.
Beyond that, yes it was said it will be like PotD and I had no expectations beyond that. I'm not salty over it, I just wish a bit more story and grabby aesthetics.

Yes that describes how I feel about it. It feels very slapped together. It doesnt feel very fleshed out. Sadly we are not getting any addition to it.

[Keridwyn]

Haven't run it yet but from the second hand accounts I have and the patch notes I read...it seems what I expected. I expected a new PoD with higher levels and different rewards with possibly a new mechanic or two thrown in. I seem to have gotten a new PoD for higher levels with different rewards and a new mechanic or two.

I mean I don't get the disappointment here. We all knew this was just a sequel, a follow up to what was clearly and obviously the single most popular side content in HW. In my circle of friends none of us expected any great changes to come from this particular formula. We never thought it was included in any of the statements about trying something new because in our eyes it was always just going to be PoD 2: Doman Boogaloo.

So for those who were expecting something can I ask why?

[Hestzhyen]

Haven't run it yet but from the second hand accounts I have and the patch notes I read...it seems what I expected. I expected a new PoD with higher levels and different rewards with possibly a new mechanic or two thrown in. I seem to have gotten a new PoD for higher levels with different rewards and a new mechanic or two.

I mean I don't get the disappointment here. We all knew this was just a sequel, a follow up to what was clearly and obviously the single most popular side content in HW. In my circle of friends none of us expected any great changes to come from this particular formula. We never thought it was included in any of the statements about trying something new because in our eyes it was always just going to be PoD 2: Doman Boogaloo.

So for those who were expecting something can I ask why?

For me personally (can't speak for anyone else here), I just hope for it. When SE teased it with footage we saw the new wide-open floor, magicite, new pomanders, and not much else. It's easy to see how people could mistake that as an appetizer for something bigger and better, especially if they're craving a different experience instead of more of the same. That's not to say HoH is bad... I appreciate them condensing the number of floors, and the addition of magicite and the new pomanders is welcome. But it feels like a version 1.1 instead of 2.0.

I knew we'd just be getting a lightly modified version of what we saw with PotD since we haven't gotten anything truly new since HW. SB has been all about repetition and playing it safe, which is disappointing as a long-time player.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I knew we'd just be getting a lightly modified version of what we saw with PotD since we haven't gotten anything truly new since HW. SB has been all about repetition and playing it safe, which is disappointing as a long-time player.

This is something that bothers me. With Heavensward, and especially ARR you could appreciate a conservative approach. The former was their first expansion; the latter a complete relaunch of the entire game. By now, that good well from the playerbase has began to wane. People are getting tired of the same stale formulas. What I find particularly irksome is how Stormblood essentially became "make everything easier." Doing so only worsened the lack of longevity already present. While I am not bored yet, it's certainly disconcerting for future expansions if all we're going to see is Garlemald with a purple coat of paint instead of red or blue.

[RiyahArp]

I don't think anyone was expecting them to reinvent the wheel, but they didn't change the formula except in bad ways. The casual experience is just bad. It's 3 floors, which on the first time you can beat in fifteen minutes each while looking for all the chests. The story is nowhere near as cool as Edda's was, the last boss is insultingly easy (and I don't complain stuff is too easy very often), and to top it all, the "summon a primal" thing lets you kill off an entire floor. You can literally just walk through and pick up the shinies. It feels like the meat is in the challenge floors, but they kept the "fixed party" requirement, which I don't think anyone liked that much. So if you are solo/casual, your whole experience now is probably going to be grinding 21-30 for +10/10 then trading it in for a grip to repeat.

The interior just looks like reused doma castle assets. It doesn't really change at all during the casual experience, where you went through different environments every 10 levels in potd. The open floors are pointless; they don't really add anything to gameplay, since its still the same kill to unlock and loot chests as the later levels. You have so many tools now to mitigate encounters and death I wonder how on earth they can make the challenge levels a challenge.

I mean, there's some really odd design choices here. I don't think people were complaining POTD was hard at all, from casual to challenge people, save for soloists. But it feels like they balanced everything around giving soloists a chance.

[Mixt]

I'm personally a bit upset that they added new Triple Triad cards to the random loot bags.

I feel like that is not really the place to put them.

[Enla]

I'm personally a bit upset that they added new Triple Triad cards to the random loot bags.

I feel like that is not really the place to put them.

I gotta agree. I already made my peace with old gear being available but with the drop weights for the bags I don't think it was a good idea to put the cards in there.

[MageBlack]

What did you really expect?

What I expected was a straight up reskin of PotD. What I hoped for was a more expanded system; Multiple ways to clear a floor, Larger maps with more varied room shapes, better procedural generation. So in the end, we have gotten more than what I expected but not quite what I hoped for which has been par for the course in this game. I'm not shocked or surprised with what we got nor am I disappointed, my OP was an honest question phrased in a challenge sort of way to illicit some player feedback.

At the time of my OP there was not any threads started with HoH as the subject (since its release) there were only patch notes, which are not usually a full representation of the content or how it feels, and when I logged into the game to try it for myself I guess it had been taken down for maintenance already. I have gained a bit of valuable insight to HoH because of this post, minus the trolls, that has helped a bit. Sounds like the Magicite system is the "FC summoning" idea they threw out there back in a 1.18 dev letter, not quite what I was hoping for yet again but at least its a full on summon. Now, if only they could make new skins for the summoner job but thats a whole different thread.

All in all I'm ok with what we got, I will be using the heck out of this to level my other jobs and might even shoot for that floor 100. Hope that answers your question!