My perspective as a new player who started in 2018

[Edax]

Lol.It's just my personal opinion.

You do get solo boss-esque battles in HW and Stormblood,some of which you don't even have NPCs with you like Estinien's boss battle in the dragoon questline so no I kinda disagree here xD

Again I'm relatively new so maybe that's why I don't have much hatred towards Stormblood.....maybe that'll change in the future but right now I did like most what I got from it except Eureka which was bleh

Well, I only finished HW at the end of patch 4.0 because I wanted a chance at getting a Shirogane house (boy was that a let down), so I ended up blowing through Heavensward and Stormblood's story at lightning speed back to back. Granted, Stormblood's story isn't over with, but I could really feel the difference in the quality of storytelling since I experienced both expansions within weeks of each other.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

Well, I only finished HW at the end of patch 4.0 because I wanted a chance at getting a Shirogane house (boy was that a let down), so I ended up blowing through Heavensward and Stormblood's story at lightning speed back to back. Granted, Stormblood's story isn't over with, but I could really feel the difference in the quality of storytelling since I experienced both expansions within weeks of each other.

I took my time with it honestly.I started in June with ARR but didn't get to Stormblood until September.I took my time doing things like sidequests,job quests,side storylines....etc

Yes Heavensward is better than Stormblood but I still think Stormblood is excellent so far as I observe it with all the background and lore I gathered from ARR and HW and seeing things unfold as I keep playing.It ain't perfect by any means,but personally I'd preserve my judgement till the final SB patch rolls out

And even then,both HW and SB in their own way fix a lot of major issues I had with A Realm Reborn as both are better than ARR in almost every way.

ARR might be the revival of XIV but you can see the remnants of 1.0 lingering in more ways than one.Especially the excessive amount of padding especially in Coerthas and the fact that 90% of the scions barely did much with the exceptions of Yshtola,Thancred and maybe Papalymo and Lyse.Minfillia in particular was very infuriating for me as a lot of the tasks she gave you in ARR felt like busy work which added to the excessive padding I mentioned earlier storywise.Something that both HW and SB fixes as those two don't have anywhere near as many stretches of nothing happening like ARR did