YoRHa/NieR alliance raid 5.0

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Okay, so you're into word games, that's nice I guess. Would "the next raid story line" be more to your liking? I referred to the 5.x raid series as "future" in the sense that it is slated to be released at 5.1 and late this year. After which it will be...content.

I mean, if its gonna need the lore dumps and will be like Ivalice, brutally forced into Hydaelyn... I rather not.

I mean, this expansion, the garlean imperial palace could perfectly be our 24 man raid. Maybe our 8 man raid, and let 24 to a continuation of the "Eastern Front" which is kinda how Ivalice ended really. Sorry, i see no way or reason, considering Hydaelyn lore and current storyline setting, for this to work. It's seriously is nothing but marketing, and is disgusting.

[Dyvid]

Agree, the announcements we've got it's pretty much the same since HW, it's really nothing different: "brand new area which will be empty because nothing is in there, brand new class that it's either another paladin replacement or a second warrior, a brand new tribe with brand new 3 daily quests, brand new dungeons which half of them are brand new remakes of previous dungeons, brand new level cap, everything is brand new...except a lot of stuff is as common as grass.
Only features that are completely new might not even big a big deal...I mean trust system? just like the custom deliveries? which is super underused?
Nice no more tp...what's the difference? It might not even affect us melee that much for all we know. It's not like SB classes overhaul level of excitement.
And more skills....uhm, my bar is so full i can't even put new stuff. Are they gonna add even more skills? Great, nothing new again!
And Viera....I feel like it's just an elezen with bunny ears on them. I didn't expect it anything and I'm still disappointed. I'll stick with my potato girl.

At this point is pretty easy to figure out what's gonna happen unless something REALLY big happens and unless the trust system and stuff are REALLY all that impactful, we'll get the same stuff we had since ARR. Under yet another coat of fresh paint

Not that I disagree with you but an xpac should be judged on the entire life span of the version number series be it 2.X, 3.X or 4.X, instead of just the initial release.

[purgatori]

For the people saying this won't quit: clearly time-travel and alternate worlds are being heavily emphasised in 5.0, so I wouldn't discount this as a possibility at all. For the NieR fans, though, I think it's safe to say that we're more excited about THAT world being expanded in some way. My hype is off the charts, and I don't even like raids.

[Voltyblast]

Not that I disagree with you but an xpac should be judged on the entire life span of the version number series be it 2.X, 3.X or 4.X, instead of just the initial release.

Sure, you have a very valid point but that would imply me spending 40 euros on an expansion I PROBABLY won't even bother/like + 2 years of sub.
Yeah I might be unfair but unless you got a crystal ball and can look into the future, we're more than entitled to doubt the quality of the expansion.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Not that I disagree with you but an xpac should be judged on the entire life span of the version number series be it 2.X, 3.X or 4.X, instead of just the initial release.

My Stormblood Review.

First Trailer: WAR, REVOLUTION, GO LYSE, BLOODBATH, FACING THE EMPIRE, MILITARY OPERATIONS, AMAZING ANTHEMS, YEAH HELL GO LET GO, TASTE STEEL IMPERIAL BASTARDS.
Lauch Day: First zone! This should be a mess here Omega and Shiryu Fought! Imperials all over trying to retake/protect important assets! Damn the FATEs are gonna be so thematic and amazing, i bet the quest chains will invole amazing fights and operations against imperials, maybe end up fight huge imperial mechas or special force----- Nope, have random fates that serve as lore dumps.
Lv61: Go where to do what?! What about the war and the revolution?! ARE YOU CRAZY ARE WE OPENING A SECOND FRONT ON A WAR WE CANNOT EVEN SUSTAIN OURSELVES AND ARE YOU SENDING YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSET (ME) THERE FAR AWAY FROM ANY RELEVANT PLOT THREAD?! O-k
First Dungeon: Funny how we just skipped over one of the most named and iconic cities and cultures in our way here, isn't Othard something we should honestly be visiting like more in 6.0...?
Lv65: Look, the steppe is good, the clans are cool, their culture is great, i love the steppe, but we diverted here all the other side of the planet to basically get very specific help from very unreliable/voluble groups that might or might not help us, also the same with the pirates and hingashi, this whole thing is a mess, maybe if its properly connected to the East Aldenard Company and Lolorito and the whole unfinished Ul'dahn plotline we havent really see progressed.... Oh.... Oh no. Also how comes that having the trust or not of a random bird outweights all of my curriculum, why do i have to prove anything to anyone anymore since they can really tell just by looking at me im the most powerfull entity alive in this world aside maybe a few exceptions.
Lv70: ALA MHIGO WAR IN ALL It glo... ry and a cutscene.... And a corner of a map.... A map as badly themed as can get... This should be literal zone zero, no one but hardened war combatants should even be close to... Fates based on monsters, yeah, as if we don't have enough of those already! Luckly Eureka will be something entirely diferent!
4.0 Ending: ARE YOU KIDDING? Like omega is still open, shinryu was meaningless (I expected a lot more when it was compared to bahamut and his calamity), and honestly, beating zenos like this made him feel very short lived and not much of an enemy, it was cool he beated us, but aparently all we had to do was to level to 70, as nothing really important changed in us during our travel toward that. I guess the plotline do care about stats or item level...
4.1: What a not surprise, baddie is alive, through the power of bad writting and complicated terms that honestly serve no purpose really. I won't even mention the disaster Rabanastre is.
4.2: What a not surprise, baddie is also alive, and goodie is also not dead, who could saw that coming, does the devteam have something for not ending plotlines and let characters stay dead? So unsure are they of their writing, so unclear is the path forward, that they make everything so vague and "retconable" as to have no consistency at all and thus making every character inheritly meaningless since it can just die or go or whatever, is all the same, we will call you when we need you. Won't even mention the cheap, lazy, uninspired mess that Alpha and Sigmaescape are.

Btw, where is the revolution and the war? Oh right, Lyse got all the credit for that, i guess she happend to be there and look nice in the posters and marketing stuff, yay.

4.3 and 4.4 I don't know, was playing better games. I think omega happend, that was actually decent. Ridorana was also a mess, even worse if that's possible. Notice the excess at this point of "Final" "Ending" "Weapons", every monster we fight by now is the "Last Solution", and because of that, is irrelevant, i never thought i would use the Name Yiazmat AND irrelevant in the same sentence. Or ivalice and irrelevant in the same sentence. Omega was cool, only cause it was more closely related to Hydaelyn lore, and had less to do with other better games, that if i wanted to play i would go and do that, play those games... You know... I think a good design policy is to make my game, my game you know, with it's own, original, world and lore and content, something this game doesn't lack, if anything, is not exploiting at all. So yeah, Omega was so much better just because it was simply FFXIV and not a quick checklist of references to other games...

4.5: WAR EXCITMENT WAR, IVALICE WAS GOOD, WE FINALLY OPENED THAT SECOND FR--- What, are you CLOSING IT? ARE WE NOT HELPING THE DALMASCANS NOR THE ASCIAN HUNTERS? THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU ALL?!?!??! So we finally go back to the war! Alliance! War! Wee! Amazing last dungeon, if only, had been the level 65 dungeon.

I'll not talk about Eureka. Or the lack of any meaningful systematical change to player progression, itemization, etc. Everything Stormblood did, ARR and HW did better. Everything Stormblood teased, it never did. Everything Stormblood actually did and was not made by ARR or HW was bad -The diadem/Eureka might be the exception, i dare someone to even call one of the two worse than the other, just to see how low of a estandar people have for content-.

Let alone exploration, the burn was a dungeon: 2/3 of the dungeon were reused assets. And was like 25% of the revealed map of othard, let that sink in. Let alone we are going to other time/dimensions when Eorzea is full of places zones to explore, we skipped over half a continent in a dungeon and a raid. Both main cities of the expansion were not explorable but as dungeons, very underwhelming dungeons too. "ishgard Remembers"... Meh.

Class changes were not that huge, in fact, they are scrapping role actions it seems and the job gauges... Yeah... I guess there is that. The rest is usual QoL stuff we are used to.
Did i mention Stormblood was announced, promoted and marketed to have triple the heavensward budget? How comes i get a hella less content than before.

Dude, idk, for me stormblood has been basically a terrible filler arc in an other wise pretty good anime. Everything is wrong here, powerlevels, resurrection of characters all over, wordywords that mean nothing (interdimensions! time travel! cheap and bad sci-fi!)... Like, the substance of this expansion happend out of our view, everything other characters are doing is much more interested and connected to world events than us. Aside 4.5 main storyline that is. I mean, we had literal filler dungeons, like, not only we get less dungeons, but the game dares to throw in dungeons that are literally meaningless (Drowned City lmao) And then again, only serve for character building of characters that are either pretty solid or irrelevant for most players, and lore dumping, so much lore dumping. We cannot get exploration or interesting dialogs, but we can get a whole airship full of entries as if it was FFXIII trying to explain it's world instead of, you know, be playable maybe?

And yeah, we don't know what is going on in 4.55 but let me adventure something:

-Minfilia comes back, hydaelyn runs out of Aether to manifiest in herself.
-Matoya is a title, Y'shtola will inherit it. Urianger will play his fate part and they will hold some kind of "time bubble" while we ONCE AGAIN cut to "some other place" In good sci-fi, time and space traveling are fundamentally the same, so ill use place and not time, full of meaningless stuff only to prove ourselves even further which is already pretty redudant.

I dare say that, probably the empire will crush the poor Dalmascans and Alliance and Matoya will activate a "oh shit" button along the other two, probably do a whole Luisoux in her way out. Maybe Eureka finally has meaning to after all, is kinda the trend of this expansion, as content is so uninspired and lazy, the end of it is good by virtue of that, being the end of it.

Who knows, what i know, this expansion is really not that interesting at all, not really deepened anything, just was more of the same, maybe a bit too much more, like a cheap binge meal that you can only feel glad it's over after.

----

Seriously, what did Stormblood added to this game that is truly worth mentioning by value of itself and not because is either over or is a re-use of something we already had. I mean... There is even any new content in this whole expansion? And don't tell me Eureka please. Re-used assets everywhere, FATE + Hunts, and a parallel progress that is honestly, underwhelming as it's so closed off. Let alone grindy and uninteresting.

[SoulEchelon]

I think this means they officially gave up on Original Content. So which tournament fanservice bs will our regular raids be...

Yeah because all the things with Shadowbringers and the WoL turning into the WoD as well as the insanity surrounding everything going on right now in the story isn't original content, right?

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Yeah because all the things with Shadowbringers and the WoL turning into the WoD as well as the insanity surrounding everything going on right now in the story isn't original content, right?

It is, but is not even close to be enough. And there is not certainty that it will remain so. If anything, Stormblood is a testament as to how far the game can go following meaningless characters, developments and plot threads that work only to fan service the franchise and as like marketing.

[Dualblade]

Honestly YoRHa is easy enough to make XIV compliant without relying on other worlds beyond Omega jumpstarting the Allagans tech. The Manikans in the Fractal dungeon already look like humans and advanced versions of them could easily be the YoRHa units. Even the Garleans could work, the Hypertuned could be used as a sorta prototype with the YoRHa androids being the Garlean version of the Manikans.

Can I also say, the funniest thing to me is that the version of 2B they showed is using her Alt Color from Soul Calibur VI. So obviously that means Soul Edge is going to be Zenos's new blade.

I may also be biased because I kinda sorta already have the YoRHa existing as Allagan andriods in my headcanon from before Stormblood, with my own being one of them >> << >>

[Arkdra]

They've shown one picture of a heavily industrial area that could very easily just be dropped into Garlemald showing a giant robot and anime people in a game comprised entirely of anime people with a dozen or so giant robots already in game.

What I am saying is you lore nerds are bad at your games own lore.

[AxlStream]

Yeah because all the things with Shadowbringers and the WoL turning into the WoD as well as the insanity surrounding everything going on right now in the story isn't original content, right?

Look the MSQ has to be original, else the main selling point of the game would be moot. But is it too much to ask that the creativity goes further than just bare minimum? I don't mind bosses being other notable creatures/bosses from other FF games. So many designs of the original RPGs you can expand on to give a new dimension to their abilities. But taking a cornerstone of your patch content and just giving it to another universe goes too far.