Since we got an expansion announcement coming. The preasure to repeat Shadowbringers.

[Greyhawk]

I'm actually more concerned to see if this is an actual expansion announcement or just another patch number. It should obviously be the former, but we know how things go, and a lot just assume the 'usual'.

[Dogempire]

Honestly I'm more concerned about job balance than I am about story at this point. Mostly because the tone they set for every job come 6.0 will be what you'll expect the job to play like for the next 2 years or so, whereas story loses most of its impact a few days after playing through everything

[Mansion]

shadowbringer just had a good story and art direction
but thats pretty much it
I would take another SB or HW over ShB

100% agree.
Just comparing ShB with HW which had an equally great story and less overall resources, but many more dungeons and content in general, it makes me think Shadowbringers isn't that great of an expansion in itself. The story doesn't make up for the lack of content.

[Absurdity]

100% agree.
Just comparing ShB with HW which had an equally great story and less overall resources, but many more dungeons and content in general, it makes me think Shadowbringers isn't that great of an expansion in itself. The story doesn't make up for the lack of content.

Shadowbringers was basically carried by it's launch. The story blew everyone away, especially with such a great villain. But if we take the story out of the equation and only look at the other content then I'd argue even Stormblood was at the very least equal to Shadowbringers.

[Garnix]

People are here complaining about ShB's lack of content, meanwhile I am just enjoying my fishing boat.
IMO, there is just one thing missing in ShB's content compared to previous expansions : replay value. (Bozja being done in a few days, no deep dungeon)
I think it's not as bad as people make it to be and is pretty much on par with previous expansions (aside from the dungeons, which I am still wondering why they had to cut resources on that...hopefully the 5.5 live letter answers this question...).
It's just unfortunate that there was no longevity to Bozja at all...

[Wrestlefire769]

I think the music is actually the biggest pressure of all.

Soken outdid himself with at least two songs off of Shadowbringers, even if the general battle music was a bit much for my estimation.

[zeylos]

Not sure about you guys but for me Shadowbringers ranks in my Top 3 all time with experience going all the way back to 2000. One constant mistake I see MMO devs do and especially Blizzard is forget what made an expansion popular and do a poor attempt at a repeat.

The most recent example is trying to retcon Lich King lore so they can LITERALLY drag Arthas out of the grave.

What made Shadowbringers special was the 7 year payoff! An evolving storyline with character building and story resolution and not being scared to go dark. So tell the Square Enix suits to back off if this next expansion is "not as popular" or whatever.

Stick to a vision and do not deviate because some depers want another Shadowbringers every expansion. It is easy to ignore it now and I saw Blizzard do it during Wrath. They had systems that worked and were popular but needed minor increases in difficulty and they obviously went to far with multiple things.

People clearly like what you are doing now. Just focus on content and fixing minor gripes.

In my honest opinion, while shadowbringer's story was 10/10, the rest was really lacking.
BLU is already talked about enough but it is heavily limited, the nuber of dungeons was limited, the number of weapons for hte new jobs was limited, the new races were incredibly limited and genderlocked, the hats they could wear are incredibly limited. Overall, while the story and art are a asolid 10/10, I would much rather see ourselves in a Hevansward situation where they push past this limitations and gave us full jobs (3), finished races with both their genders being able to wear all gear (except race-locked ofc) and, imo, a much better raiding and end game expirience overall.

[Iscah]

Right now I think Shadowbringers will be remembered for the art (I'm including music here of course) and the story. Content hasn't been the greatest or the most innovative, some events get cancelled (Halloween and Little Ladies for example) and Mogstation keeps getting expensive stuff while we get hats which not everyone can wear or housing items, Hrothgar and Viera are in the same state as they were at launch.

I mean, I really liked ShB and fear the next expansion might be worse but, in perspective, content could have been a lot better. I understand the situation we have been through during the last year, but this content issue has been an ongoing situation since ARR and it's become stale.

I don't know if I'm in a minority but outside of dungeons and side stories that form part of the narrative, I don't really see everything newly released to be part of Shadowbringers just because that's the current expansion at the time. Shadowbringers was a story expansion that added new plot, zones and dungeons. Other things that get added are independent add-ons that have no relation to the Shadowbringers content.

Seasonal events and things like ocean fishing are not part of the expansion - they are essentially new ARR content. The Firmament is a direct sequel to Heavensward. Mog Station is it's own thing disconnected from what the rest of the game is doing. New races and jobs have no direct link to ShB beyond the need to own the expansion.

I just can't see any of these things as part of Shadowbringers. They're simply part of FFXIV.

[ReynTime]

I don't know if I'm in a minority but outside of dungeons and side stories that form part of the narrative, I don't really see everything newly released to be part of Shadowbringers just because that's the current expansion at the time. Shadowbringers was a story expansion that added new plot, zones and dungeons. Other things that get added are independent add-ons that have no relation to the Shadowbringers content.

Seasonal events and things like ocean fishing are not part of the expansion - they are essentially new ARR content. The Firmament is a direct sequel to Heavensward. Mog Station is it's own thing disconnected from what the rest of the game is doing. New races and jobs have no direct link to ShB beyond the need to own the expansion.

I just can't see any of these things as part of Shadowbringers. They're simply part of FFXIV.

It's not lack of "new" content as much as lack of increments to the contents other expansions managed better. For instance aside from the first two extra dungeons, every patch only adds MSQ dungeons for light parties, making it the expansion with the least amount of regular dungeons. And they're not even particularly great in the design department aside from looking pretty.
We got no deep dungeon equivalent/replacement despite their speech about it way back then. Bozja is arguably worse than 2/3 of Eureka so far, and I'd say less rewarding even. Normal Raids are still a series of trials, doesn't matter what they call them, they're practically trials, where you fight a single boss, which IMO is a lot less interesting and distinct from trials compared to how Alexander was done.

I think what people who satisfy themselves with fishing, glamour dressing and housing forget that for a lot of people the first thing they look forward to in jRPGs after the story and lore is the combat content, and this is, after all, like many repeat online as defense against certain kinds of criticism "a Final Fantasy game first, MMORPG second". What do you do at least 80% of the time in jRPGs and, by extension, Final Fantasy games? Run around, fight things and watch cutscenes.
So, naturally, a lot of people expect consistent delivery of PvE content to do, dungeons being the bread and butter and savage being the icing for even more dedicated PvE players. ShB, however, is significantly lighter in PvE content compared to past expansions.
But I guess we're supposed to be happy they threw yet another alternate difficulty of ARR trials at us.

You're not supposed to dislike the kind of content you like, if you care less for the pve and more for the themepark stuff, that's fine. All it matters is that you're having fun with it. But don't talk like there's anything strange or wrong about people criticizing Shadowbringers' lack of core offerings.

[Shougun]

IMO where ShB was striking gold was in the pacing in general with context of the 5.0 MSQ. I mean yes the story was great, and the main antagonist was great and also wasn't Zenos lol, but I feel it wasn't just the story (even thought that's a key part of it). It was the whole pacing and flow, it was very akin to an actual single player RPG- it felt natural and not attempting to add any chaff because it needed to nor did it have glaring holes that felt like "did you honestly feel this was done?".

I've been thinking about this in a sense of FF games but also in general, especially as I like to touch upon questions others pose over and over lol, but I think there is a decent majority of MMO /rpg/ players who while they greatly enjoy playing with friends also really want that just standard good ol' single player-like experience and the gain of social noise. There are obviously those very social out going people (and your irl / in game persona are different) but I think the analogy of comparing life structure to an mmo RPG structure works for quite a bit of stuff. Many people want the social noise of pleasant people but that doesn't mean they want every single person in the game to friend request them and want to play with them every day, like if you go to a bar- some people would be happy to have a few approach, some not at all, etc.

Anyway getting back to ShB, it reminded me of some of the times I had in WoW (minus the story lol), where I was wandering this interesting place on my own and then occasionally I'd get into a social situation (while the entire time there is or was a chance at social noise but just kind of noise in the back ground). In WoW I've some very fond memories of going out and solo'ing stuff I shouldn't have with my pet and a stupid amount of kiting, doing most things alone (including some open world elite quests), but then coming back to town like a hunter (lol.. cause I was...) and feeling just right with everything. Naturally there were occasions of forming a group to do some grand quest every now and then. With ShB they introduced trusts which even further facilitates this sort of concept..

From reading the forums pretty closely, watching which features become popular or which games / expansions do well, at this point and probably to the chagrin to some players who think "mmos are for playing with others, not by yourself - if you like those features don't play this game".. I think that there is actually a very size-able desire to have the best of an sRPG mixed with the general reality of real life and how people want social interactions to work there. Meaning some people like the noise, some people are outgoing (decent portion of people, but not everyone), and some just want some alone space (like if you got a nature hike and you don't want the trail to look like Disneyland on New Years). I think ShB 5.0 did that very well, giving players options in many scenarios and just how you flowed in and out of situations (not just on the social but the story flow itself). Consistently features that bring players the ability to control their own social experience do very well as a whole meanwhile features that force awkward means of interaction are often just for a very specific group of players (especially I think for perhaps the western community, it seems a little bit less true for Japan for example; although, that may just be the get it done nature overriding other urges.. since I know there is the stereotype of learning one strategy even if another might be slightly better because it's better people got it done than argue over and fail to complete a content). Like for some people forming parties is fun, waiting in a lobby basically, but many, and to myself it's now an awful experience I generally want to avoid at all costs (PF gets almost no attention from me unless it's for Hunts that are in the area, which case it's pretty much an instant fill queue). Yet watching people and features I know I'm not entirely "insane and playing the wrong genre" since obviously every single major mmo that does well pretty much has the feature not to sit around begging for groups anymore (a relic feature for standard content that some people still greatly enjoy, and of course can help facilitate better control of quality for much harder content which is a more important non-relic feature). It's true some of these features do take away from that classic "get a group, bond, or die" concepts (Party Finder for example has damaged the level play you can expect and design to, people tend to get a bit lazy lol).. but that's where I am trying to point out that I think more and more and not just a few weirdos like myself but a decent group that want "sRPG quality" with "social noise" the absolutely massive "grand scale" of an MMO and the opportunity to make and play with friends (but not necessarily a requirement to enjoy many features, given patience at least- like in most MMOs they let you go back and solo old content, and a few people like myself, were originally excited blue mage might be this solo king job designed, rather it's a PF exclusive job that dies rather quickly after each patch /salt lol). Naturally like the real life example there are social butterflies that would die if they weren't in some form of social contact, so it's not to say there should be no balance (there definitely needs to be, at least a balance of options and time scale) but just to point out .. I think what made ShB 5.0 so well beloved was a sRPG like nature bonded to the ability to enjoy said content in environments of social noise (and with friends / random if you so chose, but some people picked "with an enhanced story / sRPG experience" with trusts a feature that honestly has done fairly well in use by reading people's comments). I also think that nature is what makes FFXIV a good game to play in spurts.

I mentioned "FF" in the beginning since FF games are clearly more story oriented and so the journey has a lot more opportunity to shine (and where other expansions had good moments of course I think the pacing on ShB was most akin to what you'd expect from a good normal sRPG game with the added benefit you now get to play that FF game with your friends and in a social environment that isn't too oppressive). Most MMOs that are 'big' are following this model, some more than others, but you can point out in GW2, WoW, and others where a lot of features are designed, intentionally, and allow scale to play in such a fashion but ShB just happened to marry those things together particularly well). I make the point out of this since occasionally I see people confused on this idea of why people play a social game if they don't want to be inundated with social events all the time.. "what's the value of playing this game if you spend most of it doing your own thing?" and I just feel after seeing all these events as a whole that social noise (and opportunity to turn that noise into a social event, without a super strict requirement on everything) is actually a well desired feature. That and it was just bouncing around my head and then with this thread talking about what made ShB great I think it had some relation to that (all that said you could easily lose balance and opportunity, so it's not just go down one hill and slippery slope it.. just thoughts outloud ).

Would also like to say I did intentionally bring up and narrow on the 5.0 part of it, since people have brought up concerns there after (some I share or some I understand even if I don't 'share' them), but I think largely the 5.0 'launch' period was one of the better periods in mmo time in that everyone seemed to be in a perfect flow and all types of players were in agreement that it was a great time.