What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[Sebazy]

Except the game is actively promoted as a Final Fantasy game first and foremost (hence why it's often called an RPGMMO instead of an MMORPG). The immense amount of new story in EW is most definitely an expansion. A post-patch is the equivalent of a (free) DLC.

Note the 'In terms of gameplay', this is a thread about combat after all.

Endwalker has changed very little in this regard. I'm pointing out that in the context of combat, it's IMHO the least impactful expansion of them all. 1.0 to ARR was a complete reboot, ARR to HW drastically switched up both the content and gameplay, Stormblood finally got the side content ball running successfully and was another fairly significant shift in class design and philosophy, Shadowbringers was a solid refinement of side content concepts such as Bozja and for better or worse, brought with it an across the board pruning as well as making typical content easier and more accessible across the board.

Meanwhile Endwalker added a few impactful new keystone abilities, gave healers a 1.5 nuke across the board and has called it a day so far. Put the MSQ to the side for a moment and there's really very little else to differentiate the gameplay loop from what we had in Shadowbringers. It's the same recipe in a different coloured box.

Considering that EW is the current biggest in terms of main story content compared to previous expansions. What the hells did we call base Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers then? Small downloadable add ons? What a stupid take. It's stuff like this that absolutely gets me irritated with this game's community sometimes.

I'm gonna go calm myself down lol

This is a thread about combat sir. By all means once you've calmed down a bit, come back and let me know what ground breaking gameplay changes Endwalker brought along with it.

The best I can think of would be two of the MSQ quests 'A Frosty Reception' and 'In from the Cold'. Both are unlike anything we've seen before IMO but a pair of unique MSQ quests doesn't really alter the core gameplay loop.