Anyone else just feeling really disapointed this expansion?*vent*

[Jeeqbit]

To the point of SE "miss the timeing for the content" . The people say they are not miss the point. Take what we get in 6.25,why it's so late when it need to be content that relevant at the start of the expression not mid of it. Same for the new deap dungeon, why it's in 6.3/4 and don't 6.1 . It's things like this that are a problem.

Abracadabra, here is 2 years worth of development in just 4 months.

Things take time to do in life, especially game development. If you put yourself in the position of drawing concept art, creating all of the models, animations and environments, painting all of the textures, writing the story, designing a fight scenario that meets strict criteria for the content type, coding the functions, scripts and cutscenes and coming up with some good background music that is completely your own piece and not someone else's, you will start to see how it's a lot of work. All of these things can and probably do have bugs and issues that need fixing over and over again until the bugs are gone.

Not gonna lie, the weird "THIS IS WHAT REAL FINAL FANTASY IS" gaslighting going on in the forums is starting to get on my nerves.

No it ain't lol

In FF9 you visit towns full of dwarves, mages and rat people and in FF7 you meet a lot of 4-legged creatures at their home and talk to them. I don't know about others, but subverting your expectations by having you meet a completely ridiculous type of people feels like exactly what FF games have done to me before, so seeing Loporrits was easy for me to shrug off because I know what type of game I'm playing.

[Liam_Harper]

Yes, I'm disappointed with Endwalker.

But there's no point wasting my time typing up why, when you just get shot down with "it's fine!" and "if you don't like it quit!" while the developers state how they like it the way it is every Live Letter.

[sagacious]

They come to the forum to complain. They live to complain. Nothing you or I do will change that. If they were playing another game they would do the same. Endwalker was and is phenomenal. This is coming from someone playing the game for 10+ years. These people are in the very vocal minority. I guarantee you they play the game all day regardless of their complaints.

Seeing straight is a very rare quality then top it off with a beautiful face and we have a winner ..... Best answer while being beautiful ...

[Lauront]

Yes, and for a variety of reasons.

I am currently playing TESO instead and just letting my subscription lapse. Whilst TESO is not perfect with respect to what I want out of an MMO, I am enjoying the fact that it is not so heavily centered around a single character. I also like its ability to deliver immersion in terms of zones and racial flavour, with each being distinctive. It has better quest storytelling than I've seen in most MMOs, and ample world-building to dig into.

Its combat is not the best, and I couldn't see myself doing end-game content in this game, but in fairness, the same applies to XIV. I've never enjoyed its combat style enough to do high end content in it. I used to do midcore raiding in WoW years ago, but the class and fight design in this game has never gripped me enough to do anything above ex trials and the like. The PVP revamp was decent but again, not really enough to warrant a sub. I'm keen to see what they do with the criterion dungeons (i.e. whether they will really be a kind of midcore content to plug that gap) and whether the "normal" content will continue to be a snoozefest in its difficulty level, even as they roll out trusts to cover more of the MSQ in the hopes of realising their single player ambition (which if used properly, could negate the need to water down the difficulty of normal content so much, at least in the MSQ.) With that said, I am not expecting any huge changes to their existing formula, but alone, this is not the end of the world to me until an MMO releases that delivers combat that I consider substantially better.

I don't care about Island Sanctuary in the slightest, and although I have a house in XIV, its housing system isn't as good as TESO's in terms of house variety, plus I'm really not going to tether myself to this game just for a house. I had hoped the relic would get a cool storyline but having been tied to Hildibrand and with no zone? Unlikely.

My biggest disappointment was with how the story was handled. I primarily enjoyed the Ascian and Garlean story arcs in this game, and I was keen to see how they'd follow up from SHB, which I thought had delivered one of the most nuanced storylines and some of the best world-building this game had seen. Amaurot will forever remain memorable to me. I am not sure if it was excessive ambition in the "themes" they were trying to execute, or the fact that Yoshi had decided to squash what was possibly 1-2 further expansions into this but what I felt we got was a melodramatic hodgepodge of inconsistent themes, bitter and saccharine in equal measure, with sloppy and unconvincing execution. If this expansion was meant to conclude on a note of "hope"? I really did not come out with that - equally, it's too cartoonish in many parts for me to treat it as a piece of fiction suited to a grittier bent. It just felt like a gloopy porridge with far too much sugar, and little capsules of cod liver oil interspersed throughout, and the message was more a case of "hope", but with an asterisk that says "*...provided you have the right levels of plot armour".

In my eyes, the ancients were probably the most intriguing lore element this game has managed to produce, and have proven very popular with the broader playerbase, but their arc was concluded hastily and, I'd say, messily, in a way that just felt like the writers were keener to hit us over the head with various "themes" I can't say I cared for or considered well executed. They were inconsistent with the stance the main characters took themselves, e.g. the Scions have passionately railed in the past against judgements made against their own kind based on actions they might take in the future and asserted their own right to exist in spite of their imperfections and, at the same time, remain committed to perfectionist ideals, to the point that the game's entire "moral" could be distilled into "It's okay when we do it". The overall tone of the game feels preachy, whilst offering me (through my character) very little input in terms of how I responded to certain characters in 6.0. I also considered the Garlean story, while decent, to have been rushed and to have delivered a Garlean zone that felt underwhelming relative to the scale implied by Garlemald's technological sophistication.

Throwing in time travel over all of this, and what felt like a rushed Q&A to address criticisms of the story post-6.0, that tied answers to significant events in the setting to the very time loop introduced in 6.0, resulted in even further disappointment, coupled with what seemed like a very dismissive tone from Yoshi. Judging from the interviews I've read by him, he does not really seem to understand why players did not receive Hermes well or why Emet-Selch worked as a character, and gives me the impression that he's bitter over it.

All the above has left me lacking in confidence for how the story will be handled in the future, but, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt with 6.0+, and so far, I am really finding myself utterly disinterested in the story as it progresses. Other than Pandaemonium, which I consider to be the highlight of storytelling this expansion (although we'll see how it concludes), I'm just struggling to maintain any interest in the lingering plot aspects. I was hoping to also be freed of the Scions, for a new cast to make its way in, but so far, we're still travelling around with the same guys for the most part... maybe they'll eventually complete a transition, but for the time being? I'm not into them.

So I'll wait to see how things shape up for 7.0 and see whether things improve, but as things stand? There's other things I'd rather be playing and the game doesn't offer me enough to justify the sub fee.

The “sound” should have been a huge mystery leading up to 7.0 with a very fleshed out NOT THE ASCIANS problem we would have to deal with.

If anything, the themes of this should have been finally being done with the ascians and trying to reconcile with the Garleans and “what comes next”, with some crazy cosmic horror necessitating the unified power of everyone on the planet.

My biggest disappointment was in the mysterious sound (and ultimately the entire plot of the game to now) being the result of..essentially a glitch.. and the forced events to make that whole time travel men-in-black nonsense even happen.

“Oops, made a mistake, guess we gotta sacrifice everybody to protect ourselves instead of building something to destroy it”

instead of

“Ancient evil from beyond has found us, the only thing we can do is try to hide from it to buy time to figure out how to beat it”

They even had the parts there: imagine an entity utterly immune to aether/Magic and extremely powerful towards Aetheric beings. We have the Garleans, a pet project of the Ascians who are essentially low/lacking in aether. Who knows how many eons it took to evolve such a race, but they would have been a perfect technological society to battle such a creature, no?

All that said, taken outside of the plot as a whole I did very much enjoy a lot of parts of EW…but all together…not so much.

Edit: Alternatively, just lift parts of Chrono Trigger entirely. Cosmic horror (Lavos) deep inside the planet. Uh oh, ya'll broke the thing that was keeping it asleep...

Yep, I agree with all this, and to me the worst part is that they could've delivered a storyline very similar to what they put in, for example by having such an entity engineer the destruction of multiple stars, and have the ability to warp some echo powers. Throw in a nihilistic, suicidal madman (aka Hermes) making contact with this, and Venat possessing some manner of future sight as a result of her echo, which this being then warps by showing visions of destroyed worlds and convincing her that theirs would end like the Plenty (rather than her just hearing 2 lines from a report and then deciding it'll be the case), having Fandaniel provide her with an untested concept (enervation) and stoking fear about Zodiark, which leads to her accidently sundering the entire star, and you'd have what I'd consider to be a far more sympathetic character, closer to one like Yunalesca. It'd also provide for a future plotline to be tapped into later, leaving the galactic exploration for subsequent expansions, to avoid the sense of shrinking down the world so rapidly. The biggest error, in my eyes, was to try justify this all and, on top of that, use a time loop to do it.

The degree of agency she has in this plot, as per the Q&A Yoshi did, has left me very cold towards her. My biggest disappointment isn't the end of the ancients as such, even if they were my favourite element of the lore, but how sloppily this long-lasting arc was dealt with, and how many opportunities were missed.

[Neoyoshi]

At the end of the day, we all have that hook that keeps us sticking with the game; for some it's the game content, for others the story; for many it's the company they keep- i like to think for me it's the fishing and the limsa eye-candy.

OP's reasonings are just as valid as anyone else's; even if we may not wholly agree with one another, i do hope they find a game they can enjoy, and if by-chance a spark for this game stirs in them, they are always welcome back.

[Lauront]

I don't really know what to feel about the rest of 6.x and heading into 7.0. On one hand I do still enjoy playing the game but I can see the concerns going forward and what SE are realistically going to do with their cash cow MMO. Likewise, Blizzard have seemingly pulled their head from their backsides and are actually listening with Dragonflight looking pretty promising. Not to mention there's the Riot Games MMO and if they nail that like they've done in the FPS and MOBA categories, it's going to be a huge title. Destiny 2, GTA Online and other "MMO-lite" stuff is still pretty good as well.

I'm keen to see what Riot and some other upcoming projects (including Ashes) are going to do. With MMOs it's best not to raise one's hopes, but I am keeping an eye on them.

[SturmChurro]

I'm not really disappointed. Now, during ShB I was. I was quite a bit more optimistic back then. Now, unfortunately, with EW, I have become more apathetic with and leading up it.

Story has never been a make it or break it for me personally, so while I do hold opinions on various events, and I do enjoy a good story, the rest of the game (gameplay, customization, content, etc.) is more important to me. I would like to see the game get better. In regards to housing, personally, I already have a house and I don't do much with it. I have wanted to get a bigger house, but mostly just to have it. I'd give it up, but maybe one day I might actually want to get my crafters leveled and start decorating. I did express concerns over the new system or a system like it well before it ever came out as well, for that matter.

I'm keen to see what Riot and some other upcoming projects (including Ashes) are going to do. With MMOs it's best not to raise one's hopes, but I am keeping an eye on them.

I'll be cautiously optimistic. I'd say my biggest concern with many newer games are their monetization systems. The game could come out good, but then be completely ruined by it.

[Lauront]

I'm not really disappointed. Now, during ShB I was. I was quite a bit more optimistic back then. Now, unfortunately, with EW, I have become more apathetic with and leading up it.

That's a good way of putting it.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I'll be cautiously optimistic. I'd say my biggest concern with many newer games are their monetization systems. The game could come out good, but then be completely ruined by it.

Optimistically the games will be sub-based - as while I am enjoying ESO much more than I think I ever have FFXIV outside of the MSQ (until its EW bellyflop), I fully believe quality tends to be better in games with a non-optional subscription model, in the long run. Or at least, are supposed to be.

The problem will be maintaining that subscription - if they choose to launch with it - rather than giving up a year in because numbers aren't where they hoped and turning it b2p/f2p. I'd hope Riot at least is smart enough to wait for a bit before doing such a thing, but this is also with the hope it will be sub-based to begin with and not f2p from the start (with their usual heavy monetization that we can see in LoL). Either way, looking forward to hearing more about their upcoming MMO.

I don't plan on another massive MMO move any time soon, as I'm quite content in ESO right now, but I never turn down potential competition in the market. Competition only breeds better performance on the part of developers, and I feel part of why FFXIV is suffering right now is - aside from FF16 development - there's not really any true competition out there right now. Perhaps WoW's newest expansion will provide a resurgence and bring it back into scope as a decent competitor, but a single game can only do so much on that front.

[Johners]

I'll be cautiously optimistic. I'd say my biggest concern with many newer games are their monetization systems. The game could come out good, but then be completely ruined by it.

Final Fantasy XIV has to be one of the most monetised MMOs on the market though and I'm sick of people giving it a free pass, especially when the monetisation of other MMOs is mentioned. Let's break it down:

• Game licenses that are Windows, macOS and PlayStation specific (need to buy multiple
• Game subscription
• Retainer service
• Mobile app subscription
• Mobile app currency
• Optional item store with more items, both raw number and categories, than other paid or free MMOs
• Paid in-game weddings
• Character services such as home world transfer

Some of these monetisations are present in other games but FFXIV is the only paid MMO, at least that I'm aware of, that has a large player base and this excessive level of monetisation. The saving grace, if you can call it that, is not being able to buy optional cash store items directly from the game client... even if they do spam the launcher and social media feeds every time they add something.


Sure, I don't want a Genshin Impact in which a good game is grindy if you don't spend money but at the same time, I don't think XIV's level of monetisation is any better either.