Review of 6.3 Story Content

[Kyrj]

It's just boring overall. I was barely able to make it through the EW MSQ and just by going off that I was sure that the .x patches would be even worse, and I was right. Idk who they have writing this stuff, but they need to move them to something else. This expansion was not a good look for FF14, especially when we had a massive wave of people flocking to the game just to see....this.

[aveyond-dreams]

It's just boring overall. I was barely able to make it through the EW MSQ and just by going off that I was sure that the .x patches would be even worse, and I was right. Idk who they have writing this stuff, but they need to move them to something else. This expansion was not a good look for FF14, especially when we had a massive wave of people flocking to the game just to see....this.

The latest information we have is that the patch stories are being written relay-race style between different writers. Seems the baton got passed back to whoever did 6.1 with how much of a downgrade this one was. Hiroi hasn't stepped up to the MSQ yet until 7.0, but since he's working on Pandaemonium I'm going to use that as the benchmark as to whether or not 7.0 will be worth playing for me or not.

In an expansion overwhelmingly tilted towards childish and irrelevant nonsense, Pandaemonium stands apart as the sole storyline that I have any interest in because it actually manages to take itself seriously. I really like how he wrote Lahabrea last patch, especially because it really seemed to urk the Ascian haters that he wasn't his old cackling evil villain self. Nuance. You know, what we thought Endwalker would have before the story bent over backwards around Venat and the forced philosophical rambling about the meaning of life via Hermes and Meteion.

[Kyrj]

Honestly idk if I'm going to give 7.0 a try. Kinda tired of every other expansion being meh followed by a good or passable expansion just to be followed by another meh expansion. I've played that before with WoW.

[TofuPenguin]

• I feel that overall the game's trajectory is on a downward spiral.
  
  
• The storytelling made a noticeable shift in ShB, where the storytelling started to feel more "anime" than previously and in EW it really embraced that. And not for the better. I wouldn't consider EW a "dark" expansion either. It felt more juvenile in it's telling than any previous expansion with more tropey themes and predictable characters and predictable storytelling.
  
  
• As for this patch, it was terrible imo. I was actually getting more irate the more I went through the MSQ because there was no entertainment value to it and I felt like my time was being wasted. And this is the first time this has happened outside of ARR fetch quests.
  
  
• The new alliance raid isn't too bad. I always like doing the alliance raids so I'm a bit biased in this aspect. But Menphina doesn't seem to fit the theme. Nor her theme song. Instead of ancient god/goddess theme she's more like a magical girl anime trope. I don't hate it but it's whatever to me and just reinforces the whole anime storytelling approach they've seemed to adopted (which I don't care for.)
  
  
• The new 4 man has more rehashed and undyeable gear. Cheap, lazy and unneeded.
  
  
• Portraits are still a shit show. The UI continues to get more and more disjointed and terrible to navigate through and use, just like their piss poor inventory and glamour system.
  
  
• Casters/healers still get robes after years of complaints. This is probably one of the easiest things they could have done to appease players. Just throw them gear that isn't a robe here and there. It's not that much to ask.
  
  
  I could go on and on...
  At this point, it's painfully obvious that the design/dev teams don't know how to plan for future scalability and additions. If anything, I'm more amazed that this game is even playable because of how much spaghetti code it's built on.
  
  For a while now, I've been thinking of quitting. I've cut back on my play time and the only thing that's brought me back are friends. Or sometimes I just like to log in to look at my avatar but other than that, I find myself caring less and less for the game and the direction it's taking.
  
  Really wish the writer who did HW would come back.

[Brandt_Nunh]

I also didn't like the raid story. I thought it was predictable and I was seriously hoping that Crystal Mom was less involved.

I didn't start MSQ yet, and to be honest I'm not super excited for it.

They literally said the 24 man raids were the epilogue to the Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga before Aglaia came out.

[Teraq]

They literally said the 24 man raids were the epilogue to the Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga before Aglaia came out.

Doesn't mean it had to be all Hydaelyn though. There were theories about parallels between the Twelve and the Convocation, as well as an hypothesis that they could have been created by the unsundered Ascians to help mankind back up immediately post-sundering.

Though I suppose this is part of Endwalker's pattern of forgetting the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc was about Hydaelyn and Zodiark, too.

[GTK0HLK]

Doesn't mean it had to be all Hydaelyn though. There were theories about parallels between the Twelve and the Convocation, as well as an hypothesis that they could have been created by the unsundered Ascians to help mankind back up immediately post-sundering.

Theories and Hypothesis.., Headcannon, and expectations.

I see this alot, people holding dearly to how they expect the overall tone of things to lead.

But it's all clear what they meant in the direction of things.

if they had gone with anything else, we'd have someone complaining about the forgotten followers of venat.[which weren't forgotten, but simply elsewhere]

[Graeham]

In an expansion overwhelmingly tilted towards childish and irrelevant nonsense

The tilt it is bad. It is causing the wipe raid.

We think the Lahee it is strong chara. The parrot social love of the Lahee to the Athens it beautiful. It reminding us of love of the King Solus for the Hotlodeus or the Elibuss for the Alan on the Elpis. Only excuse the time magic is to bring back the true love story. Is why the rewrite of story is need to stop the Hildabrand destroy future of the past in the patch 635.

[Teraq]

Theories and Hypothesis.., Headcannon, and expectations.

I see this alot, people holding dearly to how they expect the overall tone of things to lead.

But it's all clear what they meant in the direction of things.

if they had gone with anything else, we'd have someone complaining about the forgotten followers of venat.[which weren't forgotten, but simply elsewhere]

...yes, when you have an ongoing story, fans are going to make theories based on the lore. Do I get to complain about the forgotten members of the Convocation as well?

And yes, it's clear they meant it to be rather boring. That's been happening lately.

[Alleo]

...yes, when you have an ongoing story, fans are going to make theories based on the lore. Do I get to complain about the forgotten members of the Convocation as well?

And yes, it's clear they meant it to be rather boring. That's been happening lately.

Thats what they said in the live letter from March 2022

Q: Will we have a chance to learn the identities of the full Convocation of Fourteen?
（03:36:44）

A: Their true names are already decided, but whether they’ll be revealed or not depends on how the plot develops in the future.

So bascially there might still be a chance that we do learn more about them in the future. But at least unlike many characters from the Convocation we basically knew nothing about her followers. Finally being able to learn at least a bit is just fair imo.