Endwalker is pretty great

[VirusOnline]

• Endwalker's Story
  Not much left to say that hasn't already been said. Endwalker's MSQ put a very neat bow on the story so far, with highs only rivaled by Shadowbringers. WoW tried similarly to frame Shadowlands as the end of an era, and they failed miserably. Destiny 2 is currently trying to do the same, and it's looking like they'll soon follow in WoW's footsteps. It's difficult to overstate what a coup this has been.

While XIV does have the best story for an mmo out there, my biggest gripe is the storytelling. While the story didn't fail - it also didn't achieve anything in particular. Like ok, this happened but it didn't change how I view anything in this world that XIV has presented except to continue on with the idea that the scions are a mary sue.
Like HW challenged the ideas of xenophobia, classism. SB presented war, revenge, redemption. ShB challeneged what it meant to be a WoL, a play on the concept of light and dark (well ... as best as they could >.>). EW ...
I don't know if writers changed or if it was impossible to go back and edit things between the writers and the dev team, but it read like a YA novel on KU at some points.
An expansion that bases its writing on 80% exposition and denouement when the world is literally supposed to be ending is ???

At any rate...

The story I like in terms of thematic, but I don't think it was able to really reach a good balance between threat/urgency and otherwise more 'lighthearted' moments, which is where the base story for Shadowbringers really hit the nail on the head. For the most part, I attribute this to the simple fact that Endwalker was crunched into a single expansion, and Shadowbringers didn't really give an appropriate build-up for this. I think it was sort of obvious that the initial build-up was done with 2 expansions in mind. Had they had the proper build-up, it could have been better

When I reploayed on my alt, IIRC, there's a point where we've gotten the deal to take Ragnorak, Thavnair has just been through the gutter, and Y'shtola and the scions are like "let's go get some take out in Sharlayan" (girl what).
Once you hit the major climax/rising action/plotlines in a story you don't just downgrade the action. It's sort of an insult to the reader/player when that happens. Don't filler me when we're literally about to be badass.

There were no stakes at all, no real major decisions to create any type of conflict. And where there was conflict, it was easily solved when it could have created real world consequences. Imagine if the Forum said no the scions ? Imagine if Tataru suggested that the scions steal the Ragnorak knowing they'd face major consequences on return. Or they don't steal it and make a deal with Fandaniel/Zenos to get them to the edge of the universe (subplot here to even get to know Zenos more than the beloved 1D he is).

The message for EW could have been a way to ask the player "You need to save the world. You are the only one who can. If given a set of choices with equally disastrous consequences amongst them, which one would you take ?
Instead we got mary sue and I'm just

[ForteNightshade]

The two Endwalker ultimates stand as the greatest ones to date
Even if this were literally the only thing I mentioned, it would be enough. If you do any serious raiding at all there's no question about this. Both DSR and TOP managed to successively raise the bar for ultimates. It would've been one thing if they were just difficult fights for difficulty's sake, but they artfully built on their source narratives as well. We got a very intriguing Heavensward AU, as well as further insight into the Omega raid story in light of Endwalker developments.

The ultimates being of this quality have largely contributed to the high end raiding crowd being willing to bite their tongue on stuff they aren't as happy about - 2min homogenization and the like. And that notwithstanding, TOP in particular seems to have been designed with a lot of knowing and cheeky nuances that repudiate the supposed '2min meta' too.

While there is no denying higher end hardcore players ate relatively well this expansion, both Ultimates aren't without their criticisms. TOP, in particular, has largely been divisive even amongst those who cleared it. In fact, a surprising amount of top tier players have voiced absolute hatred towards the fight due to its perceived early slog, very tight DPS checks that heavily favor specific comps and just general burn out from back to back to back high intensity encounters due to Abyssos' imbalances. It should also be noted TOP had two pretty noteworthy bugs that caused no small amount of annoyances.

As for the two minute meta conversation. Your assessment isn't entirely true as certain jobs or comps benefit significantly. Dark Knight, for example, has nearly as many clears as every other tank combined because it feeds so aggressively into both that aforementioned meta and has a one minute burst. Summoner is overwhelmingly superior compared to Black Mage and Red Mage. In fact, it completely outclasses both of them even in aDPS—matching Samurai in that department. The fight favors it to a comical degree. I'd mention Bard but its utter lack of presence is more a design issue with the job itself than anything TOP specific. All in all, the two minute meta has been a factor.

On the whole, I'll acknowledge that while I have my dislikes of TOP, I do consider it an overall good encounter. Dragonsong, meanwhile, is up there with UCoB as my all time favourite.

[*]The portrait system is super fun
I don't know about you guys but I think glamour and g-posing are some of the most important pieces of content this game has. It is the one edge that FFXIV has over its more visceral peers like WoW, and it's important for it to cultivate that edge.

Through the power of a nice looking portrait, its also ushered in an era of DPS players getting comms that were previously monopolized by the tanks and healers.

A fun features, yes. One also absolutely riddled with poor implementation and bugs that have yet to be addressed. More often than not I see people with the default portrait likely due to frustration after the thing brought for the umpteenth time. Conceptionally, I love the addition but it cannot be understated just how horrendously programmed it is. The fact their beta functioned better is genuinely astounding. I'm not going to sing Portraits praise until they're working properly. Nearly a year later and they have not even so much as acknowledged the sheer number of criticisms.

[*]Crystalline Conflict has been a massive improvement over The Feast
On my datacenter, queues for casual matches are consistently <5mins starting from the mid-afternoon to past midnight. This would be an inconceivable level of engagement for The Feast back when it existed. By any metric you can name, the PvP rework has been a success.

I know some Feast vets are glum about its slower, more strategic gameplay being replaced, but let me remind you that Lord of Verminion still exists. The Feast wasn't even the most competitive PvP activity in it's own game. Despite this, its playerbase was pampered with dozens of exclusive mounts and outfits over its lifespan. After a run like that, surely you can find it in yourselves to be gracious about passing the torch to CC.

PvP is evergreen content and infinitely replayable due to the human element involved. It's very important to get right as a result, and I'm glad their efforts paid off this time.

At a surface level, I agree. Crystalline Conflict and the PvP overhaul has been a marked improvement from previous iterations. I'd go so far as to say it's their best attempt yet. Alas, PvP remains absolutely infested with bots and cheaters they do nothing about. It's hard to lobby praise when they still don't have consistent (or any) moderation and seem move concerned over player trash talk than cheating. They have also failed to address the very vocal complaints of players wanting to queue with friends even if only restricted to casual matches.

Frontlines, on the other hand, still needs a lot of work. Between poor spawn locations, badly designed maps and some rather bland gameplay modes, this aspect of PvP has seemingly been forgotten. It's still played, and certainly isn't without its fun. They just need to extend the overhaul across the whole of PvP.

[*]Side Content
Orthos and Island Sanctuary I consider equivalent to the past expansions' equivalents in Bozja and the like. It largely comes down to a matter of taste as to which one strikes your fancy.

It's worth noting that something very interesting is going to be happening on islands next patch - it's getting an outdoor furnishing quota of 80 items. Even large mansions only have a 40 item limit, as a result, outdoor housing builds have never received particularly strong interest from housing enthusiasts. A quota of 80 will enable builds that dwarf in scope anything that has been possible up to this date. For housing designers, this is going to be an earthshaking addition.

This addition is being grossly overhyped. While having outdoor furnishings is a welcomed boon, you're still restricted to their static designs. What housing designers fancy is the freedom to customize their houses in unique and different ways. Island Sanctuary will never allow for this because you, your neighbor and your BF will always have the same overall aesthetic. The Treehouse may be up the hill instead of next to the animal pen but that's about it. No amount of Maple Trees or Beach Chairs will change that. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good addition that people will enjoy but it isn't "earthshaking". That's widely overselling it.

On the whole though, this largely ignores how poorly implemented Island Sanctuary is. I've said my piece on the content multiple times but so I'll be concise. It's incredibly barebones to the point of being a glorified retainer venue with depth on par or weaker than a Facebook mobile game. The fact the dev team supposedly drew inspiration from playing Animal Crossing and came up with this is baffling. Not even the basic features of a farming sim are present such as actually tending to your crops and taking care of your animals. It's point, click, seeya next week.

[*] Endwalker's Story
Not much left to say that hasn't already been said. Endwalker's MSQ put a very neat bow on the story so far, with highs only rivaled by Shadowbringers. WoW tried similarly to frame Shadowlands as the end of an era, and they failed miserably. Destiny 2 is currently trying to do the same, and it's looking like they'll soon follow in WoW's footsteps. It's difficult to overstate what a coup this has been.

Naturally, this will be entirely subjective but the longer I've had a chance to marinate on Endwalker, the weaker I find its overall story. It comes nowhere close to Shadowbringers and, honestly, I'd rank it below Heavensward, personally. There are far too many lulls where the story kind of drags on. Thavnair, in particular, is especially bad for this. Speaking of, the supposed apocalyptic event is more akin to "The Final Days... of Thavnair." Seriously, every single instance of us dealing with the Final Days, Thavnair is getting screwed. Either the Country directly or its refugees. Which made the whole thing feel like a giant afterthought as nowhere else is ever impacted. They tease Sharlayan near the end, where Thavnair refugees have taken shelter for the second time, but nothing ever comes of it. Contrast that to the Flood of Light and it feels entirely underutilized. We then get to Zenos and nearly every scene with him is utterly pointless. He has zero character until the very end and his rather infamous scene in Garlemald amounts to absolutely nothing. It exists purely for shock value. He takes over your body and does... nothing. Worse even, nobody ever mentions it again. You could quite literally cut that scene out and nothing changes. It's completely meaningless.

We then have Ultima Thule where we get this expansion's patented Y'shtola fake out death. Except now the Scions all join her in what is so blatantly obvious it erases any sense of tension that segment of the game has. Y'shtola all but winked at the damn camera telling you "not to bring us back!" For me, personally, Emet and Hythlodaeus save what would have been a very cliche and underwhelming conclusion. I will say, I liked Meteion and Hermes, which certainly helped the ending. I just wish they would stop with the fake out deaths. Either commit or stop doing it.

I could go on but we're getting a little off-topic. Suffice it to say, while Endwalker has several highs like almost all of Elpis and Garlemeld but when it sinks, it craters. Of course, as I said earlier, this is all subjective. What I dislike people may love. So all the more power to those who do. I wish I could feel the same enthusiasm.

On the whole, even with an uptick in higher end content, I would not call Endwalker a "major success". In fact, it's my least favourite expansion they've ever released.

[Kickwars]

While there is no denying higher end hardcore players ate relatively well this expansion

After the trauma of DSR being delayed, we've fallen to the point where having 2 Ultimates, one buggy and tuned poorly, is considered "eating well".

Never forget that to this day we're still OWED one Ultimate

Pretty much all of the Savages so far are worse than SB Savages anyways.

[Gemina]

the portrait system is the most bugged shit EW has dropped so far. Sometimes your portraits can just break for no reason even when you make zero changes to your glamour plate or gear set. Why do adventurer plate portraits not break when I make changes to my gear set/character, but regular portraits do? It's inconsistently designed.

The recently added restrictions for portraits (having to show your char's face) ruined a lot of the portraits and pose ideas I previously had too, all because a handful of jackasses decided to ruin it for everybody involved and show their ugly character's rear end.

The bugs involved with the portrait system doesn't take way that it was still a nice feature to implement that no one was asking for, but many enjoy. They just need to fix it so it is less cumbersome and more user friendly. I've seen players do many creative things with their poses, which tells me those particular players are having fun with it.

Your face being a requirement is a given. That restriction should have been in place from the get go. I've still seen portraits with players getting around it though. Just requires a little more creativity. As an example I just recently saw a DRG in a duty and his portrait just showed his lance with a ghostly effect from the lance's particle effect and background used to hide his face. I believe he was using one of the backgrounds locked behind content.

[Kaurhz]

When I reploayed on my alt, IIRC, there's a point where we've gotten the deal to take Ragnorak, Thavnair has just been through the gutter, and Y'shtola and the scions are like "let's go get some take out in Sharlayan" (girl what).
Once you hit the major climax/rising action/plotlines in a story you don't just downgrade the action. It's sort of an insult to the reader/player when that happens. Don't filler me when we're literally about to be badass.

There were no stakes at all, no real major decisions to create any type of conflict. And where there was conflict, it was easily solved when it could have created real world consequences. Imagine if the Forum said no the scions ? Imagine if Tataru suggested that the scions steal the Ragnorak knowing they'd face major consequences on return. Or they don't steal it and make a deal with Fandaniel/Zenos to get them to the moon (subplot here to even get to know Zenos more than the beloved 1D he is).

The message for EW could have been a way to ask the player "You need to save the world. You are the only one who can. If given a set of choices with equally disastrous consequences amongst them, which one would you take ?
Instead we got mary sue and I'm just

The Ragnarok point and the whole Ultima Thule were parts that I liked in terms of overall 'theme', in that the problem or threat was so significant as to supposedly force them to 'relocate' - I liked the idea of this. But beyond this, as you have said (and was my reference to, didn't get the balance right with threat/urgency and light-hearted moments) once the story was starting to climax/rise in action the story would take you away from it. Now, I don't want to scathe the writing/story for going for a steak, for example, or a burger because these are the most pitiful examples one could actually find - I don't mind this as much. But the whole Elpis storyline essentially took us away from that danger in Thavnair and overall on the source for an entire 20% of the story, which realistically could have been told in another way without necessarily coming at the expense of detracting from that immediate danger. - Elpis IMO only works in the premise where there are 2 expansions dedicated to the conclusion of the story.

If it had to be one expansion, then realistically to get that sense of danger... Shadowbringers would have had to end effectively on a quest like 'As the Heavens Burn' - e.g., where the 'danger' started to spread beyond just Thavnair (Making reference to that solo instance where Alisaie basically says Zenos will never get that rematch he pines for)

Again, to reiterate, I don't think there is any situation where Endwalker could have gone to that height many were craving for the conclusion when you take into account the build-up that Shadowbringers put forward in 5.1-5.5. Those towers either should have never existed in the first place or should have been concluded before Endwalker even started.

That said, even with these in mind, I don't think it was a bad story, but it did have the potential to be much, much better, especially so if it were split into 2 expansions.

[Rithy255]

I was having more fun in SHB tbh despite the cool defensives tanks got everything else tanks got makes me go "grrrr", but ew is ok, I really don't know I don't play much RN, waiting for the new raids and new content in 6.4, prolly playing for a month then going back to afking until theirs more interesting stuff to do which maybe next expansion if we're lucky?

Also people having valid criticism likely care more about the game then people who accept everything as fine, but that's just my opinion lol. Those people actually want a better game at least.

[Reinha]

I agree and I've had a lot of fun in Endwalker. The MSQ, 8 man story and the 24 man story have been really interesting and I'm waiting for what's next on all of them. I've played both sage and reaper and they're probably my favorite jobs right now.

Criterion was the hardmode dungeon I've been wanting to try for so long. I did it 25 times for the mount and that took a while. Tried savage, which had interesting mechanics especially in the last fight. Nice mount there too. This was the first expansion where I've played pvp and actually done it repeatedly, and that's because there are now enough rewards for non-ranked play that cheaters mostly stay out of. CC also has short queues unlike Frontline.

Got a mansion in Ishgard which has been the dream since Heavensward. The ward split and ward additions made it possible for me to try out fc housing features (aka submarines). Soon we'll also be able to put outdoor furniture to the Island, which is nice.

If I were to pick the worst aspect of this expansion it would be the relic. Sadly I can't do the ARR relic on any of the jobs I actually play.

[Wyssahtyn]

amazing that anyone can say anything good about the portrait system when the devs went out of their way to make it worse than the beta implementation

[Ath192]

I am disappointed with the game. I did expect something of a content drought similar to ShadowBringers because of the ongoing graphics update which I heavily support. But I did not expect this level of disposable content that leaves you with a barren game and only minor inconsequential achievements to work on.

I honestly thought the relic was going to be along the lines of the HW and ARR relics which had a bunch of time sinks in order to get the weapons and that would keep me logging back on to work on them when I had time but nothing of the sort. Those grinds had plenty of criticism but they did provide something to do in the game, and the game seemed busy because of it.

So no, I cannot say that Endwalker was a good expansion. The story for me was fine. Not in love with everyone coming back from the dead all the time but I also didn't hate it to where I was skipping cutscenes. I've seen way worse TV shows. I think EW could've been a good expansion, even with no exploration if IS and VC dungeons were more replayable, had better rewards, in particular if IS had more depth and involved player cooperation and if the relic had a variety of goals to accomplish.

In terms of reasons to play after the expansion has launched this one gets a D tier from me. Not an F because of the work put into CC, decent savage and 2 Ults but besides that, really close.

[Gemina]

amazing that anyone can say anything good about the portrait system when the devs went out of their way to make it worse than the beta implementation

I absolutely love it! It was just poorly implemented. The only thing better about the beta version is its simplicity.