A comparison of combat content in Endwalker.

[CelestiCer]

Regarding Combat content Comparison that I find meaningful
- Shadowbringers: Has Kaiten, much fun, much wow.
- Endwalker: No Kaiten, less fun, less wow.

Aside from that!

SHB Raids/SavageRaids/Alliance Raids were a lot more Fun to me. But EW Alliance Raids aren't to far off in terms of Fun factor. EW Fates and Dungeons definitely more boring with the loss of my previous you know what and Tenka Goken turned into a circle, making my gameplay extra braindead boring... the EW dungeons does feel better? vs SHB Mobs not being so beefy in HP, but that's a number tweak more so vs gameplay comparison. Everytime you queued into SHB Mt'Gulg or Amaurot, you knew you couldn't make it go faster no matter how well you DPS it. Although a tiny gripe I have with EW synced content is how they sync my stats down to 400SkS... forcing me to get an off-set for say Alzadaal's, though that's not the end of the world for that...

Endwalker just made my Job dumber, so every bit of Combat content? is worse for me in Endwalker vs Shadowbringers. The amount of combat content matters not so much to me as how fun my Jobs is to be which is made diet fun in EW. But the worst thing about it all is that I see them staying on this trajectory... making every Job more hollowed out. That's what I fear the most for FFXIV's combat direction, the excessive simplification and homogenization.

[Blossoming]

That was part of the point, to allow players that didn't have crafters/gatherers to participate in the IS. It's a positive thing in my opinion.

Yes the island automated by mammets which ends up being another thing you don’t have to actively play is another brilliant move by SE!

[Boblawblah]

Yes the island automated by mammets which ends up being another thing you don’t have to actively play is another brilliant move by SE!

So many flavours you have to choose from

[Deo14]

That was part of the point, to allow players that didn't have crafters/gatherers to participate in the IS. It's a positive thing in my opinion.

Bozja is gated by SB alliance raids, midwalker's relics are locked by hildibrand quests, and 95% of any content in the game by locked by MSQ, I don't understand why they drew the line at leveling crafters. It makes no sense to separate IS from real game, might as well just play Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, at least that is fun.

Right now, IS is just bland because it's only about excel workshop, there are no side activities, no anything, not even fishing is allowed on the island for some reason. They could easily make island specific recipes for real crafters and better gathering than just clicking on nodes. If you really don't want to level crafters, let the "Mammet Crafter 3000" craft it for you for some cowries instead, or make those crafted items marketable to power up the economy. Or even better, make it so you can level your crafters and gatherers like in Ishgard restoration.

If they really want to make IS separate, then they should at least make a separate crafter and gatherer progression. Otherwise the whole IS just feels very low effort and bland.

I still can't believe we lost Garlemald Restoration or similar for whatever IS is supposed to be.

[Boblawblah]

Bozja is gated by SB alliance raids, midwalker's relics are locked by hildibrand quests, and 95% of any content in the game by locked by MSQ, I don't understand why they drew the line at leveling crafters. It makes no sense to separate IS from real game, might as well just play Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, at least that is fun.

Right now, IS is just bland because it's only about excel workshop, there are no side activities, no anything, not even fishing is allowed on the island for some reason. They could easily make island specific recipes for real crafters and better gathering than just clicking on nodes. If you really don't want to level crafters, let the "Mammet Crafter 3000" craft it for you for some cowries instead, or make those crafted items marketable to power up the economy. Or even better, make it so you can level your crafters and gatherers like in Ishgard restoration.

If they really want to make IS separate, then they should at least make a separate crafter and gatherer progression. Otherwise the whole IS just feels very low effort and bland.

I still can't believe we lost Garlemald Restoration or similar for whatever IS is supposed to be.

And yet I like IS as it is. I enjoy having it separated mostly from the rest of the game. I'm also not alone.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Ive enjoyed all of it, Myths of the Realm was..joyous, enjoyable, high spirited, it was FUN, I cant wait to see what comes next.. It wasnt some "big bad", we had the Twelve come to play. Hell, the music alone was Lord of the Dance on steroids, absolutely pumping all the way.

The dungeons have been a load of fun as well, the reaper based one was way cool.



A few. Not a lot.

I've really enjoyed all the EW and post-EW content also. So I don't have a quantity or quality issue.

I personally have no interest and would have reworked criterion dungeons into more roulette dungeons, but that's mostly a nitpick.

[Kaurhz]

That was part of the point, to allow players that didn't have crafters/gatherers to participate in the IS. It's a positive thing in my opinion.

See, there are a few solutions to this, really...

1. Don't gate the content behind requiring that you have leveled them exorbitantly. Ishgard Restoration had a nice balance in that provided you were level 20, you essentially had access to everything. They could have even still retained the situation of everything practically being non-tradeable. In this regard, you could simply pick it up at level 1 and use it as a vehicle for levelling - I don't think this is inherently bad either since you incentivise people to pick up another piece of content they may not have otherwise put their feet into.

2. Have it so that Mammets can act as an intermediary wherein you can take the trade-off on whether you want to submit items for crafting or whether you want to craft them yourself, that way it takes nothing from the experience of those who want it to act as a self-contained system or those that want to see a measurable benefit.

Then again, their obsessive need to gate absolutely everything behind a weekly/daily is equally more as damaging to the experience, because ultimately the core of the content outside of leveling is reduced to logging in and doing a daily. Don't get me wrong though, I like Island Sanctuary and it has as much potential as exploratory content if I were being honest, but they just missed the mark by not allowing players to have a degree of choice in how they approached.

[Edit] That's enough of my tangent though, I wanted to include this in my original post because still an interesting talking point.

[VelKallor]

While they are, there are also some that allow for bypassing timegates via paying real money or exchanging currency for more attempts

Liana.

Pay to win?

Really.???

[Rhysati]

You forgot Eureka Orthos. We didn't get a Deep Dungeon in Shadowbringers.



Fair enough opinion. But you pinpoint why the quality is off to you?

Is it rewards?

Is it job design making jobs less satisfying to play?

Are dungeon/raid designs getting too formulaic?

You weren't asking me, but I would say: Yes, Yes, and Yes. I pretty much only log in on occasion to keep my house for the future as the content right now is excruciatingly boring to me.

The story I've thought was awful since the release of the expansion, especially coming off the amazing story in Shadowbringers. The classes have never been in a less fun state or more homogenized and simplified. The dungeons are so basic and boring that you run from point A to point B, AOE everything down and repeat until you are done in 20 minutes.

The whole game badly needs a refresh on how things are done to give us something new and fresh. Instead it keeps doubling and tripling down on tired mechanics, bad class design, and now a depressingly bad story.

[Ransu]

My personal hope is that Criterions get dropped completely come 7.0, and the development team go back to creating long lasting content that players will go back to like Eureka and Bozja that have rewards that are worth the time investment, like the Elemental Armor sets..

No thanks, I really liked the criterion dungeons. They just need to figure out the reward structure for it. Something I don't expect to change much till the next expansion.