Well, you're wrong. Hope you feel better.
Just wanted to add a plus one to pretty much all your posts here and say I'm in total agreement, and you've managed to sum up really well why and where this game somehow managed to fall off a cliff for me. It's something I struggle to adequately explain, especially, as I've said this before, when I honestly feel like I'm being minorly gaslit sometimes with how some players view the story, particularly with regards to ARR and EW. There's only so many times I can use the words "depth" and "nuance" before they lose all meaning, but your comments about Sharlayan and Thordan reminded me why I'm not old-man-yells-at-clouding about EW and that it really!!! wasn't!!! like!!! this!!! no matter how much various sections of the community constantly try to argue otherwise. I don't want to talk about realism in a game with tonberrys, chocobos and giant talking crystals, but the world felt infinitely more relatable and realistic back then insofar as the characters, their motivations, their backgrounds, their behaviour and more notably their flaws that don't suddenly get wiped off the blackboard when confronted with the power of kindness and friendship. Do you remember Aymeric, and how the shocking twist and flaw of his character was how naively trusting and optimistic he was? ...yet here we are, with that pretty much being par for the course for the entire cast at this point.
I don't get the hate for ARR, either. Its worst crime was that it dragged, but I sure as hell enjoyed the subtle worldbuilding and care that went into making interesting and complex characters than the JRPG trope pick and mix we've been given lately.
Anyway, I'm not meant to be here I just resubbed solely to join in Savage prog and felt vindicated seeing some ARR love so ignore me
Last edited by Lunaxia; 06-18-2023 at 01:58 PM. Reason: remember when you couldn't predict a character's entire story arc from the moment you met them
I always found the scathing distaste for ARR to be rather bizarre. It was very common for a lot of players to insist that the game only truly started with HW but...that simply wasn't true at all. ARR had a lot of fetch quests that could and were shortened down but plenty of world and character building took place that had actual pay off in later expansions.
Large swathes of the game's established lore seems to be at risk of just being completely retconned out of the blue. Sharlayan, for example, was established as a sinister and shady isolationist nation that sent assassins to kill or threaten anybody who shared knowledge with the outside world without permission. Whenever we explored remnants of Sharlayan outposts there was very much a sense that something was 'off' about the place. Bizarre experiments, dangerous research left behind, unsettling familiars and constructs...
Then when we go to explore the place directly it had all its rough edges sanded away to be little more than a glorified university town where pretty much everyone is very friendly and for some strange reason, there's a bunch of male viera running about despite it being established as part of the worldbuilding that they're exceptionally rare.
All in all, I just hope it comes out someday what the original script for Endwalker entailed since so much of this expansion's story seems stuff that was abruptly changed from one thing to another.
I had always struggled to put into words why EW's depiction of Sharlayan bothered me but you hit the nail on the head with this post for me. It comes off more like a college paradise for 20-somethings to me (hell the last stand might as well be a starbucks too) rather than what previous expansions had alluded to.
(Please picture this as a sticky note left on a chair because I am not here.)
I honestly enjoyed the whole experience of going through ARR, meeting the characters, exploring the zones and getting to know the game, and I really liked the Coerthas/ Dreams of Ice content and the build-up with the Crystal Braves a lot. There was an official "rating" thread of sorts for the expansions not too long ago, and I realised for me there's a large chunk of ARR I would actually put up with there with HW and parts of ShB - it just suffered from that post 2.0 come down where the quests surrounding the primals and Domans seemed nigh endless.
I think more than anything, and what ARR encapsulated and what I miss the most, is the sense of an unsteady and uncertain world that actually felt like it necessitated the presence of do-gooder adventurers and a group like the Scions. I'm not saying we should have artificially prolonged the threats that previously existed, and that restoring some sense of peace and stability wasn't a logical outcome, but I miss how each character and community we came across felt more like its own mini cohesive story wherein the cast had their own individually-centered and more natural, grey sense of morality and much more varied degrees of self-interest and motivation that did not simply boil down to "grouchy, racist asshole we have to win over" or "an unconditionally supportive sweetheart." We did not implicitly trust and befriend everyone we met, and corruption and conflict were highlighted as significant problems even within "official" organisations we might have actually been expected to trust. What makes Eorzea especially feel so bland these days is that they've tried to address and smooth out every conceivable wrinkle within its various societies, and there's no sense that existed early on in the game that something could switch or change or become precarious at any time as it is wont to do in the real world. As a result, it just feels... very safe, and ultimately very boring.
And it's why how they dealt with areas like Sharlayan or Garlemald feel even more frustrating, because look! Potential conflict! ...but through a combination of steamrolling over there with our Positive Way of Thinking and taking away any sort of human element from their behaviour by making everything a Wizard Did It (Hydaelyn made the Sharlayans secretive! The Ascian Emperor made the Garleans quasi-evil!) it just makes everything very sweet and inoffensive and dull, again. With Garlemald in particular, I don't see why they couldn't have instated a Quintus-type leader to take over who could have been a point of antagonism and abrasion for the moral purity of the Eorzean Alliance, and allow the Garleans to evolve and rebuild and potentially leave a door open to revisit their story further down the road and offer just a minor feeling of uncertainty to a world that desperately needs it.
Last edited by Lunaxia; 06-18-2023 at 05:25 PM.
Agree here. Garlemald needed to be fleshed out and expanded a great deal more, I am also somewhat disappointed we didnt have more to do IN Sharlayan, I have an AST and after I got there my first thought was 'Wait, someone HERE sent an assassin?...all this lot do is send angry letters..."With Garlemald in particular, I don't see why they couldn't have instated a Quintus-type leader to take over who could have been a point of antagonism and abrasion for the moral purity of the Eorzean Alliance, and allow the Garleans to evolve and rebuild and potentially leave a door open to revisit their story further down the road and offer just a minor feeling of uncertainty to a world that desperately needs it.
I dont actually think EW was rushed, BUT I have a feeling a lot of stuff went to the cutting room floor. Remember Erenville? Something told me there may have been more in his backstory, but it was never explored.
( Mind you, that would have made the MSQ longer , people would STILL complain..............)![]()
Okay, but it wasn't as cut-and-dry as that.
The WOL didn't really kill the "designated devil" - it was stated, and demonstrated, that Zodiark was "incomplete" and what we fought was a Fandaniel controlled puppet.
Hyadaelyn wasn't really fully powered either - she had to rely on a reserve she'd kept for her final battle
And we fought "the amalgamation of despair" in a place comprised of a power/energy "that reacts to strong emotions, both negative and positive" - it was the positive element (the WoL's willpower) reinforced by the Scions, that gave us the win here. And even afterward we had enough residual energy left to give us 'insta-heals' Vs Zenos.
I mean, I have mixed opinions about Endwalker - but again, each of those fights were Vs a foe with some degree of 'handicap' and I therefore tend to give them a pass in this regard.
I don't think it's the lowest point but it's among the lowest...
Battle content wise, I don't feel we're going to be on par with ShB. This is the only expansions where I mostly raidlogged.
We only have 1 patch remaining and it's most of the time just a patch to keep the game alive until next expansion.
Dungeons, 8 man raid, 24 man raid
We'll have the same number as past expansion, this isn't changing.
Extreme
So far we're missing 1 Extreme compared to SB (Rathalos) and ShB (Varis)
Ultimates
We got 2 Ultimates this expansion and they are higher quality.
This is a straight gain, but having two bugs on TOP isn't acceptable.
Eureka Orthos
I get people asked for it but the problem is that it's POTD 3.
Sure it's now more about mechanics than Auto attacks but POTD mechanics are tiring as they're the same again and again.
Same potmander, sames traps, same monsters...
No Eureka, No Bozja
This is honestly a massive let down.
Eureka and Bozja were a fun area to explore with tools to make the jobs feels different.
No Delubrum Reginae, No Baldesion Arsenal
Again lacking.
I think DR and BA have a lot of potential.
DR problem was that nobody used resources from Bozja, Lost Action and essence, making the dungeon painfully longer.
DRS main problem was getting 48 players together.
No Relic content
Give 500 tomestones and get cool weapon.
Having to farm 500 or 15.000 tomestones isn't interesting in both cases.
But we're really lacking a side content, it could've been tied with Eureka Orthos or something.
+Criterion
Criterion is a very good idea but the execution is lacking.
The extreme is good, you have good mechanics and the bosses are fun.
The savage version is simply "everything hits harder and has 15% more hp, also no res possible", it's a lot of artificial difficulty and barely any rewards.
You clear it once and barely have no reason to come back. And it's not especially fun, you're barely repeating what you did on Extreme.
Others
I don't have any interest in crafting but we didn't had reconstruction as far as I know.
In SB we had the reconstruction of Doma, in ShB the reconstruction of Ishgard... Also Idyllshire was rebuilding itself in HW.
Story wise we are at the lowest point ever seen for this 6.4. We got hours of filler and only 10 minutes of actual MSQ.
Job design dropped in quality, SQEX has given up on MCH and RDM, SMN has been buchered to legos, Healers are still complaining and the game caters to melee DPS.
This is the first time in years QA testing missed serious issues (Auto in TOP, Caloric, job balance in P8S)
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|