Endwalker is my least favorite expansion yet

[magtuired]

This is such a deeply bizarre reply since anyone who has lurked for any amount of time (like me) knows Theodric is one of the most measured and fair people that have vocally disliked Endwalker and offer critiques.

As for the topic at hand. I feel the same as OP. While I actually liked parts of base game Endwalker and Pandemonium's first two halves, the whole patch cycle feels very...I guess inconsequential? Zero and Golbez both had the potential to be interesting and have consistentially disappointed by recycling the Fan'daniel plot and

[Silver-Strider]

Also you must be really ignorant if you never noticed how criticism of EW in these forums never bring up the fact that this came around when Shb started to shift the direction of this game.

Ok, so what criticism of EW was the fault of past expansions?
Bosses recentering themselves and having ginormous hitboxes?
The lack of longevity of its content?
The lackluster story?

The only criticisms that can even be attributed to past expansions is raid buffs being auto aligned and jobs being boring now.

Everything else was just EW being a bad expansion.

[Theodric]

As I pointed out the last time it was brought up, nobody on the forum is obligated to lace their every post with 'in my opinion' as I think that it should be inherently obvious that any given poster is speaking on their own behalf. Strangely, the only individuals I see around these parts getting terribly worked up over the absence of such disclaimers just so happen to be the very same posters who claim to be speaking on behalf of the 'majority' at every turn. The only obligation anybody actually has here when posting is to follow the terms of service so the bizarre attempts at policing which threads individuals post in and the tone/content of said posts remains rather bizarre.

[SeriousPan]

I dislike that Endwalker is like "What if X faction wasn't as evil as you thought?" and they did it twice with Garlemald and the Void.

[Heroman3003]

I dislike that Endwalker is like "What if X faction wasn't as evil as you thought?" and they did it twice with Garlemald and the Void.

Tbh both were already plot points long before Endwalker.
With Garlemald, we had plotlines about people in Garlemald that are otherwise good, just live in bad country since as early as ARR, we worked together with Garlean legatus to stop Warring Triad in HW, we actively worked together with Maxima and the crew of the Ivalice raid airship who were Garlean in SB. If anything, Endwalker is a step back, where despite being shown to be potentially decent people, these potentially decent people still tried to oppose us in the Garlemald portion of the story.

For void... I wouldn't say it was recontextualized and more explored the reasons for 'why' they're the way they are. Like, the friendly voidsent we meet are only friendly because they're either too weak to be a threat, too cowardly or intimidated into submission or... it's Zero, who is directly stated to be unique and special among the voidsent and managed to retain enough humanity. Voidsent are still a threat to the world, and are still a force of destruction, we just know how it came to be the way it is now.

[SeriousPan]

Tbh both were already plot points long before Endwalker.

You know what? That's fair. It's been so long since I did those plotlines that I had completely forgotten the intricacies of it. Though in my own unnecessary defense I was just making an off the cuff comment. :P

Or maybe I'm just salty I don't get to kill Garleans anymore.

[Zarkovitch]

The raiding scene got the somewhat stormblood treatments, but with lame gameplay. The story have a good ending for saga of ARR, but the new story feels weak af. The grind doesnt exist for relics, It's like playing a shetty version of genshin or honkai star rail dailies to get them. Even the introduction of new content such farmville/4 man content felt a miss shot from the devs. Hard 4 mans could give us tomes upgrades and farmville could make the grind semi-automatic the more you lvl the farmville as a reward for the tedious grind of the start. The good news there a chance they are fixing the 4 mans, but for farmville no chance they wont do it. Overall this expansion felt weak/mid and 7.0 they have to find a solution to make it "fresh" not shb 3 remastered edition.

[Bekuta]

I think it was a good expansion, but nothing can top Shadowbringers, yet.

[Zsolen]

I was not a fan of EW and I thought ShB was okay mostly because of story but I have noticed problems in SHB. I'll focus on things more in my realm.

1) EW crippled ranked pvp and it is basically on fire, although casual is doing better
2) ShB/EW crippled the point of crafting, but I think gathering is better
3) BLU is chugging along just fine despite early criticism
4) Sanctuary is okay but not great. It is a great spot to queue, because you go back to it automatically after coming back from an instance unlike your house
5) I miss relics requiring more. I think SE can take a role quest approach to this. You can use tomes for weapons, if you unlocked the role via whatever SE needs you to do like quests, open instance, etc... Completing this unlock, which should involve a lot of combat, 4 or 5 times and getting tome relic access for it is easier to swallow for many. I wonder how many more people would do relic related content, if they only had to grind it out for 4 or 5 roles to unlock it all to complete as they pick up the tomes, compared to having to grind out every weapon.
6) MCH is still a joke. Both HW and SB versions were far more interesting.
7) I actually liked the story leading up Elpis. It started to fall apart with Elpis. It made a small comeback with the airship/ aetherial sea but started to fall apart again with the fake losing of companions through the completely unneeded fight with Zenos. Patches started off okay, and I was with it until the last patch. The last patch was just plain terrible.

I dislike that Endwalker is like "What if X faction wasn't as evil as you thought?" and they did it twice with Garlemald and the Void.

I know this was a light comment, but I think this needed to be said. it is probably a good thing this is out there with all of the 'canceling' people do. This is one of the things in the expansion I did like. Perspective is everything, and there are many adults out there that need to learn this lesson.

[Supersnow845]

As someone who considers ARR an expansion because they started in legacy it tells a lot that EW has fallen below ARR for me and is now fighting with legacy for last place

Hell if legacy got split into pre and post dalamud then EW would even be below post dalamud for me