Zepla: Endwalker is the Worst FFXIV Expansion I have played

[ChrysOCE]

I think the issue is there would first need to be points to refute. I just see a bunch of subjective opinions that anyone can freely agree or disagree with alongside claims that are likewise questionable. For example, comments like "it's the same stuff over and over" or "we need an exploration zone" - people can just as easily enjoy exactly what the "same stuff" is and dislike exploration zones. There's nothing to "refute" there, just our own personal likes and dislikes.

Then you have comments like "My FC is pretty dead" and "content lasts for only 3 days". That may well be true for the individuals posting it, but not for others. My FC is very alive, for example, and when a new patch releases, it usually takes me about 3-4 weeks to gradually play through the new MSQ, Raid/Alliance Raid quests, sidequests like Tataru, etc.. And once that's done, I go back to the proverbial laundry list of other things I'm still looking forward to trying or finishing (finally got my last ARR relic on NIN a week or so ago).

So, I think most of it is that there really aren't any points to "refute", just someone offering personal opinions that anyone can freely agree or disagree with. Sadly, given the history of this forum, I'd say the rest of it is that even if there were things to refute, people could clearly and thoroughly do so, and certain others on here would just willfully ignore those posts and then continue to claim nobody has refuted anything.

Ok so, just for you, you say complete in 3-4 weeks. What content in EW holds over for 2-3 months? What content is going to hold over for 6.5-7.0? And you say, once you have done that, you point to a proverbial laundry list of stuff... from previous expansions?! That's what is being argued! There's nothing to hold long term interest in EW so, for people who are current, we either have to go back to previous expansions to find content or we just hang about or we just not login. The game design in EW patches has been sub-par and, my personal view, nothing seen yet (and yes, understand early days) in DT speaks to any real kind of change of course.

[FenyxRising]

Ok so, just for you, you say complete in 3-4 weeks. What content in EW holds over for 2-3 months? What content is going to hold over for 6.5-7.0? And you say, once you have done that, you point to a proverbial laundry list of stuff... from previous expansions?! That's what is being argued! There's nothing to hold long term interest in EW so, for people who are current, we either have to go back to previous expansions to find content or we just hang about or we just not login. The game design in EW patches has been sub-par and, my personal view, nothing seen yet (and yes, understand early days) in DT speaks to any real kind of change of course.

Don't you worry about them, they have a full time job so they can only play 3 minutes a week, they won't run out of content.

[Darkobra]

Don't you worry about them, they have a full time job so they can only play 3 minutes a week, they won't run out of content.

You should look into one. Or do you get paid per post per account?

[Renalt]

The will to avoid this conversation at all costs drives these guys to bend so far over backwards their heads are coming out from between their legs.

can...can I watch?

[technole]

I like Zepla, got to say hi at Fanfest Paris. That was a time before she got even more famous after the Asmon collabs and doing all content including ultimates. So her opinion matters. It's probably even more valuable than say a housing or PF services selling main that does the same stuff everyday in the game.

Endwalker I don't think will be the worst, but it's awfully getting close. It's trending into that red category of CB3 mailing this expansion in after 6.0 and taking their patch schedule for granted. There is probably substance in "we have the highest sub count in our history" allowing them to stick with it like glue. But they chose a heck lot of disposable content. Created one awesome ultimate, a controversial second one, jobs are on the downhill with continued loss of complexity and uniqueness. Magical bard, errr Summoner kind of things.

Either way they are taking things for granted, and made questionable choices. "How do we band-aid this 8-hour story into something to force people into?" "If we connect the two, that'll save us a lot of time on relics!"

[bloodSp3c]

jesus, 90+ pages. ya'll are still bickering!?

[Kleeya]

Zepla is right, the community cannot take ANY criticism about 14 at all. On the main subreddit an hour ago I said that 14 was falling behind the other big MMO's like GW2 and WoW and that comment is sitting at -13 votes right now.

I don't know for Wow because i didn't play it since nearly 7 years and i don't really know the state this game is in now, but you deserve to be downvoted for saying that FF14 is falling behind GW2. GW2 is in a state waaayyyyyyyyyy worse than FF14. If people make a 90+ pages thread about some streamer they would totally lose their mind if they were to experience what i see regularly in GW2.

Some examples ?

- tons of bugs, new or old, not fixed for years, that you encounter not even trying to find them on purpose, just by playing the game normaly. Including the new tutorial category "viewing vistas V" bug that sometimes stay unfinished on a character despite having met the requirements, which is really bad for new players retention because they are very probably wanting to do the whole category, all to see in the end, after tons of efforts, that they will be forever stuck at 99% of it. Or some events (the equivalent of fates) that sometimes stay stuck in the middle, locking a npc merchant behind it. Or npcs spawning in the wall in an instance, preventing you to get the "kill all ennemys" achievement you are trying to get. Or the last wave of ennemys not spawning at the end of an instance of the personnal story, no choice but to get out and redo the whole instance since the beginning. Or this one time when a npc tell my character to follow him to met other npcs, i let him go while i stay still because i wanted to look at something in my character menus, all to see my character starting to speak in the void, beginning the dialogs with the npcs out of view 500 meters away. Or some npcs having tons of things to say and texts to read for lore enthousiats, but who are always walking to make the map look more alive, and closing the dialog boxes by themselves every 3 seconds when becoming out of reach of your character. Or the dialogs sound spatialization being all wrong depending on the direction your camera is. Or this time in the personnal base game story where i have to choose between A, B, and C, i choose B, and going after that to A and C npcs they tell me they are happy i choose their idea, and to another B secondary npc my character tell him "sorry, i didn't choose B". Or... oh well, the paragraph is getting quite long, if i continue people will not even read it so i am gonna stop here.

- tons of abandonned content. Apart for some class "balance" (we will get to it later), the pvp didn't get new game modes or new maps since an eternity. Wvw as well, with players actually realizing that they wil never get the alliances promized years ago. No new classes anymore, as a bandaid to make believe they are doing something new in this category, they are reduced to allow existing classes to wield other previously locked weapons, which would be the equivalent of SE saying for Dawntrail "there will be no new jobs, but you will be able to equip an axe on your paladin, great right ?". New instanced content is either not a thing at all since years ago too when it comes to certain things (dungeons), or very rarely being added. In fact, GW2's players did become so starved for new content, that they have come to the point that even something who dont add something new to do, will be categorized as such anyway. DX11 ? New content ! Remplacing coherentUI by something else ? New content ! The same seasonnal copy pasted event is coming back ? New content !

- crafting and gathering is barebones and a joke compared to FF14. Really fell likes a bad corean old f2p game system. No crafter or gatherer stats or gear. No skills or rotation as well, just get the ingredients and look at a bar be filled in two seconds to get your items. No stealth system on gathering in a game where your level is synchronized in overworld maps, which means you are always being attacked by nearby mobs when gathering, which will quickly make players that only want to gather in peace not stay in this game. No side content like rebuilding some town, or helping some npc tribe with crafting and gathering. When it comes to high end craft, some ingredients are either so hard and long to gather, or locked behind a "you can craft this only one time per xx hours" artifical barrier, that it is obvious that they want you to throw your credit card at the cash shop to buy everything you need with gold.

- talking about the cash shop, GW2 is a good example of a game degraded on purpose to sell you things. Create a problem, sell the solution. Your inventory is way too tiny for all the mountains of crapy items you drop ? Buy inventory bags. The bank is way too tiny on top of being shared with all your characters ? Buy bank tabs. Even if you did buy the game, you get only 5 character slots for 9 different classes available ? Buy character slots. Equipment and builds tabs are not enough for all the different choices you can make ? Buy more tabs. Not enough free templates for all the different choices you want to keep ? Buy templates items. A lot of the free fashion is ugly ? Buy cash shop fashion items (and there sure is a lot). You don't want to stay with the only basic mount skin ? Buy it in the cash shop too. Oh, and there is loot boxes.

- starting from Hot, GW2's mapping is making the worst zones of our Eureka island looks like baby easy stuff. I don't even consider HOT maps like mmo maps, but rather metroidvania/platforming ones. And do you remember how people were complaining of Eureka ? They would totally lose their minds trying to complete something like Verdant Brink.

- class balance is all other the place, waaaaaaayyyyyyyyy more than FF14. Tons of "choices" in the build system are useless, underperforming and looks like abandonned content from a 10+ years game launch that don't fit with the new content anymore. Despite the claims that GW2 has an horizontal system, the powercreep is getting more and more atrocious, when i did begin this game the norm was 25k-30k dps, now it is reaching 50k. The balance team way too often has no idea of what they are doing, are destroying whole classes, and i am not talking of something on the level of pressing 1-1-1 too much on FF14 healer jobs. Some stupid ideas even looks like they are launched on purpose to look cool when they do get back on it (like reducing the range of the sniper's attacks, this one really did get me laugh).

I could say tons of more things, like for example getting more into details when it comes to the monetization and the game being falsely advertised as F2P on steam when it is, in fact, a B2P, or how there isn't even a personnal housing system, but i dont have the time to write a whole book about it.

TLDR : your downvotes are deserved. Saying that FF14 is falling behind GW2 is either trolling, and/or having no idea what you are talking about.

[Reap00]

I like Zepla, got to say hi at Fanfest Paris. That was a time before she got even more famous after the Asmon collabs and doing all content including ultimates. So her opinion matters. It's probably even more valuable than say a housing or PF services selling main that does the same stuff everyday in the game.

Endwalker I don't think will be the worst, but it's awfully getting close. It's trending into that red category of CB3 mailing this expansion in after 6.0 and taking their patch schedule for granted. There is probably substance in "we have the highest sub count in our history" allowing them to stick with it like glue. But they chose a heck lot of disposable content. Created one awesome ultimate, a controversial second one, jobs are on the downhill with continued loss of complexity and uniqueness. Magical bard, errr Summoner kind of things.

Either way they are taking things for granted, and made questionable choices. "How do we band-aid this 8-hour story into something to force people into?" "If we connect the two, that'll save us a lot of time on relics!"

Zepla is a random nobody. Her opinion literally means zero. Why would you accept the opinion of a random stranger? Why would you accept the opinion of a random stranger influenced so strongly by their agenda? Learn to think for yourself. Form your own opinion. FFXIV is an AMAZING GAME. Make sure to spread that opinion too. It has the same value as the other random person.

[Supersnow845]

Zepla is a random nobody. Her opinion literally means zero. Why would you accept the opinion of a random stranger? Why would you accept the opinion of a random stranger influenced so strongly by their agenda? Learn to think for yourself. Form your own opinion. FFXIV is an AMAZING GAME. Make sure to spread that opinion too. It has the same value as the other random person.

Why should you follow the opinion of a streamer they are biased

Instead you should follow my opinion

[sindriiisgaming]

Zepla is a random nobody. Her opinion literally means zero. Why would you accept the opinion of a random stranger? Why would you accept the opinion of a random stranger influenced so strongly by their agenda? Learn to think for yourself. Form your own opinion. FFXIV is an AMAZING GAME. Make sure to spread that opinion too. It has the same value as the other random person.

Why are u afraid to let the game be criticised? What are u scared is gona happen? That itl die or change for the worst. Its the devs responsibility to make sure that this game allways feels like ffxiv