There was far less content in Heavensward than in Endwalker

[Raven2014]

This could be an an unpopular opinion but for me Heavenward was the "worst" expansion FF14 ever had. The HW today is one that has been fixed, patched up with most of the malcontent removed while retaining the only thing that made it good - the story. Especially if you're a new player who come in at the end or after the expansion, and just ... passing it by with glance, it's a fantastic one time stop on your journey. But it wasn't a fun expansion to live through:

- Crafting&Gathering: these days FF14 may be known for a more accessible experiment, the crafting&gathering in HW was so convoluted and grindy that it would make a Korean MMO blush in jealousy. It's not something most people even try then give up, but more like you took a look and decided "yeah this **** isn't worth my time". It was so bad that they had to repeatably neft the system almost every single major patch, and while some residue of the crafting system survived into later expansions (but made optional/irrelevant), by Shadowbringer everything introduced in 3.0 crafting except the Soul stone were removed. And you can still see some of the remnant in the gathering system still exists today, like how "regular" materials (like Mythrite ore) are semi-hidden, and how HW's material took the most raw to refine.

- Savage was so over tuned that it almost break the raiding community.

- Relic grind was identical to 2.0, abeit they did remove the most annoying part (books). Now I admit, it's better than what we have now in EW, but in the context of moving from 2.0 to 3.0 repeating the same grind, it wasn't something people excited about.

- And the classes ... oh boy, no matter how bad you think class balancing is at any other point of the game, they don't compare to the mess in 3.0, and I don't think there will ever be a bigger mess, some of the most prominent examples:

+ PLD was almost non-viable because it can't block magic. Requiring you either have invul or kitchen sink almost every mechanic. Remember how bad it was for PLD last tier because they can't block bleed? HW was like that, but worse, because you know ... there are far more magic attack then there are bleed.
+ AST didn't fair any better on the viable scale. I see another poster already mentioned it so I won't go into detail.
+ MCH was so unpopular that it had to spent the next 2 expansion reworking.
+ BRD received some stray shot from the MCH mess that see the major change it received in 3.0 completely reverted in 4.0.

- Diadem: one of the major piece and showcase content of Heavenward was pretty much DOA. The concept was so bad that even after being taken down, rework, the re-introduced Diadem 2.0 was also DOA ... again.

- They pushed the Nanamo vs Syndicate story line so far that the conclusion felt almost like a Recton and handwave.

- And just a reminder, especially for new people who came to the game recently: while the Firmanent is a very good piece content that is associated with Isghard, it was not HW's content. It was introduced in 5.1, almost five years after HW came out.



I honestly think had SE decided to be stubborn about the many bad designs in HW, they may have killed the game the second time. Or at least stagnant its growth for good while, similar to how Blizzard deal major damage to WoW when they decided to double down on the bad decision. I went hiatus from HW for over a year (which is the longest time I ever took a break from the game) after the first major patch, and only through some major coincidence and boredom that I decided to come back near the end of HW. Thanksfully, Stormblood got me hook, and while there are low and high point since, I'm fairly content with the game.