The State of Endwalker: A 2 year Recap.

[Noumenon]

The only thing I have to say is this:

FF14 has been mediocre for a while now. It's only been camouflaged because of the good story. And the dam finally broke because the 6.x story is unadulterated, concentrated garbage.

Endwalker isn't much worse than ShB. It's only slightly worse than ShB. ShB was very bad too: it saw the dumbing down of healers and tanks, the gutting of numerous jobs (like MCH), and encounters start to get streamlined catering to the FFLogs crowd.

Both SB and ShB also saw uninspired copy-paste jobs for side content. Heaven-on-High is a copypaste of PotD, with the singular petty "innovation" of large room floors. 70% of Bozja is an ugly copypaste of Eureka, with the only redeeming factors being the actions (most of which was copied from Eureka anyways), the 3 raids and the duels (with almost no mechanic that is new to the game, outside of prisoner saving in CLL and LR memes in Dalriada).

Unfortunately EW is even worse. There is next to no redeeming quality to Variant dungeons or Island Sanctuary. Orthos does not even have petty "innovation" to boast of as a feature. And the raids are extremely, extremely dull. Euphrosyne's first boss is quite possibly duller and have fewer mechanics than Syrcus Tower's first boss. Yes, a Lv90 boss developed in 2023 is easier, has less depth, has fewer mechanics, and is far duller than a Lv50 boss developed in 2013.

You care a lot about the story, so I can see why EW is especially bad for you. Yet for people who are interested in gameplay, EW is just another dot on the long downward trend since HW.

Everyone here can agree that CBU3 can produce excellence

Perhaps they theoretically can, but it seems increasingly clear that their corporate philosophy does not accommodate for designing excellent games. The nickel-and-diming of FF14 is quite clear now. It is increasingly obvious that Yoshi P and CBU3 takes pride in cutting costs wherever they can and streamlining and funneling all their budget onto eye-catching sequences that can wow game journalists.

It is why FF16 has immense highs (at least, on a graphical level, since the gameplay during primal fights is as shallow as a drying pond in a desert) followed by PS2-tier cutscenes with wooden facial animations and insanely mundane quests such as fetching airship parts for Mid, and indie studio level presentation like many dialogues only being voiced for the first few words.

The entire CBU3 project is not one of video game development. It's one of marketing. Yoshi P is not an adept game producer. He's an adept marketer. FF14 and FF16 bend over backwards in their game design to fulfill marketing needs and to wow game journalists, while using the minimal budget possible.

CBU3 is not a game development team. It's a marketing team. That's why you have absolutely inane comments from the producer like SGE's icon triggering non-existent phobias so game journalists can praise how 'woke' CBU3 is.

[Bonoki]

Both SB and ShB also saw uninspired copy-paste jobs for side content. Heaven-on-High is a copypaste of PotD, with the singular petty "innovation" of large room floors. 70% of Bozja is an ugly copypaste of Eureka, with the only redeeming factors being the actions (most of which was copied from Eureka anyways), the 3 raids and the duels (with almost no mechanic that is new to the game, outside of prisoner saving in CLL and LR memes in Dalriada).

Early Diadem is extremely forgettable, but Eureka is technically a copy paste of the original Diadem 3.X reimagined and given relic quests. Diadem from Heavenwards failed twice and was even restricted from entry for a time until Ishgard Restoration revamped it. I don't blame people for forgetting how easily overlooked it was, but it was arguably the first field content in the game. (and really field content has always been over glorified FATEs in a special instance if we want to talk about copy and pastes) ...

[Lauront]

FF14 has been mediocre for a while now. It's only been camouflaged because of the good story. And the dam finally broke because the 6.x story is unadulterated, concentrated garbage.

Pretty much this, although for me I'd include 6.0 itself in that. Agree with what you say about the gameplay aspects of it. It peaked in SB gameplay-wise for me, although I liked some of the SHB side-content as filler content, like Bozja. Mainly as a result of Matsuno's involvement and for DR and Dalriada. Eureka was more pleasant for the zone design, as Bozja just felt dreary, especially with this game's washed out aesthetics. Agreed on HoH, I never quite liked it as much as PoTD. As much as both had room to improve I'd still take them over an absence of a zone. It's also a pity that they didn't hit the mark with the V/C dungeons. They're not ditching them but it remains to be seen if they'll figure out what they got wrong with those.

The one thing I enjoyed in EW was the CC revamp but even that's held back by the game's antiquated engine, and the fact that you can't queue with a friend even in the non-competitive mode. Still, it's about as enjoyable as PVP has been in this game. Gameplay-wise I've always preferred WoW to it, certainly for its class design (mage and warlock are still two of my fave MMO casters) and the amount of distinctive flavour they put into each race, but it had a pretty bad track record with its two expansions prior, which pushed me away from it coupled with other legacy issues, which it is now finally learning from. I kind of see XIV going on this same trajectory, although we'll see if it's a wake up call or if they're just content slowly cruising along with managed decline, which may mean XIV becomes less of a cushion for them to rely on when their other projects bomb or, less dramatically, under-perform expectations.