Quote Originally Posted by Absurdity View Post
Don't forget the first time you see Rapture...I mean Amaurot.



It's kinda hard to disconnect the actual gameplay from the overall expansion quality when it's like 90% of what you do. The story takes up very little time spent with the game, unless that's literally all you do before unsubscribing.
The job design has a massive impact on most of the activities outside of watching cutscenes and reading dialogue.
Firstly, there's a difference between how much time a person might spend playing the story versus how much time they might spend thinking about the story. I'm a lore nerd, I'm discussing the story constantly and replaying it occasionally.

Secondly, regular gameplay has more to it than just the jobs themselves being played in a void. If I'm running a dungeon or trial then my focus is on the environment and the boss mechanics, and the buttons I have to press while doing those mechanics are a distant second that apply to the game as a whole and not just a single expansion.

Thirdly, following on from that previous thought, the state of battle system is ephemeral and not permanently linked to the gameplay of an expansion. If I replay Heavensward today, the battle system will not be the same as the one I played when I went through the story for the first time in 2017, but the things that are still there – the story, the dungeons, the music – are what makes it Heavensward.