Quote Originally Posted by LalafellDown View Post
That’s why I still play Guild Wars 2. Their “fate” system is fun because the combat and open world is fun. Exploring the world is a treat. NPCs are voiced even though by the same voice actors it’s still perfect. Each map has limitless exploration and achievements to find. All events or fates paint a story on the map. The story in Guild Wars 2 doesn’t waste your time. I can’t count how many times I’ve replayed the main story and expansions.

FF14 wastes your time by with its bare bones world. Its strengths are in boss fight and dungeons. They got fates right in Bozjan Southern Front why don’t they take time to implement that into the base game? I’d rather have 2 maps in an expansion if they were filled with the way GW2 filled it’s maps.
I agree. What I think hurts FFXIV the most is its insistence on story completion for all the content they introduce with each expansion. Even if you story skip to the latest, you still have to go from zone to zone to unlock all the extra stuff like Mounts, Hard/Extreme dungeons, etc. There is very little content that you can do with friends who are not as far as you. Not to mention, they'll add stuff like Bozja/FATES/Deep Dungeons/Variant Dungeons/Island Sanctuary/Eureka/etc and give them attention when they release and then rarely revisit them to refresh drops/exp rates/add more content.

There is a lot of pressure on the story to make up for the many ways this game lacks in providing engaging gameplay outside of the MSQ.
At least when I jump into GW2/WoW these days after not playing them for a couple of years, I can still do a bunch of group content with my friends that's fun, challenging, and rewarding. I'm not immediately at a huge disadvantage for not being all caught up on the narrative.