This story is really underwhelming - it's opened to mixed reviews.

[LittleArrow]

Yep. I hear people say "oh someone will always complain" but this isn't normal at all. I've been around since early Heavensward, I attended every launch from Stormblood on. In my recollection, nothing like that has ever happened before. Not on this scale.

It's not just the story either. Between that, the controversy of the graphics update + related bugs STILL not fixed, the general sense of animosity regarding class changes (or lack thereof), rather sloppy implementation of f!Hrothgar (scaling on arms still not fixed), underwhelming dye system update and so on..... I get the feeling that things are not quite right at CBU3. Is it because of FFFXVI? Other projects? Pressure from higher ups? Yoshi-P stopped caring? Who can say... But something is up.

I was thinking something very similar as well. Stormblood, imo, doesn't even come close to the problems in writing I've seen in DT so far. The plotholes are so out of character for this team. This is the team that took characters from the 1.0 trailer and actually gave them all full backstories in Shadowbringers years later, without any request or complaint, on their on, and in ways there were just beautifully and memorably done (role quests / if you know you know), and we can't even contact Cid to try to see if there's something we can do to help the people in the end? We have time to hangout even after increasing the time for the big bad world ending problem but before we don't even consider how similar this situation is to those living in Ultima Thule??? I digress.

Stormblood, people didn't like the MSQ, and hated Lyse, but so far as I can tell, most people consider that peak job design, peak raid design, peak everything design. Despite Stormblood having such a disliked MSQ, people still loved the expansion. I'm not seeing that here. it seems people are very discontent with most of what this expansion has brought. If I hear one comment praise one thing, it'll give a heavy criticism on another - not just in the forums either.

I'm not saying everyone hates this expansion. There are people that love the story and love the direction the game is going in. I don't want to put any words in those people's mouths. I'm just saying, from what I've seen, there doesn't seem to be a universal positive padding to this expansion that is universally loved.