Quote Originally Posted by Absurdity View Post
But now that you mentioned it, the escalation of stakes became a complete mess in XIV. Up until the end of Stormblood the threat was comparatively small scale, maybe a nation in danger, at most a continent.
Then comes Shadowbringers and we suddenly need to save an entire world, even if that world is basically reduced to a few regions.
And in Endwalker we jump from that to saving the entire universe and all of existence.
It's a really common problem in storytelling. The next chapter has to be bigger and better than the last and eventually everything scales to the absurd. There is a similar problem with character traits that become more and more exaggerated over time until they dominate a character's personality and leave them as nothing more than a caricature of an actual person.

Quote Originally Posted by Kaurhz View Post
Generally speaking the game just lacks that immersive feel, and the substance behind the content absolutely sucks because player inconvenience cannot happen in any capacity.
Everyone will have their own opinion but I think part of this comes from the story being so firmly on rails to the point where you can't even visit fluff areas like housing until you get to the point where the story says you can. The same repeated formula where you just so happen to unlock the same number of physical locations in sequential order. While ARR was not my favorite expansion, the ability to explore the entire world from the beginning gave it a sense of exploration and immersion that no later expansion could hope to match.