Dark Ages of the game - My opinion on the state of the game

[Rizlee]

Hi guys, since FF14 is going through its lowest point (i call the Dark Ages) in terms of new content, stale jobs, story etc. there has been many who are sharing their thoughts on the game and I wanted to provide my honest opinion about the state of the game pre patch 7.3.

Story -
Regarding story, the arcadion series was really good, alliance raid story has yet to be explored in details however the introduction was pretty good although I am not a fan of fighting hologram enemies.

The MSQ story was initially fun and exciting pre-Heritage Found arc, ever since the train scene and Smile OST it went to bad real fast and felt all over the place and rushed. I dont like it when they use random robots fighting people in the source, and Koana throwing his life for a cow, felt watever. The story could have been more fleshed out and done properly, the reason why I think a lot of ppl found it boring and bad. Wuk Lamat isn't that bad of a character personality when compared with Lyse. Post 7.2 the msq is somewhat good, and I think going 7.3 onwards it might pick up again with the Azem chalice mysteries.

My personal take on story is, its decent and good enough for the plot to continue although very low effort, I know the community as a whole is on outrage calling it a bad story but it has some highs when u look deeper into it, I hope the devs stick with the same writers it might turn out good eventually. I also dont think Sphene belongs in the WoL's team, she makes a great NPC and should stay like that, as an occasional guest appearance. WoL badly needs a rival of equal strength like Zenos, and more powerful mysterious villains. Heck maybe even turn Wuk Lamat into a villain at this point, the MSQ still has great potential. (I dont get it why ppl hate on Wuk Lamat so much, she really isn't that bad of a personality, there has been worse personalities in the game and our WoL has been taking the spotlight since ARR its good they are trying new things with the story)

[Hallarem]

While I think the WoL couldn't solo armies of aether users, I think we need a villain that is far more than a "big strong anime bad guy". We need an organization, we need politics back. Strife between countries and areas and the WoL stuck in between them helping people. You can't muscle your way through politics, because the factions both tend to have a leg to stand on.

But I feel like if they let Dawntrails writers return, we will have similar situations like the cooking task. They will pair up the obvious good guys with the obvious bad guys, so it's a stale "good vs evil" situation. Without one side hearing the other, until it's time for a hamfisted flashback instead of sorting it in dialogue. Remember the Varis meeting on the battlefront with the Eorzean leaders? Yeah stuff like that. Dawntrail reduced world politics that were ALREADY BUILT INTO GAME into 5 minute skypecalls to call a dragon army from Thavnair for a impromptu alliance. Vrtra is a dumb leader for accepting before checking things out for himself.

[Rizlee]

Combat -
I like the 2 min meta as a DRK main. Initially in 7.0 DRK felt really bad since it was a very weak job. After the buffs and improvement to Dark Mind and Shadowstride being more reactive it started feeling better to play post 7.1.

The 2 min meta is braindead and very easy to execute, so I like doing that at the moment since it takes minimum effort to get the content done. Specially when you are playing DPS or Tank jobs, 2 min meta allows you to enjoy the content in a relaxed and chilled manner. When DRK became stronger I had a lot of fun playing the game casually spamming mentor and expert roulettes, while also having a lot of fun doing ultimates and savage raids. At this point I can say I got very used to doing the 2 min meta rotation on not only DRK, but SAM, RPR, BLM, NIN, and many other jobs. I am aware that there are still ppl who will disagree with me on the 2 min meta, they will say that its boring, makes jobs samey, generic etc. but if you think about it, we all just wanna get the content done and there are many ppl who work jobs or have a family IRL, and they want to just get home and log in without having the stress to actually think about what they are playing and how they will have to execute their specific rotation.

However with all that said, I would like to mention that there are still many improvements they can do to the jobs, like why is DRK's Carve and Spit have no Visual Effects other than a lame slash animation, they need to overhaul the visual effects of the job abilities and make them flashier, so that they are more fun to play and feels good to play. The removal of Plunge animation was bad, as it took away the lore/thematic identity of DRK. Same can be said for many other jobs, like Samurai's Kaiten. The devs really need to think about how they can make the game more fun and interesting in terms of feel, such as the graphics update on 3D model was a really good thing for the game they need to do the same for combat skills.

[ChrysOCE]

Hi guys, since FF14 is going through its lowest point (i call the Dark Ages) in terms of new content, stale jobs, story etc. there has been many who are sharing their thoughts on the game and I wanted to provide my honest opinion about the state of the game pre patch 7.3.

Story -
Regarding story, the arcadion series was really good, alliance raid story has yet to be explored in details however the introduction was pretty good although I am not a fan of fighting hologram enemies.

The MSQ story was initially fun and exciting pre-Heritage Found arc, ever since the train scene and Smile OST it went to bad real fast and felt all over the place and rushed. I dont like it when they use random robots fighting people in the source, and Koana throwing his life for a cow, felt watever. The story could have been more fleshed out and done properly, the reason why I think a lot of ppl found it boring and bad. Wuk Lamat isn't that bad of a character personality when compared with Lyse. Post 7.2 the msq is somewhat good, and I think going 7.3 onwards it might pick up again with the Azem chalice mysteries.

My personal take on story is, its decent and good enough for the plot to continue although very low effort, I know the community as a whole is on outrage calling it a bad story but it has some highs when u look deeper into it, I hope the devs stick with the same writers it might turn out good eventually. I also dont think Sphene belongs in the WoL's team, she makes a great NPC and should stay like that, as an occasional guest appearance. WoL badly needs a rival of equal strength like Zenos, and more powerful mysterious villains. Heck maybe even turn Wuk Lamat into a villain at this point, the MSQ still has great potential. (I dont get it why ppl hate on Wuk Lamat so much, she really isn't that bad of a personality, there has been worse personalities in the game and our WoL has been taking the spotlight since ARR its good they are trying new things with the story)

Genuinely curious. What highs do you feel are in the MSQ? What was fun and exciting, pre-Heritage Found?

As for Wuk, what I don't get is how people compare her to Lyse. I don't recall, when going through the Stb MSQ "Talk to Lyse", "Talk to Lyse again", "Talk to Lyse yet gain", "Talk to Lyse yet again", multiple quests in a row...

[Rizlee]

Content addition -
For the addition of content, I personally think that having 13 to 15 dungeons should be a goal for the devs, having more fun dungeons like we had in DT is the way to go, and maybe 8 trial bosses. The 12 normal/savage raids is fine, and they way they are doing the door bosses in Arcadion is also very good. I feel that the chaotic alliance raid should be added way earlier in 7.0, and there should be 1 chaotic raid every even patch (7.0, 7.2, 7.4 total 3). The field operation zone should also be added at least before the ultimate (pre 7.1) for ppl to grind and do content in. Cosmic Exploration is watever, I personally max out all crafter and gatherers in initial patch X.0, so the zone is just a massive grind for rewards nothing else, so they should spend less resource in that, and rather invest more resource in making a NORMAL MODE for things like Forked Tower along with its savage mode. They should make field operation a type of content for casuals/midcore not for hardcore, and more long lasting (it shouldn't require discords for clearing content). There should be at least 2 ultimates every expansion (X.1 and X.3 patches), and the limited job content + last field operation and relic grind should appear in X.5. They should add the relic grind from as early as X.1 patch. They should ditch the treasure maps idea and replace it with something you unlock while doing fates in the open world zones (like a portal opens randomly when you beat a fate boss). They need to make criterion dungeons (4-player content) by reusing the assets from existing dungeons in the game and just making the bosses harder or giving more difficulty options, 1 criterion each odd patch (X.1, X.3, X.5) is ok.

[Rizlee]

While I think the WoL couldn't solo armies of aether users, I think we need a villain that is far more than a "big strong anime bad guy". We need an organization, we need politics back. Strife between countries and areas and the WoL stuck in between them helping people. You can't muscle your way through politics, because the factions both tend to have a leg to stand on.

But I feel like if they let Dawntrails writers return, we will have similar situations like the cooking task. They will pair up the obvious good guys with the obvious bad guys, so it's a stale "good vs evil" situation. Without one side hearing the other, until it's time for a hamfisted flashback instead of sorting it in dialogue. Remember the Varis meeting on the battlefront with the Eorzean leaders? Yeah stuff like that. Dawntrail reduced world politics that were ALREADY BUILT INTO GAME into 5 minute skypecalls to call a dragon army from Thavnair for a impromptu alliance. Vrtra is a dumb leader for accepting before checking things out for himself.

if you think about it then it does make sense when they have access to aetheryte teleportation, dragons being able to fly (midgardsormr literally flying through space to reach eorzea from a different planet), and vrtra having so much trust on the WoL and the scions from endwalker journeys, the only way they can have the ARR situations is if they strip all these off from the story, such as by making WoL go to another dimension like Shbringers, but thats not the case so u cant really complain about it

[Lufir]

I still can't figure out why people think Lyse was a bad character while in the same sentence say Wuk Lamat isn't.

[Jeeqbit]

Genuinely curious. What highs do you feel are in the MSQ? What was fun and exciting, pre-Heritage Found?

Finding the city of gold, it was really cool how they did it with it in the background creeping towards you in Skydeep Cenote.

Learning all about the giants and being on top of the mountain like that.

Fighting Valigarmanda.

Learning about the battle and Wuk's father in Yak T'el.

Pretty much anything and everything that involved Gulool Ja Ja.

If nothing else, Bakool Ja Ja was a fun and comical villain... until he wasn't.

Finally meeting the legendary Ketenramm, long assumed dead and a historical figure.

Although a sudden theme change, I can dig a zone stereotyping westerns.

As for Wuk, what I don't get is how people compare her to Lyse.

Mainly in that Stormblood was Lyse's story with her as narrator and the idea seemed like she would eventually lead Ala Mhigo, a similar overall premise, but there was another more qualified person for that job and SE couldn't ignore it - Raubahn. And the fact the story was split between two unrelated sections of the map like Dawntrail.

[Rizlee]

Genuinely curious. What highs do you feel are in the MSQ? What was fun and exciting, pre-Heritage Found?

As for Wuk, what I don't get is how people compare her to Lyse. I don't recall, when going through the Stb MSQ "Talk to Lyse", "Talk to Lyse again", "Talk to Lyse yet gain", "Talk to Lyse yet again", multiple quests in a row...

Dont forget in Stmblood we went to save the ppl in Doma and fight in Gyr Abania on our own accord, however in DT it was Wuk Lamat who personally came to recruit a champion who will assist her in claiming the throne, so in DT it makes sense that the story revolves around Wuk Lamat and WoL interacts a lot with her since it was WoL's choice to journey alongside her. The initial adventure itself in Tulliyolal was very fun and exciting, it was like exploring a brand new place meeting ppl and doing the story there (one of the high points). The moment when Gulool Ja Ja personally requested WoL for a fight was badass, and there are several moments like Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja who made the journey fun.

[TaleraRistain]

if you think about it then it does make sense when they have access to aetheryte teleportation, dragons being able to fly (midgardsormr literally flying through space to reach eorzea from a different planet), and vrtra having so much trust on the WoL and the scions from endwalker journeys, the only way they can have the ARR situations is if they strip all these off from the story, such as by making WoL go to another dimension like Shbringers, but thats not the case so u cant really complain about it

Vrtra does trust the WoL and the Scions but he's also been displayed as a responsible leader and he would be remiss if he didn't go investigate personally and confirm the full details of the agreement.