Expansion is only temporarily enjoyable. Fails to fix all main flaws.

[lagata]

Ok. So, my experience with mmos goes all the way back to the original EQ days. EQ bored me to death. It's battle system was so slow. I played WoW as a mage during the burning crusade era. I agree that it was fun trying to form my own type of mage. I decided to be a frost/fire mage. I had a blast! ...until I had to raid. I was told that my super fun build that got me to lvl cap just wasn't cutting it and I had to build it their way. On top of that, I was forced to do raid A to get gear for raid B to get gear for PvP to get gear for Raid C. Needless to say...I quit that game very quickly and never looked back.

[lagata]

Also:

This game allows me to play at my own pace, to get through content with a FUN difficulty and not an annoying one. The mechanics they come up with are amazing and I don't mind farming the fights to learn them. I agree that gear becomes obsolete when new content comes out and that gets really annoying but the fights being FUN is what is important. As others have said; if it isn't fun or challenging to you, then maybe this isn't your game. For me, I like the idea of breaking the Holy trinity of heal/tank/dps and going for more of a ff tactics route where you go in with a party of 8 you want and hope for the best but in order to do that, they need more jobs with variety.

Maybe you should play ESO. I don't know about content but I know you can build your character any way you want

[Airget]

That is the only challenge tho, never knowing who you might be paired up w/ in the DF. If you run w/ friends/guildies you are going to steam roll it every time.

That's because communication and teamwork are important. Do you expect something to stay difficult when people can relay messages and work together and understand what' going on? There is a fine line between difficult and just unfair and with the dungeons that were released I honestly believe they all did a good job staying fair. They threw in familiar tactics, added in some new ones and made it where even if you mess up it's not the end. It's meant to be fun without being punishing, like coil and the upcoming savage mode of Alexander.

Honestly is it fun or stressful to have to be 100% perfectionist all the time? Personally for me it isn't fun or relaxing to have to be on A game all the time, to not mess up it's stressful and at the end of the day that stress is counter-intuitive of what an MMO is suppose to offer and that's a fun relaxing experience.

[lonix]

I can't take the OP at all serious, basically he’s moaning about XIV being XIV.
You can't type up an essay for cons and just bullet point the pros - sorry kid but life doesn't work like that. In the real world that entire post would look like a whine above all else instead of looking like constructive feedback.
SE deserve credit for doing something well, if it doesn't feel new I suggest you quit because unless they drastically change XIV - you're not going to be happy.
Speaking of quit, I suggest you uninstall the game and quit because you are moaning about the very fundamentals about the game. Every MMO has that grind/repeat feeling, that's MMOs. I've played over a dozen and yet to find a single one that always feels different when going through expansions- even WoW, EQ, STO, KOTR, XI.
You are complaining about something that frankly the majority feel is a great expansion if not one of the best SE has made.
So please just quit.

And yes my 1st post is having to defend SE for a damn good job well done because I am sick of people crying like a child.

[Aeyis]

I've played over a dozen and yet to find a single one that always feels different when going through expansions- even WoW, EQ, STO, KOTR, XI.

Perhaps I should first use a disclaimer that I really dislike wow, but anyway:
Wow felt very different with each of its expansions. They reworked quite a few mechanics/class workings in each of their expansions.
That's kind of the whole point of an expansion: to take the old and expand upon it. Simply prolonging the old content only really works if the old content was super awesome.

[Zarzak]

Lengthy read ahead.

If you make a list and compare pros/cons of FFXIV: Heavensward, the bad outweigh the good by far. It's mostly because the flaws are still there which plagued the original game. I know I may get criticized for this because it's the official forums, but I'll do this detailed review anyway. Some things need to get pointed out, the reasons why most players unsubbed before and will do it again.

First, the pros:

+ Level cap 60, this is what keeping most busy at this point with leveling main/alts.
+ Main storyline done much better than original.
+ Massive zones and flying.

Unfortunately, that's all I can say for pros because it seems that's where most of their efforts went. Once you hit 60, it's like now what? Back to what it was like before, which is...

Cons:

- Linear Gear Progression. Back to mindless tome grinding and hunts. Repeat easy dungeons over and over again. How about actual challenge in dungeons and have a sense of progression from the start? There are many MMO's that get this right by making Hard Mode dungeons actually "Hard" and make their gear necessary to obtain in order to start progression in raids. Or have raid attunement, world bosses, rep grinds, open world drops, etc to provide different options for gearing. FFXIV has taken the most boring path possible and it only hurts it further when the gear resets every six months.

- Second flaw, still no challenge anywhere to be found. Raids for example, they're planning "one real raid" every 6 months like before and only 4 bosses. Are you kidding me? We have so many classes/jobs now, but still only 4 bosses to farm to hope for your gear piece. I know this from personal experience as a hardcore raider before, it kept many people unsubbed for months. Raiders get tired of farming same old content for six months straight and only four bosses.

Instead of releasing one billion easy dungeons, how about transfer some of that effort for creating more raids instead? And I don't mean 24 man raids, they're a joke. Typically, MMO's release with couple of raids for progression. One higher tier than the other. Here, we don't have our first raid yet. The last one came out in 2.4, which was October of last year. It's been almost a year. That's too damn long for an active and profitable MMO like this.

- Third major flaw, still no such thing as character builds. The new 51-60 skills only add to your existing rotations, but they haven't done anything to have a variety of character builds. It's an MMO after all. Like the gear progression, the depth in classes are so bland and linear. The rotations are still 1 > 2 > 3. Think about it. If they continue like this till level cap 100, you would need all hotbars you can get to run all available skills. Because a character build makes only certain skills viable, but here everyone is running on same gear and rotation. Speaking of gear, the gear stats are still as bland as they can get. Where are the special powers or pieces that could help with different skills? There are no thoughts invested.

- Fourth flaw, glamour and inventory systems are still a mess. Instead of giving us some more storage to gather all new crafting materials, glamour etc like MMO expansions normally do, here we have more retainers to "purchase". Are they so desperate for money that they have to nickle and dime on every opportunity? Glamours are a huge mess. It will clutter up your retainers like crafting mats do. Why couldn't they do come up with a transmog system like Blizzard does? Then there are other issues like crafting still can't take materials directly from your bank/retainer. Can't manage multiple retainer storage at once to search and manage items. Everything is so archaic here.

- Fifth flaw, too much recycling/re-skins. New jobs were a huge disappointment.

It started with 2.4 when the raid bosses were re-skinned mobs, crappy Bahamut fight and the efforts seemed lazier compared to 2.2. Now in expansion, majority of enemies are recycled from original including even raid bosses. Same old recycled mechanics, nothing refreshing as seen on new Extreme primals. Again, it makes me question where their efforts were spent.

Then to make it worse, the new jobs were pretty much copy/pasta of another job with their silly gimmick thrown in.
Take AST for example, re-skinned WHM skills with the card gimmick. I really expected better thoughts put into new jobs.

I can go on forever with more issues, but these were the top five I wanted to point out. I know FF games are all about storyline, but this is an MMO with monthly subscription so it wouldn't hurt to fix the flaws I mentioned. Maybe next expansion, I hope they focus on fixing/improving rather than "more of the same".

You can carry my children OP.

I hate rep grinds but I'd welcome them if they meant getting some more stuff too. Esp an expansion of raid content.. and having it NOT be replaced by group gear the next patch.

[Waliel]

This shows you have no clue what you are talking about.

I was a Riftstalker, so no...not every rogue became a Sab. A lot of players were trying it out when it got buffed more for AoE, to get a feel for it, but that's different. There were plenty of Assassins, Nightblades, and Blademasters running around.

Sure you could spec either Assassination or Combat for Rogues, but inside those specs there was only one choice. If you wanted to be fire mage, there was exactly one build for PvE fire and one for PvP. Maybe one talent variations at best. 41/25/5, or whatever it was, with X talents was the only viable Arms Warrior PvE build. Mists did change it around, but what little I played it at launch, there was the best choice for DPS talents and for the utility ones you took what you wanted. Some choice, at least, but choice that didn't really matter outside of PvP.

I don't know how it was later in Rift but the short time I played it, I could swear every damn Rogue was Sab.

[MageBlack]

Larger Apples only temporarily enjoyable. Larger apple fails to fix hunger problem.

[PandaPause]

That's because communication and teamwork are important. Do you expect something to stay difficult when people can relay messages and work together and understand what' going on?

Short answer of mine would be yes. I would love if we had some more AI and less scripted encounters but that's a different discussion and probably game all together. I get keeping dungeons needed for story or progression "Fair" But there is nothing "Expert" about Expert Roulette aside from it having the highest tier ilvl to enter.

Honestly is it fun or stressful to have to be 100% perfectionist all the time?

Not sure anything in this game requires to be 100% but some degree of danger can be exciting or fun in an encounter.

Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

[Ferocious]

Sure you could spec either Assassination or Combat for Rogues, but inside those specs there was only one choice. If you wanted to be fire mage, there was exactly one build for PvE fire and one for PvP. Maybe one talent variations at best. 41/25/5, or whatever it was, with X talents was the only viable Arms Warrior PvE build. Mists did change it around, but what little I played it at launch, there was the best choice for DPS talents and for the utility ones you took what you wanted. Some choice, at least, but choice that didn't really matter outside of PvP.

I don't know how it was later in Rift but the short time I played it, I could swear every damn Rogue was Sab.

Then I'm assuming you only played vanilla Rift and not post expansion? Rogue was my main after expansion and I was a hardcore raider in one of the top 5 guilds. As a matter of fact, I was the best Rogue ranged dps on server. There were quite a few popular Rogue builds. Riftstalker (Tank), but usually wasn't used in hardcore progression groups. Marksman and NB/Sin were two most popular DPS builds. Bard (support) was another must have in raid groups. Tactman was absolutely amazing and the go to AoE build for any fights that required it.

In the end, each class had many build variants. I raided with them all. Even if someone came up with the best possible build for one thing, there were always "options" to tweak and push further. For example, there was one famous build for Ranged specs but personally I was running a tweaked version of it that I never shared with anyone and that's how I remained on top. Then I knew people in other hardcore guilds who were doing the same. That's why I loved the competitive nature in Rift and the character builds were a huge part of it.