The one consistent critic on Heavensward is "too much like ARR"? srsly?

[Intaki]

What I said was "hard" is not a free pass.

When you're running a business and only have so much money and manpower, it kind of is. When a manager sees that his team can either accomplish one "hard" thing or three "easy" things and one "challenging" thing, the decision-making process becomes fairly simple.

[Saggo]

When you're running a business and only have so much money and manpower, it kind of is. When a manager sees that his team can either accomplish one "hard" thing or three "easy" things and one "challenging" thing, the decision-making process becomes fairly simple.

Not really how it works. This isn't some indie studio. They're given a company directed vision and all work effort boils investment into that vision. If that one hard thing offers more for the company vision than a dozen others, that's what they'll be told to do. The kicker is that not all difficult tasks are resource intensive and not all resource intensive tasks are difficult. The complexity, difficulty, or "hardness" of a task may inform the resource investment of a decision, but ultimately what advances the company goals is what's decided.

They only thing we can ask as a player base is if our interests fit in their vision. Some player telling others that their interests shouldn't be in that vision because it's hard is a disservice to every party involved. So no, I don't see "hard" as a free pass.

[Hyrist]

<snip> I don't care if it's hard to make.

You know as well as I do if you accept unnecessary work inflation, your turn around time suffers, you get tempted to take technical shortcuts that bite you in the butt, and it takes your attention away from other projects. I might not entirely agree with the individual choices of what they're cutting, but the concept of trimming the fat from your work table isn't an incorrect one. This is less about "Hard" and more about "Not worth it." in their eyes. If they're going to work on something hard, it may a well be something more worthwhile than inflated number crunching. That was the full of their opinion, sorry that I didn't depict it correctly.

As far as "More Variety" we have it. It's just not relevant to the Endgame Grind. Look forward to the possibility of Dusk Vigil, Sohm Al, The Aery, The Vault, The Great Gubal Library and The Aetherochemical Research Facility hard modes in the future.

Cause while endgame is low on dungeon numbers. They certainly put variety into the leveling chain.

[SendohJin]

As far as "More Variety" we have it. It's just not relevant to the Endgame Grind. Look forward to the possibility of Dusk Vigil, Sohm Al, The Aery, The Vault, The Great Gubal Library and The Aetherochemical Research Facility hard modes in the future.

that is not more variety, replacing expert dungeons with other expert dungeons is not more variety.

Dungeons, Trials, Hunts, Fates, Treasure Maps, Beastmen Dailies - those are variety (from each other). when they add Vanu and Gnath beastmen quest to replace the Ixal quest that nobody does now, that's not adding variety, that's updating the existing system to remain relevant.

[Nordya]

While I have yet to experience Heavensward itself, reading the posts on here, it does sound like your typical complain of a vertical progression mmo. The trapping is they can't really change the formula since its a dungeon/raid for better gear treadmill. That wouldn't change without a solid revamp of the core systems.

Now could they add more activity to the game, yes they could have. From what I read it's pretty much do the story, grind same dungeons. I imagine later patches will bring the same things 2.X brought. meaning more dungeons with higher ilvl and new raids. Not everyone likes or do that.

[Seryl199]

While I have yet to experience Heavensward itself, reading the posts on here, it does sound like your typical complain of a vertical progression mmo. The trapping is they can't really change the formula since its a dungeon/raid for better gear treadmill. That wouldn't change without a solid revamp of the core systems.

Now could they add more activity to the game, yes they could have. From what I read it's pretty much do the story, grind same dungeons. I imagine later patches will bring the same things 2.X brought. meaning more dungeons with higher ilvl and new raids. Not everyone likes or do that.

3.0 feels pretty safe, while they did add a lot of content, not much of that content is different. Over the course of 2.0, they did add a lot of activities, treasure maps, Gold Saucer, Hunts, beastman dailies, and such, but Heavensward has done little to expand the list. I think Heavensward added some good base content, a nice expansive overworld, and a progression system that we're quite familiar with. We're just getting a bit antsy waiting for something to do in that world since gear progression is the only thing occupying a level 60 character's time, and that gear isn't even truly necessary for someone who's not a full time raider.

[Nordya]

3.0 feels pretty safe, while they did add a lot of content, not much of that content is different. Over the course of 2.0, they did add a lot of activities, treasure maps, Gold Saucer, Hunts, beastman dailies, and such, but Heavensward has done little to expand the list. I think Heavensward added some good base content, a nice expansive overworld, and a progression system that we're quite familiar with. We're just getting a bit antsy waiting for something to do in that world since gear progression is the only thing occupying a level 60 character's time, and that gear isn't even truly necessary for someone who's not a full time raider.

That is what I meant, so I completely agree with you. There seems to be just so much you can do if you don't raid.

[Madruck]

Right now Heavensward is nothing more than 2 flavors of ice cream. We have Fractal which is Chocolate and we have Neverreap which is Vanilla...SE, why cant you be like Baskin Robbins and add at least some more flavors! If I only had 4 dungeons to run at 60 that would be way better than just 2 which give way more variety of things to do. In patch 2.5 we had 17 dungeons that which would could que us for with that not even including Praetorium or Castrum at Level 50.....now at max level again we are stuck doing the same 2 dungeons over and over again...boring. And Alex Normal Mode is no where near the same as a dungeon.....Alex is nothing more than just 2 pulls at most then one boss excluding the 2nd floor which is just one repeated difficult fate with multiple mobs. How did you go from having 17 dungeons in 2.5 and multiple options of things to run to now being stuck doing only these very few things at max level?

P.S. No the sky is not falling and no FF14 is not going away but I run stuff at max level to earn gear or items I need for my job, not just for glamour. Noone is going to run level 50 content at level 60 only to lose all thier new and added abilities so the argument to these things are mute. No I do not want to run older content Unsynced that have no challenge to them and no I do not want to run them as a level 50 again since I did the work to be level 60 with my new skills in which I paid for the expansion to do.

[SethCypher]

Right now Heavensward is nothing more than 2 flavors of ice cream.

Vanilla ARR when it was first introduced was pretty much the same.

Also, I'm not sure why people would be expecting an entirely new and different game when they're playing an expansion.

[Madruck]

Vanilla ARR when it was first introduced was pretty much the same.

Also, I'm not sure why people would be expecting an entirely new and different game when they're playing an expansion.

I am not expecting a whole new game Seth.....I just want more variety of content than we currently have. I am not asking for 16 new dungeons, I am just wrote that to compare to what people had to do at max level compared to now. SE could have easily have made more than just 2 dungeons at max level to do for Expert Roulette. I would even be extremely content with a Hard mode Stone Vigil and Aery....at least that would be more variety than just Fractal or Neverreap over and over again for 3 months.....