What does Heavensward actually bring to the table as an expansion?

[FoxyAreku]

Why does everyone seem to forget the entire 51 to 60 leveling process?
I mean, that was the core of the expansion, and the leveling phase is always the core of any expansion until the first major patch introduces a raid. It's like everyone forgot about the million quests and epic story they did for a week.

[Colorful]

Why does everyone seem to forget the entire 51 to 60 leveling process?
I mean, that was the core of the expansion, and the leveling phase is always the core of any expansion until the first major patch introduces a raid. It's like everyone forgot about the million quests and epic story they did for a week.

The story was amazing, I'll give you that. But the side quests? I found to be nothing more than a grind, I tried reading some instead of just skipping past them, but they never managed to get me hooked in. Having me travel back and forth without the ability to fly yet, again and again for what seems like no reason wasn't fun to me. Side quests can be done right, but does FFXIV do them right? No. If we're talking about the story specifically, I picked up the Witcher 3 for about $80 AUD, that's $2 more than the price of Heavensward + a month of subscription. The Witcher 3 gave me interesting combat, an incredibly interesting and well done story, with very little to no filler, side quests that kept me entertained and weren't just boring "find my art piece that I lost" type of quests, even one where I had to find a pan (or was it a pot?) in a house was interesting! That's how well done the "leveling experience" is in some single player games.

If an expansion's only good part is story, and that on its own is subpar that's a bad sign. An MMO has to keep you paying, it has to keep people subscribed and put out interesting and varied high-quality content, a lot of it too. FFXIV is currently not doing that, telling people to unsubscribe until the next expansion isn't a good idea unless you either want the game to die, or never release patches but expansions very few months instead.

[Khalithar]

Sorry you feel that way OP, I think it might be time for you to take a little break and come back when they add some new content.

[Dagda]

Something tells me you all just like to complain.

[Mikhaill]

Something tells me you all just like to complain.

I dunno man, I think a lot of us are sick and tired of having a 2.0 clone and are expecting change.
We don't wanna see the same cycle done from the previous the base game.
I feel like people dropped like flies faster than they did in 2.0...

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy AST and the story here in 3.0, but it took so long for them to fix it my sister asks "Hey AST is getting huge buff, so you're coming back?"
Come back to see AST is fairing well, still needs a tiny bit of love to fix Noct stance, but no, I'm not coming back...Why? Because I'm bored to tears with these dungeons
and FATE grind for hours on end. It sucks, because I don't really like ANY of the dungeons except The Gubal Library. I wish it was 60, because I'll never get bored of it.
Alexander is so bad in terms of fun. Coil was much much better than this, I am very disappointed in this raid, and it doesn't even feel like a damn raid.
Alexander should of been a 24man, I want more bigger party raids, and I'd like 4man dungeons to actually be hard and stop the rehash of HM's too...
I'm tired of everything being the same flavour with a different coating of paint.

I will only defend SE to the point where...hey the expac is new but if they keep going at this rate, I myself will probably play this game a lot less than I did in 2.0, and if they
CONTINUE IN 4.0, and pray to The Twelve they don't, I'm quitting for a few years.

[raela]

The story was amazing, I'll give you that. But the side quests? I found to be nothing more than a grind, I tried reading some instead of just skipping past them, but they never managed to get me hooked in. Having me travel back and forth without the ability to fly yet, again and again for what seems like no reason wasn't fun to me.

I've waited to do side quests until after I got flying... And I actually did find they had a cohesive story. Several storylines were actually kinda depressing. But I still enjoyed them.

[Aeliott]

There is a lack of medium-core content....extreme primals fill that role well, but we only got 2 - one of which is merely a gatekeeper you'll rarely do again - and will likely not get more than one for subsequent patches. Alexander normal mode doesn't really cut it either, because it's an essential gear stepping stone it's more or less something you barely think about doing - not really taxing. Before, Coil was definitely hardcore content but it didn't really feel inaccessible for medium-core players to chip away at either - I successfully led a static through it despite limited availability, but Alex savage upped that ante significantly, especially with A3 and A4. 24-man content is generally easy...the middle-ground is a hard place to be in. Apart from 2 extremes, everything else is faceroll and savage is even more exclusive than coil was. I'm not the kind of player who gets bored then comes back on new patches - I do enjoy the odd bit of PVP, Triple Triad and leveling other battle classes - but at the moment I still feel in this limbo where it feels like only the extreme wings of the casual/hardcore content spectrum are catered for.

To be fair Alex normal was _almost_ there, but at the same time if it was any more difficult people would rant about how they couldn't get their loot but they kept wiping.

In terms of actual gameplay content Heavensward added nothing really. There is nothing new to do - dungeons, extremes, a raid, all the old saucer stuff. That said, the team for this game DO throw out patches faster than other MMOs. I have faith that a lot of good things are coming - 2.55 compared to 2.0 are significantly different after all. I just hope they're not another brain-dead part of a daily/weekly grind you do out of habit.

[Wildsprite]

The issue we have here is that this game is catering toward the casual player and incase you haven't noticed quite alot of the casuals don't want things like EX Primals(I did these entirely with my FC or wouldn't have them done otherwise) and Alex Savage or Coil Savage( don't want anything to do with these raids). Heck some of them don't even want Alex(myself I'm only going to do it to complete the quest or quests) normal or Coil with Echo.

My point being: As long as the majority is players that don't care about medium and hardcore content don't expect more than a slow trickle of it.

[Gilraen]

There's a problem with changing a game. Essentially, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." 'But it is broken!' I don't see how it's broken given it IS a fix of what WAS broken (I speak of 1.0). Even people in this own thread talk of how solid 2.0 is over what it was. Fixing what isn't broken kills games, a prime... no, the poster child of this very argument is Star Wars Galaxies. Sony took a fun sand-box game where you can literally be anything you want, dragged it out back and beat it with a 2x4. Repeatedly. And didn't stop until the death knell that was New Game Experience. That is something I would never wish even on games I hate. Besides, expansions don't redesign the games they're for, they expand on them. Something Heavensward is doing nicely. Yes, 'doing', because it's far from done.

[aurace1095]

There's a problem with changing a game. Essentially, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." 'But it is broken!' I don't see how it's broken given it IS a fix of what WAS broken (I speak of 1.0). Even people in this own thread talk of how solid 2.0 is over what it was. Fixing what isn't broken kills games, a prime... no, the poster child of this very argument is Star Wars Galaxies. Sony took a fun sand-box game where you can literally be anything you want, dragged it out back and beat it with a 2x4. Repeatedly. And didn't stop until the death knell that was New Game Experience. That is something I would never wish even on games I hate. Besides, expansions don't redesign the games they're for, they expand on them. Something Heavensward is doing nicely. Yes, 'doing', because it's far from done.

Please look at the post above yours:

And yes the content is very much copy pasted (in format) from ARR, lets compare this to systems from the game that shall not be named:

Dynamis
Limbus
Salvage

Over three expansions each one of those were added as a form of endgame content (1 per expac), and while they all followed the same theme of kill mobs, then kill bosses, and get loot they all took very different approaches to how players went about doing so, this doesn't even include the various other endgame events each expansion added like Sky, Sea, and Einherjar or even ENMs, BCNMs, ZNMs, or Nyzul Isle.

It's not that people want a completely new game. The New Game Enhancement from SWG is completely different - that's more akin to what 2.0 did from 1.0. We just want new content that actually has variety, something different to do at endgame.