HoH feedback

[Alleo]

Story opinions are subjectives contents aren't. We learned nothing about potd and that is a fact, we barely learned who was Nybeth and Edda frankly was that part really useful for her character arc? No it wasn't, nor 20 floor would've done anything about the story, what you got about the story of the place with 50 floors in potd? You either had Edda silently stalking you or Nybeth rambling about death and eternal life, but nothing of concrete was ever said about the place, was it gelmorrean? was it more ancient? I dunno, you do?
What really is making you feel like that the story was better is the mystery about where the story was going. PotD had a 3 months build up from start to finish and frankly it didn't pay off, Tell me do you know why the lower floors are like that? Nobody knows, Meanwhile we know what HoH and who are the ppl that control the aetherytes in the far east, not to mention now we have a depth to the confederates which now are not just a bunch of pirates.
This are not opinions are facts

Also of all the bosses of the higher floors you take in consideration floor 80? Really?

Story is subjective because everyone has a different taste. We already had a lot to do with Edda, thus the story around her and the palace moved me. Also the last surviving member of the group kinda finally got some closure. We also were able to save them. Did we get much lore about this? Not really. But we still know that somehow in this place lost souls wander around and meeting some of those NPCs and reading their bubbles really hits you. Nybeth himself was sadly not much explained but he seemed to have been someone that was trying to rezz someone he loved and also was the one that did it to Edda. Thus the emotional impact was bigger.

What did we learn about HoH: Its a really old training ground from an old Allagan group that somehow has forseen that the planet needs help somewhere in the future. Thus they use that building (why was it built that way? When was it built that way?) as a training ground that is at the end nothing but something that will split the great strong fighters from the weaker ones..they kill those that dont manage to kill the boss which completely ignores that someone can get better in the future (we would have been killed too if we went there first on our travels) and even if they might not help with a catastrophe, they could still have been useful for the rest of the community. Then we have that tree that is a projector, that tells us a sob story about two character we never met. And thats it. We have no real emotional ties to this story, one known NPC that still does not really play a big role and we only get a small bit of lore about this. (That feels utterly strange..)

Why should I not pick this one? The dog before that only is a challenge if you dont know the mechanic, which is also not a wipe but just need rezzes. As soon as you get that one mechanic you are good to go and nothing should hurt that much. And anything bellow that is barely worth to mention. Boss 80 is the second last boss and thus should have been a challenge and not feel weaker than even the 30 one. The only one that seemingly does pose a problem is the 90 boss. So one out of 9, with 6 of those bosses being in the hardcore part of HoH. I do see this as a big problem because this decreases the challenge imo. I mean PotD had Edda with her punishment if party members get hit by her aoes, which could be hard to get out of depending on where you stood. So the whole group would be punished for the mistakes of the rest. Nybeth was also not quite easy, especially if you did not have the right pomanders. Then you had Behemoth with his enrage. (And all of those are just from the casual part of PotD)

[Remedi]

While opinions on stories are subjective, facts are not, the fact that PotD story had literally nothing on itself and had to rely to an old character and a cameo ON TOP of already beign a cameo in it's inception and then not giving ANY explanation of what the place was all about is honestly something I cannot pass over even though the story was emotional, it simply lacked an ending and had no explanation about itself, which is something HoH had. a start a middle and an end and frankly to me that's the basic and it's not an opinion it's a fact. Try to sell a story without a payoff to someone and tell me how it goes, in my experience it doesn't go well.
And still you tell me what those 20 extra floors in Potd told you about Edda or Nybeth, frankly the former was silent and the latter was just rambling about his experiments, that unless you had prior knowledge of tactics ogre meant nothing, so no it wasn't any better and 20 floors wouldn't have made any difference.Actually you know what in the cutscenes that we had in between floors we had more involvement than any cutscenes of potd so ye. Believe what you will but the facts are different

and honestly.....The cerbero AT LEAST has a mechanic, fenrir look-alike doesn't

[Alleo]

Story and Lore about a place is kinda something different. And PotD really had a story. You might find it boring but it still had one. Also with a beginning (Lala comes to us for help about his old group member) a middle (finding out what happened to Edda and solving her case) and an ending (giving her closure so she can finally rest and found out about who made her into that and stopped that person too). So the story there is finished. What did we have in HoH: More lore about the place itself (but still open question on when it was built and why it was built that way) but about the story itself? It may also have a beginning, middle and ending but with less emotional ties and the part of why it was done (training someone for a world ending crisis) was not really solved because we dont have that, so that story point is still open but might never be solved either. So the story itself in HoH felt tacked on and not really emotional at all. I did not know any of these NPCs while the closure for Edda was great. So yes both had a story in a way but for me (which is the subjective part) HoH felt less great and none of the cutscene created any kind of impact.

So that was about the story. Now about the lore.

HoH: Was built somewhere in the past as a training ground because a world ending disaster might strike in the future. The allagan clan that built it, is keeping watch on it and get good fighters in there to see if they are worthy. You know that the 30 boss is a construct that needed that one man and somehow can see if someone is worthy. Thats it.

PotD: Underground city that people lived in when the great flood happened that was done by the elementals after that one great war. It was left afterwards and Nybeth seemingly took over it and used his magic to create how it was when we went through with it.

Ethys has at least two videos about the 1-50 about this. (And in this he still speculates that the robed ones are Ascians which is Nybeth as we know later) And again it might not be huge at lore but its still there and gives us insight on the old world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T-sg0LabOQ

So both have lore, both have story but I found the one in PotD better. Thus the subjective part.

About the bosses:

Isnt it a bit bad that the second last boss is a pushover with no special mechanic? That the only one that seemingly even give true problems is the 90 one? Shouldnt hardcore even mean that its hardcore and not simply just attacking for a few minutes to kill something that does not even have great mechanics?

[Remedi]

Edda's story =/= potd story, the part of edda story in potd can even be done before tam tara creating a paradox, which is why it's tacked on and overall unnecessary, also and this is a personal opinion, I appreciated the grim ending of tam tara more, instead of the happy ending of the post nybeth story

You keep misunderstanding what I mean. You also think I found the story boring because of what I say, which is not, I'm pointing out that potd story never really went about the place and it leaves everything up to your imagination (which is what you are doing by describing potd, which is only in the surface level gelmorran but the ones below aren't, that is confirmed by LL preceding Potd btw, said LL also said that we were gonna have some answers about what was in the final floors but we got nothing) which might be a good thing, but ultimately because of the reliance on either a character whose story was already done as far as we are concerned and a character which has no reason to exist in our world and we got no explanation to why that happened in the first place is bad storytelling.

I want to stress this out Potd story had to be about Potd, not about Edda is really dead story or The magical adventures of Nybeth in an unknown world. When all said and done we have nothing on the place but our suppositions.

Mwanwhile on heaven on high, we get to know the ppl responsible for the aethernetwork in the far east, we get to know how large was the Sarina rebellion, what exactly the tower is for, who are the confederate really and most important of all we have a recognition of the upper floors.

You are right about it beign less emotional, but it center the story on the world and gives it a place, something that I can't say about palace of the dead, although it kinda hints to the palace beign of the same origin.


Bosses: It is but using the weakest bosses as an example it would be like me using PotD 90 floor boss as a comparison to floor 90 of HoH, that said I think that the overall pace of the bosses are better than potd since you have sometimes 2 mechanics appening at the same time, while I can't say the same for potd, cept maybe Edda

[Starflake]

I personally think Heaven on High is an absolute joke and is repeating a worrying trend in this game. Reskinning everything. There isn't really anything new about HoH, it's a reskinned PoTD with some extra goodies that are primals and some minor changes to pomanders. Only 100 floors, bosses are reskins, all of them. Just so poor, so lazy that I felt bad progressing as I was cringing so baldy at how terrifyingly dumb the development of this must have been. No creativity, no grit, almost no difficulty either (savage level what?). The rewards ... A dodo mount which is literally a reskin of the mob near Aleport. It does have a nice animation. Juedi mount is a reskin of Sleipnir, just with different attire. Getting grade V materia from platinum sacks. Are you having a laugh, SE? Still getting those useless sprinklers? HoH, to me has been an absolute joke and pure laziness. There is nothing in there that is creative or engaging, there is no breath of fresh air.

[Remedi]

I personally think Heaven on High is an absolute joke and is repeating a worrying trend in this game. Reskinning everything. There isn't really anything new about HoH, it's a reskinned PoTD with some extra goodies that are primals and some minor changes to pomanders. Only 100 floors, bosses are reskins, all of them. Just so poor, so lazy that I felt bad progressing as I was cringing so baldy at how terrifyingly dumb the development of this must have been. No creativity, no grit, almost no difficulty either (savage level what?). The rewards ... A dodo mount which is literally a reskin of the mob near Aleport. It does have a nice animation. Juedi mount is a reskin of Sleipnir, just with different attire. Getting grade V materia from platinum sacks. Are you having a laugh, SE? Still getting those useless sprinklers? HoH, to me has been an absolute joke and pure laziness. There is nothing in there that is creative or engaging, there is no breath of fresh air.

Pray tell me what wasn't reskinned in Potd then

[Starflake]

Pray tell me what wasn't reskinned in Potd then

Just makes it a reskin of a reskin. Just opened three platinum sacks. Mind VI, intelligence V and a quickarm V. Just ridiculous.

[Alleo]

Bosses: It is but using the weakest bosses as an example it would be like me using PotD 90 floor boss as a comparison to floor 90 of HoH, that said I think that the overall pace of the bosses are better than potd since you have sometimes 2 mechanics appening at the same time, while I can't say the same for potd, cept maybe Edda

Eddas story became part of PotD story because PotD and Nybeth made it possible for her to be that way. I mean HoH itself also barely had a story because most of it was about something that happened outside of it and thus the need for HoH was created. Do we know why it was created that way? Do we know how old it is? Do we know how the monster came in there and why we have our god animals in there too? Do we know why each boss exist? For me HoH and PotD are quite similar to each other. They are both a place were the story stuff happens.

I mean if we take it that way to we truly have much story in FF14? For me the places are more there to create lore (which both do) and to have a story happen in them. They are foundations that are needed to make the story work but not necessarily are the story. I mean for example any city state is not a story itself, but are the place were different stories happen while we still learn more about the place itself as lore.

Because what exactly would have been a PotD story? Any person that created the PotD (like Nybeth) was an outside source and not the place itself. What story (and not lore) can you tell about a place?

Also a lot of the things you are counting for the story of HoH are not about HoH itself. The group exists without it and have other responsibilities too, Sarinas rebellion was also not really in touch with the tower, which was built more with the thought that something bad could happen somewhere in the future. Heck we dont even know when this has happened and when it was built. The confederate are also not completely linked to the HoH and just use it to get a new leader but their own story exist outside of that. So even here you have people that are only linked to this, exactly how Edda and Nybeth were linked to it.

In the end again its all subjective. You can argue and say that a good story needs certain points but in the end enjoyment of it, is still subjective. And I will keep it that way to not further go off topic.

Bosses: The problem is that boss 90 of PotD was still in the casual part. We are talking about bosses that are mostly in the hardcore parts and feel weaker than the 30 boss.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Overall I like HoH. that said the failure to properly segment starting points is extremely frustrating. having to start at floor 21 every time you want to clear the content is a 4-5hr commitment, which is ridiculous.

Please consider segmenting the dungeon to 1-30, 31-60, 61-100. Fixed parties have an intrinsic issue regarding scheduling players' time to align which results in limiting access to the content.

While this would be welcome, I can at least tolerate it compared to starting at 51 and spending the next eight hours trying to get to the bottom of PotD.

[Remedi]

Eddas story became part of PotD story because PotD and Nybeth made it possible for her to be that way. I mean HoH itself also barely had a story because most of it was about something that happened outside of it and thus the need for HoH was created. Do we know why it was created that way? Do we know how old it is? Do we know how the monster came in there and why we have our god animals in there too? Do we know why each boss exist? For me HoH and PotD are quite similar to each other. They are both a place were the story stuff happens.

I mean if we take it that way to we truly have much story in FF14? For me the places are more there to create lore (which both do) and to have a story happen in them. They are foundations that are needed to make the story work but not necessarily are the story. I mean for example any city state is not a story itself, but are the place were different stories happen while we still learn more about the place itself as lore.

Because what exactly would have been a PotD story? Any person that created the PotD (like Nybeth) was an outside source and not the place itself. What story (and not lore) can you tell about a place?

Also a lot of the things you are counting for the story of HoH are not about HoH itself. The group exists without it and have other responsibilities too, Sarinas rebellion was also not really in touch with the tower, which was built more with the thought that something bad could happen somewhere in the future. Heck we dont even know when this has happened and when it was built. The confederate are also not completely linked to the HoH and just use it to get a new leader but their own story exist outside of that. So even here you have people that are only linked to this, exactly how Edda and Nybeth were linked to it.

In the end again its all subjective. You can argue and say that a good story needs certain points but in the end enjoyment of it, is still subjective. And I will keep it that way to not further go off topic.

Bosses: The problem is that boss 90 of PotD was still in the casual part. We are talking about bosses that are mostly in the hardcore parts and feel weaker than the 30 boss.

If you believe so, more power to you I suppose. I could answer to the questions about HoH but that's beside the point anyway. Frankly if you think that in a story everything is subjective then by all means

Anyway if my comparison wasn't good enough I can just give you floor 190 boos of potd, just as easy as floor 90 with a simply color swap which is the last boss of the challenge floor and comes after a more challenging one.

His mechanic, while deadly can totally be ignored with stuns