SHB story is my least favorite

[VictorTheed]

Well it's better then arr story, but reason why it's my least favorite is not cause it was written bad because it was written very good, reason is I didn't care about the plot as much as I did hw and sb and yes it's a personal opinion thread but it is what it is.

I personally enjoy the dravainians vs ishgardians aspect to hw, mostly because I am a religious man irl and I love dragons so both together was great and doma/ala mhigo we been hearing about them and interacting with people from there since 1.0 and 2.0, most people hated the split story but I liked it, just wish ala mhigo got a little more attention.

I wished we'd got to explore more of the source before heading to a diff shard, I still wanna see shrlayan lands, the new world and mericydia and most of all I wanna see my fav story arch get an expansion to it, the garlean empire, I liked norvrandt but I wished it would have waited till we explored more of the source 1st.

[EdwinLi]

I doubt we would have gotten a wait until we explore all of the Source first plot anyways.

The story seem to reaching the finale to end the Zodiark vs Hydaelyn Arc and to conclude this we first need to know the origins of this war which did lead to SHB story to be more focus about how this entire war started so we can finally reach the ending.

I expect the Garlean Empire to be the stage where we reach that Finale and after that then we go to places beyond in a Season 2 storyline since with the threat of Garlean EMpire and Zodiark gone, we can finally return to a storyline that starts us as normal Adventurers once again to explore areas of the Source that is now free from Garlean Empire or have never been explored before because the war against the garlean empire and Zodiark prevented the Adventurer Guild to fund a large scale expedition into the Unknown regions of the Source.

[FaerieAura]

Personally? I think you're looking at this a bit too small. The Shadowbringers story informs all of the content we've had up until now in so many ways, just because it offers us an entirely new perspective. Let's take, for instance, the idea of 'beast tribes'. On the Source, we've been taught that Beast Tribes are typically dangerous, somewhat savage groups of intelligent creatures with the capacity to speak and understand language, but whose ways are so fundamentally different and opposed to those of the 'spoken races' that we simply cannot get along with them, and so conflict between us is inevitable. Obviously, there are the friendlier beast tribes, but most primals come from the conflicts that have been set between the 'beasts' and the 'spoken'. Now, we know that the Ascians have been meddling in these conflicts for a good long while, and that they have been responsible for teaching 'beast tribes' the methods of summoning magicks, but overall the conflict has been portrayed as 'civilization' vs. 'savages' who are summoning monsters that could wipe out the entire world.

We get to the First, a world where primals simply haven't been a factor, and what do we find? The Mord, the First's Kobolds, have a trading hub where they live alongside Humes and other races and are treated as equals. Zun, the Amal'jaa of the First, live and work in the Crystarium and are valued for their knowledge of Amaro taming. The Ondo, Sahagin of the First, trade with Eulmore and hunt and fish freely in the oceans. They are not summoning Primals, coming into conflict with the 'spoken', or even truly distinguished from the other races. They simply exist. They're part of society. They're not separated, they're not treated as lesser, they're not at war, hell, if the game was based on the First, there wouldn't really be a reason for them not to be playable characters. This helps us to see that the 'war on primals' that we've been fighting on the Source? All of it has been an Ascian machination to cause chaos and conflict, nothing more than a shell game to make us hate each other rather than work together to build a brighter future. They don't want us to. They want us to hate. They want us to fight.

The first is a refutation of the idea that we have to be at war with the 'beast tribes' or that that is even a meaningful category at all. That's just one example I can think of; those are the types of things that I think it gives us. It's a useful mirror to Eorzea and the Source. Not to mention all of the metaphysical knowledge we now have, and knowledge of our enemies' motivations. I can now go back to the Source with a true understanding of why I am fighting, rather than simply reacting to what the Ascians' latest plots are.

[Edax]

I liked it.

Care to elaborate?

[Iromi]

I kind of felt the same when it was first announced. I was looking forward to seeing Thavanir and the Empire, where the Viera come from..etc. But once the story started in SBH and without spoiling much..when I saw we FINALLY got answers of stuff I've been wondering from 1.0 days back in 2010, it quickly became my favorite expansion.

I dunno how much longer SE plans to work on XIV but now it seems like it has a loooot more story coming, so I am thinking we will get to explore the source among other things later on.

[Atamis]

I much prefer the First. I have disliked the ascian plot up to this point where just dealing with Emet didn't feel like a pointless endeavor. He actually had a motive instead of generic evil bad guy wanting to end the world because plot device.
Ishgard felt disjointed to me and the zones were out of place past coerthas, one of the temple knights in ala mhigo even eludes to the eastern highlands so its not like they forgot about the rest of the areas.
The whole Doma/Ala Mhigo arc felt extremely rushed to me, a consequence of trying to tell two full length stories by jumping between them arbitrarily I'm sure. I actually quit in stormblood from sheer disinterest in everything going on.

Currently my only real complaint on the shadowbringer arc is the lack of class quests. I wasn't too miffed by crafters losing their specific ones but DoM/W feel awkward just inventing automatons and summoning demi primals out of the blue. The role quests were nice and provided some great side stories, but they were not replacements.
Most of the zone stories feel whole without obvious gaps and none of them felt like you were being pulled through it because they had to force the story there like sea of clouds.
I do wish there were more opportunities to interact with characters along the way. Feo Ul, for example, gets introduced as a retainer stand in, and then shes bullying fearies while getting upset you didnt summon her earlier, and then shes queen of the fae. While a bunch of mandatory fluff steps in the middle wouldn't be idea, maybe she could of interacted with us in many of the side quests in the area. I'm more attached to the Anima faery at this point.

[GenBroadaxe]

I felt that it was a nice breather from the scope of Stormblood, kind of like Heavensward was after ARR. Both ARR and SB were wide reaching stories that set up a lot of the world and the politics while HW and ShB both felt more personal and introspective with the focus being solely on Ishgard and then with our journey on the First. The development team (in my opinion), did a great job making the different areas feel uncomfortable and alien under the unending light while clearly being reflections of familiar spots on the Source. to me it was successful in showing how isolated the WoL could be as well as the power we could carry and it did a great job at laying out bare the real source of conflict between us and the Ascians as well as giving us an excellent antagonist in Emet-Selch.

[QT_Melon]

As a general fan of origin stories that lead up to the journey, this has been a personal favorite. My complaints are as of now - there leaves a lot of contradictions in how events are told starting from ARR I'd like to see addressed.

However, I'm INSANELY curious about the conflict we're going to get from 5.5 on.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_with_yoship/

After half way through 5.x, the story will unfold like a turmoil up to the end.

[Bright-Flower]

It's been an odd case for me.

I was hype to get into HW because I loved Coerthas and the story related to Ishgard in late ARR. I loved HW.

I was hyped to get into SB because I was interested in ala mhigo. I didn't much care for Doma. I was disapointed in the end. The region split made both stories suffer and I loathed the Yotsuyu arc in 4.2/4.3. And I felt there was so much more they could have done with ala mhigo without spending half of 4.0 on a side quest to Doma. Including fleshing out different factions of the Resistance and having Lyse actually progress up the chain of command and EARN her place as resistance leader. This is already going on long so I'll just say with the exception of 4.1 I found SB pretty disapointing.

SHB I was going into warily. Going to a different planet I had no investment in? This could be Warlords of Daenor all over again. However, it far surpassed my expectations. The first 'act' of the story (intro, Alisae/Alph quests, and first dungeon) really set the stage and got me invested in this world. It dragged a little i the middle where the plot became 'go to zone, Ran'jit tries to stop you, avoid him, kill light warden' three times. But I still enjoyed it overall. Then everything that happens after Innocence was just great. I really loved it.

So it's odd. HW I expected to love, loved it. SB I expected to love, felt it was MEH story wise. SHB I was wary of, but loved it.

[Kokomi]

My complaints are as of now - there leaves a lot of contradictions in how events are told starting from ARR I'd like to see addressed.

Any contradictions in particular? (They have said that they are super careful to go over all existing lore and make sure new revelations are consistent.)

However, I'm INSANELY curious about the conflict we're going to get from 5.5 on.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_with_yoship/

After half way through 5.x, the story will unfold like a turmoil up to the end.

Nice find! Using Google Translate on the original Japanese, what Yoshida said was something like, "From the middle to the final stage of 'Shadowbringers', I think that it will be a raging development." Assuming 5.0 puts us about halfway, maybe two thirds there, that means 5.1+ will be really exciting. Since he also said that Zodiark/Hydaelyn is 80% done with 5.0, maybe things will even be wrapped up before 6.0.