Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 2)

Originally Posted by Crushnight

Actually HW had less content than SB did

HW had:

Ravana
Bismarck
Thordan
Sephirot
Nidhogg
Sophia
Zurvan


Stormblood had

Susano
Lakshmi
Shinryu
Byakko
Tsukuyomi
Suzaku
Seiryu
"Yojimbo"

Stormblood had:

Sirensong Sea
Shisui of the Violet Tides
Bardam's Mettle
Doma Castle
Castrum Abania
Ala Mhigo
Temple of the Fist
Kugane Castle
Sunken City of Skalla
Hell's Lid
Fractal Continuum Hard Mode
Swallow's Compass
The Burn
Saint Mocianne's Hard Mode
Ghimlyt Dark

Heavensward had

Dusk Vigil
Sohm Al
The Aery
The Vault
Great Gubal Library
Aetherochemical Research Facility
Neverreap
Fractal Continuum
Saint's Mocianne's Arboretum
Pharos Sirius HM
The Antitower
Lost City of Amdapor HM
Sohr Khai
Xelphatol
Hullbreaker Isle HM
Great Gubal Library HM
Sohm Al HM
Baelsar's Wall

The second part to Savage raids for Stormblood don't really count as "more" content, because it's still one fight. They're merely removed for the normal mode version to incentivize more people into Savage. I.E. They were originally intended to be part of the fight, they even have dialogue from the storyline NPCs in them. The Heavensward fights didn't have that, but the Heavensward raid bosses were FFXIV originals. We count them as separate fights, because there's a checkpoint, but they're not actually separate fights at all. If you wanna go with the idea that because the backgrounds around the arena change/weather changes, that happened in Creator Savage too with the Giant Alexander coming up on the outside of the arena in the final phases/utlimate attack transition. The Heavenward raid bosses were also much more difficult with far harder mechanics, like Gavel and Enumeration. Or Digititis

So, so far it's Stormblood +1 on Trials, vs. Heavensward +3 on dungeons.

Ok, so, Eureka right?

Eureka is Stormblood and it's:
Anemos
Pagos
Pyros
Hydatos + Baldesion Arsenal.

Pagos and Pyros are almost copy pastes of one another in terms of scenery, aside from Pyros's copy pasted Lava caves. Not a lot of thought went into the zone design after Anemos, best exhibited by Pyros/Pagos similiarity, but also by Hydatos being a large rectangle of mud with an interesting skybox and more unique weather relating to Baldesion's Arsenal. Baldesion Arsenal along with Lost Actions are really the only interesting and new, planned out content in Eureka. The rest of it is like an homage to FFXI while actually being nothing like FFXI, as glorified Fate farming with extra steps and different loot.

Basically it's like getting half of an overworld zone with faintest sniff of a story. More thought goes into dungeons, as well as more art and work. As all of the fate bosses in Eureka are reused, pared down raid/dungeon bosses we've previously seen with new coats of paint that don't even use the full skillset.

Heavensward had the original concept for Diadem, which was one unique new zone with a lot more to it than any Eureka zone, just by the sake of the zone mechanics themselves, as opposed to the magia and lost action system. It also had non-combat related objectives, so it was for gatherers and crafters too.

So in this respect, you may not agree, but we can take the dev time for the 3 dungeons and diadem and translate it to the 4 Eureka main zones. Stormblood gets an edge on quantity with Baldesion's Arsenal.

So what's left? Well, Stormblood also introduced Blue Mage. Blue Mage is a new job for players, but it's limited. It reuses all standard caster gear, with its own unique AF at the plateau levels. However, almost all of its spells are just monster skills that are already in the game, and the vast majority of them just do damage. It basically exemplifies what the majority of Stormblood content was, rehash of old stuff.

Like sure, Stormblood has more content than Heavensward, by a very slim margin. The quality of that "extra" content is malms lower though. Heavensward gave us 3, completely new and unlimited, jobs. It gave us more complex raids. More complex dungeons. Heavensward will also always remain the only expansion where each job only gained new skills and lost no old ones. Stormblood started the trend of trimming down skills for button bloat, so a lot of jobs wound up with a net loss on skills, though some, namely PLD, wound up with more buttons than they had, even in HW.

It's also significant to point out that until the patches at/after Tsukuyomi, there was a massive content drought in Stormblood. It wasn't until the latter half of the expansion where they started shoveling all of the content in where it caught back up.

I guess I left out the deep dungeons. HW had a 200 floor one, and Stormblood had one with 100 levels. HoH has three interior designs that are unique to it, somewhat. POTD has six, though more if we want to count crystal color changes(I don't). If we want to just talk about quantity, rather than quality as well, then POTD clearly wins there, requiring 10 more instances of floors to complete along with 10 more bosses, as well as two unique bosses. Something HoH cannot claim to have.

TL;DR - Stormblood kind of has more, but in a lot of ways less. Its quality is lower, and it really showed.

Oh yeah, we also got the Au Ra race in Heavensward. Maybe Stormblood didn't have more content after all.

Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

You're really going to complain about how similar looking Pagos and Pyros are but not about the fact that HW had five HM dungeons (six if you count Fractal as an Aetherochemical reskin) compared to SB's two? You could at least try to make even comparisons.

Meh. At least those HM dungeons had associated sidequests and story, with new bosses aplenty, top to bottom, side to side. New trash monsters completely in some of them, too.

The only point of the comparison is that rather than all be snowy mountains like in Pagos, they changed their paste tool to lava caves for half of Pyros. The Eureka zone design was lazy (though I enjoyed it). HM dungeons seem like that, but they incorporated new things in them, usually. There's also usually a drastic aesthetic change that makes it feel like a new place, with the alternate path.

ARR had 9 HM dungeons, and I won't complain about those, either. Some of the most memorable content in the game comes from HM dungeons, and they've used said content to leap frog into other stories and side quests too.