How many people are excited for Endwalker?

[CKNovel]

Hyped? For the story and the music yes.

What I'm really looking forward to is the job design and so far it's not promising. We got crumbs, sure.
But as usual we have no idea was direction jobs will take. Did they listened to feedback? To what feedback exactly?
All we know so far is that SMN is reaching a breaking point and that they have no idea what to do with BRD. Which is logical since they added the Dancer as a support ranged.

But many questions remains:
-What will happen to healers?
-Will WAR and DRK stops being that similar?
-Scholar, the fairy, what happened to it?
-Ranged miss half of the utility they used to have, will they get something else rather than being subdps?
-Will MCH finally have more button or Flamethrower rework?

This is something I wish SQEX would improve, job design and communication about those. Some jobs are in their best iteration such as Black Mage, Gunbreaker, Dragoon, Ninja... But some other really needs something.

Can't wait to see who's going to be the final boss. Hoping it's not Zenos in any form nor the other guy

Get prepared for Zeronus on the moon.

[Adeacia]

I've always been a story person myself, so I'm most looking forward to how the story concludes and the lead up to it.

I only started playing this game to begin with because I wanted to see the story after all.

[AngeliouxRein]

Hmm…

There’s a part of me that wants to be excited about the expansion, such as, us finally going to Sharlayan. However the main drives to keep me going has seen some changes that leaves an uncertain feeling about it. For starters, the story has always been a big focus but after they changed the pacing from Stormblood onwards, I’m not as interested in the story anymore. In Heavesward, we spent the entire expansion being concerned about dragons and Nidhogg. About how ending a thousand year war was not going to happen overnight. The pacing of that entire story was perfect and allowed for all the right emotions to be seasoned just right for that story arc to have epic impacts that made it easily my favorite expansion.

But for Stormblood, we literally solved the problem in one chapter and the rest of the time it felt like we was bumbling around long enough to go back into battle. Then Shadowbringers came along and did the same thing. I want the point of the expansions to last longer like it did in Heavensward. Otherwise all the build up just seems shallow.

The second biggest thing that’s been bugging me is how they recked the healers into the nonsense they are now. Doesn’t help that SMN doesn’t look to appealing based on that trailer we got. I’m not going to comment to much on design changes since we haven’t seen or heard anything official.

Overall, my feelings are pretty meh at the moment.

[BaconBits]

Ya, I'm not sure why some people did not like Shadowbringer story. It is the second best story we had. (nothing beats heavensward.). After going through Stormblood i thought was very boring. Shadows was amazing.

I disliked the direction Shadowbringer's story took mainly because of the tagline. "Become what you must, become the Warrior of Darkness" made it sound like we would be actively eschewing the Blessing of Light in favor of Dark in order to repel the Flood of Light. That we would be committing more morally ambiguous or even reprehensible acts in the name of our cause similar to how the Warriors of Darkness came from the First and tried their hardest to kill the Warrior of Light and the Scions, even going so far as to poison Alisaie.

Imagine if the cartoonishly vile Vauthry that anyone with eyes could tell was going to be a villain turned out to be a reasonable and honorable leader that nonetheless needed to be put down on account of being a Lightwarden. Or perhaps the Night's Blessed, after 100 years of being unable to see the night sky began worshipping a relatively docile Lightwarden, and we had to forcibly make them return to their senses by killing it.

Both of these actions would have some relatively steep consequences, such as the citizens of Eulmore being extremely conflicted by the death of their leader, potentially escalating into a civil war between those who supported Vauthry and those who believed he needed to die, depriving the Crystarium of much needed support. The Night's Blessed would be extremely distrustful of the Warrior of Darkness and the Scions, especially Y'shtola, on account of having lost several lives attempting to defend their god with many more bedridden from severe injuries, and only a select few individuals giving them the time of day.

Quelling a civil war that we caused and regaining the trust of the Night's Blessed seems a bit more interesting than being almost automatically accepted because we're friends with Y'shtola or Alphinaud convincing the entirety of Eulmore to help us with a single speech after we drove off Vauthry, in my own opinion of course.

[Liam_Harper]

I'm cautious.

I'm looking forward to Endwalker, but at the same time while Shadowbringers had amazing story and decent raids/trials, it ruined crafting, Hunts, Tanks and Healers for me which was a good chunk of my play time. We lost deep dungeons (No, Bozja is the Eureka replacement) and a lot of side quests like Hildebrand and the Beast Tribe conclusion. Botting also became rampant.
Ishgard, the depth of encounters in Bozja and Trusts are all quite nice, but they don't add much gameplay. I also like that FF14 respects your time, but at the same time it severely disrespects crafters time with horrible unhealthy grinds like Skybuilder ranking seasons, 500 hours for the Pteranodon and the new Resplendent Tools.

What bothers me most is there has been no communication that they care about a lot of this. They're flat out working, but they don't always apply their resources in the best way.

I'm sure I'll have fun in Endwalker overall, but at the same time I'm worried what they'll kill off next that I enjoyed. The game is miles better than WoW and Yoshi's a great developer, but that doesn't mean we should be blind to the fact it has quite a few flaws too.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Ya, I'm not sure why some people did not like Shadowbringer story. It is the second best story we had. (nothing beats heavensward.). After going through Stormblood i thought was very boring. Shadows was amazing.

Shadowbringers had far too many plot holes and plot armor that it just made the story a mess for me. And like the person above said, kinda some false advertising with the whole warrior of darkness shtick. Didn’t even use darkness once in the msq, just more light >>

[Snorky]

Nothing is perfect, but I can appreciate the joy in playing a game I like. It doesn't always have to be about complaining on the forums.

[Snorky]

Shadowbringers had far too many plot holes and plot armor that it just made the story a mess for me. And like the person above said, kinda some false advertising with the whole warrior of darkness shtick. Didn’t even use darkness once in the msq, just more light >>

The warrior of darkness was duped into his acts by the acians. They never said you would be turning evil anywhere that I found. So no plot hole there. The WoD even comes back and tells you he was wrong so.. where is the deception?

Besides this thread is about Endwalker and I am excited for this stories ending and all the other things it contains.

[Theodric]

The warrior of darkness was duped into his acts by the acians. They never said you would be turning evil anywhere that I found. So no plot hole there. The WoD even comes back and tells you he was wrong so.. where is the deception?

Besides this thread is about Endwalker and I am excited for this stories ending and all the other things it contains.

We've consistently been told that Light and Dark do not translate into good and evil.

Despite that, we didn't get the opportunity to make use of darkness in any meaningful way - just Light, again. It becomes rather bland after a while.

The story also bends over backwards to insist that the conflicts we involve ourselves in are not a matter of good or evil but rather a matter of perspective. Which means that the player character would not necessarily be 'evil' for engaging in morally grey acts.

If the story intends to elevate itself in my eyes, it would do well to move away from the excessive hero worship. It doesn't help that the content with the most grey morality, namely Bozja, has been cut for the foreseeable future.

Shadowbringers didn't really have high stakes as far as I'm concerned. We dealt with two of the game's major antagonists without them securing a single victory of note. Not even a single minor, throwaway character perished at their hands - so the expansion, despite the marketing, failed at being 'gritty'.

Given that the premise of Endwalker is a return of a literal apocalypse...well, hopefully we see some meaningful consequences this time around and not just consequences for the antagonists. Many people follow the story for their sake, after all and as we've seen from FFVIIR, it's possible to write a story in such a way as to ensure that the antagonists are written intelligently and don't just fall into each and every trap placed within their path.

[KizuyaKatogami]

The warrior of darkness was duped into his acts by the acians. They never said you would be turning evil anywhere that I found. So no plot hole there. The WoD even comes back and tells you he was wrong so.. where is the deception?

Besides this thread is about Endwalker and I am excited for this stories ending and all the other things it contains.

Someone mentioned ShB and i responded. That wasn’t a plot hole what i said, but there’s many in ShB you can look for yourself.I never said anything about turning evil though…i said using dark which they’ve said time and time again isn’t evil. Anyways my overall point was, i hope Endwalker improves from ShB and relies less on plot armor and plot holes and actually has stakes in the story. Seeing that it’s a literal apocalypse that ended the world before, i don’t think that’s too much to ask.