How many people are excited for Endwalker?

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[ReynTime]

I'm only excited for two things:
-Old Sharlayan
-Not feeling like I have to keep my sub active

I used to think the MSQ alone justified staying. Shadowbringers 5.1~5.55 proved me wrong. Very wrong.

I've been playing since 2014. I've seen the game gradually tilting into a direction that is the opposite of what I enjoyed about it. But with ShB it became painfully evident I wasn't their demographic anymore.

I'm not excited for Endwalker because I'm not excited for:
-More hallway simulator dungeons with pointless trash pulls
-Stagnant combat that feels like a chore when not fighting bosses - People say the combat is amazing but also that we lack content like enough ultimates... well, there are only so many new dance moves and spectacles you can add to compensate the stagnancy of the static rotation based play with very minimal situational character setup that XIV's combat 'evolved' to be about. I'm not wrong about this... the combat "system" is so static when you take specific boss fights out that leveling multiple jobs becomes really boring and grating, and the zerg FATEs they like to keep adding become dull and repetitive, and trash pulls become completely undesirable and a waste of time. Most of the mechanics have no direct correlation with how the game's combat in its raw form works, either. It's a pile of sloppy patch-ups that keep stacking over the years and I'm sick of it.
-More "normal raids" that are just trials with a self-contained story
-More "large scale" instances that feel like Disney World attractions with ball and chains attached to the legs of anyone who puts half an effort because Yoshi-P himself said he wants it that way
-Another procedurally generated samey room deep dungeon
-More job homogenization to appeal to people who think practicing and leveling alt jobs is "like work"
-I would be excited for Hildibrand, but because that usually comes with patches, I'm gonna pass
-More barren map design limited by their dated memory restrictions
-Lack of midcore content outside the rehashy DD and Extremes
-No new overworld features

I'm sure they will add a lot of second-life stuff like more GATEs, more costumes, more mounts, more minions, the Island Sanctuary, more housing content, some other themepark attractions... But I don't care about any of that stuff. The XIV I started playing treated those things as a side content... now it feels like the opposite. PvE is just a chore roleplayers need to half-heartedly endure to get to the fun part.

I'm extremely disappointed a game I used to enjoy years ago is now something I can't help but look with very pessimistic eyes when it comes to its playable parts.

As for the story... I expect the finale to be decent. But nothing amazing. ShB made my expectations collapse.
I expect more rushed colorful resolutions (Sharlayan doing a 180 in attitude to become the same as the other nations very quickly), plot armor, unnecessary amounts of fanservice for the usual suspects, and more middle fingers aimed at all the unresolved or abandoned lore from 1.0~2.55 that had more potential than the shounen manga tropes they've been pushing real hard since Stormblood.
I like to experience stories to their completion, however, so I'm going to wait until I finish 6.0 before quitting this game, and likely MMORPGs, for good.

[Zsolen]

I'm in a wait and see mood for Endwalker. I'll break it down into several parts.

Story- Shadowbringers was the weakest in terms of story so far. We didn't have much in the way of consequences and the story was very straight forward, particularly in the patches. I don't expect anything big for Endwalker.

Content- I'm not expecting much innovation for PVE, crafting, or gathering. I'm a bit cautious about the new pvp, knowing about the cheating that is currently acceptable in Feast and that other aspects of the game have been dumbed down. The idea of a capture the flag mode was tossed around, and that does catch my interest.

Glamour- Glamour seems to be more and more focused on making people not look like they are from the Source or any shard for that matter. We didn't even get a 2nd pvp armor set. I don't anticipate any improvement here.

PvE Machinist- People like the simple version of machinist in Shadowbringers, but it honestly feels empty. I don't think they will change it for Endwalker. Machinist has never been as good, since it stopped being a gun mage (late HW was peak). They changed it, along with bard. The bard change was justified. The machinist change was not.

PvE Sage- I'm not sure if I would play this job much. I always wanted chemist, and this is the closest thing that will will likely get to a gun wielding healer. I guess put this in the "cautiously optimistic" category, and I actually have come around from not liking the job, to be honest.

PvP Machinist/Dancer and PvP job balance- I'm not sure what to expect here, so I'm optimistic. Aside from the former DRK/SCH situation, SE tends not to having many hiccups here, since they separated pve and pvp actions.

I would love to be wrong, but there is little doubt that the launch will not live up to the hype. Maybe the patches will do better.

[Stormfur]

I'm ambivalent about it. I still preordered and all because I enjoy the series and the game but felt like

- The story got weaker/watered down after Heavensward. HW made you care about the characters, at least in the beginning. Near the end with the little Au Ra girl and that whole setup and then Ryne and Gaia made me feel like the game was catering too much to these tired old stereotypes of "weak little girl in trouble needs sassy older girl to show her the ropes".

- I'm positively sick of fake character deaths just to generate attention which ends up being no story at all (haha just kidding it was poison/a dream/journey to the fourth dimension).

- In dungeons at least, it doesn't feel very meaningful to play my class. I know a lot of people hate it but I really liked POTD/HOH because it was random and you really never knew what you were gonna get, and strategy played a role in it. You had to plan out how you were gonna carve a path through there and how to use pomanders wisely.

- Feast PVP is on life support and even the most hardcore players are seconds away from pulling the plug. I'm glad they're doing something about this but I've learned not to get my hopes up too high. PVP in general sorely needs some love. Although I've unlocked them, I have absolutely no idea how to play Rival Wings or whatever that other one is. There's no real training to help you figure it out either, you just follow the group.

Just my opinions, for what they're worth.

[Mackallan]

I'm excited about Endwalker, but then again I'm absolutely new to FFXIV Online, so I guess I have "more to do".

[Snow123]

One can be very excited to this new expansion but if you cant log in due to queues or get contstantly disconnected it wont help you