Endwalker is the most controversial expansion

[anhaato]

And I'm just speaking factually. I was only here for a small portion of Stormblood, but for the duration of Shadowbringers I hadn't seen quite so many... mind boggling changes that upset, or at the very least bemuse, more people than they please. From job design to housing to mundane content like crafting and gathering. But regardless of my opinion on some of these changes, there has been a lot of outrage because of them.

I also have never seen the playerbase be so divided on the msq. Stormblood got its fair share of "oh my god this is so bad compared to Heavensward oh my god Lyse is so boring" but people were ok with it in the end because it wasn't that bad. People could generally agree that it was kind of a letdown but all of the other content was good so the game was still doing fine. Shadowbringers was pretty much universally praised as far as I could tell, and those who weren't with the majority at the very least were still pretty ok with it. Endwalker... well, if the existence of that one thread is anything to go by, there are quite a few people who are not into it. "But those are just whiny people on the forums!" Yeah but... even on Reddit and Twitter more people are starting to criticize it. This time it's kinda either you love it or you were severely disappointed by it. Either it's the best story in MMO history or it's worse then Stormblood or even ARR. Regardless of your opinion of it, this is just how it is.

And I know there will be plenty of people saying "it's not even that controversial you're just whiny" or "this is all overblown" but if that were the case YoshiP wouldn't have felt the need to defend himself numerous times, from an msq clarification stream, to the Hroth hair backlash, to the housing disaster, and now the recent post about blm buffs. The blm post was the strangest of all to me because the "backlash" over those buffs (aka some memes) was nowhere near the severity of the firestorm caused kaiten's removal or the constantly smoldering anger of scorned healer mains. Why he chose to type up a response to some memes about him being biased through an official post dripping with shade (that's producing even more memes) is BEYOND me.

I'm saying this because it's very weird and upsetting to see the game end up in this sort of state. I really don't know what motivated certain decisions but to me it seems like Endwalker has had a lot more bad than good, and even the good is heavily debated. And that's depressing because I want this game to do well, but now tons of players are upset over how out of touch the devs seem to be these days, and the devs are playing defense. Like, we used to be able to trust in the devs to make changes that most people would be ok with, and to be generally in tune with what the majority of players wanted. How did this happen?

[Poporito_Popoto]

Your concern is noted.

[FatalFatalis]

I mean, outside of the story, 6.0 didn't have a lot of controversy.
Now 6.1 on the other side, oh boy, it was controversy after controversy, I am now expecting another one in 6.15, what's going to be now? Honestly this is more interesting than the MSQ right now, the suspense is killing me!

[SentioftheHoukai]

I mean, outside of the story, 6.0 didn't have a lot of controversy.
Now 6.1 on the other side, oh boy, it was controversy after controversy, I am now expecting another one in 6.15, what's going to be now? Honestly this is more interesting than the MSQ right now, the suspense is killing me!

Are you sure about that?

Shadowbringers had nearly no detractors. That Endwalker has plenty of critics, well. It should tell you something.

[Lihtleita]

Are you sure about that?

Shadowbringers had nearly no detractors. That Endwalker has plenty of critics, well. It should tell you something.

shb had female only viera that couldnt wear hats, problems with the nier coffer and other minor nitpicks

but compared to raubhan ex and pipin savage both ew and shb are uncontroversial

[aveyond-dreams]

The upcoming drama over job changes is now more entertaining than the actual MSQ. With AST, the last healer I can stand to play long term about to get changed I don't know what to expect besides them deciding to remove Lord of Crowns (again) or some other change instead of condensing the buttons that had no business being separate in the first place. I won't speak on Dragoon as I rarely touch it-but I imagine somehow they will end up losing some of their jumps or something along those lines. They've lost my confidence.

My opinion on the MSQ is something I've already gone at length about in the other thread, but EW's story did irreparable damage and future writing seems to be focused on catering to the fans of the Scions, of which I am not. This is the single worst cast in all of the Final Fantasy franchise given their lack of depth or worse, negative character growth in the case of people like G'raha Tia or Thancred, neither of which act like believable people. You have a catboy whose insufferable attitude makes me want to uninstall each time he opens his mouth, and Thancred being incredibly stoic after fighting so hard to defend Ryne during Shadowbringers. It's shocking.

For all the attempts to make it so that FFXIV has a good single-player RPG experience, it has failed greatly in terms of EW's later storytelling, and its development of characters throughout. I can't wait for someone to tell me "not every party member needs development!" or something along those lines, to which I would gladly recommend they play FFIX, FFX, or even FFXIII. Those of us who have been around long enough can recognize decent story telling when we see it-unclouded by the launch hype which has long since faded.

You can't have both pillars of story and gameplay collapsing on each other like this. FFXIV's future feels more uncertain than ever, and a graphics update will mean nothing if gameplay takes another turn for the worse and the story becomes even more derailed and like a visual novel. To say the situation is concerning is putting it likely, it simply is an unacceptable state of affairs.

The moment the next major single-player rpg releases, players like myself will up and disappear. Instead of logging into FFXIV I'll be playing Forspoken, Soul Hackers 2, or FFXVI. You know games with (hopefully) decent combat gameplay and plotlines that have more depth and nuance than this "battle of morals" nonsense EW pushed.

[anhaato]

shb had female only viera that couldnt wear hats, problems with the nier coffer and other minor nitpicks

but compared to raubhan ex and pipin savage both ew and shb are uncontroversial

Yeah it’s not like EW had anything like Raubahn preventing people from getting into the msq on launch

[Zsolen]

Shadowbringers ripped crafting completely apart and ruined machinist. The PvP in ShB was also worse than SB PvP.

[Maxilor]

My only issue with Endwalker was that the big bad got destroyed with literally 'The Power of Friendship'.

I know Final Fantasy is kind of known for pulling that trick, but it's super cliché.

Everything else about the expansion though I think was great. SGE and RPR are cool additions, the environments are super interesting and varied.

The endgame content so far has been very interesting. So yeah outside of story complaints that have been repeated ad nauseum I think Endwalker was solid.

[Necrotica]

I like Endwalker overall. Feel bad it had to follow up Shadowbringers since that story was so well liked. Will say that Shadowbringers was complete bait and switch at launch but was good enough people just moved on from it.

STORY-Take a great story. Now remove all reason and accountability. That is Endwalker's story. An emotionally driven plot that cared more about music and cheap manipulation over well reasoned cause and effect scenarios.

PVE-Great. Love the dungeons, love the trials, love the raids. Knocking it out of the park for me. (minor nitpik, why does the underwater tropical dungeon give snow themed gear?)

PVP-the greatest dumpster fire known to man. Revert back please.

SOCIAL CONTENT-Once they add Island Sanctuaries that will be the equivalent to instanced housing, everything will be fine. Yoshi P came to me in a dream and said it would be so. I will not believe otherwise.