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

[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

[-Teria-]

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

Don't forget that bug on the first two days where if you were mounted before going into Sussano's story trial you'd leave to a game breaking bug that saw you trapped in the water of Ruby Sea and made it impossible to play until the emergency server maintenance and hotfix kicked in.

[Renathras]

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

I still have a shirt somewhere with a stylized Raubahn that says "I survived Raubhan Ex" or something like that. Someone threw them together at the time and posted to Reddit. I never buy stuff like that, but it was too good not to pick up.

But yeah, SB was the most controversial expansion in the game's history, and even ShB had some detractors. EW is probably up there as second most, and there are things I dislike (not having an exploration zone/relic grind is REALLY noticeable now during content droughts/when patches are long in the tooth - which happens longer since the patches are longer now), but it's not the worst thing ever, it just could be better.

I'm also hoping that the extra energy is either going into 7.0 or it was just going into FF16 and with that complete, will come back to FFXIV. Either/both, whatever. As long as the effort's going into FFXIV going forward...

[Teno]

Are you sure about that?

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

ShB was by far the most controversial, if you were a healer. EW only continued on that path.

[Kolsykol]

Are you sure about that?

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

I remember a ton of drama going back as early as Heavensward, people do this every single time with every expansion it's an endless repeating cycle.
Every expansion is '' the worst and most controversial ever '' until the next expansion is out and then suddenly it wasn't so bad after all.
People have short-term memory.

People seriously need to play some other MMO's and get some actual perspective, the problems people ramp up as severe and controversial are so incredibly minor by comparison.
And there's so much over-dramatization of everything ( in the OP included ).
Much like on other websites and the reason why clickbait articles are so common place even if people say that they hate them.
It gets more likes and attention.
Ragebait and drama works.

I really don't see this kind of divison as is being described at all either outside of the same people on the forum ranting endlessly about it again and again and upvoting each other.
There's people on this forum who have 50-100 or even more negative threads alone.
On Reddit it's mostly memes, and there is also no way of even confirming who plays the game altogether.
It's the same on Twitter but you can't really judge these things accurately because it depends on who you follow/ don't follow.
But I dunno where all of this supposed negativity there is either.

I think that the truth is too that most people don't care about stuff like Kaiten being removed.
I don't think it's a good thing and I really hate the change too, and Yoshi-P actually did apologize for it and said that we should keep giving feedback on it and that they might revert it.
But this isn't some kind of a sky is falling scenario.
These are ultimately minor issues in the grand scheme of things, something that every expansion has had and will have that don't even affect a significant portion of the playerbase.

The narrative just never changes, people were flipping out about SHB all the time here and Heavensward had way worse balance issues and design decisions that people ranted endlessly about.
I actually enjoyed '' BRD mage '' but I still remember how mad people were about it, and as someone who played MNK from ARR to EW and swapped this expansion I've been around and remember how perpetually mad we've been about it lol.
These things happen all the time...
It's bound to happen because you have so many different people to please, not everything is going to make everyone happy and you'll mostly really hear from the people who are unhappy because those are the ones who take to the forums.
People who are happy are less likely to go and talk about it online, especially since most of this is really just venting for people and there is no reason to do that if you're happy.

I actually enjoy both Eureka and Bozja still but it's the same there too, people who hate/ hated them will be more noticeable.