Live Letter Thoughts

[Deveryn]

I just figured that since Hydaelyn herself was destroyed "completely" (yoshi's words, not mine), everything else "attached" to that would also be destroyed. But considering the amount of convenient plot macguffins introduced into Endwalker for things to make sense (see kairos and dynamis), I can believe that probably won't be the case. It's just a sore spot for me because I disliked EW so much and I would love to be onto the next thing without constantly reminding me of all the things I disliked about it. Convenient Universe Spanning Tracking Device is one of those things unfortunately. I hope you're correct and we don't carry on with this "hydaelyn's chosen" stuff. I just want to go on a plain honest adventure with new characters and a new plot haha. Some real stakes would be nice too.

Why does every action / creation have to be attached? Following this logic, we don't even get to use the blessing on the crystal of Azem and the story ends there.

[Shougun]

Sanctuary looked neat, a lot of farm features . Hopefully the system has some useful external items, like you don't hit the end of the road with no purpose to collect more tokens for, and one of the facilities we can build has some sort of homely feature akin to an inn room. That'd be super cool. The huge freaking windmill was already impressive lol. I appreciate thoughtful touches like being able to revert to a previous design. All good signs they took the content seriously and didn't hold much back (worried about the reward value dying out once you get the neat rare / ex stuff, but until we see the list it's just a concern). Hope they're imagining all the neat things they might add and do for the island, every 2 patches new content is a good sign and so I'm hopeful it'll be good content piece.

Liked the fancy raid gear but given it's savage it looks like I'll not get to enjoy it for a long while, at least last I tried DF savage was akin to customer service job in a high rude customer industry... lots and lots of head banging on wall as the healer out DPSes half the DD team, you keep dying to shared mechanics that impact each other, etc- an exercise in patience.. (and I don't like / usually have time to dedicate to more than one session to make PF make sense).

Dungeons and new content in general looks interesting. I had wanted to have some Sil'Dihn content for a while :3..

[AnnaUK]

For the time being I lean slightly more towards excited

Tough crowd

[Denji]

I'm tentatively pleased by what I've seen so far although until the patch notes are released I'll hold back on any actual enthusiasm.

I hope the bit about the hrothgar ears are true for obvious reasons.

[AwesomeJr44]

Tough crowd

The player base should be a tough crowd to please. When the player base demands quality, they receive quality. When the player base is lenient, they receive mediocrity.

[Lunalepsy]

Despite the controversies of 6.1, there were several steps taken that have since restored some of my confidence in the recent Live Letter. For the time being I lean slightly more towards excited, though there are still a few things which give me pause. However, to begin with the positives:

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this new reaper character and look forward to her involvement in the main story. With Alisae left behind, she could easily fill the role of DPS in our party and with Vrtra’s new adult body, he can take on the vacancy left by G’raha Tia. It appears that Y’shtola will be able to act as a healer in the upcoming dungeon, but overall our new smaller party feels a lot more balanced now. Our dragoon, sorceress, Au Ra lancer/swordsman, and new dark heroine is a good change from the previous party of Sharlayan Scholars, which are now down to just 1. For the time being this will serve to balance out Y’shtola and has struck a happy medium between old and new characters. Thank you for fulfilling this promise. Troia and the other locations previewed in the Void look excellent and deliver on the sort of dark fantasy environments I was hoping to see together with Pandaemonium.

Overall, new gear from battle content/crafting/tomes looks excellent and very high quality. I look forward to pursuing them once the patch drops though I was disappointed to see even more modern glamours added, despite us having so many of them already. I think it would have been a better opportunity to add something more in the way of tropical fantasy for island sanctuary as opposed to the two sets that were previewed today. Rewards for Variant/Criterion dungeons also seem to be rather unclear aside from the mount, which is not really what I was expecting from a dungeon that was associated in the lore with necromancy, etc. Hopefully we can get some more clarification on them later on. I was hoping for a different travelling companion for that content...but Nanamo is not the worst option and at least is different from the scions.

As for my concerns, I still believe that exploring the option to add exterior furnishings to Island Sanctuary would be a worthwhile endeavour due to the ongoing housing scarcity. While this island is located is a warmer region of the world, I do hope that someday in the future islands in other biomes are added such as a more artic island, spring-themed island, and so on. In terms of the story, I found it quite out of place to be including mentions of Meteion’s crystal, whose relevance to the patch MSQ is difficult to see from my perspective. Lahabrea’s apparent shattering of his sigil also raised some red flags, as it would have serious implications and potential lore contradictions of the Shadowbringers short stories if Eric turned out to be our Lahabrea. Given Endwalker’s previous handling of the theme of grief and loss, there are many who would like to see a different perspective approached when it comes to Lahabrea’s emotional state as opposed to a repetition of the “forge ahead” message, which isn’t how a lot of people approach these situations. Not subscribing to that message does not necessarily make one an antagonistic figure, so it remains to be seen how the story approaches Lahabrea and whether it portrays him in a nuanced and mature way.

On a closing note, it did not escape my attention that Hrothgar ears have been restored for the Snow hair at least, and although there was no extended update regarding their situation I hope that more is touched on and previewed in the upcoming patch notes. I will also lend my voice to calls for making Proto-Carbuncle available as a summon for players, and look forward to the mechanics in the fight against it. It is difficult to comment on job changes until we see what they entail, but I am largely in favor of leaving more major changes on a per-expansion basis except in the case of more prominent issues.

It's just a huge filler.

[Ransu]

I disagree, I loved 5.x sam, and despise what they did with it in 6.0.

Why exactly? Outside of the opener (which imo is way more fun, but I like being busy so *shrug*) and maintaining your 2-minute rotation, the 1-minute loop didn't really change....like at all. You still loop around your dot.

[Silverbane]

The player base should be a tough crowd to please.

Applied generally, this is a great philosophy for being miserable your entire life.
And for coming off as an entitled ass, which is perhaps equivalent.

So, no thanks. I'll keep my ready smile and easy laugh, instead.

[Marbino]

The Kaiten removal was great, removed an unneeded button from the hotbars when Shinten uses kenki just fine. Next I'm hoping for the Shoha 2 removal.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Why exactly? Outside of the opener (which imo is way more fun, but I like being busy so *shrug*) and maintaining your 2-minute rotation, the 1-minute loop didn't really change....like at all. You still loop around your dot.

The loops did change, for one. Also using kaiten 3 times in the opener tended to clip horribly.

And if I wanted busy I'd play ninja. I don't, which is why I liked Sam. I moved to DRG instead, less frustrating.