The Lessons Not Learned.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Thordan was fairly interesting (even if "the church is evil" is one of the most obvious plot twists ever for anyone who's ever played a JPRG before), but most of the Heavens' Ward were set dressing. Only three of them even do anything outside of the Vault and the Singularity Reactor. They get a little more story in Encyclopedia Eorzea, but that doesn't really help in the game.

I think the main reason Heavensward and Shadowbringers get higher marks, at least for me, is that they're clearly telling one story, rather than two. Stormblood has a very uneven split between the Ala Mhigo and Doma arcs, and Endwalker is pretty blatant about being two expansions crammed together, with both suffering for it, especially in pacing.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Thordan was fairly interesting (even if "the church is evil" is one of the most obvious plot twists ever for anyone who's ever played a JPRG before), but most of the Heavens' Ward were set dressing. Only three of them even do anything outside of the Vault and the Singularity Reactor. They get a little more story in Encyclopedia Eorzea, but that doesn't really help in the game.

I think the main reason Heavensward and Shadowbringers get higher marks, at least for me, is that they're clearly telling one story, rather than two. Stormblood has a very uneven split between the Ala Mhigo and Doma arcs, and Endwalker is pretty blatant about being two expansions crammed together, with both suffering for it, especially in pacing.

To me Thordan is a villian written to just "show up and be a villian" there was no nuance to it besides the usual "lust for power" and wanted to keep control oh his own people despite the ignorance in history. For characters like that, I would've at least preferred if he was entertaining or had unique odd quirks to make him stand out and memorable like Vauthry....actually yeah...LIKE VAUTHRY. He was in the same position and goals as Thordan yet he did a lot more in his villany and had a good personality and quirk to boot. But he wasnt and how I would've loved if they gave each Heavensward knight at least some screentime to show us their reasons and motivations for what they were doing. Didnnt need to be much but SOMETHING at least in-game and like you said, we only got 3 out of them doing just that and even then it was lackluster.

Yeah it told one story for sure and it worked for me but honestly it was kinda "boring"? I suppose this is why I enjoyed ARR, SB and EW a bit better because I enjoy stories that have us travel and see more of the world, despite the pacing issues. If its just one story, I just get reminded of how other games tackled this story much better as Ive said with Final Fantasy Tactics or Tales of Symphonia. Its not the game's fault, due to it being an MMO and no matter what, the story pacing in a quest based MMO will always be inferior to the more better presented single player experiences in other games.

[RukoBoshi]

Thordan was fairly interesting (even if "the church is evil" is one of the most obvious plot twists ever for anyone who's ever played a JPRG before), but most of the Heavens' Ward were set dressing. Only three of them even do anything outside of the Vault and the Singularity Reactor. They get a little more story in Encyclopedia Eorzea, but that doesn't really help in the game.

I think the main reason Heavensward and Shadowbringers get higher marks, at least for me, is that they're clearly telling one story, rather than two. Stormblood has a very uneven split between the Ala Mhigo and Doma arcs, and Endwalker is pretty blatant about being two expansions crammed together, with both suffering for it, especially in pacing.

That's also why i prefer HW and SHB, the fact that they are both self contained story allow them to focus on a new unique plot (i consider the ascians backstory to be completely new).

Stormblood and Endwalker are both plagued by having to follow up multiple stories (Ala Mhigo or Garlemald) while introducing new plots and areas at the same time.

It's a weird patchwork of unrelated places that each have their individual story.
Endwalker having to introduce Radz-at-han, Sharlayan or Elpis while dealing with Garlemald or the moon, makes the plot too spread out and unfocused.

Cramming two expansions worth of areas and stories, while having to finish the current storyline is a hard task. Especially when your a follow up to Shadowbringers.
Despite the expansion story feeling a bit rushed, I think the devs manage to arrive at a satisfying results even if it isn't on par with the previous expansion imo.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I will agree that I rose an eyebrow when I heard in the Event that the Epic Saga would Conclude in 6.0.
Its like...wait really? Because it would definitely mean its being rushed, and they really wanna get us started into the next Saga.

And I still very much enjoyed EW Vanilla despite its flaws, but one of its glaring issues is it did feel like they tried to do to much all at once.
EW should have solely focused on ending the Saga, instead of just 6.0.
But, idk, I guess a whole expansion dedicated to starting anew might not have worked either. But maybe EW could have been the longest running Expansion with say....6.7 or 6.8 being the ending. And then the last couple could have been to set us up.

IDK, we can sit here and talk about other things they Could have done, but its already done.

[RukoBoshi]

I will agree that I rose an eyebrow when I heard in the Event that the Epic Saga would Conclude in 6.0.
Its like...wait really? Because it would definitely mean its being rushed, and they really wanna get us started into the next Saga.

And I still very much enjoyed EW Vanilla despite its flaws, but one of its glaring issues is it did feel like they tried to do to much all at once.
EW should have solely focused on ending the Saga, instead of just 6.0.
But, idk, I guess a whole expansion dedicated to starting anew might not have worked either. But maybe EW could have been the longest running Expansion with say....6.7 or 6.8 being the ending. And then the last couple could have been to set us up.

IDK, we can sit here and talk about other things they Could have done, but its already done.

Yeah, i have a lot of issue with the idea of finishing the saga with Endwalker instead of making it two expansions.
I think it created a lot of problems, be it from pacing or story decisions. I wasn't the biggest fans of the theme of the expansion or how some characters were written either.

So i hope they decided to end it in 6.0 for a good reason, and that they have an interesting story in the work of 7.0 to justify this decision.

[VictorSpoils]

But that's just bc I'm a massive nerd and my favourite FF is 12, so I have really bad tastes as far as the FF community sees it.

You mean as far as a small handful of contrarian zealots are concerned.

[SannaR]

How do you know this? You've never completed a single Savage tier on content. At best, this is entirely hearsay—which isn't saying much because we have no idea on the qualifications of those players. Speaking from actual experience, this never happened. The only time people made any sort of stink about your melds is during Stormblood Ultimates when the occasional DPS and Healer refused to meld Vitality, which made them squishier. Nobody was looking through your gear to check whether your i400 Omega Earrings were proper bis. They weren't doing it in Midas either when Savage was more on par with Ultimate level difficulty. Substats have never been more than a very small fraction.

Even if I took you at face value, you openly claim it was only ever a minority of players who bothered. So... who cares? It wouldn't be applicable to the argument I had with Jojoya earlier and what sparked this whole conversation to begin with: Adding raid equivalent gear to Criterion wouldn't make it mandatory.

You're right I haven't cleared an entire Savage tier on content on this character. The furthest I got was T4 on a different character due to my needing to restart over halfway to late into Stormblood. Which is also around the time I stopped having to listen to someone raid each week, leave a midcore-hardcore FC and choose for myself and another who got to keep my SE account. As before then it had made more sense to tie our accounts together. It just happened that the account that didn't get absorbed was mine. And no SE isn't able to re-split said accounts. Unfortunately you wouldn't find much on a certain site to see any of my proof.

Nor on the lodestone as I deleted the character. Even after I started this character I still kept in touch with people who did raid. Along with being in a Midcore FC. I stopped raiding when I did due to various reasons. One being in a past life I must have royaly pissed off the RNG gods as I had an abysmal time getting the things one you needed for ARR relics. Thus I fell behind on that aspect. I also tend to have high healing and raid anxiety. The other reasons have to deal with RL stuff I won't divulge here.

For me the reason why it's a minority as to checking people's gear is because they're not a raid lead. Or a nosey person. Why would your average raider think about wanting to or feel the need to check to see if someone has proper melds? Normally it's they're eating stuff they shouldn't, poor gear, not having refreshed their food, potting at the wrong time. Melds tend to be the least looked at.

Anyway I also know how this community tends to behave. If a bunch of people say you should do X cause it's the most optimal then they'll go do said thing. So if for some reason enough people made it so that checking to make sure gear was melded properly was optimal guess what is most likely going to happen? Why? Cause people tend to want to rather be like a sheep and turn their brain off.

[Midareyukki]

Depends. Did you like 13 or X-2? I might judge a little bit then even though you're a real chill dude.

I like them. Generally speaking.

I liked FNC, I'm the kind of guy who feels Type-0 was dropped too quickly and damned too harshly. I liked 13 and its world. I understand why people had such an issue with the game's story being mostly told in Analects and the linearity of the gameplay. But to me, those were fine. The linearity was justified, even if a little overdone: not only are they running away all the time in Cocoon, they're also in a technological world thar likely doesn't have that many open-ended paths when security is that tight. And as for the plot, all you need to know is told to you, and you can sort of tell what some stuff is through context. Consider this: if I liked the FF12 Bestiary, the Analects really didn't bother me. It's part of why I like Bozja and the Variant Dungeon. You go through the adventure yourself, but if you want more, you can look it up.

As for 10-2... Even if it is too goofy and causes whiplash, I kinda didn't really mind it? I understood why they went for that sort of mood, even if I prefer 10 itself over the sequel. I know so much is different from 10, but it just didn't feel like it NEEDED to be. 10 was gloomy and mournful, whereas in 10-2 the reasons for why that was are gone, and people clearly became more indulgent. So it made sense, since breaking 10's depresso-espresso spiral was 10's whole point. But I did mind one thing: not all of the humour was my taste, especially the really cringeworthy dialogue. Even if I enjoyed the gameplay and the story was alright, the writing was... disasterrific. Besides that, I like how some stuff are explored from the past game too, especially some Ronso who obviously don't like the Guado after Seymour Thanosed them. I need to replay it, actually. I only learned that you can end up making Garik kill all the Ronso in these forums ^^; I never saw that.

i thought garik would just ignore me getting stuff wrong lol... What? :| That happens in FF14 all the time, don't @ me!

Also helps that I liked Koda Kumi as a kid xD

You mean as far as a small handful of contrarian zealots are concerned.

o,o;; FF12 isn't that popular in the community, by far. A lot of people criticised it back in the day, from its "boring and political" tone to Vaan being annoying. A meme in 2010 was that they thought 12 was the worst until 13 came out.

[Renalt]

See this is why I like talking to you. You can give your view in a completely reasonable way. I may not agree with the points but I understand it now why you would like it.

[VictorSpoils]

o,o;; FF12 isn't that popular in the community, by far. A lot of people criticised it back in the day, from its "boring and political" tone to Vaan being annoying. A meme in 2010 was that they thought 12 was the worst until 13 came out.

It's a pretty big community and 12 is one of the most popular ones. The fault would be on these hypothetical people for finding quality boring and an easygoing character annoying.