Linear, linear, linear

[R041]

Wow that's a bold opinion. I felt that a lot of the changes that came with HW were good ones and that the expac was a huge step up from ARR overall.

It's been pretty divisive I think.. It has a lot of good things, but also made a lot of sweeping changes to core systems and completely gutted a lot of personal expression in favor of streamlining everything. When you compare Heavensward to Endwalker, they're night and day of personal expression and RPG elements. But the same can be said for ARR to Heavensward.

I personally think they should have stayed on the path that ARR was heading, and they could have made the QoL changes we wanted in doing so. It was their own fault for locking critical abilities behind other secondary classes, so instead of balancing things out or making that experience easier - They opted to just destroy systems and put nothing in their place. This was the start of culling player self-expression, build capabilities, and RPG systems.

We say those things were bad, but they were only bad because CBU:III didn't balance them correctly. That kinda goes along with a lot of stuff they do. And we often conflate bad systems with it actually just being bad balance, and bad engagement.

Also the flying everywhere is absolutely egregious. You go from walking everywhere, and sometimes it takes a long time. To flying everywhere and it literally taking LONGER than it ever did walking in ARR. Because the maps are way too large.

Edit: Also, if anyone tries to say ARR content was bad while only experiencing it using classes and systems from HW+, that's because for the past 7 years or so we've been basically playing Checkers on a Chess board with half chess pieces and the car from Monopoly. So of course it's going to feel bad.