Endwalker is my least favorite expansion yet

[Mithron]

ARR-SHB were fantastic, all of the Trials and Raids felt memorable and the mechanics were fun and interesting. But not EW. Every single EW Trial and Raid feels like a completely different team now works on the game and it's taken a giant step down in quality. The mechanics are not memorable or interesting, and almost none of them have any sense of uniqueness to them that all the others did. The creativity of this game's stellar mechanics have died, and it's sad to see.

I love this game, that's why I'm being critical on it. For the first and only time in my time with this game since I started it in 3.4 launch, I've found my self not actually having any desire to do the 24 man raid, extreme trials or savage raids. Never before have I felt this way. That's disappointing. It's not burn out, I never truly get burned out on this game, it's just the direction this game has taken and how far it has sunk away from the original design philosophies of ARR.

The EW conclusion to the Ascian arc was overwhelmingly disappointing for 10 years of build up to a random villain they made only recently with no real relevance to everything we've been doing. And don't even get me started on the two minute meta.

I did 6.3's MSQ and honestly haven't played since this entire patch cycle. Not even the Extreme trial or 24 man raid this time. I can't bring my self to log in and learn them, much less the Savage raids of 6.2.

I miss when FF14 was good.

[ZephyrMenodora]

EW is my favorite and I have more sub time since EW than any other expansion. Game is great. Different strokes for different folks.

[Thenightvortex]

Based, couldn’t agree more.

You should check out this thread, you’re definitely not alone in your dissent

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...y-in-Endwalker

[DPZ2]

My only question is why did it take you 4 months to make this post? Were you unsubbed from January through end of April?

[Boblawblah]

I suppose if you're only playing for trials and raids, that's fair. That's definitely not why I play, but I can respect your opinion.

[Mithron]

My only question is why did it take you 4 months to make this post? Were you unsubbed from January through end of April?

I'm still subbed because I want to support the idea of how good FF14 was and hope that it returns to it someday, and I don't want to lose my house obviously. I was hoping 6.3 was just a bad phase and 6.4 would hype me enough to get heavily back into the game but it didn't. Now I'm reading prelim patch notes and feeling such disappointment that honestly never happened before with this game.

I suppose if you're only playing for trials and raids, that's fair. That's definitely not why I play, but I can respect your opinion.

I play(ed) for a lot of reasons, Trials and Raids just happen to be my favorite content.

[Arkdra]

Naw, SB was way fuckin worse. Eureka alone puts sb in the dumpster tier but that wasn't the only thing that sucked about it.

[Jeeqbit]

ARR-SHB were fantastic, all of the Trials and Raids felt memorable and the mechanics were fun and interesting. But not EW. Every single EW Trial and Raid feels like a completely different team now works on the game and it's taken a giant step down in quality. The mechanics are not memorable or interesting, and almost none of them have any sense of uniqueness to them that all the others did. The creativity of this game's stellar mechanics have died, and it's sad to see.

Then how do you explain how awesome and unique Zodiark is? It's my favorite EW trial by far and one of my most favorite overall.

All the asteroid and memory stuff in Endsinger is neat. I think the mechanics in the others are really great too, just the aesthetic that I'm not really into. Barbaricca was well-received for example and I thought it was really good, just too green for me, like Rubicante is too much fire for me.

Even the leveling dungeons I have found really good too. I love the final Ktisis fight for example. It's well designed and people who do the mechanics wrong wipe. There is even something for the tanks who can wipe their group if they don't know what interrupt is and there are definitely a lot of tanks that don't know what interrupt is. The fights before it are good too, simply requiring you to learn what different head telegraphs mean.

The Tower of Zot fight's mechanics are fast-paced as well which is a change from a lot of fights.

I even find Lapis Manalis' mechanics quite punishing if you aren't paying attention. They give you Doom and kill you and other mechanics I have seen just kill DPS or healers leaving me to finish it.

And the raids are great too. I don't know how you can do the current savage raids and not think they are good, memorable and interesting. I know they are for me.

And what about the 24-person raids? Aglaia was probably one of the most well-received alliance raids in history, if not the most. The Rhalgr fight and the last fight are memorable! The others were interesting too, like Byregot's platform mechanics.

And don't even get me started on the two minute meta.

I think this must be where this is all really coming from, because almost nobody likes this or at best is neutral about it.

It's true that SE has hired new people over time (I have even seen the job adverts for fight designers that say to make a design similar in difficulty to current dungeons that would make a dungeon only last 20 minutes). The fights aren't worse, just different.

If the argument is they reuse mechanics like a lot of people bring up, they did this even in Heavensward.

[Rufalus]

I don't think it's getting worse, it's just getting stale because it's old and not evolving much. How many times can you be locked in a room with a small group of people, solving mechanics that amount to standing on the correct spot. It's a good game built for the PS3 generation. We're pushing up against limitations and running out of ways to redress stuff.

[Stormpeaks]

I love how it's always the ones that literally dont play the game or play the game amongst a million other games that will tell you how great EW is

its really telling