Zepla: Endwalker is the Worst FFXIV Expansion I have played

[Renathras]

Remind me in 95 pages has a single person who disagrees with zepla actually refuted her points with evidence or is insulting the streamer/ i feel your reasons are wrong because……….all GCBTW can muster

Largely this:

I think the issue is there would first need to be points to refute. I just see a bunch of subjective opinions that anyone can freely agree or disagree with alongside claims that are likewise questionable. For example, comments like "it's the same stuff over and over" or "we need an exploration zone" - people can just as easily enjoy exactly what the "same stuff" is and dislike exploration zones. There's nothing to "refute" there, just our own personal likes and dislikes.

There's a lot of subjective stuff or anecdotal stuff. "My FC is pretty dead", "Weird, because mine has been super active". And it's highly dependent on where a person is in the game and what things they find interesting. For example, I've spent this expansion shoring up some old Relics I hadn't finished, leveling other Jobs I hadn't before, and going through every zone in the game doing sidequests. Some other people don't care about those things at all. Some are still working on Bozja duel achievements. So this is very much a "your experience will vary" thing that's hard to pin down in an argument without specifics to quantify.

How do you want people to refute opinion and anecdote? "I disagree" and "My personal experience is different"?

It also isn't helpful that we don't have a condensed list of her arguments. So going to watch the video again here and try to make a list...

...and here's the list and my take on the points I felt mentioning:

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Preface) She says she wanted to make the video a while ago but got burnt out and felt she should take a break and might be unfairly negative. Coming back, she felt refreshed, was doing hunt trains, glams, raiding, looking forward to Dawntrail, the fanfest, and overall is back in love with the game, but she feels some of her prior concerns had merit

1) People feel "so little pressure to log in". Whether this is a negative or not is HIGHLY subjective. But she notes people are raidlogging and such. Granted, this was a complaint people had back in ShB. And SB. And HW. I'm old enough to remember people complaining about it in every expansion to date. We don't have data to substantiate whether this is worse than normal or not.

2) There's still one more patch, but we know what's in it, more or less, as the pattern is very predictable. But...this has been true since they cemented the patch cycle and content in ShB, and arguably SB. It's something people like Mr Happy have PRAISED because unlike other MMOs like WoW where you might have a patch in 3 months or 9 months, with FFXIV, you're guaranteed a pretty steady introduction of content over time and you can plan things like vacation time from work or whatnot around it if you wish to do so most of the time. This is one of those highly subjective things where some people in life like schedules and predictability while others prefer things being unpredictable and exciting.

2b) Ignoring that part, though, one could say her point here is half that but also half that she doesn't see that there will be anything in this patch to really change the current situation. That's a fair concern, though it still runs into the problem of many people actually like that about FFXIV.

3) She says she's not doomsaying, she just is concerned and worried about less engagement from people she personally knows. She notes this could be anecdotal and just people that she knows. She asked her followers how they felt, and a lot of them said they felt it as "underwelming...lackluster...just not interesting". Not that it was terrible or sucks, more "it's fine" but "I don't really care that much"/"it's...okay". These are all, I should note, VERY subjective statements, from an unscientific sample, and they seem to be less negative as they are "slightly positive". Kind of like a decent meal; does the job, it's good, but nothing to write home about or something you will necessarily go out of your way to bump other things in your life to do. Zepla's concern here is that the game needs to wow people, and that just okay isn't good enough. This is...again, subjective. Understandable, but still subjective.

4) She says it's "wonderful" that FFXIV doesn't pressure people to log in and never has, and that this is good since there are other great games coming out people want to play.

5) She says there haven't really been things to get people to log in together and do. I think from this she means community stuff like Ishgard Restoration or Eureka/Bozja. Of course, I'm old enough to remember when players complained about literally every one of those things being added to the game, despite me personally liking them. So as much as I genuinely AGREE WITH HER on this point, in the interest of fairness, I have to point out it's also subjective opinion that not everyone agrees with, too. Though I, personally, agree.

6) She says it's normal for, after a patch has been out for a while, people to get burnt out and bored; and after an expansion for a while, same thing. What she's more concerned about is the rate is faster. Instead of a few weeks or months, she's worried that after a week or two of a new patch, people drop off. She does say if people are enjoying it, she's happy for them, but it's an MMO and she feels people need to be "excited" for new releases.

7) She keeps hearing from people they're burnt out, but she doesn't think that's the right word. Her take is it's not people burnt out from just overworking themselves for too long, but rather there's not enough to keep their interest.

8) She kind of snarks about the "go play other games", but then says she's glad it's a thing, but also she things there are two ends of the spectrum (WoW forcing people to be on all the time, FFXIV the far end of so little pressure), and she thinks FFXIV needs to be more towards the center where people have a reason to play the game. Her concern is people will just go play other games and then not come back if there's nothing they need to do for years and if they can do the content any time they want between now and years from now. She feels (referencing Ian from WoW) that people need to be incentivized to play the game. That people shouldn't feel they have to log in, but rather that they should want to log in with things to do, while not falling behind if they don't. I honestly agree with her on this, though it's a very tough needle to thread. She played part of an interview with Ian where he talked about how WoD was so bad because there was nothing to do other than raid logging. Zepla talks about EW reminding her a lot of WoD...though not as bad. She's just sensing similar vibes. Again, I kind of agree with her on this, so there's little to ague about. She specifically mentions lack of an Exploration Zone here, that it's not even so much the specific things (FATEs, collectables) so much as the feel of being there with tons of other peoples, which is what an MMO is about; which is the same thing I've been saying for months now, so I don't see any reason to disagree with...my own opinion.

9) Contrasted to this, she mentions that the stuff they're adding instead (Orthos, Criterion), it's pre-made groups and isn't a big zone with lots of people. She mentions not even being able to show off mounts, but that's not a super important detail (people might catch on that and say "Well, they could just let people mount in Radz like they did in Iddly/Rhalgar's"). What she means is that there's not places you can meet new people randomly when all the content is pre-made que type content or content where you can't hang out with these people for hours doing random stuff.

10) She mentions how past Relics have felt like "a journey" that is casual content but "shows you have dedication and you have patience" to "get a cool weapon that they can be proud of" having worked for, but this is the first expansion people kind of haven't cared about or talked about. She doesn't understand it in particular since there are already tomestone weapons with 8 man normals. (Granted, those are time gated, but...) Specifically that it gives people something to do between patches. This is really more of (9), and I obviously agree with that, so... She mentions that in late SB, people got mad at Yoshi P when they asked during a content drought what to do and he said "Just get another relic weapon", but in retrospect, that that was a good thing. (This does support the position of "people complained about things in the past they're now complaining about not having", though). She says no one she knows is going after the Relics...I disagree with that. It seems a bit hyperbolic, but more to the point, EVERYONE I see has the Relic weapon. The only people who don't are raiders. The problem is more that it's TOO accessible so we get the Oprah meme.

11) She says she has never been more disappointed with the MSQ than she has been with EW patches. She says she loved EW's base MSQ. But she thought the first few patches (6.1, 6.2) she thought were setting up for something...but then nothing came. She says looking back, she thinks she was just making excuses - I disagree with that. It's common for the X.1/2 patches to be kind of slow and set up. So that's not "excuses". But I agree on the merits that it's been pretty lacking so far. She complains about the Trial series not being a side quest, so having less content, and that it's "way less interesting". I kind of disagree with that. I think that the arc has been interesting enough, my problem is more that it's too...hurried? Rushed? Like we could have had a good chunk of expansion or arc about "war with the Thirteenth", yet we just kind of get a few skirmishes and we all know it'll PROBABLY all resolve in 6.5 and have no effect o0n the 7.0+ story. She says it feels like some artificial/forced FF4 story beats, and even are telling us who the next boss is going to be because "they know that we know", which isn't common (for example, 5.3 didn't tell us who we were going to be fighting for obvious reasons). Contrasting with either the 5.X MSQ or the Sorrows of Wyrlit (which made her cry), she feels this is "the lazy way out". She does like the "slice of life" stuff and feels that Zero is a good character that's been pretty well received (the forums here clearly disagree with that opinion), and she enjoyed the "getting to chill out with the Scions" moment and is looking forward to that in DT (something else this forum disagrees with)...but felt the MSQ was just the lazy way out overall and has been lacking in the meaty story-ness of it aside from those things she enjoyed.

12) Island Sanctuary - "I literally do not know a single person that is excited and happy with how Island Sanctuary turned out". I've had these exact same complaints, but in summary, she says she thought it would be a nice relaxing time, but instead, it's a work scheduling simulator. There's no real reason to go to anyone's, making it worse than even Garrisons. It's mostly grind to max level then run spreadsheets once per week until you get all the mounts and costumes, then there's no reason to bother with it. She said the best thing they did was give outdoor furnishings - "but we have housing...well, not everyone does...". I personally agree with all that, so...

13) She says the Pandaemonium raids and their story was really good. Even better than the MSQ. This is something else I agree with, though it is subjective. She liked the Eden story better (I didn't), but overall she seems to have been happy with them.

14) "We could talk about the 2 minute meta all day but..."; I think this is the single most universal complaint in EW. While there are a few people that try to defend it, the single closest thing to "literally (almost) everyone agrees" is probably that players overall seem to dislike the 2 min meta. "It's a whole can of worms. And it's not going away...any time soon."

15) The new deep dungeon "is okay...", but you can't use it for leveling, which is where she says the replayability of these things comes from. She also felt that there wasn't anything really "fresh and new" added. She wanted a "better, more involved progression system". I do agree with her OVERALL that it's missed the mark, but I'm not quite sure I agree that it needed to shake things up A LOT (HoH basically copied PotD's homework and was still successful), but I do feel the decision not to let people level with it (WHY NOT?!) was a bad call, and I once again am annoyed they won't let us random que passed floor 30, meaning if you aren't soloing or don't have a group to dedicate 40-60 minutes at a time to playing with on a schedule (like a raid group), you can't do it, which limits the content's accessibility to players who don't have statics/raid teams. That the rewards aren't really there. But "in terms of content that has come out...Deep Dungeon is all right. It's one of the better ones."

16) Criterion she thinks is tragic. In terms of the content, "everybody agrees" that it's good, well designed, innovative, fresh, a breath of fresh air (all quotes). But "it takes half measures with innovation" and is "afraid to risk too much; change up the forumula too much". That they didn't have it drop things, have different things, break with the ilevel stuff. And if they're not going to drop gear rewards, it should be tied to literally anything else, even relic progress. That there's no reward other than a mount, which you can buy with gil. She says she's never seen new content die so fast ("less than a week"), which she seems to feel is tragic since she thinks the content itself is good. (She says all her friend were done and cleared all paths "without even trying", which I find issue with since I've seen tons of people have to reference guides to get them all unlocked, but...I agree with her on the overall merits.)

17) PvP she likes the changes of, but she thinks the rewards "you can do in a week or two if you really try", and she only finds ranked fun not casual. This I have a contest point with her over, since I suspect the vast majority of PvPing in this game is from people just casually doing Frontlines. She also attacks the notion that this game's PvP is bad and says it's defeatist for people to say that sort of thing.

18) She then attacks the community as being unable to take criticism. This I have a HUGE disagreement with. Well laid out criticism given in neutral tone tends to have a lot of agreement, it's insult or attack (which, ironically, she does here) on the community or devs, or low energy insulting the game rather than offering criticism, are what are poorly received, and that the latter can even prevent the former from being onboarding. Further, that this isn't anything to do with "this community" but is Human nature; "You catch more flies with honey" is a saying that exists for a reason - if you insult people, it doesn't matter how good your arguments are, they are FAR less likely to listen to you, even if they're pretty rational and fair-minded (the people who AREN'T rational and fair-minded are just going to close you off outright). It's one of those people everyone with even a basic level of social skills is aware of, but for some reason, a lot of people forget when they get in the moment, they do it, then are shocked when other people, also reacting in the moment, don't take their "criticism" to heart. It poisons the well of criticism and takes very mentally disciplined people to NOT react to. TO HER CREDIT, she tries to be nice about it (at the start), but it does fuel a lot of pushback and had she not said it, the overall critiques and video probably would have been taken better. She also does it in a specific way to try and preempt/poison the well of people disagreeing with her with the caricature they will just insist that she's demanding the game be too grindy. So I've a huge disagreement on this point, one I've voiced, so I won't contest it yet again here other than to say it really isn't true.

19) She doesn't think the game is dying and doesn't want to be a doomer. She feels the content is worse vs the usual of "usually pretty damn good". She doesn't have a realistic standard that content will never have sub drops. She is concerned about her friends and "a lot of people" saying they'll just come back in Dawntrail. She's worried maybe Yoshi P is being worked "too damn hard" by being a member of the board (he tried to get off and they wouldn't let him) and FF16 as well as FF14.

20) "This isn't black and white", she feels. That there's some answer somewhere in the middle. That people have to come up with their own reasons to log in, and with lots of other things, FFXIV needs to "fight a little harder" for people's time. Kind of makes me think of when I used to play Eve Online, a real sandbox MMO, where you had to come up with your own things to do since the game didn't really have a lot of scripted stuff for you, and she feels like that's not enough for FFXIV.

21) "DSR was probably the best experience I've ever had in gaming...the most fun I've ever had in a game, period. It was phenomenal." I don't do Ultimates, so can't speak to this one.

22) "The next part of this discussion is going to be the casual experience", and that's going to be her next video. She says some people say "Well, all this is because of the casuals/being done for the casuals!", and she's saying no, that thhe casual experience is being hollowed out just as much.

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OP and the forum negative posters: "See! Even ZEPLA says the game sucks and is the worst it's ever been and that she hated Endwalker!!!"

Now then, Snow, watch Peaks/Titan reply to this - since you say no one's done it - attacking my post length. THAT is why you don't get a lot of in-depth discussions and rebuttals like this. Because the heckler brigade will come in and accuse people of daring to write something lengthy to respond to a lengthy topic and a lengthy 40 min video. If you type out the transcript of that video, it'd be WAY longer than this post...

.

EDIT:

I also think this was really funny: https://youtu.be/inp7MTOAwro?si=VSr8OkziOv5j4JOT&t=2993

Reddit: "She never said that it was a bad expansion, just that it wasn't as good as the others in terms of reasons to log in."
Zepla: "Holy shit, what?! Oh my god, someone actually watched the video!"

Gee, funny how the negative posters here - who accuse everyone else of not watching the video - seemed to not have watched the video, either. They just saw "worst expansion" and thought Zepla was agreeing with them on it being a bad expansion. <_<

(inb4 "Well, no, we're just saying that she agrees with some of our points!", yeah yeah...clearly that isn't true of all the negative posts here, but believe the illusion if you like.)

Anyway, now there's a list of points to debate. Have at it. Though we really need to just copy the list (without my commentary, just the points themselves) and start a new thread if we're going to have any hope of sensible debate on the topic.

[Swordsman]

Damn, I've been gone for a month and the battle on these forums still goes on fiercer than ever.

You can tell she hit the mark because nobody is actually arguing against what she said, and is just engaging in personal attacks. You guys really can't take criticism towards XIV.

That's the FFXIV Official Forums for you: attack/debase people who criticize, in order to make them appear unreasonable. Dismissing or handwaving away criticism of FFXIV is a great pastime for diehard FF fans on these forums.

Except you provided nothing to the topic other then attack and insult a streamer and admit you only come to the forums to troll in another thread. You never posted anything about ideas or and feedback at all.

It's just better to use the ignore list when it comes down to this. There's no point in engaging with these types of people.

??

NGL, I think this guy might be a Gaius alt arguing from the opposite position just to keep the thread going.

[Nebelheim]

NGL, I think this guy might be a Gaius alt arguing from the opposite position just to keep the thread going.

There probably the only person i would agree that would possibly be a gaius/titanmen alt

[AlexiaD]

jesus christ

[ZephyrMenodora]

There probably the only person i would agree that would possibly be a gaius/titanmen alt

Same. I was tricked at first because it looks different from the standard fare, but so does the character in OP. But an August 2023 account who hasn't cared about MMOs since EverQuest and constantly posts in a drama-heavy fashion? Ding ding!

[ZephyrMenodora]

denying my individual personhood?

Sounds like something a Titanman alt - who works in his school's diversity office I think he said - would say lol.

[BRVV]

OP and the forum negative posters: "See! Even ZEPLA says the game sucks and is the worst it's ever been and that she hated Endwalker!!!"

Clearly you can quote that. Right? It's not something you made up, right? How many "in my opinion", "from my / Zepla's point of view" do you need? "The game sucks" is never objective. I expect some form of basic logic.

I am nobody. I don’t even exist. I’m just some troll’s alt account.

You are your own enemy.

Actually that’s because it is a bs troll post trying to drum up a stupid “Console Wars” type internet slap fight.

Getting called a troll = bad. Calling others trolls = good.

hit thing with axe

Not a troll post, just your opinion.


I read the first page of your post on the list of your most recent ones. There is 1 post that isn't an insult or a joke (the one about combo macros).

Sounds like something a Titanman alt - who works in his school's diversity office I think he said - would say lol.

But his crafters and gatherers are not at 90!

[Renathras]

jesus christ

OP and the forum negative posters: "See! Even ZEPLA says the game sucks and is the worst it's ever been and that she hated Endwalker!!!"

Now then, Snow, watch Peaks/Titan reply to this - since you say no one's done it - attacking my post length. THAT is why you don't get a lot of in-depth discussions and rebuttals like this. Because the heckler brigade will come in and accuse people of daring to write something lengthy to respond to a lengthy topic and a lengthy 40 min video. If you type out the transcript of that video, it'd be WAY longer than this post...

See?

Told ya.

You can't complain people aren't having a discussion on the topic when people do and immediately get attacked for having an actual lengthy discourse on the individual points.

Oh, and note my actual discussion - what everyone says they want - gets 0 like while her grade school retort gets 9 (as of this posting, I expect it will get higher).

So you can't complain people are unwilling to discuss Zepla's points when they see this is how someone doing so gets treated.

[EZGIL]

yes, YES, bring your rage to bear



I wanna see 100 pages

[Jojoya]

Excellent job of proving the point he made toward the end. Let me quote that part for you.

Now then, Snow, watch Peaks/Titan reply to this - since you say no one's done it - attacking my post length. THAT is why you don't get a lot of in-depth discussions and rebuttals like this. Because the heckler brigade will come in and accuse people of daring to write something lengthy to respond to a lengthy topic and a lengthy 40 min video. If you type out the transcript of that video, it'd be WAY longer than this post...

.

I wanna see 100 pages

It's probably good for another 15 pages or so as people keep attacking each other while ignoring what was in the video.