Heavensward the worst expansion

[Kaurhz]

But this right here is why HW can't be the worst expansion. Yeah it did a lot of shit wrong, but they were changing it, they tried to fix shit, and they did eventually fix shit.

Meanwhile in Endwalker,

Remember when they added Island Sanctuary, took no feedback on it, and let it rot, and are now abandoning it entirely?
Remember when they added V&C Dungeons, no one really did them they ignored all the feedback, and now its likely going to be the most dead content this game has ever seen, they'll even lie to us and call it wildly popular in interviews too.
Remember when they added Eureka Orthos, and it died out in a week because the first 30 floors are a slog and not even worth doing to level your alt jobs, and it universally became the most hated deep dungeon?

Like damn I miss when this game would take feedback on content and try to fix it if it wasn't right. Endwalker has just been releasing half baked systems and never even seeing if people even wanted them in the first place.

To be fair, a lot of the systems in HW were equally only improved and innovated on in later and subsequent expansions. It wasn't until Eureka Pyros until they actually managed to sufficiently iterate on large scale content, which was over more than an expansion later, for example. Over 2/3 of the expansion itself was a borderline trash experience for many players. No amount of late fixing still changes the overall perception of how bad many people found HW, now how bad it was for the game.

Scrip system? Wasn't even properly reflected on until Stormblood. A lot of people were raising many complaints with the red scrip system, even early on in the game. Yet, they did nothing for a very long time, and instead let this abysmal system fester for an entire expansion.

Specialist? - They still elected to try and ram an awful and mistakenly specialist system down your throat for an entire 2 expansions before they realized people still didn't like it. They knew people didn't like it, but they absolutely weren't bothering to look at why people didn't like it otherwise it would not have taken them so long to come up with the solution they did

Favors? - They determined that the best course of action was outright removing them from the game, essentially. - Same thing with Matron and Patron Diadem. If you think V&C was bad then you ought to experience the OG Diadems. Once again also so poor that they had to remove several times, before eventually permanently removing it and repurposing for Ishgard Restoration. The EM was a chance, within a chance, within another chance at getting a weapon. There was the chance you get it in the first place, on top of the chance it was actually for your class, and then a chance that it actually had favorable substats

Yes, they did listen and eventually fixed it, some systems in that same expansion had the courtesy of getting fixed in given course, however, many, many of them weren't even addressed in that expansion, and only got addressed in the subsequent ones. Some feedback they listened to, some they absolutely didn't. and much of the feedback was unironically deleting actual streams of content. It's all well and good saying "Well, they listened here, and they listened there, and some of it was improved in Stormblood" - But it doesn't change that of how was when sticking true to the Heavensward experience.

Some of the systems in Endwalker will be seeing this same treatment, e.g., "Lifestyle content" - Pretty sure they have already reflected on this to understand that they didn't nail a communal aspect to any degree. IMO, no amount of "Fixing" would ever make Island Sanctuary into something palpable. The very best they could do with that is enabling one player to help progress another player progress their island, e.g., gathering or tending to workshops.

I will just say that I think both EW, and HW are mutually the worst expansions, each for their own reasons. Yes, they took lessons in HW. However, no amount of lesson-ing is going to change the simple fact that it was a drab experience for the majority of it. Just equally as EW is a drab experience because it doesn't give you a reason to actively participate in the content. As I've said elsewhere, you can certainly like them for personal reasons, but that doesn't necessarily mean that either of them are actually good for the game relative to the community.

[TaleraRistain]

But this right here is why HW can't be the worst expansion. Yeah it did a lot of shit wrong, but they were changing it, they tried to fix shit, and they did eventually fix shit.

We are still in post-EW and a lot of problems in HW still existed in post-HW or originated there and didn't get fixed for some time later. You can't criticize EW response without including how long HW response took. And some things weren't fixed until SB or ShB.

[Asari5]

there is improvement... go into thaleia and admire the aesthetics. arent they beautiful? the effects in the fights and the backgrounds... amazing. peak dungeon mechanics there.

voice acting improved too... and its more, still not everything, but its at least more.

soundtracks... i guess there are averagely more bangers than back in arr?

gameplay... well lets skip that one

[ReynTime]

I'll take a janky "unbalanced" job system that isn't anywhere near as homogeneous and actually keeps some semblance of party utilities in non-tank jobs over the dull trash they've been striving for since Shadowbringers.
Not like the "unbalance" prevented raiders from clearing with the so called "not meta" comps anyway.

The whole era from ARR patches til the end of Stormblood was peak PvE in XIV for me. And no Endwalker apologist is going to change my mind, because I can play the game and I can tell what I miss.

[Jeeqbit]

There’s a video going around stating people wouldn’t tolerate the gameplay.

There are reasons to agree and disagree on that video.

The Bad

What made Heavensward bad was the gameplay was bloated, janky and full of useless or unreliable abilities.

For example, Dragoon had an ability which buffed the damage of a jump ability, but before that they would want to use all their other damage buff abilities including Blood for Blood, Battle Litany and cross-class things (maybe Raging Strikes and Monk's version as well I forget). Point is, pressing all those damage buffs is annoying.

Monk had an ability called Featherfoot, which increased Evasion so you could completely dodge attacks. Problem is, Monk is not a tank, so when would they ever need attacks to miss them?

Warrior had an ability they could only use when the enemy was at 20% health or lower with a long cooldown. Warrior had an ability that buffed physical defense (in an era of magic attacks) that amount to, what I recall, 7% real mitigation. Raw Intuition parried 100% of attacks from the front so only worked against physical attacks and it crit you if hit from behind. Paladin could block attacks with their short cooldown Sheltron, but could only block physical attacks, when Alexander was casting mostly magic attacks.

Everyone attacked the parry stat because nobody could argue it was useful against the main tank mechanic, tank busters. You were not going to stack parry for a CHANCE at mitigating a tank buster which may not even be possible if it's magic. For all the memes Tenacity gets now, at least it is reliable and consistent if you choose to stack it to help with tankbusters.

You see what I am getting at. We had so much useless stuff. And it was attacked and meme'd. So of course it all changed in response.

And yes, as the video says, we had less content because we didn't have a useful version of Bozja and Eureka (because Diadem was visited via airships), we didn't have Criterion, we didn't have Ultimates. We just had Extreme and Savage.

The Good

But the reason it wasn't as bad as it's being made out is because...

1. Relic grinds were actually grinds.
2. Relic grinds were social and had you party up to farm FATEs or farm Light.
3. The story and dungeon design got better and better, aesthetically speaking.
4. Wondrous Tails was social because it involved joining 9 parties in Party Finder. You couldn't just solo unsync extremes because they still needed a full party then.
5. Farming FATEs to level alt jobs was a social activity until Palace of the Dead destroyed the concept.
6. The extreme and savage raids were still awesome.
7. You could hang out at Idyllshire and show off the mounts you worked hard on farming the extremes.
8. Jobs, although full of useless and janky abilities, were more unique and made unique by many of those useless abilities that you could, maybe, find some positve way to use if you tried hard enough. Where they lacked basic abilities, finding ways to overcome that disadvantage was also a thing.

It was social which helped a lot, unlike our solo island sanctuary content, our solo variant dungeon runs, our duty support dungeon clears, our inability to hang out with our mounts at the newest city state. To be fair, in its place we have bicolor gemstone farming, blue mage spell learning, unreal weeklies and hunt trains, but half of those are one-offs in Endwalker rather than weeklies.

Only being able to block or parry physical attacks made those abilities unique compared to other mitigations, something many people praise Heavensward for, but again, they couldn't block magic so that was improved and now people say "homogenized!" Just like they are simoultaneously crying out for tank abilities to be unique whilst also saying that Dark Mind should be homogenized to be like rampart.

New gearing methods new end game things to do besides ultimates

So what about Criterion, which was new to this expansion?

[Rithy255]

How I view it:
HW was the most mixed expansion, it brought a lot of new things and experimented a lot with class design, which led to a lot of backlash for the systems/designs that people didn't enjoy, so there was "issues" but also a lot of high points.
EW was the most safe expansion, most content is middle of the road, expected, low experimentation (systems like VC dungeons were implemented poorly), obviously theirs some content people enjoyed such as Ultimate's, but most people don't really play that.

I think both fail in some ways, but they have two completely different issues, I don't even think EW or HW are bad expansions, It's just that EW fails to really feel different or feel like it adds much, in the sake of class design it felt like it took even more away then shadowbringers. While Heavensward was really unbalanced and unfun because it wasn't safe enough.

In a Ideal world I would want a expansion that's always having high moments and bringing new content but also balanced content/jobs. Personally I rather have more creativity then "stable balance" but that's just personal preference. A bit of both would be ideal but that's a hard ask.

[Vrankyl]

This may be a biased nostalgic view on things but you cannot deny that Heavensward was the only expansion that actually had a cohesive theme and a connected expansion of the OG continent. And while it had its edges, for me it was way and beyond anything we have right now in terms of battle and gameplay design.

The 8man raids actually still felt like raids, alliance raids actually felt threatening at times compared to the tutorial/baby mode that Myths of the realm is, the triad battles were quite unique, the post MSQ story was also insanely strong with the final steps of faith, jobs still had somewhat of an identity with encounter variance to keep you on your toes and they weren't afraid to introduce new content despite pushing out 3 jobs AND hard mode dungeons at the same time. I think this was the developer's peak in terms of passion for this game imo.

This all very much massive nostalgia talking. I will grant you that it did handle the best expansion of Aldenard (Ala Mhigo was done dirty and no one can deny it) it is not the only one that had a cohesive theme. In fact I would argue that ShB had a far better cohesive theme.

Then for the raids.... Alexander is probably one of the worst examples to use just based on the sheer virtue that Gordias was a static killer and it wasn't until Creator that the raid really found its rhythm (though I won't lie. I am a brute justice simp. Voltron fight lets go). In fact, Faust was one of the leading causes of meaningful trash being removed because Faust was a roadblock and a half for no actual reason and nothing worthwhile other than access to the boss on killing him. As for the 24 Man raids you are forgetting that Void Ark was, and still is, a fairly luck luster raid. It's legit riding on the coat tails of how good Weeping City and Dun Scaith were. Which I will grant you, the last two raids of HW for 24 man were indeed fun and engaging and it does feel like 24 mans have gotten easier.

The 3 jobs... that was a mess. No scratch that, that was a disaster. The only job that was in a decent usable state at launch was DRK. It took AST forever to be in a good state during HW and MCH has been the ugly red headed step child ever since. Dropping down to only 2 jobs an expansion has probably been the best decision they ever made. The Devs nearly worked themselves to death during HW and you could feel it. Yeah we had more Dungeons... they all were pretty forgettable aside from the MSQ ones. The Hard Mode ones especially and I don't lament them missing.

[Hallideus]

There's plenty I loved about HW at the time and plenty I'd criticise. Like, the thing is now is you can go back and "play" the content but you don't experience it the same way you would have during HW so the only thing we can judge retroactively especially if you're a player who didn't experience it back then is just the content and story.

I thought it commendably tried to advance the systems already in the game, and try out new things. Yeah some things didn't work out too well I mean the whole "Turn BRD/MCH into casters" thing was absolute and utter gash but they tried, wasn't well received, was taken out in response.
On the other hand I thought that towards the end of the expansion Dark Knight was incredible. I genuinely miss the time when the game gave you stances and rotations for Enmity when tanking, and another for damage when not tanking.
Granted this was a time when the game still had TP, and I'm still so glad that eventually got taken out.

Was it "THE WORST EXPANSION EVER?" I don't think so, even at its worst and clunkiest it was a better time for me personally than I've had with EW. I admire many of the QoL improvements in EW but I feel many things make it greatly inferior to its predecessors. The class/job streamlining and the whole 2 minute meta is an absolute pox for a start, I feel overall we've gotten far less content and have had to wait longer FOR it than previous expansions. What content we have had just doesn't feel like it has that special element that makes content feel like it has longevity. Maybe we'll see more of the same, or an improvement on it or something totally new, maybe it will be worse to the point we look back on all this and think "Well, maybe it wasn't so bad". You never know. ANYTHING can happen for better or for worse and also... "worst" and "best" are entirely subjective, we could all lay down our feelings and there'll be someone who just doesn't agree. That doesn't mean someone's "wrong" ye?

[Atelier-Bagur]

We are still in post-EW and a lot of problems in HW still existed in post-HW or originated there and didn't get fixed for some time later. You can't criticize EW response without including how long HW response took. And some things weren't fixed until SB or ShB.

Diadem wasnt fixed until Shadowbringers. And I say fixed very loosely because its still relatively dead, since most of the skybuilder rewards are purchasable via the marketboard.

I know I never played this game till Shadowbringers but Ive heard stories from a few friends whom were veterans of this game since 1.0 and everytime they hear people overly praise Heavensward they roll their eyes at the statement since a lot of its content and features were implemented very poorly; even worse than what we say about EW features such as IS, Eureka Orthos and Variant/Criterion.

Heck it was the expansion where it almost KO'd the raiding scene and the job balance was extremely sloppy with many jobs such as Paladin and White Mage being non-viable in raiding.

Even parts of the story was underwhelming; like how they quickly concluded the whole aftermath of the Bloody Banquet; where everything pretty much returned to status-quo. No lasting repercussions from the Ul'dah side and the only person we lost from it for good was Minfillia.

[TaleraRistain]

Diadem wasnt fixed until Shadowbringers. And I say fixed very loosely because its still relatively dead, since most of the skybuilder rewards are purchasable via the marketboard.

I know I never played this game till Shadowbringers but Ive heard stories from a few friends whom were veterans of this game since 1.0 and everytime they hear people overly praise Heavensward they roll their eyes at the statement since a lot of its content and features were implemented very poorly; even worse than what we say about EW features such as IS, Eureka Orthos and Variant/Criterion.

Heck it was the expansion where it almost KO'd the raiding scene and the job balance was extremely sloppy with many jobs such as Paladin and White Mage being non-viable in raiding.

Even parts of the story was underwhelming; like how they quickly concluded the whole aftermath of the Bloody Banquet; where everything pretty much returned to status-quo. No lasting repercussions from the Ul'dah side and the only person we lost from it for good was Minfillia.

I've played since early 2014 and all of that is true. I don't hate HW. But many hold it up as the end-all be-all and crap on EW for it when HW had very similar issues.