All The Doom Threads Are Strange To Me

[Erzaa]

There's nothing equivalent to large group of players with a difficulty hovering somewhere between casual and extreme. Endwalker came with plenty of content, but it is targeted to casual or high-end, and in different numbers. There's nothing in Endwalker for players who want to play with large groups and have a difficulty above casual and with good recovery, but not to the level of mechanics of extremes.

Alright, I see your point. But how many of those players would've preferred to do that content fewer times to get their reward, and not have to endlessly grind for months?

Because, I did Eureka and Bozja long after it relevant content. And, while on weekends during peak hours, there's usually people there, I can tell you numerous times I went in, and it was empty, I was alone, or maybe one other person. I ended up soloing most of it, and even had to wait for a weekend to do the raids.

That kind of content will either die as soon as players get everything they want out of it, leaving newer players without the means to do it, which makes the grind even harder and longer, or make it an infinite grind and then everyone complains that it's too long.

I can see the value of having it, even if I personally don't enjoy it, but it is a double edged sword. You can solo most FATEs and CEs in Bozja, but how would you solo the raids?

Meanwhile, Variant can be solo'ed by newer players who are late to the party, especially players like me who haven't an interest in high-end raiding, as can Deep Dungeons, even if farming aetherpool will take a bit longer alone, and they still provide a perfect level of difficulty, at least at first. And by the time you're used to the fights, know them and they're a snoozefest, you're already close to finishing them, that it doesn't seem like a drag.

[Saraide]

All the positive threads are strange to me because they somehow can never stand on their own, they always have to involve responding to the complainers.

[Jeeqbit]

All The Doom Threads Are Strange To Me

I know, right? They've been at it for years and the game has just grown in spite of them.

it just doesn't seem like a reasonable view of what is going on.

Statistics are the most objective thing we can look at and Lucky Bancho's active character stat is higher than in other expansions. That doesn't mean there isn't some sort of "doom" slowly materialising, but the stats aren't reflecting it yet and would most likely take a lot of time to do so because of the abundance of sprouts, and returners from the pool of 30 million adventurers.

Is this game perfect? No, of course not. But is it a grind-fest like WOW, where you literally can't stop playing if you want to stay relevant? No, and thank God for that.

It is refreshing when quests don't ask you to kill hundreds of enemies just to progress. That is what gets really tedious for me in other games. Traveling is tedious as well and we can just /teleport.

People claim the game has no content. I find that to be fundamentally untrue. I have been playing since the beta for 2.0, and I haven't done everything there is to do. Not on my main, and not on any of my alts. There may not be content you are interested in, but there is plenty of content.

This is so true.

People claim Endwalker, specifically, was limp on content.

There were people claiming that in prior expansions too (always saw claims Stormblood or Shadowbringers lacked content), but it seems more people have felt this is the case than in any prior expansion due to the lack of a field area.

I could agree that non-story content was somewhat lacking. Didn't bother me much because I play for the story and RP, not high end raiding, but to each their own.

Endwalker has objectively had more high-end raid content than in any other expansion, by far. 2 ultimates, 12 savages, 3 criterions, 7 extremes, a deep dungeon with 70 high-end floors. That is a lot. Bonus if you are into blue mage raiding because you can do the level 80 ones now.

People claim (and this was a weird one) that the keynote made them not want to play because it didn't reveal the story for Dawntrail.

It did reveal a lot, they just didn't put the pieces together.

We are likely going to explore why the city of gold is such a rumor instead of just a fact, which takes us to a place of illusion that powers itself by sapping up the aether in the north.

the team has never exactly been prone to spoiling storybeats

Not true, actually. They do spoil the next expansion's story, but only enough to get you excited. They save aspects of it so you can still enjoy it and be surprised. For example, they told us that in Shadowbringers you would learn the story of the "Warrior of Darkness" and go from area to area restoring darkness. It was pretty obvious, given that we have 5 dungeons and 3 trials, that we would restore the darkness by defeating dungeon bosses. So it virtually spoiled the whole thing. Then the launch trailer spoiled even more of it. But I still enjoyed it and there were still nuances that weren't spoiled and things like about Hades and the tempest weren't spoiled.

People claim that this is going to be a content-less 'anime island beach episode'

This is clearly not true. You can direct anyone to the Dawntrail media website to see screenshots of deserts and lands of technology and mountains.

[Banriikku]

Just to clarify certain "arguments" here:
Island Sanctuary was advertised as a chill side game-mode without pressure, in which you could use youre minions to chill.
Truth: It's a time gated chart-simulator with a lesser version of housing that needs 5 to 10 minutes A WEEK attention but you can "place" youre minions.

Criterion are advertised as "Random Dungeons" with diffrent paths and rewards and replay value.
Truth: A Series of short dungeons with diffrent rewards but only once and without any replay value.

Hildibrand is the only thing we got as advetised. But that kind of story and humor is an "acquired taste".

Deep Dungeon was advertised as the same as the other 2.
Truth: The Exp booster that the others have is gone and the reward is mostly RNG or tedious or in some cases both of the formentioned. Also after the first clear there is STILL no reason to replay it and for that reason falls under the "once done - gone" categorie. The other 2 have the value of "you can level jobs there" in the new one there is no need because all other options are easier, faster, do not need unlock if you follow the msq or any other measures of prep work worth mentioning.

EW is the "once done - gone" xpac. Grind is not bad - there is fun working towards something grind and chinese/korea "you will suffer (The Only Thing They Fear Is You starts playing) grind.

[Supersnow845]

Do people forget that Bozja added like what 45? Or so alliance raid quality bosses plus a side progression system deeper than anything 14 has ever offered in the main combat system

Like I’m genuinely confused when someone goes “I despised Bozja it had nothing I liked but I’m also excited for the next alliance raid”, what do you even like doing in an alliance raid in that case……..gposing in the Boses arena or something

Bozja gave us more bosses than all of the 3 variant dungeons put together AND an entire nother alliance raid series on top of that that had an alliance raid quality story, I think it’s hard to argue on the quality of Bozja even if you don’t like fate grinding

[Erzaa]

Do people forget that Bozja added like what 45? Or so alliance raid quality bosses

Like I’m genuinely confused when someone goes “I despised Bozja it had nothing I liked but I’m also excited for the next alliance raid”, what do you even like doing in an alliance raid in that case……..gposing in the Boses arena or something

Bozja gave us more bosses than all of the 3 variant dungeons put together AND an entire nother alliance raid series on top of that that had an alliance raid quality story, I think it’s hard to argue on the quality of Bozja even if you don’t like fate grinding

What 45 Alliance Raid bosses were added exactly? The raids were fun, I'll give you that, but Notorious Monsters are not fun past the third time. It's just a FATE with a stronger monster. That's it. But that's the same for any piece of content, what raid is still fun for the upteenth time? Even the best Alliance Raid in the game, Nier, becomes stale and boring, running it 40 odd times to get that one mage dress.

Perhaps you're into, do FATE 60 times and CE 30 times for those books, axles, crystals or whatever silly thing, but I wasn't. It was a drag, I hated every second of it. But I did it, and I didn't complain on the forums about, why must I do this?

[Supersnow845]

What 45 Alliance Raid bosses were added exactly? The raids were fun, I'll give you that, but Notorious Monsters are not fun past the third time. It's just a FATE with a stronger monster. That's it. But that's the same for any piece of content, what raid is still fun for the upteenth time? Even the best Alliance Raid in the game, Nier, becomes stale and boring, running it 40 odd times to get that one mage dress.

Every critical engagement is at the quality of an alliance raid boss

So you have

-30 unique critical engagements
-3(4) Boses from castrum (I won’t include Lyon as a seperate boss)(if the two first bosses count separately is debatable)
-4(6) bosses from DRN (dahu and ghost are debatable)
-4(5) Boses from dal (again debatable on the first split boss)

So 41 at the bottom end, 45 at the top end, I’m not even discussing fates here, I think people underestimate the complexity of bozja’s fates but I’m intentionally omitting them to prove a point, an alliance raid has 12 Boses, so Bozja functionally gave us 3.5 whole extra alliance raids, I cannot overstate how much extra casual content of undeniable quality (since a lot of it is modelled off the universally beloved ivalice) that is

[Erzaa]

Every critical engagement is at the quality of an alliance raid boss

So you have

-30 unique critical engagements
-3(4) Boses from castrum (I won’t include Lyon as a seperate boss)(if the two first bosses count separately is debatable)
-4(6) bosses from DRN (dahu and ghost are debatable)
-4(5) Boses from dal (again debatable on the first split boss)

So 41 at the bottom end, 45 at the top end, I’m not even discussing fates here, I think people underestimate the complexity of bozja’s fates but I’m intentionally omitting them to prove a point, an alliance raid has 12 Boses, so Bozja functionally gave us 3.5 whole extra alliance raids, I cannot overstate how much extra casual content of undeniable quality (since a lot of it is modelled off the universally beloved ivalice) that is

Which you're going to do, 180 FATEs and 90 CEs, in repetition, over and over and over, to collect those silly items for what's essentially a glamour item. You've seen them once, you've seen them twice, you've seen them 20 times. And then what? Just sit there and pray for this hell to be over.

And Variant dungeons aren't that different. They're super fun the first few times, even seeing the minor mechanic changes here and there on separate paths, but then you still need to repeat them over and over and over if you plan on getting all the rewards. Getting all 12 paths isn't even enough to get enough currency to buy all rewards.

When did repeating old content ad nauseum become new quality content?

[Supersnow845]

Which you're going to do, 180 FATEs and 90 CEs, in repetition, over and over and over, to collect those silly items for what's essentially a glamour item. You've seen them once, you've seen them twice, you've seen them 20 times. And then what? Just sit there and pray for this hell to be over.

I mean I don’t see how repetition of something makes the inherent quality of said thing any worse, hell a good chunk of arguments arguing about the content on here usually focus on “well have you done this random achievement that amounts to a meaningless grind”

Hell you can make the argument the core alliance series is pointless, what does myths actually give you in the long run, all content is inherently optional so I’m not sure why that’s an argument one way or the other

The design of the relic steps is entirely external the argument of the quality of the content Bozja added as is variant, this isn’t about repetition of said content, this is about entirely unique content Bozja added