Thread: So that 7.1 msq...

What I am most worried about with the whole "key" stuff and hints they've dropped so far, is 8.0 is going to be another "visit a new shard" patch when we still have plenty of map to uncover here in Eorzea. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved Shadowbringers and the new lands we got, but I don't want this to be a crutch they keep falling back to.

Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

What I am most worried about with the whole "key" stuff and hints they've dropped so far, is 8.0 is going to be another "visit a new shard" patch when we still have plenty of map to uncover here in Eorzea. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved Shadowbringers and the new lands we got, but I don't want this to be a crutch they keep falling back to.

They're also nearly out of shards. The First and Thirteenth have been covered(unless they want to do time skips showing their recovery), the Ninth is apparently a lifeless hellscape now that the remains of Alexandria have been grafted to the Source, and 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 12 have all been Rejoined.

So, we have 3, 11 and 14 left. There's patch 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0.

Originally Posted by BigSpenDaBeast

It's not really a crutch, the shards are legitimate places in the FFXIV universe. They are in essence unexplored areas of the map.

It's completely lazy, when we have plenty of places in Eorzea to still discover.

Originally Posted by LisseyCrowe

Definitely my biggest worry as well.

It's weird, I remember thinking at some point how cool it would be to visit the other shards, maybe even all of them. But the more it sat with me the less I desired it: it feels like giving up on the world our characters (both MC and Scions) are from. I want to see more of The Source, how its future is shaping up, its towns/groups/cultures adapting, its secrets discovered, etc. The idea of simply picking up some key and using it to just reset the world state every expansion to visit a new shard sounds incredibly dull to me. I'm sure they could do something cool with it but I can't shake this fear that if they do go down that route it's essentially akin to soft retiring a show and just slapping filler seasons until it's no longer profitable.

Endwalker and on has been them trying to speedrun as much of the established lore as they could for no apparent reason. 6.0 rushed through Garlemald, Sharlayan, Thavnair, the moon, and even the past while also establishing that the other civilizations in the universe had either wiped themselves out or were extinguished by Meteion. The MSQ in 6.1 and on rushed through the Bounty and 13th while also going through various other locations in the form of dungeons(variants and normal) and killing everything related to the Twelve. With 7.0 having now crossed off two more continents and another shard, we're left with Ilsabard's cloud donut, Meracydia, Koshu, and the 3 remaining shards assuming we don't just bounce from one to the next during the rest of the patch cycle. It's been such a colossal waste of potential and only makes it harder for them going forward, so I don't get why it happened.