Should I wait to renew my subscription?

[Luciel2]

A couple weeks ago I finished Shadowbringers and got a tiny bit (roughly 6-10 quests) into Endwalker and my sub was about to run out so I took the opportunity to avoid burnout. Recently been more in the mood to play again though but I've seen a lot of negative stuff about the current state of the game. My main question is: Are these issues prevelant enough that it would affect the stuff I would be doing? Said stuff being MSQ and side content outside of endgame difficult content.

[Jeeqbit]

No, it wouldn't affect the stuff you're doing. The "issues" are something that veteran players are concerned about (who have been playing non-stop for 11+ years, done all the content they want to do, and reached a point where the developers can't make new content at a pace they would like). New or returning players don't have this problem because there is a backlog of 11 years worth of content.

There was a negative reception to the latest MSQ, Dawntrail, but since you're still in Endwalker, you're fine. Endwalker's MSQ was received mostly positively.

I think the primary reason Dawntrail was received negatively was that the actual point/morale of Dawntrail's story wasn't communicated well (but was in an interview, where it made more sense). Whether you'll enjoy it yourself really depends on your mindset... if you go in just trying to enjoy it, absorb the feel, the beauty of the areas and make the most of it, you'll be fine. If you go in with a critical mindset... no doubt you'll find things to attack. That's true of life really.

There have been people attacking the "lack of difficulty" of content but this isn't really of concern to people who don't play a lot, because the chances are the content in recent expansions will leave them dead a lot (but other players will resurrect/push through it so it's alright).

There have also been people who attack the way class rotations are harder to mess up, but this isn't of concern if you just return to play occasionally, because they are made hard to mess up for the average player that just returns to the game once in a while or tries out a class they are unfamiliar with. The idea is they are being made more intuitive to figure out, such as by highlighting what to press and making it harder to overwrite/lose attacks.

The high-end raid content is pretty good, honestly. There's plenty of it as well at this point. But a lot of people avoid it since they don't want to invest that sort of time. A common argument has been "lack of stuff other than high-end raids", but as I said, there's a backlog of it for returning players. There is plenty of side stuff as well, it is just people not "counting" it because they don't choose to engage with it, so it depends whether you would "count" it as side content.

The actual content formula hasn't changed much... if you were happy with what you found content-wise in prior expansion, it's much the same sort of stuff in Endwalker and Dawntrail, except a different coat of paint.

[Luciel2]

Thanks a lot for being so informative, I've got nothing to worry about then.