Dark Ages of the game - My opinion on the state of the game

[Rizlee]

Hi guys, since FF14 is going through its lowest point (i call the Dark Ages) in terms of new content, stale jobs, story etc. there has been many who are sharing their thoughts on the game and I wanted to provide my honest opinion about the state of the game pre patch 7.3.

Story -
Regarding story, the arcadion series was really good, alliance raid story has yet to be explored in details however the introduction was pretty good although I am not a fan of fighting hologram enemies.

The MSQ story was initially fun and exciting pre-Heritage Found arc, ever since the train scene and Smile OST it went to bad real fast and felt all over the place and rushed. I dont like it when they use random robots fighting people in the source, and Koana throwing his life for a cow, felt watever. The story could have been more fleshed out and done properly, the reason why I think a lot of ppl found it boring and bad. Wuk Lamat isn't that bad of a character personality when compared with Lyse. Post 7.2 the msq is somewhat good, and I think going 7.3 onwards it might pick up again with the Azem chalice mysteries.

My personal take on story is, its decent and good enough for the plot to continue although very low effort, I know the community as a whole is on outrage calling it a bad story but it has some highs when u look deeper into it, I hope the devs stick with the same writers it might turn out good eventually. I also dont think Sphene belongs in the WoL's team, she makes a great NPC and should stay like that, as an occasional guest appearance. WoL badly needs a rival of equal strength like Zenos, and more powerful mysterious villains. Heck maybe even turn Wuk Lamat into a villain at this point, the MSQ still has great potential. (I dont get it why ppl hate on Wuk Lamat so much, she really isn't that bad of a personality, there has been worse personalities in the game and our WoL has been taking the spotlight since ARR its good they are trying new things with the story)

[Hallarem]

While I think the WoL couldn't solo armies of aether users, I think we need a villain that is far more than a "big strong anime bad guy". We need an organization, we need politics back. Strife between countries and areas and the WoL stuck in between them helping people. You can't muscle your way through politics, because the factions both tend to have a leg to stand on.

But I feel like if they let Dawntrails writers return, we will have similar situations like the cooking task. They will pair up the obvious good guys with the obvious bad guys, so it's a stale "good vs evil" situation. Without one side hearing the other, until it's time for a hamfisted flashback instead of sorting it in dialogue. Remember the Varis meeting on the battlefront with the Eorzean leaders? Yeah stuff like that. Dawntrail reduced world politics that were ALREADY BUILT INTO GAME into 5 minute skypecalls to call a dragon army from Thavnair for a impromptu alliance. Vrtra is a dumb leader for accepting before checking things out for himself.

[Rizlee]

While I think the WoL couldn't solo armies of aether users, I think we need a villain that is far more than a "big strong anime bad guy". We need an organization, we need politics back. Strife between countries and areas and the WoL stuck in between them helping people. You can't muscle your way through politics, because the factions both tend to have a leg to stand on.

But I feel like if they let Dawntrails writers return, we will have similar situations like the cooking task. They will pair up the obvious good guys with the obvious bad guys, so it's a stale "good vs evil" situation. Without one side hearing the other, until it's time for a hamfisted flashback instead of sorting it in dialogue. Remember the Varis meeting on the battlefront with the Eorzean leaders? Yeah stuff like that. Dawntrail reduced world politics that were ALREADY BUILT INTO GAME into 5 minute skypecalls to call a dragon army from Thavnair for a impromptu alliance. Vrtra is a dumb leader for accepting before checking things out for himself.

if you think about it then it does make sense when they have access to aetheryte teleportation, dragons being able to fly (midgardsormr literally flying through space to reach eorzea from a different planet), and vrtra having so much trust on the WoL and the scions from endwalker journeys, the only way they can have the ARR situations is if they strip all these off from the story, such as by making WoL go to another dimension like Shbringers, but thats not the case so u cant really complain about it

[TaleraRistain]

if you think about it then it does make sense when they have access to aetheryte teleportation, dragons being able to fly (midgardsormr literally flying through space to reach eorzea from a different planet), and vrtra having so much trust on the WoL and the scions from endwalker journeys, the only way they can have the ARR situations is if they strip all these off from the story, such as by making WoL go to another dimension like Shbringers, but thats not the case so u cant really complain about it

Vrtra does trust the WoL and the Scions but he's also been displayed as a responsible leader and he would be remiss if he didn't go investigate personally and confirm the full details of the agreement.

[Volgia]

We need an organization

An organization? An organization 13 perhaps?

[All_Nonsense]

While I think the WoL couldn't solo armies of aether users

They might <.< I have no doubts in my mind that at this point the WoL could quite literally destroy the world with relative ease. And are powerful to the point that conquering the world is almost a trivial matter, especially considering the powers we wield. Such is the consequence of the infinite power scaling that's plagued gaming for the past 20 years. In Eorzea proper, you can walk through at lvl 100 and 1-shot everything but the most elite threats (you have to hit them twice, but it's clear that one hit would grievously wound them and in a real world scenario you're just getting their inevitable death over with by hitting them a second time so you can collect your hunt currency), and you can easily go head-to-head with Bahamut themselves without so much as breaking a sweat (unsyncing turn 13). The same Bahamut that brought the latest umbral calamity upon the source, and completely destroyed a large portion of the world as we knew it.

I think we need a villain that is far more than a "big strong anime bad guy". We need an organization, we need politics back. Strife between countries and areas and the WoL stuck in between them helping people. You can't muscle your way through politics, because the factions both tend to have a leg to stand on.

Truest thing that's ever been said. Promoting the writers into positions where they're not writing anymore was the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. Because now you have these far lower-quality, less skilled writers cooking up a shonen fanfic as an expansion and delivering it to us like it's a premium product. It's been nothing but hot garbage with horrid, glaring issues from start to finish. I think the people who actually read and internalized the story without relying on context and skipping have felt insulted the most by this. We don't just need a change in how conflict is approached, we need the entire writing team revamped, actually trained, or straight up replaced at this point.



EDIT: Actually, what I said about the WoL's power being one that could conquer the world and bring it to ruin? That thought was explored in the 6.55 Hildebrand quest around when you fought the trial. It was handled comedically, but you could quite literally say "yeah I could do it, I could rule the world" and it's played off in a funny way. Just thought that was interesting

[Rizlee]

Combat -
I like the 2 min meta as a DRK main. Initially in 7.0 DRK felt really bad since it was a very weak job. After the buffs and improvement to Dark Mind and Shadowstride being more reactive it started feeling better to play post 7.1.

The 2 min meta is braindead and very easy to execute, so I like doing that at the moment since it takes minimum effort to get the content done. Specially when you are playing DPS or Tank jobs, 2 min meta allows you to enjoy the content in a relaxed and chilled manner. When DRK became stronger I had a lot of fun playing the game casually spamming mentor and expert roulettes, while also having a lot of fun doing ultimates and savage raids. At this point I can say I got very used to doing the 2 min meta rotation on not only DRK, but SAM, RPR, BLM, NIN, and many other jobs. I am aware that there are still ppl who will disagree with me on the 2 min meta, they will say that its boring, makes jobs samey, generic etc. but if you think about it, we all just wanna get the content done and there are many ppl who work jobs or have a family IRL, and they want to just get home and log in without having the stress to actually think about what they are playing and how they will have to execute their specific rotation.

However with all that said, I would like to mention that there are still many improvements they can do to the jobs, like why is DRK's Carve and Spit have no Visual Effects other than a lame slash animation, they need to overhaul the visual effects of the job abilities and make them flashier, so that they are more fun to play and feels good to play. The removal of Plunge animation was bad, as it took away the lore/thematic identity of DRK. Same can be said for many other jobs, like Samurai's Kaiten. The devs really need to think about how they can make the game more fun and interesting in terms of feel, such as the graphics update on 3D model was a really good thing for the game they need to do the same for combat skills.

[CidHeiral]

I am aware that there are still ppl who will disagree with me on the 2 min meta, they will say that its boring, makes jobs samey, generic etc. but if you think about it, we all just wanna get the content done and there are many ppl who work jobs or have a family IRL, and they want to just get home and log in without having the stress to actually think about what they are playing and how they will have to execute their specific rotation.

This has to be bait.

[Rizlee]

This has to be bait.

the goal with my post is I want the devs to know that I want them to keep the 2 min meta and job rotations the way it currently is lol

[ChrysOCE]

Hi guys, since FF14 is going through its lowest point (i call the Dark Ages) in terms of new content, stale jobs, story etc. there has been many who are sharing their thoughts on the game and I wanted to provide my honest opinion about the state of the game pre patch 7.3.

Story -
Regarding story, the arcadion series was really good, alliance raid story has yet to be explored in details however the introduction was pretty good although I am not a fan of fighting hologram enemies.

The MSQ story was initially fun and exciting pre-Heritage Found arc, ever since the train scene and Smile OST it went to bad real fast and felt all over the place and rushed. I dont like it when they use random robots fighting people in the source, and Koana throwing his life for a cow, felt watever. The story could have been more fleshed out and done properly, the reason why I think a lot of ppl found it boring and bad. Wuk Lamat isn't that bad of a character personality when compared with Lyse. Post 7.2 the msq is somewhat good, and I think going 7.3 onwards it might pick up again with the Azem chalice mysteries.

My personal take on story is, its decent and good enough for the plot to continue although very low effort, I know the community as a whole is on outrage calling it a bad story but it has some highs when u look deeper into it, I hope the devs stick with the same writers it might turn out good eventually. I also dont think Sphene belongs in the WoL's team, she makes a great NPC and should stay like that, as an occasional guest appearance. WoL badly needs a rival of equal strength like Zenos, and more powerful mysterious villains. Heck maybe even turn Wuk Lamat into a villain at this point, the MSQ still has great potential. (I dont get it why ppl hate on Wuk Lamat so much, she really isn't that bad of a personality, there has been worse personalities in the game and our WoL has been taking the spotlight since ARR its good they are trying new things with the story)

Genuinely curious. What highs do you feel are in the MSQ? What was fun and exciting, pre-Heritage Found?

As for Wuk, what I don't get is how people compare her to Lyse. I don't recall, when going through the Stb MSQ "Talk to Lyse", "Talk to Lyse again", "Talk to Lyse yet gain", "Talk to Lyse yet again", multiple quests in a row...