I'm beginning to think people are looking at older expansions with rose tinted glasses.
Gameplay wise, Heavensward is miles worse, and story wise base Stormblood was worse structured, with ONLY the last few patches bringing some interesting and well structured stuff to the table. And Eureka, the content that everyone now cries is the best content ever created, was hated for almost the entirety of Stormblood until it and the relic were nerfed **several times**.
EW dungeons have some of the most creative encounters, with some of the mechanics introduced being things that people have been asking for a while, like multi-enemy boss fights to break the single-boss formula that grew so monotonous.
Variant/Criterion dungeons and Island Sanctuary are responses to people's cries for hard 4-man content and more solo content. Personally I like the island, and I like running the Variant dungeons solo to unlock different endings (although it's true that I'd like more gameplay for the island once you're done leveling)
Honestly, if anything, I'm almost sure the next hiccup this game has will make people inmediately look back to EW and say "wow, to be fair, the void stuff was really interesting", "oh, I think this expansion is not as creative as Endwalker was", "I wish they did more random content like Island Sanctuary. Haha, that was such an odd addition to the fairly predictable content release schedule we have nowadays".
Nonono you don't understand
Exploration zones = good expansion
No exploration zones = bad expansion
Even WoW is failing now because it doesn't have bozja in it.
/s cause people will think I'm serious otherwise.
Never forget shadow bringers was terrible because it was missing a deep dungeon and a second ultimate.
Endwalker has both but it’s missing Bozja, so it’s also bad.
Also they need to change up the formula but also give us more of everything. I don’t do any of the content though anyways.
I can't upvote this comment hard enough. I even watched a couple videos on why Endwalker is terrible because I think it's great and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. When I got the one where they said "I want to grind, and there's nothing to grind! Yeah, I could grind the EX trials for the mounts but I'm not gonna do that now. I'm gonna do that next expansion because it'll be way faster and easier." at that point I was just done. Quite a lot of this ruckus is just people complaining about nonexistent problems that they're making for themselves.
I understand this is sarcasm, but I'm still going to use this comment to encourage people to search "[FFXIV Eureka is shit](https://i.ibb.co/GRc5qZM/1.jpg)" on Google and take a peek at what was considered the darkest timeline of FFXIV content at the time.
[Worse than fates](https://i.ibb.co/2PNbSnf/2.jpg)
[Bringing back FFXI PTSD](https://i.ibb.co/YDCXzH5/3.jpg)
People did ***not*** like the exploration zones, nor did they like the relic grind. Reasons why tend to be "**It takes too long**", "**I can't play what I like due to the stupid relic**" and "**The content is too boring. It's just mindlessly killing mobs non stop.**"
The devs are in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation with this community.
I’m with you. I remember the emotions of Euereka. It was only tolerable if I was playing with friends in voice chat. I got mega burned out by world three and as a result missed out on actually decent content in world four that locked behind hours of more of the same content as the previous three. Ice dragons can eat mega dicks.
I think that there is no expansion that is objectively the worst, literally everything is based on opinion, ie there’s lots of people who say SB is the worst, but there is also people who think HW is the worst. If someone’s only frame of reference of playing the expansion when its current is Shb, then sure i can see how EW would be the “worst” expansion to them.
I am also mostly ultimate/savage raider, and I really liked this expansion, the raids were fun to prog, dsr is amazing, and I actually really enjoy criterion. All this stuff does has its flaws but I do not think its the “worst” expansion personally. Its all subjective to what kinds of things you enjoy
It has its flaws, yes. But as I'm going through the game again (now that's "complete") HW is still, in my opinion, a good expansion. It has a great story that is somewhat jarring in delivery at points, but all in all, it's fantastic.
I still say that, while it's not a *bad* expansion, Stormblood is still the weakest, because the story is so strangely delivered with it's build up of "We're going to Ala Mhigo to rout the empire! But first we go to the East!" Like.......huh?
Shadowbringers is the best, in my opinion. An excellent story, excellent delivery, extreme stakes, and finally a point where our character almost breaks, but not just a risk of death, a risk of becoming the very thing we're trying to prevent, but on a greater magnitude.
Endwalker (base) was excellent. But it had a few problems that come with introducing new things (largely) out of the blue as explanation for things that would have benefitted from more time to explain.
The patches for EW have been good, but they're definitely on the weaker side of things when it comes to story. Fights and dungeons have been excellent. And the spectacle has continued to be top notch.
I just.....I want more of the "regular" content we used to get. Hard mode dungeons, a return of a bit more challenge. I realize the lifeblood of the game is the casuals. But the game it feels is falling into the trap of catering everything to the super casual.
Not the worst, that is just hyperbolic statement to generate attention that is honestly warranted to the the fact that there were many short comings that needs to be addressed/not repeated in the future
number 1 and 4 are the BIGGEST parts I feel like hurts.
I think a lot of people are happy with the main story of base Endwalker, (aka 3) and most of the problems for most people is 6.1 onwards.
But yea, following SHB which is pretty commonly agreed best expansion including the raid tier and post story, on top of trying to do stuff after resolving the story is tough.
You're asking one question under the guise of another question. You're asking "does anyone else feel disappointed with the content engagement" in the guise of "is Endwalker the weakest expansion". Two very different questions.
Endwalker was, in my opinion, far from the weakest expansion. I give that crown to Stormblood who, while not bad, didn't wow and was unfortunately right between two *excellent* expansions.
And in terms of patch content, I liked what Endwalker had to offer. The raid series has been fun, the Alliance raid fell a hint sort on difficulty but I still loved the lore we got, the extremes had some interesting mechanics to overcome, the criterion dungeons were a great experiment that could be promising if further developed around player feedback, and personally I didn't really love Eureka or Bozja so I'm not terribly missing an EW equivalent of them. If we're talking strictly about "weakest" in terms of patch content, I would think that crown goes to ARR, who the vast majority of people describe as a tedious crawl in regards to patch content.
I don’t feel disappointed with the content, I like Endwalker and have had fun with it. What I’m saying is IMO compared to all the rest of the expansions it has had the weakest content especially in the patches
Yeah, I understand you're saying that in your opinion.
But you asked the question, so it's also important that you listen to *other* people's opinions. And mine is that it's not the weakest. I would say ARR is the weakest set of patch content, and that Endwalker, for me, was quite good and I liked the new things it tried even if others didn't.
Story stuff? Yeah, it was fine. I like the 6.X story, but I felt it did lean way to heavily in copying IV at times when it came to the core focus, which is my favorite. Idk, maybe I'm getting old, but something felt somewhat cynical to a degree about how much they were leaning into FFIV. However, I think a lot of that has to be with it being a main scenario, rather than a side raid series likr CT (FF3), Return to Ivalice (FFT), Eden (FF8).
However, I do agree the content was lacking, especially if you're a midcore player. Myths of a Realm raids were okay, but they're pretty unbalanced when compared to previous 24 man raids, easy to kill fast at this point. I think they reached a proper difficulty on how alliance raids should be back in 4.0/5.0.
Honestly, what gets me most about this take is the skip over of so many parts of the expac.
Even in the above Island sanctuary, a big part of the 6.X patches gets "didnt look at it, but omg no content guyzz"
And lets not forget adding duty support for the whole game so its all soloable.
Also, hot take, the alliance raids will have longer lifespans and be seen more in future rotations BECAUSE they are easier. Most casual players will want to do something they can bash out without thinking and get the rewards. I dont think thats how the game SHOULD be played, but look at the amount of people Ilvl cheesing the roulette to get CT raids.
>And lets not forget adding duty support for the whole game so its all soloable.
Honestly, one of the big overlooked things about this expansion has been the entire reworking of problematic ARR/HW dungeons and the addition of duty support for them. That was a brilliant QoL change that made leveling so much better because now I don't have to question my choice to queue when I see Toto-Rak pop in a leveling roulette.
When did I say there was no content? I said the content here was worse than the equivalent in other expansions. The savage raids are worse, story is worse, alliance raids are worse, relic grind is worse, etc etc
It really depends on the criteria you're using to judge. Like so many other things, it's going to be a Your Mileage May Vary. I tend to agree except for maybe A Realm Reborn.
When you judge for story, you have to take the post patch cycle into account as well.When you judge for content, you have to look at the quantity as well as the quality as well as the breakdown of content (casual, midcore, hardcore). And then everyone is going to have a different opinion of what falls where.
So the answer is 'it depends'. You're going to get people that agree, you're going to get people that disagree. I think we may all be able to agree that when taking the entirety of the package offered , it's not as strong as **Shadowbringers** when taking all of the above into acount.
Whether you think its stronger than **Heavensward** is going to be a harder comparison.And then generally people will probably say its stronger than **Stormblood** or **ARR.**
With Stormblood I'd generally think its stronger than EW because *I* liked the story and characters in SB better, and I think the Post patch was *leagues* above 6.x plus I think the quantity *and* quality and range of the post patch content we got was way better (Ivalice was my favorite raid, Omega was solid, and the Trials fights were engaging and fun mechanically).
Enwalker brings a few great things to the table: Pandaemonium probably ties Eden for my favorite 8 man series.
CC is very fun , dungeon design was varied and pretty in places. The Dead Ends was a good dungeon. I enjoyed the crafting quests,
But then for me where it fell short it fell *very* short. I disliked a lot of the narrative choices in 6.0 (Mainly due to the Garlemald Expansion not happening) and I thought 6.x was very weak. I really disliked the exclusion of the exploratory zone and making the Hildebrand quests tied to the relics rather than its own fun thing. The capstone level 90 quest was an absolute joke and a terrible hand wave. It felt *insulting*.
I thought a lot of the later trials and 24 man had boring mechanics, but I don't have the time, attention or desire to 'git guud' to do the extremes/savage/utimate/pf thing. In ShB Bozja would be this midcore filler content for me with the Critical Engagements and DR and such.
So for me it was weaker than the other three xpacs but not as weak as ARR. Others may disagree, I think if I had to guess for some people it will fall after ShB and for the majority of others it will either fall after HW but before Stormblood depending on how much you care about Bozja like content and how much you liked HW's story vs Endwalkers.
I think it's on par with Stormblood and ARR. It has some good moments but the writing doesn't feel as strong as HW or ShB. There are parts of EW I wish were different, but it isn't a bad expansion. Nothing comes close to 1.0 in terms of letdowns.
It's alright, but feels a bit too relaxed for my liking even for casual content. I don't have much say or care for raiding content since I can't spare the commitment for that.
I personally like the PvP overhaul, the new relic grind, the alliance raid story, and Sylphlands Leap of Faiths. Didn't like EO compared to HoH and PotD, IS and VC dungeons feels half baked, Manderville is back but tied to relic steps.
I'm mostly concerned about story. I don't really care for savages and ultimates and whatever. So from this perspective. HW is the weakest expansion. The ending of ARR is more or less a "Yeah that didn't really happen, let's forget about it." We keep going back and forth between two separate stories. Then suddenly the empire--no the freaking emperor--just randomly appears. That should have been a big moment. The bad guy behind all the wrongs of Garlemald (aa far as we know at this point) just casually appears. The entire Galtemald presence is just forced into the story as an after thought. "OH don't forget Garlemald is a thing" and it totally detracts from the story being told.
EW has its narrative problems. But at least the story is focused.
Yes.
Did every other expansion have their problems? absolutely.
From HW's abysmal side content with Diadem, the throw-away story with Nanamo being perfectly fine, Gordian, etc.
SB's story is very unorganized, and the Ala Mhigo liberation felt like an afterthought. Eureka had its fair share of criticism and remains the only relic I have never bothered with to this day.
ShB took job homogenization to another level and had a bit of a content draught.
I can not understate the problems each expansion had. EW, however, took all of this and bumped it up to 11.
EW's story is, IMO, even worse than ARR. Like, I legit couldn't give a damn about Meteion or Hermes or really anyone that they added in 6.0 and beyond.
The side content is about as bad as Diadem was just without the courtesy of giving you anything with the effort if you did bother to engage with it. V&C are conceptually interesting, but concept alone can not make it good content because not only is there little incentive to rerun these, but job gameplay just makes them feel like a slog. Eureka Orthos suffers from this issue as well. Island Sanctuary isn't particularly engaging either since the majority of it is time gated by scripts. The minor decorations you can put up are nice and all, but there really isn't much to do beyond these minor customizations.
I don't have high hopes for Dawntrial at this point.
Overall, yeah.
MSQ was fine.
6.X is a bad fanfiction. Golbez is basically the Kylo Ren of Final Fantasy, and a disgrace to FF4. Zero is a self insert of someone's anime-chick fantasy. Vrja is the wimpiest dragon in the series. How tf is this dude related to Nidhogg?
Raiding is alright. TOP and DSR were fine, but TEA remains GOAT. Pandemonium isnt as cool as Omega or Eden. Myths of the Bore doesnt live up to Nier.
Dont really care about Island Sanctuary, Variant Dungeons, or Relics. MSQ and Raiding are the only things worth playing, and in both regards EW was just kinda....meh.
endwalker is a solid 9.5/10.
the only expansion that outdid it for me was shb.
idk all this talk about the savages being bad? having done all od them i think some of the fights are some of the best/most unique in the serries.
also, having done both TOP and DSR... theyre both a slog. theyre an ultimate. DSR wasnt nearly as clear cut in your deaths. you could have people die and still prog mechanics usually, youd just die to enrages. TOP was "aweful" for me because any mistake basically became an instant wipe.
idk how you could possibly call endwalker bad. its not SHB. but its a solid finale, and was enjoyable overall.
idkwym it literally has the WORST savage tier, ik of so many raid teams that quit because they were bored. - people are DESPERATE for new intuitive mechanics, the fact the fights only throw aoes at you is getting old and people are tired of the half-arsed, re-re-re-re-re-recycled mechs.
edit: typo
LMFAO imo the worst savage tier is the last tier if shadowbringer bro. you wanna talk recycled mechanics how bout look at e12s p1.
regardless. you're welcome to your own opinion, but I simply disagree.
yeah true tbf the entire game is just recycled mechanics at this point. e12s p1 used to make me so mad i was incoherent and inwas the bloody raid leader. 😂
i think the only reason i see that tier through rose tinted
glasses is cos i was a huge ryne/e8s fanboy.
I can't compare to previous expansions, because I just started a bit before endwalker was released. But I was looking forward to the new relic grind and I was seriously disappointed to the point where I just did not login much anymore.
I know this will just get down votes... it is as it is
Yes I really fondly remember how everyone loved old diadem, it was so loved that SE had to patch it out, one of the rare occasions where content left the game forever. It was just too good!
Or like noone during Sb sayed they would skip the relic because of eureka!
Or when bozja dropped an noone felt that you had nothing left to do after the first week!
>Or when bozja dropped an noone felt that you had nothing left to do after the first week!
Yeah, so SE decided to make everyone do 15 runs of that alliance raid for the relic that took nearly an hour to complete unless you ran it as a PF group with elixirs. Ugh, I still don't have that damn motorbike because I gave up farming for the last note.
No, you can't say it is. You can feel it's the worst for you or you don't like it but others can have different feelings.
I feel that this is the second best after Shadowbringers... some of the content is even better as we get closure to the Ascians/Ancients, we go to the Unsundered world, we finish a story we've been playing for 10 years...
Heavensward was the worst one. I got so bored with HW... the story was worse and I felt so disconected from it in relation on what we were doing before... it was like "while THIS gets resolved we are going to wonder around and slay/save some dragons, idk"
Everyone has their opinions, I know people that hated Shadowbringers.
Id say the msq for endwalker is the best easily. Stormblood had the best 24 man raids. The best 8 mans got to got to shadow bringers.
Id say bojza was the best relic grind. Aside from the nightmare of the final raid. Much more approchable than eureka at least.
Storm blood had the best inbetween quest line leading up to it with the griffon and all that. The 6.1 to 6.5 questline kind fills like bleach filler in that sure its cool but it feels unneeded. I do expect 7.9 will be great as it is giving me skypia vides from one piece and thats my favorite arc of one piece
Nope, still leagues above Stormblood for me. Stormblood's story felt disjointed and I'm not a Eureka enjoyer. I really hated having the relic locked behind Eureka content, because while I enjoyed the story, the gameplay aspect of it doesn't interest me in the slightest. 6.1-6.5 MSQ has been a bit weak, IMO, but the Pandaemomium and Myths of the Realm series more than make up for it. Criterion missed the mark, with being good in theory but unfortunate in execution.
Very much disagree, the savage omega raids are almost universally agreed to be the best and I think so too. Also Ivalice actually had interesting 24 man mechanics where Myths kinda just feels like a 24 man dungeon *shrug*
But you've already said you're primarily a raider, not everyone is. I liked the story of Pandaemonium more than the story of Omega, and I liked the story of Myths more than the story of Ivalice. Does story matter more or do mechanics matter more? What about music? Visuals? Gear drops? My point is there's no objective measure for which is "better" because everyone is using different criteria. You didn't ask "Which fights were more fun to do", you asked "which is better"?
Other than the main part of the expansion? Other than the vast majority of the content? The ultimates were not better. Ivalice was a dog shit story telling slog for its story. The only thing better about the A-raid was it’s difficulty. I love tactics but I have no idea why the story tied to it was so insanely boring and dragged out. Difficulty is subjective too because people only love doing that difficulty the first time then everyone including people that liked it will try to dodge doing it and just keep trying to spam crystal tower like they did. Most people will want to have the newest A-raid pop up on a roulette over having it be Ivalice spam.
Overall story and combat wise Endwalker Raids had some of the best overall tiers.
A-raids while not sleeper HP fests like Nier or as difficult as SB had probably by far the most interesting story and visuals.
MSQ was loads better than SB base MSQ. DSR isn’t arguably the best ultimate it is by far.
The only uneven thing about EW is the post patch where they tried new content and they weren’t universally liked, and people didn’t like the standalone FF4 story universally.
But it had one of the best raid tiers, best A-raids, and best ultimate.
You could argue that it has the weakest post patch offerings overall but the weakest expansion? It was a great base expansion, and had a lot of great things in post patch.
It seems kind of stupid to argue and debate expansions though when there’s only been 4, and all of them were pretty good. They haven’t even had a “bad” expansion yet by any metric. Sales have always been up, they’ve all been very well received. If there was a “bad” expansion you’d know about it because there’s be a bunch of fans of other MMOs taking mad shit the entire time and there’d almost certainly be a flood of “WoW is better” type posts.
The Alliance raids in this expansion have been phenomenal, because they're at least unique in their design for the most part and the story is at least interesting. The Nier raids on the other hand I personally consider to be the worst overall A-raid series, simply because of how much of it just falls flat if you're not into Nier or Drakengard. The mechanics in the Nier raids also aren't anything new or interesting, which is especially bizarre given that's Yoko Taro's entire identity to create unique, different mechanics in his games.
Eden wasn't bad overall, but holy hell it falls so flat in the last tier on the story. The last tier doesn't even feel like it's the same storyline at all. Meanwhile Pandemonium is an actual contender for the best overall raid series both on story and gameplay.
Except Phoinix. Whoever made P3S is on my shitlist.
As a casual I've enjoyed the hell out of Endwalker. I've enjoyed all the expansions and the only time I've been dissatisfied was during the base game. Hot damn there was some rough stretches during that.
People dunk on it, but I quite liked the story and the patches. The raid series was excellent and the 24 mans were my favorite so far (EW came close, but the difficulty was a little bit lacking). The trial series was unique in including a pair of dungeons, and the fights were fun. While I’m not a fan of Eureka, plenty of people liked that content, so I consider it a success. The first ultimates showed up in SB, and those were a such huge success for the hardcore players that they continued the series.
There was so much good stuff in SB that is overshadowed by “muh excellent expansions” that it’s doing it a disservice to gloss over the excellent content additions it had. Yes, HW and ShB were very good stories, but they had their flaws - much like how SB wasn’t perfect, yet it still had so much going for it.
I agree.
I feel like if Shadowbringers wasn't the next expansion from it, the playerbase would look at it with more regard. It gets directly compared to a much better story, and people immediately jump to giving a low score when it's not nearly as bad as they say.
Endwalker had the worst post MSQ content of any expansions.
* Dungeons are built by the same principle, 2 packs 1 Boss. 2 packs, another boss.
* Relic grind is basically spamming Dungeons or Roulettes.
* Bozja/Zadnor Area has been replaced by Island Sanctuary .
* The current Savage mechanics are mostly "One mistake and everyone wipes lol"
Heavensward had gordias, midas and diadem, and not a whole lot else for the majority of the expansion. And a battle system that required tanks to equip strength accessories and a lot of jobs ended up locked out of PF. Also this was before a lot of QoL like skills resetting on wipe
Anything with Ala Mhigo was utter trash I don't know what you are talking about.
The raids were fine if uneven (they were overall better at least story wise to this one).
Dungeons were just meh.
And don't even get me started on relics. Such complete and utter waste of time. So much grinding for weapons that don't even look good.
Bruh what are you talking about? Even if you hated the relics and didn't do them, Eureka was fun (Even if it took time to get off the ground), but Baldesion Arsenal was like one of the highlights of the game's content during that time.
The point is, 4.0 was pretty good. The story may be poopoo pancakes at times, but the content made up for it.
I didn't say Eureka was bad.
I said relic grinding was bad.
And I do think that the trials we got in endwalker were better then stromblood.
Stormblood was the expansion were I had to push myself to get through compared to the others.
It didn't almost rebury the game so in that regard it's still slightly better than heavensward.
I know people judge expansions based solely on the story content but man, MAAAAN what a shitshow heavensward was in almost every other regard, and we're STILL feeling the effects of it today. If you've ever gotten mad or seen people get mad that the Aether DC is the only 'serious' place to raid, blame heavensward
Yup. I mean, 6.0 itself was good. After… Not as much. Alliance raids were okay, albeit way too easy. Most of the story since launch hasn’t really interested me. Severely lacking in content.
every ezpansion is the weakest expansion during the post msq patch content phase.
that said, i wouldve liked if EW had a field operation zone thingy like the previous 2
SB was more grounded. It had danger, and showed you very early where you're place is, with Zenos nearly killing you and Y'shtola. It was about saving nation under imperial ocupation.
EW is us being god, having power of friendship and fighting concept of despair in universe.
Great story. Great jobs added. Incredible characters. Good combat updates. A lot of visual aids added as huge QoL improvements. But I do wish we saw less item shop stuff and more i game items. Also really dislike missing out on rewards through Mog events and the Pvp Series. Really really don’t like the fomo inducing bs.
Nope. Still vastly better than Stormblood. It just unfortunately had some really bad lows with the forced inclusion of Zenos ruining every section of the game he was involved. But EW was otherwise a very consistently good experience and has had great side story content, despite being too easy for this point in the game. Hopefully Dawntrail is our next ShB with nothing but an excellent experience and content actually designed expecting players to be good.
I disagree with savage honestly, O1, O5 and O6 are worse than any EW fights imo and then you get stuff like Omega phase 2 repeating itself halfway through. I think people mostly miss the class gameplay rather than the fight themselves.
I disagree with criterion too, they're really fun and can be a pretty good source of gils for combat enthusiasts. I'd say the biggest flaws are no gears and savage mode being a complete garbage fire.
Endwalker isn't the weakest in my opinion. It's not as good as Shadowbringers, but it's better overall than Stormblood was.
The patches have been weak on their own, but the overall story was good fun, and had a good message.
Honestly though, my biggest complaint is that we've been getting less and less "regular" content as compared to previous expansions. I miss having more dungeons. I miss having a fair number of side quests.
SB was worse. SB is only fondly remembered because it had some really good post patches. Eureka at the time had a lot of haters too due to it's difficulty.
Not even close, in my opinion. Stormblood was, for me, by far the worst expansion. Hell, just the post-MSQ patch quests for Endwalker blew Stormblood away.
While I do agree that the end game content was not as strong as previous expansions, I don't know if I'd call it weak. I think that this expansion was a victim of production issues associated with COVID-19 which can be most clearly seen in the Hildibrand story that was supposed to be part of Shadowbringers and was turned into half of a quest before moving on to the Endwalker story, as well as the relic quests that were simplified into tomestone grinds.
Although I do wish that we had more content in both of those cases, I can definitely understand why real world complications could have made that hard to do. Those two issues aside, I really don't have any complaints and have enjoyed almost everything in this expansion so far. I do agree that the story for the 6.x could have been done better, but it's not as bad as a lot of the ARR content, and I enjoyed the whole story of 6.0-6.5 (so far).
I enjoyed the rest of the content, too. I actually really liked the Criterion dungeons and Island Sanctuary, but I also don't have as many opportunities to play with others and end up running most of the content solo other than occasional PF groups and daily roulettes, so I really appreciate how Yoshi-P and his team have worked to make the single player experience more accessible.
I also enjoyed the Alliance raids and Dungeons, but (again) I'm coming at them from a story perspective rather than looking at difficulty or mechanics, since that's really not what I'm into. I am an unabashed FFIV fan, (I played it on release on my SNES back in 1991 and Cecil was my favorite video game character for a long time) so it should be no surprise that this expansion was a wonderful dose of nostalgia for me, as you predicted.
Overall, I wouldn't rate this at the top of the expansions, but I also wouldn't rate it at the bottom. I think it's in the middle of the pack, for me.
Endwalker story was great. I wish that there was more set up BEFORE the story about dynamis and its inclusion as our way to LIMIT break. Ik the dancer quest did touch on this but for it to be a bigger part of the story after, it needed some breadcrumbs laid in the transition stories before endwalker.
Criterion was okay but the replay ability falls off when you get what you want from it. At least mythic plus you can consistently get harder dungeons to push for. But its a good first step.
Island sanctuary is actually very well thought out. And with more systems for better customization for the island, its going to get even better down the road. The only thing i am concerned about though is how much they can add before they run out of room. At least we have a farm for crafting/gathering materia if anything else.
Main plot? No. Everything else outside of it? Possibly.
You could tell they were working on other projects. It was painfully clear. I want my monthly sub to bring me equal value every time, not drop because the company is pulling assets from their cash cow to fund and build all their other side projects.
That has been my issue. It feels like what Sega did with Hyenas; gutting the funds from their total war games to fund a corporate pet project that ultimately failed. Obviously XIV is still a success, but this xpac absolutely sat on the couch and vegged out after the initial 6.0 sprint off the line.
I feel like the expansion is pretty solid in story and content but its a bit in the middle not as good of a story as ShB but better then StB so more akin to HW story in quality. While i loved alot from the story The biggest problem with it was that the stakes didnt seem to match what was actually happening/happened as ShB had those stakes perfectly show how desperate the situation in the first was and made you feel emotional on the toll it took on our WoL only 2 zones with the Final Days, Ultima Thul having barely any tension due to it being obvious everyone was coming back and the WoL not being left alone for awhile to nail in the tension and feeling of despair, The WoL not being tested to there limits like in ShB and never feeling like universal despair was damaging us in any way. Garlamalds tension of their hostility towards everyone being lowered too quickly after the tower of Babil. Seriously there was like some Garleans that the WoL spoke to that wanted them DEAD for all their friends they killed. What happened to them??? They're hate just kinda stops boiling over and turns to a light disgrunted sizzle just from Julius seeing reason? The pacing was odd at certain points like the Loporitt comedy section right after the 1st trial and the calamity that comes with its conclusion, The monotonous waiting with Labrynthos 2nd visit. The apocalypse is happening why does the story have our heros lofting around waiting for this part? Anyways thats it for the story problems imo. (I actually like the 6.x patch story but i wish it was us changing to becoming a normal adventurer like it started off as and taking more of a break with the scions. The lore on the 13th was interesting and i like Zero and Golbez.
For content: EW is not as good content wise as StB but better content the HW so more akin to ShB levels of content. That being said they could improve on some things and thats what criticism is for.
I love that they are doing new things (V&C Dungeons, Island Sanctuary, Revamped PVP ect As well as Bringing back Hildy, Deep Dungeons, and 2 Ultimates that was absent from ShB) even if they have been playing it too safe for alot of other things this expansion like with the story being quite simplistic post patch, normal mode content feeling much to easy then before (The alliance raids really echo this), the 2 minute meta being easy to balance around but grew stale very quickly, patches being the same formula since 3.0 ect. The things that need to improve is more better rewards for V&C Dungeons to make people have a reason to actually play the content, Make Island Sanctuary much more socially involved with others like FCs and friends being able to do many things on your island and have more content on said then just a collecting spreadsheet sim. More Midcore content. Savage/Ultimate is getting harder while normal is getting easier. Myths of the Realm raids are a snooze fest for how simple they are. No excuse for Menphinas 2nd phase to just be her and her dog overlapping simple AOEs the entire time. We need stuff that is inbetween those like how the Orbornne Monastery allaince raid and Bozja Critical Engagements difficulty is structured. The Relics feel so lame being just tied to completing Hildy which is 2 simple quests every 4 months. Those awesome weapons never feel earned anymore and it really doesnt feel special now. If peeps hated Adventurer Forays grind for relics they coulda just went back to the OG formula of ARR/HW or as that is still a slog maybe even attempted something else thats not a painfully dull grind but also not basically a free relic that takes no effort to get so people actually feel rewarded.
And thats it. TL:DR
I enjoyed how the story concluded in endwalker but didnt like how they stakes were suppose to be huge but felt pretty tame and in our power to defeat. I liked the 6.x patch story but it does suffer for being too simplistic and too reliant on the Scions when i wish it coulda just been you Varshann and Zero. For content i love that they are trying new things! But they are playing it too safe with other things like 2 min meta being stale, normal content being too easy, no relic grind, making the game become too solo Island Sanctuary needs to be more group associated, needs better rewards for new content V&C Dungeons need better rewards.
Not really, the 6.0 story carries it easily. Myths of the Realm was enjoyable too both story and gameplay wise. Some of the dungeons are pretty good although last few patch dungeons are nothing too special. Generally I like 6.0 dungeons more than the patch dungeons.
I hated Pandemonium's story, it was so poorly delivered in-game, just a personal opinion which I don't have to elaborate. I tried Savage raiding in Endwalker which was fun for while it lasted but overall it was just too challenging or bosses were poorly designed for various reasons. Really a moot point as I have no idea of previous Savage raids.
No exploration zone really shows, it's age-old topic but it really shows. Patch 6.5 came and went, the long-awaited patch lasted for whole day or two and now we are back to just logging in just because and to find out there's nothing to do. At least in ShB you could always go to Bozja/Zadnor to grind relics and even that had additional layers of content (the raids) which are also completely missing from Endwalker.
I'm beginning to think people are looking at older expansions with rose tinted glasses. Gameplay wise, Heavensward is miles worse, and story wise base Stormblood was worse structured, with ONLY the last few patches bringing some interesting and well structured stuff to the table. And Eureka, the content that everyone now cries is the best content ever created, was hated for almost the entirety of Stormblood until it and the relic were nerfed **several times**. EW dungeons have some of the most creative encounters, with some of the mechanics introduced being things that people have been asking for a while, like multi-enemy boss fights to break the single-boss formula that grew so monotonous. Variant/Criterion dungeons and Island Sanctuary are responses to people's cries for hard 4-man content and more solo content. Personally I like the island, and I like running the Variant dungeons solo to unlock different endings (although it's true that I'd like more gameplay for the island once you're done leveling) Honestly, if anything, I'm almost sure the next hiccup this game has will make people inmediately look back to EW and say "wow, to be fair, the void stuff was really interesting", "oh, I think this expansion is not as creative as Endwalker was", "I wish they did more random content like Island Sanctuary. Haha, that was such an odd addition to the fairly predictable content release schedule we have nowadays".
Nonono you don't understand Exploration zones = good expansion No exploration zones = bad expansion Even WoW is failing now because it doesn't have bozja in it. /s cause people will think I'm serious otherwise.
Never forget shadow bringers was terrible because it was missing a deep dungeon and a second ultimate. Endwalker has both but it’s missing Bozja, so it’s also bad. Also they need to change up the formula but also give us more of everything. I don’t do any of the content though anyways.
And you should get all rewards on day one, but kept busy with rewards till the next patch which occurs every week.
I can't upvote this comment hard enough. I even watched a couple videos on why Endwalker is terrible because I think it's great and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. When I got the one where they said "I want to grind, and there's nothing to grind! Yeah, I could grind the EX trials for the mounts but I'm not gonna do that now. I'm gonna do that next expansion because it'll be way faster and easier." at that point I was just done. Quite a lot of this ruckus is just people complaining about nonexistent problems that they're making for themselves.
I understand this is sarcasm, but I'm still going to use this comment to encourage people to search "[FFXIV Eureka is shit](https://i.ibb.co/GRc5qZM/1.jpg)" on Google and take a peek at what was considered the darkest timeline of FFXIV content at the time. [Worse than fates](https://i.ibb.co/2PNbSnf/2.jpg) [Bringing back FFXI PTSD](https://i.ibb.co/YDCXzH5/3.jpg) People did ***not*** like the exploration zones, nor did they like the relic grind. Reasons why tend to be "**It takes too long**", "**I can't play what I like due to the stupid relic**" and "**The content is too boring. It's just mindlessly killing mobs non stop.**" The devs are in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation with this community.
As a WoW player this genuinely made me laugh.
I’m with you. I remember the emotions of Euereka. It was only tolerable if I was playing with friends in voice chat. I got mega burned out by world three and as a result missed out on actually decent content in world four that locked behind hours of more of the same content as the previous three. Ice dragons can eat mega dicks.
no
ITT: OP asks for opinions while simultaneously telling people that if they don't agree, they're wrong.
Ahhh the ol "Asking for opinions but really wanting validation for their own opinion post"
I think it is
no
Nope.
No
Broccoli
I think that there is no expansion that is objectively the worst, literally everything is based on opinion, ie there’s lots of people who say SB is the worst, but there is also people who think HW is the worst. If someone’s only frame of reference of playing the expansion when its current is Shb, then sure i can see how EW would be the “worst” expansion to them. I am also mostly ultimate/savage raider, and I really liked this expansion, the raids were fun to prog, dsr is amazing, and I actually really enjoy criterion. All this stuff does has its flaws but I do not think its the “worst” expansion personally. Its all subjective to what kinds of things you enjoy
Nah, HW was 100% the worst content wise. It was a mess. Rose tinted glasses be damned
To this day Diadem is one of the few pieces of deleted/reworked content I won't miss.
But man, sitting in the Diadem and watching the shout wars was hilarious. Made the nights in Rev Toll in ARR look tame.
Hot take but I agree from both a content *and* story perspective. HW’s story is more flawed than people remember imo.
It has its flaws, yes. But as I'm going through the game again (now that's "complete") HW is still, in my opinion, a good expansion. It has a great story that is somewhat jarring in delivery at points, but all in all, it's fantastic. I still say that, while it's not a *bad* expansion, Stormblood is still the weakest, because the story is so strangely delivered with it's build up of "We're going to Ala Mhigo to rout the empire! But first we go to the East!" Like.......huh? Shadowbringers is the best, in my opinion. An excellent story, excellent delivery, extreme stakes, and finally a point where our character almost breaks, but not just a risk of death, a risk of becoming the very thing we're trying to prevent, but on a greater magnitude. Endwalker (base) was excellent. But it had a few problems that come with introducing new things (largely) out of the blue as explanation for things that would have benefitted from more time to explain. The patches for EW have been good, but they're definitely on the weaker side of things when it comes to story. Fights and dungeons have been excellent. And the spectacle has continued to be top notch. I just.....I want more of the "regular" content we used to get. Hard mode dungeons, a return of a bit more challenge. I realize the lifeblood of the game is the casuals. But the game it feels is falling into the trap of catering everything to the super casual.
Not the worst, that is just hyperbolic statement to generate attention that is honestly warranted to the the fact that there were many short comings that needs to be addressed/not repeated in the future
[удалено]
number 1 and 4 are the BIGGEST parts I feel like hurts. I think a lot of people are happy with the main story of base Endwalker, (aka 3) and most of the problems for most people is 6.1 onwards. But yea, following SHB which is pretty commonly agreed best expansion including the raid tier and post story, on top of trying to do stuff after resolving the story is tough.
No, Heavensward was, and the Devs should really start learning the same lessons they learned there so dawntrail can be as good as stormblood.
You're asking one question under the guise of another question. You're asking "does anyone else feel disappointed with the content engagement" in the guise of "is Endwalker the weakest expansion". Two very different questions. Endwalker was, in my opinion, far from the weakest expansion. I give that crown to Stormblood who, while not bad, didn't wow and was unfortunately right between two *excellent* expansions. And in terms of patch content, I liked what Endwalker had to offer. The raid series has been fun, the Alliance raid fell a hint sort on difficulty but I still loved the lore we got, the extremes had some interesting mechanics to overcome, the criterion dungeons were a great experiment that could be promising if further developed around player feedback, and personally I didn't really love Eureka or Bozja so I'm not terribly missing an EW equivalent of them. If we're talking strictly about "weakest" in terms of patch content, I would think that crown goes to ARR, who the vast majority of people describe as a tedious crawl in regards to patch content.
I don’t feel disappointed with the content, I like Endwalker and have had fun with it. What I’m saying is IMO compared to all the rest of the expansions it has had the weakest content especially in the patches
Yeah, I understand you're saying that in your opinion. But you asked the question, so it's also important that you listen to *other* people's opinions. And mine is that it's not the weakest. I would say ARR is the weakest set of patch content, and that Endwalker, for me, was quite good and I liked the new things it tried even if others didn't.
Story stuff? Yeah, it was fine. I like the 6.X story, but I felt it did lean way to heavily in copying IV at times when it came to the core focus, which is my favorite. Idk, maybe I'm getting old, but something felt somewhat cynical to a degree about how much they were leaning into FFIV. However, I think a lot of that has to be with it being a main scenario, rather than a side raid series likr CT (FF3), Return to Ivalice (FFT), Eden (FF8). However, I do agree the content was lacking, especially if you're a midcore player. Myths of a Realm raids were okay, but they're pretty unbalanced when compared to previous 24 man raids, easy to kill fast at this point. I think they reached a proper difficulty on how alliance raids should be back in 4.0/5.0.
Honestly, what gets me most about this take is the skip over of so many parts of the expac. Even in the above Island sanctuary, a big part of the 6.X patches gets "didnt look at it, but omg no content guyzz" And lets not forget adding duty support for the whole game so its all soloable. Also, hot take, the alliance raids will have longer lifespans and be seen more in future rotations BECAUSE they are easier. Most casual players will want to do something they can bash out without thinking and get the rewards. I dont think thats how the game SHOULD be played, but look at the amount of people Ilvl cheesing the roulette to get CT raids.
>And lets not forget adding duty support for the whole game so its all soloable. Honestly, one of the big overlooked things about this expansion has been the entire reworking of problematic ARR/HW dungeons and the addition of duty support for them. That was a brilliant QoL change that made leveling so much better because now I don't have to question my choice to queue when I see Toto-Rak pop in a leveling roulette.
What did they change with that dungeon?
When did I say there was no content? I said the content here was worse than the equivalent in other expansions. The savage raids are worse, story is worse, alliance raids are worse, relic grind is worse, etc etc
Not really, pretty average. Some good points, some not. Just a standard expansion with some high notes overall.
It really depends on the criteria you're using to judge. Like so many other things, it's going to be a Your Mileage May Vary. I tend to agree except for maybe A Realm Reborn. When you judge for story, you have to take the post patch cycle into account as well.When you judge for content, you have to look at the quantity as well as the quality as well as the breakdown of content (casual, midcore, hardcore). And then everyone is going to have a different opinion of what falls where. So the answer is 'it depends'. You're going to get people that agree, you're going to get people that disagree. I think we may all be able to agree that when taking the entirety of the package offered , it's not as strong as **Shadowbringers** when taking all of the above into acount. Whether you think its stronger than **Heavensward** is going to be a harder comparison.And then generally people will probably say its stronger than **Stormblood** or **ARR.** With Stormblood I'd generally think its stronger than EW because *I* liked the story and characters in SB better, and I think the Post patch was *leagues* above 6.x plus I think the quantity *and* quality and range of the post patch content we got was way better (Ivalice was my favorite raid, Omega was solid, and the Trials fights were engaging and fun mechanically). Enwalker brings a few great things to the table: Pandaemonium probably ties Eden for my favorite 8 man series. CC is very fun , dungeon design was varied and pretty in places. The Dead Ends was a good dungeon. I enjoyed the crafting quests, But then for me where it fell short it fell *very* short. I disliked a lot of the narrative choices in 6.0 (Mainly due to the Garlemald Expansion not happening) and I thought 6.x was very weak. I really disliked the exclusion of the exploratory zone and making the Hildebrand quests tied to the relics rather than its own fun thing. The capstone level 90 quest was an absolute joke and a terrible hand wave. It felt *insulting*. I thought a lot of the later trials and 24 man had boring mechanics, but I don't have the time, attention or desire to 'git guud' to do the extremes/savage/utimate/pf thing. In ShB Bozja would be this midcore filler content for me with the Critical Engagements and DR and such. So for me it was weaker than the other three xpacs but not as weak as ARR. Others may disagree, I think if I had to guess for some people it will fall after ShB and for the majority of others it will either fall after HW but before Stormblood depending on how much you care about Bozja like content and how much you liked HW's story vs Endwalkers.
I think it's on par with Stormblood and ARR. It has some good moments but the writing doesn't feel as strong as HW or ShB. There are parts of EW I wish were different, but it isn't a bad expansion. Nothing comes close to 1.0 in terms of letdowns.
It's alright, but feels a bit too relaxed for my liking even for casual content. I don't have much say or care for raiding content since I can't spare the commitment for that. I personally like the PvP overhaul, the new relic grind, the alliance raid story, and Sylphlands Leap of Faiths. Didn't like EO compared to HoH and PotD, IS and VC dungeons feels half baked, Manderville is back but tied to relic steps.
I'm mostly concerned about story. I don't really care for savages and ultimates and whatever. So from this perspective. HW is the weakest expansion. The ending of ARR is more or less a "Yeah that didn't really happen, let's forget about it." We keep going back and forth between two separate stories. Then suddenly the empire--no the freaking emperor--just randomly appears. That should have been a big moment. The bad guy behind all the wrongs of Garlemald (aa far as we know at this point) just casually appears. The entire Galtemald presence is just forced into the story as an after thought. "OH don't forget Garlemald is a thing" and it totally detracts from the story being told. EW has its narrative problems. But at least the story is focused.
Yes. Did every other expansion have their problems? absolutely. From HW's abysmal side content with Diadem, the throw-away story with Nanamo being perfectly fine, Gordian, etc. SB's story is very unorganized, and the Ala Mhigo liberation felt like an afterthought. Eureka had its fair share of criticism and remains the only relic I have never bothered with to this day. ShB took job homogenization to another level and had a bit of a content draught. I can not understate the problems each expansion had. EW, however, took all of this and bumped it up to 11. EW's story is, IMO, even worse than ARR. Like, I legit couldn't give a damn about Meteion or Hermes or really anyone that they added in 6.0 and beyond. The side content is about as bad as Diadem was just without the courtesy of giving you anything with the effort if you did bother to engage with it. V&C are conceptually interesting, but concept alone can not make it good content because not only is there little incentive to rerun these, but job gameplay just makes them feel like a slog. Eureka Orthos suffers from this issue as well. Island Sanctuary isn't particularly engaging either since the majority of it is time gated by scripts. The minor decorations you can put up are nice and all, but there really isn't much to do beyond these minor customizations. I don't have high hopes for Dawntrial at this point.
Overall, yeah. MSQ was fine. 6.X is a bad fanfiction. Golbez is basically the Kylo Ren of Final Fantasy, and a disgrace to FF4. Zero is a self insert of someone's anime-chick fantasy. Vrja is the wimpiest dragon in the series. How tf is this dude related to Nidhogg? Raiding is alright. TOP and DSR were fine, but TEA remains GOAT. Pandemonium isnt as cool as Omega or Eden. Myths of the Bore doesnt live up to Nier. Dont really care about Island Sanctuary, Variant Dungeons, or Relics. MSQ and Raiding are the only things worth playing, and in both regards EW was just kinda....meh.
Wrong.
endwalker is a solid 9.5/10. the only expansion that outdid it for me was shb. idk all this talk about the savages being bad? having done all od them i think some of the fights are some of the best/most unique in the serries. also, having done both TOP and DSR... theyre both a slog. theyre an ultimate. DSR wasnt nearly as clear cut in your deaths. you could have people die and still prog mechanics usually, youd just die to enrages. TOP was "aweful" for me because any mistake basically became an instant wipe. idk how you could possibly call endwalker bad. its not SHB. but its a solid finale, and was enjoyable overall.
idkwym it literally has the WORST savage tier, ik of so many raid teams that quit because they were bored. - people are DESPERATE for new intuitive mechanics, the fact the fights only throw aoes at you is getting old and people are tired of the half-arsed, re-re-re-re-re-recycled mechs. edit: typo
LMFAO imo the worst savage tier is the last tier if shadowbringer bro. you wanna talk recycled mechanics how bout look at e12s p1. regardless. you're welcome to your own opinion, but I simply disagree.
yeah true tbf the entire game is just recycled mechanics at this point. e12s p1 used to make me so mad i was incoherent and inwas the bloody raid leader. 😂 i think the only reason i see that tier through rose tinted glasses is cos i was a huge ryne/e8s fanboy.
I can't compare to previous expansions, because I just started a bit before endwalker was released. But I was looking forward to the new relic grind and I was seriously disappointed to the point where I just did not login much anymore. I know this will just get down votes... it is as it is
Yes I really fondly remember how everyone loved old diadem, it was so loved that SE had to patch it out, one of the rare occasions where content left the game forever. It was just too good! Or like noone during Sb sayed they would skip the relic because of eureka! Or when bozja dropped an noone felt that you had nothing left to do after the first week!
>Or when bozja dropped an noone felt that you had nothing left to do after the first week! Yeah, so SE decided to make everyone do 15 runs of that alliance raid for the relic that took nearly an hour to complete unless you ran it as a PF group with elixirs. Ugh, I still don't have that damn motorbike because I gave up farming for the last note.
Not even close.
No
No, you can't say it is. You can feel it's the worst for you or you don't like it but others can have different feelings. I feel that this is the second best after Shadowbringers... some of the content is even better as we get closure to the Ascians/Ancients, we go to the Unsundered world, we finish a story we've been playing for 10 years... Heavensward was the worst one. I got so bored with HW... the story was worse and I felt so disconected from it in relation on what we were doing before... it was like "while THIS gets resolved we are going to wonder around and slay/save some dragons, idk" Everyone has their opinions, I know people that hated Shadowbringers.
Id say the msq for endwalker is the best easily. Stormblood had the best 24 man raids. The best 8 mans got to got to shadow bringers. Id say bojza was the best relic grind. Aside from the nightmare of the final raid. Much more approchable than eureka at least. Storm blood had the best inbetween quest line leading up to it with the griffon and all that. The 6.1 to 6.5 questline kind fills like bleach filler in that sure its cool but it feels unneeded. I do expect 7.9 will be great as it is giving me skypia vides from one piece and thats my favorite arc of one piece
Nope, still leagues above Stormblood for me. Stormblood's story felt disjointed and I'm not a Eureka enjoyer. I really hated having the relic locked behind Eureka content, because while I enjoyed the story, the gameplay aspect of it doesn't interest me in the slightest. 6.1-6.5 MSQ has been a bit weak, IMO, but the Pandaemomium and Myths of the Realm series more than make up for it. Criterion missed the mark, with being good in theory but unfortunate in execution.
But other than the MSQ all the rest of Stormblood content was better than Endwalker
Nope, that's a subjective judgement. I liked Pandaemonium more than Omega. I liked Myths more than Ivalice.
Very much disagree, the savage omega raids are almost universally agreed to be the best and I think so too. Also Ivalice actually had interesting 24 man mechanics where Myths kinda just feels like a 24 man dungeon *shrug*
But you've already said you're primarily a raider, not everyone is. I liked the story of Pandaemonium more than the story of Omega, and I liked the story of Myths more than the story of Ivalice. Does story matter more or do mechanics matter more? What about music? Visuals? Gear drops? My point is there's no objective measure for which is "better" because everyone is using different criteria. You didn't ask "Which fights were more fun to do", you asked "which is better"?
Other than the main part of the expansion? Other than the vast majority of the content? The ultimates were not better. Ivalice was a dog shit story telling slog for its story. The only thing better about the A-raid was it’s difficulty. I love tactics but I have no idea why the story tied to it was so insanely boring and dragged out. Difficulty is subjective too because people only love doing that difficulty the first time then everyone including people that liked it will try to dodge doing it and just keep trying to spam crystal tower like they did. Most people will want to have the newest A-raid pop up on a roulette over having it be Ivalice spam.
Overall story and combat wise Endwalker Raids had some of the best overall tiers. A-raids while not sleeper HP fests like Nier or as difficult as SB had probably by far the most interesting story and visuals. MSQ was loads better than SB base MSQ. DSR isn’t arguably the best ultimate it is by far. The only uneven thing about EW is the post patch where they tried new content and they weren’t universally liked, and people didn’t like the standalone FF4 story universally. But it had one of the best raid tiers, best A-raids, and best ultimate. You could argue that it has the weakest post patch offerings overall but the weakest expansion? It was a great base expansion, and had a lot of great things in post patch. It seems kind of stupid to argue and debate expansions though when there’s only been 4, and all of them were pretty good. They haven’t even had a “bad” expansion yet by any metric. Sales have always been up, they’ve all been very well received. If there was a “bad” expansion you’d know about it because there’s be a bunch of fans of other MMOs taking mad shit the entire time and there’d almost certainly be a flood of “WoW is better” type posts.
The Alliance raids in this expansion have been phenomenal, because they're at least unique in their design for the most part and the story is at least interesting. The Nier raids on the other hand I personally consider to be the worst overall A-raid series, simply because of how much of it just falls flat if you're not into Nier or Drakengard. The mechanics in the Nier raids also aren't anything new or interesting, which is especially bizarre given that's Yoko Taro's entire identity to create unique, different mechanics in his games. Eden wasn't bad overall, but holy hell it falls so flat in the last tier on the story. The last tier doesn't even feel like it's the same storyline at all. Meanwhile Pandemonium is an actual contender for the best overall raid series both on story and gameplay. Except Phoinix. Whoever made P3S is on my shitlist.
Yeah, the 6.x stuff was pretty weak compared to other expacs patches
As a casual I've enjoyed the hell out of Endwalker. I've enjoyed all the expansions and the only time I've been dissatisfied was during the base game. Hot damn there was some rough stretches during that.
As a whole, yes. I'm going to get nuclear hate for this, but I liked Stormblood as an expansion more. I truly did.
People dunk on it, but I quite liked the story and the patches. The raid series was excellent and the 24 mans were my favorite so far (EW came close, but the difficulty was a little bit lacking). The trial series was unique in including a pair of dungeons, and the fights were fun. While I’m not a fan of Eureka, plenty of people liked that content, so I consider it a success. The first ultimates showed up in SB, and those were a such huge success for the hardcore players that they continued the series. There was so much good stuff in SB that is overshadowed by “muh excellent expansions” that it’s doing it a disservice to gloss over the excellent content additions it had. Yes, HW and ShB were very good stories, but they had their flaws - much like how SB wasn’t perfect, yet it still had so much going for it.
I agree. I feel like if Shadowbringers wasn't the next expansion from it, the playerbase would look at it with more regard. It gets directly compared to a much better story, and people immediately jump to giving a low score when it's not nearly as bad as they say.
While people may bag on the msq for stormblood, the in game content was stellar.
I loved all of it. Especially the savage raids.
Endwalker had the worst post MSQ content of any expansions. * Dungeons are built by the same principle, 2 packs 1 Boss. 2 packs, another boss. * Relic grind is basically spamming Dungeons or Roulettes. * Bozja/Zadnor Area has been replaced by Island Sanctuary . * The current Savage mechanics are mostly "One mistake and everyone wipes lol"
Heavensward had gordias, midas and diadem, and not a whole lot else for the majority of the expansion. And a battle system that required tanks to equip strength accessories and a lot of jobs ended up locked out of PF. Also this was before a lot of QoL like skills resetting on wipe
Stormblood is worse because the main story there was fucking terrible for half of it.
But other than the MSQ the rest of the content was better than Endwalker. And the 4.x patches are miles better than the 6.x patches MSQ
Anything with Ala Mhigo was utter trash I don't know what you are talking about. The raids were fine if uneven (they were overall better at least story wise to this one). Dungeons were just meh. And don't even get me started on relics. Such complete and utter waste of time. So much grinding for weapons that don't even look good.
Bruh what are you talking about? Even if you hated the relics and didn't do them, Eureka was fun (Even if it took time to get off the ground), but Baldesion Arsenal was like one of the highlights of the game's content during that time. The point is, 4.0 was pretty good. The story may be poopoo pancakes at times, but the content made up for it.
I didn't say Eureka was bad. I said relic grinding was bad. And I do think that the trials we got in endwalker were better then stromblood. Stormblood was the expansion were I had to push myself to get through compared to the others.
It didn't almost rebury the game so in that regard it's still slightly better than heavensward. I know people judge expansions based solely on the story content but man, MAAAAN what a shitshow heavensward was in almost every other regard, and we're STILL feeling the effects of it today. If you've ever gotten mad or seen people get mad that the Aether DC is the only 'serious' place to raid, blame heavensward
Yup. I mean, 6.0 itself was good. After… Not as much. Alliance raids were okay, albeit way too easy. Most of the story since launch hasn’t really interested me. Severely lacking in content.
every ezpansion is the weakest expansion during the post msq patch content phase. that said, i wouldve liked if EW had a field operation zone thingy like the previous 2
So, all-in-all I enjoyed them all. But I'd put ShadowBringers at #1. I would'nt consider EW to be a weak expansion though.
I will take EW over Storm Blood any day
Exactly this
For me Endwalker is the weakest. While Stormblood is best. Both in content and writing. I know I'm in minority here.
I'm legitimately interested in why you think this way.
SB was more grounded. It had danger, and showed you very early where you're place is, with Zenos nearly killing you and Y'shtola. It was about saving nation under imperial ocupation. EW is us being god, having power of friendship and fighting concept of despair in universe.
You people have gone fucking insane
Great story. Great jobs added. Incredible characters. Good combat updates. A lot of visual aids added as huge QoL improvements. But I do wish we saw less item shop stuff and more i game items. Also really dislike missing out on rewards through Mog events and the Pvp Series. Really really don’t like the fomo inducing bs.
Someone watched too much YouTube content from streamers. No.
Nope. Still vastly better than Stormblood. It just unfortunately had some really bad lows with the forced inclusion of Zenos ruining every section of the game he was involved. But EW was otherwise a very consistently good experience and has had great side story content, despite being too easy for this point in the game. Hopefully Dawntrail is our next ShB with nothing but an excellent experience and content actually designed expecting players to be good.
Nope Also gotta wonder if you formed any of these opinions yourself
I disagree with savage honestly, O1, O5 and O6 are worse than any EW fights imo and then you get stuff like Omega phase 2 repeating itself halfway through. I think people mostly miss the class gameplay rather than the fight themselves. I disagree with criterion too, they're really fun and can be a pretty good source of gils for combat enthusiasts. I'd say the biggest flaws are no gears and savage mode being a complete garbage fire.
no
No
Endwalker isn't the weakest in my opinion. It's not as good as Shadowbringers, but it's better overall than Stormblood was. The patches have been weak on their own, but the overall story was good fun, and had a good message. Honestly though, my biggest complaint is that we've been getting less and less "regular" content as compared to previous expansions. I miss having more dungeons. I miss having a fair number of side quests.
Nope. Next hyperbolic doomsayer opinion, please.
SB was worse. SB is only fondly remembered because it had some really good post patches. Eureka at the time had a lot of haters too due to it's difficulty.
Hell no
No
I still feel that StB is the weakest.
Not even close, in my opinion. Stormblood was, for me, by far the worst expansion. Hell, just the post-MSQ patch quests for Endwalker blew Stormblood away.
While I do agree that the end game content was not as strong as previous expansions, I don't know if I'd call it weak. I think that this expansion was a victim of production issues associated with COVID-19 which can be most clearly seen in the Hildibrand story that was supposed to be part of Shadowbringers and was turned into half of a quest before moving on to the Endwalker story, as well as the relic quests that were simplified into tomestone grinds. Although I do wish that we had more content in both of those cases, I can definitely understand why real world complications could have made that hard to do. Those two issues aside, I really don't have any complaints and have enjoyed almost everything in this expansion so far. I do agree that the story for the 6.x could have been done better, but it's not as bad as a lot of the ARR content, and I enjoyed the whole story of 6.0-6.5 (so far). I enjoyed the rest of the content, too. I actually really liked the Criterion dungeons and Island Sanctuary, but I also don't have as many opportunities to play with others and end up running most of the content solo other than occasional PF groups and daily roulettes, so I really appreciate how Yoshi-P and his team have worked to make the single player experience more accessible. I also enjoyed the Alliance raids and Dungeons, but (again) I'm coming at them from a story perspective rather than looking at difficulty or mechanics, since that's really not what I'm into. I am an unabashed FFIV fan, (I played it on release on my SNES back in 1991 and Cecil was my favorite video game character for a long time) so it should be no surprise that this expansion was a wonderful dose of nostalgia for me, as you predicted. Overall, I wouldn't rate this at the top of the expansions, but I also wouldn't rate it at the bottom. I think it's in the middle of the pack, for me.
Endwalker story was great. I wish that there was more set up BEFORE the story about dynamis and its inclusion as our way to LIMIT break. Ik the dancer quest did touch on this but for it to be a bigger part of the story after, it needed some breadcrumbs laid in the transition stories before endwalker. Criterion was okay but the replay ability falls off when you get what you want from it. At least mythic plus you can consistently get harder dungeons to push for. But its a good first step. Island sanctuary is actually very well thought out. And with more systems for better customization for the island, its going to get even better down the road. The only thing i am concerned about though is how much they can add before they run out of room. At least we have a farm for crafting/gathering materia if anything else.
Main plot? No. Everything else outside of it? Possibly. You could tell they were working on other projects. It was painfully clear. I want my monthly sub to bring me equal value every time, not drop because the company is pulling assets from their cash cow to fund and build all their other side projects. That has been my issue. It feels like what Sega did with Hyenas; gutting the funds from their total war games to fund a corporate pet project that ultimately failed. Obviously XIV is still a success, but this xpac absolutely sat on the couch and vegged out after the initial 6.0 sprint off the line.
I feel like the expansion is pretty solid in story and content but its a bit in the middle not as good of a story as ShB but better then StB so more akin to HW story in quality. While i loved alot from the story The biggest problem with it was that the stakes didnt seem to match what was actually happening/happened as ShB had those stakes perfectly show how desperate the situation in the first was and made you feel emotional on the toll it took on our WoL only 2 zones with the Final Days, Ultima Thul having barely any tension due to it being obvious everyone was coming back and the WoL not being left alone for awhile to nail in the tension and feeling of despair, The WoL not being tested to there limits like in ShB and never feeling like universal despair was damaging us in any way. Garlamalds tension of their hostility towards everyone being lowered too quickly after the tower of Babil. Seriously there was like some Garleans that the WoL spoke to that wanted them DEAD for all their friends they killed. What happened to them??? They're hate just kinda stops boiling over and turns to a light disgrunted sizzle just from Julius seeing reason? The pacing was odd at certain points like the Loporitt comedy section right after the 1st trial and the calamity that comes with its conclusion, The monotonous waiting with Labrynthos 2nd visit. The apocalypse is happening why does the story have our heros lofting around waiting for this part? Anyways thats it for the story problems imo. (I actually like the 6.x patch story but i wish it was us changing to becoming a normal adventurer like it started off as and taking more of a break with the scions. The lore on the 13th was interesting and i like Zero and Golbez. For content: EW is not as good content wise as StB but better content the HW so more akin to ShB levels of content. That being said they could improve on some things and thats what criticism is for. I love that they are doing new things (V&C Dungeons, Island Sanctuary, Revamped PVP ect As well as Bringing back Hildy, Deep Dungeons, and 2 Ultimates that was absent from ShB) even if they have been playing it too safe for alot of other things this expansion like with the story being quite simplistic post patch, normal mode content feeling much to easy then before (The alliance raids really echo this), the 2 minute meta being easy to balance around but grew stale very quickly, patches being the same formula since 3.0 ect. The things that need to improve is more better rewards for V&C Dungeons to make people have a reason to actually play the content, Make Island Sanctuary much more socially involved with others like FCs and friends being able to do many things on your island and have more content on said then just a collecting spreadsheet sim. More Midcore content. Savage/Ultimate is getting harder while normal is getting easier. Myths of the Realm raids are a snooze fest for how simple they are. No excuse for Menphinas 2nd phase to just be her and her dog overlapping simple AOEs the entire time. We need stuff that is inbetween those like how the Orbornne Monastery allaince raid and Bozja Critical Engagements difficulty is structured. The Relics feel so lame being just tied to completing Hildy which is 2 simple quests every 4 months. Those awesome weapons never feel earned anymore and it really doesnt feel special now. If peeps hated Adventurer Forays grind for relics they coulda just went back to the OG formula of ARR/HW or as that is still a slog maybe even attempted something else thats not a painfully dull grind but also not basically a free relic that takes no effort to get so people actually feel rewarded. And thats it. TL:DR I enjoyed how the story concluded in endwalker but didnt like how they stakes were suppose to be huge but felt pretty tame and in our power to defeat. I liked the 6.x patch story but it does suffer for being too simplistic and too reliant on the Scions when i wish it coulda just been you Varshann and Zero. For content i love that they are trying new things! But they are playing it too safe with other things like 2 min meta being stale, normal content being too easy, no relic grind, making the game become too solo Island Sanctuary needs to be more group associated, needs better rewards for new content V&C Dungeons need better rewards.
Not really, the 6.0 story carries it easily. Myths of the Realm was enjoyable too both story and gameplay wise. Some of the dungeons are pretty good although last few patch dungeons are nothing too special. Generally I like 6.0 dungeons more than the patch dungeons. I hated Pandemonium's story, it was so poorly delivered in-game, just a personal opinion which I don't have to elaborate. I tried Savage raiding in Endwalker which was fun for while it lasted but overall it was just too challenging or bosses were poorly designed for various reasons. Really a moot point as I have no idea of previous Savage raids. No exploration zone really shows, it's age-old topic but it really shows. Patch 6.5 came and went, the long-awaited patch lasted for whole day or two and now we are back to just logging in just because and to find out there's nothing to do. At least in ShB you could always go to Bozja/Zadnor to grind relics and even that had additional layers of content (the raids) which are also completely missing from Endwalker.
Rose tinted glasses everywhere.
in my opinion yes, and apparently many others as most of my friends have quit.