Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

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MCH packs a punch but it's brain dead, Bard is fun but a buff bitch, and Dancer is somewhat between the two.
 
(and in the case of ninja/dragoon, memorizing long openers and cooldown phases)
NIN has bunny hat hell you can get into by fucking up your mudras, but DRG is generally pretty easy.

You can put all your oGCDs on a hotbar in the order you use them in your opener and then just click them as soon as they get off cooldown. That's literally it, everything's designed to line up.
 
endwalker wouldve been a good ending to ff14 as a whole, make a new mmo set in the same 'realm' but now every shard is slowly converging, new classless systems that let us seamlessly change "job loadouts" like in shadowbringer's trailer, etc. etc. Limit breaks as a system is now implemented outside of raids.

And an actual skill line with actual fucking summons. But the biggest thing: new character, lvl 1, new MMO systems.
 
endwalker wouldve been a good ending to ff14 as a whole, make a new mmo set in the same 'realm' but now every shard is slowly converging, new classless systems that let us seamlessly change "job loadouts" like in shadowbringer's trailer, etc. etc. Limit breaks as a system is now implemented outside of raids.

And an actual skill line with actual fucking summons. But the biggest thing: new character, lvl 1, new MMO systems.
You know the reason they won't. You get fashion endgamers and raidtroons being up in arms about not being able to transfer their perfectly glamoured characters over. Muh cheevos, muh raid gear, muh collectibles. The list goes on.
 
I wanted to call out that I've started playing with the Visibility plugin available in the normal Dalamud list to hide visibility of all players unless I'm in a party, and I haven't enjoyed the game this much in years. Toggling on and off is very easy. I have shout, yell, and custom emotes also disabled in my chat box.

No more pink hrothgar in 2B bikini and boots every time I teleport somewhere, no more "softboi bnuuys" wearing ruffled dresses doing uwu emotes at each other while finding more people to swap their Mare Synchronos codes and carrd URLs with in cities and low level areas, no more Legend catgirls - friends with the softboi bnuuys - wearing 2B bikinis and boots with mog station jackets standing in circles with copy-paste versions of themselves around the aetheryte plaza quietly jacking themselves off while playing dress-up Barbies with each other. Unless I forget to toggle it off after being around my FC or something.

I have plenty of gripes about EW and the general "safe" and uninteresting game design elements, but the community is by far the worst thing about this game.

Thank you for allowing me a complain. 💕
 
endwalker wouldve been a good ending to ff14 as a whole, make a new mmo set in the same 'realm' but now every shard is slowly converging, new classless systems that let us seamlessly change "job loadouts" like in shadowbringer's trailer, etc. etc. Limit breaks as a system is now implemented outside of raids.

And an actual skill line with actual fucking summons. But the biggest thing: new character, lvl 1, new MMO systems.
Well I suppose when you think about it, Endwalker is the end of the FFXIV story but they just have to make more expansions because FFXIV is a huge money maker.
 
From what I remember reading; Endwalker WAS actually supposed to be two expansions, originally. The first expac was supposed to be the build-up towards and invasion of Garlemald - with I think Zodiark being the finale of it, story-wise, though that's just my theory - while the second one was supposed to be dealing with the Final Days and such. So, you're all not wrong when you state the pacing is a bit fucked; it's literally two expansions crammed into one.

If I remember correctly, the reason why Endwalker turned out the way it did was because the devs just... wanted to finish up the story. I think, because this story was over 10 years old at this point, the devs just wanted to finally wrap it up. Can't say I blame them for wanting to finish the story... but the pacing of the finale certainly suffered, especially when it comes to dealing with the damn rabbits.

Ironically, I think Endwalker is my personal favorite expansion; not saying that others are bad, mind, I just really like it for some reason.

EDIT: Found the interview where they confirmed that Endwalker was supposed to be two expansions: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/tg7lgz/spoiler_60_famitsu_interview_with_yoshida/
The reasons are 1) they wanted to move on from the Ascians 2) they feel fans might get fatigued from the story dragging its feet for too long. Seeing TV shows that do this, I can understand the concern but personally I wouldn't mind if they took their time doing the Garlemald expac and give themselves time to finetune EW.
 
The reasons are 1) they wanted to move on from the Ascians 2) they feel fans might get fatigued from the story dragging its feet for too long. Seeing TV shows that do this, I can understand the concern but personally I wouldn't mind if they took their time doing the Garlemald expac and give themselves time to finetune EW.

Yeah, that was the reason why; sorry for the wrong answer earlier.

And yeah, I agree; they really should have taken their time with this one. I mean, I love Endwalker, it's my personal favorite expansion, but I can definitely see how they could have made the whole thing quite a bit better. There's a lot of cool ideas in this expac that should have been developed a bit more; sadly, with the devs moving on with Dawntrail, it's very unlikely that we'll never see what a lot of it.

For instance, there's quite a bit of nods towards how the Garleans were forced up north, into the wastes, by a tribe of magic users; it would have been extremely interesting to see us meeting with this tribe, learning about the shit that they did with Garlemald, and how their current people are faring.

Similarly, in the final few areas, we learned that the Meteion visited at least 20 different worlds, but we only ended up seeing 7 of them; the Dragon, the Ea, the Omicrons, the Grebuloff, the Karellians, the Nibirun, and the abandoned world (where the Last Dregs cafe gets started during the Tribe Quests). It does make you wonder what the other worlds could have been like; I think the Manderville quests bring up another, but it's still something.

What would you guys have preferred to see?
 
And from looking at the quest list it looks like it’s time for me to talk to the space bunnies, so it’s gonna be cancerous until I get to an actual good part of the expansion again.
Heavensward and Shadowbringers were consistently good
As others have pointed out, Thavnair 2 is good - or, at least, OK - but I genuinely believe everything else up until the final trial is dogshit, and the final trial is just a fun fight. The actual thematics of it are dogshit, and it's impossible to do anything but roll your eyes at the entire thing - or, like most people, quietly just forget it happened.

The thing is, Heavensward and Shadowbringers had their slow, monotonous, boring points. From La'Hee to Innocence in ShB is weak and features several pratfall deaths. Heavensward has the whole arc with both Ravana and Bismarck, which if I didn't go look up I genuinely wouldn't remember. But these filler arcs are both, at worst, disappointments. They fall inbetween far more engaging plotlines and there's so much more that could have been done with them, but ultimately they still fit within the overall pacing of the expansion's overall story. They don't feel like horrendously awkward stop-starts. Hey, anyways, I know you just defeated what you believed was the ur-antagonist, wud u liek karrot Xd??
then Endwalker comes stumbling through the door at 2AM drunk off its ass pissing itself.
I spoke with someone who said they heard that Endwalker was, in effect, committee-written -- and that the upcoming expansion would be much the same. Not out-of-touch corporate stooges committee, but rather just a panel of writers that already worked on the game, each being assigned their own part with (apparently) no predominant, prevailing vision.

This is obviously just something I heard from a random on the internet, but would explain so much EW's utterly bipolar behavior. Half of the zones hardly belong, the other half feel utterly necessary but entirely too short, dumb plot macguffins are given way too much time, and genuinely awesome sequences - like almost the whole of Garlemald - become this thing that fades into memory because the main gist of the expansion seems to be introducing tons of new elements in an 8-year-old-story and then summarily closing them off in favor of yet another new, wholly-undeveloped element.
What would you guys have preferred to see?
Restraint. Rather than writing a bunch of ideas really poorly with zero time to cook, I'd rather they hone in on a few ideas and really, really dedicate to bringing those ideas to fruition. But with all the listless asskissing EW got, I don't really see that happening.
 
The thing is, Heavensward and Shadowbringers had their slow, monotonous, boring points. From La'Hee to Innocence in ShB is weak and features several pratfall deaths. Heavensward has the whole arc with both Ravana and Bismarck, which if I didn't go look up I genuinely wouldn't remember. But these filler arcs are both, at worst, disappointments. They fall inbetween far more engaging plotlines and there's so much more that could have been done with them, but ultimately they still fit within the overall pacing of the expansion's overall story. They don't feel like horrendously awkward stop-starts. Hey, anyways, I know you just defeated what you believed was the ur-antagonist, wud u liek karrot Xd??
Thing is, the monotonous parts of earlier expansions have redeeming story moments sprinkled in, especially ShB where Emet is finally on the scene and keeping things interesting which helps break up the worst of that stretch. Even the trolley has one of my favorite scenes in the game to close it out, where Urianger talks to Ryne. In EW you kind of have that at the end of Labyrinthos 2, but the space rabbits are so bad with no payoff that it permanently leaves a bad taste in your mouth. You've also been burned by Elpis shitting itself at the last second too.
But with all the listless asskissing EW got, I don't really see that happening.
I'm curious to see this too, just because of how EW got exponentially more asskissing than it would have from the community even though they're always too positive about the game, largely due to the WoW exodus after that game finally imploded and them taking it as some weird MMO-culture-war victory that proved 14's superiority in all things. A whole lot of criticisms at the time got handwaved by the community as "Yeah, but look at how bad WoW is, they're all playing 14 now!" The game's not bad enough to make me not play Dawntrail, but enough that I'm just gonna shotgun the EW patches when it comes out.
 
but enough that I'm just gonna shotgun the EW patches when it comes out.
Oh no no, trust me, for all the problems the main EW story has, it is a masterpiece of storytelling compared to 6.1 onwards.

It's such a trashfire that I almost feel like I should tell you *not* to skip it so you can bask in just how fucking bad it gets.
 
Endwalker's post story is suffering heavily because it's being forced to also be the Trial series, instead of relegating that to its own thing like Four Lords or Werylt were.
Its another budget saving move they did that hurts the overall quality of the expansion, and that's probably my biggest gripe with the expansion as a whole.

All of the content they've added feels incredibly uninspired like they were just going through the motions, and any shortcut they could take they did.
 
Endwalker's post story is suffering heavily because it's being forced to also be the Trial series, instead of relegating that to its own thing like Four Lords or Werylt were.
Its another budget saving move they did that hurts the overall quality of the expansion, and that's probably my biggest gripe with the expansion as a whole.

All of the content they've added feels incredibly uninspired like they were just going through the motions, and any shortcut they could take they did.
I honestly couldn't give a singular fuck about the "muh nostalgia" they're peddling by practically copying Final Fantasy IV. It's somehow more blatant than the Eden raids which practically has you fighting the Eden GF on the first fucking raid.
 
Thing is, the monotonous parts of earlier expansions have redeeming story moments sprinkled in, especially ShB where Emet is finally on the scene and keeping things interesting which helps break up the worst of that stretch. Even the trolley has one of my favorite scenes in the game to close it out, where Urianger talks to Ryne. In EW you kind of have that at the end of Labyrinthos 2, but the space rabbits are so bad with no payoff that it permanently leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Yeah, and the Ravana arc plays into the Warrior of Darkness plotline and Bismarck is a prelude to... well, I actually can't really remember the point of Bismarck, but in itself it's a bit of cool spectacle that isn't offensive, even if it feels a little forced.

See, even the end of Labyrinthos 2 is not just tainted by the rabbits in and of themselves - it's tainted because Urianger has been relegated to "comedic relief" and will proceed, for the rest of the expansion and its afterlude, to be the butt-end of rabbit jokes. It's just such whiplash to have the big, emotional setpiece foisted atop a thoroughly rubbish segment -
Imagine instead if, during the final dinner scene before you blast off into space, where the player talks with Thancred, Y'shtola, and Urianger in Sharlayan about being at peace with themselves and what they've done, that Urianger impresses upon Thancred the importance of forgiving himself over what happened to Minfilia, and to free himself from the constant torment and what-ifs. Thancred acknowledges the logic of it, but has trouble truly internalizing it - and then you have Moenbryda's parents chime in, from off-screen, that Urianger aught to do the same. You can play Urianger's scene with them almost exactly like it is in Labyrinthos 2 at that point, really.

Cue the big, emotional man-crying bishie moment in which they both let their burdens free, have Thancred cut a joke through his manly tears, and use the opportunity as a rare one to have Y'shtola's glib, callous demeanor lighten up and give her a bit of the sniffles, too, while she impresses to the player the importance of preserving moments like these and overcoming the End-Days both for the sake of everyone still with us, and for the memory of everyone gone by.

Keep the rabbits in a locked box a million miles away from this scene.
 
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