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**Updated review after finishing all major patch MSQ content as of 6.5. This is a doozy so sorry in advance…
Final Fantasy XIV has been a part of my life for almost 9 years and is the first “real” MMO I sunk a significant amount of time into (7500 hours at the time of writing - sorry to my circa middle school abandoned Runescape account). I always considered it to be a fun yet flawed MMO that didn’t quite reach the heights of the franchise it was named after until the release of the Shadowbringers expansion in 2019. Somehow, all the stars aligned and we were presented with an exceptionally good narrative with interesting and well written characters, a beautiful new world to explore with tons of interesting lore and most importantly, lots of fun and engaging content with some of the best story beats in the whole FF franchise. Shadowbringers revitalized FFXIV for most people and convinced plenty of new players to come along for the ride. After a few years of COVID-delayed patches, the FFXIV community hype for the following expansion Endwalker was through the roof, as it aimed to wrap up the story that had been building up since the launch of 1.0 in 2010. Unfortunately, Endwalker’s base expansion does not reach the same narrative or gameplay heights as its predecessor, and its postgame patches had an honestly shocking decline in quality that made me start second guessing the amount of time I chose to sink into this game.
When Endwalker launched in December 2021 after a last minute month long delay, players were greeted with a host of technical issues - namely the fact that it was extremely difficult to even log in, with hours-long queues that frequently timed out and sent you back to the end of the virtual line, requiring you to be glued to your computer to make sure you could even get in. While technical issues are to be expected at the launch of any online game, and nobody could predict COVID related supply chain issues and chip shortages we dealt with at the time, I wanted to highlight this specifically to show, in my opinion, the biggest issue with FFXIV development at the time of Endwalker - Square Enix providing the development team with the lowest possible budget for years despite it being their most profitable game by the time of Shadowbringers, and how after 10 years of development the cracks in the systems are starting to show. Each of the first few major patches launched with at least one significant technical issue, such as Bard songs overwriting each other if there was more than one Bard in a party in 6.2, along with lag and packet issues in 6.3. This happened over the course of the game’s lifespan, impacting what the team is able to do with story and gameplay which hurts the overall experience.
Endwalker’s story revolves around the Warrior of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn attempting to avert the Final Days - an apocalyptic event started by Fandaniel and Zenos, the Garlean villains from the Stormblood expansion, that threatens to destroy all of humanity. Along the way, players discover more about the origins of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, travel to wartorn Garlemald, uncover the secrets of the moon and its inhabitants, even go back in time to visit the Ancients. If it sounds like a lot, it is. While necessary to touch on all these aspects of the plot to wrap up the story in a clean way, Endwalker suffers from pacing and tonal issues that lessens much of the emotional impact the game is aiming for. The game feels both too bloated and too rushed at the same time, with the early game feeling glacially slow, and later parts such as the actual Final Days zipping past. It's obvious that they had to combine what was to be two or more expansions worth of story into one, which can impact the tone wildly between sections. One of my favorite story areas was Garlemald, where the stakes finally amp up due to conflicts and atonement with the locals and the first major appearance of Zenos. This is the first time in the expansion where you feel things are about to go wrong and it’s very emotionally tense. Immediately after, you spend what feels like an eternity on the moon with the comic relief characters - the Loporrits - bringing the momentum of the narrative to a screeching halt. Moments like this make the plot feel extremely disjointed, and while things all come together at the end for the most part, makes the journey to get there feel laborious.
Your enjoyment of the Endwalker story will hinge upon your feelings on either Zenos as an antagonist, or how much you liked Emet-Selch and the Ascians/Ancients from Shadowbringers. I personally think Zenos is one of the worst FFXIV antagonists - to me he’s incredibly boring compared to most other villains in this game and it's frustrating how they keep bringing him back. I liked the scenes with the Ancients more, even if they meant that a lot of what I liked about Shadowbringers and previous expansions’ lore needed to be retconned (DYNAMIS!!). Pacing and tone issues aside, I found the last few hours of Endwalker to be genuinely solid and I’ll totally admit I shed a few tears at the end of the journey. The new areas we explore are both varied and very pretty, music remains the highlight of this game and that final zone still gets me. I also want to give a nod to the enemy design, particularly the Blasphemies you end up fighting towards the end. Real incredible stuff!
Endwalker introduced two new classes, the shield healer Sage and the melee DPS Reaper. Reaper quickly became a favorite of mine, striking a balance between the rigidity of Samurai and the gameplay loop of Dragoon, plus I’m a big fan of the aesthetics. Sage I enjoyed, but personally enjoyed Scholar more. Level cap increased to 90, and classes were updated with new abilities - mostly capstone abilities - while Summoner and Astrologian got reworks. The class simplification that started in Shadowbringers continues in Endwalker, with classes starting to feel much more homogenized based on role this time around. You will hear the phrase “two minute meta” frequently when discussing Endwalker combat. What this refers to is that all party buffs are on the same timers, making syncing buffs across a raid significantly easier. Buff syncing occurs every two minutes during a fight now, which makes for a host of problems. It's a generally boring way of playing the game as buff syncing has become too simplified, fight progress and parsing is too reliant on random crits now, and after participating in some of the current raids, you can immediately tell that fight difficulty for the rest of this game’s lifespan (if the meta continues) will be a hard mechanic during a 2 minute buff window. The two minute meta has been very controversial in the community and I personally hope it's reworked moving forward as it makes the game much less interesting to actually play. Crafting and gathering I kind of gave up on this expansion - individual crafts were made much harder this time around due to everyone having maxed out crafting classes at the end of SHB and I personally didn’t feel the effort was worth it to continue.
While I had my issues with the story and some of the new combat design at base Endwalker, I found it to still be a fun and engaging expansion that didn’t quite hit the highs of Shadowbringers, but also didn’t hit the plot lows of Stormblood.
Postgame Endwalker… is where things start to fall apart.
The EW post game MSQ starts off promising, but quickly devolved into an extremely dull fanfic-tier retelling of Final Fantasy IV in the context of XIV where pretty much nothing happens for 5 patches. A new character Zero is introduced as the voidsent side of Zenos who was freed from serving him after you kill him at the end of EW. She is interesting, but I hate how we have yet another tie to Zenos (PLEASE let him stay dead!!) and the writers seem to not know what to do with her. Each patch is basically a “Zero learns the power of friendship” story, and the whole arc feels like ARR tier filler towards the end. Trials are incorporated into the MSQ this time around, with no side story like previous expansions. Boss fights against the FFIV archfiends aren’t as memorable as other trial bosses, and I found the EXs (with the exception of Barbariccia) to not be as engaging as the Savage tier raids. Dungeons are pretty, but over too quickly and are far too easy this time around.
The bulk of EWs postgame content is raiding, with 12 new normal and savage raids released in sets of 4 every 8 months, and two new ultimate raids for the more hardcore players. I consider myself more of a midcore player - I like doing savage, but at a more casual pace in a group with my friends and I care more about clearing a fight than optimizing and parsing, so your mileage will vary depending on how you approach raiding in this game. I found the new savage raids this tier to be a mixed bag, with some fights like P2S and the second half of P8S to be very fun to learn, while other fights like P3S had some truly bizarre design choices, or P6S and P7S to be extremely boring. This was my first time finishing full tiers (I had cleared one off fights during SHB), and I’ll admit I was feeling a little burnt out towards the end of each tier. A big issue I ran into during many fights was you can tell the developers are starting to include more involved mechanics but the game engine can barely keep up with them - such as snakes during P8S Phase 1. Server ticks and lag can cause many, many frustrating wipes and it feels bad to fight the server over the boss. Plot wise, if you like the Ascians/Ancients story you will find it enjoyable, but for most people including myself who are just in it for the fights and rewards, you will find yourself skimming text and cutscenes. I have yet to try the new ultimates, but after only getting one in SHB, the two new ones will keep hardcore raiders very busy.
The new Alliance raids are definitely the best part of the expansion for me. These 24 player raids explore the origins and motivations of the 12 patron deities of Eorzea. The raids and story cutscenes ooze personality, with some of the most fun writing of the expansion, best music and interesting boss mechanics. I really enjoyed the lore you get at the end of the raids, and it's nice how your chosen deity is incorporated into the plot too. The glam from the first raid is super pretty and looks awesome on your character. My only complaint is the difficulty is tuned a little too low compared to previous alliance raids, and after the first couple weeks once people figure out mechanics you will steamroll these, finishing in about 15 minutes. You can even skip the capstone mechanic of the very first final boss in a party with geared up characters, which really lessens the impact of the fight.
Endwalker added a few different types of new content, but each feels half-baked in their own unique way. PVP got a rework, simplifying abilities and adding the Overwatch style 5v5 “push the payload” Crystalline Conflict. The new simplified classes actually work well in PVP and are unique takes on each job, but the actual mode suffers from many of the same problems Overwatch has, with very minimal team communication and the addition of a battle pass. When you’re winning it feels great, but when you’re losing it feels even worse than Frontlines. Speaking of frontlines, the new PVP rework has made Frontlines even less fun as certain metas completely dominate what is supposed to be a random PVP mode. The team seems less focused on balancing this mode too. I don’t think FFXIV has ever been a fun PVP game - mainly due to the game’s engine and server tick system preventing it from feeling as fluid as a PVP game should, but I at least give the team props for trying to reinvent it.
The new Variant and Criterion dungeons are a good addition, but have lackluster rewards and are soloable ensuring this content dies out extremely quickly. It’s a more interesting take on the dungeon formula, where interacting with certain items and certain paths can change the outcome of where you go and can also alter boss mechanics. 3 difficulty modes are provided, but for players looking to get into harder content, the jump from Variant to Criterion is a little too steep compared to Criterion to Savage. Rewards are mostly glam and materia, and mounts that can be bought off the marketboard, so if you have no interest in collecting there is little incentive to grind this content. I hope to see this expanded in future expansions and it seems that for the final dungeon which has yet to be released, the dev team is making the rewards more appealing.
Island Sanctuary is hard to describe because I think most of us were expecting something totally different to what we got. Initially it seemed like it would be an Animal Crossing-style solo experience, but what we ended up getting was this weird spreadsheet simulator where you gathered materials on your island and assigned workers to craft things that would be exchanged for special island currency, which you redeemed for rewards. It was fun at first trying to figure everything out, but after a couple patches maintaining your island became monotonous and was quickly abandoned by most players. Island customization was minimal at best and besides trying to catch animals to add to your farm, it’s just another glorified AFK spot. I think most of us were expecting more, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this content was left to rot after EW.
And that’s pretty much it… the relic grind has been severely simplified, requiring completion of Manderville quests (ugh) and collecting tomestones. The new Eureka Orthos deep dungeon is lots of fun thankfully if you’re into the deep dungeon grind. Beast tribes are solid as usual but are also much faster to complete this time around compared to previous expansions. There is no exploratory area like Eureka or Bozja this time around and it hurts. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Bozja last expansion for many reasons but not having this big group, more mid-core content with additional raids this time around makes the late game feel a lot more empty. Beyond small side quests and crafting/gathering relics, there really isn’t much more to do if you’ve finished everything from previous expansions.
The final big point I want to make about my dissatisfaction with EW is that it just seems like the dev team does not know where to take the game at this point. Many QOL patches we got during this expansion and SHB were attempts to make the early game more palatable for new players, which is great since ARR is still a slog even after much of it was trimmed out. But something I have mentioned a couple times in this review was the idea of SOLO content. At this point, the vast majority of MSQ dungeons and trials can be done as a solo player throughout the entire game. Most of the new content bar raids can also be done as a solo player. While it’s nice to have the option, I don’t think this is healthy for the life of an MMO. Players have less and less opportunities to interact with each other and the community becomes more antisocial as a result. This combined with a still very poor onboarding system for new players and having to venture outside of the game to resources like The Balance to even find out how to play your class correctly will ensure the raid pool will become smaller over time as veteran players start to get bored with phoned-in raids. FFXIV in 6.X cannot decide whether it wants to be a more welcoming single player RPG experience or an MMO, and since it can’t decide on either, all players are hurt.
Anecdotally, I feel like easier content is getting way easier and hard content is getting way harder. There is no more midcore content and the skill gap required between doing something like a normal vs an extreme is getting wider. I’m an officer in a large FC and I hear people talking about how they want to try harder content but they don’t feel like they have the skills required to even try, don’t know how to go about becoming better, and are nervous about dealing with people in Party Finder. Granted, it is up to the player to put in the work, but the game should be encouraging that too. Keep the community healthy by giving them content and rewards people want to obtain.
I think Dawntrail is going to be a big make it or break it moment for FFXIV. Player engagement has been dipping with each patch, and the endgame raid pools have been becoming smaller. Patch content can be completed in a day or two max with the exception of gearing your character. I even unsubscribed for a couple months for the first time in over five years. Despite everything, I still enjoy FFXIV and keep coming back to it for my friends and the community I’ve built for myself in game, but I found myself booting the game up less and less as I became dissatisfied with the expansion’s offerings over time. I know FFXIV can be so much better, and I hope the development team takes the community's concerns to heart for 7.0 and beyond. Give me a reason to play this game for another 10 years.
Final Fantasy XIV has been a part of my life for almost 9 years and is the first “real” MMO I sunk a significant amount of time into (7500 hours at the time of writing - sorry to my circa middle school abandoned Runescape account). I always considered it to be a fun yet flawed MMO that didn’t quite reach the heights of the franchise it was named after until the release of the Shadowbringers expansion in 2019. Somehow, all the stars aligned and we were presented with an exceptionally good narrative with interesting and well written characters, a beautiful new world to explore with tons of interesting lore and most importantly, lots of fun and engaging content with some of the best story beats in the whole FF franchise. Shadowbringers revitalized FFXIV for most people and convinced plenty of new players to come along for the ride. After a few years of COVID-delayed patches, the FFXIV community hype for the following expansion Endwalker was through the roof, as it aimed to wrap up the story that had been building up since the launch of 1.0 in 2010. Unfortunately, Endwalker’s base expansion does not reach the same narrative or gameplay heights as its predecessor, and its postgame patches had an honestly shocking decline in quality that made me start second guessing the amount of time I chose to sink into this game.
When Endwalker launched in December 2021 after a last minute month long delay, players were greeted with a host of technical issues - namely the fact that it was extremely difficult to even log in, with hours-long queues that frequently timed out and sent you back to the end of the virtual line, requiring you to be glued to your computer to make sure you could even get in. While technical issues are to be expected at the launch of any online game, and nobody could predict COVID related supply chain issues and chip shortages we dealt with at the time, I wanted to highlight this specifically to show, in my opinion, the biggest issue with FFXIV development at the time of Endwalker - Square Enix providing the development team with the lowest possible budget for years despite it being their most profitable game by the time of Shadowbringers, and how after 10 years of development the cracks in the systems are starting to show. Each of the first few major patches launched with at least one significant technical issue, such as Bard songs overwriting each other if there was more than one Bard in a party in 6.2, along with lag and packet issues in 6.3. This happened over the course of the game’s lifespan, impacting what the team is able to do with story and gameplay which hurts the overall experience.
Endwalker’s story revolves around the Warrior of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn attempting to avert the Final Days - an apocalyptic event started by Fandaniel and Zenos, the Garlean villains from the Stormblood expansion, that threatens to destroy all of humanity. Along the way, players discover more about the origins of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, travel to wartorn Garlemald, uncover the secrets of the moon and its inhabitants, even go back in time to visit the Ancients. If it sounds like a lot, it is. While necessary to touch on all these aspects of the plot to wrap up the story in a clean way, Endwalker suffers from pacing and tonal issues that lessens much of the emotional impact the game is aiming for. The game feels both too bloated and too rushed at the same time, with the early game feeling glacially slow, and later parts such as the actual Final Days zipping past. It's obvious that they had to combine what was to be two or more expansions worth of story into one, which can impact the tone wildly between sections. One of my favorite story areas was Garlemald, where the stakes finally amp up due to conflicts and atonement with the locals and the first major appearance of Zenos. This is the first time in the expansion where you feel things are about to go wrong and it’s very emotionally tense. Immediately after, you spend what feels like an eternity on the moon with the comic relief characters - the Loporrits - bringing the momentum of the narrative to a screeching halt. Moments like this make the plot feel extremely disjointed, and while things all come together at the end for the most part, makes the journey to get there feel laborious.
Your enjoyment of the Endwalker story will hinge upon your feelings on either Zenos as an antagonist, or how much you liked Emet-Selch and the Ascians/Ancients from Shadowbringers. I personally think Zenos is one of the worst FFXIV antagonists - to me he’s incredibly boring compared to most other villains in this game and it's frustrating how they keep bringing him back. I liked the scenes with the Ancients more, even if they meant that a lot of what I liked about Shadowbringers and previous expansions’ lore needed to be retconned (DYNAMIS!!). Pacing and tone issues aside, I found the last few hours of Endwalker to be genuinely solid and I’ll totally admit I shed a few tears at the end of the journey. The new areas we explore are both varied and very pretty, music remains the highlight of this game and that final zone still gets me. I also want to give a nod to the enemy design, particularly the Blasphemies you end up fighting towards the end. Real incredible stuff!
Endwalker introduced two new classes, the shield healer Sage and the melee DPS Reaper. Reaper quickly became a favorite of mine, striking a balance between the rigidity of Samurai and the gameplay loop of Dragoon, plus I’m a big fan of the aesthetics. Sage I enjoyed, but personally enjoyed Scholar more. Level cap increased to 90, and classes were updated with new abilities - mostly capstone abilities - while Summoner and Astrologian got reworks. The class simplification that started in Shadowbringers continues in Endwalker, with classes starting to feel much more homogenized based on role this time around. You will hear the phrase “two minute meta” frequently when discussing Endwalker combat. What this refers to is that all party buffs are on the same timers, making syncing buffs across a raid significantly easier. Buff syncing occurs every two minutes during a fight now, which makes for a host of problems. It's a generally boring way of playing the game as buff syncing has become too simplified, fight progress and parsing is too reliant on random crits now, and after participating in some of the current raids, you can immediately tell that fight difficulty for the rest of this game’s lifespan (if the meta continues) will be a hard mechanic during a 2 minute buff window. The two minute meta has been very controversial in the community and I personally hope it's reworked moving forward as it makes the game much less interesting to actually play. Crafting and gathering I kind of gave up on this expansion - individual crafts were made much harder this time around due to everyone having maxed out crafting classes at the end of SHB and I personally didn’t feel the effort was worth it to continue.
While I had my issues with the story and some of the new combat design at base Endwalker, I found it to still be a fun and engaging expansion that didn’t quite hit the highs of Shadowbringers, but also didn’t hit the plot lows of Stormblood.
Postgame Endwalker… is where things start to fall apart.
The EW post game MSQ starts off promising, but quickly devolved into an extremely dull fanfic-tier retelling of Final Fantasy IV in the context of XIV where pretty much nothing happens for 5 patches. A new character Zero is introduced as the voidsent side of Zenos who was freed from serving him after you kill him at the end of EW. She is interesting, but I hate how we have yet another tie to Zenos (PLEASE let him stay dead!!) and the writers seem to not know what to do with her. Each patch is basically a “Zero learns the power of friendship” story, and the whole arc feels like ARR tier filler towards the end. Trials are incorporated into the MSQ this time around, with no side story like previous expansions. Boss fights against the FFIV archfiends aren’t as memorable as other trial bosses, and I found the EXs (with the exception of Barbariccia) to not be as engaging as the Savage tier raids. Dungeons are pretty, but over too quickly and are far too easy this time around.
The bulk of EWs postgame content is raiding, with 12 new normal and savage raids released in sets of 4 every 8 months, and two new ultimate raids for the more hardcore players. I consider myself more of a midcore player - I like doing savage, but at a more casual pace in a group with my friends and I care more about clearing a fight than optimizing and parsing, so your mileage will vary depending on how you approach raiding in this game. I found the new savage raids this tier to be a mixed bag, with some fights like P2S and the second half of P8S to be very fun to learn, while other fights like P3S had some truly bizarre design choices, or P6S and P7S to be extremely boring. This was my first time finishing full tiers (I had cleared one off fights during SHB), and I’ll admit I was feeling a little burnt out towards the end of each tier. A big issue I ran into during many fights was you can tell the developers are starting to include more involved mechanics but the game engine can barely keep up with them - such as snakes during P8S Phase 1. Server ticks and lag can cause many, many frustrating wipes and it feels bad to fight the server over the boss. Plot wise, if you like the Ascians/Ancients story you will find it enjoyable, but for most people including myself who are just in it for the fights and rewards, you will find yourself skimming text and cutscenes. I have yet to try the new ultimates, but after only getting one in SHB, the two new ones will keep hardcore raiders very busy.
The new Alliance raids are definitely the best part of the expansion for me. These 24 player raids explore the origins and motivations of the 12 patron deities of Eorzea. The raids and story cutscenes ooze personality, with some of the most fun writing of the expansion, best music and interesting boss mechanics. I really enjoyed the lore you get at the end of the raids, and it's nice how your chosen deity is incorporated into the plot too. The glam from the first raid is super pretty and looks awesome on your character. My only complaint is the difficulty is tuned a little too low compared to previous alliance raids, and after the first couple weeks once people figure out mechanics you will steamroll these, finishing in about 15 minutes. You can even skip the capstone mechanic of the very first final boss in a party with geared up characters, which really lessens the impact of the fight.
Endwalker added a few different types of new content, but each feels half-baked in their own unique way. PVP got a rework, simplifying abilities and adding the Overwatch style 5v5 “push the payload” Crystalline Conflict. The new simplified classes actually work well in PVP and are unique takes on each job, but the actual mode suffers from many of the same problems Overwatch has, with very minimal team communication and the addition of a battle pass. When you’re winning it feels great, but when you’re losing it feels even worse than Frontlines. Speaking of frontlines, the new PVP rework has made Frontlines even less fun as certain metas completely dominate what is supposed to be a random PVP mode. The team seems less focused on balancing this mode too. I don’t think FFXIV has ever been a fun PVP game - mainly due to the game’s engine and server tick system preventing it from feeling as fluid as a PVP game should, but I at least give the team props for trying to reinvent it.
The new Variant and Criterion dungeons are a good addition, but have lackluster rewards and are soloable ensuring this content dies out extremely quickly. It’s a more interesting take on the dungeon formula, where interacting with certain items and certain paths can change the outcome of where you go and can also alter boss mechanics. 3 difficulty modes are provided, but for players looking to get into harder content, the jump from Variant to Criterion is a little too steep compared to Criterion to Savage. Rewards are mostly glam and materia, and mounts that can be bought off the marketboard, so if you have no interest in collecting there is little incentive to grind this content. I hope to see this expanded in future expansions and it seems that for the final dungeon which has yet to be released, the dev team is making the rewards more appealing.
Island Sanctuary is hard to describe because I think most of us were expecting something totally different to what we got. Initially it seemed like it would be an Animal Crossing-style solo experience, but what we ended up getting was this weird spreadsheet simulator where you gathered materials on your island and assigned workers to craft things that would be exchanged for special island currency, which you redeemed for rewards. It was fun at first trying to figure everything out, but after a couple patches maintaining your island became monotonous and was quickly abandoned by most players. Island customization was minimal at best and besides trying to catch animals to add to your farm, it’s just another glorified AFK spot. I think most of us were expecting more, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this content was left to rot after EW.
And that’s pretty much it… the relic grind has been severely simplified, requiring completion of Manderville quests (ugh) and collecting tomestones. The new Eureka Orthos deep dungeon is lots of fun thankfully if you’re into the deep dungeon grind. Beast tribes are solid as usual but are also much faster to complete this time around compared to previous expansions. There is no exploratory area like Eureka or Bozja this time around and it hurts. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Bozja last expansion for many reasons but not having this big group, more mid-core content with additional raids this time around makes the late game feel a lot more empty. Beyond small side quests and crafting/gathering relics, there really isn’t much more to do if you’ve finished everything from previous expansions.
The final big point I want to make about my dissatisfaction with EW is that it just seems like the dev team does not know where to take the game at this point. Many QOL patches we got during this expansion and SHB were attempts to make the early game more palatable for new players, which is great since ARR is still a slog even after much of it was trimmed out. But something I have mentioned a couple times in this review was the idea of SOLO content. At this point, the vast majority of MSQ dungeons and trials can be done as a solo player throughout the entire game. Most of the new content bar raids can also be done as a solo player. While it’s nice to have the option, I don’t think this is healthy for the life of an MMO. Players have less and less opportunities to interact with each other and the community becomes more antisocial as a result. This combined with a still very poor onboarding system for new players and having to venture outside of the game to resources like The Balance to even find out how to play your class correctly will ensure the raid pool will become smaller over time as veteran players start to get bored with phoned-in raids. FFXIV in 6.X cannot decide whether it wants to be a more welcoming single player RPG experience or an MMO, and since it can’t decide on either, all players are hurt.
Anecdotally, I feel like easier content is getting way easier and hard content is getting way harder. There is no more midcore content and the skill gap required between doing something like a normal vs an extreme is getting wider. I’m an officer in a large FC and I hear people talking about how they want to try harder content but they don’t feel like they have the skills required to even try, don’t know how to go about becoming better, and are nervous about dealing with people in Party Finder. Granted, it is up to the player to put in the work, but the game should be encouraging that too. Keep the community healthy by giving them content and rewards people want to obtain.
I think Dawntrail is going to be a big make it or break it moment for FFXIV. Player engagement has been dipping with each patch, and the endgame raid pools have been becoming smaller. Patch content can be completed in a day or two max with the exception of gearing your character. I even unsubscribed for a couple months for the first time in over five years. Despite everything, I still enjoy FFXIV and keep coming back to it for my friends and the community I’ve built for myself in game, but I found myself booting the game up less and less as I became dissatisfied with the expansion’s offerings over time. I know FFXIV can be so much better, and I hope the development team takes the community's concerns to heart for 7.0 and beyond. Give me a reason to play this game for another 10 years.
This review contains spoilers
I want to write an actual review of Endwalker once the patch cycle has completed but man I feel like my opinion of this game has soured quite a bit in the last few months of postgame. Actual expansion content was solid; I liked the new zones, new classes, and the story for the most part. The game felt both too bloated and too rushed at the same time and had plenty of issues with tone, but I felt they were able to wrap up 10 years of story fairly well. Not the biggest fan of the combat change to the 2 minute meta, but I enjoyed some of the savage fights I did even if the EXs were lacking in comparison.
Post patch content seems to have taken a nosedive in quality, with MSQ content being a completely dull retelling of FFIV where nothing has happened for 4 patches besides the introduction of Zero, a new character that I do like but unfortunately is still tied to Zenos (please let him stay dead already!!) and the writing team seems to not know what to do with her yet. Savage has been pretty hit or miss, with fights either being fun to figure out or complete slogs running on an engine that is starting to hit its limits on what mechanics actually feel like they work consistently. Alliance raids are excellent, if tuned a little too easy for my tastes.
Unfortunately, the new content introduced in EW postgame has been interesting, but mostly halfbaked. The new CC mode feels like a copy paste of Overwatch including all the problems that game had. A big PVP rebalance to compensate for CC has made Frontlines even less fun and the team seems to have moved on from balancing it already. Variant and criterion dungeons are fun but over too quickly and have lackluster rewards ensuring this content dies out after a couple weeks. Island sanctuary ended up being a relaxing but dull spreadsheet simulator, again not really giving you much incentive to continue with it once ranked up. The new deep dungeon is great as always thankfully. Relics are tied to manderville quests which have worn out their welcome and the act of getting relics has been reduced to grinding out tomestones instead of the checklists from previous expansions. There is no exploration areas as well. Extended time between patches is fine but patch content seems to be thinner and more along the lines of future proofing older expansions - great for new players, not so much for veterans running out of things to do. I found myself increasingly bored with the game and even unsubbed for the first time in 5 years.
With 7.0 seemingly taking a completely new direction, and ideally the bulk of the development team back on XIV dev after the release of XVI, I am hoping SE can make FFXIV into an engaging MMO after 2 years of lackluster EW patches and get players excited to return to Eorzea again.
Post patch content seems to have taken a nosedive in quality, with MSQ content being a completely dull retelling of FFIV where nothing has happened for 4 patches besides the introduction of Zero, a new character that I do like but unfortunately is still tied to Zenos (please let him stay dead already!!) and the writing team seems to not know what to do with her yet. Savage has been pretty hit or miss, with fights either being fun to figure out or complete slogs running on an engine that is starting to hit its limits on what mechanics actually feel like they work consistently. Alliance raids are excellent, if tuned a little too easy for my tastes.
Unfortunately, the new content introduced in EW postgame has been interesting, but mostly halfbaked. The new CC mode feels like a copy paste of Overwatch including all the problems that game had. A big PVP rebalance to compensate for CC has made Frontlines even less fun and the team seems to have moved on from balancing it already. Variant and criterion dungeons are fun but over too quickly and have lackluster rewards ensuring this content dies out after a couple weeks. Island sanctuary ended up being a relaxing but dull spreadsheet simulator, again not really giving you much incentive to continue with it once ranked up. The new deep dungeon is great as always thankfully. Relics are tied to manderville quests which have worn out their welcome and the act of getting relics has been reduced to grinding out tomestones instead of the checklists from previous expansions. There is no exploration areas as well. Extended time between patches is fine but patch content seems to be thinner and more along the lines of future proofing older expansions - great for new players, not so much for veterans running out of things to do. I found myself increasingly bored with the game and even unsubbed for the first time in 5 years.
With 7.0 seemingly taking a completely new direction, and ideally the bulk of the development team back on XIV dev after the release of XVI, I am hoping SE can make FFXIV into an engaging MMO after 2 years of lackluster EW patches and get players excited to return to Eorzea again.