Just sharing some thoughts on this as I procrastinate weekend working.
I am a relatively new player to FFXIV. I started earnestly about a year ago, after getting to around level 35 in the MSQ way back in 2015. Before FFXIV, my main MMO was Guild Wars 2 for around 9 years and prior to that WoW for around a similar amount of time.
As I progressed through the earlier expansions I was assured that the story was fantastic, even if major leaps in logic
spoiler
such as the construction of the huge Talos to reach Mount Gulg or Varis suddenly believing in the need for rejoining or Zenos turning up at the conclusion of Endwalker
were prevalent in all expansions.
I was also lead to believe that Dawntrail was going to be absolutely awful with terrible writing and a slog on the level of post-ARR. But, honestly, that hasn’t been my experience so far. I have just finished the level 91 journal and I am finding the story of Dawntrail quite refreshing after how WoL-centric the previous expansions were and I am enjoying the world building being a bit more subtle and delivered via small character interactions rather than being beaten over the head with exposition for cutscene after cutscene.
I have been warned that there are moments where the narrative tension is sapped, but that was also really prevalent in Shadowbringers (as a Viera player, Rak’tika Greatwood was beyond disappointing) and Endwalker
spoiler
(much of Elpis and Ultima Thule)
I’ve also heard so many complaints about the balance and game design that I am just not really understanding. Perhaps I really need to dip my toes into Savage to understand this, but looking at the concerns it seems very quaint compared with the balance issues in other MMOs (looking at you Guild Wars 2)!
Maybe things really will get monumentally worse and I won’t enjoy DT by the end of it, but I am enjoying DT considerably more at this stage than the other expansions aside from Shadowbringers.
I will try to remember to come back and share thoughts when I am done!
I think those are all very fair points and I will definitely keep much of that in mind as I continue working through the expansion.
One thing that I am finding myself really disagree with more experienced FFXIV players on is the job identity and resulting balance. This is very much coloured by coming from Guild Wars 2 which made excellent strides in opening up the ability to perform major roles on all professions but then failed the landing so drastically that despite a plethora of builds being available, most see very little play because of how strong a handful are. Much of the reasons for the poor balance seem to stem from trying too hard to have distinguishing features and different playstyles and I’m not overly keen to go back to that.
FFXIV, from what I’ve played thus far (I am mainly focusing on healers with all at 100 or very high 90s) feels very similar to WoW when I played during WotLK. There are definite differences, but they aren’t considerable.
I do hope that Square Enix manage the very tricky balancing act of adding more flavour and differences without subsequently destroying balance which aside from FRU looks pretty okay? Failing that, I’ll take somewhere that I can play my main in group content without being on the receiving end of a kick because of what I play.