Honestly, when I put in my jab, I didn't expect you to actually do it. I merely though "eh, there's a chance." "I have no idea who you are" kinda cemented that. I further didn't expect you to agree with me on personal or objective level. On any level. I wanna further emphasize: This isn't about saying EW is fine because HW was bad. It's that if you want to call it "the worst," this is your competition. Every bad thing about EW, you have to also consider HW nearly killing the game before we could get this far. To be clear, I 100% agree that there's a lack of rewards. I got all 17 ShB relics on content because I really liked Bozja, so I want that content back. Other thoughts on what EW did wrong - including some comments we get in the rest of this video. We aren't paying to play mid expansions. I agree 100%. No question. We deserve as best as they can do. But I agree that a HW2 would just kill the game, full stop. And we get there by blindly claiming EW is this super bad, no upside experience. It's not about that HW is bad in the lens of HW. It's that HW is bad in the lens of HW. We didn't like this stuff 8 years ago either.

Wesk (in my opinion) has the best new player guides out there. Goes over every skill and ability you get, explains them well and helps craft a beginning rotation in how to play the jobs correctly. I owe a lot of my ability to play pretty much every job in the game decently to him.

I loved Eureka and Bozja personally. There was a lot of standing around and then large bursts of movement, but I enjoyed it because it felt like those pieces of content brought people together. I have many fond memories of ferrying people across Eureka and running to save players who died so they wouldn't lose experience. Many fond memories of everyone in the whole instance talking to one another, having discussions, just memeing, etc. The alliance runs inside Bozja were really fun mechanically as well. Ah good times.

Maybe I'm biased about Endwalker, but honestly, my grandmother passed shortly after Endwalker released and the underlying theme of "No matter how dark the days become, there is a light. There is hope if you just keep going." And honestly? I really needed that. And Endwalker earned a very special place in my heart because of it.

Based Wesker had some really good guides before he took his break. Hope he comes back for DT

As someone who only started playing at the end of Shadowbringers, I always appreciate ff 14 history lessons. Gives me such an appreciation for the version of the game i came to.

I remember doing Diadem version 1 and getting a healer robe that was better than Gordias Savage. Three high roll substats including capped Crit and Piety. My FCmates were livid because I had quit raiding.

All i’m gonna say is that when they turned bard into a caster, everyone lost their minds but when they turned summoner into a ranged dps, everyone clapped and cheered. We truly live in a society 😢

Ive played the game 9 years and it has its up and downs. I think ppl are blowing this whole "ew is worst expansion" thing out of proportion

What honestly continues to bother the shit out of me, Yosi P literally SAID that the content for Post EW was going to be less content packed BECAUSE Dawntrail was going to be MORE content packed + all the additions to the system and graphics. If you guys can't stand the fact that EW is the end of a saga and it's expected to have little to nothing left to do until we go to new lands, PLUS the fact the developers are even saying themselves they'll be slacking on Post EW to ensure Dawntrail has all the time needed and effort put into it because it's going to be fucking huge, then yall don't deserve to play this game. All people want to do is whine, for once think logically, gather your information, and then speak. P.S before you respond "well why didn't they make sure all of this was settled before so on and so forth" bro, covid happened and threw them way off schedule with Endwalker as is. So of course that fucked up the course of Dawntrail too.

Xeno yelling about Dragoon TP just took me so far back

I’ve always found it odd that with such an influx of players the past few expansion, most of the community seemingly rate the expansions by the quality of the MSQ and any other facets of the past expansions are instantly forgotten. I think OP brings up a really good point of people just parroting hot takes which always have me scratching my head like ‘are y’all new?’

I don't see the argument of "Expansion A is fine because Expansion B was really bad" that Wesk is trying to use as logically sound. It's very possible for Endwalker to be a bad expansion regardless of whether Heavensward was worse. Also, the beginning of the video seems meanspirited and is misrepresenting the discourse that's been going on/the people involved, similarly to how Lynx's video did, but Xeno didn't seem to notice. Considering how much he complained about the lynx video (rightfully so), I really hope it's not because Xeno agrees with Wesk's premise more than Lynx's and that he genuinely didn't notice.

Oh hell yeah he REACTED!

The diadem story kinda puts into perspective why the devs are so afraid to mess with alternative gearing paths.

49:45 'That type of mentality I think is just so stupid'; Yes, Yes it is. And it's a result of players not really knowing what they actually want coupled with the fact that players GRIND their faces into some parts of the game instead of taking their time and enjoying it. They don't realize how much they enjoy the content because they're grinding their face into it until their face resembles a chunky paste, and then only realize hay wait I kinda liked that AFTER it's no longer there for them to do that. People have no patience, and min-max their time and don't just play to have fun.

Wesk got me into the game and made it very approachable for me he's awesome

I was part of the HW raid groups disbanding part. They gave BLM Enochian and Leylines, hated them both and I didn't like SMN so I had an identity crisis trying to find a job I liked plus my raid group struggling with Faust every now and then without getting a consistent clear on him. Our SMN was a kind of SMN that didn't even have raging blows from Archer until later in our raid tier in ARR.

20:00 I feel this massively, I remember doing Doom Train in SB and reading my logs and seeing two fights, near exact same down to a GCD. One was a 30th percentile and the other was near 80th. The difference? Critting in wildfire windows.

Ohh I’m glad he’s reacting this video. Really enjoyed it.

the lack of discord back then, i think, is understated. we used to log in to game to talk to our raiding buddies but nowadays that feels like a weird outdated chore.

okay the game dies then i am the only one left to play the new expansion and attend the next fanfest ha ha

As for crafters the only crafting class that didn't need any cross class abilities was Carpenter, in Heavensward carpenter made the accessories. also mog poms from fishing. only fishable in one location, and noone fished there.

On a fundamental level Heavensward was by far the worst expansion, as much as I loved it back in the day and I miss the job complexity it was just fucking awful. I got kicked from a fucking dungeon for playing paladin, a DUNGEON.

My server was a ghost town during the first half of Heavensward, and there wasn't that many people in the first place. People really don't realize how HW almost burried the game again. But to quote Lynx's video about the Downfall of XIV, "because the pixels said sad words", it is heralded as one of the best expansion to date. Yes, the story was top tier. The rest was an unmitigated disaster. You play the story for 40-60 hours. You play the rest for 2 years.

As someone who played ninja in HW, I'm still exhausted.

I’m not sure what all the fuss is about, I don’t want FFXIV to turn into WoW and feel like I must play every day / every week. I’ve been branching out since I found FFXIV, I like to play multiple games at once as hobbies rather than jobs. I guess the option should be available to people who have nothing else to do / don’t want to play any other games, but I’m personally happy with the state of the game. I know it’s not perfect, but I’m chillin’ in Limsa and doing dailies with my friends every so often, and that’s fine with me :) But hey, maybe there should be more to do. I don’t think Squeenix can make everyone happy though. I wish they could, ‘cause I love this community, and I hate to see everyone so madge.

Is there a part 2, its abruptly cut off D:

Wesk is the GOAT. Homie's job beginner and Blue Mage guides are just so cleanly made.

I'm glad y'all revealing the truth about Heavensward. Granted, I quit ff14 in HW back then (not becuz I didnt like raiding or anything. I just stopped playing cause I wasn't interested), but once I came back to play Stormblood, gosh it felt SOOOOOO much better. So much of the goofy shit that made playing the game straight up annoying were gone.

My favorite part of what Wesk brought up was the pink gear because it's the problem I have with farming exotic armor in Destiny 2. Random chance for a drop on a random exotic piece with a random stat total with a random stat spread.

Everybody I know who played FFXIV quit in heavensward and didn't come back for years. Most didn't ever come back. I hated it, because once I finished the story I just bashed my head against a wall for a short time, then watched everyone around me quit the game before joining them myself.

People say "Critically Acclaimed" but dont understand what that means. To be Critically acclaimed, it to be praised by the critics who reviewed the game. The thing about MMOs when it comes to critics is that they only review the game on the surface level. First 24 hours kinda stuff. Of course ffxiv being a story focused game, all critics played during reviewing was the story which was good. After they finished the story review, they move on to review other games and dont stick around for all the patches and raids. Which seems to be where the issue a lot of players had with Heavensward.

Glad to see you react to this one. WeskAlber is a chad.

Could you put Part numbers in your video titles or put them into playlists just for ease of finding and listening?

What is that groan sound that keeps going off? Thought it was an old cat, but maybe it's a Twitch thing?

Endwalker had one of the best stories out of all games i've played, really touching on the emotional weight. If anything, the only reason it's "bad" is because we're waiting on the next major expansion, where every chunk of story that takes place between expansions always sucks and feels like a grind.

i cant believe ZEPLAH STARTED THIS LOL

omg i have not heard the name Dervy in so many years absolute legend.

Really, I liked all of the expansions. Did I like some of them better than others? Yes. Endwalker was not the overall favorite, but it was most definitely was worth the ride, imo. Even in this 'lull' between expansions, XIV is much better than most other options. EDIT: Of course, I built my first char when Stormblood was the 'current expansion' and then I moved on for a while, and didn't come back till EW was there. I picked up at about level 62 in about Oct 2022, and pushed on through. So, yeah, I missed all that part of HW when things were horrible. When I went through HW you were using newer job balance (I played BRD for MSQ), and the raid issues weren't a problem anymore. You can see just about anyone playing anything anymore. That's something that newer games really haven't yet mastered.

the only reason people think heavensward is good is because they played it with the Shadowbringers QoL at the time. No one would think it's the best expansion when you had to level multiple classes for spells or god forbid the TP bar.

As someone who just finished ARR right as Heavensward took off, I went through this whole thing and it's amazing to me having to explain some of this stuff. Like I hear so many ppl who started in Shadowbringers and I just chuckle a little. But I do love this game and I felt weird about how people were just dunking on Endwalker when like yeah, it's FINE. I don't think any of these people would have liked FF14 as much if they had been playing during that stage. I was lucky I had such an active and friendly FC at the time where it made me want to continue playing. Once you started talking about what AST cards used to do, I got war flashback when I first picked it up. It was my first healer and I swear I was scared the whole time to stance dance but my god, did I learn. I don't watch you on twitch but I enjoy your opinions on things lmao so I'm glad you upload to YT so I can put this on in the background and nod my head like some old grandma remembering the old ff14 days XD

As a person who played MNK and PLD back in HW... I can still feel the pangs of rejection to this day...

I remember trying to queue for Alexander and not being able to find anyone for normal

FF has the same problem as wow. Now because everyone is starting to compare how it used to be. Instead of focusing on the how is it right now. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. The things you tend to remember are way better in your memory. Then in reality. It’s how everybody remembers classic wow as this hardcore mmo experience. When in reality everybody was shit at the game and at video games in general. Because it was one of the most popular mmos that attracted a lot of new people to gaming in general. In general don’t look back because you’ll only see the things you want to see.

As a non-raider, I absolutely loved heavensward, I still have the best memories of ffxiv in that expansion.

I think the biggest issue that EW is suffering from is that there are people who want very different things from the game. Some players want more hardcore PvE content, and thus want content catering to those experiences. Some players want chill, fun times to do with their friends, and thus want content catering to those experiences. None of these are necessarily wrong things to want, but players of all stripes need to understand that just cause they didn't get EVERYTHING they wanted (cause at the end of the day everyone gets something) that doesn't mean the expansion sucks. My own belief is that the dev team wanted to have 6.X content feel a bit more relaxed, which is how we got stuff like the Variant Dungeons, the Island Sanctuary, and the Hildebrand quests replacing Bozja/Eureka. This is obviously speculation on my own part, but I think it has some merit to it given the tone that the expansion we're leading into seems to be sporting. Also to go the point about players wanting different things, some people just don't want to play FF14 anymore. And that's also fine. But I think demanding the game change to suit your now differing tastes is unrealistic. One of the examples I remember seeing of this was that someone was saying they wished that FF14 was more like a horror game. Which just doesn't seem attainable without massively changing the game (of course there are some horror moments in the game, but those are more story moments and not even main components of said story anyways).

Final fantasy 14 has a stable influx of content with some new features added in expansions here and there (such as island sanctuary) that goes outside of what you can expect right, alliance raids, dungeons, raids... relics etc although I am unsatisfied with the relic on Endwalker since eureka and bozja are my favorite types of content I believe Endwalker is a fine expansion as well, I started playing on Shadowbringers and I really enjoy having a game that has this stable content coming in that you can pretty much "predict" what is coming and when specially because its not the only game I play.

I hope there's a part 2!~

Damn, I loved Heavensward lol but I feel the criticism. Raids were insanely difficult

So Endwalker has had its failings but for me the worst those failings amount to is: "this is just a bump in the road" then again my perspective on HW is because I kinda joined the game on the cusp of just before all those major overhaul changes happened, practically only a year and a half before 6.0 it’s not like I had a bad impression of the expansion or understand that perspective (although I think some of the changes from 6.0 were unnecessary)

In regards to the 50 second macro since I have no context of the time. Was Infuriate an ability you could use out of combat so you could get that extra Fell Cleave?

Community that got stranded on dead servers when all the raiders left to join other raiders to join gordias has gaslit themselves into thinking that the patch that caused a lot of 14's competitors to jump ship and join 14 has somehow "killed raiding" and I don't even know what to think anymore because when you look at the tiny % dip in 14's playerbase during Gordias and Midas and compare it to Endwalker's freefall it's not even close. But I guess if that's the delusional way that people wanna look at 14. I remember how my circle quit GW2 and SWTOR en masse to join 14 when they heard Gordias was actually a challenge. We get that raiding isn't for everyone, but when you look at your guild that used to do Coils, and see that when demands for the raid went up they all jumped ship to settle with people who actually care about meeting the requirements, and then go "wahh my raid disbanded and joined the other elitists on [insert populated server here], Gordias killed raiding" it's extremely out of touch. It's honestly cope for a jump in difficulty that was frankly needed in 14 and I would even argue frankly that if it weren't for gordias and midas at all the population would have fizzled before Stormblood as the game would not have survived another Coil. Alexander was the raid that showed the raiders in competitor MMO's that FF14 was serious about giving us the content we wanted and that's why we even stuck with this piece of shit game for 8 years. Just because the raiding culture had to restructure itself doesn't mean that the raiding scene was killed, JFC.

Xeno is right. Tons of people left during heavensward. It was miserable man... I hope this game never goes back to those times.

I've always said that FF fans rate the expansions based on the story element only. This is why they think they want to try HW as it was, in a WOW classic form, but they don't know that most of them would be exposed as trash raiders as you needed to be on point to clear Tier 1. Also, Brute Justice was more of a mini Ultimate for it's time than anything other fight. This one also had low clear rates. Hell, people were hard stuck in A6S (the gauntlet). I remember so many PFs just stuck on this fight for weeks on end. This fight also made friends into enemies. Also, Stormblood was great for content, just the story was "ok" compared to HW story. This is why people say it sucks, only due to the story.

18:25 yeah i think it'd be more fun if we have a 40% crit chance rather than two 20% crit chance but one is weaker than the other

I had 3 statics break on A3S and I was already not able to find tanks back then because there was no party finder nor cross server recruiting. So I gave up and stopped playing. The only reason I started playing again is because I stayed in touch with friends from the game, these players convinced me to join them on EU Fanfest in 2017 which got me hyped for the game again so I resubbed 2 weeks before Stormblood early access. Also to realize how low pop and low hype the game was back then, EU Fanfest did not sell out, there were shitton of empty seats. I bought my ticket very late with no issues. Guess it'll be my last Fanfest though since we have lottery now :(

Aetherial gear was a level above for Bard because of the bloodletter resets proccing off of crit dot ticks. In general it could roll higher stats, but even without that a bard piece with just high crit but nothing else could be comparable to raid BiS.

My god, I have taken a several month break from this game and I'm just starting to check in again and people are still bickering about what is "real criticism" and what isn't? The game is not fun right now! Endwalker has been sorely lacking. Stop talking about Heavensward, that was then, this is now. That doesn't make Endwalker less mid. Seriously, what is up with the whataboutism? "Endwalker isn't bad because Heavensward was bad!" So stupid.

I dislike accuracy and direct hit for different reasons. Accuracy was such that it literally created scenarios where you had to wait longer to properly gear/meld. Direct hit just added another random damage equation that, as Xeno said, can make something either do 30k dmg or way more than that. It was a stat that as such, made other stats in the damage equation take back seat to the point that SE had to come back and change the equation for determination so it didn't lag so far behind in comparison. I don't like having too much random variance in damage projection, and DH added that in as you had your standard attack, your Direct hit attack your critical hit attack then your direct hit critical attack. Then they had to adjust it so that Brd and other buffs to DH adjusted it to do more damage when the buff is on as opposed to just increasing the chance of it. It just seems that DH was both their bandaid fix and at the same time the whole reason why we had to go through various stat adjustments since it has been added, to include adjustments to fights where they 'adjust the HP too high and needed to correct it.'

Someone needs to send this video to Zepla at the speed of light.

i was a member of that statistic but by proxy, i started ARR when 2.0 released but never really did the MSQ much, i remember being at level 25-35 ish in the msq when i stopped and focused on just levelling, i grinded out to 50 with fates in coerthas and didnt seem to care about the msq, a week or so before heavensward dropped i printed out every msq quest i would need to do to be ready for 3.0, the amount of msq i ran through in the short amount of time (keep in mind before they thinned the msq down) and took a break after getting caught up, that break lasted until stormblood lmao

It’s good to get insight in how HW was back then. As someone who joined in during Shadowbringers I understand that as a new player who has not experienced past expansions one shouldn’t confuse a stories quality with the old state of the game. I think I can understand how HW was terrible, considering I actually chose to farm the DrK relic during ShB. It was certainly a terrible experience for a staple glamour.

Hey man, as a WoW andy this whole thing has been quite humorous.

HERE'S the shittiest thing with Aetherial Gear. Wesk said it, but when he says "Lots of Points, or Little points." It was also RNG with HOW MANY points you had in the sub stats. Meaning, if you get a gear, you don't get 50 points of Sub-Stats point randomly allocated to random stats. You had RNG stats with RNG amount of points. So you can easily have a gear that has, for example 10 Crit, 10 Sks and 10 Accuracy, to the same gear dropping, but has 23 Critical only. So you HAD gear, that only gave you LESS than the sub-stats allocated points of a raid gear. It was IDIOTIC.

This video took me back. Bow mage and gun mage. Deep lore right here.

I started playing in heavensward, but wasn't really in the community yet, and was going through the backlog of msq and content, so the context to all my extremely long queue times is very interesting to hear. When i got to end game it was probably a few months before creator came out.

I started raiding in HW as PLD and it changed me forever... i havent touched raiding since

My buddy and I just left the moon, been loving cutting through the game from fresh start

I first started playing in Stormblood. I clearly remember there was a free trial until level 30 and I started as a BLM Lala. I quit so quickly because you have to face the enemy manually if you are casting a spell. It was really annoying.

As i commented on the original video, endwalker was probably a very experimental expansion. For us now it seems like they are shotgunning things but i feel like some of those changes will be well regarded when they make an actual legacy, and none of the experements have had the amount of time to have a legacy yet

I wish mch would get gunmage back. I think it could be a fun way to balance the ranged dps/give them further variety.

Honestly I want accuracy back but more like Expertise like wow had where instead of a "hit/miss' it's instead its a chance to be parried or partially resisted maybe the mob takes 20% less of the damage. Getting it so you have to hit a certain breakpoint (not a super high one but involving some Materia/stat investment) that benefits you to have the stat capped without being as harsh of a penalty of accuracy... with the value of what you need to hit 100% hit rate being plainly shown in game. Granted I still feel we need a new interesting stat that ideally makes it so crit isn't the end all be all stat it is today.

i started in HW (not endgame thank fuck) but i basically switched from NIN to DRK since the dungeon queue's were easily on peak times around 30-45 minutes. this was before you had cross world duty finder (added in SB, which drastically reduced the queue times) in SB i started my 1st savage raid tier (didn't finish it due to O3S, i cleared it in PF, but we could never get past the mix tiles phase as a static) i did this as a DRK, early SB for DRK was amazing, then in the 2nd raid tier i realized that having 2 DRK's is kinda bad, so i switched to PLD/WAR (and boy, was WAR desired for O5S due to IR and FC the ghost add, completely removing the add phase for 7/8) 1 thing i kinda want back for specifically MCH and maybe even BRD is the cast time like MCH has it in PvP currently, just make it so you're at walking speed while casting, i also miss the reload system where you had to reload BULLETS into your GUN, crazy right? Honestly, I still don't like Eureka or Bozja, I do think they're healthy for the overal game since it gives during times of content draught something to do, which this expansion sorely lacks. got my Zeromus EX mount yesterday, time to never do that fight again. (for example) tried searching for a static for Criterion, couldn't find a single static looking for players, didn't clear the final tier since the static i was in was terrible and i dread going into PF to learn P12S, on top that i can just wait till januari and be BiS anyway, it's almost like P12S doesn't matter. (still want to clear it, but damn, PF is an incompetent mess) also when i hear people say "HW was the best expansion" they rarely mean the actual battle content, but more the story, I agree that some systems in HW were really really bad, but in general, when people speak fondly about HW it's almost always the story.

The raid scene was truly dire, especially because your raiding was locked to ONLY your world.

This guy is being real af, lots of people today have no idea how good they have it and seeing them cry about the most nothing problems are fools.

The worst part about crafting and gathering back in the day was you had to spiritbond gear to get materia but it destroyed the gear to spiritbond it so you just recrafted and melded and made stupid items to spiritbond the gear via use over and over and over again. I only got an emergency mission 1 time in diadem and we didn't clear it lol (obviously) so yeah that was a complete garbage system.

You are correct about people hating stuff when it is present, and when it is gone they want it back. A good case in point is a lot of WoW people who complained about borrowed power. Now that there isn't any borrowed power systems in the current expac, they are asking for it to return.... As for Eureka, I loved it then, and still do now. It is my favorite content in the game, by far. But, I was a long time FFXI player, so maybe that is why it resonates so much with me.

Man I remember the wait for 3.1 was sooo long I think it was like half a year.

EW is cool, and given that I've played SMN since ARR, I don't mind its current version much since it has always changed over the years, glad I get to take a break while playing now for once.

Great video! I’d suggest removing the chat enabled sound effect. That moaning SFX was really annoying hearing it throughout the video. Just a small nit. Great job!

I feel like this is a poor perspective. Only around 30% of people even do the first savage tier, and only 20% of players actually finish up raiding on "good expansions". Raiders are the minority of players and health of raiding scene has very little to do with a expansion being good or bad. No one cares if that 20% quits the game, it about if the expansion can keep that 80% logging in each day. People are in a bubble and view their tiny raiding community as the entire game when in reality they are just a small fraction. Memory is blurry but in terms of player retention and the casual 80% logging in each day even towards end of the expansion I feel HW and SB was the best. It felt like we had lot of casuals logging in even towards the final patch. Shb I feel like the last patch was kind pretty rough but people were pretty engaged for first few patches. It feels like drop off between ARR and EnW is pretty similar but it does feel like it happened earlier with EnW. I would probably argue if everything wasn't so brand new in ARR it would of probably performed way worse then EnW. I feel like EnW isn't a bad expansion but the issue is FFXIV itterate so little between expansions that with each new expansion there less brand new experiences each time. So while it took a year to experience all the casual content of ARR, For EnW you pretty much got 90% of the experience of the expansion within a month.

yo, that last void blizzard into void aero is always so dirty. it's basically an enrage because it's impossible to avoid unless you know it's coming.

The Black Mage issue was not exclusive to HW. It was in ARR as well.

I was in vitality tank in havensward if I'm remembering correctly paladin had the highest hp and I beat them by like 2000 points as darkkinght lol😅

The fact that people are complaining about EW being a "bad expansion" is one of the most moronic things i have heard.

oh hell no that crafting discussion I can't, it was too horrible

@5:15 what's your saying is "if a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it does it make a sound."

Cross class and XP loss on wipe was a AMAZING thing that made so only us good players sustained at end game...

Heavensward is where you have to log in the post expansion just to get by on how insane and time consuming everything is. Endwalker is where the post expansion you don't actually have to play often or perhaps at all if you're casual till the last update so you can justify the one month sub. They really went places ngl.

But That is also when we didnt have ingame pull timers or Ready Checks either so having a countdown so when Pugging these raids having a WAR with the macro was a blessing cause some didnt have the macro and it was a mess.

I started late ARR into HW. I never killed Faust and didn't start savage raiding again til Alexander. I was content with the relic grind and other casual content. Story carried me through that time.

i started playing in ARR but got lost at somepoint (Lv30ish Cnj/whm) and took an absence and only caught up at around Baelsar's wall XD apparently i was super lucky and dodged alot of pain XD

You both really put into perspective how bad some things were back before I started the game 😂 like holy, I can’t imagine not having ability cooldowns reset after wipe

i want crossclass in a very specific way, i want some things to be shared but there should be a way to get stuff WITHOUT leveling another class. like for example res on paladin, you could just level white mage till you unlock the res, or you could just level paladin till it unlocked, like the cross classing would jsut be a way to get certain skills early

I'm of the opinion that increase in numbers came from basically what i'm calling the "streamer boom" and I think despite the usual criticisms the game has always had, there's just more voices shouting louder. I think consistency has gone up, and feels alot more like SE has honed in on what they see as the "FFXIV Formula", and can definately understand the criticism that it can sometimes be a bit samey. Even if we see some drop-off I think its in-line with what you'd expect at the end of the main patch cycle. Mixed with the increase from that aforementioned streamer-boom I do kinda miss that in ARR as summoner, you could clear dungeons as 4x SMN and some of the other weirded way of playing the game (Does anyone remember when Titan-egi used to be the preferred tank for Ramuh-ex?), mind material melded SMN that I swapped into after summoning Titan-egi with tank accessories so I could have Titan-egi tank dungeons for some fun challenges I enjoyed the fact that Materia was alot more meaningful in 1.0 (putting everything else that was wrong with 1.0). Really, I think alot of it comes down to the type of way they balanced content. Rather than focusing on what I see is player strategy and inter-class mechanics, it's more about knowing your rotation, and it's more about learning how to respond to bosses. Saying that, i've not touched raiding content for the last two expansions so most of what I say about that is a hot take.

There is another Point I've heard in another Video: the thinning of ARR's Gameplay and that's true for example Cross-Class Abitilies, those worked in ARR and not so much later, which is why it's okay that this stuff has been removed. Since in ARR the Devs were not sure if they succeed, they just put in the work, the blood, sweat and tears and hoped that it paid off, which it thankfully did. But there are new troubles like the 2minute meta or direct hit both of which I'm not necessarily against. NIN&SAM for example work well in the 2min meta the severe downside of SAM that you Spam Shinten like a Bitch without Kaiten and speaking of which, the devs just could've changed Kaiten so it gives the Next Weaponskill Direct Hit and suddenly the Player is responsible for their damage output instead of hammering down the lvl50 rotation with cool stuff happening every 2minutes, Kaiten spiced things up unlike the limp Shinten Spam.

I wish people would have had this energy regarding field operation content in Stormblood and Shadowbringers because a certain part in the community did their best to constantly hate on it. Please don't let the same thing happen with variant and criterion dungeons.

I'm not going to lie, I miss Heavensward because I miss all the Dark Knight buttons. Class was so dope.

This is so interesting to hear about. EW is the first time I reached level cap, I technically started playing in Stormblood but didn't get really into it until shadowbringers was nearing the end of it's life span. It was kind of disheartening to see so many people say the game is going down the shitter even though I'm having fun because I worry about there not being enough people for lobbies, but hearing some push back and reminders that not everything is as rosy as people talk about is kind of nice to hear. Hope dawntrail is still fun, I'm hoping to dip into savage properly before echo is added.