MSQ is slow because that’s what most of the release content is. It’s more or less a 40+ hour movie that follows the usual FF14 story development tropes.
Every character that is put into the MSQ has a reason to be there, one way or another, and is explained whenever they appear.
Improvements to the gameplay were minor, mainly revolving around the fixes to make it so you can’t accidentally overcap on resources by using your cooldowns (mainly things like Plentiful Harvest = Free Enshroud vs giving just an Enshroud’s worth of meter).
FFXIV endgame hasn’t changed, it is designed to be something you can consume as quickly or as slowly as you want, some people clear things 50 times in Week 1 then take a break until the next patch, as is the game’s design.
Visuals? Spells look neat, though there are plenty of examples where the overhaul had massive improvements to making the world look less ‘flat and empty’ even when flying well above it. The zones in the expansion are distinct enough that each one is mostly different.
Community Engagement? Eh. Dawntrail has been out for less than a week (only one week if you include early access) and has been given relatively frequent developer notes even on such a short timespans so that seems to be kind of moot.
I’m also a Black Mage main and have been enjoying it, some of the fights are godawful to play as it (like the first boss of the first level 100 dungeon) but overall it feels sort of better being able to more reliably extend Astral Fire, not being beholden to random Thunder procs, spending more time in Fire and less time in Ice and having Flare Star as the added (nuclear) cherry (bomb) for finishing a Fire phase properly.
I don’t know if its fake or not because I havent played FF14 in a while. But I have seen way more negativity on the socials about this new x-pack than what I’m used to
I’m a bit confused how someone got all the way through Dawntrail before they noticed FF14’s MSQ is slow and meandering. It has been more visual novel than a video game since ARR.
Well, but there are identical core principles. For example, I press a button and things happen. It also has a screen that shows what’s happening.
That’s how a video game works!
Kinda… fits the definition, doesn’t it?
Don’t give it a second thought. Just agree with me.
Because people expected the momentum of ShB and EW and got ARR again; an expansion focused more on establishing new plot threads rather than resolutions since everything was resolved with EW.
Some people aren’t going to like that, especially since many people came in during ShB and EW.
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