I’m back for my annual month on FFXIV, but I honestly admit I’m growing a bit tired of the gameplay loop, the “omg you’re the main hero !!” story and the sometimes very weird community. I love the world setting though, so I usually stick around anyway.
I would love to give GW2 more chances, but I’m not totally vibing with the combat system; plus, I wish art direction went a little differently, the game is not exactly holding up well these days (but I admit that square-enix is quite a high standard in that regard: even FFXI still looks artistically coherent, two decades and a half later).
Trying to hold onto my desire to play FFXIV since I have a personal large house and years invested
But honestly the recent expansion having the worst story we’ve seen in a final fantasy ANYTHING alongside multiple staff members pretending Wuk Lamat’s voice acting was acceptable (and the large portion of the player base that will call you a transphobe for that opinion) has me seriously considering if this is the end of the line for me
Tried picking up GW2 but tank controls disgust me
I haven’t played Dawntrail yet, but I have to admit that I felt something was troubling the game even in earlier expansions: as I finished both ShB and EW I couldn’t help but be left with a state of “oh, tome grinding… again… in the same exact way as all the other expansions”. No one seemed to care, however, so I thought it was my problem. And it’s a big shame, because I expected differently from Dawntrail: from what I heard, it feels more like the character going on a vacation than anything, with really just the same gameplay loop.
Another thing I was expecting from Dawntrail, apart from big gameplay changes, is to redefine the story more significantly: FFXIV up to Endwalker was a great story, but sometimes I couldn’t help it but feel like I didn’t want to be so central to everything: it’s great when MMOs make you feel like “a hero from the sidelines” because there’s less immersion breaking (and FFXI did this succesfully, if I recall). I think writers really dug themselves in too deep of a hole:
spoiler
how the hell do you write a threat that feels significant after you’ve talked about universes, ancestral gods from previous eras trying to destroy everything, etcetera? I understand that resetting everything to the point of no one having any recollection of the Hero of Light would have required a lot of writing, but maybe it would’ve been better - having EW’s ending trigger a sort of memory-wipe similar to that of FFXIV 1.0’s story.
From what I hear - reason I haven’t played it yet - is that Dawntrail is fram from such expectations. I agree that once you try FFXIV’s legacy controls you can’t go back. Same thing goes for gamepad optimization.
What about gw2 “tank” controls disgust you?
There arguably isn’t even the concept of a tank in gw2.