I'm actually enjoying this character but found Lyse incredibly boring.

I'm at the level 94 stuff rn but I love how FFXI this expansion feels. Seeing people on Era who didn't like the first half comment that the second half ties it all together has me excited for what's to come.

Yeah... Lyse wasn't the greatest

If you're liking it now, I'm sure you'll like the second half. Hope you enjoy

Best decision they ever made was moving on LMAO

Emet Selch is still numero uno

This s*** really went from 0 to 1000, the previous quest actually had me doing the most mundane s*** ever

Levelled viper to 90 and enjoying it so far; it’s like a streamlined version of monk with reaper’s burst added on top. The job quests weren’t too interesting however, especially compared to the reaper storyline.

The succession story is ok but I'm really loving the world building in Tural. I do wish they would change the format of questing in this game but overall I think the story isn't as bad as people say. I'm at level 97-98 MSQ btw.

I gotta get back into the game

I genuienely hated the story this expansion but the combat encounters have been really fun, the raid fights are all voice acted this time and they also all have their own BGM, I don't think they ever did this in the first raid right?

Damn, that bad huh

I'm going to do a lot of speculating but based on interviews over the past couple years about FFXIV, FFXVI, and FF in general I think that Yoshi P and the new writer are just trying too hard to appeal to a younger audience because they're scared that the franchise will die as the current audience ages.

You can see it in Zero's character arc over the 6.x patches and Wuk Lamat's story in the first half of Dawntrail. It's not terrible but it's so juvenile for this game it's kind of jarring. I don't hate Wuk Lamat or anything but even I was happy to get a break when we finished the succession ceremony and got to Shaaloani.

Personally my biggest gripe was getting to Heritage Found and having to spend the next several hours learning things that we mostly already knew from watching Zoraal Ja fight Gulool Ja Ja. But this game has always had excessive exposition and pacing issues which people usually don't seem to care about outside of ARR so I assume Wuk being an obnoxious shonen manga character and poor character writing in general (like, Zoraal's motivations are pretty weak) are probably bigger factors for Dawntrail's reception.

Anyway, the second half of the expansion finally picks up by the level 99 dungeon and thematically it gets more interesting in the last zone. Players having to make the zone ugly to progress was a bold choice, and a good one. I think Living Memory does a lot of things well, so I feel like Hiroi isn't really that bad of a writer. Seems to me that Dawntrail is a result of being pressured to write a story for an audience he doesn't really know how to write for, as well as having to meet all the stupid mandates that come with writing an FFXIV expansion (must always have x amount of characters for trusts even if they're useless, must spend y amount of time in each zone, etc.).

With all that said I feel like people are being really hyperbolic about it. But then again people act hyperbolic about every expansion. Hopefully the raids and Shade's Triangle are good though.

If anybody is wanting a good story told in an MMO you should play ESO. Do the Daggerfall Covenant questline because Rivenspire is great. Then subscribe to ESO+ for a month and do Wrothgar. Only problem is the combat f***ing suuucks.

Would you play ESO over this? I'm not really an MMO gamer anymore. Used to be really into runescape and wow as a kid.

I just want something that's fun I can get into. But all mmos are like giant time wasters and everything feels like a huge bullet sponge.

Idk. I want to find something I can really enjoy. I like raids alot too. Just don't want to have to buy expansions to have fun unless they're really good.

I thought this was free to play?
I still gotta buy it to play on ps5.

I think FFXIV is great. As an MMO vet this might not matter much for you but for someone who was new to MMOs, whenever I tried one I used to get overwhelmed by everything and give up before ever reaching endgame. The way FFXIV locks everything behind story progression actually helped me to avoid getting overwhelmed in that way, since it gave me one clear path to progress and introduced new bits of side content at a decent pace. The issue is the story is incredibly long and it takes a while for it to become engaging to most people. But the story is good and you probably won't regret playing through Heavensward or Shadowbringers if you get to it. You can play the free trial up to the second expansion (Stormblood) but I think they restricted access to it because a new expansion just came out so I would try again in a month.

To be honest I haven't played as much of ESO as I have FFXIV so I feel like I can't really give a fair take on it but the combat just feels awful to me and the game really tries to wring every cent out of you that it can. FFXIV combat only feels good at higher levels but at least it feels good eventually. I think ESO is much better when it comes to storytelling though, at least for the quest lines I've played. The difference is ESO has it so each zone has a separate storyline so don't expect a grand decade-long narrative with a big payoff like you would get from FFXIV. Anyway, I would probably never fully switch to playing ESO from FFXIV. If anything I would rather play GW2 since that has a really cool open world and a lot of systems I wish every MMO would borrow.

Since you like raiding I think FFXIV or WoW are your best options. FFXIV has shorter gear treadmill so you might enjoy that more. And you would have to buy the expansions and pay the monthly subscription to access the current raids that everyone is doing in either case.

Thank you for the informative response. I tried ESO and other than 1 questline I was meh on it.

I'm trying the free trial now off ff14 I'm hoping I like the combat more.

Also I don't play on PC so I think this may be the best choice for ps5

Also, does this cost a subscription as well as the price to play the game?

I get that's not uncommon in mmo's but I was really hoping it was just the initial price.

Unfortunately there is a subscription and there's no way around it once you buy the game. It's technically not F2P so you can't back out and get on the free trial again. I recommend playing as much of the trial as you can before you buy it because you'll be stuck paying $13/month after. But you can spend 100s of hours in the free trial alone if you want to, as long as you're okay with all the social restrictions and the gil cap.

is anybody here going to run savage next week? it's real quiet here for a new expansion. did you all really quit over the story?

The normal raids were probably the most fun I have had in normal raids in this game, tbh I have just been taking a break from savage raiding since there are just too many games in my backlog I wanna get to

these raids have been fun asf, need to do extremes to get the wing mounts as they look cool

Savage PF is rough
Im thinking of joining a static for reclears but none of the ones I'm finding work for my hours