Been playing the game since before the launch of HW and oh boy has it been a ride.
Now I'm a story skipper, I don't give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about the story, if you enjoy it great, if you don't I'm sure there's other reasons you find to play. But that does not excuse the sorry state the game is in.
We have veterans praising heavensward as the best expansion ever because even though it was rough around the edges with the fight design being extremely overtuned for the majority of it, tons of systems that either didn't make sense or had no place to be there (ACCURACY STAT LMAO), it was charming, it was incredibly charming and fun to go through all that jank because the sky was the limit in regards to fight and job design.
Jobs were difficult but they all had a very strong identity. Almost every job had utility and fight specific uses, which did create things like the drg + nin + bard comp being by far the best one to run, but ♥♥♥♥ me if it wasn't still fun.
We had difficult to execute rotations and openers, vastly different tanks with offensive and defensive stances, healers with more than 2 dps buttons.
What do we have now?
2 minute burst windows making most jobs feel exactly the same with slight variance
Tanks have 4 different flavors of warrior
Melee dps has 3 different flavors of dragoon (seriously why is viper just a less edgy reaper)
Ranged phys has 3 different flavors of priority based rotations with an aoe mitigation skill
Healers have a dot and a dps button and overloaded kits that do not require a decent healer to almost ever gcd heal

What did this expansion bring?
A few small reworks and qol changes, maybe an extra button or two for the luckier classes and flashier animations

This has been a very special game to me for well over a decade and I would hate to see it continue with the same design philosophy.
Square, please make 8.0 good

Been playing the game since before the launch of HW and oh boy has it been a ride. Now I'm a story skipper, I don't give two shits about the story, if you enjoy it great, if you don't I'm sure there's other reasons you find to play. But that does not excuse the sorry state the game is in. We have veterans praising heavensward as the best expansion ever because even though it was rough around the edges with the fight design being extremely overtuned for the majority of it, tons of systems that either didn't make sense or had no place to be there (ACCURACY STAT LMAO), it was charming, it was incredibly charming and fun to go through all that jank because the sky was the limit in regards to fight and job design. Jobs were difficult but they all had a very strong identity. Almost every job had utility and fight specific uses, which did create things like the drg + nin + bard comp being by far the best one to run, but fuck me if it wasn't still fun. We had difficult to execute rotations and openers, vastly different tanks with offensive and defensive stances, healers with more than 2 dps buttons. What do we have now? 2 minute burst windows making most jobs feel exactly the same with slight variance Tanks have 4 different flavors of warrior Melee dps has 3 different flavors of dragoon (seriously why is viper just a less edgy reaper) Ranged phys has 3 different flavors of priority based rotations with an aoe mitigation skill Healers have a dot and a dps button and overloaded kits that do not require a decent healer to almost ever gcd heal What did this expansion bring? A few small reworks and qol changes, maybe an extra button or two for the luckier classes and flashier animations This has been a very special game to me for well over a decade and I would hate to see it continue with the same design philosophy. Square, please make 8.0 good