By the time I left GW2 I was mainly just logging on for World vs World and Raid. There was also some Living World stuff but the current season wasn't really gripping me even though it probably should've been. (Charr focused!)
Raid was just taking too much out of me. The raids are too long and due to schedules, the ideal time to do them with your static is in long four hour blocks.
I've said it many times but there's a few huge flaws in GW2's raids and honestly I do believe these flaws are the main reason the raiding scene is so small.
I think the dev team noticed a lot of the problems and I think Strike Missions were their attempt to make raid-style content that was more user friendly (+try to boost the raid population) but it's kinda too little too late imo
namely Bangar is a fucking moron and I don't understand how he's been able to lead Blood Legion all this time without marching them off a cliff in sheer stupidity
He has no evidence for any of his claims, his plan is absolutely stupid, he has a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Elder Dragons work, and somehow he was able to win over so many of the Charr?
yes the charr are the "war race" but that doesn't mean they have to literally be at war all the time and there is no shortage of conflicts big and small they are still involved in
It just really feels like a missed opportunity when we were promised more charr content and it's largely just more of the same, sure we got some cool glimpses but it's like teases
Besides that, seasonal events were just recycled content with a few new prizes added, upwards of 70% of all game content is dead, what the fuck is going on with Dragon's Watch? Most of what's supposed to be our main cast has been absent for much of PoF and LW.
I know that there's issues with her voice actress, but they've gotten replacement actors before, or they could let us see her again just don't give her any voiced lines, even if it's just to have her tell us she's retiring and leaving the story permanently
It's just super noticeable when she's supposedly still in critical condition when Logan, who was in the exact same situation, made a full recovery and returned to the action a long time ago.
I also miss the crafting interface. Want to craft something but you need another crafted map? No problem just pop up the required item, craft it once, then x out to the item you were originally going to craft
Leveling crafting was super tedious and there really wasn't a good way to do it aside from stockpiling hundreds of mats of like twelve different types, popping a booster, and crafting the same item over and over until the exp gain diminished and you move to the next item
only need one iron ingot ha ha fuck you people are only selling in stacks of 99 either pay 50k for an extra 98 ingots you don't need or hope you have miner unlocked and know where the iron nodes are
continuing on, while it's cute that each server has its own economy what it means to gil conscious buyers like me it means having to port across like 8 different servers to check every market if i want to make a big purchase because in many cases you could be saving like 50% on an item
I understand they want neighborhoods, but what this really means is only a tiny percentage of the playerbase can have a house ever and apartments don't fit the same niche, especially since they can't support gardening
"upgradeable" housing always seemed like a no brainer for me, every player/fc starts on a small lot/house that they can spend money on to upgrade over time
floating is so tedious and annoying also i'm pretty surprised that the wooden loft, which was clearly meant for players to be able to add additional floors to their homes, can't support floor based items without floating
meanwhile GW2 offers an ACCOUNT WIDE skin saving system, you are not forced to "keep" the item in a storage withe extremely limited space, change your clothes anytime, anywhere, hundreds of also account wide, single use dyes, dye channels, also just way more skins in general
I try to not fault them too much due to the limitations of the XIV system (god give us more glamour plates) but it's kinda depressing to see so many people in the playerbase wearing the same outfits
we have so few clothing options and because changing your clothes is such a pain and you have limited space for fashion items we can't really be as creative as we want to be
Anyway things I really appreciate in XIV: - less grind - frequent updates that add new content - even if it's small, they try to do new things for seasonal holidays every year
I think one thing XIV super lacks in is open world content but I understand that they choose to not focus on the open world and instead on instanced content
I legit thought it was a voice actress change from core -> HoT but no it was apparently the same one they just had her do a completely different voice I guess
I understand that the playerbase wanted Viera and the devs wanted Hrothgar so they tried to put in both but it feels like neither race got the attention they needed
- less grind
- frequent updates that add new content
- even if it's small, they try to do new things for seasonal holidays every year
I am begging Scholars to use Aetherflow