...well, there's plenty worth criticizing about FFXIV, not least its politics, but from a purely gameplay perspective, Heavensward fucking sucked and flying ruined the game.

Basically:

The very left edge is 1.0, not A Realm Reborn.

It's not very good at being pure content the way expansions since Stormblood have been (though that uniformity of content is its own problem, as my own post-Endwalker slump tells me); AND it removed a lot of the weird things that A Realm Reborn had that made it... charming.

Chief among them: Actual map design.

It's very easy to show that Heavensward has dogshit maps. Just open them! Huge swathes of flat nothing. Usually with one strict dividing line of cliffs, so as to justify flying. Sometimes, like the Sea of Clouds, it's huge swathes of nothing with holes, so as to justify flying.

It's literally 90% flat, empty space with monsters strewn about. Almost comically bad.

The map design has recovered a little bit since, there's usually only a couple horrendously bad maps per expansion now; but what never recovered is the feeling of familiarity with places. I spent about an equal amount of time in ARR and HW zones; possibly more than that in Stormblood zones—and yet. ARR zones are the only ones I feel any particular attachment to.

Sure, they were my first, and that'll always help. But a huge difference is that when I was doing chores in them—daily quests, relic grinds, etc—I was actually engaging with the map. Not only that, the maps were actually built to be navigated! Sometimes, they were annoying to navigate, but at least there was some texture to the experience.

Now I just press Flying Mount Roulette , ascend for two seconds, and then move in the right direction until I can descend. You might say that "I control the buttons I press", but unfortunately not flying is often either impossible, or just makes the experience slower instead of different.

Maps have become disposable skins for the exact same experience everywhere.

The exact same experience everywhere

A criticism also levied at the dungeons in the game. It's always the exact same structure, with absolutely minimal differences:

• 4 groups of mobs with one wall between the first two and the rest;
• miniboss;
• 4 groups of mobs with one wall between the first two and the rest;
• miniboss;
• 4 groups of mobs with one wall between the first two and the rest;
• the final boss.

To fully appreciate the monotony, I typed all of that out repeatedly instead of copy-pasting it. You're welcome.

I'll admit that the minibosses have been consistently really cool. But the entire structure is so worn out that I can go into a completely new dungeon in any role, and clear it basically with my eyes closed. It sucks.

No I don't really have a point

I'm just writing it down because sometimes I talk to people who like Heavensward.

Here's some closing thoughts:

• "church bad" is not a story. We know that church bad. Do better.
• haurchefant? more like irrelefant lmao gottem
• snow areas suck, get better colours