Of course, it also had other stuff in it, so this time around we can start going into other useful stuff like new jobs and class design. Which is a good thing, since, again, we’ve got a little while longer until Stormblood arrives, but not forever. So enough preamble; let’s finish up talking about the stories in Heavensward, especially as we’re moving into the parts that just unambiguously did not land well.
The Warring Triad
I feel like one of the big problems that Heavensward had was the simple problem of having too many stories going. If I had to pick one to be removed? This would be it, because you could bake the Warring Triad stuff back into the main scenario and improve both of them along the way.
As it stands, the Triad felt oddly nonconsequential, like a series of fights against Primals solely to have those new trials in each patch. It never really sent the message that people were in actual danger or that this was something which urgently needed player attention. No, this was just… a series of things you were expected to do, rather perfunctory normal-mode fights so you could unlock the harder version for weapon farming if you cared about that and didn’t mind listening to whining about skipping Soar.
Worse yet, the story pulled a bunch of otherwise interesting characters to serve as its supporting cast and wound up sidelining them in the process. I really wanted to see more of Legatus Regula, but his space in this story meant that he was basically forgotten elsewhere… and as a result, he didn’t have the space to be much more than an eleventh-hour distraction on occasion. It felt, tragically, boring.
There’s some neat cosmology here, but sidelining the Warring Triad has always felt like a weaker story overall. I liked that it was getting some focus, but given what that focus entailed, I wasn’t thrilled with the end result.
Hildibrand and the Curious Case of Boredom
Look, I come to Hildibrand stories expecting two things: a bit of worldbuilding lore and some humor. This delivered the former, but not much of the latter, and it was also pretty much entirely devoid of actual gameplay. Pretty much every quest boiled down to going to places and watching movies happen, as opposed to the actual somewhat farcical fights that did wind up accompanying the gentleman’s storyline in the 2.x series.
The reasons cited for all of this, of course, was the fact that Hildibrand was originally not planned for inclusion in Heavensward, brought in largely because of player demand. And I can appreciate and respect that. It’s just, well… while I like Hildibrand on a whole, I’d prefer no Hildibrand to a weak incarnation of same. And there’s a lot of reasons why this installment didn’t come off well (recycling too many jokes, lack of escalation, everyone just buying into the Manderville way of looking at the world), ultimately it’s just heaping abuse.
The short version is that this just wasn’t very good, and frankly, I would rather not have Hildibrand in Stormblood if he needs to take an expansion out to be funny again. The idea of his adventures becoming boring is far worse than not having them in a single expansion.
The Scholisticate was just not good
Well, this was just dumb.
I can, on some level, see what the writers were going for with this story. The problems here are multiple, though. Instead of giving us a ground-level view of what’s going on in Ishgard as the nation reacts to the revelations of Heavensward, it drops us into what amounts to a crew of spoiled and sheltered children to watch them bicker over a problem which has absolutely nothing in the way of long-term stakes. The worst consequence is just that a school shuts down, and it’s a school full of people we’ve never met before and who have no personality beyond “the milquetoast nice one” and “the bitchy one,” so who cares?
It also removes a straight man character from comedy and just plops him into a story, resulting in… nothing. He’s just there, doing his job, doing nothing interesting. There’s no clash of views, no contrast, nothing but bland by-the-numbers progression of events.
In short? This was just the flat-out loser of the bunch, and more so than any other story in the expansion, it added nothing of merit to the expansion. Removing it would have been a good thing.
Class stories and design
I could spend a bunch of time unpacking the various class stories one-by-one, but about all that can be said as an aggregate is that there were good ones, bad ones, and neutral ones. Dark Knight got a very good set of storytelling, while I think Black Mage felt the most perfunctory out of the lot, but that’s going to be the sort of thing we’ll encounter in every expansion. They’re side stories delving into the class itself, it’s inevitable.
What’s more interesting to me is the way that this expansion reworked job mechanics… or, in many cases, didn’t rework them. Monk and Ninja, for example, still play largely the same as they did before; Ninja makes it easier to maintain Huton on the regular, but the job I’m playing at 60 is fairly similar to the one at 50. Other jobs had other major wrinkles added on, with every ranged job receiving a major rework (either in the form of casting time for ranged weapons or buff maintenance for casters), every tank getting a solid off-tanking damage option, and healers staying mechanically similar with some extra tools.
The emphasis on the design was definitely on giving everyone more things to do and pay attention to, so previously rather simple jobs like Dragoon got a buff to deal with (and two rather superfluous abilities to go along with it). It also really rewarded aggression in a way that the base game didn’t; with healing mostly being a numbers game and tanks getting absurdly inflated stats, there’s every reason to rush ahead and pull things up to each barrier regardless of whether or not you have a strong AoE party. (That’s something to also be discussed with itemization and endgame philosophy.)
I think, by and large, this was a successful effort. Certainly it makes a lot of classes more interesting to play now, and I’m definitely in favor of the things that have been done to make Dragoon and Summoner have more mechanical wrinkles. The biggest problem is just that some of these elements go a little bit too far; Black Mage in particular has been given a particularly complex system of overlapping buffs which can require way too much fine management to allow actually using your abilities.
It also encourages people to be aggressive and impatient, which is never a good thing. When you have so many buffs that are build entirely around maintenance, where you’re actively weaker if you aren’t pulling something at all times… well, it drives that philosophy to the players. It encourages rushing rather than allowing for different styles.
So it’s good design, overall, but there’s a bit too much in the way of time-limited buffs. There are too many things where you have a very limited time window to capitalize on something, and it’s too possible to “lose” vital improvements. That’s the sort of thing which we can only hope Stormblood addresses, by and large.
Of course, there’s more to discuss on that matter when it comes to dungeons, raids, and so forth… which we’ll be doing next week. Until then, feel free to leave your own opinions in the comments down below, or mail them along to eliot@massivelyop.com.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
