FFXIV: Top 6 Things I Disliked from Heavensward

Since Stormblood is just around the corner, I’ve decided to make a few posts thinking back over Heavensward in general. What did I like? What didn’t I like? What was just meh?

I covered the things I liked about Heavensward already, so what are some things I didn’t like?

6. Wondrous Tales

I’m going to put this under a “meh” category, but Wondrous Tales never did much for me. I’m still never going to run dungeons for the fun of it, and doing an Expert and a Levelling in a night is more than enough.

So, no. I look at those journals and what they’re asking me to do, and nope right on out of there at the possibility of RNG rewards. It’s so much a carrot on a stick that it almost makes me cringe. It’s one thing if you’re doing this content anyhow and get an extra reward, it’s another when I hear folks say, “Well I NEED to run XYZ because journal!!!”

I always suppress the desire to say, “But there’s no promise you’ll even get a line. Why?”

Anyhow. I won’t knock it too hard because it keeps content running. But it’s not my thing. It needs to be a lot less RNG for me to be excited about it.

5. Stupid Battle Levequests

I did so few battle levequests that I don’t even have a picture for this! So… have a bunch of behemoth mounts in Idyllshire.

Battle Levequests. They used to be a solid leveling alternative to FATEs back in 2.0. They just got really dumb in Heavensward to the point that no one did them except to abuse the Amber drops for Relic.

The problem was that unlike 2.0, Leves were all distributed from Ishgard, instead of the nearest town or outpost to the Leve’s location. Then, if you want to turn them in, you have to go all the way back to Ishgard. This was extremely annoying, and once I figured that out, I never did one outside of Amber farming again.

Also those BIG Levequests that take up like 10 Leves? Worthless in comparison of XP gain to individual quests. This was a big missed opportunity.

Leves were still good for crafters (before the Moogle quests), but battle Leves really went down the tubes.

4. Fokelore Books

I like the idea of crafting Scrips and Collectables. I don’t like how they were implemented. It’s only been recently, when Squads and Custom Deliveries (two of my favorite things in HW) were put into the game that I could reliably earn the Scrips I needed for my crafting and gathering jobs.

I enjoy gathering, and sometimes I enjoy crafting, but I just did not have the time to grind out for all the gear, tools and recipies that end game required. The worst of these have been the Fokelore gathering books, which require 99 of Rowena’s Blue Scrip Tokens. Each token cost 50 scrips.

This means that each book costs 4,950 scrips. And there are NINE books.

No. This is too much. I know they need to give gatherers stuff to do, but it makes it almost impossible those of us who are trying to work on battle jobs as well as gathering/crafting in a casual setting.

They said that the Custom Deliveries we have now will continue to develop in the future, so I hope that Stormblood’s equivalent to Fokelore books (if they have them) won’t be so terrible.

3. Messed Up Bard

Bard was my main in 2.0. Then Heavensward came in and messed it up so badly that I struggled for a year before I decided on a job for my main. I hated it that much. In the end, I did level and use Bard as a backup, and it got a little better with the latest round of buffs. But it really soured a good bit of my Heavensward experience.

You don’t know how excited I am to hear about Bard changes in Stormblood. I feel like I can finally go back to playing the job again, and hopefully enjoying it.

2. Death of FATEs

It hurts my heart to admit this, but Heavensward FATEs were almost dead on arrival. What used to be a fun (to me) and engaging solo activity for leveling has been pretty much replaced by PotD now. Though while you can do PotD solo, it’s not lucrative, so there’s really not a solo option for leveling in the open world like there used to be with FATEs.

The problem with Heavensward FATEs started at launch. People began playing them, but they gave so little experience in return, the community quickly scoffed at them as useless. A patch later, the experience was buffed by 50%, but the damage was already done — few people played Heavensward FATEs when compared to Dragonhead or North Than.

When they added FATEs to requirements for the first Relic step, that just made people more loathe to do them. This is really sad because some rewards (Triple Triad cards, barding, etc) can only be won by completing the FATE chains out there. I’m glad I got to see them, because without a solid farming party, I don’t think these get completed regularly anymore.

1. Alliance Raids

I loved the Crystal Tower series of raids in 2.0. They were my first ever raiding experience in a MMO. I still run those for fun from time to time.

I completely loathe Weeping City and Dun Scaith, however. Many months later, I still don’t think these are newcomer friendly, that the mechanics on some fights are fuzzy and hard to read if you don’t know exactly what to look for, and the raids punish people too much for slipping up, even on small things.

I don’t like them. I doubt I ever will. I rarely play them. I’m not optimistic about the direction that Alliance Raids are going in FFXIV.

I hope Stormblood will change my mind, or else, I’ll be sitting out raid nights again next expansion. And let me tell you, it’s a real bummer when you don’t play stuff with friends and FC (who you do want to play with) because the content is more frustrating than fun.

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