Or any decent analysis of the game's story that isn't just deepthroating and ball-gargling it?
That would involve making mild criticism of the game, which is like to get you lynched with the broader community, so you won't see it from any of the "big" voices in the game.
The endless praising of the game's story as "the best ever" is drawn from people making the game a core part of their identity, and thus the game has to be like, the best ever or else they'll be self-conscious. The game has to be a reflection of their self-image. The alternative, that they've never played any other story-driven game, watched any movies or TV, or read any books, is just too far a stretch for me, but I guess it's not impossible.
Aumarot manages to actually transcend FF14's limitation and is genuinely just fucking great storytelling period, but everything else indeed rises at best only to "really good for an MMORPG." And even then, it's almost on a technicality - the game is functionally a single-player RPG where every few levels you need to group up with 3 or 7 other people who had may as well be robots. The story only barely handwaves who you're grouping with for the first portion of it, then is written in such a way that it assumes you're rolling with your pals.
We got Gulg. Wall to wall pulls, only wiped once when the WAR stood in something he shouldn't have. Healers are a waste of a slot in dungeons after the tanks get their sustain (insert DRK QQing here)
See, the Gulg pull is one of the ones I enjoy because it lets you gather up a ton of packs right before the last boss. I guess with a third damage-dealer, if you cycled through all of your mitigation and healing several times over and made use of the classic holmgang->3 benedictions from intuition, they'd burn down before you ran out of sustain.
It winds up being that healers are necessary to complete the dungeons in pugs only because the DPS players so often seem to snack on paint chips (or you get a curebot deathly afraid of using aoes, or both), so the mobs die so damn slowly you will run out of sustain and mitigation 9/10 times. Smileton as a fresh 90 and Bardam's are just about the only places I worry about incoming damage for incoming damages' sake.
Nah mate, it was on boss mechanics that I was perfectly fine in. What WAS NOT fine however, was the boss turned his face right around and started AOE shit on the whole group.
May as well report people who do that and don't immediately apologize, as even if it was a genuine mistake, it'll get the message across to be more conservative.
But rescue-cleaving parties is usually just griefing with the hopes that no-one notices, like shirking a dps.
