Niantic and Google are (were?) not companies with very strong links to the Saudi Arabian government.
I've seriously reconsidered how much I use Google in recent months, but Google and Niantic aren't owned by a government that is incredibly repressive and discriminatory of people like myself.
I'm a level 50 Pokémon Go player, who has played since release day, and that's the app deleted.
Next up will be requesting removal of my data under GDPR.
I think those are all very fair points and I will definitely keep much of that in mind as I continue working through the expansion.
One thing that I am finding myself really disagree with more experienced FFXIV players on is the job identity and resulting balance. This is very much coloured by coming from Guild Wars 2 which made excellent strides in opening up the ability to perform major roles on all professions but then failed the landing so drastically that despite a plethora of builds being available, most see very little play because of how strong a handful are. Much of the reasons for the poor balance seem to stem from trying too hard to have distinguishing features and different playstyles and I'm not overly keen to go back to that.
FFXIV, from what I've played thus far (I am mainly focusing on healers with all at 100 or very high 90s) feels very similar to WoW when I played during WotLK. There are definite differences, but they aren't considerable.
I do hope that Square Enix manage the very tricky balancing act of adding more flavour and differences without subsequently destroying balance which aside from FRU looks pretty okay? Failing that, I'll take somewhere that I can play my main in group content without being on the receiving end of a kick because of what I play.
Some of the voice acting is indeed all over the place. Krile is very up and down in quality, Alphinaud sounds like he's have his first hangover and Thancred is stuck in Metal Gear mode! Urianger and Alisae have been great, I'm enjoying Erenville a lot more in DT and Wuk Lamat's English VA has been excellent imo.
I think it is the craftable one, but I am not certain.
I have the opposite of main character syndrome when it comes to MMOs. I do not want the world to revolve around my character, so perhaps that is why I am not finding the same faults!
One of the moments that made the Steppe section in Stormblood the best the expansion had to offer until Tsuyu!
I think you have a point about game communities being somewhere to vent. I know I did that so much with Guild Wars 2. There isn't really anything I feel the need to get super annoyed about with FFXIV yet - the balance is nowhere near as glaringly bad as GW2 or at points when I played WoW and really the biggest sin it has is a lot of boring (but very good for an MMO) story.
I can't wait for the FF9 references to hit. I loved Eden so much for the callbacks to 8!
I enjoyed the Steppe section but everything else (aside from Lyse doing some fun stuff every now and then) was just not enjoyable in the slightest. Post-Stormblood was really good though imo!
I... really quite Wuk Lamat so far and I think the English voice acting for the character is one of the stronger examples of good VA in FFXIV.
Not entirely sure what happened with Thancred's voice though since EW. He now seems to be stuck in the Metal Gear Thancred mode from the stealth quest section of EW!
I am quite enjoying the pace of the story line, but I am expecting it to become a bit more of a drag at one point since there is generally at least one section of the X1 to X7 story in each expansion that just feels there for the sake of being there.
That is because "the left" might have a few members that just so happen to be better read and have considered some of Popper's writings.
On such a note, I presume these right-leaning opinions aren't about the virtues of conservative fiscal policy?
There are many right wing views, views that are now sadly becoming more and more mainstream, that should not be tolerated. If right wingers had faced actual consequences when espousing their hatred of minorities, we might not be looking at a US government that wants to cozy up to Putin and distance their long term allies while stripping away the rights of US citizens.
For myself, it is much more about the ties to Saudi Arabia given that the country and government aren't all too happy with LGBT people.