**SPOILERS** Did anyone else find this new zone to be a complete slog? **SPOILERS**

I found Elpis to be a welcome reprieve from a lot of the doom and gloom. Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus’ relationship was lovely and really helped me contextualize a lot of things, and by god finally figuring out why Fandaniel went from someone who respected all life to someone who disregarded life as meaningless…

I mean obviously, I am in the minority here, which is actually quite surprising to me. I am by no means overly critical or a "hater" as some like to describe. I just simply have not enjoyed this section at all. It is very slow. I actually fell asleep playing last night while there. Yes, the zone itself is gorgeous. But I am just not finding a single thing in the quests or storyline interesting at all. Though I will admit EW as an expansion isn't hitting me emotionally like Heavensward or Shadowbringers did. I am enjoying it but so far I can't say this is my favorite expansion. We shall see how it ends. Anyway, back to trying to get through this zone and out of it as fast as I can.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dionysius

Elpis is a dream come true story arc (and very important moment) for a lot of people including me.

So I respectfully disagree.

---

I agree with Dionysius, the events, characters, and reveals in Elpis have been some of the most mind-blowing of the whole game so far. I've read every single line of dialog I've encountered in the expansion so far and none of them match Elpis. I can't wait to see what areas after that are like!

I understand the pacing issue, it's pretty up/down fast/slow and see how that can be bothersome to people. Personally, I enjoy it as it shows both macro and micro scale story that ramps up on the whole as the MSQ progresses.

Not at all. I enjoyed every bit of it as it was a very crucial arc in the story

Knowing what were the characters like in the past when you already know what happened to them in the current time was very interesting

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I mean obviously, I am in the minority here, which is actually quite surprising to me. I am by no means overly critical or a "hater" as some like to describe. I just simply have not enjoyed this section at all. It is very slow. I actually fell asleep playing last night while there. Yes, the zone itself is gorgeous. But I am just not finding a single thing in the quests or storyline interesting at all. Though I will admit EW as an expansion isn't hitting me emotionally like Heavensward or Shadowbringers did. I am enjoying it but so far I can't say this is my favorite expansion. We shall see how it ends. Anyway, back to trying to get through this zone and out of it as fast as I can.

---

I will say that at the very least pay attention to the quests that have lyrics from Answers as the title. If you’re not enjoying the slow pace of Elpis then you may enjoy those.

But I’d also like to remind you gently, that this isn’t close the the Final Days for them. They’re simply living their lives, so obviously things are going to feel slow… their lives WERE slow.

Elpis wasn't the drag. Moon rabbit comic relief part right after Zodiark was the drag, as well as the second half of Labyrinthos. Overstayed their welcome a little bit.

And tbf, all the expacs have had pacing issues. especially HW and ShB.

I'm a sucker for anything Amaurotine related at this point, so I loved the zone. The only weird thing that stood out to me was Elidibus saying I couldn't change the past, which is all fine and dandy since just being able to warn Emet about the Final Days would just be a lame way to wrap up the story. But then I gotta ask, what was Shadowbringers?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zumi

No Elpis is one of the best zones they ever made.

---

Different stokes for different folks. I love Elpis and the backstory and character development there was superb. We need housing in that area.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baklava151

I'm a sucker for anything Amaurotine related at this point, so I loved the zone. The only weird thing that stood out to me was Elidibus saying I couldn't change the past, which is all fine and dandy since just being able to warn Emet about the Final Days would just be a lame way to wrap up the story. But then I gotta ask, what was Shadowbringers?

---

You’re essentially creating a closed timeloop. If you’re not done with Elpis then I’d suggest not reading further but

Ultimately you are, and always have been, part of that small window into that time period. It is set in stone. You were always meant to visit Elpis, tell Hades, Venat, Hermes and Hythlodaeus about the Final Days. Hades, Hermes, and Hythlodaeus were always going to lose their memoeies of that event, Venat was always going to create Hydaelyn, and you were never going to change the past- because you were ALWAYS going to do these things. It’s a closed time loop, with a clean finish. You effected no change because your actions have already been done.

I felt that Elpis was necessary for a few reasons.

For one thing, if it was just a small handful of quests you wouldn't have time to get to know Meteion or flesh out Hermes properly. Not to mention Venat, getting a real sense for who she was before becoming Hydaelyn.

I get it if some people don't like the zone. But it felt very necessary for me.

Elpis is fantastic what are you talking about :p !?
The Story is really important there too.

Elpis was great. I didn't want the MSQ there to end.

The only issue I had with this zone was crying too hard. We got sent back to form attachments to characters we know we can't save but what's worse, then we're told to tell them we can't save them...

And that montage with Venat and the Answers song (that most people said wouldn't be relevant this far in and were wrong) was just so heart-wrenching.

So I completely disagree.

Im struggling with the same in garlemald.
Walking-simulator :P

I seriously would’ve loved more of Elpis. Ima kinda upset that we probably won’t get more of the ancients after Endwalker because I find them the most interesting thing in the game so far.

I loved Elpis so much I never even mounted. I just ran everywhere enjoying all the little things here and there.

I played through and read every single cutscene in Endwalker.

There's a lot of quests I wish I had skipped.

None were in Elpis. It was by far the best and most interesting part of the entire story to me.

I stated this in other threads, Elpis I thought was the highlight of our journey in Endwalker. It was great, and I enjoyed it. Literal wonder. Other zones felt like a slog in comparison at times, even the last one, that one carried on a bit long in parts.

Elpis was my favorite zone and I loved the whole story. I did a bunch of side quests there and plan to do the rest later.

But maybe I enjoyed it so much because I'm a big Emet-Selch fan.

I opened this thread fully expecting to read "The Moon." How dare you say mean things about Elpis :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LisSquid

I opened this thread fully expecting to read "The Moon." How dare you say mean things about Elpis :(

---

I'm sorry :( I guess I just never connected with all the past stuff? I've never been so bored.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I'm sorry :( I guess I just never connected with all the past stuff? I've never been so bored.

---

"All the past stuff" in Elpis is the setup for the entire ending of 6.0, and also clarifies a lot of what we learned in the Tempest.

To think it is boring is to think the ending of both expansions was boring.

Which I mean, valid, not everyone likes everything. But it's a highly unusual take.

Elpis was the best part of the whole MSQ.

IMO Elpis has been the highlight of the game. I personally thought Thavnair and anything involving the elephant folks were a slog.

I loved Elpis! Whether the MSQ or the zone, I loved it all. <3 I was thrilled with the way it played out there.

I liked Elpis a lot. I actually think that right after we defeat Zodiark, we should skip the entire space bunny bonanza and move directly to Elpis, because its THAT RELEVANT right around that time. The Moon bunnies are just completely superfluos, but they are so ESPECIALLY at that point in time. I think they d be better suited to be slotted into the overly long and drawn out lvl 88 questline in lower Labyrinthos, which is basically about moon bunnies again anyway.

I personally consider Elpis, and the way its story was handled, to be the best low-action episode of this expansion.

It was nice to see the old friends of Azem interacting with each other and our WoL. The little remarks toward their friendship with Azem were also very lovely. Ever since we learned about that friendhsip in Shadowbringers I had hoped we could get glimpses of the past through our Echo. Actually traveling to the past and to build our very own connection to Emet was very rewarding and like a dream come true. I hope we get to see our old, new friends again one day when they are reborn.

It was also very nice to learn more about who Fandaniel was in the past. How he became so twisted.

Elpis tried to quickly establish emotional ties to some characters we haven't really interacted with much or at all, and it also gave us a face for the final days, rather than it just being a looming unbeatable concept.

However, the one part, with the little game of cat and mouse as you chase down Meteion....there's a reason the rule of threes exist, and that quests proves it. It should not have dragged out like it did, there was simply no reason for it to drag you halfway across the entire area to find her 6ish times before the quest is actually over, and for the latter few times you couldn't even mount because you had to drag Emet with you.

Overall it was an interesting zone, and i enoyed it, but that last little bit before the dungeon had me fuming with how long it was taking.

And, from a story perspective, it didn't feel like i was wasting a lot of time there doing chores while the world was ending, because we came back to the point a little after we left at.

I will say, however, SE got a little too fond of the "have an NPC follow you around" shtick, because it's annoying as hell when you lose them and have to go back. Hell, for one of the role quests i had to talk to a guy and move 10 feet to the north with him and talk to him there, just because.

Edit: That cutscene when you leave elpis? *Mwah* Magnifique. If SE knows one thing, it's when to use Answers. Also the lyrics are very relevant

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

So for the first time ever, I actually have skipped cutscenes in FF14 because the story has become so dreadfully boring and dull. What zone am I talking about? Elpis. This entire section completely derails the momentum of the MSQ and once again presents us with a zone that really no one will have a reason to return to later just like Tempest.

I feel the story from this could have easily been truncated into 4-5 MSQ quests and didn't need an ENTIRE ZONE dedicated to it. The pace of EW had been great up until now, but my god what a slog.

---

It doesn't have serious pacing issues because you stated it. That is your opinion. I didn't think they could top shadowbringers but they actually pulled it off.

Elpis is my favourite zone of this expansion, and really liked the MSQ-part. I also don't find it to be a weird pacing, rather I found it natural to be this way. We had our introduction with the first halves of Labyrinthos and Thavnair, then it was leading up to what appeared to be the real threat, which was dragged out to the moon. After that, we have basically another expansion with once again a lengthy introduction, before it builds up its momentum again.

If there was any zone I almost fell asleep, it's the last one. Especially the 2nd section of it. I was first hyped, when I saw the dragons and parts of Omega and was ready to learn more about the old dragon world. But that 2nd race was utterly boring, and I don't know why the omega-people were a thing in the first place.

I rather enjoyed the zone, the only thing I would like to have seen in Eplis would have been meeting Azem themselves but we just got teased that they were else where

Ehm, no?

I was actually kinda disappointed in where the story was going up until that point, Elpis reignited my interest and got me excited again.
Honestly I didn't like how sci-fi the story got until the end, I spent a lot of the game loving it but also at the back of my mind being a bit like '' wtf why is so much new stuff happening? ''.
But Elpis and the last zone connected it all and now I love the whole thing.

The story was very bold and it did make me very worried and questioning the whole thing but in the end it was worth it.

I couldn't disagree more lol. Elpis was my favorite part of the story and I am looking forward to NG+ solely to play through it again. I'd hoped (but never expected) anything in game about the old chaos trio of ancient times but the warm fuzzies of recognizing the voices of my guides eventually giving way to the realization that you were always a part of the beginning of the end was a hell of a payoff.

The plot needed to slow down there to build up the final arc, without it the home stretch of MSQ wouldn't work at all. The only part of that zone that felt a little too long for me was the last follow quest. It could have been chopped in half.

imo, the only slog was the 2nd part of Labyrinthos.

Hmmm there were parts in Elpis that I felt were unnecessary, but overall I really loved the zone and the story. It gave a lot of answers about the ancients and I liked finding out how they lived and stuff.

I didn’t mind the pacing of that zone because it was a nice monetarily reprieve from the doom. And I LOVED seeing the relationship of the npcs of the past.

I liked it a lot! That sort of a return to peace for a moment after the story events.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rhysati

I like story. (...) While I understand why others are saying they love Elpis for the adorable little story, I feel it would make an EXCELLENT optional side-story that everyone can play when they feel like it. (...) Sure, it is relevant to how we got to that point in the story, but couldn't we tell this on it's own when it isn't detracting from the pacing of the adventure we are currently on?

---

Just goes to show that you (and others with the same opinion tbh) don't like stories, you like action packed bullshit with no rhythm except "cocaine driven movies and games" that you were nurtured with.

Am I an elitist ? Sure. But I'm fed up with y'all pretending to know shit about writing.

Elpis is awesome. Love the backstory there and just about everything else. The moon on the other hand was a bit tedious for me.

I LOVED Elpis right up until the dungeon at its conclusion, when the entire Endwalker story stopped making a lick of sense.
Like, I strongly suspect everything from the level 87 dungeon onwards was written by a different, much worse author.

Sharlayan and Elpis are by far the slowest zones of the expansion. Lots of filler IMO that breaks up the action and lacks urgency until it picks up again. It's more about world building and setting the stage.

That said I feel Sharlayan is the worse of the 2.

You could argue that the Loporrits on the moon was equally as bad but because of how SUPER MARIO and charming the Loporrits they are I didn't really mind it. Plus the FF4 nostalgia also helps out a great deal.

Elpis is much more enjoyable if you've played Chrono Trigger. If you turn BGM off and play Corridors of Time in Elpis it just feels good.